The Best Music

Notice how the best music comes from the most unlikely places?

Beethoven was Deaf. The Beatles came from one of the most culture barren cities on the planet at the time. (No offence Scousers, you know what I mean). Elvis was a white man singing like a black one. Scribe came from Christchurch, not exactly a hip hop holiday town. The Sex Pistols couldn't even play their instruments, (according to The Establishment of the time, which was kinda the point Mr McClaren intended, and the one they missed) and Stevie Starr was playing in everyone else’s band whilst he dreamed up harmonic loops that make angels weep.

Stevie who? Exactly. Stevie Starr is a musician living in Wellington that doesn't play dub, downbeat or reggae. Stevie makes music like I've never heard; it awakens those things inside you that you tell your lover in intimate whispers as the rain creates a mini drum symphony on the window.

I'm listening to him as I write this.

Like all good art, it Conjours Feeling.

Stevie put everything into his album. Literally. You can taste the sweat in it. Feel the hunger from the meals missed to pay for the next piece of kit he needed to get the sound that translated what he was feeling. It was never going to be a Pop album. That was a given. Stevie had something in him he wanted to share. Something words spoken directly couldn't adequately express and more than that, something only evocation of emotion could convey.

Tricky thing generating emotions in others. For a start, how can you guarantee what the recipient feels is what you feel, or intended them to feel (don't think about that too long, it'll hurt). Sure, with words, if you are angry at some one, you yell, and sure enough, they'll feel something. Normally anger or fear (actually the same thing, but, don't be telling the next angry guy you see he's scared, it don't come across so well)

Several songs on Stevies album have no words, and are outside "normal" song structure, however, the strength of feeling within the notes, some discordant...others a perfect harmonic vibration warming you, awaken emotion. It's undeniable.

It's the artist’s experience of life, brewed up inside a soul so intense it must be channeled through sound (painting, photography, drama, poetry, dance, etc etc etc) to escape.

Stevie is a happy man on the outside, with an electric, passionate, sociable, personality that excites a room. His music, melancholic sunlight, best enjoyed alone.

John Lennon, by most accounts, could be a right moody prick, and was without a doubt a deep thinker, his personality portraying a reflection of Liverpool, but was responsible for writing some of the greatest upbeat pop tunes ever written. No one mention Paul. Thanks.

The Sex Pistols sang for the downtrodden. Hard angry songs, loud and fast, the sort of shit your mother would never understand, songs of alienation that bought a generation together and gave it hope. Now that's a dichotomy if I've ever heard one. Alienated youth sitting in a group. They were all going to be punk for life. I know an "ex" punk that is now a marketing guru, and another that is a lawyer. Both would of spat in your face had you suggested this thirty years ago when they were teens. The female one would've kicked you in the groin too. Yep, she’s the marketer, how'd you know?

We are all familiar with the Elvis story. The biggest star in the world, dieing fat and bloated, on a toilet. He was a Sex God to millions.
Girls passed out in his presence. Imagine that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, take more than a moment to appreciate what musicians go through to bring you that shiver that enters the base of your spine and fills you with tiny little sparks, the songs that give you a lump in your throat, and the ones that fill you with power.

Go buy them. Full Quality sounds better.

Hold the inlay in your hands as you listen to it. Devour the words, the thank you, delve deep, look for meaning, lick the plate, be intense. Experience it to the fullest.

Feel.

Thanks Stevie, you made me feel despair and hope tonight.

Thanks Elvis, you hunk a burning love.

Thanks John, I do imagine all the people living life as one.
(yeah yeah, I know, dreams are free)

And Scribe? Heard him on a tinny stereo at the peak of homesickness in a clothing store in Guanzhou, China. Skinny white guy smiling and crying amidst 90 million strangers speaking a language he couldn't hear.

Thanks Scribe.

How many?

Not many,....ain't finny.

Adam Bright
15/09/09

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