This all started this past Christmas when my Dad received It Might Get Loud, a documentary featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. Amidst the flurry of present opening the movie was found, and my very suprised Dad promptly had a fit over it and exclaimed that it must be played immediately. To say he is a U2 fan would be a giant understatement. Truthfully I paid almost no attention to the beginning of the film. Suffering from a general lack of sleep and too much Christmas cheer and having unwrapped all our presents, I was lounging on the couch chatting with a couple of cousins, sipping water, and deciding upon a thorough dislike of cognac. And then I remember seeing a sunset on the tv, and weathered boards of a house. I don't remember much about it ottherwise, except hearing this music with a rock, blues, bluegrass mixed sound and a haunting quality to it.
Fast forward several months. I'm doing a random search for music, this one I think "songs about vampires". I found a couple that I liked, made a playlist, and promptly forgot about them. Then, happily rediscovered them awhile later. They were "Blue Veins" by The Raconteurs and "Satin In A Coffin" by Modest Mouse. I had those two songs on repeat for several days straight! I had liked other songs by both bands some time ago, but never really given either much thought. This happened to coincide with the creation of my first project for the directing class I am currently in. While coming up with the premise of my project and forming the ideas behind the staging of it I played these songs over and over. And found more songs by each band that I liked. And played them over and over. Then it was performed. And my professor said "I'm getting this maybe 50's vibe, very stylistic, with these icons and this really beatnik, seedy feel".
Hunh?! Beatnik? The only time I have ever heard the word had been in conjunction with seedy, strung out artsy people, and not in a good way. Now, admittedly, my projec
t was a performance art piece (a haiku) that was inspired by the painting The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and my actors were portraying Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, James Dean and Humphrey Bogart. But seedy? Beatnik? I didn't even really know what beatnik meant! So, I came home and Googled it. And the whole idea was interesting. So I read some more. And along the way Googled Jack White and started looking up his other music. And then I found The Dead Weather. And suddenly my mind's eye took a turn and began to want everything to have that weathered quality that I remember from those boards on It Might Get Loud. Luckily it rained for several days straight so the sky was nice and dreary and I realised how much I love the whole idea of A.) the beatnik culture and B.) music like this. Straight Bluegrass is still a bit much for me to digest, but a banjo and fiddle mixed with some awesome rock? Just makes it rock that much better in my opinion. And in listening to all this new music I found that my creativity has just been amped up a notch and I have been writing more in the past two weeks than I have in the past two months. Add to this an extreme influence by David Lynch's work at the moment and my slight obsession with the aforementioned painting, film noir, and creepy victorian stuff and it's quite fun inside my head at the moment!
So I now go off for a nice cup of tea, my new book of beatnik poetry in hand to peruse and a very difficult decision to make: to watch the new version of Hamlet I just bought, that I had never heard of, and know nothing about.... or the new version of Macbeth, which looks like True Blood and Underworld crossed with Macbeth. Hmmmm.
Creepy amazingness by The Dead Weather:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0YI0UUazkU&ob=av3eAnd a clip from It Might Get Loud, Jack White plays some blues and talks about musical philosophy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj8f0w_SMnw
