Welcome to my blogging side project, "Circular Zen" - a blog dedicated solely to music-related matters. not sure what shape this is going to take, but I imagine it will be mostly informal reviews of albums and concerts, some news and up-coming concerts listing, along with the occasional "rant" or philosophical meandering. I'm hoping to keep it lite and fun, and in doing so perhaps I will post more.
First, the name, and then a little of my musical history (so you know where I'm coming from). Back in the old days, before the download revolution took over the music world, music was always recorded onto some sort of circular device - from the first recordings on wax cylinders, to the classic vinyl record (78's, LPs, and 45 singles), right up to the now-dying CD. even tapes of all sorts were "in the round" - a square casing holding 2 reels of tape. 8-tracks were rectangular, but you had to listen to the whole thing to get back to the beginning, and so even that was "circular" in nature. I'm a big fan of music being held on some sort of physical, collectible object, and so I usually only listen to "circular" music...
Zen is a concept, or quality, that can't really be talked about without speaking of it wrongly (it doesn't fit well with labels or categorization). but it is something I think we all experience when we are listening to our favourite music. it is that quality of "getting lost" in the music, of resonating or connecting with the art. It is the thing that draws one person to one kind of music and another to their own kind of music. Zen is that thing that leads each person on their own path, inexplicably. It's that thing that, conversely, draws people together. We can talk about the music, about what we think we like and dislike about it, but at the end of the day it is each person's Zen nature that draws them to whatever it is they are drawn to, and why one person can love a certain piece of music or album, and another person can hate that same music, and why they are both right. You could call it opinion, but when it comes to music and the way it resonates so deeply with so many of us, I believe it's something more...
so much for "lite and fun"...
(to be honest, I came up with that name because every single other possible logical name for a music blog seems to be taken!)
If you're looking to locate me on a music-listening map, you'll find my starting point rooted pretty strongly in pop radio. My musical tastes were developed, for good or bad, growing up in the 80's. Debbie Gibson, George Michael, Whitesnake, Heart... And to make matters worse, these were the years I was also attending a Christian school, and so I was immersed in the christian subculture, including that horrid animal called CCM (Contemporary Christian Music). Christian Rock. Both embarrassing and wonderful. Didactic, yet deeply moving and often profound in the midst of much banality and propaganda. It's a hard sell if you weren't there. Stryper throwing bibles while wearing too-tight junk-revealing spandex, to name an obvious example. and yet in the midst of the garbage, there's all this great rock and roll, music that still deeply moves and influences my life decades later. Undercover coming to grips with the pain of living this life in the midst of disappointments and disillusions, reminding their listeners that "all our days on earth are like a vapor". I don't regret any of my time spent immersed in CCMland, and yet I wouldn't expect anyone else to understand...
In college I discovered alternative music, perhaps a little late to the game in the late-80's (I grew to love The Smiths long after they were gone), and yet perhaps right on time. The 90's had more to offer than I cared to admit at the time (I was a little sore at that new decade for killing my beloved pop-metal). I grew sick of (and away from) the confining realm of CCM and radio pop music in general, and discovered some of my favourite groups of all-time. Over the Rhine, Vigilantes of Love, Innocence Mission, Sixpence, Sarah Masen, just to name a few. life-changing musical experiences for me. music that helped me move away from the christian subculture without abandoning my faith altogether. And music that refined my musical tastes, taught me what musical integrity was all about, set me on the right road away from the easily-digestible pop music of the previous decade without abandoning its pop sensibilities. the music was running deeper, wider, more challenging, yet somehow more appealing because of it.
as I entered my 30's, I developed a love for a couple genres that were totally foreign to me before - Classical and Jazz. I think most people of my generation don't develop the hormone that allows one to appreciate these styles until after 25 at least. Music that once was noise (or just boring) to me before was now rich and deeply rewarding, music I couldn't even wrap my head around on first listen. Pop music is easy to get. you listen to a pop song a couple times, and you've pretty much heard most of what you're ever going to hear in that song. it's catchy and fun, and even addicting at times, but like a sugar rush, it grows old fast. repeated listens will soon enough garner the exclamation "I'm SO SICK of this song!". You probably won't ever hear that from a classical music lover listening to Bach or Mozart. Coltrane's "Ascension" may give you a headache after repeated listens, but you won't even have begun to scratch the surface of what that song has to offer at that point.
At some point in my early 30's, I watched the movie "Almost Famous" about a hundred times on my friend's hi-fi system, and subsequently developed an OCD love and appreciation of classic rock beyond what I had already known. and somewhere in there, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan entered the picture. My 80's trained ears had a rough time acclimating themselves to those sounds, but once they did, my music-listening life was never the same...
so there's just a brief and incomplete glimpse into where I've been, where I am, and perhaps a clue as to where I'm going. From radio pop, classic rock, hard rock and metal (I went through a brief thrash phase that I never recovered from), to classic and modern alternative, literate coffeehouse folk-rock, all the way to classical and jazz...
A few friends have suggested I do a music blog, and I'm looking forward to trying this. Watching "Almost Famous" again a couple weeks ago for the zillionth time gave me the itch to do some more music writing, and reading Nino's blog was kind of the final push that made me want to do one of my own. and so here it is. Just to get things rolling I think I'll import some of my music writings from my other blog, and maybe throw in a few "essential top 10" sorts of lists. I hope, if you're reading this, you feel free to jump in on the discussion. tell me what you think, what music you like or don't like, what you agree or disagree with here. it's all good, and all in fun.
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