Blog: The Trouble With Music

Music is a mixed blessing. First of all, there’s way too much of it. And second, so much of it is really good. This raises a number of questions and challenges.

A big one for me is: Where do I find the time to listen to it? And then, out of the roughly 100 CDs in my collection (all of which I like a lot) which ones should I listen to in the time I do have available? And how do I get interested in today’s music when I’m not doing justice to the music I already have?

Then there’s this: since we all have lots to do, can we really listen to music while doing something else? Some of it maybe, particularly when we’re doing stuff that doesn’t involve a lot of concentration. But the better the music, the more it requires complete and rapt attention. I can’t even feed the cat, or sweep the floor, while listening to Django Reinhardt. I have to close out everything else to fully absorb the technical excellence, speed, inventiveness, and serendipity of his guitar playing.

Or consider Bela Fleck’s great instrumental CD entitled Drive. Here Bela has brought together six marvelous players (banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, dobro, and bass) to form an acoustic powerhouse. To follow and appreciate what each of these folks is contributing as they play together takes all the focus I can muster, and then some.

And how about the bass lines in many of the Leon Russell songs, or the great themes in operas like Turandot. Even Abba’s Greatest Hits can drag me completely away from what I’m supposed to be doing at the time, as can the Doobies, Marlene Dietrich, Van Morrison, Nancy Griffith, Louis Armstrong, Gordon Lightfoot, and—the list just goes on and on.

Finally, there’s the problem of vinyl. It is said that the electronic wizards of today spend their time at work using the latest digital and optical equipment to create musical miracles, only to sneak home at night and listen to vinyl! It is claimed by some that the first play of a well-recorded vinyl record represents the ultimate reproduction of music in the history of mankind.

I happen to have a good turntable that plays vinyl and made the mistake the other day of putting on an old Sidney Bechet record I had around entitled The Fabulous Sidney Bechet.

Fabulous he truly was, as was Sidney de Paris on trumpet. (I used to hear Sidney de Paris, and his brother Wilber on trombone when they played in a club on 52nd Street in New York City in the 50s. They could give you an adrenaline rush and make your hair stand up on end with their playing.)

And I thought, “Oh Sidney and Sidney, where you been hiding from me all these years?” And now I’m pumped and ready to run over to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and compound my problem of too much music by adding some great vinyl from the old days.