A Musical Musing

I have to be careful about doing musical blogs because there are so many musicians watching me (see "A Musical Sandwich"). And I say about music what a lot of people say about art: I don't know anything about it but I know what I like. The only qualification I have for writing about music is that my heyday was the sixties, when music exploded from its bounds into the chaotic situation we have today, with every division having a sub-division and the boundary lines so blurred that I don't know where hip hop begins and rap ends.

With a background like that, I have no option but to blame the current situation on the Beatles, because they dared to look at every musical type and genre they could find and then drag it into their songs. Everyone will know of how George went off to India to learn the sitar and how, for a while, his twanging accompaniment became the accepted background to every Beatle tune. But does anyone remember Revolution 9 in which the Beatles experimented with music concrête, the juxtaposition of recorded sounds and noises to create an alleged tune? And do we recall that they were the first to record instruments and then play them backwards? Nothing was safe from their inventiveness and curiosity and they taught us to listen rather than pre-judge.

It was the Beatles that made me interested in new sounds and unusual ways to blend musical styles. For decades the mere fact of a song being different has been enough for me to listen carefully before deciding whether I like it or not. So you can imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered Hispanic American radio on one of my previous road trips in the States. I think I have mentioned before my amazement at hearing what I took to be a union of Rap and Mexican music. That, I thought, has got to be the strangest combination ever.

No longer. On my trip to Vicksburg I discovered something even weirder, again courtesy of the Hispanic radio stations. It sounds unbelievable but it's absolutely true - some of their musicians are experimenting with the oompah-oompah of traditional German folk tunes interlaced with their hot-blooded and passionate vocals. The result is so other-worldly that it is beyond description. I listened with my mouth agape, unable to believe what I was hearing.

It is my latest theory that the next great musical trend will come through these radio stations. And what strange beast slouches its way towards Bethlehem to be born? In my opinion, the next explosion into the world of popular music will be some modern version of Carlos Santana, dressed in a kilt and Mexican hat, with some bagpipes draped over his shoulder, a backing group of zither- and ukulele-strumming banditos and a horde of ululating Hispanic senoritas providing the harmonies. Mark my words.

Of course, I am only allowed to listen to the Hispanic stations for so long. Eventually I sense that they are wearing a bit thin with Kathy and, in a spirit of generosity and fair play, I wander through the other stations in search of something a little less radical. This is how I came across my next surprising musical revelation. It amazes me still, but I have found that the Zombies are alive and well and living in America.

Firstly, I should mention that I do not mean that the undead roam the streets of the South in broad daylight. I refer here to the little known but interesting British group of the sixties who had a brief burst of fame with songs like She's Not There and Time of the Season. And secondly, I do not mean that they have done a Bee Gees on the crowd and are now continuing to make music in places like Las Vegas and Florida.

The fact is that the Zombies' old songs get played on the radio here, whereas they haven't been heard in Britain since their heyday. Not only that but the Zombies will be heard as part of the background music in most department stores, where some bright marketing genius has discovered that no music makes people buy as does the old sixties favorites. Outside in the sunshine, driving the car or watching the television, country music rules in the Southwest. But enter a clothing store or supermarket and I am instantly transported back to my youth when the greatest songs of all time were penned by an inexplicable outpouring of musical geniuses.

As a long time fan of the Zombies, I am glad that their true worth has been recognized at last. They were and remain the only group ever to achieve a successful melding of jazz and rock. But I do find it a little strange that it should be in America that they survive.

Here too is the last refuge of groups like the Kinks and the Who. But the Zombies rule over them all, receiving more air time than even the Beatles. Can it be that they made it big in America when they were barely noticeable in their homeland? I can hardly believe that; surely I would have noticed at the time. So why this sudden popularity, as overdue yet deserved that it is?

Sometimes America mystifies me.