Every kid who wants to grow up to be a musician/singer/rockstar needs to watch Springsteen live and listen to a good jazz band interpret old songs. This weekend was an exercise in letting the music/performance flow through you - you might not get every note right, but good gods you're having such a great time up there that it's no longer about ego, even as your body is the instrument through which people are entertained/moved.
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I will go back and comment on the ordering of those four poems from a couple posts back. Promise.
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Anybody else out there have songs that just kill other songs for you? If I put my whole collection on shuffle and end up listening to, for instance, The Cranberries' "Zombie," I just can't listen to anything light and poppy afterwards for a good long while. That particular song is just so intense and dark and "real" that most other contemporary music feels like some kind of betrayal to listen to.
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No. No you're not.
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At poetry slams, there's an effect whereby one poet can draft another's energy, but it only lasts so long. For example, the first poet up does a funny poem. The second does a funny poem as well, one that is just about as good or better than the previous, and the audience reaction is better than if the second poem were a one-off. This drafting effect can go three, four poems at the most before there is almost invariably a downturn in energy and the poem-topic/style has to shift or suffer the increasing wrath of the audience.
I realize now that I designed certain poems like "ADD TV" to be draft-breakers. It's so unlike most of what I'd see on stage that it would break the slam's momentum. It's not an easy poem to follow insofar as the next poet can't go "Ah, I've got something funnier than that poem's funny parts" or "I've got something that refers to pop culture in more ways than that poem." At the same time, it's not "Zombie." Nobody is left feeling as though they would be wrong in trying to top it somehow.
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Mike Guinn has a poem that begins "There will be no more funny poems tonight" and goes on to describe some of the horrible things he witnessed as a social worker. It often works. All other poets are afraid/respectful enough of what he says to not try to be funny on that same stage.
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When Springsteen took the stage at halftime, did the physical presence of a stage matter as far as his owning the space? I mean, if he had just rocked out on the grass, would we have reacted as strongly to him? I mean, not because that's an inappropriate place to play rock and roll, but because it would have appeared to be on loan to him? Or did he channel energy such that he could have taken over any space in which he played?
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7 comments:
One thing I've often noticed about the very best songwriters is that they tend to be voracious in their listening: Springsteen can write so well in his style because he is so conscious of so many other styles. Jerry Garcia was like that, too, aware of everything "from the Carter Family to Ornette Coleman," as Dylan (another voracious songwriter) put it when Jerry died.
And Kurt Cobain (as Nirvana's Unplugged proves) knew it all, from old folk tunes to the Meat Puppets.
One band that makes most other pop pale by comparison in my book is Steely Dan, especially "Deacon Blues" (and all the rest of "Aja," too).
Hi Andrew-
Ah, Steely Dan. And Cobain. In fact, going to put on Steely Dan/Nirvana mix right now. Have been on a Howlin' Wolf kick of late.
And now the important question - do you notice the same quality in poets? That the best in a given style read voraciously across styles?
Who would be the Steely Dan of poetry? Or the Nirvana? Or the Radiohead? Or the Miles Davis?
Who absorbs all styles to create a new one? I don't know. But I think the best poets do read voraciously across styles, and that's what limits literary histories that focus on schools and categories (no matter how useful such histories otherwise are!).
I know the point of your post was something else, but I have to go here:
There are a million things wrong with each of these, but had to do it anyway...
Steely Dan - W.S. Merwin
Nirvana - Tony Hoagland
Radiohead - Alice Notley
Miles Davis - ????
(bonus) Rolling Stones - Anne Carson
Again, almost all going to be crap in the long analysis. But think about 'em... :-)
Anne Carson seems too stylistically diverse to me to be the Stones. Levine maybe?
For Steely Dan, I was actually thinking Ashbery!
Andrew - Levine is an excellent call, except that the Stones have more staying power in my mind. No offense to Levine - I have "They Feed They Lion" memorized (seriously), but I want more hits before I go Stones with him.
Ha, Ashbery for Steely Dan! I like it!
Levine/Stones: I was just trying to think of something gritty, a bit grungy, not that wideranging in style. Should be a bit more dangerous than Levine, perhaps.
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