Something About Music

This is how I have described live music:
It was great!
The singer was so wasted and you could tell.
The sound was crap.
He/She/They did six songs in 45 minutes and while it was fun, I needed more (said after a Mighty Mighty Bosstones show).
It was really really good.

It never occurred to me before recently that my powers of description fail me in this one instance. And I think I know why. When I go see a band live, I throw myself so completely into the experience; and that is a state that is hard to define.

I've been told there are people for whom music is just no big deal. Merely background noise to fill empty spaces. They rarely pay attention to chord progression or lyrics, don't know the names of most of the bands they listen to, rarely buy because the "radio's good enough for them". And I'm not stereotyping here but, most listen to lite rock, country, or classical "because it's not distracting".

Not distracting? Have you ever listened to Brahms Symphony no. 4? Or Wagner? Or even Beethoven; really listened? Composers in that day used music to create drama because unless it was an opera, there were no lyrics about lost loves and my baby's daddy to latch onto.

I have been listening to music my entire life. Not as background noise, not just as Serious Expression of Emotion, but also as an exploration of different cultures. I knew who Zachary Richard was years before I moved to Louisiana, grew up attending bluegrass festivals in New Jersey, saw Ella Fitzgerald sing live in St. Louis (a seminal moment; thanks, Mom and Dad!). I've been going to concerts, music festivals and symphonies since before I could walk. There was frequently music playing in our home: The Beatles, Harry Chapin, ELP, Crosby Stills and Nash, Carole King--artists who not only made music, but tried to make Music that Mattered. (oh please, look at my age! of course I'm a child of the seventies!)

And except for a brief period in my early teens when I fell into a pop-radio music listening crowd (thankfully rescued by the introduction of REM and The Replacements--J.D. you did one good thing for me), I have been chasing musical moments my entire life. I read record reviews about one band from multiple sources before buying, but buy I will and without listening to it first just for the initial visceral reaction of hearing something new. I have been known to be so opinionated about music, people think I hate something I listen to frequently. I have to listen to it that often, how else am I going to give a fully formed summary? Like some books change every time one reads them, music changes for me every time I listen, until it hits that niche inside me where it always belonged. It stays there, waiting to be revisited whenever I throw the CD in.

So when I get the chance to see a band I love play live? Woo Daddy, it's like my insides want to crawl out of my body and dance along beside me. There is nothing that compares to seeing someone play on stage, feeling the energy of fellow fans on the floor with you, knowing just by looking which bands do this because they love it and which do it for the money (don't even get me started on the Stones, they inspire an internal debate which distracts me for days).

But are there truly words to describe what these experiences are like? I can't find them. I think it's because while experiencing live music I'm truly living in the moment, as close to lizard zen as I'm going to get. And that is a state utterly un-recreatable in words or memory. Just try to relive some of the most perfect moments in your life: sights, sounds, smells, feeling and all. It is a rare bird who can do that and I'm not one of them. Something always gets lost in the translation. I welcome that. It gives me the opportunity to seek it out again and have the experience affect me in a whole new way. If we could recreate these moments exactly through memory, what would be the point in doing it ever?

It is refreshing, in a way, to have something I can't put into words. I feel I depend on them too much. Though it does bother me a little, when someone asks me what I thought of a certain show, the best I can come up with was "it was great!" Anyone who's heard my opinions on a particular book or movie know I can do better than that.

Well actually I can't. And it's okay, I can live with that.