Seeking Clarification!

1-5-09 Seeking Clarification!

Let’s examine: clarification. For me, I can peg it at about 1970, when I was 12 years of age. That’s about the time I really began to understand that there was a lot more to most things than I readily understood. I knew how the records / music sounded, but I wasn’t always sure how it got that way. I wanted to know more.

Probably the first things I discovered were variant versions of songs between single versions and album versions. That, or mono and stereo versions. I liked The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Jimi Hendrix Experience – and those artists had singles and album cuts that were only released in England (at that time). My dad drove me to Hollywood in search of non-US non-LP British 45’s!

My brother showed me British Beatles / Rolling Stones LP’s – they were so pretty! They looked so much better than the US LP’s; shiny covers etc. Seeing that stuff at such a young age forever changed the way I perceived those artists.

The years come and go, and it becomes a bit of a different operation, seeking clarification. I have a CD of that, but I’ll get a re-mastered CD of it – maybe it is mastered better, maybe there are illuminating bonus tracks. And one can continue to look for ancient phonograph records, of course. I found a German Island Records sampler called “London Pop News” that has a great Jethro Tull color photograph in it’s interior – infinitely more illuminating than a re-mastered CD of “Stand Up”, I can tell you!

So, you bought the 12” to get that extra track / remix? Illumination! There’s a Japanese CD of that? Little paper album cover, SHM-CD mastering etc. – Illumination! I want to know more about this item! After all these years, it still seems that the work of music artists helps define my ‘experience’ – both the music and the aesthetic presentation of the music, the cover of the LP / CD.

Since ’02, I have been writing about experiencing music in blog form. Sometimes what I write is more inspired than usual. Sometimes not. I’m not trying to bump heads with people – I’m just hoping that through ‘common experience’, we can all find out how much we are alike.

Sometimes, it becomes difficult to remember what my position is, towards pop music. Love it, hate it – whatever. What would I be doing, if not this? Where else could I utilize my instincts, my ‘talents’? What else would…could intrigue “the inspector”?

Instincts are amusing. How did I know that I was ‘straight’? Perhaps I continue to seek my GF’s embrace because I continually demand clarification of that experience? I want to know it better. Something similar to owning 25 (differing) copies of Zappa’s “We’re Only In It For The Money” – I want to know more about this work, this artifact. I demand “clarification”!