The Language of the On-Again Off-Again Future

  The Beach Boys, Wake the World: the Friend Sessions   The Beach Boys, I Can Hear Music: the 20/20 Sessions   1. I’m packing up my records. Yes I am. And I currently have an imposing tower of oversized CD and vinyl box sets sitting on my living room chair. I have three of these canon producing/affirming objects for the Beatles alone. Lest one think such things are only produced for the biggest of artists, I also have equally, if not more so, imposing boxes devoted to John Fahey, Lee Hazlewood and International Harvester. Physical media—as most media is now consumed streaming online—represents permanence by the very nature of the fact it takes up space in the world, and in my house specifically. These box sets are meant to represent the longevity of the music within, beyond your average used record or current repress. To have one of these things devoted to cataloging your work means that someone, somewhere was willing to invest enough money, time and materials to create ...

I've decided to start a new music blog dedicated to music only available digitally. The name is a nod to Laurie Anderson's spoken word piece "The Language of the Future" which has the following lyrics:  Always two things switching Current runs through bodies and then it doesn't It was a language of sounds, of noise, of switching, of signals It was the language of the rabbit, the caribou, the penguin, the beaver A language of the past Current runs through bodies and then it doesn't On again Off again Always two things switching One thing instantly replaces another It was the language of the Future [...] This is the language of the on-again off-again future And it is Digital   This blog is about music that may or may not exist in the future just by virtue of its medium: digital only. These releases can be downloaded,  streamed or YouTubed but these are releases for which there is no physical copy.

      A lifetime ago when I was in grad school pursuing a degree in German studies, I had a conversation with an older friend (I was in my late 20s and he was pushing 40…this was the late 90s) and we started talking about Sonic Youth. He responded by saying “I’m too old to listen to them” (he was a big Zappa fan and had his musical tastes shaped by the 1970s). I pointed out that the members of Sonic Youth were older than he was by this point, to which he responded “well, you know what I mean.” And, indeed, I did. For a good part of their existence, Sonic Youth was a band that seemed to both shape and embody a version of whatever was the avant-garde in American indie rock. The out sound of the already peripheral sound. While by indie rock I do mean “rock” music released on independent labels, by independent labels, however, I don’t just mean the catch-all phrase for whatever is not a “major” label (whatever that means today). Rather, I mean a certain aesthetic born in 1980...