The Death of the Guitar Solo

I was walking to the bank today, toting my "portable digital music player" [note: I'm not putting that in quotes to be trite, it's just that I neither want to use the ubiquitous i-word, nor do I want to suggest that the mp3 format is the best as regards quality], listening to the song "Shoot Out The Lights" from Richard and Linda Thompson's same-titled album. Critically hailed when it came out in '82, it has since faded into obscurity, not helped by the fact that they divorced shortly after its release. I remember seeing it listed in a Rolling Stone magazine (again with the magazines, Cahill, you hypocrite), in a Best Albums of All Time issue in the mid-to-late-80's. I'd never heard of them, but for some reason, when I see something I've never heard of before listed so plainly amongst the likes of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, I just have to take notice.

When I got around to picking it up on a whim - about 20 years later - I liked it, though the production on it is terribly dated [note: I can't hold this against them or their producer since it was done on a shoe-string budget in a decade of much more heinously, shittily produced albums. And yes, "shittily" is a word I'm making up on the spot. I'm prepared to stand my ground on its use.]. The stand-out of the album is the previously mentioned title-track. It has a pair of guitar solos that remind me of what guitar solos were meant to do: attach themselves to the spirit of the song as an extension of the musician's soul. The song and the solo are one; the solo extends the reach of the song, articulating something akin to a dialogue with the larger body of the piece.

When I listen to the likes of Link Wray, Tom Verlaine, and other great guitarists, I'm reminded that - as opposed to what took root in the 80's, which was the Top40-EZ-Radio-Softcore-Metal wankfest we still have today - guitar solos weren't necessarily about razzle dazzle. Yes, since the Classical period when soloing took root, one of the reasons for a solo was to display the technical proficiency of the player - this cannot be denied. However, technical proficiency and artistic discipline are not mutually inclusive - one does not necessarily carry both traits by developing one.

I suppose I'm writing this because North American mass media is only interested in easily-digestible razzle dazzle. This is why a band such as Green Day was successful; they're entirely about "lite punk" attitude, the inoffensive appearance of rebellion. Soul is neither required nor condoned. Neither is subtlety. This is why even the "classic rock" radio stations clip off the best parts of songs such as Television's "Marquee Moon" - it's simply too long for them. They'll take shitty and short, thank you very much.

This is not to say that, musically speaking, I'm living in the 70's, or that I'm some sort of acetic. I honestly don't have a favourite genre of music - picking one has always seemed futile. I just like what I like. But one thing is clear: with few exceptions, my playlist contains musicians, groups, and styles that will never see the light of day on current FM radio. I was raised in rural areas where, waaaay pre-internet, the radio was the only escape for a confused kid. All I know is that I feel sorry for kids exposed to most of the crap currently out there, and I only hope that the proliferation of independently controlled internet radio stations succeed. For sake of variety. For sake of exposure.

"Coincidence is logical."

- Johan Cruijff, Dutch footballer

Damn you, Harper's

About eight years ago, I read my first copy of Harper's. Up until then, I'd never been a magazine person (not counting the subscription I had, at the age of 16, to Psychology Today...and then later, Spy for a brief period, while they were struggling with bankruptcy). Okay. Let's just say that, from my twenties onward, I wasn't a magazine person. But one day I picked up Harper's and I fell in love. I discovered something densely intelligent, funny, and with such a variety of content that one could spend countless hours reading (nay appreciating, savouring) every morsel it served. Lastly, for someone who was much more interested at the time in non-fiction, it was a godsend.

Then, after 9/11/01 [sidenote: it took a tragedy for people to officially confuse the order of the month and day when writing the date], I fell out of love. Not immediately, mind you - if anything, out-of-the-gate, Harper's was one of the few mainstream voices of sanity in the aftermath. While everyone in the mass media seemed to conform to a dangerously singular mindset (i.e. being complacent), Harper's was honestly critical and asked the necessary questions. But, over time, I found then-editor Lewis Lapham's essays too predictably left-wing (and I think the fact that they were predictable was perhaps the greater sin). The magazine also began to suffer from the same Americentric cocooning as the rest - I believe the turning point for me was an essay on how pragmatism was a uniquely American concept. Oh, really.

I felt like I was reading something written by people who had never left their homes, or who didn't want their presumptions challenged. In other words, for reasons arguable or not in hindsight, it became a magazine like any other.

Flash-forward to 2008: with the hell-job in its trailing throes, I found myself in a bookstore itching for something different to peruse - something less weighty (literally) than a book. And sure enough, as if face-t0-face with an ex-girlfriend, I was staring at a copy of Harper's on a magazine rack. I picked it up, flipped through, and seeing a lack of blatant political indignation, sighed, and proceeded to the cash register.

Sure enough, I found myself addicted once again. The Readings section, with its immaculately edited selection of essays, fiction, poetry, and miscellaneous news items. The ubiquitous Harper's Index. A fascinating piece on the possibility of transmissible cancer, by David Quammen. A report on the raw-milk controversy (with a Canadian angle, no less). Last but not least, a series of 22 short fiction pieces by Paul Theroux - each of them excellent.

While I am delighted at what seems to be the return of a full-blooded Harper's, I'm equally despondent: it's almost too much of a good thing. I can't pick it up without devoting hours to reading every bit of it. As a result, I worry that everything else I'm reading (or promising to read - hello, Ulysses) will fall by the wayside.

Damn you, Harper's. Damn you.

Photo: Self-Portrait (Ossington Alley)

note

Leslieville makes Parkdale look like Rosedale.

I swear...

If there's one thing I find annoying about blogs, it's the "non-entries". You know, the "I've been really busy due to (x). Sorry I haven't been updating regularly.". In other words, they're writing to say that they haven't been writing, and furthermore they have nothing to say, other than the obvious.

But true to form, I find myself in the same situation.

Oh, I have excuses. I can't scan slides currently because the scanner is cursed (I swear), so I can't post photos. Work is killing me (slowly). My phone won't stop ringing with "life-and-death" (work-related) emergencies. I tripped on the sidewalk and lost my homework...etc.

So yes, I too have nothing to say, other than a little soft-shoe routine to overstate the obvious, and some empty-sounding promises.

Give me some time, and I'll be a posting fiend once again.

Regards,

Management

"Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates."

- Mordecai Richler

Live In Toronto: Pas Chic Chic

Right. I was just tipped-off to a concert happening this Thursday (April 10) @ The Drake Hotel. It's a band called Pas Chic Chic. What excites me, other than listening to clips of their songs on Facebook, is that it's a collaboration of members from Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am, Et Sans, Silver Mt. Zion, and Cobra Noir.

In other words, I'm going.

I'm not going to go into a whole "fan" thing, but...well...I'm prepared to be a big fan of this band. Just saying.

By the clips I listened to, I'm hoping for a revival of the sound that Fly Pan Am abruptly left us with before breaking up (on their seminal album N'Ecoutez Pas) - a sort of sonic, 60's psychedelic, prog synth, rock-out sorta thing.

More info here

Book Review: The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq

I honestly don't know much about Michel Houellebecq. I typically don't take a lot of interest in the lives of authors (or musicians, artists, etc.). The only reason I came across his name - and thus this book - was browsing the shelves of a local independent bookstore, killing time. I saw his name, which I thought was odd/familiar, and glancing through the several tomes on the shelf I realised that I'd found a rather curious writer: controversial, philosophical, with a tinge of "speculative fiction" about him.

So, with his name in my head, I did some research later and decided to start with an earlier (1998) but well-considered novel, The Elementary Particles, tempted though I was by another book of his, on H.P. Lovecraft no less.

Not one for believing the publicity machine, yet knowing next to nothing about the man as a writer, the blurb on the back cover of Particles compares him to Huxley, Beckett, and Camus. If I may take the liberty of rearranging this, having read the book, I would say - if anything - it's Huxley via Camus. However, to make direct comparisons, though tempting, would be an insult to all involved. Houellebecq is Houellebecq - he's not channelling anyone in his prose. Hark: a unique voice.

The Elementary Particles is a study of the moral murk of modern society, a result, Houellebecq's omniscient narrative posits, of a world that has moved well-past the relevance and supremacy of religion, and in the middle of a phase of rational/scientific investigation. Without the guidance of a supreme set of rules, society embraced a virulent individuality and in doing so eventually begot a generation of spiritual and sexual materialists, beginning in the late 50's. It is the aftermath of this wave which Particles concerns itself.

Meet Michel and Bruno. Michel is an accomplished molecular biologist. Bruno is a civil servant. They are half-brothers, mutually and separately abandoned by their common mother, a libertine and prototype of everything wrong with the "me" generation. Despite his success, Michel is emotionally dead, and at the beginning of the book decides to step away from his position at a prestigious university research department. He remains in his apartment, contemplating his life and inability to feel anything. Bruno on the other hand, is a self-destructive hedonist with no aims or aspirations, aside from pleasuring himself in any way he sees fit.

I know what you're saying: Matt, where can I find this book! It sounds riveting!

Okay. Sarcasm aside, it may seem repellent to some on the surface. I found it repellent at first. And yet, the more I read, the more I wanted to keep reading. Not because it was misanthropic, but because of its philosophical undertow. Houellebecq is making a statement - it's unapologetic, citric, and compelling. Whereas it may seem he paints society with a thick brush, underneath it all - in the structure of the book, and certainly in its eye-raising epilogue - there are layers of fascinating subtlety and important questions which rise in well-crafted crescendos.

To be honest with you, I've been thinking a lot about The Elementary Particles. After I completed it, I wanted to dislike it. I wanted to find faults - and there are faults. There are moments where Houellebecq's prose is extremely dry and clinical (nay acetic), and while it can be justified by certain plot elements, these unnecessarily antithetical flourishes simply didn't make it easier to care about the characters, or the point of the book for that matter. That said, if anything, I have a greater regard for it now than when I read it almost a month ago - it is a book with the power to haunt.

What was particularly difficult for me was that I began reading this book right after Eugene Zamiatin's We. In other words, from a dystopian anti-collective polemic to a dystopian anti-individualist polemic. My head hurts, but I've decided it's a good hurt.

The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq (ISBN: 978-0375727016) is available at an independent bookstore near you, or online at various retailers. Note: this review is based upon the English translation by Frank Wynne.

"The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good."

- Peter (Stephen Paul) Brook, theatre/film director