The All New Adventures of Us - It’s Genius, I Swear
By: Various Scribes
Music is odd.
It confuses you, disgusts you, breaks you and mistakes you for someone who cares. Yet it picks you up, teaches you to love, inspires you and makes you laugh... sometimes a single song can do all of the above, nailing both the former and the latter.
Weeeelll, I've always seen it as fine though.
Occasionally, the most inspiring songs are the ones which make you feel so unbelievably ill that you change everything in your life out of fear of ever falling prey to the same ideals as the person who wrote it. What I'm saying is that to me all songs serve a purpose, even if it's just to remind us that in most parts of our lives we should never accept what is given to us on a silver platter. If you didn't have to dig a little deeper to find something, the chances are that it's going to be trite & if you didn't work for something, it either won't last long or no-one will respect you for it anyway... and well, as elitist & contrived as that sounds, I don't think enough people appreciate the beauty that can come from shovels & sleepless nights.
The records I love most are the ones which I found by chance on a photocopied flyer in the back of a cut 'n' paste fanzine or something which I sought out after it was referenced in an obscure novel written by a person who used to play in a band I liked when I was younger. I think I've just always liked the chase.
It's the "I found it, it's mine" mentality, but in a weird way I kind of like it. I've always had records in my collection which I take great pleasure in playing to other people who I know will 'click' with it in a similar way to myself, but there has always been a non-literal safe house hidden away at the back, behind a security-locked iron door, housing the records I rarely listen to in the company of others.
They are records which I've always thought would be trivialised by groups of people, standing around, half listening/ half talking. They are records which need my full attention; I feel I owe it to them. It's a sincerity thing I think, in the same way to if you were having a conversation with a friend and it took an unexpected 10 mile dive into darker waters, they start pouring their heart out and you turn away and start talking to someone else. That person probably wouldn't speak to you in the same way ever again, and it's the same with the records. What if they didn't affect you the same because they didn't feel so personal anymore? ...forever scarred with the burden of having lyrics taken in the wrong way and thrown out of context or destroyed by people drunkenly covering them. It'd be a train wreck...
...I think I'll graciously decline the offer before there's nothing left behind the iron door except a dull ring from outside, made by the dozens of clean-cut, cravat-wearing 'musicians' wondering where they need to go to swap the tiny bit of sincerity they have for overt accessibility... Thanks for thinking of me though. No, really. Ha!
I don't mean that in a scathing way, I'm more just making the point that it's OK not to like something, I'm a great believer that in order to know what you really love, you need to know what you downright hate!
I'll occasionally step out of my little world and slip a song from one of the safe-locked records onto a mix tape I'm making for someone... BUT, the rule I set is that I can't mention it, they have to spark with it and read into it themselves. And I suppose that if they really did click with it in the same way as I did; we'd never speak of it again anyway. Though there's still part of me that likes to think I'd pick up on it, through a knowing-glance across the backroom of a bar when a song from one of the records gets given a spin by an unassuming DJ. I'd like to think that that person would make the glance momentary though, not time enough to give anyone else in the room a chance to notice and get the feeling that we know something that they don't, ha!
For this column I was supposed to be writing about a record which I think goes unappreciated or unnoticed for its genius, but the thing is, if I told you which records I'm referring to it would make all the care and effort I go to when I'm falling for a record null & void. No adjective can compare to a feeling in the pit your stomach, screaming "guard this with you life".
"The temptation to take the precious things we have apart to see how they work must be resisted; for they never fit together again" - Billy Bragg/'Must I Paint You A Picture'
Jaime C. Macefield - The All New Adventures of Us
Artists in this article: The All New Adventures of Us