award shows – celebrating mediocrity

a few friends of mine have mentioned the lack of talent and good music at this years ARIA awards, and I have to agree. i had absolute no interest in the awards this year, or any other year for that matter

it reminded me of a quote that I read by paul arden stating that awards ceremonies only celebrate mediocrity. if you think about it he’s absolutely correct. awards are usually voted by the public or by a committee, and whenever something appeals to a mass amount of people, more often than not it isn’t very good. i’ve always said “if there’s something everybody likes, its probably something I don’t want to be involved with”

there is so much great music out there, both in Australia and internationally and i for one have trouble keeping up. unfortunately the stuff that sells is what the masses want. they want to hear the same old song, see the same pretty faces, and listen to the same old rock clichés. that’s not to say that some popular acts aren’t worth listening to but i’d much rather see an award show congratulate innovative and excellent performances rather than the usual mediocre crap they’re been peddling for years

i’ll get around to it when the time is right

in my life of listening to records i’ve often found myself disliking an album and putting it way for a while. on plenty of occasions i’ve revisited the album. days, months, or even years later, to come back and realise how great a piece of work it is. why didn’t i realise this when i first listened to the work?

i’ve come to realise there are times in your life to accept new music, art, lovers, friendships. we move through cycles in our lives and there are times when something makes the most perfect of sense, and other times where a thought or an idea can seem so ridiculous

these days rather than dismiss a piece of work, i put it away for a while with the idea of rediscovering it at another time. some of my most favourite albums i hated on first listen. but somehow over time i gave them another chance and was in the frame of mind to understand the art presented to me

its all about timing

tortoise and a little shout out to andy the music mystic

having breakfast this morning at my local cafe and heard tortoise being played through the sound system. what a delight it is to hear such sounds. the album being played was TNT, an album that used to be on my pre-bedtime playlist

andy the barista has great musical taste and anyone who listens to tortoise is worth his salt in regards to musical taste

if you like experimental jazz wrapped up in a post punk ethos you might like to check these guys out. as andy pointed out they also did an album with bonnie prince billy, another creative genius

check out TNT for their most accessible album

steve albini on john peel

lifted from GQ magazine. one of the best quotes i've ever read. highlighted in bold

Is there anyone who can fill John Peel's shoes today as a cultural arbiter of music?
No. One of the things that made John Peel so valuable was that he had decades of archived material and sessions of bands that had played live and were only ever heard on the John Peel show. His work ethic was absolutely incredible. He made it a point of pride to listen to every record that anyone sent him. He would listen literally to dozens of records a day. He said something once that I thought was really profound: He said that no one would bother making a record and sending it to him if he thought it was shitty. Obviously, to the people making those records, they are important. If he doesn't get it as a listener, if he didn't like it in some way, that's his fault, not the fault of the people who did something important to them. That's a pretty amazing, humble insight for someone like him to have. A lot of radio professionals kind of feel like they know the game, they know what's good. His way of looking at it was much more selfless: there was this culture of bands creating music and he was getting to audition some of it. Then he could spread it out to the rest of the world if it struck his fancy. Just because he didn't like something didn't mean it was bad. He was just deaf to it.

cee lo..........he understands the great depression

i was in a whiskey bar the other day in a hipster part of brooklyn, drinking crazy amounts of whiskey with pickleback chasers, when i got talking to a peculiar fellow who decided to sit next to me. being in a hipster bar the conversation turned to all things creative and then we started to delve into the realm of music and various artists

i was surprised that a guy who was a jazz aficionado and seemed like bit of a music snob mentioned that his favorite band was gnarls barkley. we all know that danger mouse is one mad producer and this is agreed upon by most music fans but i was particularly surprised to hear about his fondness for cee lo. i've been a massive fan of cee lo and i've always had a certain idea about where his lyrics come from but it was nice to have this idea consolidated by another intelligent person. actually when we started talking about how great his lyrics were and how we both loved what he sang about the guy then asked me "you've been through depression haven't you?"

funny enough i always felt that cee lo was a guy who explored his brain and emotions more than most. i've always been a fan of his ability to make the most depressing lyrics sound fun. unlike most other introspective artists he has an ability to create a pop song that the whole world can sing along to

the guy is true genius, disguised in a pop format

brendan o'brien

so right now i'm sitting here listening to rage against the machine and marvelling at their sound and it occured to me that brendan o'brien (producer/engineer) has been responsible for either producing, recording, or mixing a tonne of the great music that i spent my teens listening to

now i'm always going to love this guy cause he recorded and co-mixed 'blood sex sugar magik'. he made that album, which was recorded in a house sound fucking great and unique. one of the great qualities this album is that it sounds like no other that came out around that time, the rawness that comes from non-ideal recording situations makes this album come alive like so many of the great punk albums before it

now if you were in your teens during the 90's and you loved bands such as pearl jam, stone temple pilots, rage against the machine, the offspring, incubus, soundgarden, red hot chili peppers then you owe brendan o'brian your left testicle. this guy has some mad skills

i suggest checking out any of the pearl jam or rage against the machine albums that brendan was involved with if you want to hear the epitomy of the nineties rock sound

compress and compress again, and then again for volume

i'm a little concerned with the current trend to over compress music lately in order to make things sound loud. it is getting to a point where it is sucking the life out of the song

what are the main elements we look for in sound to stimulate our ears? we look for frequency response, dynamic response and clarity, amongst a bunch of other factors. when you compress a mix and squeeze the shit out if you are reducing the dynamic response and also creating distortion, thus messing with the main components that stimulate our ears and subconscious. when a musician plays his instrument and puts his energy into performing, this energy is audible to us via the dynamic range between the notes we can hear and feel. when you take this dynamic range and reduce it so much that everything almost sounds the same volume, you effectively take out the emotion that the musician was putting into the playing. and whilst distortion can be good, distortion caused by over compessing a mix can ruin it, and is only subtly heard, thus affecting our subconscious experience of the music

too many audio engineers and producers are giving into the pressure to create a louder mix which in my opinion is fucking up modern music. there are some great artists out there, producing highly creative and entertaining music. unfortunately we are giving into what the punter thinks he wants rather than guiding them into an understanding that louder isn't necessarily better. its like letting your three year old kid convince you that mcdonalds is good for them

how absurd is that idea?