Like its Southern California influences in the Paisley Underground (Rain Parade, Three O’Clock), named as an homage to the psychedelic heyday of Jefferson Airplane and Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Green Pajamas must hold the world’s record for most albums (somewhere around 30) recorded by a band with the fewest number of live appearances (somewhere more than 30) over a career that has spanned almost 30 years. Jeff Kelly and Co. recently released longplayer Death By Misadventure via longtime Pajamas label Green Monkey. Kelly and bandmates Laura Weller and Eric Lichter will be guest editing magnet magazine.com all week. Read our recent feature on them.
Kelly: The other day I was talking to MAGNET’s Jud Cost of about Gustav Mahler. We discovered we were both fans, which inspired me to write about him. Not Jud, of course, but Mahler.
Mahler was a composer who kickstarted the 20th-century in a striking way. He wrote 10 symphonies, the last unfinished, that somehow still sound remarkably modern today. He was criticized for his “vulgar” music. His symphonies threw in “everything but the kitchen sink,” which he did. His eighth symphony was written for 1,000 musicians and he loved sticking children’s choirs, sopranos, offstage percussion, big brass, sound effects and just about everything into his wonderful, quirky compositions. He never over-stayed his musical ideas. His symphonies were always quick and on to the next bit! Just like the pop music we hear today
It’s no surprise that Mahler packs them in at the Seattle Symphony. To modern audiences, living in this era of instant information and very little patience, a Mahler symphony will hold one’s attention much easier than, say, a symphony by Schubert. What modern audiences love about Mahler is the very thing his critics loathed in his time. I believe those righteous few had little insight into how things would and must inevitably change.
I believe, in a popular sense, Mahler was about 70 or 80 years ahead of his time. Our modern ears seem very used to this music, and sometimes we don’t even know it. The first time I played a Mahler symphony, written at the end of the 19th century, on our stereo, my wife said, “What is this shit you’re listening to, Star Wars?” I realized how Mahler, a whole century earlier, was laying ground for people like John Williams and countless blockbuster Hollywood soundtracks. Don’t let that deter you though; there is some wonderful, sensitive music to hear, and it doesn’t all sound like Star Wars. It is, in the end, very much just Mahler.
My favorite recording is Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 performed by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic on Sony. I have spent a lot of wonderful evenings in headphones with that recording. I think it is just about perfect.
Video after the jump.
