A monthly collection of frantic fiction and nutritious non-fiction from the esteemed Dave Shortland:
The title is taken from a Slade Song.
Both the title of this column and the visual may be changed very soon, without warning. Or perhaps, not ever.
New work can be found here
April 2010
THE GIFT OF LISTENING TO NEW MUSIC
Hi there, enormous NextBigThing Listening and InterWeb Public! My name is Dave / David. Also: Shortland / Smegma / Smegmann. Take your pick. I’m not particularly fussy as I’m mostly ambivalent about whom I think of myself as being. Probably not often David though, as only my mother calls me that, and this I find a little unsexy.
Actually, let’s settle this here and now, and for the purposes of the next few minutes you may think of me as “Stan”. I’ve always liked this name, very strong, very no-nonsense, very to-the-point.
I think it’s a safe guess that anyone who has found their way to this website has a deep love of music, and I’m no exception. For a while I was a creator, but now I am exclusively an Appreciator. Music has entertained and fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I have a very murky recollection of The Beatles’ Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da playing on the radio and somehow sensing that these guys were Very Important and still Very Much In The Game. I also have a more definite recollection of playing tennis-racquet guitar in my bedroom along to the alluring hit-parade strains of The Sweet (Fox On The Run, I’m afraid, rather than the flippantly-stood-the-test-of-time-Ballroom Blitz), and Mudd (Oh Boy). Oh boy.
As you will have by no doubt worked out, this piece is about the gift of “Listening” to New Music, rather than the gift of “Good Taste” in New Music.
I have known Martin at NextBigThing for a very long time. I first met him when I was the Quiet Shy Guy working the part-time shift at the unambiguously coolest record shop on the continent. There can be absolutely no contradicting this claim, by the way. Although I will support it by saying that the continent in question was of course Africa. In the 1980’s.
When I met him, Martin was pasty, taciturn and mostly night-dwelling. Slightly musty too, if I correctly recall. But nonetheless pretty damn exotic – certainly by my own protected, suburban standards. He always chose to wear black – thankfully, though, in a cool Nick Cave / Johnny Cash kind of way. I’m not sure how hard he actually thought about his visual image though, as his clothes seemed mostly spilled-on, kind of by default. And probably also because sticking to one, easy-to-remember colour took a lot of the ambiguity out of his available choices too.
An unimaginably intense playwright, he came across as a little scary and severe. But he clearly knew a LOT about music, and even more importantly, about the connections-amongst-all-things. Fascinating. I fell in awe almost immediately.
I worked backstage on some of his self-produced plays and gradually got to know him. Time passed. After the record store, he organised for my band to play some gigs in influential clubs, and then even managed us for a while. I guested some vocals on his album. He let us nick his best song for us to cover, and even record, for our album. I let him occasionally vomit out of my car window. In short, we became mates.
But here’s the best thing that I got from getting to know Martin: by example, he showed me the pleasure and importance of listening to new music (always more and different and don’t be complacent and definitely don’t be lazy), and by mistake, he gave me the opportunity to learn how to do this. And in a way, this treasured gift that I got from Martin all those years ago is exactly the same gift that he now shares with the users of the NextBigThing website. How very elegant and apt. I was reminded of this when I recently re-profiled my taste on the NextBigThing site and was really pleased to see how much my musical likes and dislikes had changed in even a relatively short time.
At the time that I met Martin I already knew a lot about music….as long as it involved some variant of commercial 70’s hard rock, (the first and real) New Wave or 80’s NWOBHM (look it up on the internet if you’re not sure, or send me a postcard via NextBigThing, people). However, my mind was already beginning to open up a little. Remember, this was not just pre-internet or mp3, but effectively pre-CD as well, and getting to listen to new music was harder, especially out here on the ass-end tip of Africa. And did I mention that it was expensive? For me, each purchase had to be considered and carefully debated. I’d already been deeply hurt, scarred and disappointed by the likes of Simple Minds and Rod Stewart, too. My eggshell temperament couldn’t stand many more direct hits, and I really had not much idea of where to start.
Martin helped me out in many different ways: his playlist choices and the conversations we had with co-workers and customers to while away the late evenings at the record shop. Paging through his through his extensive record collection, seeing which tracks he had coded as his nightclub DJ choices. Fielding his withering glances when trying to defend the merits of the latest Frehley’s Comet release next to, say, that of The Pixies or Tom Waits, or even when I was Being Generally Disrespectful Of Neil Young.
But mostly, my education came through the time-honoured process of the MixTape. Jesus, he put a lot of those tapes together for me – too many to ever hope to keep up with or do justice to. Each one carefully themed or thought through, calculated to expose, prod, open doors. I remember in particular one that he called “In The Cave”. It was a collection of rare and common Nick Cave tracks, as well as some related collaborations, off-shoot projects and stylistically similar artists. What a treasure, and what an eye opener.
But to be completely honest, at the time most of these tapes felt a bit of an obligation, a millstone around my neck. They were HARD. I was conscious of them sitting on my tape-shelf and eyelessly, balefully staring at me. Waiting. Malevolent, like a bad Stephen King creation. They were a burden, too great a responsibility. Because, you see, the idea of listening to new and challenging music was absolutely great, but actually getting up off my ass and DOING it seemed a whole lot harder. It was tough going: I never seemed to have enough time, or space, or quiet, or energy. It all seemed so daunting, and just so difficult – much gentler to glide back into the comfort and massage of the known and familiar and easy.
But you know what, I really did apply myself. It might have taken me years, and there was some stuff that I never listened to more than once, twice, tops. But some things really hooked into me, as music will always do.
Thinking about it, though, it’s not really the content of those tapes that’s important to me here, for they are only the detail, the colour. It was the attitude, the curiosity and the stamina that I learnt from coming to terms with those tapes that has really been Martin’s true gift to me, the gift of listening to new music. Of course I still revel in the warm familiarity of an occasional Police album, or (god-help me) Black Sabbath, but I more often find myself excited and pushing, preferring to hear new music, rather than the old. This has is what has enriched my life so much, and what I find so rewarding.
There is just SO much new music out there, and like any adventure the journey of discovery comes with pain and blisters as well as indelible memories. But attitude, curiosity and stamina – those are the things that really matter.
May 2010
THE LOST ART OF THE ALBUM
Mmmm. Ok. I know that I’m now skirting suspiciously close to the borders of Olde Farte territory (early-40’s / hair cut to uniform #1 to hide the grey / healthy respect for the glorious history and hidden connections of popular music), but am I the only person that sort of misses the lost art, allure and mystery of a full-length album?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I do recognise that they really do still make and release and distribute actual, bona fide full-length albums. But, somehow the allure and honey-trap-sweetness of the physical article formerly packaged, re-issued, repackaged, re-evaluated and known as the “LP”, “album”, or even “platter” leaves me strangely cold these days. Maybe it’s because I’m an enormous fan of MP3 and download technology. These quite literally revitalised and saved my love of music from the lethargy and boredom it had sunken into. My iPod revolutionised not only how I engage with the music, but also probably multiplied the quantity of music I listen to by a factor of at least twenty. It’s that entwined as an accompaniment to the ongoing details of my life. And I wouldn’t change a thing (mostly, anyway).
However.
We recently bought a new washing machine (shite, – there’s another Olde Farte alert for you right there…) and being the kind of person that I am I normally demand instant gratification once I’ve forked out the carefully sorted wads of cash. Un-content to wait the three days for the promised delivery, I agreed to go and collect it myself. The address seemed vaguely familiar. Pitching up at 08h45 the following morning I realised that the warehouse was actually what used to be the Dions Store in Randburg, close to where I lived in high school. Now, back in the day, Dions was (according to their website anyway): “South Africa’s premier lifestyle discount store”. Not sure quite what that means or what the equivalent would be in your neck of the woods, but you get the idea. They sold everything from crappy plates and glasses to camping equipment to electrical goods to enormo-catering-size cans of tuna. I’ve never been in one, but it’s kind of like what I imagine a Kmart to be like.
Seems like they subsequently fell on black days, though, as this vibrant and iconic place is now a dank and cold and soul-less warehouse. Bummer.
So, anyways, I have two abiding associations with this shop. The first is that this is where I slowly built up the collection of Iron Maiden posters that used to decorate my bedroom walls. (Kindly refer to last month’s article for my public apology regarding my former fascination with all things NWOBHM. ‘Twas the testosterone that made me do it, m’lud). My second association is Adam and the Ants’ Kings of the Wild Frontier album. And for me, these twelve songs represent everything the album-experience used to be.
In the simpler days of the early 80’s I think the blueprint used to work like this:
1. Get a first single out on the radio
2. Create a buzz with the image and a few well-placed articles
3. Capitalise on the success of the first single by releasing a better second-single, something that would become a timeless classic
4. Release a grainy / garishly bright / artlessly sexual / relentlessly happy (delete as applicable according to genre) soon-to-be-dated video that will receive airplay on TV maybe two or three times that month
5. Promote the fuck out of the album the tracks came from
6. Retire to a darkened room with trays of cocaine to count the cash (woops, there is none because of the dodge deal your inexperienced manager signed with the record co. when they held all the power)
7. Repeat process (slightly more desperately)
8. Repeat process (definitely more desperately)
9. Break the band up due to the inevitable “creative differences” (i.e. the songwriter / talent has worked out there is a way to keep what little money there is for themselves)
10.Reunite twenty five years later for the Filthy Lucre tour.
This, barring Step 10TM, was certainly Adam Ant’s path. And checking out Wikipedia just now, it seems as if this last step is growing increasingly inevitable. Keep watching this space.
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