Totally Shuffled extract-when music gets too much...

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

when music gets too much...how I felt on...

February 12th 

Beethoven-Symphony No 4 in B Flat, Op 60-4^th Movement-Gianandrea Noseda/BBC Philharmonic

Sometimes music gets just too much; there is too much music and I end up flitting from one thing to another, never fully satisfied. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen that often as there is usually something that fits. But when it does, I have developed two different solutions. 

The first is to listen to Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” album. This blows the cobwebs away and clears the palate (to stitch a couple of metaphors together). There’ll probably be some Dylan cropping up later-I wonder if it’ll be a track off John Wesley Harding? 

The second solution I have is to listen to some classical music. This was originally just a solution, just a way of getting back into music, but recently I have found myself listening to classical music for pleasure and not just a means to an end.

Classical music, like jazz and reggae, appears to be such a massive and wide-ranging genre that it is seemingly so difficult to find a way in. I don’t wish to be one of those people who start off with a classical-music-for-dummies mindset or with some horrible compilation e.g. that’s what I call classical music CDs. Neither does anything like Classic FM appeal: the only time I have heard that was when I was at the dentist, and for that reason alone it has enough bad connotations, let alone the idea of popular little snippets of classical “hits”. So I dipped a toe in the water through Radio 3, a couple of classical blogs, reviews in the papers and half-remembered ideas of what might be interesting. This meant that I ended up with about 250 or so classical CDs, including the one above. I suppose to anyone who is well-versed in classical music that I have maybe picked my selections at random, magpie-like or only gone for the obvious. I know that there is a whole world of other stuff there and that such a small amount cannot even be representative but for now, it’s enough for me. I suppose over time, different things will pique my interest and take me in fresh directions. Looking at what there is here now though- Beethoven’s symphonies, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Bach, Bruckner, there’s plenty to be getting on with.

After reading Alex Ross’ “The Rest is Noise” book, I developed an overarching interest in Mahler, and downloaded a few complete sets of his symphonies, as well as some audience recordings of highly praised concerts. For someone coming from a “rock” background, it always strikes me as odd that there can be some many different interpretations of classical music and massive arguments about what is the best or definitive version. It’s a bit like searching for the Holy Grail, but never getting there-it’s unattainable by its very nature. I don’t think that in popular music that there is the same debate-cover versions are just that and they are all are different. Maybe it’s because we know what the first recorded version sounds like but that you can’t get back to that in classical music; it’s impossible to know even what the first performance sounded like.

Anyway, back to something else tomorrow no doubt.

Get/read/see Totally Shuffled here

Kindle:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA 

Paperback: 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X

What "Totally Shuffled" is all about; 

One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 366 tracks out of a possible 9553. From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).  From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between. This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of critical kicking. There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. But with 40 years of listening to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it.  I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music.