Serves me right.
Last time I wrote one of these things, I had some snarky
words to say about poet-songwriters being depressed in New York in the winter.
So naturally I found myself on a train heading to New York about 6 or 8 hours
before a blizzard was scheduled to hit.
To be honest, I was giddy. Manhattan in the snow. And me
without a car to get stuck, without a walkway to shovel. Without my kids with
me, I felt like one: I owed the world nothing. Let the snow fall. Let the city
get pummeled. Let the magic happen.
And it happened. When it hit, it came down sideways. The
wind screeched against uncountable fences, grates, and walls. With my N95 mask
on, my breath fogged my sunglasses. Without the sunglasses, I was blinded. I
trudged and slipped past more than one church. I didn’t stop in and pretend to
pray, but I could see the logic in it.
But all that happened several hours after I arrived.
I did get in a decent amount of time to wander about without a bunch of weather
in my face. And this wandering brought me to Academy Records.
We all know a handful of cliches about New York, but
towering over all of them is this: It’s expensive. This, for me, made the sight
of
Academy LPs all the more appealing. A humble storefront, beneath a fire
escape, with fabric awnings that announce: WE BUY AND SELL RECORDS. The idea
that such an endeavor can occupy a spot in lower Manhattan—that enough people
are buying the records they’re selling—is downright heartwarming on a cold day
in February.
Academy LPs is an offshoot of a larger, older store: Academy Records. Academy LPs is small, but doesn't feel cramped. I walked in with the thought that I would buy a single record, and I stuck to it, though this involved a lot of picking things up, holding onto them for a while, and putting them back.
Being in New York, it crossed my mind to buy something quintessentially New York. I looked at a few Talking Heads records. A copy of Paul's Boutique was on display, and for a while, that was in the running.
I ended up grabbing a record from the jazz section. It is okay, I believe, to judge something by its cover if you are judging it favorably. Here's the record I picked, as seen from my hotel window the following morning after the blizzard hit.
Moodsville. 1960. Volume 1 in a series that, I later learned, went on for quite a while.
The extensive write-up on the back of the album lets us know what they're up to:
Some few years ago, along with the popular acceptance of the
long playing high fidelity record, a new vogue was created in the form of 'mood
music'. It was found that there was a definite market for this type of
listening and it was not long before there were scores of albums to be seen
displayed on record counters with titles beginning "Music to . . .".
Whatever the individual wanted to do, there was an album of music to do it by.
So mood music today is part of our lives, we push a button and turn a knob and
we are automatically soothed by lush orchestrations of favorite ballads.
Somewhere along the way it seems to us the feeling behind the fine original
compositions of America's lyricists and composers has become a little obscured.
We think the PRESTIGE/MOODSVILLE series will be a welcome departure from
"mood" music. This series will feature top jazz artists interpreting
choice ballads and standards, and original compositions that will fit into the
Moodsville series.
"Mood music done right," seems to be the idea. It made me think of those "chill, lofi beats to relax/study to" tracks that you can find on YouTube. Music whose explicit function is to NOT be the center of attention, but to create an atmosphere wherein you focus on something else. And so this series, I suppose, is the equivalent of recruiting Radiohead to record a "chill beats for relaxing" album.
Or maybe it's more like the Rockabye Baby series (which, honestly, is excellent).
Whatever one wants to compare it to, it's plenty nice to listen to. And, as a person who sometimes listens to those "chill beats" while doing my day job, I'm finding I can throw on Moodsville vol. 1 and achieve the same effect.
After I snapped the photo of the record from my hotel window, I got bundled up and went for a walk. It was a funny thing, wandering around Manhattan that Sunday morning, the streets blanketed in snow.
Everything was closed for the day or opening later than usual. Without all the places to spend money...without all the cars...with hardly any of the people...what was left? Was walking around this empty city any different than walking around Iowa City or Eugene, Oregon, or anywhere else?
Well, yes. Though the difference might simply be the way it feels. The atmosphere. The mood.
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