Live music.
I'm here at a live music show. I really don't like live performances of anything. It's because I'm an analytical person and a visual learner, and live music isn't conducive to either, really. Analysis asks for dialogue, reflection. Live events are about the moment, something ephemeral that vanishes in an instant and yet is ever present.
Also, the live musics scenes in the Valley are very rarely lyric friendly. Most often they are about loudness. Noise-core, grind-core, etc. are always playing in bars here in the Valley. I wonder if it's a limitation of technology. I mean, we can hook up a guitar to an amplifier and get it loud with little interference, but vocals still need mikes, so I wonder if they need to be at a lower volume because they might pick up feedback otherwise. Or maybe it's just that people don't like acoustic sets and I'm in a minority.
I like semi-vapid music, pop songs with a story.
In the end, I think that's what it is. I enjoy narrative. I enjoy there being a story told with the possibility of a lesson learned. Live music can have a story. However, I haven't learned to decode music into a story. I can't listen to Wagner's Parsifal, for example, and understand where in the story I'm at by listening to the cresciendos and what not. And furthermore, most live acts aren't about the story. At best, they are about an emotion. They play their sets and, especially with established acts, they pull their songs from a wide variety of "albums" (if they have albums at all) and if I'm lucky I can tell if it's a happy, sad, or angry song. But I want more than that.
And that's why I don't care much for live music.
Also, the live musics scenes in the Valley are very rarely lyric friendly. Most often they are about loudness. Noise-core, grind-core, etc. are always playing in bars here in the Valley. I wonder if it's a limitation of technology. I mean, we can hook up a guitar to an amplifier and get it loud with little interference, but vocals still need mikes, so I wonder if they need to be at a lower volume because they might pick up feedback otherwise. Or maybe it's just that people don't like acoustic sets and I'm in a minority.
I like semi-vapid music, pop songs with a story.
In the end, I think that's what it is. I enjoy narrative. I enjoy there being a story told with the possibility of a lesson learned. Live music can have a story. However, I haven't learned to decode music into a story. I can't listen to Wagner's Parsifal, for example, and understand where in the story I'm at by listening to the cresciendos and what not. And furthermore, most live acts aren't about the story. At best, they are about an emotion. They play their sets and, especially with established acts, they pull their songs from a wide variety of "albums" (if they have albums at all) and if I'm lucky I can tell if it's a happy, sad, or angry song. But I want more than that.
And that's why I don't care much for live music.