Imagine what it would be like if the fussiness, the daintiness, on Larks' Tongues in Aspic were replaced by the kind of messy noisiness that the music seems it could accomodate easily. (Variously: tiny-instrument quiet-music, monster funk, 'shrieking' guitar leads, cod-eastern grooves...) But the fussiness is what makes it prototypical art-rock, I guess.

Even though I think John Wetton is a bad singer, 'Book of Saturday' still sounds beautiful.

Another answer (see last entry): it's not just a matter of 'I like this' or 'I don't like this,' full stop: there are complex relationships between the things I like and don't like, between different genres, artists, songs, and so on and on. Imagine what it was like when you first started liking a kind of music that you never liked before - maybe even hated. Then imagine what it was like on down the road. Now imagine that with a whole bunch of different kinds of music, together.

Just before I moved I got some email from an old friend:

you know, i always did respect your hyper-ecumenical tastes in music, with one nagging caveat: to me, there has never been any underlying ascetic in your tastes, it just seems to boil down to 'i like this' or 'i don't like that.' where is the common thread? i never could see the essence.

The gnomic answer is: my life is the essence.

But of course that won't do. How could your life be so fragmented, etc. etc. My brief answer to that is that I don't think it's any more fragmented than anyone else's. It's just that I emphasize that fragmentation a little more than some people who don't devote as much of their time to music as I do. (I might also say, than some people who spend even more time on music than I do. But explode the fragmentation the same way: haven't you ever known anyone who liked jazz and (gasp) rock? Rap and classical?) Or rather, it's naturally emphasized by how much music I listen to.

Another gnomic answer: isn't it the same as with art, or food?

The question seems to assume that either this 'essence' would be guiding me to prefer certain music over other music ('this music is more rocking,' 'I like music with the funk'), or that it would just be something that I naturally uncovered in the music I liked, like a statue in a block of marble, as long as I was liking the right kind of music.

But aren't I? This is human life, other people's experiences, tangled up in the masses of sound they record onto discs for other people to hear. This is experience. Existence. Look at everything that goes into making music. Why shouldn't I try to, and be able to, get that everything back out?

Another one: it's all just vibrations, isn't it?

Or: it's all just melody, harmony, and rhythm, isn't it? (Ans: no.)

Another one: this is what it means to be a fan of pop music.

Or: this is what it means to be a fan of music.

My favorite gnomic answer: keep reading, your question will be answered (or seen to be irrelevant) eventually.

On 'To Be of Use', Bill Calahan sings 'come' like he's still kind of embarrassed to be using the word in a song, which is refreshing given how often singer-songwriter confessionalism is taken to be a license for unchecked brashness and sexual honesty.

Most of my
fantasies
are of
making
someone else come

Josh blog is now comin' at you from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Best song heard on the trip up: 'Walkin' on the Sun'.

My sleep schedule is totally screwed up. For the past two days I stayed up past my normal bedtime of 3 or 5 in the a.m. (admittedly already not normal), so that I could find out about my truck as soon as possible and get it packed in time for my checkout appointment - I can't get to sleep early enough to be able to wake up at the times I wanted to wake up. But, since there were no trucks, that effort has gone to waste, and I've just slept later in the day as a result.

So last 'night', ca. 6 in the a.m. or so (the sun was starting to come up, at least), me: sitting on the floor in a corner, back against the refrigerator, listening to Crescent and whistling along to the solos, wishing it would all stop and I could just be done moving, and lay down and go to sleep.

Why does this Shipping News record have to sound so flat? I mean, I know I'll start to hear the details eventually, but still.

'Sweet Lovin' Man' especially makes me idly wonder if, in ten or twenty years or so, we'll have a new version of 69 Love Songs where the tunes are performed in their 'ideal' versions - I say that because, despite the differences (often positive, or at least, neither positive nor negative, simply different) effected by Merritt's production or arrangement, or his sometimes deliberately incongruous choice of vocalists, and so forth, a lot of the songs play like alternate versions of other songs. The orchestra behind the new version of 'Sweet Lovin' Man' would lend it more vastness. (Because oh yes, it would have an orchestra.)

Some, like 'Long-Forgotten Fairytale', would not be worth redoing, at least if embiggening or emboldening were the only kind of perfection being sought on this hypothetical 69LS revisitation.