This post is about a recent observation I had while digitizing my music.
Confession. I own about 800 vinyl albums. I used to be a record buyer for Tower Records, and I just have a LOT of vinyl. I've been digitizing it and cataloging it so I can eventually sell it.
The experience of listening to the entire catalog of various artists, has been interesting for me. For instance, after listening to 32 Beatle's albums, I really felt they were repetitive and redundant. I know, blasphemy. I REALLY love the Beatles. I have 32 vinyl album's including the Blue in Blue, the Red in Red and the White in White vinyl. But - there was a LOT of repetition between the albums.
Contrast that with how I felt after listening to 43 Duran Duran albums. I was really impressed with how much they really tailored each pressing to specific audiences and really made sure each pressing was unique in some way. With the Beatles, there was a LOT of rehashing existing materials.
But - those aren't my brilliant observations. My first observation that I want to talk about came after listening to the 11 Stan Kenton albums I was gifted by a fan of the big band I used to play in.
Observation 1: Creativity Requires Structure
I used to play in a college big band while I was in high school. I know - I was advanced. I spent 3 to 5 nights a week playing big band music with adults while I was a teenager. Yes, I was pretty good. No, I didn't pursue music as a career, though it was an option.
The band I was in - was gifted the Stan Kenton arrangement library by the Stan Kenton Foundation. He was committed to helping young people learn music. What this means is - we had all his charts. All of them. A chart is the musical arrangements for each instrument. And the arrangements matter. It's an orchestration of which instrument plays which notes when to create the harmonies, melodies, rhythms etc that make up the music.
Kenton's arrangements are amazing and if you spend any time, or a lot of time with them, you get to know the different arrangers and each instrument has their favorite. Listening to Kenton's albums, not only brought me back to my high school days and lots of really good memories, it also elicited thoughts about the arrangements that I know so well - as a musician.
1) The arrangements are wonderful – They highlight each part of the orchestra but help them work together. The provide structure!
2) They are really fun to play. Not only because the tunes are so classic, but mostly because of the synergy created by the structure of the arrangement when played by a big band. Musicians know there are moments of synergy that occur when playing in a group that are just - transcendent. Like, you are beyond yourself embedded in the music itself. This happens ALL the time with Kenton's arrangements. ALL the time. There are entire dances I only remember as a sort of hallucination because of this effect.
3) The amount of creativity that flourishes under the structure of the arrangement is obvious. The arrangements allow for improvisation. While it's important for people to stick to the structure, the structure allows for and creates space for - creativity. This is super important I think. A lot of people think of structure as a negative. As anti-creativity. The opposite is true. In music - structure is what creates the creativity.
4) This one is about Kenton's management style. He created space for the musicians to thrive and be creative. For goodness sakes, at one point he had a line of french horns in his band.
There are so many famous alumni from his orchestra. He encouraged his musicians who wanted to try making arrangements to do so. I'm a saxophone player, so I'm partial to the Lennie Neihaus arrangements. He encouraged talent to flourish. He didn't constrain them, though they were required to work within the structure of the orchestra.
Structure creates space for creativity to flourish.
I recently digitized my Spandau Ballet collection including my collection of their 12 inch singles. Spandau Ballet is another band that went to great lengths to make sure the long form versions of their music were special. The singles reflect that.
There were a few songs I didn't remember as they don't appear on any of the studio albums. Looking up the more obscure music I realized I need to talk about - owning your pretentiousness. The song in question is: The Freeze.
Forgive me, but if you don't have a musical background some of this may not make sense, but trust me, it's a big deal.
The Freeze is super incredibly pretentious and it's glorious! Member Steve Norman said of it, "It’s another of those songs you can only write when you’ve suddenly found a tribe of like-minded, disillusioned teenagers."
How pretentious is it? It only has one verse, and there is no chorus. The lyrics to the verse, don't make any sense at all. Seriously - it opens with: "Blue sing la lune, sing lagoon." It's sung in a deadpan voice and it's a tongue twister.
I never thought to pay attention to the lyrics before because - this is a euro white boy disco funk number. It's one of those - it's got a good beat and you can dance to it - I'll give it a 5 out of 5 songs. But, as an adult, who has written songs, played in a punkabilly band, I can tell you, Steve Norman was correct. This is a level of pretentiousness that only teens can muster. And the best part about it is that singer Tony Hadley makes it seem - perfectly normal.
Did I mention it has no chorus? Most songs are verse (A) and chorus (B) with an occasional bridge (C). The standard format of a pop song is AB AB C AB B. This son has no chorus. It kind of sort of has a bridge. There is a 2 finger I don't know how to play a synthesizer but I'm going to play a solo on one anyway - solo in it. And yet, it works. It's a great song that isn't actually a song. Again, it's not a song you sing along to. It's a song you dance to. The
It's gloriously pretentious and it works BECAUSE and only because it's pretentious.
Lesson - if you are going to do pretentious - go for it. Go over the top. Own it. Be cocky about it. Make 2 finger synth solos the highlight. Don't hold back. If you don't go all in, it will not work out well. You have to own the cockiness of it all.
Also - Tony is has a beard in the video.
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