I May Be An Idiot, But I Answer Another Letter!

Here is a nice letter from someone named Scot with one t:

Gary, I like that you are doing a show about electronica but I thought I would ask -- why do you like electronica? I am not a big fan myself but I like to ask people why they like it. Do you mind??

I don't mind, but you should know there's a story behind it. It begins (as everything does) in the womb.

That's not true! It begins around the time I learned to read. I loved reading, & I read everything. & when I discovered music, I focused not on the music itself, but on the words. It made perfect sense that the music I loved tended to have words that were silly, or clever, or just deep enough that I could waste time thinking about what they meant. (An example is the song "Rocket Man" by Elton John - as an eight-year-old I was fascinated by the idea of a "rocket man" as a job "five days a week." Or in John Lennon's "Come Together" - the obvious of "one & one & one is three" baffled me in a delightful way.)

So when songs like the ones I played in my Brief History Of Sampling show started to come about, I was far more interested in the samples than the music. Though, let's be honest here - I had already made a decision about the music. I rejected commercial crap pretty quickly, & that included metal, synthetic "soul," & mainstream "country" music. So I did care about the music in its way, but I might not have liked a record of, say, Cure instrumentals as much as The Head On The Door.

Somewhere in my early-to-late twenties, I started listening to jazz. Jazz teaches you a vocabulary of something other than words, & if you start (like I did) with early jazz & Big Band, they sneak it at you, first with songs with singers, then slowly eliminating the singers entirely.

Finding electronic music, samples & all, intriguing, & having a small but growing background in jazz, set me up for what came later - hanging around people who love electronica. I worked in a place where we fought over the background music - it was a video store - & lots of the music a couple of the clerks played was electronic. I was in a position where, to listen to what I liked, I had to spend some time listening to what the other workers liked. As is usually the case when the music is good, I discovered I really liked a lot of what the others liked. & they weren't listening to "house" or "techno" - it was electronica that wasn't made for dancing. (Amusingly, this is called IDM, or intelligent dance music.)

After that, my own scavenging obsessive nature took over, & now, even without the vocals, I listen to a lot of electronica. Since I am verbally-oriented, it's great to listen to when I am doing something like writing. Or when it's late & dark & your thoughts are your own. Or, of course, when you wanna dance.

& yeah, a lot of electronica still has words. But most of what I'll play tomorrow does not.

Thanks for the letter! Anyone can write me anything!

& if you're still reading: I have recently put up last week's show, & two recent subbing gigs - the Elk Mating Show & the Lounge Show in German - on my archive page. Go have a listen!