OUTSIDELEFT WEEK IN MUSIC WITHOUT MUSIC
In our best Hazel Motes, Church without Christ, style, I’m here to explain that the Outsideleft Week in Music that was to be a Week Without Music has been extended to Two Weeks Without Music. Not because there is no music at all. Just for so many reasons a little resting, recuperating and resetting seemed about right.
I think readers know from that time to time, my agnosticism about the weekly slew of releases we are alerted to, by no means a comprehensive list - after all many publicists for the most massive stars shun us entirely, unconvinced I suppose that we will deliver the hegemonic epistolary that is what has come to define the contribution of the music criticism arm of the industrial-music business complex. A collusion ensures everyone but the musicians get paid. Outsideleft’s outsider status is odd because if I cast a glance back over the past year of Weeks in Music, it looks like we are more than generous to past stars no matter how dimly their lights are shining now.
Maybe we can never be as humorous as the Guardian Newspaper reviewer that declared Paul McCartney’s LP McCartney 3 his best in decades, ‘Although the bar is admittedly low.’ I nearly unsettled my cornflake bowl into my lap with my chuntering. Well I don’t really chunter, I rarely laugh at anything. Mainly because I hate my teeth, and would rather they went unseen. I loved that line though and am only sorry that I’d had to add it myself after the piece had been published.
Anyways, the morass of weekly releases often makes me despair, fortunately we have a tough-eared coterie of music fans who are writers that take the task on week after week, digging deeper, look harder for something musically magical that happens for a few minutes each and every week. Hearing what is found makes it all worthwhile.
Reading what Outsideleft's writer's write is often as joyful a discovery as the music itself. I love their dedication to words about listening.
And it's the unearthing of new music - and there is so much of it that is challenging and brilliant and alert to our time - that makes me feel so maligned by the masses of attention paid to legacy stars. It's so weird, I don't understand it really. And it's even worse when they die. People who paid no attention to them in life are suddenly tripping over each other to post their RIPs to social media first. What is the contribution at that point? I wish someone could explain to me the public piling on to an essentially private matter. It is true to say though, I have no concrete understanding of what's good or bad about social media. So... hmmm.
So, no regular Week in Music this week. Instead, as we have been gathering and publishing Holiday stories from writers, friends and supporters of Outsideleft, I’ll say one of the things I enjoy is the joyous sound of Mariah Carey each Christmas. That’s when Christmas begins for me. I was thrilled then when I discovered a living legends from the Birmingham music scene, Cara Tivey had posted a most beautiful piano version of All I Want For Christmas Is You on instagram. Thanks, Cara. Here’s a link to Cara’s Instagram. You can take it from here…
Cara Tivey on Instagram here→
Essential Information
Image: So much of this begins here - my title for a screengrab from the Gibson guitar website.
