I finally turned on the Genius Bar to make some playlists this weekend, it took ages to scan and can my collection; but in the end I was happy with the playlists it was creating based upon songs I picked in my library. Driving home listening to one of these lists I wondered, if Wes Anderson had the Genius Bar, how would his soundtracks look? Would Zach Braff’s “Garden State” sound the same?
Then I meandered away to; what if I was using the Genius Bar to make a movie soundtrack? What would the movie be about? I thought about it a bit and decided that I would like to see a movie where a Nerd Girl falls in love with the cool Librarian at her school, he’s a student and a nerd. However; they are both ugly as boots and ostracized by the school population as a whole. The only problem is that the guy, Library Boy (Aaron) has become so twisted that he is a total misanthrope and unlike Christan Slater in Heathers, isn’t cool and self-assured along with it. Both of them are clumsy and awkward, but only Nerd Girl (Jilly) is capable of normal human interaction, Aaron having long given up on people.
Jilly tries to get Aaron to interact with her; taking on his interests (the ones she can figure out) and reaching out to him through his younger sister (who is almost as odd and withdrawn as Aaron, but not so much that she doesn’t appreciate a friendly person). Through perseverance and understanding Jilly convinces Aaron to come to her house and just hang out. While watching TV on the couch he leans over and kisses her, music swells its “Let Go” by Frou Frou, he breaks off the kiss says “There, are you satisfied?” and turns back to the TV.
Jilly settles back for a bit and considers the matter, ugly or not she has a great personality and she doesn’t need to settle or fix this kid. She tells him that she’s had enough and asks him to leave, he says “fine” and takes off home. Jilly gets off the couch, calls a girlfriend and they make plans for the nearest ComicCon, Jilly meets a nice Pokemon cosplayer named Janice they hit it off, at the end of the ‘Con Janice takes off her cosplay head, they kiss “Let the Drummer Kick” by citizen cope plays over the camera pull away as Jilly narrates Aaron’s total withdrawal from society and her own happiness with Janice. “You can’t predict when love is gonna drop on your head, but when it does don’t jsut let is bounce off you thick skull. Okay?”
The whole movie is narrated by Aaron’s younger sister and she narrates Jilly watching Aaron during the opening with:”You can’t predict when love is gonna drop on your head; and sometimes when it does you need to just cover up and run away. Okay?”
So Here is the playlist the Genius Bar made around “Let Go” by Frou Frou. Obviously not all these songs would end up in the movie; but couldn’t you see My Moon is My Man playing over a long “girl staring at guy” scene, maybe a montage of girls and guys staring at each other around differing settings? Maybe “Le Disko” playing over the Comic Con?
I think the Genius Bar did a fairly Good Job here, Wes Anderson: your muse.
| Let Go | Frou Frou |
| Goodnight and Go | Imogen Heap |
| Look What Youve Done | Jet |
| Fallen | Sarah McLachlan |
| Memory | Sugarcult |
| My Moon My Man | Feist |
| Ocean Breathes Salty | Modest Mouse |
| New Slang | The Shins |
| Time Is Running Out | Muse |
| Le Disko | Shiny Toy Guns |
| chocolate | Snow Patrol |
| Breathe In | Frou Frou |
| Headlock | Imogen Heap |
| Don’t Panic | Coldplay |
| Canned Heat | Jamiroquai |
| Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn | Hellogoodbye |
| An Honest Mistake | The Bravery |
| dashboard | modest mouse |
| Open Your Eyes | Snow Patrol |
| Let The Drummer Kick | Citizen Cope |
| Swing Life Away | Rise Against |
| Everything You Want | Vertical Horizon |
| Mushaboom | Feist |
| Just A Ride | Jem |
| Gold Lion | Yeah Yeah Yeahs |
Substantive Debate about Music is impossible
Published by NiteMayr on July 30, 2009Why do you listen to such crappy music all the time?
Music, like the visual arts is a two part relationship. The Performance and The Consumer. If one was to set up a random tone generator that made repetitive patterns over time; there is a chance that even if it was at a tuneless pitch and widly swung through the chromatic and dreadful scales, someone would hear it and appreciate it as music. Witness the sometimes cacophony of modern “art” music such as “Art of Noise” “Atari Teenage Riot” or “Muslimgauze”, I admit these are popular examples, but I am not a fan of conceptual music and have no real exposure. Share in the comments if you have stronger examples of music made through non-traditional or in non-traditional forms.
This appreciation of music is highly subjective; the listener and their experiences shape a great deal of the types of sounds that they would appreciate as music and prize as entertaining or at least provocative on an emotional level. This relationship between experience and musical preference can be highlighted when one looks at popular music as it relates to geographic location, social strata, economic status and cultural norms.
That is a bit aside from what I’m heading towards though. It’s the way that we can’t as individuals appreciate what other people enjoy in music because of the fact that we are individuals. Even the tightest cliques; who dress and apparently think alike are composed of individuals who experience the world through their own lens (if you will) and therefore interpret the world around them differently.
DJ Funktual is the musical Everyman
There will always be someone you know who doesn’t listen to music at all; not for pleasure, not for torture. They don’t listen to music and then may never. This is akin to someone who doesn’t read or watch television or enjoy theatre or movies or any number of passive entertainments. Some people do not appreciate or enjoy some or all passive forms of entertainment. Their views on music (if they are the type who doesn’t listen to music) might be unique among the populace as they don’t bring to it the same prejudices and preferences a life-long or even short-term musical fan may take. They might even make for better mechanical critics of muisc (or art or television, etc) as they can (likely) be counted upon to dissect a piece for it’s pure objective merits. It’s very loud or Why does the singer keep repeating that phrase even outside of the chorus. That isn’t (as I understand it) what critics of “art” should do though (even though I will do it in a review if the mechanics of something are so unappealing as to overwhelm the piece (I’m looking at you show that smells)).
What about the person who likes everything? They owe no allegiance to any one genre or form of art. They are not a dilettante; but they aren’t a “hardcore fan” of anything. Are they better suited to judge the merits of a given piece, can the Musical Everyman (like DJ Funktual) look at a piece and give it the metaphorical Thumbs Down and have it accepted by society at large as canon? I would imagine not. In the end, even a musical polymath like DJF would have his own cultural and social lens in place when viewing a piece and therefore his opinions of any given thing would be altered by his own experience.
The Accepted Authority
When we are talking about musical tastes, especially when debating the merits of music each party is a flawed judge. Having no legal precedent to fall upon and no (if you will) law of music to appeal to; debates about matters of taste are largely unproductive if the parties have no neutral or accepted authority to call upon as meter to measure the relative value of said piece. For it is the relative value of the piece that the two parties are debating. In some cases they can debate the relative value through economic measures (this piece sold X items) or the relative draw of a piece (this many people chose to play or hear ther piece this many times) . In the absence of some form of objective measure, debate about the relative value or quality of a piece can become abstracted from values and therefore insubstantial and unresolvable. In those cases, debates about music and the other arts are moot, because the debaters cannot experience the piece as the other consumer can and any abstract argument about the merits of the piece become moot.