much and earnest

Carson Holloway’s recent “What’s Really the Matter with Pop Music?” disappoints. He begins the essay (a Part 2 of 2) by rehearsing the ancient and intriguing claim that “the music itself” –the rhythm, tune, etc.,–and not lyrics, are the more influential element of songs, in moving the listener toward good or ill. I’d have really enjoyed hearing him out on this point, but the remainder of the essay builds to the more familiar argument that the modern practice of censorship (e.g., replacing potty words with beeps or honks) only lowers our standards of what counts as “good”; and that instead, we ought to listen to music that “encourage[s] our pursuit of the highest goods attainable”: “reason’s enjoyment of moral nobility and theoretical truth.”

Nights and early mornings in the desert can get a bit chilly. This morning I left the kitchen in the middle of making breakfast:

Me: I’m going to put my shoes on – my feet are cold.

Noelle: Will you put some music on? My soul is cold.

So now we’re listening to an iPod Genius playlist, based on a Stacey Kent song.

You seem to work as much as a producer as a musician yourself. Do you have a preference? Does producing satisfy your creative side?
I can answer these types of questions very easily because they’re about me. I can say definitively that producing, does not satisfy my creative “jones,” but I love doing it; I love being on both sides. As far as the balance of the spotlight versus not the spotlight, it’s a function of what I’m doing. In other words, if I’m producing, then it’s not about me but about the artist. If I’m playing, it is about me, and bring on the spotlight! It’s about the art, but I’m the one bringing the art and I know that and it would be dumb of me to pretend that it isn’t me doing it. I’ve sat in group prayers before Christian concerts where people say “Lord, we just pray that You’d get this band out of the way so that Jesus can shine” and I’m like, well, if I’m not quote/unquote “in the way,” then there is no concert! From a theological perspective, how far do you want to carry that? Do you want to get Jesus out of the way so that Jesus can shine, because He was a human being and there’s an implicit endorsement of humanness in that. He didn’t create us and say “It’s OK,” or “not so great,” He said “It is good.”

Source: a Colossians Three Sixteen interview updated link

Update: Part Two of the interview is now available. Here they are again: Part One and Part Two.

Brent Thomas over at Colossians Three Sixteen has just posted Part One of an interview of Don Chaffer, leading man of the best jam band of my youth. Here’s a taste:

At what point did you realize that music was your life’s calling and at what point did you realize that it was actually feasible?

I would say I was in High School. I actually had a kind of a renaissance with poetry at some time between the ninth and tenth grade because I remember in the ninth grade seeing a flier on the wall for a poetry contest and I remember thinking consciously “Poetry’s sort of stupid, I don’t want to do that; like it’s a stack of statements that aren’t particularly sensical,” I think I remember having that sort of attitude about it and then the next year I won. So somewhere in there was a transition between feeling anti-poetry and then writing it. I would say adolescence was pretty rough on me. I’d say the birth was a bit bloody into manhood. Not literally a birth nor literally bloody.

The poetry thing was key, and then I started writing these songs. One of the turn-around things for me as a Christian was this particular youth group ski trip in which I basically surrendered my agnosticism in favor of the knowledge of God and more particularly, God’s knowledge of me. There was just this moment in the mountains and I read Psalm 139 and the line that nabbed me was “You understand my thoughts from afar” because I felt like nobody understood me. And so the thought that someone might know me, the inner workings of my mind, was particularly overwhelming; a source of great, if not also painful joy.

Are you still involved in visual art?

I sketch in church during sermons.

Has fatherhood changed your perspective on your art?

Utterly. Bob Dylan said one time in an interview “Children are the great equalizers.” It just changes absolutely everything about the way you see life. I think I tended to see things a little more darkly before I had the wise eyes of babies and toddlers looking at me. We have two kids now. Especially now; I come home and my one-year old who has just recently begun to say things like “Mommy” and “Bye” comes running and says “Daddy” and holds her arms up and there’s this sort of innocence; not a sort of innocence, an almost shockingly eye-level innocence in these kids. You just can’t look at the world in the same way.