Notes From the Grid is a bi-weekly column about the Columbia County music scene written by Rob. It is featured every other Friday in the "On the Scene" supplement of the Hudson Register Star. See all »

January 30, 2012

Borrowing a cup of Sugar or the Narcissism of Minor Details

Dear Reader ,

All the quotes in the following column are meant to be what you yourself might have told me in an unguarded moment or a description of how I suspect you may feel, but they might be quotes that I’ve made up. they might be mine and mine alone or maybe I wanted to conceal your identity. A few weeks ago we tried to explore what people love about music. This is an offering that attempts to understand why people sometimes seem threatened by the differences in music.

At first I thought the explanations were simple – if you were brought up listening to certain music that’s probably what you like, but often if you were brought up listening to certain music that can also be aa reason to hate it, depending on how fondly one remembers childhood or sometimes you hated it then and now you like it for sentimental reasons. People change, things get different, there’s a number of hidden and overt factors at work here and I’d like to try to get to the bottom of the whole thing if you, dear reader, will just grant me a bit of patience.

I’m reminded of a few phrases one of my favorite writers has used. I think the person is female and she goes by moniker of “Sugar” when writing an advice column, aptly named Dear Sugar, on therumpus.net Her observations resound to me about musical preferences though she offers them as general observations about life.

“Your Jesus is my mother is someone else’s turtle”

What does that mean? The phrase means something different to everyone as well as meaning that people perceive things differently and selectively and there’s a lot of different reactions to the same stimulus. Here’s another:

“How beautiful. How ugly. How little. How big.”

Same thing said another way. This philosophy, if it can be called that has been stated over and over for eons and perhaps Sylvester (Sly) Stone put it most accurately and simply by shouting

“Different Strokes for different folks” to which we can add “And so on and so on and shooby shooby doobie.”

Here’s a few things I’ve heard about music in this town

“Hudson Opera House has too much jazz and classical.”

“Helsinki Hudson always insists on booking people I never heard of.”

“The Spotty Dog is too ‘hip” for me.

“If an old man likes a twenty year old’s music, the twenty year old has failed.
If a twenty year old like an old man’s music, the twenty year old has failed.”

“There’s not enough enough jazz in Hudson, no… I mean real jazz. “

“There’s not enough folk music in Hudson, no… I mean real traditional.”

and so on and so on…..

Some people dismiss genres when it comes to music, some dismiss venues, others entire geographical areas, sounds farfetched? It’s not. We cite the “Bard kids”,the “Greene County bands” or the “Hudson hipsters”and so on until large masses of land become notorious for all-encompassing praise or criticism Some us us remember Mersey Beat ( England) others remember The San Francisco sound (psychedelic) or the Seattle Sound (grunge), both Irish pseudo-traditional and Australian rock have had their moments in the lime light music and these days Balkan Beat (Eastern European)is hot and so on.

The other evening in Hudson there were at least four acts representing a measure of international acclaim, all of them performing within a block of each other…

The George Cole Quintet for the jazz/European/violin /swing/gypsy types
Steve Earle for the politico/former drug guy/alt country/legendary singer/songwriter types
Eleanor Friedberger for the indy/hip/legendary singer songwriter types
John Wesley Harding for the topical British legendary singer songwriter types.

Maybe not a perfect evening for music in a town of 7000 but pretty darn close. Most people were amazed not only by the entertainment opportunity, but also by the amount of talent concentrated into a few hundred square feet. This was not lost on these seasoned performers either - while on the Spotty Dog stage (well not stage… okay, place where the performers sit) Mr. Harding actually joked about the possibility of taking the whole audience over to Helsinki to see Mr. Earle. There were a lot of very talented singer songwriters in town that night, but the reactions of attendees surprised me – it seems as though people who claim to enjoy good songwriting would be beside themselves in rapture. Not so.

“Your Jesus is my mother is someone else’s turtle”

There is a condition that Sigmund Freud called the “narcissism of minor differences” which can be explained as small shadings of prejudice in a loving relationship, a need to find, and even exaggerate, differences in order to preserve a feeling of separateness and self image.

There were plenty of enthusiastic and grateful people in the audiences of these venues – I heard a lot of positive remarks about how privileged we should feel residing in such a diverse high quality atmosphere of first class music.  heard this -

“He sounds like some other guy I don’t like.”

“That one song was stupid.”

“I don’t need a crack head to tell me how to vote.” (my favorite)

“Um… not really my generation’s type of stuff”

Which weirded me out a bit

Okay, we’re getting towards the end of the page and I haven’t figured any of this out yet. I’m not wise enough… I should write to Sugar and ask her advice on how to sort this out. If I do have a point it’s that sometimes when people are prejudiced against a kind of music or are enthralled by a type of music they are looking for a bit of self-perception assistance or to verify identity.  As a musician, I find that many people listen to music as a balm or a comfort or as a catalyst or a companion I’ve had people thank me for playing because it was so “calming” (eek!). I’ve had people compliment me profusely for what I’ve considered inept and chaotic performances. I’m not sure I consider the description “calming” as accurate but I’m happy to enable some manner of serenity however it might be achieved. There’s worse things that can happen.

See you in a few weeks.

By the way….

Thurston Moore will be playing with band at Helsinki Sunday, January 27.
Yes that is the same Sonic Youth Thurston Moore, not some guy with the same name.