Twiddle

One Christmas when I was say around 12 to 14 years old, I got an amazing Christmas gift. I got a new cassette tape recorder.

I learned that I could hook the microphone of this recorder up to my AM radio and record all of the latest hit songs. Which I did with regularity; WRKO from Boston and WABC with Cousin Brucie were two of my favorite stations. Neil Diamond and Tommy James and the Shondelles were two of my favorite groups, but just about any 45 RPM that made number one on America's Top Forty was a good song.

The problem was that in my heart I sincerely knew that what I was doing was displeasing to God and condemning me to hell. You see, I learned from Perry F. Rockwood on the People's Gospel Hour that all rock music was sinful and would send the sinner to hell (Perry F. Rockwood was the voice of true Christianity to me as opposed to all the liberals and Catholics out there that were masquerading as Christians).

Now I sincerely did not want to go to hell. I remember once at the Princeton Maine Baptist Church that my grandmother attended that I sincerely prayed to ask Christ into my heart. The problem was that when our family drove back home to Rumford Maine that I had my tape recorder and my collection of top forty tapes; and by the time we got back to Rumford my new found commitment to Christ was history.

If only I had learned the art of asking stupid questions that has since come to me later in life. I could then have asked how do I identify this evil rock music that I might avoid it. Certainly God would identify a clear way to avoid clear evil. I have learned that if I ask this questions I would get as many answers as I would have questions. One radio station in Maine that I knew of had this all figured out. Any music that had drums in it that was not military drums was evil (I assume then that the percussion section in symphony orchestras would be evil). However this was prior to the point that pastor Herman Carroll Franklin (the radio station was WHCF by the way) got caught with the secretary and Jerry Farwell had to come up from Lynchburg to bail the church out. God apparently has changed His mind, the radio station now specializes in Christian Country and Western.

Of course now most churches that I know of have music provided by some type of worship band that at times can be much more rock music like than the Neil Diamond music I used to listen to. I could ask how a genre of music that is objectively evil would be appropriate in church. One church that I know of solves this by teaching that the spirit of the composer came through in the music and that rock music that is not Christian is objectively evil. OK that is good. Does this mean that Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky are objectively evil (Tchaikovsky was gay BTW so I would think his music would be especially evil).

Note: not to say there is no such thing as evil music, any song that say advocates suicide, murder or other violence should be censored by intelligent parents. But anything that I have read that attempts to stigmatize a whole genre of music as evil intellectually falls on its face.

However, as a music lover I can and will criticize music for being boring, trite, and full of cliches. In other words, just being crappy music. I find that I can not listen to a popular music radio station for long without being driven up a tree by the musical garbage being played.

Now in the musical genre of rock music, I have some global suggestions that I think will help the overall quality of music that musicians in this genre create. First of all, it is very annoying when the dynamic range of this genre seems to be limited to ff - ffff. I would love to listen to a piece in this genre that goes down mp with an occasional subito pp. Beethoven and Mozart knew the expressive power of soft, I would love it if today's artists learned this.

Now I view a rock band as essentially a string quartet with an added vocal and percussion part. But why oh why does the percussion section have to dominate so in any music in this genre. A good Beethoven quartet does not need a percussion section to keep the beat, so why does a rock band need this. This is not to say that the percussion section does not have its time and place, but why does it need to be a constant. Anyway, I would suggest that any artists working in this genre study the string quartets of Beethoven and Mozart to learn how to blend multiple string instruments into a pleasing and satisfying whole.

That having been said, there are some artists that have worked in this genre that I consider to be creative and have risen above the banality that dominates this (most of the artists in this genre know only three chords per key and really could use a course in elementary and intermediate harmony). Some of the classic rock bands that I sort of like include the Beatles, Jethro Tull, the Who, Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I could come up with more given some time, but probably can not come up with more than 20.

I am not well versed on contemporary musicians who work in this genre. But I have sort of liked anyway a couple of bands (Radiohead and Phish come to mind).

Which brings me to the title of this post. Twiddle is a Vermont band out of Hubbardton Vermont that actually is creative and is quite (might I say very) good. They are one rock band out there that I will actually pay at least a modest sum of money to see (I have been to a couple of their shows at Higher Ground in Burlington). Now I trust that my bias in this matter is not affecting my judgement (the keyboard player in this band..Mr. Ryan Dempsey..goes back with me since he was a wee one in fifth grade or so. I still remember with fondness the ski trips that he, my son Stephen, and I took all over New England).

But anyway, don't take my word for it. Here is their web site where you can listen to them online. Enjoy.

PS Ryan: I wish you had not removed the song "Gatby the Great" from the web site. Of course I remember when Gatby was Ryan's beloved pet duck. I am sure that Gatby is in duck heaven by now.