Do you really love music?

By BILL CHAISSON
In the Stream
Do you like music? I don’t mean, do you like knowing what is popular, or do you like music that is associated with your favorite television show, or do you like certain bands because you think their look would be a good look for you.

No, I mean, do you like music? To cut straight to the chase, are  you a music nerd? 

Music nerds take many forms. Some are relentless genealogists of their favorite bands. The first level is “who has played with whom?” Then there is who has produced what bands and gave them that particular sound. 

How many Allman Brothers fans, upon learning the Duane Allman didn’t spring from the earth fully formed, went backwards in time to track down Derek and the Dominoes and all the sessions that he sat in on at Muscle Shoals? Same could be said of Jimmy Page; I’m sure it broadened the mind of many Zep fans to sit down and listen to the flat-out weirdness of some of the Yardbirds albums.

And there are those who upon learning that the production style of Bruce Springsteen’s breakout single “Born to Run” was inspired by the style of Phil Spector, suddenly found themselves listening to “girl groups” from the mid-1960s and maybe even the Ramones.

And others are devotees of Brian Eno. Too odd for Roxy Music, he quickly made a name for himself as a producer, massively popularizing, if not outright inventing ambient music, and bringing his layered, airy approach to the likes of Talking Heads and James.

The next level in is to become obsessed with the music itself: what are the roots of a particular sound. This is most obvious with pop music that has strong ethnic antecedents, like reggae, which blended Jamaican mento, ska and rocksteady with jazz and rhythm and blues, and eventually gave rise to dancehall and ragga.

Country music fused elements of the blues, Applachian string band music, and gospel into something that originally was marketed to rural white folks, but with the addition of elements borrowed from the Great American Songbook, rock and roll, and even various Latin traditions, it has grown to appeal to a much wider audience.

Genuine music nerds are never bound to a particular genre. You can never be satisfied listening to heavy metal music all the time. Or rap. Or EDM. Or emo.

Some categories of music aren’t real, but are  marketing categories, like “new wave” or “grunge.” There is famous story out of Seattle about a receptionist at a local indie label who got a call from the New York Times, and they wanted to interview her about “grunge culture.” She made one up on the spot, complete with a vocabulary wedded to a bunch of fake definitions. The NY Times reporter bought it hook, line and sinker and it was years before anyone in Seattle ‘fessed up.

Grunge was artificial as a music category and only marginally more coherent as a fashion category, although that was largely due to the charisma of Kurt Cobain. The Seattle scene included Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and dozens of other bands that really sounded nothing alike beyond being unafraid of combining the crunch and whine of various kinds of classic rock with the ferocity of punk. They unfortunately also overdid the nihilism of punk while having absolutely none of the humor or politics.

I don’t know of an American equivalent, but one streamable source of information for the many roots of British pop music is a series made by BBC 4 starting in 2005. (Most of the episodes are about music, but various other British obsessions like birds and games are also explored.)

Many of these can be found on YouTube and streamed free of charge. There is an entry for the series in Wikipedia to serve as a guide. If you are super nerd, you may insist on watching them in order.

I did not watch them in order. I began with “Punk Britannia,” which is one of the later ones (2012) and it was very endearing to see lengthy interviews with musicians 45 years after their heyday. The vast majority of them did not become wealthy, but many have stayed in the music business in some shape or form. All of them are as full of piss, vinegar, and fun as they were four decades ago.

The series is very much for nerds. Synth Britannia (2009) includes, for example,  Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark talking at length about the purchase and building of his first synthesizer and then writing songs without knowing a thing about music or playing an instrument. He simply loved music and that is enough.