Music, and a story

[drwex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF90C9g09Gc

I link this track not because it's particularly excellent (it's good, but not THAT good) but because it brings up stuff for me. For one thing, this track is really different from the original. I like it when a remixer takes a good tune and turns it into something related, but different, and still good. My relationship to music is like my relationship to poetry in that I've got no formal training in either - I just go with what I like.

Now, this particular remix sits right in the very gray area between what I'd call "funk" and what I'd call "disco." This matters only to me in that I generally like the former and generally dislike the latter. This has roots way way back in my childhood when - it seemed to a very young me - disco arose out of white guys' attempt to co-opt my beloved Motown artists and somehow make that "dirty" music palatable to an audience I didn't understand. Over there was George Clinton doing pretty much exactly the opposite, grabbing the dirty and celebrating it while making it something wholly new, with a large helping of crazy. I loved Motown, could take or leave the Beatles and their ilk, and though George Clinton was awesome and the Bee Gees sucked.

My parents wouldn't allow any of this in the house. Ours was a classical and folkie household, So It Was Written, So It Shall Be. I bought my own 45s when I could scrounge the nickels together, and one of the best things about visiting my maternal grandmother was that she had a little portable transistor radio that I could take with me into the back bedroom and close the door while I fidgeted the dial around to get the Philly area Motown stations or maybe just half an hour with Parliament and their friends.

As adults we all know music is more complicated than that, but as a child I needed things to be simpler and more easily split into two camps. Nowadays I'm more fond of the interstitial things.

Comments

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

When I was younger and followed popular music (before my taste switched to jazz) I preferred James Brown and Aretha Franklin to Motown, The Stones to The Beatles, and original R&B versions of songs to cover versions by white artists.

My parents were/are classical music enthusiasts but did not censor my record collection or choice of radio stations. My dad also had some early Sinatra (from the late 1940s, his high school years), though I prefer Frank from about a decade later when he was wounded, vulnerable, and emotionally deeper after Ava Gardner dumped him.

Another insight into <lj user="drwex">

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

*leaves a pebble*

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

apparently, you can reliably recommend music i will like... this is quite a talent. perhaps i could visit you & your music collection sometime and take notes?

Any time

[drwex]

You can also listen to my Pandora stations. "Wex Eclectic" has a wide range of "stuff I like" from old 80s favorites to funk to dance/electronica.