the importance of music

"We exchanged a lot," says Roedelius, his face gently creasing into a grin. "The main thing we exchanged was don't take music too serious. Life is more serious."

Roedelius of Cluster, from here.

A true-ism if there ever was one. And being a counter-dominant-culture type in West Berlin in the late-60’s/early-70’s there were definitely other things to worry about. You were in the shit w/ the Baader-Meinhof, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain, a generation removed from yr parent’s Nazi-ism and you're around post Paris '68 and various other 'revolutionary' 60's things. A tru-ism but also against the grain of the general 60’s ethos that Rock and Roll was the revolution (or at least part of it).

And if making music is relatively un-serious fare, how less serious should writing about music be considered relative to Life? It seems almost silly to sit here in ’07 as I still waste too much of my resources (time, money, brain-space) on knowing as much about, or thinking about music as much, as I do. And mostly music that was recorded before I was born. Granted there are other things that I worry about and other things that I do with my time, but really why worry about music at all. Why try to construct taxonomies and rankings and connections for music that had borderline revolutionary credentials at the time and even less now? Erg.

In the end this is a fret over the what & the where for; the why I am doing this. But on the other hand, why not?

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One benefit of rolling back on serious-ness when worrying about music it brings down the rigid walls 'twix genres that are un-neccessarily contructed by the too-serious. From earlier posts: Led Zeppelin & the Grateful Dead. Today: Fusion.

Almost as taboo as jam-band music, fusion is slightly redeemed by association w/ bonafide genious Miles Davis as well as others. But like the fellow evil step sister of Prog it stinks of trying to herald unwarranted and unsuccessful pretension into rock. But being a Punk champion and snubbing your nose at the middle-class upittiness of 70's musicians to take the Rock as art pretension brought in by the 60's deeper is unfairly revisionist. As much as Punks like to disdain artiness in rock, or ring in a back-to-basics (back-to-stupid) rock ethic they are conceptually closer to the heady early 70's art-rock paradigm than to that of any early rock rockabilly or jump music thumper. Not that punk's aspire to a Elvis rock purity (leave that to rockabilly stoopids), but Punk's do hold up 60's grungy garage rockers as the true rock flame holders through the 60's, cause they were simple and stupid. But 60's garage rockers weren't trying to be Big Joe Turner but trying to ape the Byrds and the Beatles who were arty middle-class climbers themselves. Just we don't see it that way now.

Whatever, I really wanted to talk about Fusion (and how Serious music fans build walls; walls that are unneccessary and artificial, having nothing really to with the music (or how music is really made or heard) but everything about being serious about something that is resistant to seriousness) so I'll get back to that.

Not only is fusion a post-facto impercise genre category but it is also unfairly broad. Even different late era Miles Davis' bands sound completely different. And one degree farther removed the bands that late era Davis alumni moved on to cover even a broader breadth of musical ground (not a lot of it good); Mahvishnu Orchestra, Weather Report & Herbie Hancock being three that I can think of off the top of my head that cover a lot of sonic ground but all "Fusion". Coming from the other direction in American jazz-rock fusion are folks like Zappa, Paul Butterfield & Santana; also relatively diverse sampling. And when you get out of the US the fusion map gets even broader and somehow more hipster credible: Soft Machine, Henry Cow, King Crimson & (ick) Chicago. And then onto Germany, and my current musical fascination, with nominal Krautrockers Xhol Caravan, Embryo and Anima. All "fusion" but not in the end fusion at all.

And so here the Fusion descriptor is revealed to be the hole-y beast it is. Anima is random -ish noises in a free mess of "untrained" music making. Xhol Caravan sprung out of a motown-style soul band (then known as Soul Caravan - german soul, wha?), took some drugs and started playing extended psychadelic jazz-rock jams. Embryo includes some Amon Duul hangers-on and is the most conventional fusion-sounding band of them all, but listening them next to Guru Guru & Can & Amon Duul (I & II) & on to Soft Machine & King Crimson & Roxy Music & Hawkwind & Miles Davis & the Red Krayola & the 13th Floor Elevators & whoever else you want -- the effect is not of constricting music into genres and styles but instead the effect is of unfolding the musical map so everything is fair game. And why shouldn't it be? Not that styles and genres don't have a function but they're not the end, they are a beginning, or better said a tool, and not even the only beginning/tool, but one of many. The only "beginning" beginning is making sound.

Not suprisingly open-ness comes back in (in 70's Germany) where figurative walls serve less function (not much culture industry $$ pie to be shared) and literals walls are more apparent. Too bad they made a little money (Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul II, Jane, Kraan) and it's like the walls build themselves. Kosmiche, Berlin-School, Krautrock? Funk dat.