More Weird Music Please

Joni’s Song for Sharon, from a park bench

Something different today, banged out on a park bench in just a few minutes.

I’ve heard this song a hundred times, but this morning on Flo’s NTS show it really struck me how weird it is, how long, there isn’t really a chorus, it just keeps chugging, unspooling its tale to a backdrop of shifting drums and bouncing, twangy guitars heavy with bass.

I’m not a music critic, but I love music, often times music that is weird, sometimes because it is weird. Poptimism, that flowering of acceptance of pop amongst the Pitchfork and Rob Gordon types (guilty), was in many ways a good thing but it made it harder to find time to defend and proselytize for the weird music that surely continues to be made and enjoyed but has an increasingly harder time finding its audience in the tragedy that is the internet commons.

I miss it, and I think a lot of you do too. The most fun thing about Geese (yes) and Getting Killed and Heavy Metal to me was/is the weirdness, which was both initially intriguing in that “wtf is this” way and the thing that kept me coming back for more. I suspect it was that special kind of weirdness, combined with (sure) their inbuilt appeal and (ok) a marketing budget that got everyone so excited, myself included. I liked how I could literally feel my own sustained attention to its weirdness push my sensibilities in new ways - Captain Beefheart, who I’d long tried and failed to love, suddenly made sense.

I think we all know why weirdness has been crowded out, and rather than expound on the ills of social media or dig up the scientific studies showing creativity dims under observation, rather than edit this into oblivion like I usually do, I’ll just let this stay weird, and ask for more weird music please.