Adele, Appoggiatura, and Commonality of Heartbreak

Adele is all over the place now. She received six Grammy's. In addition, she's receiving a lot of play time on most radio stations worldwide. You can hear her at Starbucks, at the doctor's office, even at Costco. Adele's ubiquitous which is one of the better things to come out of pop culture.

She's even featured on the Wall Street Journal as an illustration of appoggiatura. The article entitled, "Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker" zeroes in on Adele's track "Someone Like You" and why it resonates with most people.



Personally, I don't care much for the track. I find the chord progression too simple and the lyrics vexingly clichéd. But, I like the video. No, correction, I am in deep like with the video. It reminds of my most favorite French film of all time, the spectacular Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais. Incidentally, if you do need to take a couple of hours to yourself and work something out in your mind, give this film a try. It will lead you to a kind of introspection few other things can. But that's another post. A trailer from the 1961 film is featured below:



The WSJ article stipulates that the reason why a track like "Someone Like You" has such wide appeal is because of appoggiatura which is an ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good.

A bit from the article says: "Measuring listeners' responses, Dr. Zatorre's team found that the number of goose bumps observed correlated with the amount of dopamine released, even when the music was extremely sad. The results suggest that the more emotions a song provokes—whether depressing or uplifting—the more we crave the song."

You can read the rest of the article here.

Concert, Trip, and Promises

My legs hurt.
It’s what happens when you’re in a concert venue and you’re trying to see the performers on stage. When the performers look like Kings of Leon’s Caleb, there’s good reason to stand on your tippy toes.
I'm a sucker for aesthetics, what can I say.
I’m only 5.2 and while certain things come with ease to people my height, I do suffer from 'height-envy'. I have it. That’s what I like about wearing heels. Or being with someone tall. Opposites, especially when it comes height, work well together. Especially when in concert venues. Height, I find, ads years to a relationship. When in doubt, go to a concert where you need some shielding from a rowdy crowd. Concerts make me feel safe the way a child feels safe when held by a parent. It's an odd mix of pleasure, safety, and comfort that, come to think of it, I don't feel in other settings. I have clarity of thought when in concerts. The majority of my most important decisions have been made while in concerts. The 'pleasure, safety, and comfort' mix added to a good dose of music is the right recipe for good decision-making.

I’m tired. Haven’t slept much. Had a stressful morning before getting on a plane to see the show and to make matters worse I have something awful stuck in my head.
Disney’s “It’s a Small World After All.” What?!
How does that work, brain, really!
I mean, I’m all pumped up to hear a live rendering of "The End" and can’t wait to feel the bass in the track and all my brain can do for me is gift me with a Disney crap song?! Eh?!

The first and last time I heard this disease of a song was in 1995 which was the year of my first [and last] visit to Disneyland. I remember feeling distinct loathing for the song. I mean, it makes sense. I was still doing Nirvana in ’95.

On the flight back home I wonder why, of all the thousands of tracks I could be thinking about, I'm stuck thinking of a track I would never be caught listing to by my own volition. Then I'm told, 'Well, what about your "La Donna e Mobile?"' I mean, granted, it's Verdi but a few years ago I was so ticked off at it I tried to starve myself of Verdi for a while just so that it would leave my system.

However, Disney track or not, live shows make me happy. Not just smile-because-I-can't-control-my-facial-muscles happy. 'Proper' happy. 'Craving nothing' happy. The kind of happy that restores a sense of hope that makes me want to promise all sorts of things to my person. And then on the flight back home, I'll be metaphorically kicking myself in the back as I watch an episode of Curb and think of how I'll manage to keep to my word.
Hm.
Then, all of a sudden, I'm told: "Don't worry, you won't have to deliver on A, B, or C. I know it was the music talking." Phew! I'm a chronic promise keeper so being relieved of a promise feels as good as ..., yeah, pretty darn good.

I reference music a lot and I do so because it informs every facet of life. In a way, I sort of, kind of resent its hold on me. I resent holds of all kinds and music is no exception even though it gives me much pleasure. Pleasure, is a tricky rascal, however. It keeps you hooked, like a good promise often does, and it often underdeliveres as with time you keep wanting more and more of it. Much like music. Only music rarely underdelivers. Well, unless it's Disney's "It's a Small World After All." And then you're, you know, ....

My Fill-In-the Blanks. Et Tu?

This morning I was looking at Carrie Bronstein's blog over at Monitor Mix where I noticed an interesting fill-in-the-blanks music-informed exercise.


Here's HetPer's own version:




1) I've had to defend my love of _____________________ over the years.

2. As far as I'm concerned, ______________________ nearly ruined music.

3. One of my favorite live performers ever? That's easy: _______________________.

4. If I could go back in time and dance like crazy, crowd surf or join a mosh pit, I would do that at a ___________________ show.

5. If I could choose to name a concert that truly changed my life, it would have to be _______________________.

6. The one clothing item that's musically informed and I value above the rest would have to be ___________________.

7. If there is one musician I would choose to see live even though such a choice would mean that I would be skipping out on my loved one's birthday, it would have to be ___________________.

My answers:
1) The Killers
2) Bono. And it doesn't mean that I don't listen to U2.
3) Keane
4) 30 Seconds to Mars. Blame it on Leto. Featured in the picture with C. Farrell
5) Muse. It was a life-changing experience.
6) Easy! My vintage Bob Dylan t-shirt.
7) Kelly Jones. It's true. I'm sorry. I am flawed.

Yours?

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graph per google images

Embrace the Inner "Music Freak"

Yesterday I was listening to Bob Dylan's track "I Want You" [see video below] from the album Blonde on Blonde, and I found myself struggling over the kinds of contradictory thoughts I was having. "I Want You" has strong, serious lyrics. The melody is inspired.
However, Bob Dylan sings it.
Or at least, he's trying to.
And I know that therein lies his idiosyncratic style. He's no Pavarotti, he never pretended to sing conventionally, and I'm grateful for that.
Here are some of the thoughts I had with nigh perturbing synchronicity. 'Ha. He sounds bad but it's the kind of bad I dig.'
I suppose, I do say 'dig' for 'like' when I'm thinking. My vernacular is truly authentic in my mind, apparently. I suppose it's because I keep it on a leash quite often.

The thoughts continue.
'Hmm, I like the guitar here.' 'Strong lyrics.' 'Ha, ouch, this is bad.' When Dylan says: "The cracked bells and washed-out horns/Blow into my face with scorn,/But its not that way,/I wasn't born to lose you./I want you, I want you," you're bound to pay attention. This, in my mind, is solid poetry. But then he sings it, you know, in that sort-of-talking-sort-of-reciting sort of way, which, I know, is his shtick.
And what a shtick.
It's what makes him Dylan, after all.
So, the mixed reactions contain much seriousness, respect for the art form you're experiencing, and, well, humor, too.

I mention this to make a point about music and how I view it. To me, music is a kind of umbrella that has room for an array of reactions that reside in the cognitive and the emotional at the same time.
And it's in its comprehensive policy wherein its significance lies.
Music is so big that it consumes the totality of my attention.
In that regard, it eclipses everything and everybody else. Bar none. I've come to accept this as a character trait, actually. I know what my limits are and I most surely know how to frame everything else around it.

Granted, many people like music. Humans, for the most part, respond to it instinctually. Some, however, love it with another degree of intensity.
Music-loving is not for the faint of heart.

I was scolded (I'm told in retrospect) a number of times a while back for giving all of my attention to music when engaged in some form of conversation with the other one. The thing is, I've never been able to ignore music. If I was contractually bound to music, I'd never succumb to any other visual temptations, if you catch my drift.
I always go back to this awfully long car ride I once experienced and the other person telling me that every time music is in the background, I leave the premisses. I'm in a different realm. 'You're elsewhere whenever there's music around.' said the other party with a good dose of disappointment. I couldn't understand why my unequivocal dedication to music was taken so personally.
I've loved music since birth and if I'll be asked to make a choice, well, I've loved music since birth.
At the end of the track I said, 'I'm sorry, what was that?'

Music, in other words, is never inconsequential to me.
It's not inconsequential in my personal life and it, most certainly, isn't inconsequential in my professional life. Music accompanies all I do and it's, as I often say to many, my mode of journaling my quotidian experience.

In terms of philosophy, I always reference Nietzsche's discussion of the superiority of the 'language' of music in his Birth of Tragedy. The moral of that story is that the blind, dying music-loving Socrates does, after all, privilege music above all.
And I concur.

I read a good bit on the Rolling Stone magazine yesterday. When asked about his new Web-only show about music, Brian Williams, the news anchor of NBC's Nightly News, had this to say:

"I'm just like everybody else. I love music. If you ask my wife and kids, they don't necessarily know the guy they see for a half-hour on the nightly news. They know me as a music freak."

Openly embracing one's music-freak is key to acceptance, I find.
Yes, I am a practicing music freak.

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graph per www.britishcouncil.org

Chairlift's Music is *Adorable*

I saw a new band live. They're called Chairlift.

I find them, well, for lack of a better term, adorable. I don't think I can find the word 'adorable' in my vernacular or professional inventory but this adjective sums this Brooklyn-based band up.
Songs like "Bruises" have already entered the mainstream since Apple picked it up to promote their fourth generation iPod nano.

However, their entire album entitled Does You Inspire You is a bundle of cuteness. I suppose I can't really help but use words like adorable and cuteness when it comes to their music.

Chairlift is characterized by a whole lot of levity and their music evokes the pleasures of daily life for in its simplicity lies its real value.

I approve of them and they were, yes, adorable in concert. And who doesn't have room for some cuteness in their iPods? I sure do. At least a gig worth.

Here is an interesting bit about them I was made aware of via Liam.

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graph per google image

Franz Ferdinand: Concert Report

Franz Ferdinand is on tour promoting their new album Tonight with Franz Ferdinand. We saw them in concert last night and I am happy to report that they delivered. They performed for one and a half hours and the energy of the band was in harmonious synch with that of the crowd.

The lead singer, Alex Kapranos, entered the stage in shiny red shoes coupled with blue polyester pants, and a beautifully tailored checkered shirt. Kapranos' boyish looks have always fueled his overall charm but this time around he, and the band, had much more substance informing their form. It was exhilarating being there and they put on a show worth remembering.

The red shoes I fully approve of:











Now, I have been wanting for Franz Ferdinand to do well for quite some time. I always thought they had potential and their new album is a good translation of their skills. I reviewed this new album here a while back and a bit of my review said: "Now I can finally think about their music when their name pops up and not their cropped pants and novel hairstyles (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course)." This felt especially true at the show last night.

I have been critical of some of their presentations in the past. Once I wrote:

"Franz Ferdinand is an example of a rock band that understands too well the difficulty to resist the side effects of the mainstream. After having experienced the mainstream, they are now back trying out their new sound in very small venues, away from music execs in an attempt to re-enter what I call Indie-topia [my coinage]."

The 'fashion' of Franz Ferdinand is not entirely who this band is, however. They have truly redeemed themselves with this new album. And, boy, do they put on a great show. If they are performing in your neck of the woods, do go and see them.

Ergo, a big and deserving tip of the hat to Franz Ferdinand for the aesthetically and substantially appealing show. Kudos to a band that not only possesses 'mad style' but also 'mad skills.'

[picture taken by B.R.]

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red shoes graph per: http://www.citypages.com/slideshow/view/8197313/2

Depeche Mode's New Album: A Review

Think of Depeche Mode's new album Sounds of the Universe as the kind of thing you can carry anywhere and with any 'outfit.'

I am absolutely loving it because while it feels very 'now' and as hyper-modern as time allows, it is, at the core, staunchly Depeche Mode. Dave Gahan and company have a thing or two to teach younger musicians about creativity, musical relevance, and reinvention: These things happen if the artists know themselves and willingly surpass their limitations. This is the king of album that allows you to do your work, take care of quotidianity, run menial errands, read the paper and so forth, and feel well fed musically.

I had been looking forward to Depeche Mode's new project as they have been a favorite since I was teenager. Granted, as a teenager, I didn't give them the kind of lip service they deserved because, well, the cool thing to do was lavish Metallica with attention. Adolescence is cruel, no doubt.

The tracks I am enjoying the most are:

1)Peace
2) Wrong
3) Hole to Feed
and
4) Miles Away

So, if synthpop and/or electronica/indie is the kind of musical direction that tickles your fancy, do consider Depeche Mode's Sounds of the Universe. And I sign off as I listen to Miles Away.

Also, for those of you who enjoy things German, here's a German commercial featuring Depeche Mode.

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graph per wiki