a new update

sometimes i wonder if music hasn't died.

of course that's overly dramatic and probably not the case, but if you think about it we're kind of in a rut. i mean certainly there is phenomenal music out there (devendra banhart, animal collective, joanna newsom...) but none of it seems to have the spark that the older music did.



take yes, for example. the first time i heard "close to the edge" it did nothing short of MOVE me. perhaps it's cliche but that's how i felt. and LED ZEPPELIN for chrissake. gods of rock. the greatest rock band of all time. even if there are bands with more talent, with better songs, whatever... they were the GREATEST. they haven't made music in years (apart from the recent reunion tour) but people still talk about them as though they're relevant. do you know why? it's because they were great. it's because every single fucking song that they put out into the world was a singular work of art, to say nothing of the albums. i can think of four albums right now that i would call their best. THAT, my friends, is saying something.



granted, i feel similarly about devendra banhart's "smokey rolls down thunder canyon," which came out in september. but that is a rarity. albums these days (to say nothing of songs) just seem to lack the intensity and the art that went in to the music of the sixties and seventies. they're either too all over the place (the one fault of smokey) or too themey (of montreal's "the sunlandic twins", everything by beck...). or worse, they're chock-full of filler ("tears of the valedictorian" by frog eyes, "feels" by animal collective...). three good songs does not an album make!



it seems, my friends, that albums as an art form may well be lost. there's no journey anymore (like the journey one takes while listening to sgt. pepper). a couple of illegal downloads (we're all guilty. not legally though, just figuratively) and suddenly nobody gives a shit about the record as a goddamn concept. raise your hand if FILLER SONGS are a good part of the reason you STARTED downloading in the first place? that's what i thought.

a true fan of music will buy a record, regardless of its availability online, not because they want the songs, but because they want the record as a whole. if anything, we've become more discerning about what we'll pay for, and i'm not sure we should be punished by being peddled a bunch of mediocre albums by mediocre bands. you want to make money, record companies? make some damn records! give us something worth listening to and i guarantee we'll buy it (or your money back).

and another thing, i'm sure i'm not the only person left who misses the 15 minute song (no, i'm not talking about let's not shit ourselves (to love and to be loved) by bright eyes, because while that song IS proof that conor oberst is the only man who understands me, it is proof of little else). i'm talking about the recording of dazed and confused from led zeppelin's incredible three disc live album "how the west was won." i'm talking about and you and i by yes, which is one of the greatest songs ever written. these songs are works of art. they're not pretentious, they're not overwhelming. they just are. beautifully and inexplicably. and they absolutely touch at the core of every single person who really listens to them.



that, my friends, is music.

-jocelyn