Foo Fighters - Big Me: youtube.com/watch?v=pLdJQFTnZfA
I sang this song in a school talent show. I was 12 years old. Jonathan Kenny played guitar and I sang and he was great and I’m sure I wasn’t. I don’t remember being nervous before and I don’t remember being elated after but I’m sure I was both.
This has always been a strange song to me, in a way. When The Colour and The Shape came out I listened to it every day, learned every song on it, went back to the self-titled Foo Fighters album and learned to appreciate it. And “Big Me” has these thin guitars, very safe sound and structure, no challenge to the listener at all. Most the other songs on that album are harder (and better) but this one stood out to my young taste. It was fun.
Sometimes friends are surprised by my taste in music. I love, what some deem, sad bastard music. One of my favorite albums right now is The National’s High Violet. But sometimes I hear something really fun like CSS’s “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” and it kills me. It’s just so much fun and it’s something I can’t make; I have a high appreciation for pop music in all its forms.
And music should be fun. It is, in its most idealistic form for the artist, an expression greater than the form of the individual. One is expressing, through sound, an aspect of the human condition. One is painting portraits, landscapes, capturing form in empty space. But it doesn’t always have to be so heavy, the lightness is important as well; it’s something simple that makes you feel something simple. Or move. Or laugh. This is as important to the human condition as any.
This all goes back to an argument of high art vs. low art. But it doesn’t have to be viewed that way; John Cage’s “In a Landscape” is just as important to me as The Ramones “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” It’s a great expression of the human condition. It’s not about high art or low art, it’s about good art. And it’s about art.
No comments:
Post a Comment