Such Dizzying Movement

Job Satisfaction

In Which: Our Hero Finds A Man Younger Than He Who Is Lost In The Murky Depths Of A Self Perpetuating Paradoxical Job, And Realises The Fate Of The World Is At Stake.

I just met a 22 year old career advisor. What? Something about this seems distinctly wrong. How can someone who is only 22 give advice on careers? I asked him this and he told me he just advises people which courses to go on, ‘and stuff’. Now I don’t know about you, but I along with pretty much everybody I know (with a few notable exceptions) spent vast amounts of money on completely pointless degrees – not a waste of money exactly, because obviously we all had a great time getting spectacularly drunk and talking about how amazing anarchism is, but not exactly a career enhancer. I don’t see how someone who has done exactly the same thing can preach to little kids about the best way to advance in life.

Maybe this is the government’s way of pumping more people into university – employ a youngster who knows nothing about careers except for the merits of doing a degree or further education course. Simply by employing him he will be under the belief that a university degree is the answer to all of life’s uncertainties, and tell everyone else to take one. By the time the kids have finished their degrees and got a job in Tesco, they’ll be too old to go to the young person’s careers centre, and thus career man will never know. Beautiful.

There is an inherent cyclical irony in the fact that someone’s career path is defined by telling other people what their careers are. Surely the only career he knows properly is the career advice career. If kids go to him for advice, will they eventually end up as career advisers? Is this the fate of our planet, to all eventually become career advisers, millions of us telling each other what to do and how to achieve it?

God I’m a boring wanker.

On an entirely separate note, having written this, I realise what a brilliant word distinctly is, simply because of the cluster of consonants ‘nctly’.

Trumpets

So I've recently started hooting along to some songs by the Hair Traffic Control boys, playing at a couple of gigs, trumpeting on one or two songs, writing some new things. It has raised an interesting question in my mind - does trumpet work in a rock music setting?

The most common sighting of trumpets is in classical or jazz music. I think there is an obvious reason for this. The timbre of a trumpet is incredibly bright, narrow and piercing. And thus completely different to the timbre of guitars. So it sticks out like a sore thumb in a guitar band. As a classical or brass band player, one spends much of one's time adding melody and warmth to an overall sound. This is difficult if your sound is the most prominent and audible feature.

So should you attempt occasional trumpet lines in a guitar band; no brass no brass no brass and then a solo on top which stands out because of its loudness and textural difference? Jazz manages to blend both textural backing and prominent soloing because the timbres are all so similar, so in fact the reverse happens - there is a constant warmth of everything blended, and then when a solo is needed, everything else cuts out, leaving space.

Not to say that classical instruments are unwelcome in rock – string instruments turn up all the time and work very well (Grammatics, Nirvana, Cats in Paris, to name a few live acts), but then the timbre of a string instrument is, for obvious reasons, much closer to a guitar than a trumpet is.

I can only think of a couple of instances of trumpets in rock, and I'm not sure if any of them really work well. For the most part it's just gratuitous. The places it does work, is where there are other unusual instruments playing too, and it all contributes to a big twee mêlée, no one timbrely independent instrument sticking out over the rest. e.g. Calexico, Belle and Sebastian, Sufjan Stevens, &twee &twee...*

So with trumpet in a guitar band, is it best to stick to quiet constant playing adding warmth and subtle melody, or stick to obvious melodies over the top, punctuated bits of trumpet, to add to the 'epic' bits. The trouble with the first is that it is almost impossible for the trumpet to blend in entirely, and can easily end up as a constant unchanging horn mush at the back of the sound. The problem with the second is that it can sound crap, out of place and gratuitously baroque. Or Mexican, depending on how you play it. Or Christ forbid, you could end up with some horrible genre-fusion jazz-rock monster on your hands.

The reason, I should point out at this juncture, that jazz fusion worked (if for some reason you think it did...) was that it wasn't one jazz instrument with a rock band, or vice versa, but a mingle of equal parts of each.

This all also raises an important point. Either because the idea of a trumpet in rock, or simply the sound itself is so unusual, is it likely that a band would be defined because of its sound, not because of the quality of its music? This would obviously be a bad thing. I can think of a few people who are defined by their sound. And I'm not talking about style here, obviously I can think of plenty of people who have carved their own style, and it's a truly impressive and wonderful identity. But the Zutons? The Darkness? – a very distinct sound. I'm really just saying it's all too easy for it to be a gimmick.

Should a trumpet play in a rock band?

To be continued I suppose... I'll work on it.

*In my mind this is a hilarious pun on &c. &c.

Hommage à Picasso

Listening around today at work I discovered this, which made me extremely happy. Many sister bands to these people, most of which are all very lovely and twee Brighton folk, but these kids kick ass - really nice melodic songs. What really made me happy was that they joined in on the amazing Black Cab Sessions, which I'd neverh heard of before, but it transpires it also involves a session from Brian Wilson. Can't argue with that. Genius.

The Miserable Rich