Time to breathe
—————-
By Beppe Colli
Nov. 2, 2009
Strange
but true, Clouds and Clocks is about to take a vacation. What kind of vacation?
Well, at the moment of this writing the thing that to me appears to be
the most similar to our current situation is the by now extremely well-known
"extended hiatus" taken by Phish. But when compared to the peculiar
events that had the Vermont quartet as the main character, this webzine travels
less mysterious paths.
2009 was a year definitely not short on surprises
for us, and I’d like to have the time to tell readers about one or two
of them, they appear to be quite funny, after the fact. Plus, all the usual
stuff. It looked like placid waters were in sight when, about a month ago,
the apartment that’s located just above the one where we live started undergoing
a major renovation. And I mean major: floors were eliminated, walls came
tumbling down, pipes were taken away, the heating system soon to be rebuilt…
also, a cement fixer was put in place. All things considered, I’d say that
when it comes to productivity, in the course of last month our webzine
didn’t fare too bad. But since it looks like this will go on for a couple
of months or so, I thought it better to accept our present condition, and
its potential disruptive consequences for the quality of the work done
on Clouds and Clocks.
I‘m really
sorry for the stuff that’s on my table (I had already started an interview
that promised to be great, but which was truncated by health problems –
nothing really serious, but problems nonetheless – on the part of the interviewee):
first item – just when I had lost all hope
of ever seeing it published – is Volume II of Behind
The Glass By Howard Massey (subtitle: Top Record Producers Tell How They
Craft The Hits) (Miller Freeman Books 2009, $24.99, pp332); I’ve
already read it twice, which is not enough to write a profound review,
but more than enough to say that – just like Volume I – Massey’s book will
be for a long time an important source of information and debate (up to
Volume III, if it’ll ever appear – for reasons clearly explained in the
course of many conversations featured in the book);
then there’s the new CD by Nellie McKay,
Normal As Blueberry Pie (subtitle: A Tribute To Doris Day), which I didn’t
find to my liking, though it can be said that (as it was to be expected)
it’s a nice product; since I’ve listened to it just a couple of times,
I’d like it to be clear that the following opinion is a personal opinion,
not a review; I think that here we don’t have a
"bringing the material to our present time" that was so successfully
done by Shelby Lynne in Just A Little Lovin’, her fine tribute to Dusty Springfield;
maybe it’s because I lack the cultural framework that’s needed in order to
get this, I have to say that – when listened to "as it is" – to
this album sounds not much more than a divertissement
mostly intended for those who like exotica and frou-frou items; which is
not a tragedy by any means, but I’m not one of them; a strange "sideways
step" for McKay, if you ask me (full disclosure: after listening to
this CD for the first time I felt the impulse to listen to some music by
Ani DiFranco);
there’s also the new CD by Imogen Heap, Ellipse,
which confirmed to me all my doubts about her previous work, Speak For
Yourself (2005), which is better; sure, what compared to what’s on the
charts this could be classified as a good album, but this is not the way
we argue at Clouds and Clocks;
then there’s the re-release of Phonography
by R. Stevie Moore, which I’ve never listened to but which I’m pretty sure
I’ll like, given the fact that I own and like some of the albums he released
after this one (his first);
there’s also (well, it’s about to arrive)
the recent re-release (featuring some unreleased tracks) of Thirty Seconds
Over Winterland by Jefferson Airplane, with a remastering that I hope will
sound decent;
… next week the new album by Mike Keneally,
Scambot 1, which I pre-ordered, will be sent to me.
So
it’s
"see you in about two months"? Well, I don’t know, for many reasons
I wrote on a tiny piece of paper in order to discuss them at length in the
course of my article celebrating this webzine’s seventh birthday (November,
26th). This is not the right moment to talk about them.
It goes without saying that a thing like
Clouds and Clocks operates in the realm of the irrational, so it’s not
like the decision to end it necessitates some special conditions, motivations,
and reasons. A disruptive event of an independent nature such as the renovation
of the apartment above could be a good enough reason to tip the scale.
Just
a couple of points, fast:
a) most of the albums that I happen to listen
to nowadays are incredibly poor, and they greatly suffer when compared
to "similar" albums from the past; of course, it’s at this point
that somebody (it’s not really important here to determine if it’s for
financial reasons, or because he spent his life eating canned food, and
now sees himself as a connoisseur when it comes to haute cuisine) starts
talking about "past & nostalgia"; while I think it’s better
to consider things like budgets and career perspectives (the single page
written by George Massenburg as an introduction to Massey’s book works
quite well as background to this topic);
whatever the reason, however, as long as
Crescent by John Coltrane is in print listening to one hour of honking
sax backed by two drum sets going boom boom crash doesn’t look like the best way
to spend one’s time; and though I’m perfectly conscious of the importance
of the factor called poverty I have to ask myself whether a musician can
really ask for a listener to spend a slice of his life (which will be gone
forever!) listening to such mediocre works that sometimes it’s easy to
see are released without much faith in their intrinsic value, (it’s not
for quality reasons that one is eventually offered to play some concerts
– I could say more);
on a parallel note, I see no reason why buying
the new psych-folk album of the week could be considered a priority as
long as I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight by Richard & Linda
Thompson is available, at a price (just looked on the Web) below £6;
maybe because I was so (un)lucky to grow
during a period when artists were the
"avant-garde" (I believe it’s really impossible nowadays to understand
the importance of the words spoken by Dylan, or The Beatles) I’m frequently
surprised by how often artists sound like they spend their time totally oblivious
to what can be called "life"; I don’t know if I got this right,
so no names or quotes, but I read about a conference of some sort that dealt
with the problem of innovation when it comes to Copyright in the case of
materials "quoted" in a work of art (which reminded me of things
discussed by people by John Oswald and Negativeland about… 25 years ago?);
which is obviously fine, but that given the current situation when it comes
to Copyrighted materials all over the world (meaning: while Web aggregators
use materials produced by the "press" in order to sell ads, and
radio programs fill air time reading from, and commenting on, articles from
the press in order to fill the air at absolutely no cost while the press
dies due to decreasing revenues, both in ads and sales) arguing about this
sounds quite similar to talking about the way porcupines manage to have sex.
b) talking about the audience would take
a long time, or maybe a little; by now fully investigated, the fact of
dealing with "things" inside a pointillistic time, and so discarding
things as the normal attitude, is nowadays a given.
© Beppe Colli 2009
CloudsandClocks.net
| Nov. 2, 2009
