Gland Prix

Walk right up

I’ve been listening to The Books tonight.

My reaction at this time:

Fantastic.

“Now put on some undergarments and go deeper and deeper and deeper.”

I listened to their album “Lost and Safe” when it came out approx. twice. It didn’t connect with me at the time.

Why should this be?

I’m fascinated by different things being appealing and inviting at one time and not at another.

Perhaps you now expect a fast food metaphor.

Well the why to the riddle does not seem to be: education, mood, life stage. None of those things seem all that much different than the present.

Evolution?

Way too often we talk about evolution in terms of a species adapting to an environment without considering the changes in the environment. The environment also consisting of other species.

Perhaps some music and books enter into our lives at a time when our cultural bio-dome offers an environment too inhospitable for whatever reason. The other music to we which we listen overwhelms new entrants. Our ears are too acclimated to a particular genre/style/sound; conversely the new contestant resists approachability because of its musical characteristics.

And on occasion a new musical experience devastates the memory cells of what we know to like and love. Think of the kid you knew in high school that discovered Zeppelin or Pink Floyd and whom that experience radically altered. The environment was perfectly suited to these beasts in such cases.

Funnily enough, some things stick with you, though the time, at the time, was not quite right. Like little mammals scurrying within the Mesozoic of your gray matter.

Right now that’s The Books for me.

These things are so frustrating at times. So often I’m trying to recall a photograph or band name that I saw a year ago and having little to go on but the impression that has stuck around for a while.

And little notebooks and web clippers don’t help. Those things only work for material that strikes you immediately in some way.

Lots of things - they need to live a while in the skull. There’s no software for such subtle stuff.

Go listen to The Books now and make a note - you may not regret it later