In Praise of Random

One of the terrible things about us boomers is that we won't shut up. We won't go away, and we don't ever stop talking about the wonders of our youth. It's embarrassing for me to join this relentless chorus of those-were-the-day-ers, so I'll try to be brief with this quick memory bit. It was occasioned by reading this neat piece by Zadie Smith in the current New Yorker, which is unfortunately paywall-blocked, but if you're a lifelong lover of Joni Mitchell such as I am (which for most boomers is like saying: we've been breathing oxygen for many years now), you'll want to seek out the full article.

In it, Smith does a great job of describing what it's like to actively hate an unfamiliar sound (in this case, the distinctive warbling of Mitchell's voice), and it's a peculiarly enjoyable experience, somewhat akin to what a liberal experiences while watching Fox News. The piece is about Zadie Smith's epiphanic conversion from Joni-hate to Joni-love, and what came after, and it's centered on the not even arguably most-loved masterpiece in the Mitchell canon, the album Blue. 

It got me reminiscing about how I came upon that album, and what I want to relate is a simple, small observation about a key difference between living then and living now.

In those days (1971), the long-player vinyl album was the universal medium for music. My friend Matthew and I used to sneak home from school and steal handfuls of quarters from a big jar kept beneath his parents' bed and bicycle to the Sam Goody's store and buy everything British that had been released that week. I was a fan of other stuff, too, the prominent American bands and singer-songwriters, and scanning the shelves on this particular day in June, I caught sight of that dark blue cover amidst the sea of LPs on display, and picked it up.

I had worn through the first two Joni Mitchell albums, so I was excited to discover a new one. I rushed home to hear it immediately, and thus entered the stream of musical history with gazillions of listeners then and since. If you've been there, you know what it's like - the dawning awareness that what you're hearing is not merely good, but something far greater than that. And given the album form, with its ten-track paradigm, it's a bit like being present at an epic no-hitter that's going into the baseball history books: there are no bad songs on this album, you realize, and many of these songs are ones you already know you're going to want to hear again and again and again.

Within weeks of that first awestruck listening, I comprehended that I wasn't alone in my assessment. Of course these days, Blue is on most short-lists of the definitive musical achievements of its epoch, et cetera, and you know the rest, but here's my point.

Today's young listeners have been robbed, denied a primal pleasure they may not even know was once theirs to claim, and that is the random nature of such encounters. I didn't purchase my copy of Blue because I already knew its hit single (there was none), because I'd seen it advertised (it hadn't been yet, or at least, so minimally by today's standards that it might as well not have been), or because I knew its release date, as heavily promoted on every medium known to man and perhaps extraterrestrials. I had heard no word-of-mouth. I came unto the experience like a virgin. I had not been hyped.

"Random" has taken on a pejorative subtext, but I recall such randomness with what feels like legitimately earned nostalgia. Can you even imagine Red, Taylor Swift's current blockbuster, being approached by a prospective listener with anything like such a clean-slate consciousness? Inconceivable, as Vizzini used to say. In 2012, such random discoveries are rare anomalies; we may come to a work that's already immensely popular with no direct experience of it, but hardly ever without even knowing it exists. And most of the time, we have to consciously work against the siege of extant opinion, or even block such knowledge (spoilers!) if we want to have an experience that truly is unfiltered and our own.

A small thing, a small loss. But once upon a time, greatness occasionally just sat there, hiding in plain sight, like a scepter of solid gold placed on a shelf of trinkets and gimcracks, waiting for you to find it. I suppose I'm old enough to finally say this, damn me: Those were the days.

Comments

[Barbara]

love this post -

[Judith Duncan]

Hey Billy,
I only truly came across Joni Mitchell a few years ago on youtube.I was aware of Yellow Taxi,but had never fallen under her spell. Then, when I was writing a love story and was scouring youtube for something to get me into the right place,I came across ,'A Case of You', and it brought me to me knees.What a wonderful discovery.That along with ,'Into my Arms,'by Nick Cave and ,Áin't No Sunshine 'by Bill Withers,that I rediscovered are those special songs that transcend an era.One of the reasons I love youtube,being exposed to music that i would never have known about.
:)Judith

[Adaddinsane]

What can I say? I'm a Boomer, Joni is wondrous and Blue sends me into a state of euphoria.

But I love some of her less appreciated works like Mingus.

In the UK in the old days there was only one pop radio station, only one pop TV show anybody watched. That meant you heard everything from Led Zeppelin to Hall and Oates. It was a forced eclecticism.

Doesn't happen now, if you like a style you listen to the channel that gives you that, and nothing else.

Luckily I brought my kids up proper - they have their own tastes but they'll listen to all sorts of music.

[Rob in L.A.]

My random record-buying experience was in 1979, when as a teenager, I made a trip to the Big Mall in the D.C. suburbs. There, I happened across the album "Old Hag, You Have Killed Me" by the Irish traditional-music group the Bothy Band. I knew nothing about them, and didn't know much about Irish traditional music, but I bought the album, anyway. I was blown away by I sound I wasn't prepared for. Imagine the Chieftains struck by an energizing bolt of lightning.

Needless to say, "Old Hag, You Have Killed Me" is one of my favorite albums, along with "Revolver" by the Beatles and "Imperial Bedroom" by Elvis Costello, and has been a part of my ever-changing music collection ever since. And you're right: Where am I going to find that kind of a random happenstance situation today?

[londonmabel]

I don't know... is it really that rare? Just a couple weeks ago I was looking at the top 40 on itunes Canada, and saw this song called "Thrift Shop" and wondered what it was, and wandered over to itunes, and that took me to other Macklemore songs, and an hour later I had downloaded the album. Totally random, wonderful experience.

And that wasn't my only random find of the year. :-)

[mernitman]

Hi Barbara! Thanks for the love.

Judith: Yes, YouTube has become the King of Random. Happy Holidays!

Aladdinsane: Yes, that's another major shift in our culture - the splintering into niches - so I'm glad to hear of your good musical parenting. Meanwhile, I'm also a fan of the later Joni (Hejira & Don Juan esp.), and "God Must Be a Boogie Man" still cracks me up.

Rob: Thanks for sharing your Irish epiphany. I'll look into the Brothys.

Londonmabel: Right, in that sense, we're living in the Golden Age of Randomness (and now I'm going hunting for Macklemore, thanks). What my post was addressing was the more random event of bumping into universally acknowledged greatness, i.e. Most teenagers today couldn't randomly come upon say, "Beat It" or "Billy Jean" for the first time ever, having never heard (or heard of) "Thriller" - or the 2000-teens equivalent of whatever we're deeming "genius for the ages," these days.

[Deb Montoya]

Ah yes - discovering greatness before the hype. It happened to me once.

I was working for the Youth Conservation Corp in Yosemite with no access to TV, radio or newspapers. We had some time off and a group of us drove into Modesto to catch a movie. Only one choice for the matinee and none of us had ever heard of it.

It was late June... 1977.

And that movie was Star Wars.

[mernitman]

Deb: Wow. That must've been quite the quintessential mindblower. I hear it's a pretty good little movie.

[Martha michaels]

I agree, Billy. There was a time when I felt a kind of mystic potential with every walk through the world; a book, I'd never heard of, would fall off a shelf and hit me in the head, or an album would catch my eye at a grocery store.
I came to count on it, for inspiration, for growth, just go into the world, physically, and see what's going on. You can't get that from Amazon, or I-tunes. We digitized everything and instead of more access to information, it feels like we boxed it up, put it in a warehouse, then some guy gave us a key and said, "there, isn't that better, all tidy, help yourself, I'll guide you."

[Ourdia Hodge]

Happy Holidays, Billy.
Sorry for being totally off topic but I would love to get your take on the following article:

Can the romantic comedy be saved?

http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/can-the-romantic-comedy-be-saved.html

Damn depressing.

Cheers.
Ourdia

[mernitman]

Martha: I like your metaphor - it IS like that. Happy holidays!

Ourdia: GMTA (Great Minds...) I'm planning to address the Vulture piece in my annual "Astas" post tonight (and you can see a comment from me, and Brodesser's response, in his post's Comments).