I found two remarkable quotes, from different sources, and realized they were from the same speech from Karl Paulnack about music. Here's one of them (via)...
I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.
With that in mind, I present to you an obvious basic human need...Music Monday. First, Neko Case has a new video for "People Got A Lotta Nerve" off her excellent new album, Middle Cyclone (download, CD)...
DM Stith's Heavy Ghost (download, CD) continues to haunt me. The short, first track is "Isaac's Song." Here's the video with Stith's art, about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Put yourself in that story and walk with them into the forest with your father...
DM Stith- Isaac's Song from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
Some current Amazon MP3 deals you need to check out: M. Ward - Hold Time ($5) is brand new, The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America ($1.99) is great anthemic bar music, Radiohead -- The Bends ($6.99) is a nearly perfect album that everyone should own, and Alejandro Escovedo - A Man Under the Influence ($6.99).
what makes The Bends merely "nearly" perfect? In my eyes, it is one of the few albums that no need for any in front of the word "perfect."
Posted by: Rick | 03/23/2009 at 11:52 AM
Oh, stop it. If I say perfect someone will gripe. If I say nearly perfect
someone gripes. I'm trying to say it's really, really good. :)
Posted by: Steve McCoy | 03/23/2009 at 12:57 PM
I agree....without music I would not survive. Music calms me down. Music pumps me up, music makes me dance. Music makes me perform basic bodily needs. It is life!
Posted by: free karma | 03/23/2009 at 07:00 PM
I think of music as a really useful method of communication that has a function independent of words or pictures. Good music is that which communicates from the source of the music (e.g. performer, writer) to the heart of the listener.
Since the whole of the universe is, at the heart of it, the result of God's desire to communicate His glory beyond the trinity, it helps to understand creativity as something which expresses a god-reflecting desire to communicate "heart".
I think I often feel most moved by music which speaks truthfully and believably about the human heart, and which tangibly captures a sense of the sublime. Good music causes the spiritual dimension to intersect with the natural dimension.
It doesn't have to be understood in those terms to be created, or appreciated for that matter, but recognising something as an unfathomable mystery often helps us to appreciate the glory of the mystery, and gives us a delightful sense of perspective that is otherwise lacking in our daily lives.
Posted by: Beat Attitude | 03/25/2009 at 07:15 AM
I don't know if Steve's mentioned it before, but if you like the Neko Case tune, it's free on this Amazon sampler:
http://tinyurl.com/c6z8ph
Posted by: Kevin Goodwin | 03/25/2009 at 10:24 PM
Speaking of music, isn't this Joe Thorn in a black wig singing this classic?
http://www.ignitermedia.com/products/iv/singles/886/The-Dont-Song
Posted by: Ray Van Neste | 03/26/2009 at 04:45 PM
Yeah, a little bit. You must also remove the pimp mustache.
Posted by: Steve McCoy | 03/26/2009 at 05:06 PM