What’s Music for?

 In the Observer music mag last week Jarvis Cocker of Pulp poses the question: What is music for? Before I read his answer, here’s mine:
Community and connection
Getting in touch with Nature
Energising ouselves
Communicating a vision of the world
Linking to the past
Passing on the human musical spark (which circles the world)
Capturing a feeling
Capturing an idea
Binding two people through dancing
Raising us to our higher nature
Smashing the mundane
Bringing tranquility

[Author READS article in old MAG he found at his mum’s here]

Jarvis adds:
Mood
Instruction
Dancing
Communication
Atmosphere
Revolution
Comfort
Soundtrack
Advertising
His list is of what music can be for. Mine is what it is for.

So it looks like we basically agree on:
Dancing
Communication
Revolution
Comfort

Dance like a Monkey

Just watched the New York Dolls performing live on Jonathan Ross’s show – David Johansen has become an Elder Statesman of punk, got that white shoe cool about him. They were a huge influence via Malcolm McLaren but I came straight into the English mainstream of punk with The Buzzcocks and The Clash, only circling back to NYC through Patti Smith and a brush with Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

Now I’m sitting here watching a documentary about Mose Allison with Van, Georgie Fame, Pete Townsend and Elvis Costello. Never saw the roots of My Generation in the blues til Pete demonstrated the Mose influence.

And earlier I was watching Walk the Line with U and, after the delight of Folsom Prison Blues, revelled in the conjunction of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and that whole Memphis holy rock’n’roll vibe.

There’s a physics thing about music I really love, the transmission of energy from generation to generation, place to place, Groove’s Law, a biology thing, the evolution of the beat, dance like a monkey, soar like an angel.

 

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When I was just a baby

My Mama told me: “Son,

Always be a good boy,

Don’t ever play with guns.”

But I shot a man in Reno

Just to watch him die.

When I hear that whistle blowin’

I hang my head and cry.