RE-RELEASED

This past week I picked up a copy of Sonic Youth's re-release of Daydream Nation. Nicely repackaged as a two disc gate fold in a vellum sleeve. Nicely reminiscent of the vinyl era of rock n rolll now returned as a nostalgic fetish, I might add. It's chock full of un-released material specially packaged and priced for discerning music enthusiasts such as myself...

Anyway, as I leafed through the expanded booklet full of pithy liner notes from obscure yet highly credentialed critics I was struck with conflicting emotions. First, I felt the reassuring glow, no doubt intended from the disc's producers, that because of this purchase and my longstanding appreciation of Sonic Youth, that I was somehow part of some cultural elite; some post-rock literati; some post-punk purveyor of musical genius... Quickly on the heels of that feeling was the sting of ironic realisation that I was holding a Sonic Youth record in my hands, and all that self-important ego noodling was at the core of what they were rallying against...

But brushing aside this irony as the inherent dichotomy of modern art, I settled into the realization that I was now part of a new demographic for the music industry. The underground, alterntative, cult, indie, groundbreaking bands of my youth were now crossing that threshhold into... what shall we call it... Classic Rock? No, that doesn't really fit. Maturity? I don't know... much like the music at the time, the labels don't fit. But Sonic Youth is now propped up alongside Pavement, The Pixies, even The Orb as bands to be "re-released", "re-mastered", "re-packaged" and "re-discovered"... What does all this mean... I guess it means that I'm getting old.

And for the most part, I'm OK with that. But as I looked through the CD collection and realized how many of the bands I've loved are now being "re-released," I realized that it is actually more than just the nostalgic glow of my own aging process. And it's more than the slick marketing ploys of the dinosaur that is the record industry making it's last grabs to pull itself out of the tar pits... There's actually important work going on here. I am from a generation who's musical history and legacy could easily be lost.

In my time, I saw music go from the demise of the Top 40, through New Wave, to Alternative, to Post Rock and Electronica. I've raced to record stores on Tuesday mornings to buy the new releases. I've logged on to download them (for free and for a price) to my computer. I've discovered new bands through "tape chains", fanzines, indie labels and record shops, email forums, web sites... I've listened to this music on bedroom stereos, car stereos, "boom boxes", MTV, Marshall Stacks and iPods. There's a unique trajectory that music has taken in my lifetime and so far, I've not seen anyone trace it. This trajectory was not only technology driven, but the music itself has followed a transgressive spiral driving itself further and further from "main stream" and away from the critical imperative to pigeon hole, as bands and the music itself evolved stylistically. So much so, that now when a band like Sonic Youth is re-released as a "Landmark Album", most of the people I know scratch their heads and go "Sonic WHO?".

So there I stood, contemplating all this in front of my CD collection as Lee Renaldo asked over an answering maching a thousand miles away and 20 years ago "...did you find your shit?", captured in re-mastered, re-packaged and re-released version of "Providence". And I came up with this idea for a blog. Most folks that come into my house and see the CD collection have no clue what half of it is... Inevitably, I get the same questions "where did you ever hear of these bands?!" I can never really explain it all. I usually brush it off with a joke "I get transmissions from the mothership telling me what to buy." But in reality, I've got some explaining to do. When I go through my CD collection, it's FULL of Landmark albums. Not just because that was playing at my prom, or when someone broke my heart, or some other life event. I'm talking about albums that changed the course of the History of Music.

Is that pretentious enough for you?

It may be. But none the less, that's what I'm here to do. Explain WHY all this music I've spent so much of my life with is IMPORTANT. It remains to be seen how disciplined I am with all this. I'm sure there will be digressions and personal asides, but I'll try to avoid wasting your precious reading time telling you an album is great just because "I like it". And it remains to be seen how faithfull I am in adding to this blog... I'm a busy guy, and frankly there are days where I would rather listen to the music than write about it. But this opening post is the manifesto. Let's see if Joe can make it through his collection and offer up reviews, commentary, critical theory and philosphical noodling to the void in a consistent way to make some History of the DIS/RE/Integration of Music into a narrative that somehow make's sense. And in doing so, maybe I create my own "re-release" for all this music.

By the way, please leave comments and let me know if you agree, disagree, or even if you just want to throw cybertomatos at my measly little corner of the internet... it's more interesting that way.