Third entry in the 10 songs that most affected my life, and I feel like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five : Ive become unstuck in time. 1983 : Depeche Modes Get the Balance Right shows me that not only do other people feel just as much angst and self-loathing as I do - they actually turn it into music that I love. 1977 : John Barrys Persuaders / Amicalement Vôtre theme turns me into an air-keyboard-player - and teaches me what music can do to images : the show is brilliant, but it wouldnt be anywhere near as elegant, quirky or mysterious if it wasnt for the opening titles. 1979 : my one and only brother and I share the room in the tiny family house. Hes 8 years older and we have one of those relationships whereby we fight all the time - but can hardly live without one another. He owns a few LPs which he plays on our crappy-sounding-but-indestructible electrophone : one of them is the Polices Regatta de Blanc, the one with Message in a Bottle on it - which I will end up years later playing with any number of cover bands, up to and including The Consumer Republic. But its also the one with Walking on the Moon in it, and at the time, although my music addiction proper is years ahead, the song just KILLS me - it feels incredible that any combination of people could possibly create that much SPACE within the 3 and a half minutes of a song. It also opens my mind to the importance of the bass - pretty much the one instrument you cant not use in rock, unless youre Jack White. You may have heard this song a million times but listen to it closely (that will also help you ignore the gloriously stupid video - dont look like a bunch of twats ?) - listen to the way the bassline effectively constructs the melodic core of the song, and how its elastic, minimal tones combine with the spaced-out atmospheric open chords of the guitar, and Stewart Copelands insanely intricate drumming (you think theres an echo of some sort added to the drums : there isnt - he plays them to make it SOUND like theres an echo), to send the whole tune free-floating well away from gravitys grip. Ever since I heard that song Ive started every writing session with the bassline - and every time I get tempted to layer to much stuff on in a tune, I go back to songs like this to remind myself how sometimes, less is SO MUCH more. And of times which were happier than my brother and I realized at the time. https://youtube/watch?v=zPwMdZOlPo8
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:23:57 +0000
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