Perspectives of Life in Music

Life, live music and media. That's what we're going for here and I'd say we've sucessfully covered the gamut so far. I'm hopeful that more stuff is coming from everyone and I know I need to do my part as well. It's been a bit of a crazy time, though. Lots of all three of the above, with the first one, life, in an extreme state of flux. But getting married (at City Hall in San Francisco) and changing jobs is no excuse for neglecting this blog and my writing in general. In fact, change like that should help expand my perspective and offer new things to write about.

But what seems to impact my perspective most of all is live music. I've been fortunate to see a good deal of it lately. The only thing I'm not sure of is who impressed me more, Wilco or David Byrne. One was a band at the top of it's game playing one of the best rock clubs in the country. The other was a man deep into his art, with the wisdom, experience and pure rock and roll genius to deliver an incredible night of music. The energy onstage and in the audience--on both nights--was a living, breathing, pulsing presence. The murky funk of chords crossed drumbeats while the precise lyrics of simple, sung poetry overlaid and undercut the complex music. And then they would scream and the guitar would wail and the crowd would roar, all on it's feet, with demands for more and shouts of thanks and the rapture of live music captivating everyone within the room. I think the performers felt it most of all. It was in the way both Tweedy and Byrne exuded the meanings of their songs even as they sung them. They believed themselves. They trusted the band behind them. They thought the crowd probably dug what they did, but there was, for both, an air of exposure, the chance of rejection and ridicule. But of course that never happened, we ate it up and praised them for it, screaming at the top of our lungs for them to play more, to play all night, to give us their music and their minds and their souls for as long as they could stand it.

Wilco and Byrne played different nights, and their music is not at all alike, but their musical souls are in the same place. They each see the world different than most, and play it back to us from these unique perspectives, demanding that we listen and groove and give them a chance to show us the quirky beauty of everyday life.