Posted on: April 17, 2012
My Valentine, by Paul McCartney.
The video is simple, basic, but yields a melancholy paradox. Those of us who can see and hear lose and gain something mysterious, wondrous and poetic. The translation of signs into words, into emotions and meaning escapes us, if we can’t sign. We just watch Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp move effortlessly, brilliantly, to the song, to Eric Clapton’s guitar, to the ever youthful former Beatles’ sad refrain. We also may wonder how the video affects those who can see but not hear. What goes through their mind/body when they “read” the hands and limbs of the two actors?
Waiting for signs. The song is about that. The video is about that. We all wait for signs, parse them, decode them, depend upon them and hope for them.…
[More...]
Posted on: January 31, 2012
Riffing off my previous essay, with its slightly tongue-in-cheek usage of the word schizoid, I thought I’d take a quick look at major changes within bands themselves during the 60s. Two come to mind easily:
The Moody Blues and the Beatles.
Listen to the Moody Blues’ first hit from 1964, Go Now. It doesn’t set trends. It follows them. It’s well within the parameters of the British Pop Invasion, with its echo of American Pop R&B and Blues. Yes, it has a Mersey beat twist. But it in no way prepares us for what would follow.
Go Now
Just three years later the Moody Blues, with a few changes to their original lineup (losing Denny Laine, picking up Justin Hayward), would embark on a musical Odyssey that only the Beatles had come close to attempting.…
[More...]
Posted on: January 24, 2012
Casting Mind back on the day. Back into the deep, dark past of youthful folly, delusion and spontaneous combustion. Back to a time when we just didn’t care, or we cared far too much. When everything was brand spanking new and we drank and drank ourselves into unearned nostalgia or oblivion.
Driving was everything. Driving was our escape and revenge, our home, something we controlled outside the law of adults. Their law wasn’t our law when we drove and partied and listened to Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys — what today some call Classic Rock. It wasn’t classic back then. It was just the music of our generation.
We had seen “American Graffiti” and we cruised the streets looking for our own version of West Coast Car Culture, knowing we’d never find it.…
[More...]
