January 29ths
1/29/1999
Went to record store at noon and bought Mari Boine and Portishead live. Looking through the World section, I see so many discs that look Interesting: but it's so easy to get burned on these. Imports from Asia are interesting–their packaging is so much more alluring and inventive.
Disappointed with the Portishead CD. What they do doesn't translate to the stage. The DJ scratched thing sounds forced and overdone, but it's the only thing that makes it sound 90s. When we listen to it in 20 years, we’ll be able to trace the history.
[1/29/2025: A recent Album Years podcast on 1994 included Portishead. I liked the vibe and still revisit it sometimes. But ultimately, the vibe of a recording that relies only on the sound of recordings can’t easily be reproduced. This is the issue now with AI-generated music which sounds good as a recording but usually there’s not much actual music in it when you just play it manually or try to sing it with just a guitar
1/29/2008
[1/29/2026: To keep things alive means younger generations have to continue to make investments in its “upkeep”, which isn’t likely over 2 or 3 generations. But they may use parts of it and create their own way of engaging with the arts, as we see now with AI. I use AI music generators all the time, while still continuing to play instruments and compose in notation. But that might not last beyond my generation. Artists will find new ways of working with organized sound, which is essentially what music is. In terms of the “erosion”, I have retreated from the coast to remain in the same general area, but others might move to a completely new place and forget what had eroded].
1/29/2014
On musical training: Over the years I have realized the artistic and philosophic value in avoiding rudiments, and so I like to do things to interrupt my tendency to make things too harmonic. In its place I’ll start a piece with a rhythm or texture. Very often you can drape musical elements after the fact, but it takes musical training to prime yourself to notice them when they emerge. I never regretted studying music, and I love the creative range it gives me. The corollary in the visual arts is to have the skill to easily switch from representational painting to abstracts and conceptual work.
1/29/2022
Wright Of the Eyes:
1/29/2023
Watched a video of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson about their new mustard. I was reading some of the comments and it’s the usual fan stuff: “the best band in the world”, etc. It’s a cult phenomenon--people don’t realize that when they religiously follow a band or an artist it’s a subtle form of fascism. It’s a feeling of togetherness, and that togetherness can become a shared cynicism about other things as well. It’s a constellation of things that come with things that seem to be benign—like being a fan of a band and can be tangential to cultism.
1/24/2024
The current metaphor for YouTube is a TV channel, but back in 2006 I used it for animations and I’m still using it that way because that’s what I want to do—I don’t want to run a TV channel. At some point as an artist you have to be more intentional and do things that you want to do. “TV channel” seems like a disappointing option.
Durante:
1/29/2025
Watched interview with David Gilmour and Polly Samson about their songwriting process. Sometimes David would scat a vocal line and Polly would write lyrics to it. That’s actually very hard to do because you are having to assign syllables to each note, which makes it very difficult to find words and phrases that have meaning. It’s better to start with words because they have music (and perhaps meaning) in them already.
1/29/2046
(Tony Townes Diary)
Jon keeps moaning about how music is dead, but it’s continued to thrive over the past several generations. Here we are still playing Life Metal.
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