At last, at last...
After a jarring delay Amazon did its job. Yesterday the package arrived, almost three weeks late in bad careless minimalist packaging.
I know, I know, it was a risk I took.
A local store should have been my place to go to, but I did not. Like a vegetarian who “still likes his bacon”1, actually, I think buying whatever on @Amazon is worse than eating Parma and parmesan. Buying at Amazon is like eating hamburgers every single day of the week. Concerto, the best record store in town over here, would have been the better option. Yet, Concerto was not be able to deliver before Christmas. So they told me. Amazon left it sort of ‘open’, Amazon.de offered ±35 % below an already reasonably low price at Concerto, they asked € 35,-. It was an offer-I-could-not-refuse. € 22,40. The credit card was charged for € 24,98 (well you know, sometimes you got to pay for delivery).
So Amazon almost spoiled my Christmas because I preferred a lower price and apparently the publisher did not even consider sending me a review copy, nor did the creators. On another day I will write about (not) receiving review-copies.
After all, December 2022’s last days were great: attending festivities, cooking a great dinner for four, running, hiking, and then on my own enjoying another great gift to myself.
The parcel arrived today.
.
Now I am ready for it, to
(1) learn about the music…
(2) learn from knowledgeable and creative commentaries on the music, from a guy who really has a good feel for reviewing (classical) music.
(3) to be confronted with the dominance of expressions of parasocial relations, I'd rather look elsewhere. I do not care about what originates in or refers to ‘mal d’archive’ fan-talk2, including the nonsense of John vs Macca and anti-Macca stuff, mostly from a mysoginist white male dominated music-press3.
(4) I wanna learn about composition, instrumentation, styles, timbre, keys, sounds, rhythms and rhythmic devices, chords and chord-progressions, the harmonic structures, melodies; volume, voices, experimentation, inspiration; intertextual musical, literary and cultural references, and yes the lyrics and packaging of albums, etc. I know he is capable of doing that, although not everything would be covered, he plays guitar and bit of keyboards.
The journalist promised it would be about the music.4
(5) Let's talk about art. Forget the lives the musicians and other co-creators lived. Do not pretend biological truth. Surely rock stars are entitled to their myth-making. That is how they gain popularity.5 Myth-making is a marketing tool for power, whether it is monetary power, popularity, military, political. etc. Without the myth-making not too many consumers would pay attention, or give their support, and keep money in their own account.
(6) In this case one could say the biographical context explains a lot about the artistry of the artist.
Some of ‘this life’ is relevant, as it happens to be that for many songs or albums some biographic info provides context for a better understanding of the art. In the same week that ‘the journalist promised it would be about the music’, he explained:
“Wildlife, that whole story of him driving through the African game reservation and seeing the sign that says 'the animals have the right of way'. It's kind of interesting, what appeals to Paul might come out in a song someday. He's kind of like a big vacuum cleaner with a song processor in the middle. Like everything goes in and it can come out as a song somehow or other, you know there's a ton of instances of that, and this is one. 'Wildlife', (…) they're sort of at the beginning of their vegetarian period and they're sort of attracted by the idea of animals having rights and just sort of focusing on them. This is sort of the start of that.”6
(7) I want this work to be readable and accessible, but also a work that can be used as a reference guide.
(8) And yes nostalgia. I guess reading this story will pulls me back into the past. Go back to when I was a young boy, indeed looking for a way to find love, and make music with my neighbor in the attic (inspired by the first solo album in 1970), and yes back to the days I escaped to Eldorado in the Austrian mountains, and the trip to London, and write about it and publish it, and with what we know now experience a different kind of perspective - a new memory.
What is it, what is it?
Who is it, who is it?
.
Latest changes made on 08/04/2023, 20:34 CET.
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Kozinn, Allan (2022). Transcript (edited by RG, january 2023) from ‘VIDEOCAST #101 - ALLAN KOZINN, JOE MAYO, ED RISING (Top 3 Underrated McCartney Studio Albums)’. Ken Michaels Radio – Youtube Channel, 5 December 2022, 26:16 - 26:24. Assessed January 2023. Online.
Mills, Richard (2020-1). The Beatles and Fandom - Sex, Death and Progressive Nostalgia. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN: 978-1-5013-8319-9. Print.
An non-violent but still conservative, if not pathological, nostalgia happens frequently when new facts emerge and challenge old perceptions, including the understanding of the (creation) of the art, the music. A conservatism – mal d’archive – plays out often. Late 2022 on Ken Michaels Radio, when Joe Mayo learned about the mythical but in reality, non-existent ‘jam-like and first-take’ spontaneity of ‘Wild Life’, he uttered:
“I hope that the vocals on Mumbo, at least there's still one take alive and spontaneous and not like written, not planned out. Because when you hear these things that are facts that you learn, you know it does break your heart a little bit. It's like I always love ‘Mumbo’, I thought oh it's that one spontaneous take right?”
Source: ‘Joe Mayo’ (2022). Transcript (edited by RG, January 2023) from ‘VIDEOCAST #101 - ALLAN KOZINN, JOE MAYO, ED RISING (Top 3 Underrated McCartney Studio Albums)’. Ken Michaels Radio – Youtube Channel, 5 December 2022, 29:00 - 29:17. Assessed January 2023. Online.
Gorman, Paul (2022). Totally Wired. The Rise and Fall of the Music Press. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-500-02263-4.
In various online communications one of the authors promised the music would be about the music. After the review in the NYT on December 6th 2022 (Alexandra Jacobs https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/books/review-the-mccartney-legacy.html) the response got a little defensive:
Rob, on what basis are you saying: "One hesitation though... it is the music that counts and it seems the music deserves more space than it gets." If you're basing that on the Times review, maybe it would be better to wait til you've actually seen it to make that judgment.
My response:
”thanks for mentioning it... as you know for me it is the music that counts, and I think that is what I long most for, just to read your writings about Macca's music, the prospect alone makes me happy. The review makes me both excited and hesitant... I have to wait until I can read and allow the (text to bag me).”
“You know, you build your own myth. Building your myth is part of being a rock and roll star, and it doesn't have to be true. We want it to be true, as reporters and writers and and. All of that stuff, we need to get to what the actual story is, but the myth is the myth. People are free to make their myth whatever they want it to be.”
Source: Kozinn, Allan (2022). Transcript (edited by RG, January 2023) from ‘VIDEOCAST #101 - ALLAN KOZINN, JOE MAYO, ED RISING (Top 3 Underrated McCartney Studio Albums)’. Ken Michaels Radio – Youtube Channel, 5 December 2022, 29:40 - 30:03. Assessed January 2023. Online.
Kozinn, Allan (2022). Transcript (edited by RG, january 2023) from ‘VIDEOCAST #101 - ALLAN KOZINN, JOE MAYO, ED RISING (Top 3 Underrated McCartney Studio Albums)’. Ken Michaels Radio – Youtube Channel, 5 December 2022, 24:56 - 26:02. Assessed January 2023. Online.