Music Shaped Box
Jan. 27th, 2012 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI'm listening to the radio and this song comes on, "Heart Shaped Box" (I knew the name, and I knew the song, but either i'm only now connecting them together or I've previously done so but forgotten I had; quite possibly the latter, as I'm sure I'll forget this again after today).
I was probably 12 when I first heard Nirvana but i was already giving up on pop music. I wanted desperately to be cool but I just couldn't stand any of the music on the radio any more.
And I listen to this song now, and I still don't like it. But it doesn't seem to have such a visceral effect on me any more, either. I mean, maybe part of that's because I'm an old curmudgeon rather than a 12-year-old to whom nothing had really happened so I could still afford to experience everything as emotionally charged.
But part of it, too, is that I know I'm ilstening to a radio station with a really eclectic playlist and something totally different will be along in a minute. (It's just changed to The Pogues' version of "Dirty Old Town"; much more my kind of thing). In the early/mid 90s, that wasn't the case. Everything on the radio was grunge, or wanted to be. Or else, Jewel. (I'm so bitter that my British friends got to listen to Pulp and Blur and all the other Britpop bands around this time; there was nothing like such good taste on my side of the ocean.) At that time, Nirvana was just...what music sounded like, as ubiquitous as water is to fish, and as inescapable.
And it reminds me of something I read in The Rest is Noise the other day, something about how the reaction to Arnold Schönberg kind of mellowed out as his career went on. His, shall we say challenging, musical ideas excited some people but really put off others. His faithful atonal and twelve-tone disciplines were many; his influence on the music of the 20th century is tremendous; people could be been forgiven for at first worrying that all music would have to sound like his "lab work" as another composer put it: "Non, ce n'est pas de la musique... c'est du laboratoire" ("That isn't music … it's lab-work").
So it must have been some relief to them to see that, while atonality was a lot more than just a fad, at least it wasn't all-consuming; people still wrote nice tunes with proper key signatures. Grunge had its day, but it sounds so dated to me now (which is a relief when it was once the water i had to swim in).
It's such a relief to know not all music is going to have to sound like that! isn't it?
Whichever "that" you happen to be thinking about.
I was probably 12 when I first heard Nirvana but i was already giving up on pop music. I wanted desperately to be cool but I just couldn't stand any of the music on the radio any more.
And I listen to this song now, and I still don't like it. But it doesn't seem to have such a visceral effect on me any more, either. I mean, maybe part of that's because I'm an old curmudgeon rather than a 12-year-old to whom nothing had really happened so I could still afford to experience everything as emotionally charged.
But part of it, too, is that I know I'm ilstening to a radio station with a really eclectic playlist and something totally different will be along in a minute. (It's just changed to The Pogues' version of "Dirty Old Town"; much more my kind of thing). In the early/mid 90s, that wasn't the case. Everything on the radio was grunge, or wanted to be. Or else, Jewel. (I'm so bitter that my British friends got to listen to Pulp and Blur and all the other Britpop bands around this time; there was nothing like such good taste on my side of the ocean.) At that time, Nirvana was just...what music sounded like, as ubiquitous as water is to fish, and as inescapable.
And it reminds me of something I read in The Rest is Noise the other day, something about how the reaction to Arnold Schönberg kind of mellowed out as his career went on. His, shall we say challenging, musical ideas excited some people but really put off others. His faithful atonal and twelve-tone disciplines were many; his influence on the music of the 20th century is tremendous; people could be been forgiven for at first worrying that all music would have to sound like his "lab work" as another composer put it: "Non, ce n'est pas de la musique... c'est du laboratoire" ("That isn't music … it's lab-work").
So it must have been some relief to them to see that, while atonality was a lot more than just a fad, at least it wasn't all-consuming; people still wrote nice tunes with proper key signatures. Grunge had its day, but it sounds so dated to me now (which is a relief when it was once the water i had to swim in).
It's such a relief to know not all music is going to have to sound like that! isn't it?
Whichever "that" you happen to be thinking about.
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Date: 2012-01-27 02:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-27 04:35 pm (UTC)In my part of "on this side of the Atlantic", KROQ was playing Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Blur and probably Pulp, although I don't remember. And so was Live105, in the Bay Area. Coastal city privs.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-27 04:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-27 08:48 pm (UTC)I'm editing to add that the whole grunge thing was never my scene at the time but now, much later, I do have a real appreciation for Pearl Jam and Soundgarden (who I liked better than nirvana even back then, just didn't really like). Still no like for nirvana, though.
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Date: 2012-01-27 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-28 12:55 am (UTC)OH GOD Rodney on the ROQ. @.@ I'm earwormed with his voice now. CURSE YOU, ANDREW HICKEY!
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Date: 2012-01-28 01:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-29 10:57 pm (UTC)