March 7th
Teenage Jesus and The Jerks-I Woke Up
Dreaming-Everything
The sound of
what?
Ineptitude.
Noise. Clatter.Screaming.
Rock and Roll. Punk.
Classical music.
The blue-iest
music that there could be.
Woke up this
morning and …woke up dreaming.
New York. City.
Cities falling into dust.
The sound of.
Time.
The sound of
uneasy listening. The sound of professionalism. Jazz and something so avant
garde it gone round the other side.
Music for talent(less)
shows. Music and sound that is utterly irrelevant in 2012. This is so far away
from what is considered contemporary that I couldn’t imagine it even being
thought of now, let alone being produced. It now sounds so old-fashioned that
the shock of the new has been replaced by the apathy of the so what? This is as
relevant now as it was in 1979/1980.
This is music
that will only make sense in a yet unknown future. It can never make sense at a
time when it’s been played-it’s as if it’s waiting for everything to catch up
but it’s always moving too fast-it’s too far ahead. If there are alternate,
parallel universes-other dimensions-well, maybe there it could be
understood-but probably not. It’s a step too far to think that could
happen-that Teenage Jesus & the Jerks could be comprehended fully.
The most logical
music. It sounds like mathematics. Geometry.
The sound of
applied physics.
The sound of particles.
The sound of
something so polished, so rehearsed beyond what is necessary. Music that’s been
too practiced and honed, sharpened like a craft knife. Every note, every tone,
every beat is simply what is required. The most well-versed band there could
ever be.
This is the
sound of the heaviest music possible.
It’s a cliché,
but it’s hard and tough. Sonically. Hard and tough to listen to. It can’t be
background music, but should be played in lifts and department stores.
Supermarkets. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks piped through ceiling speakers in
Asda. The ideal music to have whilst getting the shopping.
The sound of
insignificance.
The sound of
bafflement.
They are the
best heavy metal band there has ever been. Forget Iron Maiden and the rest; Teenage
Jesus and the Jerks should headline Monsters of Rock every year.
The most
anti-rock group that there could be. Forget traditional chord structures, song
structures and any kind of structure in fact. Beyond deconstructed-Teenage
Jesus and The Jerks did not have an initial structure to dismantle in the first
place.
If anything is a
meaningless racket, then this is what it is. It depends what is meant by a
meaningless racket though. Even something thrown together at random has its own
meaning. What does Teenage Jesus and the Jerks mean? Do they mean something
else in 2012 than they did in 1987? Am I asking too many questions about
something that is self-evidently obvious?
The ideal way to
perform music-ten minute sets with thirty-second songs. There is no reason to
do any more. Nothing else to be said.
The sound of
unlearnt instruments.
The sound of
intense thought and consideration.
Music that if
played backwards it would sound exactly the same. The sound of entropy. The
sound of the end of days. Or the beginning of something. The sound of “where do
we go from here?” What could be next? What could this evolve into? Or have we
reached a natural conclusion? What could possibly come after this?
The sound of
love.
This is an extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
and what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:
Get/read Totally Shuffled here
Kindle:
This is an extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
and what "Totally Shuffled" is all about:
One track per
day for 366 days on a broken iPod.
366 tracks out of a possible 9553.
From the
obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex).
From the
sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).
From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music
to The Monkees.
From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz,
classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between.
This is what I
listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to
hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some
artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of
critical kicking.
There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops,
prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that
I’d completely forgotten about.
But with 40 years of listening to music, I
realised that I’ll never get sick of it.
I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but
I’ll never fall out of love with music.
Get/read Totally Shuffled here
Kindle:
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