Tuesday, August 02, 2016

The Velvet Underground - Candy Says

I don't remember when or where I first heard this song but it was probably in my junior or senior year of college.

"Candy says
I've come to hate my body
And all that it requires in this world"

"Maybe when I'm older
What do you think I'd see
If I could walk away from me."


4 comments:

Meep said...

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully things pick up for you.

Have you ever thought about how your taste in music has evolved over time?

Meep said...

One day at a time. It'll be over before long.

Hah, you'll probably find my music tastes more faddish or odd. I don't know.

I am a 90s kid. So naturally I was fed a steady diet of British and American pop with the occasional Michael Jackson and Sade mixed in to break up the monotony. My sister and my classmates were really into Backstreet Boys, Five, N*Sync, Take that, Spice girls, Britney, Christina Aguilara and the likes. Yeah, you get the idea. Saccharine sweet, cloyingly bubbly. MTV still played music videos back then. So when I could I would stay up at night and secretly watch the various throwback shows that would play music from the earlier decades. However, I had no way to access these albums or even afford them lol.

Early 2000s things started to change. Hoobastank, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, Blink 128 come onto the scene. The boyband era pretty much ended overnight. However, they weren't really my kind of music you know. Also, everyone was buying guitars and wanted to become rockers themselves. They would head bang to Metallica and Hendrix. Still, it wasn't my thing. Death and thrash metal was too loud to me. The internet, Napster and MP3 players were all the rage so everyone's music collections had exploded. I'd borrow them and try and find things I'd like. I'd come across older bands like Aha and techno electronica like The Enigma Project, Darude, Daft Punk. I was finally beginning to find music that I actually liked. Techno, experimental, new age stuff that most other people seemed to hate. This was kind of the point where my understanding of music would evolve.

I had just watched Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the Matrix movies. I was really starting to get into films. When I started to notice the music. Do you remember the ethnic wail? Russel Crowe's dream sequences overlayed with Lisa Gerrard's gibberish "We are free"?. Black hawks flying to the Breton "Gortoz a ran"? Then Enya would follow in the LOTRs movies. Its overused and cliched now but back then it was evocative and for me, transformative. How music was so much more than just something to dance to. That blew my teenaged brain lol. I used to think lyrics mattered. That you had to understand the lyrics to "get" the song. You don't. The notion was further bolstered by the fact that most ethnic wails are just gibberish and techno and electronica didnt even have any lyrics to begin with!

Its been an interesting journey since. Yes, I agree with you. I used to not pay much attention to Beyonce until her recent album (Have you had a chance to listen to Formation? https://youtu.be/WfMlFxrMb18). I was quite impressed. Although I find that most recent releases sound too similar to me. The indie scene was nice for a while when Mumford was just starting out. Not so much anymore. Most other stuff seems to be overproduced, too formulaic and autotuned. Every few months I come across something that is really nice though. I find that now I mostly like one or two singles from various albums as opposed to enjoying a whole album. Like just yesterday I quite enjoyed Shawn Mendes' Treat you better(https://youtu.be/lY2yjAdbvdQ), I didn't enjoy the rest of album as much though.

So I keep looking through your older posts to sample various kinds of music. You definitely like a lot of shoegaze and distortion :P


Where did we meet? We met the one time nearly 6 years ago on a rainy day in Dhaka. Aunty, you and I sat down and chatted over tea while it poured it outside. I wrote a piece in a magazine that I can't imagine you were too impressed by. You happened to mention a casual interest in music and told me about your blog. I've followed your blog since.

spaceman said...

Cool, thanks. Very nice description of soundtracks and movies and that evocative feeling of wordless voices..... My friend Simon Reynolds calls it 'mouth music.' I love that Gladiator soundtrack. Haven't heard it in ages. Her voice was/is quite amazing. I saw Dead Can Dance a couple of years ago in New York -- they were quite impressive, the sound, the performance, everything was perfect.

About Beyonce, yeah, I've seen that Formation video. Very powerful in light of recent stuff going on.

You're right that most recent stuff has a tinge of the 'same' to it. I don't know if this is because I'm older and new stuff tends to blur, or that pop music actually kinda sounds all the same, what with autotune, big choruses, and the EDM format of song-writing. It's like all the songs in the top 40 were written by committee to maximally appeal to every demographic.

True, I tend to post a lot of shoegaze/distortion stuff online but my musical listening is actually not reflected entirely in the blog posts. I tend to post something when I'm in a certain mood and that usually translates to moody and/or melancholy. When I'm generally happy, I tend to not want to post because I'd rather be doing something else! Well, that's not a hard and fast rule but something like that.

Sorry, I'm having trouble remembering meeting you in Dhaka. (But I have a terrible memory about meeting new people). I can't also remember what you wrote, but maybe it's online somewhere?

And yeah, one day at at time. We shall see....

Meep said...

Relax...there is no reason you should have to explain your choice in music or what you decide to post about :P

You know I've always wanted to like more of Peter Gabriel's work but I just find him to be so out there...

Check your messages. You should be able to go down the rabbit hole from there :)