Last Saturday I ran a race, a 15K, longer than I usually do. The weather was beautiful, and I took it slow. After the first loop around the course, after the 5K runners had finished, congestion diminished and it became possible to plod along with nary a competitor in sight; at points, it was as if I were running alone on a country lane with a large lake nearby.
About halfway through the run, with the Saturday-morning sun shining, a cut from Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige (1958) album shuffled on my iPod. The big band jazz orchestra and the voice of Mahalia Jackson were, for some reason, the perfect accompaniment.
I ended the race feeling fine. After a longer-than-usual wait for the bus back to my neighborhood, and then stopping on the sidewalk to sign a signature-gatherer's petition to place Kshama Sawant's name on the ballot for reelection, I ended up back at my apartment a little before 1:30 in the afternoon. By happenstance, because I had recently imported several Duke Ellington records to my iTunes library, I listened to the great jazz composer for the rest of the day.
I mention all this as a prelude to what happened the weekend before, two-weeks ago now. On a Sunday I listened to all the Yes studio albums from The Yes Album (1971) to Going for the One (1975). The idea was to listen to the records from Yes's breakthrough in the early 1970s to the widely disparaged Tormato (1978), when the band lost its compass as the Hippies gave way to the Punks.
Though I downloaded the 2004 remaster of Tormato, I didn't get to listen to it. I jumped instead to the first two Black Flag EPs, Nervous Breakdown (1978) and Jealous Again (1980), followed by the indispensable compilation of early recordings, Everything Went Black (1982).
By the end of the day Sunday it felt like my ears were bleeding. They say digital recording is hard and flat. I would have to agree. (I have pretty good speakers on my laptop too.) In any event, since then, nearly two weeks ago, I have been reticent to dive into my weekly immersions of Hippies vs. Punks because my ears have not felt up to it.
Hence the diversion to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Big band jazz is a deeper and broader and for the most part temporally more complex music than that produced by the Hippies and the Punks. More horizontal than vertical, more aerobic than anaerobic, big band jazz speaks of a time when there was more space. Both the Hippies (some very articulate, like the "present-at-creation" San Francisco psychedelic ballroom music) and the Punks are a reeling reaction to the vertiginous rise of electronic technology and its effect on everyday consciousness.
The question we need to ask ourselves, as we enjoy this interlude of Black, Brown and Beige, is this -- "If the Hippies and the Punks both failed to provide an answer to the riddle of electronic technology, what hope is there for us?"
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