Sometimes I don't realize that I'm having a memory until I snap out of it somehow. There's some kind of house noise in our house right now, water or something, maybe the laundry. For the past few minutes I had been sitting here, half-noticing it while I type, until I realized that I thought it was the big noisy fan on the woodburning stove that was down the hall from my room in the basement in the house where I grew up.

Sometimes I have similar mis-memories, like thinking that I will walk down the hall to a room which is in a place I used to live or work, or like being aware of the place I'm in yet seeing it as some other one (especially the case with bedrooms).

There's a relation to music.

The narrow line of separation between work and play: often when I hear the Dismemberment Plan or Fugazi I think about the band members actually working together, or actually playing together: that is, about the working or playing as activities involving a group of people doing things together. This isn't really something special to their music, it happens all the time. In fact something like this idea might be involved in a lot of conceptions of what good 'rock' is. Or jazz especially.

But sometimes I get the impression that these bands are working, and really enjoying it. Sometimes it is the kind of work that puts a serious look on people's faces. Sometimes it has serious overtones, but despite the seriousness everyone seems to take pleasure in the work, perhaps because of its seriousness. I think these things more often about Fugazi, not as often about the Plan. Sometimes the music seems more clearly to be a kind of play: it's a lot like work, but even if they're careful and determined, they're not so serious. (Does being at play always mean being playful? Probably not, but I think it may often, in the situations I'm talking about.) Seeing the Plan live makes it clearer when they really have fun, when they're not just playing but at play. But a lot of Fugazi's Argument sounds as if they are at play, to me, far more than any previous album. I've never seen them live but I imagine that they "indulge" a bit more in this when in concert.

These senses that music exhibits people at work or play (working together or playing together) can be very strong sometimes, so that it seems as if we should use them as criteria for success or quality. This can rub the wrong way people who like a kind of music that doesn't depend so much on musical elements of which we are able to say that they let us see people at work or play. This, despite the fact that often this kind of music can have similar qualities to it, in the sounds, in the structure. Autechre do this especially, once they start a track (circa tri repetae especially) going. I think this sort of privileging 'work' music can rub these other fans the wrong way because it seems kind of unfair, especially because the other music can come so close (arbitrarily close, let's say) to sounding the 'right' way anyway. These other kinds of music should be respected without being expected to meet the standards like 'work' and 'play' that seem to compelling and helpful to apply to other music. But that doesn't mean we should avoid talking about music in these terms - just that we should be careful what we do with the words.

Also, Dave's Nirvana article makes me think, since Golden Band has been my bedtime music for a few days in a row: since it seems like there's no particular reason why all the post-grunge bands imitate the style of their predecessors, other than that those things were popular, or were what happened to form the bands' earlier musical experiences, or anything of that sort, and moreover since it seems like much the same could be said of any musical style or movement and its followers, shouldn't you be able to imagine watered-down followers and imitators of any band, or album, or style? Or is this not in fact true? If not, what's special about your counterexamples? Something distinctive about their style? (Or something undistinctive, even: I suppose this question wouldn't be very interesting if the band being copied were just boring or nondescript already.)

(I was thinking, what would it sound like if this album became the imperfect model for a movement? Would the variation involved mean that we would see more singer-songwritery versions of the AAS's sound, more aggressive versions, catchier versions, versions concerned more with emotional commonplaces and platitudes, versions concerned more with love songs, with funny songs, with guitar solos?)

After hearing the Silent Way box the opening to Bitches Brew seems even more continuous with the earlier material.

"Pharoah's Dance" or whatever it's called has a compelling momentum to it, say 10 minutes in (and most other places) - for such a long piece with comparatively few points of large-scale structure (comparatively, with respect to western art music, that is), it seems to have a definite sense of going somewhere in the long sections between the turnarounds and edits and whatnot.

Is there just a lot more typical pop cadencing on The Argument?

kid606's ps i love you is beautiful, I think, and I'm told it counts as glitch, but I wonder if it's just too sparse, if it uses the wrong kind of noises, whatever they're called, to count as 'glitch'. Not that I'm saying Tim had to cover everything that could possibly be relevant to his fine article.

In his new Freaky Trigger article, Jess uses Eno's Another Green World as a point of comparison, a mostly-instrumental record masquerading as a vocal one. But he covers that in one sentence. I've got a woefully unfinished article sitting on my hard drive that talks about the American Analog Set's Golden Band in just those terms. Using the same point of comparison. Just thought you'd like to know. No, I don't know when it will be finished.

I think David's article doesn't go deeply enough into the point it makes about Nirvana and punk. It can't just be that Kurt knew and loved punk as a music and ethos. A number of other popular bands knew about punk, at the very least, and I bet they loved it and its ethos plenty (I'm thinking especially of Soundgaren; likewise Alice in Chains - even though they obviously had roots in glam metal early on, I bet they had some contact with punk somewhere). It's also just not a matter of fierce, primal music, etc. A lot of rock music or other music might fit Dave's description there. If punk is involved in what set Nirvana apart, it needs to be something more specific. I think Dave gets it partly right with the stuff about Kurt's dedication to the music through playing songs, playing with people, bigging up the Raincoats, etc. But it seems like something much more can be said about how punk shows up, even in some tangential or "essential" (and thus maybe obscured by the hooks, or the glistening production on Nevermind, or the Sabbath influences, etc.), in the music. (The fact that I think this makes me think that you could also say something similar about some of the other bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, etc., who seem to have more of that thing than say STP, or even worse, Candlebox, who barely masked the fact that they were never a "grunge" band with grunge mannerisms.)

I knew what sounds were around before, but adding my new boom box to my office has helped underscore what the environment was like, sonically, before. Sitting at my desk in the corner, with a shelf full of books, it had begun looking and feeling to me a little like a place. With my music on it sounds like a place.

First things listened to on it: disc two of Miles' Silent Way box, Fugazi's Argument, AAS's Know By Heart, and something new I got from Mike, Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening.