The Muse and The Music

I have not been to a Bjork concert in years, but I happened to stumble upon a Bjork concert recording on NPR’s All Song’s Considered this morning. I spent this Sunday listening to the concert in its entirety, and the experience brought me back to the time I first discovered Bjork’s voice as well as many others in my youth that have affected me in both profound and subtle ways. It is funny that I can clearly recall the moments I first discovered music whose voice would both shape me from within and without. My first encounters with these voices brought me in contact with the muse within music because I left these experiences both inspired and uplifted to another plane in my imagination. If you really know me, I spend a good portion of my time within my head, and the songs created by these artists were the soundtracks to my daydreams. These songs crept into the lines of my journals. These songs transported me to dreamlike worlds, and I am thankful for that experience.

Bjork | Debut

I vividly remember the person that brought Bjork’s music into my field of vision – Liz Gonzalez. Back in our HS science class, she mentioned a musician she thought I would enjoy in passing. Liz promised to bring Bjork’s cassette tape (that’s how we rolled back in the early ’90s) to our freshman science class the next day. When she handed over a cassette of Bjork’s Debut album, I did not think anything of the exchange. I will admit that I was taken aback and unimpressed by Bjork’s cover. In my mind, this woman had a striking resemblance to Michael Jackson. So, I threw the cassette in my Jansport and went about my business for the entire school day.

When I came home that day, I remember the darkness enveloping my room due to an overcast sky outside. A heavy rain assaulted anything that came in its path including myself a few minutes prior. After changing my drenched clothes, I closed my venetian blinds, slided the cassette into the cassette deck of my cheap stereo, pressed play, and laid down in bed as the rain rapped and tapped on my bedroom window. When I heard Bjork’s voice for the first time, it was over for me. The music had me at ‘Human Behavior” – the first track. Bjork’s voice encompassed so many things at once – pure force, whispering delight, and a child-like quality. Her voice held a peculiar quietness that hit me directly like a laser. By track 3 (“Venus as a Boy”), Bjork’s voice and lyrics held me both captive and captivated. When I heard the mesmerizing call of her voice in “Come to Me”, I reached the point of no return. Man, I was in love – that voice was dangerous. I felt entangled in the barb wire of a dream that I dared not free myself from…My mind was now caught up in her words, the symbols, the quiet….too many experiences to recount.

In comparison to her later albums, the sonic landscapes explored in Debut would merely scratch the surface of Bjork’s reach and potential , yet this album remains one of my favorites because it brought me in contact with Bjork’s music for the first time and not the last time.

Portishead | Dummy

Back in my freshman year of high school, I used to carpool with a neighborhood friend, Ryan Sealy. Every morning, his dad would drive us to school in his stretched-out, mahogany Cadillac.

Freshman year was not easy for me. At the time, I loathed riding the bus to school because of my fears in interacting with people I did not know. I was painfully shy at the time, so I felt like a dead man walking when heading to the bus stop every morning. When Ryan offered to let me ride with him and his father, I jumped at the prospect. On most occasions, Ryan’s father would subject us to yawnfest that is AM talk radio while we commuted under a veil of early morning darkness. On one particular morning commute in October, Ryan asked to change the station. Surprsingly, Ryan’s dad conceded. As Ryan scanned through each station, he stumbled upon a local station college radio station.

I was soon accosted by the trembling sound of a stringed instrument that my ears were not accustomed to hearing. Was this sound a hammered dulcimer? I didn’t know at the time. Nonetheless, I felt transported to another plane and headspace in the back of an old Cadillac at 6am. I then heard a voice that lifted me further…

To pretend no one can find
The fallacies of morning rose
Forbidden fruit, hidden eyes
Courtesies that I despise in me
Take a ride, take a shot now

Cos nobody loves me
It’s true
Not like you do

In one swoop, I felt disoriented. The hazy voice layered over cryptic lyrics left me yearning for more. The song lingered within me for days. I later learned that the song that passed through my consciousness was called “Sour Times” by a little known band (at the time) Portishead fronted by Beth Gibbons. I did not realize it at the time, but “Sour Times” became my gateway drug into a genre later coined Trip Hop.

Stereolab | Dots and Loops

I discovered the hypnotic, luscious, drone of Laetitia Sadier and the melodies of Stereolab in my Chicago/Evanston college days. Before the creation of iTunes and iPods which marked a definitive watershed in how people attained music, I used to frequent the now closed Dr. Wax Record Stores (RIP) in both Evanston (northern suburb of Chicago) and Chicago. I happened to find Stereolab at the Evanston location. Whenever I ventured into Dr. Wax, I never knew what I was going to buy whenever I passed its threshold. I would spend hours perusing the albums in the store. I had no guide. I had no compass. l would choose albums based on what my intuition would tell me. In those times, you did not have the luxury of listening to the albums (except if you went to Wherehouse Music – remember them) or the safety blanket of iTunes . At most, you could ask the cashier about the album; but, unless you were familiar with the artist’s work, it was a gamble and $12+. One day, I happened to see this little lime green album jutting out of ‘S’ section. It appeared that someone had picked up the album but failed to properly put the album back. I had a quick look over the cover and decided to buy the album on a whim. With each song, I felt that I was caught in limbo between the futuristic and the mod. I remember the well constructed layers of each track whether in instrumentatal or vocals. Through repeated listens, I detected hints of bossa nova, Marxist politics, French, the dated and the futuristic, the 60s/90s. Stereolab’s music was a marriage of contradictions. Each listen was never the same.

New Order | Technique

I would say that my best friend in elementary school was a boy by the name of Ben “Yung” Wu. I don’t know why, but we were inseparable. We were known as the two fastest boys in 3rd grade. I used to spend countless hours watching Taiwanese soap operas with him and his mom. I laugh to myself just thinking about it. Imagine this little African boy eating noodles while watching a Taiwanese drama with his best friend and mother who would speak to him in English but would pepper the conversation with a few, choice words or phrases in Mandarin Chinese (as if he understood).

I remember the days of playing Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, and Kid Icarus on Ben’s Nintendo until the first glimpses of night came around the corner indicating the time for my departure.

Ben had an older brother, Wei. While Ben was in elementary school, Wei was in middle school, so they existed in totally separate worlds. Wei acted in the same fashion as most older bothers do to their little brothers at that age; he would either torment or disregard Ben. As was expected, my interactions with Wei were very limited. One time, I vividly remember Ben and I being pointedly rebuked by Wei for finding his stash of International Playboy magazines in his closet (Ben and I were aware of American Playboys, but we were surprised that they could be found in different countries). On most occassions, Wei would acknowledge Ben and I with a nod, head to the kitchen for a quick bite, and run upstairs to the retreat within his room. Usually Wei’s bedroom door would be closed; but, on some occasions, the door would be left ajar just a little bit – just enough for me to hear the music creeping out of his stereo into my consciousness.

It was sitting in Ben’s living room that I first heard the sounds of Nitzer Ebb, Joy Division, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, The Cure, and New Order; yet, I did not know these were the names of those bands at the time. I heard those voices, guitars, synths, melodies, and rhythms while I remained stationary in my spot playing the video games of my past. Whenever I heard a song that I had never heard before, I felt the urge to walk upstairs and ask Wei directly of the song’s origin. But, I was painfully shy at the time, so I did not move a muscle. One day, I could not take it anymore. I heard two songs that I had to learn more about, so I mustered the courage to walk upstairs and knock on Wei’s door. Wei appeared shocked by my presence since we rarely exchanged words. In a meek voice, I asked him the name of the band playing on his stereo. Wei smiled and told me that he was listening to New Order’s album Technique. The two songs I had heard were called “Vanishing Point” and “Round and Round”. The names of the songs seemed like magic to my childlike mind. I felt that I had gained a particular power in learning the name of those two songs. To my delight, Wei offered to make me a copy of the album on a blank cassette. I rushed home that night to listen to the sounds of New Order until I drifted to sleep.

Whenever I happen to hear those two New Order songs by chance, my mind is immediately brought back to that place of memory. Anyone familiar with New Order is easily recognize the familiar timbre of Bernard Sumner’s voice and the bass of Peter Hook. Even as I listen to this album today, it does not seem dated at all considering the album came out in the late 1980′s. New Order was indeed ahead of its time.

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