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Music You Just Can't GET
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Pursued By Trees
Pursued By Trees
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Re: Music You Just Can't GET
Jun 05, 2012, 10:44
No completely coherent theory on this, more of a floating clutch of different ideas/angles of approach to the problem and purely personal observations ...

People respond to different things in different ways. Something that someone can take completely in stride in their life will knock someone else for six. No two persons account of the same event, at which they were both present, will be exactly the same, sometimes differing wildly.

It occurred to me many years ago that every album I have contains something that I respond to for some reason, something that seems to chime with or reflect some aspect of myself or seems rooted in a particular time of life and recalls some experience or sensation. Therefore my collection could be seen as some sort of attempt to map or model my internal workings. It's making these things real and tangible and getting them on the outside. Not everyone feels the need to do this.

Not everyone uses or even listens to music in the same way. Not all music has the same function, or does the same thing if you prefer. Some folks see listening to an album as an activity in it's own right and will listen intently, concentrating on each nuance of every separate instrumental, percussive and vocal part while appreciating how they combine to form a whole that may feel like it has an overall effect greater than the sum of these parts. Some folks just like to have something to drive to or do the housework to.

Some music is easy and immediate. Some is not so easy on the ear and demands more work on the part of the listener, an active listening process. Some works equally well either way depending on what the listener requires of it at the time.

None of this means to say that, objectively anyhow, any of it is any less valid than anything else.

Maybe this particular album says nothing to me about my life ... maybe sometimes I just don't want to be reminded of my life and would like to feel something else for say the next 45 to 60 minutes or thereabouts.

Having said all that ... I find My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' overbearingly derivative, pompous and pretentious ... but then, that's something I can't stand in myself.
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