I've had one issue of Mojo magazine since Christmas, a cool stocking stuffer. I am still absorbing it and checking out artists reviewed in it, and it makes me reflect on how much new music there is and how one Mojo per year may be enough. Just one random Mojo could be the stillpoint or locus of a diverse musical education--an artifact to rebirth musical culture, if it came to that, discovered in the rubble or on the beach by an ape boy with no wi-fi!
How do we absorb it all, or even pretend that we are up to speed? On any one page of this excellent magazine, I find enough new and reissued music to spend all of my discretionary income on for months. One mention of any of these artists in a Rolling Stone in 1983 was a sweet rumor of the wider world, if you were a punky kid in suburban KC. Even an image of The Fall or The Clash in a import t-shirt and merch ad, in the back of Rolling Stone, glimpsed while riding in the back seat to Ponderosa Steakhouse with my parents.
So yesterday I buckled and listened to almost all of the newest Pop Group album on Spotify while I was walking around the Troostwood neighborhood. I've also checked out a band I find to be really original, Wildbird and Peacedrums, and haunting soundtrack music from Jozef Van Wissem. I have not gone out to spend fifty bucks on these records, I'd sure like to, go see Judy at Mills, Sherman at 7th Heaven, Dave at Zebadees, Marion at Records with Merritt…the last record I bought was a copy of the new Testface for a friend. I have been spending extra money on flagstone for our back slope, step by step by step. For new records I find records I forgot I bought, like this one by Milton Nasciemento, a Eugene Record Convention find.
I've been on this kind of music fast, too, listening to Audible instead of compact disks in the car on my commute. I'm about 1/5th through the unabridged Don Quixote, translated by Edith Grossman. For years I have wondered what tattoo I would get, on shore leave in Hong Kong. Squids have always been in the running, and images of office supplies. (Just check Pinterest.) Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are at the top of the list. Maybe Sancho tossed in a blanket by revelers while Don Quixote rests assured in his oblivious daydreams.
To enjoy literature aloud cuts into music time and makes music time really intense, and easier to be welcoming and open to the new, as well as something like this:
