music

Little Scream — Black Cloud

March 3, 2015 By Mark 1 Comment

In late November of 2013, for the second year in a row, I found myself staggering to the end of a six-month battle with the same massive document. As had long become habit, largely to preserve some tenuous connection with life outside the confines of the virtual pages that were my waking reality, I spent much of my writing time listening to several custom stations on Pandora. While I enjoyed the great majority of the songs that played, most of them came and went without intruding on consciousness.

From time to time, however, a particular song would grate on me until I silenced it, and on even rarer occasions a song would seize and hold my attention. Among that small number of mesmerizing songs, before and since, none stands apart like Black Cloud by Laurel Sprengelmeyer, who goes by the stage name Little Scream. In the moment, sixteen months ago, it was arresting in its beauty and ability to transport, and I still feel that way today.

While looking up information on the artist back then I searched for a video but could only find uploads by others, and I didn’t want to link to something that wasn’t officially released. I did find additional songs and performances by Little Scream, but Black Cloud was not among them. Recently, however, I found this:

I listen to a lot of music and I know what I like. Give me the choice between a beat and a groove and I go groove every time. But there’s another thing music can do, and that’s take you on a trip, and that’s what happens each time I listen to Black Cloud. I’m not sure what the musical word for that would be, but my word would be storytelling.

If Black Cloud takes you somewhere, and you like the trip, tell someone when you get back. Musicians in particular have always had a tough time making a living doing what they love, and I don’t think anyone will ever solve that problem. One problem the internet can solve, however, is making sure musicians and other artists who touch us know that their voices matter and are being heard.

Lyrics here. Site here. Album here. Videos here. Another favorite here.

— Mark Barrett

Pandora Internet Radio

February 27, 2012 By Mark 1 Comment

I have a love-hate relationship with radio. I love when a song comes on that I enjoy, whether it’s one I’m already familiar with or something new. I hate everything else, including songs in heavy rotation, announcers using compression mics, commercials commercials, commercials, and incessant announcements about many songs in a row a station will play before brutalizing me with commercials, commercials, commercials.

I have various writing moods, and not all of them are music compatible. When I’m in the mood for a backing track, however, having a steady stream of songs I don’t have to manage, and that won’t be interrupted by histrionics, feels good. I can’t say I’m more productive while I’m listening to music, but there’s something about music that makes it easier to find a writing groove, and particularly a rewriting groove.

I have a lot of music on my computer, ripped from old CD’s, but even choosing which tracks I want to hear can be a pain. I either have to invest time in creating playlists that go quickly stale or I have to choose something new when each CD ends. I know there are a lot of music options available to me over the internet but until recently I didn’t know somebody had solved all my music problems in a way that would leave me utterly satisfied. And all for free.

If you haven’t tried Pandora yet I urge you to give it a look and a listen. Not only is it a free streaming music service with no commercials, you can program your own stations by adding artists that define the music that station will play. The algorithms behind the selections are not obvious, which I like, but with a little trial and error you can easily create a station that serve up a good mix of artists you included as well as songs from similar artists.

My main list has about twenty artists on it — mostly late 90’s alternative rock. I’ve added a few new artists based on songs that were played outside my playlist, and I’ve removed two artists to keep the station from wandering too far afield. On the whole, however, I couldn’t be more satisfied with the result.

Which leads me to the only caution I have about this service. It’s been a constant in my life that anything I really enjoy disappears soon afterward. If I find a favorite restaurant it either closes or burns to the ground. If I find a favorite food item in the local grocery it is soon discontinued for lack of purchases by anyone other than me. So it stands to reason that by enjoying (let alone recommending) Pandora I am ensuring it will either quickly die or go to a monthly subscription price, at which point I’ll think long and hard about paying for it before deciding not to.

Until then, however, enjoy.

— Mark Barrett

WIG&TSSIP: Ending

September 18, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

If, as Hills stated in the previous section, the middle of a story ends with movement of the main character, then what defines the ending? And how does a writer know when to bring the ending to a close?

The first question is one of scale, and the answer for any narrative form can be found by focusing on the relationship between preparation and effect. The second question concerns sensibility, because ending a story is as much about being a good host as it is about tying up loose ends.

As should be clear by now, Rust Hills believes the short story is the shortest literary form that supports convincing movement of character. Compared with the epic scope of a novel, a short story is a literary close-up focused tightly on a moment of change. It is this close focus that allows the short story to illuminate subtle or delicate moments of transition that might be overwhelmed by a more complicated tableau.

Here’s Hills on the ending of a novel:

After having spent so long with the characters, the reader of a novel has become so interested in them, almost fond of them as acquaintance, that he is not adverse to a long “afterward” or “conclusion” that tells how they married, settled down at Milltown Manor and raised children and grew old together.

And here’s Hills on the ending of a short story:

The short story need only tell us what happened in the story itself, need only make clear the slight movement that has taken place. A lot of modern short stories don’t seem to have much of an end at all, really, not in terms of old-fashioned plotting….

In order to fully realize subtleties in such a limited form, the short story truncates both the beginning and end, concentrating on those elements that are critical to providing convincing movement of character. By doing so the short story not only limits possibilities, it also omits considerable authorial obligation. If you establish almost nothing at the beginning of your story, how much can there be to resolve at the end? [ Read more ]

Scalability Bites Back

September 19, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

One of the first comments posted on this site when it launched a month ago mentioned a book called The Black Swan. So I went to the library and checked out a copy, and I have to say that it’s an interesting read written by an interesting person who’s not shy about letting you know how interesting he is.

I agree with the basic premise: that there’s too much attention paid to meaningless detail, when the really important stuff is usually not indicated by measurable shifts in meaningless detail. Rather, it’s indicated by a one-off event that pretty much everyone seems not to have anticipated at all. (My own take on the heavy use of the bell curve — which the author rightly despises in so many instances — is that the bell curve is a useful indicator of markets and demographics. Since most of our lives and the meaning in and of our lives revolves around money, the bell curve is a useful device for both measuring how much we have and whose reserves we can most easily target.) [ Read more ]

Why the Book Biz Should Be Scared

August 28, 2009 By Mark 10 Comments

Next time you’re about to school someone on how the music industry is or is not like the book business, stop what you’re doing and locate a copy of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, by Steven Knopper.

While you should ideally read the whole thing, at the very least you should flip to Chapter 7 and read it in full before you wax intellectual about all things digitally downloaded. Here’s a key graph:

“These days, [Aimee] Mann uses recording technology that is cheaper than ever and makes licensing deals with major distribution companies simply to put her records in stores and post them on iTunes. She gets to keep control of her master recordings and makes every creative decision about what does and doesn’t go on the record. ‘A lot of artists don’t realize how much money they could make by retaining ownership and licensing directly,’ her manager, Michael Hausman, told ex-Talking Head David Byrne in Wired.”

Why is that a big deal? Because it makes clear that recording artists no longer need partners in order to produce music or deliver it to an audience. Between advances on the recording side, which have made CD-quality audio cheap to produce, and developments on the digital/internet side, which have made CD-quality audio cheap to distribute, there is no longer any obstacle between Aimee Mann and her audience. [ Read more ]