"To the left, to the left..."

Okay Kerrville Folk Festival, I'll give you one more chance to prove your progressive bona fides.

I teach these country kids that punk rock is both a sound and an attitude. Folk music once was both too. Acoustic strings singing diatonic harmonies and coded political messages. Twangy morals for a society's conscience. How's her health today? Mumford & Sons' songs take the folk in' folk out of the folk. But at least they substitute pop for populism.

 4 years ago I thought folk music looked a little rundown so I decided to take her temperature. It didn't look pretty; because it sounded extra pink pretty. I teach these rural kids that country music came from folk music. 8 semesters ago it sounded like she slid back under comtp. count.'s sentimental pop side. Songs lacking the gravitational pull of humanity and justice. Just pocket mirror mundanity. Peter Yarrow of the Peter Paul and Marys sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" to me. hopefully that regression was the one step backward before the next 2 steps forward. But 4 years ago the only liberal messages to be found were on Subaru bumpers.

Zac Brown Brand or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Snob

How do you find a rationale to love hating such a lovable guy?

Take Zac Brown; entreprenuer, cover artist, musician, and Jimmy Buffet clone.
Take the gentle hypocricies buried beneath barbeque sauce; "it's all about the music / check out our new cookbook!", "notice the simple rustic quality of my state of the 'art' trailer", "Let's all thank the troops for defending our standard of living with a cold beer brought to you by the good people at Dodge Trucks and Kingsford Charcoal"

In an interview, Zac dispassionately explains his passion for the creative process extolling the virtues of writing original material "from the heart". But his set lists are the most cover heavy I've ever seen. And I guess I wouldn't have such a problem with the guy if his appropriations weren't from such iconoclasts as Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, and Rage Against the Machine.

The unaware self parody of his subtlety free "comfort music" as described in this NYT article www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/arts/music/05bowe.html
seems to be the same zeitgeist that props up Haliburton, Zoloft, and Fox News. If it makes money and the pain isn't mine then let's kick off another mid-tempo, jingle-ready, listening inhibitor.
You can taste the pride in Zac Inc.'s description of their touring chef's sponsor heavy preshow"eat and greet"s. Indulge your liberty of choosing some locally sourced vegetables improved with our very own Spicy Zac Brown Rub. And enjoy the after dinner musical performance featuring both brown gravy and cream gravy.  
It says here in this here history book that people used to write a kind of music called "protest songs"
When did being post-post-modern become so lucrative?  




www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Celebrity+Motor+Homes&view=detail&mid=3ABC2C2245D77F5FBFA73ABC2C2245D77F5FBFA7&first=0

Bridge to Nowhere?

IT ONLY HAPPENS ONCE. 

What will become of a musical idea that's too easily forgotten? If you want to create truth then keep repeating it. Folk will believe an idea is true if the meme has its own echo chamber. This is becoming a musical truth with this new thing thing called the loop pedal. Record a snippet of music, play it back and record over it. Play those back and add another layer. With new technology comes new music and a different unique snippet of music eventually gets forgotten. THE BRIDGE. Traditional pop song structures have some kind of combination of verse-chorus repetition. That synchs nicely with the loop pedal idea. But the square peg is the part of the song that is different from the rest. The bridge sets itself apart from the rest of a song by a different chord progression, melody, lyric or some such. The layering process doesn't lend itself to that kind of spice. 

Foot pedal tunes hit my main stream first with KT Tunstall:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulyoxdhHrIs

The hipsters with taste rightfully love Owen Pallett's layers:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIUAiXqH_ns

Reggie Watts makes with the funny bytes:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwfRjS9rn4

but the most to be done so far with this new gift is the incredible work of Zoe Keating:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jiWF91DssM

Repetition is not here to stay but it is-now. From Mondrian's grid painting to pop radio, the feeling of minimalist art is as real today as are big box store shelves. Beautiful things are happening with the foot pedal but does this mean we will tacitly retire the singular BRIDGE?

Art Will Break Your Heart

Very soon to choose will mean to create. Highlighting links will birth arrangements. Sharing will spawn possibilities. When this singularity of making and meaning arrives we have to be ready to regulate the indiscriminate thoughtlessness of wasted thought, time, and heart.

Critical listening to the rhythm of the spheres will lift us above the drowning candy and up toward authentic beauty.