Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, top quality, time-insensitive music is not in the ear of the listener.
It is very easy to get snobbish about music.
Modern music (to use a blanket label that actually has very little value at all) is a mixed bag.
I could name hot bands and cool artists who I *love* but they’re unsigned so there isn’t really a frame of reference for them.
Which means I’ll have to confine myself to the mainstream and that, frankly, isn’t ‘new’ or ‘modern’ at all.
I like Taylor Swift’s music (but I’m not very sure I like Taylor Swift).
There’s a naked simplicity in the way her tunes are constructed that I find endearing.
I detest Wand Erection’s music on principle.
On the principle that they’re a bunch of untalented fuckwits who are being manipulated by the cash-generating mainstream media, and are nearing the end of a process that takes lots of money from adolescent girls (or the parents of adolescent girls) and transfers it all in to the pockets of Simon Cowell.
On the way back from Shanghai I watched the first half of Love and Mercy.
Love and Mercy is the charming, disturbing, thought-provoking, enraging, calming, heartbreaking, uplifting biopic of Brian Wilson, the musical driver of The Beach Boys.
I wouldn’t class myself as a Beach Boys fan, but this film introduced me to Brian Wilson on the same level that the film Amadeus introduced me to previously unknown aspects of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
I realise Love and Mercy isn’t a fly on the wall documentary, but as a possible fictionalised docudrama (though undoubtedly it is based on hard fact), the film forced me to get closer to the musical ability, the inherent, raw, naked, and largely unfocussed talent of Brian Wilson.
Similarities between Mozart and Wilson are not difficult to draw.
Both mentally troubled, borderline psychotics, easy prey for manipulation from those closest to them.
And both of staggering musical intellect.
Love and Mercy isn’t an easy watch.
The mechanism of two actors portraying Wilson (Paul Dano depicting the early years, whilst John Cusack represented the later years Wilson), combined with the flasback/flashforward kept me on my mental toes.
The gross manipulation that the film shows is disturbing (and disturbingly credible).
But the largely untapped musical genius of Brian Wilson remains, throughout the darker passages of the film, somehow uplifting.
True genius will always shine through.
I’m sure someone wise said that.
And if they didn’t, they should have.
Some months ago, via a musical friend who is currently living in Abu Dhabi, I stumbled on another example of pure musical genius.
Music producer George Martin (no, I’m using George Martin as a point of reference; I’ve known about him for decades) was a great experimenter with sound.
Not just the texture, but the placing of it.
George Martin experimented with stereo in a way that modern music producers don’t.
Modern music producers take stereoscopic audio for granted; these days their work is (largely) all about balance between left and right.
George Martin enjoyed making the left and right audio channels contradict and contrabalance each other.
He enjoyed making left out of sync with right.
Many music producers who followed in his footsteps took his work further.
The soundscapes on early Pink Floyd albums (Atom Heart Mother, to name just one example) can clearly trace lineage back to George Martin’s successful audio experiments.
An unexpected bonus of the left channel vs the right channel counterplay can be heard when audio engineers remove the instrumental channel.
I used to get a similar effect, by swapping the left channel outputs from the stylus head on my record player, to the right channel connectors.
Sometimes I’d have ‘Hey Bulldog’ instrumental. Sometimes I’d swap it all back and have ‘Hey Bulldog’ vocal.
Sometimes I’d be radical and put the connectors where they should be, and listen to the whole track as George Martin intended.
Someone has done the modern-day equivalent of swapping the stylus head connectors with another Beatles work.
The YouTube video below came to me from the aforementioned musical friend in Abu Dhabi.
The video (basically it is just an audio track) is a medley excerpt from The Beatles album ‘Abbey Road’.
Though not strictly speaking ‘A capella’ (you can hear instrument leakage behind the vocals), this film clearly demonstrates just how good The Beatles were.
It is, like Love and Mercy, a signpost that says ‘here is talent’.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.