I’ve kept on thinking about this since I read/listened to it yesterday. First, thank you for it! Second, I can’t decide how I feel about the My Life song, which I had heard for the first time. That is, whether I believe, for myself, that things that the song lists are enough. I did an essay asking a similar question to the question the song asks, and thought that maybe I had reached some conclusions, but this reminds me that it all stays open, somehow. A rich article, thank you.
Thank you for this. Yes, I suppose that, in many ways, what the song offers is too simplistic. It’s perhaps not enough as words on a page, screen or album sleeve. For me, though, the music brings another layer which makes it all seem bigger and more expansive somehow.
To be honest, though, I think it’s the side of the equation that emphasises transience and insignificance that has kept me going back to the song rather than the answers it proffers.
Ah, that makes sense. It was running through my head all day yesterday — both the words and the melody — so it must be that it’s not only the words that had an impact on me too, though I tend to mostly only think about words. I didn’t mean at all that it was simplistic — more that it left me wondering if it came down somewhere close to where I came down in that essay, and if so what I thought about both of them, if that makes any sense. Insignificance — will think more on that.
Great read that makes me very interested in this artist and album (I am unfamiliar with both), Richard.
A box with photos, letters, memories of the people we once were or always were but lived different lives in different times, and we all looked a bit different back then. I can relate to that. There are some memories I am happy to keep in a box, whilst others I reflect fondly on. Music can definitely trigger and unleash many memories and emotions.
Thanks, Michael. Yes, there are a few boxes—real and virtual—that I’m more than happy to keep closed! And we also need that time to register and enjoy new experiences, too. With music, I try and keep a listening balance between old favourites, rediscoveries and new discoveries (new to me as well as new releases).
30 years! Oh boy. As Bukowski once said, 'the days run away like wild horses over the hills' or something like that. If memory recalls I was living in Japan when I first got wind of the album, and possibly it was one of your recommendations. I bought the CD in Tower Records, Hiroshima (once again, if memory serves), and it has been a mainstay ever since, sometimes often bitter-sweet memories are evoked when listening to it, of friends and lovers lost in time, but it remains one of my favourites. Great post Richard!
Thanks Martin. I’m pretty certain the tape I had came from you, but I wasn’t 100% sure, so didn’t add that detail. You or Mark, anyhow, and I remain forever grateful to whomever brought the album into my life (no pun intended).
That is a lovely set of recollections. It's funny that we might be the same age. I'd mentally thought of you as just slightly older; perhaps just a reflection of the sometimes intimidating breadth of musical knowledge that you bring to your writing.
Something that struck me, reading this. I occasionally make the comment that one of the challenges of writing about music, particularly music that we know well and love, is that it's tempting to think that the music can speak for itself. I often feel like the best description that I can give is just to point to the song, give some explanation of why it matters, and then encourage somebody to listen.
But, so often, that isn't enough. We hear songs in the context of a whole set of expectations and experience it as familiar or surprising, and that one of the purposes of music writing is to help guide the reader to approach the music with an appropriate set of expectations.
However, that is less true when we're young. There are many albums that I learned by listening; starting out with no set of expectations and just trying to figure out what they meant and how they operated, and those albums always occupy a special place of, on some level, hearing them as purely themselves.
It sounds like Iris DeMent falls into that category for you, and that's lovely.
Thanks. I'll think about all that some more, and follow up that link. I was born in 1971 and went to university at 22, a bit later than is usual. And I turned thirty while doing the MA. There were gaps before both those degrees where I felt that higher education wasn't for me. Now here I am, more than two decades into becoming a university lecturer!
I was struck by something that Ellen said in response to my anniversary post last week, about having what we want to say about the music in the text and not having too many examples for readers to have to play. I decided to keep it to just the three videos this time and speak for the music rather than let it speak for itself. Or rather, to speak about what the music said to me and made me want to express.
I’ve kept on thinking about this since I read/listened to it yesterday. First, thank you for it! Second, I can’t decide how I feel about the My Life song, which I had heard for the first time. That is, whether I believe, for myself, that things that the song lists are enough. I did an essay asking a similar question to the question the song asks, and thought that maybe I had reached some conclusions, but this reminds me that it all stays open, somehow. A rich article, thank you.
Thank you for this. Yes, I suppose that, in many ways, what the song offers is too simplistic. It’s perhaps not enough as words on a page, screen or album sleeve. For me, though, the music brings another layer which makes it all seem bigger and more expansive somehow.
To be honest, though, I think it’s the side of the equation that emphasises transience and insignificance that has kept me going back to the song rather than the answers it proffers.
Ah, that makes sense. It was running through my head all day yesterday — both the words and the melody — so it must be that it’s not only the words that had an impact on me too, though I tend to mostly only think about words. I didn’t mean at all that it was simplistic — more that it left me wondering if it came down somewhere close to where I came down in that essay, and if so what I thought about both of them, if that makes any sense. Insignificance — will think more on that.
Great read that makes me very interested in this artist and album (I am unfamiliar with both), Richard.
A box with photos, letters, memories of the people we once were or always were but lived different lives in different times, and we all looked a bit different back then. I can relate to that. There are some memories I am happy to keep in a box, whilst others I reflect fondly on. Music can definitely trigger and unleash many memories and emotions.
Thanks, Michael. Yes, there are a few boxes—real and virtual—that I’m more than happy to keep closed! And we also need that time to register and enjoy new experiences, too. With music, I try and keep a listening balance between old favourites, rediscoveries and new discoveries (new to me as well as new releases).
30 years! Oh boy. As Bukowski once said, 'the days run away like wild horses over the hills' or something like that. If memory recalls I was living in Japan when I first got wind of the album, and possibly it was one of your recommendations. I bought the CD in Tower Records, Hiroshima (once again, if memory serves), and it has been a mainstay ever since, sometimes often bitter-sweet memories are evoked when listening to it, of friends and lovers lost in time, but it remains one of my favourites. Great post Richard!
Thanks Martin. I’m pretty certain the tape I had came from you, but I wasn’t 100% sure, so didn’t add that detail. You or Mark, anyhow, and I remain forever grateful to whomever brought the album into my life (no pun intended).
That is a lovely set of recollections. It's funny that we might be the same age. I'd mentally thought of you as just slightly older; perhaps just a reflection of the sometimes intimidating breadth of musical knowledge that you bring to your writing.
Something that struck me, reading this. I occasionally make the comment that one of the challenges of writing about music, particularly music that we know well and love, is that it's tempting to think that the music can speak for itself. I often feel like the best description that I can give is just to point to the song, give some explanation of why it matters, and then encourage somebody to listen.
But, so often, that isn't enough. We hear songs in the context of a whole set of expectations and experience it as familiar or surprising, and that one of the purposes of music writing is to help guide the reader to approach the music with an appropriate set of expectations.
However, that is less true when we're young. There are many albums that I learned by listening; starting out with no set of expectations and just trying to figure out what they meant and how they operated, and those albums always occupy a special place of, on some level, hearing them as purely themselves.
It sounds like Iris DeMent falls into that category for you, and that's lovely.
Finally your comment about country instruments makes me think you would enjoy the talk by Jeff Warner that I highlight here -- a rich discussion of folk music history: https://earnestnessisunderrated.substack.com/p/folk-revival
Thanks. I'll think about all that some more, and follow up that link. I was born in 1971 and went to university at 22, a bit later than is usual. And I turned thirty while doing the MA. There were gaps before both those degrees where I felt that higher education wasn't for me. Now here I am, more than two decades into becoming a university lecturer!
I was struck by something that Ellen said in response to my anniversary post last week, about having what we want to say about the music in the text and not having too many examples for readers to have to play. I decided to keep it to just the three videos this time and speak for the music rather than let it speak for itself. Or rather, to speak about what the music said to me and made me want to express.