All my life, I remember reading wonderfully written reviews and articles about bands and albums that piqued my interest to the point that I actually went out and bought the album(s) they were writing about. Interestingly, though, I don’t think there has ever been a time that I actually listened to the music and heard anything that sounded even remotely like the description I had read of the music. The closest thing I can think of an article coming close to the sound it was describing is when somebody writing for Horizon magazine in 1977 said that the guitar player for the Ramones sounded like a chain saw. I would have said the engine of a Ferrari, but what do I know? I’m not a journalist with a trained ear. But whatever. It was close enough to allow me to get the message, and so I bought their albums and became a life-long fan. But that description is pretty basic, so it’s hard to misinterpret. What about trying to describe music that’s way more complex and varied than the Ramones? I’ll leave you to think about that on your own for a moment before I bring you back to Earth.
OK, so how about something that’s much easier: how about just another punk rock band from the same time period: The Clash. I have been trying to fill up my iTunes with all of my favorite songs by The Clash lately, only I have one simple problem (Okay, two): I grew up with record albums that are no longer with me, and when I used to listen to their music, I was always busy doing something else (like writing, drawing, exercising, etc.), so I never really paid any attention to what the words were or what the titles of the songs were. Well, some songs you can find and listen to samples of, and some songs you’d just have to know what the name of it is to be able to find it. I’ve found most, but there are a couple I can’t find, and most of the people I know who would know what they are live outside the United States now, so I can only write a note to ask them about it (rather than try to sing or hum it to them). Do you see the problem here? Well, this reminded me instantly of all the times a glowing review of an album I read led me to go waste my money on another lame record I didn’t want, and it comes down to the problem of how can you describe music with words? You kind of have to hear it. I mean, I could try sending an email that says: “Hey, what’s the name of that Clash song that has like a jagged, staccato rhythm guitar line, and the singing goes something like: do, do-be do-be be-doop be-do-be-do-be-do (and then they all sing:) “Aaa, aaa, aa!” (all out of tune). And then they do that a few more times or something. Which one is that? I think there’s also a ripping guitar solo that sounds like it’s shattering a transistor radio speaker or something that does something like: Needeler needeler nee, nee nee nedeler neet nyerdle ee neet needeler, or something pretty close to that. And then they all go like “Aaa, aaa, aa; Aaa, aaa, aa!” (that second one was up a couple of notes, maybe a whole step.) So, which one is it? Do you know?”
The funny thing, is that all of that gobbledygook is actually a lot more accurate that most of what you’ll read in a magazine about what a band or record sounds like. Even funnier is that musicians who are familiar with guitars and amps and stuff have this whole lexicon that they use to describe what certain guitars and amps sound like (like edgy, glassy, warm, purring, roaring, squealing, hard, etc.), and once you get used to putting the descriptions together with the corresponding equipment and/or player, it actually kind of makes sense. But music journalists don’t use or even know about this type of terminology, and even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily make any sense when talking about a band or album, since the musician’s lexicon is only talking about one aspect of one instrument, and that’s only one small part of any song. I’m not knocking music journalists, please don’t misunderstand me. After all, there has to be someone else besides A&R people for musicians to have to suck up to, right? And without them we would never have had wonderful expressions like “punk rock”, “heavy metal”, “grunge”, etc. But what I’m trying to say is this: describing what music sounds like is tricky and difficult, except in maybe very general terms. What music journalists who review albums write is beautifully thought out and descriptive (well, some of it is…), and very often creates entirely new kinds of colloquialisms in our culture, and that’s not only important and influential, it’s also powerful. But at the end of the day, we still don’t know what the music they are writing about really sounds like. And we won’t know, either, until we actually hear it. It’s just a limitation of the written language: it’s as simple as that.
(BTW: The Clash song I referenced in the second paragraph I found out later was called "Garageland", for those of you who were wondering.)
(BTW: The Clash song I referenced in the second paragraph I found out later was called "Garageland", for those of you who were wondering.)
