The Appearance of Music

I was reading some essay or other in The New Yorker yesterday which referenced Radiohead’s album OK Computer.

Critics and fans often comment on the underlying themes found in the lyrics and artwork, emphasising Radiohead's views on rampant consumerism, social alienation and political malaise; in this capacity, OK Computer is often interpreted as having prescient insight into the mood of 21st century life

-- from Wikipedia

My little sister told me I’d love it -- that it was fabulous and astounding. Now, the last band Celeste loved, that I could recall, was Bananarama so, naturally, I was reluctant to give it a listen. Mind you, Celeste was 15 when Banarama was big and 30 when OK Computer came out. When I remembered that, (took me long enough), I stopped by Newbury Comics and picked up the disc.

Celeste was right -- I was crazy, mad, wild for it. Given this, you’d think that I could bring the sounds, the compositions to mind. Nope.

I've been deaf for eight years now but I can still hear, in my head, Tropical Hotdog Night by Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno doing Baby’s On Fire, Shawn Colvin singing Shotgun Down the Avalanche solo, Richard Thompson performing Shoot Out The Lights. So, why can’t my brain generate memories of any of the songs on OK Computer?

Maybe it’s because I never knew any of the lyrics? Similarly, I can’t conjure up the songs on The Downward Spiral -- my favorite of Nine Inch Nails’ works -- and I can only hear snippets, the parts with words, from A Day in the Life. Steve Reich’s Different Trains? Nope. Nada. Nein.

The words bring the tunes, the notes, the song strings to mind.

George Martin, speaking of how the orchestral section of Day in the Life came together:

What I did there was to write ... the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note ... near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar ... Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad.

Trent Reznor has said of The Downward Spiral:

 With The Downward Spiral I tried to make a record that had full range, rather than a real guitar-based record or a real synth-based record.... It was a conscious effort to focus more on texture and space, rather than bludgeoning you over the head for an hour with a guitar.

and: 

 that he was trying to create ‘music that might evoke visual images, not any specific ones. Perceptions.’

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke:

"What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create."

Textures -- music as something that can be seen, not just heard. I see OK Computer in shades of ultramarine and cerulean blue with ropes of cadmium yellow medium arcing through it. I see Day in the Life as a giant Pollack of cadmium red medium, alizarin crimson and dioxazine purple splashes all dancing, embracing, dallying. Reich’s Different Trains -- greys, muted tones all whooshing past me on a great wind.

That’s what I have left of these dense, deep, rich, chocolate cakey songs, compositions and pieces that my internal turntable will no longer spin. I can’t hear them anymore but I can still see them.