Post #1,696

To the Readers of The Big Opus,

In case it hasn’t been made clear by the dozen or so previous posts,
 The Big Opus is announcing today that we’re shutting down our formal 
blogging activity.  In the spirit of stealing ideas from the bands we 
love the most, let’s not call this the end.  Let’s say, “indefinite hiatus.”

The music we love is changing at a dramatic pace.  New musicians rise 
to and fall from prominence at an ever quickening clip, as has been 
the case for hundreds of years. It’s not that we can’t keep up with
 what’s happening, but at this point, doing so would bring smaller and
 smaller returns for us personally, while consuming increasing amounts 
of our time.  This would not have always been such a problem.

Our lives have changed dramatically since we started the blog.  In August 2009, Mike was enjoying a break between summer and fall sessions at grad school, and Ben was newly married, working a transitional job with plenty of time to kill.  Today, we both spend our days with meaningful careers that we actually enjoy.  Ben comes home every night to his little son.  In a MINIVAN, no less!

It is hard to fully explain the impact this space has had our lives. We strove to create an original and meaningful spot in a crowded landscape of music and culture commentary. Simply pulling off a functioning blog after several failed attempts was gratifying, but afterwards the outlet it provided in an uncertain time in our lives was priceless.

We decided that announcing a hiatus would be better than keeping the site alive in name but not in spirit.  It’s also a way of saying, “you haven’t seen the last of us…

“…because if you’re reading this, we’re probably friends anyway.”

Cheers,
Ben and Mike
The Big Opus

Because,

As the first sign of the apocalypse appeared in Olympia last weekend, the world will probably be over soon, and then who’s going to be around to read this?

Here, the incalculably talented Phil Elvrum, of The Microphones and Mount Eerie, slam dunks “Got Money,” by Lil Wayne.

Because,

A user named sangennaro “liked” a post I did for The Big Opus.  This is notable because sangennaro is the alias of Rjyan Kidwell, perhaps my favorite musician of the past decade.

What else am I supposed to accomplish, anyway?

Because,

I got an electric guitar for my birthday - a cheap telecaster knockoff that sounds great.  It’s more fun to play with than my computer.

Because,

I came back from my recent vacation with six books, two CDs, one piece of vinyl, and a ukulele.  Reading has been more interesting than writing.  Playing has been more interesting than listening.

Because,

It started being more fun to participate in creative projects, rather than play spectator.

Because,

I saw EMA perform and it made most everything else seem contrived and stupid.

Because,

In Seattle Washington, I attended a Nevermind 20th Anniversary exhibit. On display, the Kurt Cobain drawing below, of his band Nirvana in its early incarnation with Chad Channing as the drummer.  I remember talking with my friend Mike about this image when we were kids, which we saw in the Nirvana biography, Come As You Are, by Michael Azerrad.  We appreciated the artistic license that Cobain took making the drums that funny horn shape.  This shape, however, turns out to have been the actual real shape of Chad Channing’s drum set, which was also on display.  A nearby plaque explained that the model was intended for playing jazz fusion in live clubs.

I also learned at this exhibit that both Nirvana and and my own band, Kalpana, played the same venue, NYC’s Pyramid Club, albeit about 15 years apart and at extremely different stages of the club’s relevance.

20 minutes after I learned this, I got a phone call from Aaron, guitarist for Kalpana, saying that we had just sold an album to a woman whose sister was the namesake for one of our songs.  A total stranger we heard about from television.

You see, the music is folding in on itself.

Because,

The only music magazine I even removed from a shelf in Portland, OR was a copy of Yeti.  And this was because my friend Eleanor (her music is released under the name Happy New Year) contributed a 12-minute-long (excellent) song to its accompanying CD.  She also occupied the last paragraph of the last page of the book with the track summary, a page she shared with one of her own favorite bands, Oneida.

And the breadth of wonder is shrinking.

Because,

At Amoeba records in San Francisco, I found a copy of Maxinquaye, the debut album by Tricky which I came very close to buying on eMusic several times, in a clearance bin for $1.95.  I grabbed it like a cat snatching a toy.  I carried it around for a few minutes until I came to the realization that there is no longer any reason for me to own a physical copy of this album. 

With the current technology I can legally enjoy all the same tracks in such a way that the album will take up no space in my home (and since returning home, I have several times.  I should note, this album is a fucking masterpiece).  Not only that, but I can access all the re-mastered tracks along with the bonus cuts on the new deluxe version of the album.  Although it violated my deeply seeded music fan instincts, I returned this album to the clearance shelf and walked away.

Everything is changing.

Because,

I have subscribed to Spotify, the service that allows me unlimited access to 15 million songs directly from the site.  The effect is identical to having spent $15 million in the iTunes store, along with the hardware firepower to store it keep all this at my fingertips, and the currently non-existent technology to make this staggering amount of storage small enough for my front jeans pocket.

Spotify has blown open my music listening possibilities, and made any excitement over “the cloud” seem outdated and silly, before it’s even landed. Not sure I’ll ever go on the Amazon cloud again to listen to the (great) Kurt Vile album I bought and saved there.  I used the Spotify site to create a 4-hour playlist of music from my 2003 WGSU rotation, which plays in the order that it would have played on the air, according to the hourly schedule we followed back then.

It’s a brilliant way to pay to experience music both old and new (Last Splash, Deleted Scenes), familiar and foreign (Neko Case, Maxinquaye), chic and pedestrian (Roxy Music, The Offspring), and it has changed everything about my music listening.  It will take the rest of my being some time to catch up.

Because,

Los Campesinos! just announced their next record is arriving November 14, and I’m still too out of breath from the last one even to think about writing about the new one.