An Excellent Article…
… can be found on Stylus today, entitled Soulseeking. It tackels the very subject I was attempting to write about today. As like most bloggers I have a thing in the side bar that lists the albums I’m currently digging or whatever, no one really cares. Some other bloggers find the need to rotate these albums out of there list almost daily, continuously refreshing them to keep up with the latest fad. Everyone would have us believe that they still love The Arcade Fire album, but if you look at anyone’s “On The iPod” list no one still trumpets the fact they are listening to that album. The “Classic” or “Essential” album means nothing anymore, here today and gone tomorrow. As fast as a person can download the next “Best New Music” selection on Pitchfork, Source Codes & Tags can be deleted.
I too for the past five years of my life had been abusing my senses digesting as much music as I could, spending night after night staring at Allmusic.com, collecting influence after influence, tracking followers, and genre maps, which are kind of like a family tree for musical genre’s. All for what purpose? So I can go to a bar and be in complete discomfort as Kenny Chesney blasts away, to say he is a two bit deep throated hack, that they should be playing more Willie Nelson, or Gram Parsons. Needless to say I’m pretty disappointed with music, and music criticdom lately. The truth is when it all comes down to it only the individual can determine what is good and what is shit, and with all of us having varied life expiriences, who am I to say what you will enjoy?
Anyway since I mentioned Gram Parsons again, I’ll post two of my favorite songs by him. “A Song For You”, is a song of wonderous devotion, it sounds supremely sad and sweet, but you can almost hear (see?) Gram smiling as he is singing it “Just so the sun don’t hurt you when you cryyyyy”, as if he is playing it right in your living room on a Friday night, not to bumb you out, but so everyone just has some fun, while playing the only songs he knows how to make. The other track is “$1000 Wedding” probably Gram’s most famous song, includes excellent back-up vocals from Emmylou Harris.
Gram Parsons - A Song For You