Now after I wrote that column, I was expecting a reaction.
Specifically, I was expecting Charlie Dirksen to email me, explaining
how I was deaf. What I wasn't expecting was for the review to be
posted to the KVHW list. What I wasn't expecting was to receive quite
a few personal attacks in my email. So, being the kind of thinker
that I am, I started wondering. Why didn't I like this band? Why do
I like some bands and not others? Why do people take attacks on their
musical tastes as personal attacks?
In an effort to give KVHW another chance, I downloaded some MP3's from
an ftp server. Unlike the show I saw - which quite a few KVHW fans
said was subpar - I checked out most of 12/31/98, a show which got
good reviews. It did nothing for me.
I tried three or four
listens to most of the tracks, before coming to the conclusion that
this was not likely to be the band for me. My main problem was that
a lot of the songs seemed to only have one part. The one thing that
could save a one part song for me is intelligent lyrics; most of the
songs on Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" only have one part and I love
them. Alas, in their current structure KVHW only does instrumentals.
While I love "Tangled Up in Blue," a "Tangled Up in Blue" jam would
bore me to tears.
"So you tend to prefer music with lyrics and songs with multiple
segments. Why should I care?" you ask. Well you shouldn't. While I
will take any chance to analyze my tastes, ultimately that kind of
description is backwards. It's not like I listen to a song with a
checklist, going "Interesting lyrics, check. Jam had 10 distinct
segments to it, check. I guess I must like it then." My reaction to
music tends to be instinctive. I like it or I don't; only later can I
make an attempt to reverse engineer the rules that I seem to be
following. Even then it can be hard; "Eyes of the World" pretty much
only has one part and has very few lyrics, but it always made me happy
to hear it.
The instinctive nature of music appreciation is what makes music so
powerful to me. Most things I react to through a filter of logic;
music is one of the few things that can affect me directly and
unfiltered. Direct experience of something is rare. Our brains shut
out things that we don't want to hear or see. A good example of this
occurs when I program. If I type "pirnt" instead of "print," it takes
forever to find the error; my mind corrects the typo for me. This is
why there are editors at newspapers (and Jambands.com); when you know
what you mean, your mind makes the corrections for you. Somehow
though, music takes the express route to my brain.
A few months ago, I was talking with a friend about music. When I
told her that music was my religion, she asked me to clarify. "What,
you worship chord progressions?" I didn't have an answer then, but I
do so now. What I worship, what I consider spiritual about music, is
not the actual tunes played, but the brief moments of connection with
the universe, of moments where there is me and the music and
absolutely nothing else is present. While I have had non-musical
experiences similar to this - I could easily write a book called
Zen and the Art of Making Really Good Frisbee Catches - music
is the event that most often triggers it.
In his books, Robert Pirsig writes about the idea of Quality. Unlike
the usual use of that word, Quality with a capital "Q" refers to the
untarnished reality upon which we base our views of reality.
His classic
example of the existence of this is a hot stove. If you accidentally
touch a hot stove, your hand yanks away before you
realize what had happened. The same thing happens with music. You
enjoy or don't enjoy the song before you can think about what
happened. This, of course, is one of the reasons why musical debates
get so ugly so quickly. Unless you're a musician - and I'm one of
those people who wasn't even allowed to play the triangle - there is
only so much you can say about why you like a song. If someone asks
me why I like Seattle, I can talk about how green it is. I can talk
about the job market. I can talk about being able to see Ken Griffey
Jr. and Alex Rodriguez play. I can talk about
summer nights that stay light until 10 p.m.
I can talk about Mt. Rainier. I can
pretend the months between November and May don't exist. Ask me why
I like a band though, and after three or four minutes I'm reduced to,
"Listen to this tape." There are very few logical arguments that can
be used to explain a pre-logical preference; axioms can not be proven.
If I can project from my own experience, there is at least one other
reason people might be defensive about their musical tastes. As much
as I can talk about glimpses of the reality that underlies our
perception, the fact is that to an outsider, what I am doing is
following a rock band around the country. When you spend that much
time doing that, there has to be some part of you that wonders if
you're going to wake up one morning, slap yourself on the forehead,
and say, "What the hell was I thinking spending all of that money and
vacation time on tour?" Now that I'm on the far side of 30 and still
haven't grown out of tour, I suppose the odds are low, but I know that
part of my defensiveness about going on tour does stem from the public
mockery the activity has. Having adventures isn't nearly as
encouraged as I would like it to be.
One of the problems with having a mathematically inclined personality,
is that I do spend too much time living in my brain. Any attempt to
transcend logic has more barriers to fight, because logic is so deeply
entrenched in my mind. As a result, I am a lot more picky about music
than most. There have only been four jambands that I have ever seen
that have done it for me- SCI, Phish, Phil and Phriends, and the
Grateful Dead. For fans of other bands, the thing to do is not to
attack me, but to feel sorry for me. You have a source of pleasure in
your life that I don't. You win, not me.
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
-Tao Te Ching, S. Mitchell translation
David Steinberg got his Masters Degree
in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1993. He
first discovered the power of live music at the Capitol Centre in
1988 and never has been the same. His
Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html
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