Music

Claudia Gorbman, in her ground-breaking and much-admired book Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (1987), invites us to imagine an alternative cinematic universe, one in which music has never played a part. Imagine if this were the norm, and imagine, after years of being accustomed to films in which music was absent altogether, attending a film such as the 1940s weepie Mildred Pierce and hearing the ebb and flow of Max Steiner’s luscious orchestral score. ‘What sheer artifice this would appear to the viewer! What a pseudo-operatic fantasy world! What excess: every mood and action rendered hyperexplicit by a Wagnerian rush of tonality and rhythm! What curious music, as well – robbed of its properly musical structure, it modulates and changes color, chameleonlike, in moment-to-moment deference to the narrative’s images.’ Of course, film music does not always defer to the narrative’s images, but Gorbman makes a good point: our willingness to admit music – music which emanates from a source external to the action on screen – as a perfectly normal constituent of film. It is surprising that we don’t find music in film surprising.

In his ‘mongrel memoir’, How to Make Gravy, singer–songwriter Paul Kelly describes the ‘pretendies’ that can ambush a musician on stage: ‘One minute you’re putting a song over to the crowd, totally inside what you’re doing, everything meshing, then suddenly you’re adrift, floating above yourself and wondering what on earth you’re doing there.’

A discussion of the outstanding albums of the 1980s might begin with the Shanachie label’s Mbaqanga compilation The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, 4AD’s Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares by the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Choir, and American Clavé’s Tango: Zero Hour by Astor Piazzolla (all 1986), three signal moments in the packaging of global music for Western sensibilities. One could go on to cite such landmarks as Brian Eno’s On Land (1982), Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa (1984) and John Zorn’s Spillane (1987). Add to these Joy Divison’s Closer (1980), Gang of Four’s Solid Gold (1981), Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime (1984), and the decade is beginning to look superior. Australia, too, produced various near-perfect LPs – the likes of Mr Uddich Schmuddich Goes to Town by Laughing Clowns (1982), Born Sandy Devotional by the Triffids, Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express by The Go-Betweens, Free Dirt by Died Pretty (all 1986), Cold and the Crackle by Not Drowning Waving (1987) and Tender Prey by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1988) while New Zealand’s The Chills deserve a mention, courtesy of their Brave Words (1987). To this fledgling list, author Jeff Apter would presumably demand the addition of True Colours (1980) and Time and Tide (1982) by Split Enz, as well as Crowded House’s self-titled début (1986) and Temple of Low Men (1988), each of which is accorded canonical status in Together Alone, his new biography of Tim and Neil Finn. This ought to be a matter of personal taste buttressed by (in the appropriate forum, such as a book like this) robust argument, but there is precious little of the latter in Together Alone. Critical analysis is promised but not delivered. Instead, readers are left to trawl through a skip-load of secondary material, including snatches from the omnipresent Glenn A. Baker and one-too-many customers at Amazon.com, in order to learn what supposedly makes this music definitive.

Winner of the Independent ‘Music Book of the Year’ for 2009,The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles is a collection of thirteen essays dedicated to arguably the most significant pop/rock group of the last century. It follows such recent tomes as Walter Everett’s two-volume The Beatles as Musicians (1999–2001), Devin McKinney’s Magic Circles (2003), the Beatles’ self-penned Anthology (2000), Kenneth Womack’s and Todd F. Davis’ Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four (2006) and Olivier Julien’s Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today(2009). One might, therefore, question whether yet another substantial volume can add anything of interest – in fact, some of the contributors to the Companion also appear in Julien’s book – but the Companion is a most worthwhile addition to ‘Beatleology’. All chapters have merits, but as the contributors come from a variety of disciplines, the overall tenor of the volume is uneven: some pieces (such as Bruce Spizer’s unreferenced ‘Apple Record’) are aimed at a general audience, while others (such as Walter Everett’s ‘Any Time at All: The Beatles’ Free-Phrase Rhythms’) are suited to musically literate readers. Inevitable overlap in information occurs at times.

House of Hits is an historical account of the family whose company helped change Australian music. The book is written by Jane Albert, a former journalist who, while wanting to respect her family’s ‘privacy’, nonetheless felt the Australian public was owed ‘some insight into the people who created such an inspiring business’.

German commentators have often asserted – not without some justification – that pas­sages of the established Schlegel-Tieck translation of Shakespeare are superior to the original. A contentious proposi­tion, perhaps. But in the case of the volume under review, which first appeared in German in 2004, there is no doubt that although, as the publisher’s note points out, ‘a section devoted to a discussion on the debate … about the initial republication and publication of Walter Benjamin’s work in Germany from the mid fifties’ has been omitted, the resulting book is clearer and more user-friendly than the original, with its arguments shown to better advan­tage. A chronology of the Benjamin-Brecht relationship (relocated more sensibly at the front of the book), plus a map and time chart of the two writers, make it easier to refer back to the stages and dates of the relationship, along with – so crucial to an understanding of the course of the friendship and temper of the debates between the two principal participants, as well other involved contemporaries – the stations of the exile years between 1933, 1941 (Benjamin’s death), and 1947 (Brecht’s return to Europe).

Nick Cave, against the odds, is one of the great survivors of Australian music. Cave, who made his first recording in 1978 and established his international reputation after moving to London in 1982, has experienced critical and popular success with a variety of musical ventures including The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Grinderman and, most notably, The Bad Seeds. It is a measure of Cave’s durability that it is difficult to think of any other Australian rock act, with the exception of AC/DC, that has maintained an international profile for such an extended period. It is also salutary to consider how few of the international acts that emerged from the punk and post-punk moment of the late 1970s are still making high-profile and critically acclaimed music.

            Cave’s ambitions have not been limited to music. As the dust jacket to Cultural Seeds proclaims, he is ‘now widely recognized as a songwriter, musician, novelist, screenwriter, curator, critic, actor and performer’. With the years, Cave has won a larger audience as the range and scope of his talent have been manifest in various forms of cultural production. His oeuvre includes works of fiction (And the Ass Saw the Angel, 1989; The Death of Bunny Munro, 2009) and a film script (The Proposition, 2005).

Why do otherwise sane human beings decide to become music critics? It’s often to jump on the PR treadmill of free passes to gigs and free records for review. There’s the writer who wants to be closer to his idol, the careerist who sees it as one more step to editorial power, or the music junkie who’s compelled to make the leap from mute fanaticism to the written word.

Writing about music, it is frequently said, is in a parlous state, with ever-falling word counts contributing to the dumbing down of the genre. A publication such as Extempore, focusing on Australian jazz, should be well placed to step into the breach, but its second issue struggles to assert its importance.