Pony Of Prey Blog

Creativity Is An You would think the music industry would have
learned by now. Art cannot be commodified. Oh, of course, you
can sell Van Gogh prints in the check out aisles of Walmart as
quickly as you can churn out a Muzak version of Led Zepplins
“Stairway to Heaven”. But great music can’t be sanitized,
sterilized or serialized. There are some things you don’t learn
in a classroom: Things you can only learn on a stage in front of
an audience. All great music is born on the stage. It is a
product of the chemistry that happens when a performer and an
audience meet headlong on the edge of sanity.

As much as we take inspiration and are certainly entertained by
great music, there is something called a collective conscious
that takes over when the music and the artist meet. A magical,
mystical synergy takes place. It is what audiences expect and
all musical artists live for. There is always an open stage for
the artist who can make an audience love him. If he gives them
what they want or at least what they expect, the union is
complete and the audience will remain faithful seemingly forever
or at least until the next craze begins.

Juke joints - now known as dance clubs - were filled with
couples jitterbugging to Swing music, a big band style emerging
out of Kansas City. These joints were jumpin’ with the sounds of
Count Basie and Duke Ellington. By the mid-forties, Fifty-second
Street in Manhattan was lined with them. The mainstream music
establishment had no trouble accepting Swing. It wasn’t a
significant break from musical tradition. Swing relied on
standard European forms similar to that of the classic concert
band. The difference between the two styles was that classical
European music created tension by contrasting movements of a
piece. Swing, on the other hand, created tension within each
piece rhythmically emphasizing off beats.

Be Bop emerged during the despair of World War II. Hitler was
fighting for a ‘New Order’ in Europe. It was a time when African
Americans were creating a growing list of firsts. Jackie
Robinson was the first black baseball player. Althea Gibson
played at Wimbledon. Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for
poetry. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in
Chicago. Suddenly, bebop groups came from nowhere. Swing had
been welcomed by the American mainstream but the mainstream
didn’t support bebop. Bop musicians were black outcasts who grew
up poor.

The black Be Bop world offered a place for expression and
experimentation. It was hip to know everything, see everything
and be mentally unflappable. Be Boppers created a double-talk
language which made no sense to anyone else. What began as a
revolt against the confining nature of the harmony, melody, and
rhythm of swing reached fruition in the mid-forties. The flatted
fifth, elaborate rhythm, and harmonic focus of “be bop”music
emerged. Rhythm and blues came right alongside combining rock
with earlier Black music.

A few decades later, Lennon-McCartney’s “Yesterday” took a
backward glance at lost if not misguided youth. It’s a constant
reminder to those of us who were of that era. Music brings back
memories. It is braided into the fabric of our being. We love to
remember the past, good and bad, and music helps us to do that.
But, today, as effortless as that may seem, remembering the past
is an exercise in futility unless, of course, it is renewing
acquaintances over a coffee once or twice a year. Remembering is
all good and well; that was then and this is now. We should be
spending our time in the present, not the future or the past. If
you want to be creative, this is the time, the moment is now.

Dennis Walsh progressofmusic@hotmail.com

I have always had a big problem with my addiction to music. I tend to hear I song I like, then rush out to the local record store to buy the CD, without consideration for whether or not I would actually like the rest of the songs on the set. After years of this habit, I have amassed a huge CD collection, but I have been left with many one-hit-wonder discs that I no longer listen to and just gather dust while taking up space in my small apartment (anyone else fall for the infectiousness of Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” back in the ’90s only to find the rest of the CD less than appealing?). I know I am not the only one with this infliction I like to call ” Itchy Trigger Finger Music Purchasing,” and we all could use some help in weeding out the now-undesirables to make room for hopefully wiser purchases in the future.

I have an established this routine for tidying my overflowing CD collection:

Scan through your CD collection with this golden rule in mind - “If you haven’t listen to it two years, pull it out.” Make a pile of these discs that have not had a recent relationship with your stereo.

Scan through this pile of CDs and remove the ones you know you like, regardless of lack of play over the last two years (everyone has favorites, but they cannot possibly be listened to on a regular basis when you are constantly buying new music). Put these back in your collection for future blast-from-the-past urges.

Take the pile you have remaining and sort them in chronological order. The older CDs are the ones most likely to have been ignored over the years, and thus prime candidates for elimination.

Read through the track listings of these discs to see if you recognize more than one song by sight. If necessary, slip them into your stereo to refresh your memory. If you are familiar with three or more songs on the set, then you probably enjoyed that CD at one point, and you can use your discretion as to whether or not you want to keep it in your collection, or part ways with it since you haven’t listen to it in quite some time. Those discs with only one recognizable song need to go!

Now you should have a pile of discarded CDs and you are wondering what to do with them. Use them as coasters? Use them as Frisbees? Have a CD-burning partying (I’m talking about the pyromania version of burning, not the process of transferring to a blank CD). These options are fine and dandy, but I’d like to suggest a couple of other options. You could invite some friends over so they can take a gander at what you no longer want. What’s old and tired to you may be just the thing your pals have been searching for (not everyone can be blessed with good taste in music). The other option is to find folks to trade with online. There are plenty of audiophiles trading at SwapThing. There are many categories at SwapThing, so you don’t necessarily have to swap your music for more music; you can exchange your CDs for virtually anything that someone else is offering. Good luck and get cleaning!

SwapThing.com is a site focused on building a strong swap community online. The ShareThing program helps non-profits get access to item & cash donations as well as volunteers and professional services.

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