Something that is always interesting, as an artist, is how people try to compare your work to someone else's. Everyone does this - I do this - it's just natural to want to relate somehow, through something you already know. Sometimes the comparisons make me happy; most often they don't make any sense to me. Sometimes they infuriate me. Musicians I've never heard of, or I've never listened to, or worse of all, musicians I can't stand. Lots of singer songwriters play the piano. But with almost all of them, and I say this factually, it's arpeggiated simple chords, plunky triads on the quarter, 8th notes on the last beat and a half - sometimes syncopated, the occasional 'dramatic' 7th added in, major for happy and minor for sad, repetitive and predictable. Sitting in doctor's waiting rooms, standing in line at the grocery store, there it is, over and over and over and over again. I IV I IV I IV ad nauseum, and then a I VI II V I in the chorus. My GOD!
So look, I'm just gonna say it. I am not a Tori Amos fan. Never have been. Never could get through an album. (No disrespect.) Sarah McLachlan, not a fan anymore. "Fumbling towards Ecstacy" was a masterpiece and I'll never stop loving it, but most everything after that doesn't do it for me. But people compare me to those 2 women all the time. I'm hoping that's just because it's their only point of reference. Because honestly, there ain't NOTHING in my music that resembles what they do. People say, 'No, I definitely hear some Tori Amos in your music.' No man, no you don't. There is no Tori Amos in my music, because I have never listened to Tori Amos, have never liked Tori Amos, would not ever have been influenced by Tori Bloody Amos. Dig?
All right, rant over.
I have 4 major female songwriting heros: Kaki King, PJ Harvey, Joanna Newsom, and Bjork.
Kaki King: A kind of demon guitarist and songwriter, the antithesis of primping diva. She writes the most beautiful, complex, moving music. Not pretty - but really beautiful in the larger sense - to the senses and all the other faculties that have no name. I have spent so many hours walking around this island with her music in my ears. First time I heard her, I remember being hit by a kind of stunned dumbness. Cause there just ain't nobody to compare her to. Watch this: Kaki King and more Kaki King
PJ Harvey: a through-and-through authentic irreverent un-self-conscious performer. She doesn't write music to please - it makes me happy to listen to her music even when I don't like it, because it's just so her own. She delivers everything with total, raw conviction. She's a little scary too. I like women that are scary. PJ Harvey - rid of me
PJ Harvey - the piano
Joanna Newsom: this woman is no slouch. Epic, dream-like songs, bizarre and floridly ballsy. Brilliant poetry. Her voice is strange and captivating, and her 1st 2 albums gave me hundreds of hours of totally enraptured listening. I'm not in love with her latest album, but I'm okay with not always enjoying or getting what I want from artists. She deserves her freedom- and what the hell do I know? But just listen to this: Joanna Newsom. So excited to see what she'll do next.
Bjork: it's obvious. She's a genre of music unto herself. She's Queen of some unnamed country. I actually cannot listen to her very much anymore, because most of her songs are time capsules that take me back to really heavy potent times in my teenage years, when I listened to her constantly. The instrumentation, her voice, ah God - it was all a revolution. Bjork
And an honourable mention goes to...
Fiona Apple: where did she go? I suspect/worry/have this feeling that she hasn't been well. Her album "When the Pawn" was amazing, but since then I feel she's been the victim of overzealous producers. The arrangements are ridiculous, just not good. The piano lost its role, drowned out by fluttery flutes, too much percussion etc. I hope she finds herself again - she can be such a powerful performer. This was a good year for Fiona: Fiona Apple
Other musicians that I am owe a lot of influence to: Brad Mehldau, Neko Case, Jeff Buckley, Keith Jarrett, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Esbjorn Svensson, Tin Hat, Billy Holiday, Nick Drake, Edith Piaf, Siouxsie Sioux, Alice Babs, Bad Plus, Billy Strayhorn, Andrew Bird, Radiohead, Astor Piazzolla, Avishai Cohen, Pinback, Death Cab, Stravinsky, Ravel, Part, Grieg, Faure, Debussy, Schumann, Whitacre, Scriabin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Villa-Lobos, Barber, Mozart, Reich, Copland, Glass, Brahms.
Feeling somewhat better today. It's been nice to have time/the excuse just to lie in bed and watch youtube videos of my favourite musicians - get all stoked up with ideas and inspiration. By the way, today is Monday, not Sunday as this post says. Which means I only have 2 days of work left before holidays, and then my trip. Crazy. I have a couple of musical goals for my time away. One is to re-learn my pieces on a small, portable, non-weighted-keys keyboard (surprisingly, no small task), and to play standing up. This'll be weird when I've had 25 years of sitting at a piano. I also want to play at least one gig while I'm there, with said keyboard, in said position, but it's not manditory. My other goal of course is to write more music. Some people have been saying that my lyrics are very very dark and that they'd like to hear me write a happy song. Well, I've tried. But fuck that. Writing 'dark' songs makes me happy, so there. Everyone loves darkness - it's at least half of what we are.
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