The Blank Page

Today's song The Sultans of Swing by Dire Straights

The Blank Page, enemy of artists everywhere.  Painter or writer an empty field of white is the enemy.  It is your job to overcome the enemy.  To create something where once there was nothing.  Preferably to create something that was worth more than the blank page you started with.  I am not claiming to be an artist.  In fact, i'd be offended if someone were to call me an artist, i am not.  As previously discussed, i am a journalist.  A journalist does work, an artist produces an experience-- or at least that is something an artist might say.  I am not an artist because my soul is tone deaf to a wide swath of what counts as art, but that is a topic for another time.

As i explained on day one of this project the last time i undertook it, sometimes the song is nothing more than the jumping off point for some other matter i want to talk about.  This is my blog so i get to do what i want here.  Well, i get to do what i want until the overlords at the FCC decide they need to regulate my freedom away.  Today i am going to discuss the difference between live music and studio music.  Not "the difference" because i don't have the time or inclination to exhaustively cover such a big topic, more like a narrow slice of "the difference."

This entry will be a little rambling.  I intended to do a warm up post or two in the lead up to March, but time slipped away and there were other things that took up my time.  It will also probably be a little short in regard to the actual purpose of the entry.  After all, so far i have only used two sentences on the actual topic and the title does not even refer to the topic.

I chose this song because I like it.  It was only after choosing it and starting this post that I decided the topic.  In fact the previous paragraph is wrong, the actual purpose of this entry is to knock the rust off my quiescent writing skills.  I will write a little about the difference between live and studio music, as i see it, but mostly this is just a warm up exercise.  I am not a big fan of stream of consciousness writing.  It is lazy and indulgent, but it is easy.  At least it is easy when you do it and do not try to make it look like you did it while actually using it as a devise and that you are not actually writing in stream of consciousness and are instead deliberately trying to write something that emulates a steam of consciousness.  (People tend to think in run on sentences; another reason to avoid stream of consciousness. Except to make fun of it.)

So to get to Live versus Studio, Sultans of Swing is a good choice.  I don't get why people like live music.  If you were there, at the concert, when they choose to do the recording it is different.  Then you are choosing to enjoy an experience frozen in time and saved to a medium, analog if you are as old as me or god forbid older, but probably digital if you are not. But if you were not there why do you want Live music?  If  Live was better it is what the industry would put out.  Music is expensive and adding a bunch of engineers and producers and all the equipment they utilize to make Studio music would be a waste of money that could otherwise go to fattening the bottom line.  The reason they do it is because Studio music is better.  Some artists would be intolerable without sound engineering.  As beautiful and skilled as she is, Paris Hilton needs every bit of wizardry they can squeeze out of sound technology to make her bearable; even then it is still better to watcher her music, and watch it on mute.

The bests artists produce Live music that is tolerable to actually good.  For this song, the "Alchemy Live" version is considered to be the seminal live concert.  The song is good and it is impressive that Knopfler improvised the guitar solo.  If i knew more about music i'd probably be more impressed, but despite my ownership of original artwork, i remain a musical Philistine.  Dire Straits was a great band and had exceptional talent.  For lesser artists Live work can be intolerable. The Studio version runs  5:46 and the Live version 10:46.  Both are good, probably great or better, but I prefer the Studio version.

Have you ever tried to listen to Live rap?  I do not mean the lip synching they do in concert or when they autotune themselves up on stage but honest to goodness live unaccompanied free style rapping.  It is more painful than Paris without the wizardry because at least with Paris you still have Paris.  So I guess Paris could free style and i'd tolerate it.  Free style is intolerable because it have every negative aspect of Live and no aspect of Studio.  Live music by a real band is better because it actually has music and if the band has any talent can be enjoyable as an unfiltered connection between the artist and listener.  But i like the filters, i like knowing the version i am listening to is the best thing that the available technology can produce.

So Day One is done.  I doubt I am going to ever look back and consider this my best work.  But i am glad i am writing again and hopefully you are enjoying this.  And hopefully something i write this month will stand up to some of my earlier better stuff when i was in fighting form.

Later,

Bob

PS

I decided to simply post song titles rather than lyrics for this exercise.  I wanted to simplify things for the people on FB that do not read this as i am not interested in confusing potential voters.

Bonus for the faithful. most of you have seen this, but it is still fun.