jbow
I guess I am what they call "old and in the way" (an old Church joke). I was singing Hank Williams "I Saw The Light" today... unrelated but same sort of great music, really in the same vein I think... and "I'm So Lonesome I could Die".
I am as well in many ways ... although I tend to try and hide/speak from a more literary/artistic historic perspective of things -- which you saw in the review. Like the work my dad was known for, it is "quotidian" ... and this is not something that everyone knows what it is or what it means ... but basically it means that not all creativity is 100% accidental and that there are things, movements and history that helps that piece come about.
Neil Young, is an American Peter Hammill ... no biggie there ... and you know where their work comes from ... the inside ... and that's that!
A song for song's sakes ... is nothing to me. So, while I may like to hear a lot of things, up to and including this and that and that and that ... many times they fall off the face of the vision of mine, because it is just an empty song ... the vision behind it is ... just a song, not a reality!
I think that all of the stuff I like is chock-ful of "meaning", because my whole life has been around literature and art, and all of it ... ALL OF IT ... has some meaning and is the reason why they are remembered! NOTHING, stands out more for us, than when it hits you in the heart ... and you feel it ... and while it is possible that a song can do that to you, or anyone else, generally that song will stay with you all your life -- changes or not -- because it is "a part of you"!
This is the reason why some music I won't review or care about ... what am I going to say about it? ... that it is a pretty song for a pretty song's sakes? To me, like most arts, that has always been a sort of experiment, to learn something from it ... and not always necessary ... IF ... you can already see things inside.
This is the main reason why the film Woodstock is so important to me ... the music meant something, and in the end, we listen to what is supposed to be the most important piece of music ... and it is done in front of trash! The meaning? ... we don't give a damn, and I believe that Jimi knew it, although he had heard Toni McPhee do Amazing Grace the same way a couple of weeks prior to it in London! (There was a precedent! Or inspiration!).
Not only have we forgotten the meaning of it all ... we don't care, and to me that is worse than anything else! Just like there is when we have a topic that has some value to it, and it is interrupted by someone that ... probably doesn't care ... and that has a tendency to bug me, and I try hard not to do that to anyone else!