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The Real Record Club
Captain Beefheart swirled and booted around the room and the strangers around me nodded their heads in time. I began to think about what it is to listen to music. Steve Shepherd , emcee; I imagined him teenaged lying on his stomach in his bedroom kicking his legs behind him in the air and carefully following the lyric sheet. He worried that this nostalgic music experience would be lost through discs of plastic or ephemeral computer sounds. You click a button and you get someone�s art that you�ll never touch, never leave in the sun to warp. Does it lessen the impact of the music to not have a fold-out vinyl album where you can spend hours trying to decide whether you fancy Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie? Train journeys listening to Philip Glass� mp3s through in-ear headphones as Welsh countryside rushed past. My dad�s Sex Pistol�s vinyl. I began to panic a little, as Beefheart�s horns hollered, that I wasn�t concentrating enough. I was too busy looking at the carpet, seeing Andrex puppies and open palms or I was giving too much attention to the orange flashing lights that passed the windows. The church bells rang but the mumbled poetry and crashing marimba continued, and I began thinking about listening to music without distraction. The forced concentration of the room, the sensible reactions, the no dancing. What is distraction? I thought of John Cage�s 4�33 and the beauty of chance. Of the fact that this air we share, airwaves scattering and colliding; Beefheart�s echo shaking Zappa�s entrance, the church bells throughout, the trees being cut down in the park opposite, someone coughing. Do you agree that concentration is subjective? One person�s sitting and listening is another person�s trapping and earache. What is appreciation? Classic films paused, impossible books left on the shelf, galleries of yawns. I agree, to stop and respect and appreciate is important, what I want to do to you as an artist. But to stop and stifle is impossible. Let it happen. Is it impossible to listen to music without distraction? To do so is to stop looking, smelling, thinking, life happening to you and around you. Yes, respect music and artists and if you�re going to a gig please don�t shout over the band to your friend that Bat for Lashes is �like an indie Lily Allen� and definately stop and listen and let music move you or haunt you or envigorate you; but don�t be upset if, while you�re listening, someone creaks in their chair, cos chances are they�re just trying to get a better view of the album art. [with great thanks also to Spiller's Records ]
12:01 p.m. - 2011-03-21
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