On Making Weird Music

There's a song on one volume of Frank Zappa's You Can't Do That On Stage, Anymore series called "You Call That Music?" It's a live recording of an early Mothers freak out that obviously left some in the audience a bit miffed (hence the question in the title). That was running through my head as I read a post on a new New York Times blog (sadly, one of the ones hidden behind the subscribers firewall), The Score, called "What Kind of Music Is This, Anyway?"

The author is Michael Gordon, a modern "classical" composer who admits that his composing is driven be a desire to do something completely different. As he puts it, in discussing what he looks for in music:

Perhaps it is a blessing and perhaps it is a curse, but “normal” music doesn’t hold my interest for very long. I may like it, but it doesn’t engage me. I may admire it, I may enjoy it, but I can’t listen to it for sustenance. For sustenance I need unusual music. It doesn’t matter what style or category, but it has to jump out at me and say, You haven’t heard me before, so listen up.

I can sympathize with that, to some extent. I can enjoy a lot of different kinds of music in different venues - as background music, film scores, on the radio, etc. But very little of it sticks to my musical ribs the way (in general) progressive rock does. And while what I listen to doesn't sound nearly as out there as Gordon's stuff appears (admittedly, I've never heard it), for lots of people I know it's "weird" music.

Sometimes I forget how weird is seems and subject people to it unknowingly. Sorry, honey!