It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it
Reidy, Maurice Timothy
IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL, BUT I LIKE IT Maurice Timothy Reidy Hhere was a time, not long ago, when I stopped listening to rock 'n' roll. I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but I know it was around...
...In another chapter: "I try not to believe in God, of course, but sometimes things happen in music, in songs, that bring me up short, make me do a double take...
...Occasionally, he retreats to his room, where he presses his ear to the speaker to catch every note...
...Yet even I greeted Hornby's confession with skepticism...
...Songbook is a collection of essays celebrating some of his favorite songs, a list that includes Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird...
...So it was with a certain contrarian glee that I read Nick Hornby's Songbook (McSweeney's Books...
...You can hear God" in Rufus Wainwright's cover of his father Loudon's "One Man Guy," Hornby writes...
...When things add up to more than the sum of their parts, when the effects achieved are inexplicable, then atheists like me start to get into difficult territory...
...Chastened, I began to listen to more Armstrong and Coltrane, less Dylan and Springsteen...
...1 just mean that at certain spine-shivering musical moments-and you will have your own, inevitably-it becomes difficult to remain a literalist...
...It's that nagging feeling that listening to rock isn't as meaningful or worthwhile as, say, reading a book or even seeing a movie (preferably with subtitles, of course...
...Hornby is the author of the novel High Fidelity and a music critic at the Nezv Yorker...
...I never thought of them as divine, but they are why I listen to pop: to find that slice of music that I absolutely have to hear over and over again...
...Here, for instance, are his thoughts on classical music: "I dislike it (or at least, I'm unaffected by it) because it sounds churchy, and because, to my ears at least, it can't deal with the smaller feelings that constitute a day and a week and a life...
...I love the relationship with music he has already," Hornby writes, "because I know he has something in him that he wants others to articulate...
...An unapologetic fan of pop music, he enjoys thumbing his nose at highbrow critics...
...Maurice Timothy Reidy is a reporter for the Hartford Courant...
...I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but I know it was around the time of Ken Burns's PBS documentary on Jazz...
...I listen to rock 'n' roll because, as Frank Sinatra once said, it's brutal, desperate, and vicious-not because it's virtuous...
...you could argue that he's simply dispensed with all the earthbound, rubbishy bits...
...I feel slightly rakish after listening to the Stones' Exile on Main Street, and that's no mean achievement...
...There's something about those songs, and those moments, that move me more than I can express...
...Listening to jazz, on the other hand, is more upscale, even esoteric...
...The essays are an eloquent, often hilarious, defense of pop music...
...And I have to admit, they came while listening to Lucinda Williams or the Jayhawks, not Mozart or Bach...
...I still listen to plenty of jazz, but not to the exclusion of rock...
...It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part, and Danny's got it too, of course he has...
...What does God have to do with pop music...
...What surprised me most about the book were the repeated references to God, not something one often runs across in critics at the New Yorker...
...I sat through Kevin Smith's Dogma (in the theater...
...Hornby doesn't mention God here, but his words bring me up short...
...Now let me say this: I will go to great lengths to catch even the slightest glimpse of my faith, artfully rendered...
...There's something to this...
...This also means something: Hornby's eight-year-old son, who is autistic, loves listening to music...
...Did I really own two Hootie and the Blowfish albums...
...When I say that you can hear God in 'One Man Guy,'" he writes, "I do not mean to suggest that there is an old chap with a beard-a divine Willie Nelson, if you will-warbling along with them...
...Let's face it, you can't separate rock 'n' roll from sex and longing, which are pretty hard to ignore even when not amplified...
...And yet, Hornby can be disarming about rock 'n' roll's unanticipated moments of transcendence...
...My conversion didn't last long...
...Rock 'n' roll expresses and embodies a passion and restlessness that are otherwise missing from my staid life...
...How could I shell out $15 for that Bob Seger CD...
...But I do know why I stopped listening, even for a short time...
...and have been known to force my wife to watch Polish Bible movies on Saturday nights...
...He walks around the house with a portable radio, turned up as loud as it will go...
...I suppose I can't do without it...
...I watched almost every episode, and after listening to Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Charlie Parker, I began to question my musical tastes...
...I guess that means something...
...In fact, thinking about it now, it's why I love the relationship anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out...
...I've known such moments...
...I enjoyed them immensely...
Vol. 130 • April 2003 • No. 8
