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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Jaimie's Tooth Revisited |
| Date | Wed, 16 May 2007 05:56:43 -0500 |
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<<Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 16:22:00 -0400
From: "Jaimie Vernon" <bullseyecanada@hotmail.com>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: Magnet Magazine
Message-ID: <BAY115-F31191B6FC542EEA1B5C6F2DA3E0@phx.gbl>
I am really picky about what I like to listen to (and do NOT apologize
for
any of my choices...including liking Sugar Ray, f'rinstance) so having
20
million choices means nothing to me because after the first few thousand
songs I will probably like less than 1% of it. That's a pretty sad
return on
my time investment. This is why, in previous debates on this list I've
grown
tired of people saying to me that if I don't like a new artist I need to
"stick with it. It will grow on you". Again....what? I'm sorry....I'm
looking for something to entertain me now and hopefully long after my
first
listen. I've got better things to do with my time than to listen to
something that doesn't impress me on first listen.
I'm not saying I need instant gratification here. But I've lived 43
years
knowing what I like and if I can't identify that sound or feeling in a
band/album/song immediately then it's time to find something that
doesn't
require me to figure out what the hell they're trying to say
lyrically/musically/etc. That's a job for music critics....not the
casual
listener. The critical analysis of my listening selections is far behind
me....now I want to be entertained....cause so few things in life bring
that
kind of joy.>>
Thanks, Jaimie, for stating so well the outline of an aesthetic that I
happen to share with you. I, too, get frustrated by Audities pleas of
"give it a few listens, and it will start to grow on you". Immediacy is
right up at the top of my musical core values. (In large part that
explains power pop's appeal to me.) If something doesn't strike my fancy
within the first play or two, the chances that I'll grow to like it
somewhere down the road are infinitesimal.
I've long since moved past feeling the need to apologize for my
aesthetic or to defend it. My musical core values are my musical core
values, and if my ear happens to have a sweet tooth, what of it? I
remain unconvinced that I'm missing out on something, because the way
that music moves me -- the emotional weight in terms of joy or sadness
that it evokes -- doesn't emerge over time or with careful analysis. I
can be as intellectual as all-get-out about *which* music moves me, and
*how* it moves me, but the act of being moved itself isn't intellectual.
It's visceral ... and in my case it's very, very immediate. As I once
said to a friend about the first time I heard The Wondermints'
"Proto-Pretty", I knew within the first twenty seconds of the song that
it was going to be one of my favorites of all time.
Even the exceptions prove the rule. I never paid much mind to Earth,
Wind & Fire's "September" until twenty years after it was released, at
which point I remember hearing it in a friend's car and thinking, "What
was wrong with me when I was seventeen years old? This is a *great*
song!" But the reason why it took so long for the song to sink in had
nothing to do with a lack of immediacy -- "September" is incredibly
catchy, and if you don't believe me then try keeping that "ba de ya"
chorus with Phillip Bailey's soaring falsetto out of your head as you
read these words -- and everything to do with the limited musical
palette my thoroughly Caucasian teenage head held back in early 1979.
I'm staying out of the debate over whether or not 20,000,000 musical
choices on the Internet is a good thing or a bad thing. But I'm 100% in
sync with Jaimie aesthetically. I know what I like, and you'll get one
listen, maybe two or three at most, to prove to me that I will ever like
your song.
Greg Sager
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