Lieder 16
JANUARY 1, 2016BRIANGART EDIT
Towards the end of 2015 I had this earworm which lasted several days …. it was Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeKidp-iWo )
And…this earworm makes me wonder about The Way It Is could I create something visual around this track as part of my studio residency at 44AD Gallery for something ive titled Leider 16 aka art songs . Is it an art song ? Can you take an earworm and turn it into a work of art?
I’ve now moved into the studio and started on a few things , setting out some images and old song sheets whose covers and song titles interest me.Its good to have the space to work in , its clean and sparse and quiet too . Its good having the wall space to see what works and what doesnt , some things work better than others ,some need more work , but thats the flow of the creative process , what looks great one day looks maybe not so great the next or what didnt look good at first is actually ok and could lead to new ideas.
But back to that song …in the world of genrefication I guess the song it sits as a classic piece of A.O.R, something that would fit in perfectly to almost any Radio Two playlist, a piece of Americana, a piece of Dad rock for that solitary journey (heading either to or from home) when it feels like everything that is personal to you is falling apart, a song with a narritive about social injustice and not believing thats just the way it is. That’s my experience/relationship with the track, a song that I only ever heard on the radio, something there in the background rather than something that I would tune into. So it’s a song that I have viewed with a certain ambivalence, it was never in my (or for that matter of my peers’) record /cd /download collections. It’s is a song that never entered any of those (many) late night music-orientated conversations that I’ve had over the years.
Would it have been different if the song had been written or recorded by Bruce Springsteen or even Van Morrison. Maybe I would have taken a greater interest in it or picked up on its reference to the civil rights legislation of 1964 . Perhaps if sung by ‘The Boss’ or ‘The Man’ it would be regarded in a different light by myself and peers but it wasnt, its by Bruce Hornsby and The Range its mainstream music, it may well be regarded by many as a great and significant song but it also veers into to the safe rock realm of Huey Lewis and News, Deacon Blue and the likes – and thats a place I tend to avoid.
Of course I am placing the song within my own parameters of taste, what if I approach this track from another perspective ? after all wasnt it the Ramones who took on the Bay City Rollers track Saturday Night ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBn2ux5vRHk ) and turn it into Blitzkrieg Bop ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYh1lRR1m6Y ). I have no nostalgic interest in this song ,it was never even a guitly pleasure. I know very little about the song except through hindsight , for example that 12 years after its original release in 1986 it was recorded as Changes by rapper Tupac, however not being into Tupac at the time the song continued to remain off my radar .
So thats my relationship with the song and whats occupying me now is creating something visual around the song ? Where do I go with it ? the title, the narrative ,my ambivalence , my intrique . The only way is to start ,to do something ,see what evolves . Below are the results so far of what has emerged by listening to this track . At the moment they all have the title The Way It Is and I dont really know how they relate to the song at all , for me thats not important ,my intention was for the song to act as a catalyst to producing some work and I could only have made these particular images by listening to that particular track .
What will be the next track ??
The Way It Is
The Way It Is
The Way It Is
