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We All Listen To Everything

Added on 16 June 2008 at 22:12:07, by Charley

We All Listen To Everything

After a performance of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, I was chatting with Polly Eldridge, one of the programmers of the Bath Music Festival, about the wide range of audience at the gig and she said “Well, we all listen to everything now, don’t we?”
That stuck in my mind. It is the mantra of the Bath Festival, one of its missions being the eradication of categories, or at least our excessive attention to them; a fine and noble pursuit.
“But is it?”, the little red, horned Tory on my right shoulder asks.
I do know that when I struggled to write three preview columns each week, one on jazz, one on country/ Americana/ singer-songwriters and one on Pop, all musics I like and know a varying something about, it was hard work.
It is impossible, at least with the brain I’ve got, to maintain any real depth of knowledge in these three areas. It means research, but even to do the research requires a moderate level of knowledge – which is where my rationale for doing the job better than others came in. I do have moderate knowledge through these areas, the deepest in jazz, the shallowest in contemporary alternative pop, which is the only contemporary pop I care much for.
But I have friends who do know about any one of these things in unbelievable, exasperating depth, people that can spend days, weeks, reeling off the names of garage rock bands around the English speaking world and Australia that I have never heard of.
The internet is full of people who know everything about a single thing – that’s one of the things that makes it work. It also has created a world where everyone seems to be a specialist.
The specialists often seem like model train enthusiasts or stamp collectors: that the process of hunting and collecting is more important than the prey.
That specialist world is humming right along next to the “we all listen to everything” faction. How can this be? Will there be a war?
There is, of course, a danger (isn’t there always?). Those that listen to a little bit of everything tend not to listen in depth. “We all listen to everything” could be the new slogan for Easy Listening music; for people who like anything that sounds good. Like wallpaper. Like ambient music. That includes me, then, with my ambient cds filed right next to my old Jackie Gleason Orchestra lps.
Of course, I am not accusing Polly Eldridge of this heinous condition of shallowness; she has the mind, the information and the desire to actually listen. But she is a professional, where most people are amateurs. Maybe this thing of listening to everything should be restricted to professionals.

Shelby Lynne - Rainy Night in Georgia

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