There are some rock musicians who are so inventive that they easily rise to the level of distinguished composers - to say nothing of jazz musicians.... If you can't appreciate the compositional inventiveness of Frank Zappa, Sufjan Stevens, Lou Reed, Christa Paffgen, Klaus Schultze, Randy Newman, Brian Wilson... I just don't know what to tell you except listen again. Is it Schnittke or Tormis? Well... no not quite, but who cares? There are so many modern classical composers who are not of this level of distinction yet are greatly praised.
I am obviously a person with enormous reservations about rock music - reservations I don't really have about older American musical forms like jazz and blues and bluegrass and especially R&B. The reason is that at least from where I sit, rock music is the music of ersatz rebellion and individuality. On the one hand, it purports to be the music of rebellion, on the other hand, it is so clearly the music of privilege. What rebellion is really necessary when you're from the most privileged societies, the most privileged generations, the most privileged social classes, in world history? ? So much of it just doesn't feel sincere, or like people who live authentic life experiences.
That's not to say that there isn't a large number of distinctive musicians within it who raise the bar tremendously, when there are so many tens of thousands of bands who made records, some of them have to be extraordinary. And among the extraordinary includes some of the most famous acts like The Beatles and Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys and David Bowie etc. etc. etc., but taken as a whole, factoring in the average band with a contract... I think it underdelivers in extremis on what its eminence seems to guarantee; as a teenager I was ashamed to say that out loud, and I'm tired of holding back.
But some of the high water marks in all rock music are so little known that it's another mark against rock music for being such risible custodians of their own tradition. Few are less known than Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt. It is just extraordinary - there are Debussyian 6/3 chords everywhere, modulations worthy of Faure, tone colors worthy of Messiaen, and polyrhythmic counterpoint so far beyond the homophony we usually get on the average rock album, this is great composition by any standard at all. And it is a personal statement so far beyond what we expect from most albums.
Robert Wyatt composed this album (and he really composed it) after a horrific accident in which he fell from a third floor window and was paralyzed from the waist down - no doubt he was high, but THIS is the sort of tragedy from which truly great art is made. Art exists to express the unsaid. Art exists to capture the elusive poetic truths that only come out of experiences too complex to be captured in simple conversation. So if the enormity of the experience is not sufficient, what is there that the work can teach us? Who can derive solace from it when life presents them with their darkest moments? Anything less is entertainment, and nobody should be ashamed of loving entertainment - great entertainment is some of the hardest stuff to produce on earth, but art needs something deeper.
Listen just to the first song on the album: Sea Song. Look at the lyrics of this:
You look different every time
You come from the foam-crested brine
It's your skin, shining softly in the moonlight
Partly fish, partly porpoise
Partly baby sperm whale
Am I yours?
Are you mine to play with?
You come from the foam-crested brine
It's your skin, shining softly in the moonlight
Partly fish, partly porpoise
Partly baby sperm whale
Am I yours?
Are you mine to play with?
Joking apart
When you're drunk you're terrific
When you're drunk you're terrific
When you're drunk
I like you mostly late at night
You're quite alright
But I can't understand the different you
In the morning, when it's time
I like you mostly late at night
You're quite alright
But I can't understand the different you
In the morning, when it's time
To play at being human for a while
Please smile!
Please smile!
You'll be different in the spring
I know, you're a seasonal beast
Like the starfish that drift in with the tide
With the tide
So until your blood runs
To meet the next full moon
Your madness fits in nicely with my own
With my own
Your lunacy fits neatly with my own
My very own
I know, you're a seasonal beast
Like the starfish that drift in with the tide
With the tide
So until your blood runs
To meet the next full moon
Your madness fits in nicely with my own
With my own
Your lunacy fits neatly with my own
My very own
We're not alone
The Sea obviously has one of the most honored places in both music and poetry. The sea not only means itself but is our deepest poetic metaphor for the unconscious. It means sex, it means violence, it means death and rebirth, it means light and darkness, it means life itself in all its possibilities.
Imagine this song as Wyatt addressing life itself. "I like you mostly late at night... but I can't understand the different you in the morning, when it's time to play at being human for a while." "Your lunacy fits nicely with my own. My very own. We're not alone." This is the dual vision present in all the greatest art - day and night, alone and together, comedy and tragedy, spirituality and humanity, romance and loneliness, rationality and madness, reality and poetic metaphor. Life is a mad thing, it is also worth embracing.
No comments:
Post a Comment