in search of pure music?


Saturday night I finally resolved to tackle the mound of papers making chaos in my bedroom. (Status check: yes, writing this is indeed yet another delay.)

Though I gave some thought to praying while I cleaned, the semi-analytical nature of sorting and organizing piles tends to distract from that. Thus, the search for bona fide background: music. You'd think with 400 CDs it wouldn't be that hard to find the right mood music. But by semi-late evening, it's too late for sprightly Aretha or Jones. It's not the bathroom I'm cleaning, but my bedroom.

And I realized, scanning through the neat clusters of cases, that all were too bright or too sad, too loud or too ... dead. Have I really been such a musical misanthrope? Wouldn't have thought it so hard to find music that melds the hope and the pain for a sound strangely clear — almost pure — that helps you pull through the mellow muck of a Saturday night. Tremolo had done that trick, and Sixpence. But both these I'd already heard today. Tal Bachman could almost do it ... but no. At last to the Canadians: BNL. A touch of melancholy, but not so you turn suicidal, morose. The life-giving spirit of the blues ... only brighter, with a more full-throated sound.

The blues often sound a bit alone. As if it's literally that guy and his guitar. I don't need the peppy, sexy blues of Robert Cray tonight, either. No, the community of a band — who sound as if just making their music had cheered them all enormously, given them something to run to through those necessarily character-molding jogs that life is made of ... much more of the time than we wish.

posted @ 10:06 PM on Sat - February 5, 2005 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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