So Saturday was music appreciation night in Auckland. Perhaps that phrase should be capitalized, as it refers to a recurring event, pioneered by my flatmate, wherein several folk bring music to play for others based around a theme. Each person gets a turn to play a track, and the rotation continues as long as the night continues, people adding in and dropping out as they come and go.
The concept is simple but it in some ways is odd to me that I have never been one to hang out with friends that play records for each other. We gave each other tapes or CDs or MP3 discs or recommendations, but just sitting there, playing CDs and making a night of it? Not really, not as an active point of focus. The last time I can think of being involved in something like “music appreciation night” was freshman year at Rice and the less said about it the better, although there was the night that I hosted the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion drinking game at my house shortly after ORANGE came out.
Each time music appreciation night happens the theme is different, and this time the theme was space. Despite my flatmate’s principal role in instigating the event, I generally haven’t been able to attend for various reasons, but this time I made a point of it.
My contributions were probably pretty predictable for anyone who knows me: Sun Ra’s “Outer Spaceways Incorporated”, Polvo’s “Lazy Comet”, The Frames’ “Star Star”, and Matthew Shipp’s “Space Shipp”. Other contributions for the night ranged from Bright Black Mountain Light to Acid Mothers Temple to the 3Ds to Cibo Matto to Nina Simone to Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” to a disco remix of the Star Wars theme to a song by Young Marble Giants that somebody felt made “use of space in its arrangement”.
(The latter was actually quite awesome, and I clearly need to investigate Young Marble Giants further.)
The attentiveness of listening came and went. With a group of people (that ranged from people I know well to strangers and all points in between) there was necessarily socializing and it varied inversely to the level of attention the music demanded. But being dogmatic about requiring focused attention would, I imagine, be self-defeating and unfun.
Mostly, it was interesting to listen with an open mind as people offered up something of themselves, in a context where you were sharing the listening experience in real time. Kind of like a NAPcast, but kind of very different all at once.
What theme should we use for the next one?
that sounds really fun. i may have to borrow that idea one day. how did the dj’ing of all the songs work? did people have to submit their songs in advance? or was it more of a walking up to your flatmate and giving him a CD and saying track 5, please. where the songs introduced in any way, who brought it, why they thought it was appropriate… and what would you say was the ratio of socializing to listening? I understand that you can’t have everyone just sitting like in church listening the whole time, but i would worry that it would deteriorate into a party where people are paying little or no attention to the music.
i think the next theme should be public transport.
I can do this podcast unless someone else would like to… Whatever theme works for me. We can dust off Yousendit, or you can send me submissions directly or direct me to a site with the file for download. Let me know… today, or I will just run with something of my own creation.
Carlos, go for it. Basically one person managed the rotation, and after each song was over, the next person would queue up and play their song, sometimes with a very quick announcement, sometimes just starting it and leaving people to ask what it was. There weren’t really breaks in the song playing. The socializing waxed and waned in relation to the interest everyone had in whatever track, but the nature of the rotation was that people would eventually have to break off from socializing to at least cue their track, which they would want people to listen to and therefore be less likely to talk through.
(Also, most people brought more possible tracks than they had slots, so some time is devoted to selecting the appropriate track to slot in given the recent tracks.)
In the past, some of the nights have devolved in the way you fear, and a hardcore group splintered off and didn’t make a point of telling others when the next music appreciation night was. :/
CB, I’ll queue up Six Finger Satellite’s “Board The Bus”.