Carbon/Copy

"Philistines.  I mean how can you re-make Casablanca?  The one starring Myra Dinglebat and Peter Beardsley was definitive." - Red Dwarf

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A fine and good morning to you, my friends. Thank you kindly once more for passing by the corner here to see what may be seen. I do hope the day finds you well. As for myself, it finds me in a somewhat reflective state. Plying my trade these days as a purveyor of alcoholic refreshment can be very enlightening, particularly as I enjoy watching those around me, a pursuit catered to handily by my position behind the bar top.

However, as often as I can make observation about those I'm serving, not serving, or already have been served, I find it amusing that I observe myself just as frequently. Take for example, music. When I was on the verge of seeing my first offspring enter the world I mused upon fatherhood and where it might take me in the future. We all do this I believe, yes? I'll treat my children this way, as opposed to my parents in this or that respect. I'll be a 'cool' parent, I'll be on top of things and in the know. I'll understand their slang before they even say it. I'll follow along with the popular music of the day. And so on.

Somewhere down the line, however, I stopped following the popular music of the day, by and large. Not because I particularly disliked it, really. It was more a matter of opportunity. I simply found myself listening to the radio proper less and less as time grew on, due to not being as much in the place where I would do that, namely the car. That, and the habit of radio stations at the time (and from what little I hear these days, my friends, this hasn't changed much) to overplay a certain set of songs that have been deemed to be popular. Now my dear and beloved wife can tell you that I can listen to a song over and over quite happily, so I'll simply ask you to let your imagination stray a bit in conjuring the quantity of playtime it would take to make me so sick of a tune that I'm actively attempting to avoid it. It could be argued that perhaps I was also rebelling in a way against a large entity telling me 'this is what is popular.' I can't state that would be altogether incorrect either, I suppose. Instead, I have more and more opted to acquire new music by artists I already appreciate, or look for altogether bleeding-edge new artists that have yet to come into the mainstream.

Either way you look at it, it strays a bit from the intended path, yes?

What brought this to my ears and mind recently was this: In our drinking establishment, we have live music every Friday and Saturday night. A local-ish band (usually) comes and plays a 4 hour set. About 5% is original music, and about 95% are covers. The style of music varies week to week, being a blend of country, rock, blues, and 80s-90s popular standards. Most of the time I find myself enjoying the background music as I work, a live radio as it were. Most of the time, it's comfortable music that I'm familiar with and even enjoy for the most part. (I pause here to make exception for the song 'Margaritaville', which I am beginning to dislike in the extreme due to the 'overplay' clause noted above. I do wonder occasionally if the playing of the song is a contractual obligation, or if they're simply trying to irritate the barkeeps by stimulating a flood of cheery frozen blended drinks.)

The point being, though - that I noticed my comfort. That musically, I was content at being unchallenged by new melodies or lyrics, or alternately that I was finding fewer melodies and/or lyrics to be new, but simply rehashed and repeated. (There is, by the by, a fascinating chapter in the book Tonguing the Zeitgeist by Mr. Lance Olsen that explores that very subject.) Laziness on the part of the artists, or have we simply run out of notes and combinations thereof? From the opposite stand, I've often found myself offended in the ears if a cover of a song is too far away from its origins as far as I discovered the song myself. Again - a direct point to my comfort zone, yes? The effects of aging, disliking change in general, or a sign that I should be a bit more open? Reinterpretation after all, -can- bring new ideas to light, and freshen the old.

I think however, the crux of it lies less with a lack of the new, but as all signs seem to point, more to the deterioration of a comfort zone. Rather than being particularly pleased when a band does an especially faithful rendition of a song, or a film faithfully re-imagines the original content frame for frame, I should I think attempt to be a bit more open to taking in the new work's individual qualities. New creations will always hold weight with me, but what I need to also acknowledge I think, is that covers, remakes, re-writes - are in their own way also new creations, and ought perhaps to be judged not only by the original context and intentions, but also against the goals they set for themselves, regardless to the amount of affection I may hold for the original work, artists, or filmmakers.

Something for me to ruminate upon. Perhaps food for thought for you as well, my readers.

In any case, I imagine I have taken enough of your passing time this fine morning.  I thank you once again for passing by, and look forward to your next visit.

Take it easy, folks.