Lyrics and contexts

I downloaded a boot of one of the Jimmy Page/ Black Crowes performances. The set list included a large number of Led Zeppelin songs, and I was impressed by the amount of sheer “crunch-value” these things have over me all these years later. It really was far more impressive than most of the lame Led Zeppelin reunion things. But just the same, past the first few of records, I have a limited Led Zeppelin threshold. Why is that?

I suppose it’s because the songwriting never seemed to have the sort of depth of most of the other bands I liked. Zeppelin is all about context; they build a sort of crushing wind of sound, but there aren’t many profound thoughts blowing through. Compared to the Who or Pink Floyd, they seemed too heavy on the testosterone. But it’s an impressive swagger nonetheless. When Page beat the violin bow against the guitar, it was a beautiful sort of violence, but it didn’t seem to have the massive resonance of Townsend’s guitar bashing, or Hendrix’s sacrificial violence. Funny how after just listening to Page again, after many years of ignoring him, I turned on the TV to see another band using a bow in a different way.

Sigur Ros was on HBO’s Reverb. There was an interview where the guitarist made a big point about the fact that their lyrics don’t mean anything. They want the audience to make up their own meanings to go along with the songs. This would be easier for me, if all their songs didn’t sound the same. It’s a nice sound, but . . . I’m looking for more from music than nice sounds. It brought me back to all the thinking I’ve been doing about making meaning.

Tonight, when I turned on the TV Godsmack was on. I think I really would have liked them twenty years ago. But now, it seems too much like Led Zeppelin at its worst: all texture, simplistic content. The message of most “heavy metal” seems to be clearly identified in one basic message: “I’m Alive.” In literature, there’s an interesting test: the so what? test. Some bands just fail miserably in that regard for me. Zeppelin did have a few challenging and enigmatic songs, but they never really passed that test with me. I could do without them, unless I was looking for a particular type of wallpaper: a type of wallpaper that they provided quite nicely.

I like to think when I listen. None of the bands I’ve just mentioned make me think that much. However, what I find most annoying is the implication that it’s up to me to supply meaning to empty frames of sound that have no real content on their own. That’s why I never really got the Eno atmospheric experience either. People raved about Music for Airports. If I wanted that sort of music, I’d go to an airport. I like to be challenged, and that just isn’t very challenging for me. But enigma for it’s own sake is also pretty hollow.

Another student in my comp theory class decided to do a case study “process analysis” of a local songwriter. I found it interesting that the guy in question had little in the way of aim in constructing a song past the idea that it should be a novel construction. Oh, yeah, and he also wanted to use the word “spit” somewhere in the lyrics. The end product sounded like a cut-up method of writing, but the guy didn’t use it. Lyrics weren’t important, except for their value as something to generate a sort of “huh?” response. So why use lyrics at all? Why not just make sounds, and allow people to generate their own responses based on the sound field?

Some music writer I read a while back posited that music was only an excuse for a lifestyle. This seems so clear as to almost be a truism. So what can we imply from music that pushes a simple affirmative lifestyle, or an endless quagmire of meanings that has no center or organizing principle? I’m not sure. That’s why I fall back to being a folkie at heart I suppose. I like words that mean things: words that I can nuance, not words (or lack thereof) that insist that I reinvent the wheel. There are lots of wheels out there. I like words that make them spin.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that lyrics must make “sense.” It just means that they should at least be suggestive of something. There should be relationships involved beyond “squeeze my lemon.” Though “a mosquito, my libido” takes it up a notch, that shouldn’t have signaled to songwriters around the world that the more obtuse the relationship, the better. It is possible to invest words with too much though; this breakdown seems inevitable when there aren’t any real issues underneath the context of the song. It just turns into wallpaper at the extreme though.

A person could get as much of an affirmation of life by wagging their foot back and forth.