State of the Music: 2011
It was midday in late July, and we had been driving down the same God-forsaken stretch of I-55 for hours, surrounded by cornfields that seemed to stretch to eternity. Occasionally an odd white farmhouse would pop up, maybe a green and yellow tractor could be seen crawling weakly along the horizon, but for the most part, corn. In the distance I could make out a green sign, blurred by dancing heat waves. It read: Memphis, 160 miles. I turned up the radio. I was close.
Road trips are great until you’re out of music. We had driven only 1,500 miles since we left our native Rhode Island, still had 3,000 to go, and we’d already resorted to the radio. The iPods ran dry somewhere east of Chicago, and the CDs didn’t stand a chance. Even the good ones provided maybe ten minutes of entertainment – no one seems to make a full album anymore.
Listening to the radio across hundreds of miles is so frustrating it’s almost laughable. Earlier we’d stumbled across about five different stations claiming to be the place for St. Louis hip-hop, each with a DJ more flamboyant than the last.
“HOT 104.1, ST. LOUIS’ N-N-N-NUMBER ONE HOME FOR HIP-HOP,” DJ Rock-T boasted, amid a torrent of quick cuts between the standard sound effects – foghorns, crowds cheering, sirens.
I must have heard a hundred stations claiming to be at the apex of the airwaves, but the fact of the matter was that they were all the same damn station, on the same damn cycle. “The Show Goes On,” by Lupe Fiasco, followed by “I’m On One,” by DJ Khaled (featuring Drake, of course), maybe with LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” capping it all off.
The same three songs. As endless as the corn that surrounded us on I-55. And now, with 160 miles to go until we reached our destination, my buddy couldn’t take it anymore.
“Dude, could you please turn this [expletive deleted] off?”
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Beale Street, 11:00 PM. It had been hours since the fiery Southern sun vanished behind the skyline, but it was still hot. Damn hot, in fact: 100 degrees on the heat index, and that seemed low. The crowd on the street didn’t seem to mind, judging by what they were wearing. Blue jeans, plaid shirts, occasional cowboy boots. I was a walking swamp, drenched in sweat from head to toe, and I was barely wearing anything. Sleeveless Municipal Waste t-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, purple bandana tied tight around my head to sop up some of the run-off. I got a lot of funny looks.
It was a Sunday but the street was still soaked in neon and swarming with crowds. Outside the restaurants the scent of cigarette smoke wisped through the air, carrying with it notes of barbeque ribs that had been cooking, low and slow, since early in the day.
I had expected all that. Prior to the trip I had read up on Memphis, and two themes always popped up: barbeque and sweltering heat. What I hadn’t counted on was the music. It was a mesmerizingly chaotic racket, spilling out of almost every one of the thirty-odd bars lining the street. Bluesy, jazzy, funky – if you could dream it, it was being played. And it was live. I had been to concerts before, plenty, but I had never heard anything quite like this. The single most unifying factor on this street wasn’t the barbeque, or the clothes, or even the alcohol. It was the music. Music; not being used as pleasant white noise for a cocktail party, or as an excuse to beat someone senseless, but to be watched, absorbed, and enjoyed.
We settled on a little bar towards the end of the street, away from most of the crowds and street performers and commotion. There was a small blues combo playing, fronted by an older man in a pale yellow Hawaiian shirt. He was perched on a stool, face buried in a harmonica. The drummer was playing loose and rough, the trombonist not playing at all, but rather holding his horn high above his head, dancing like some kind of sultry R&B crooner. And the crowd, affixed on the front man, was smiling.
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Such is the state of our music today. Never before have I felt so intensely that I’m being spoon-fed the same pre-packaged songs day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong; I’m fine with LMFAO. “I’m in Miami, bitch!” I’m all about that. But I’m also all about McDonald’s, and you won’t catch me eating it every single day.
No, instead I seek out other food. Maybe I’ll try some fine Italian calamari tonight and go in on some General Tso’s chicken tomorrow. I need to mix it up, try new things. Variety is, after all, the spice of life.
That is what I discovered in Memphis. I’m not crazy about the music that was being played; I’m not a jazz-head or an old-school blues cat. I don’t actively seek out Stevie Wonder cover bands. Yet after seven long hours of driving with nothing but cornfields and Lil Wayne reruns, I needed something fresh, and against all odds the harmonica player in the Hawaiian shirt gave that to me.
So for those of you frustrated by today’s music, or for those of you just looking for something new, something real, fear not. You may find it in an artist you’ve never heard of, or a genre you’ve never sampled. You may even find it in a bar on the end of Beale Street.
Wherever you find it, I promise you this: Good music is still out there. You may just need to do a little digging.
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