Variations on a theme

I enjoy music. It's the rhythm ape in me. I suppose there are some people out there that enjoy silence, or random nature noises more than music. But I am squarely in the corner of music. Music is powerful to me, the right music can bring me up, give me instant daydreams of some sort or another. The wrong music (usually broken tempo Jazz), can make me feel physically ill. Hot flashes, headache, nausea. It's pretty cool actually.

I know, news flash. Most of humanity has an affinity for music. Thank goodness! I have come to recognize some particular niches that my love of music inhabits. And it causes me worry on occasion. Am I too simplistic? Are the chemicals of my profession finally effecting my poor unused neurons?

I like variations on a theme. More specifically: remakes. ~cringe~

It's not a sickness, I assure you. The bitter ol' world weary traveller in me says, "There is nothing new under the sun to see." But, I am proven wrong on that all the time. New combinations of melody and rhythm continue to delight, and horrify.

I love the taking of a song I like, or even better, hate; and changing it somehow. It delights my senses. Like finding money in an old coat or something, my soul purrs.

It goes past a simple live version of a song. I like it when someone really hijacks the whole affair. Changes the tempo, the instrumentation, the works.

Ben Folds Five did a version of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit", and it is worth a listen.

I'm not a huge fan of rap, there I said it. I listen in sometimes, interested in riffs I may hear, or some of the poetry lurking behind all the hype. But as a genre, No.

So that song is one that I didn't hear in it's original form before I heard Ben's version. And I probably never would have. Which is the whole deal for me. The fundamental changing of something familiar, or not, in that case. (I love contradicting myself)

Along the same lines, one of my favorite "Mtv Unplugged" sessions was a very early one, which featured, among others, LL Cool J. I would never have imagined rap sounding remotely like that.

Well, the long and short of it is that there isn't anything wrong with me, I guess, for liking that sort of musical variation. After all it's been done for hundreds of years, with great success.

Variation, without recycling, that would be the key I think. I don't know where that fine line is though. To be explored some other day.

Cheers.

WW