Every once in a while a rock journalist shares my sentiments exactly--as in this excerpt from last week's (November 11-17) "Rock & Roll Love Letter" column by Kate Sullivan in the L.A. Weekly:
Most of the time, I walk around in a meta-historical haze, my spirit tossed between musical decades — haunting some imaginary Brill Building of the soul, then reclining in the hair of Marc Bolan and then — occasionally — being drawn back to the future by a contemporary artist of real imagination and talent. So there’s nothing like a great band pulling a stunt like this to remind me, You’re actually alive, now, at this precise moment in history.
Not that I'd necessarily ascribe this occurrence to the White Stripes' Tegan and Sara cover record that she's reviewing in the article, even if I knew what it sounded like. In fact, such a phenomenon--getting completely bowled over by a new, non-revivalist band/record, and thus feeling somewhat in step with the times--hasn't happened to me in many a year. Yet Sullivan's enthusiasm gives me hope that this could conceivably come to pass at some point. And 'til then, there's no shame in frettin' to the oldies.
"Brill Building of the soul." Why couldn't I have come up with that line?
[Currently reading Ken Emerson's Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era (New York: Viking, 2005).]
2 comments:
The experience you speak of happened to me upon hearing the High Dials, "War of the Wakening Phantoms" album.
It has some threads of sound from the past woven in, but the whole thing comes off as fresh and new--at least to my old ears.
I wrote a blog about it.
Haven't heard the new record, but trust me, my ears are way more ancient than yours. I liked 'em better when they were the Datsons.
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