ANNEX #1 TO MY VERY OWN CHARTA FOR MUSICAL VALUE

Music has to fit the moment. Yeah, music is (usually) not much more than the soundtrack to our lives. Yes, the scandinavian band by the same name knows that. It is us, the listener, who fills up the sounds and songs with meaning, emotion and experience. The relationship does work both ways, inasmuch as we use music to add a certain aural colour to a certain part of our life, whereas musuc justasmuch adds colour to our life at the same time. We all know that, we know that a slow ballad fits a romantic moment and that wild music with a heavy beat is better to let yourself go to, no matter if it is heavy metal or hardcore-electronica. If music has nothing to give to us and there is no moment in our life where we can use this music, then it is worthless. For the ones interested in music, the problem - if it ever is one - is quite different to the average mass of people. Normal people don't care a lot about music. There are some styles they like, some which they don't care about and a lot of music they can't stand. Ever since I heard one woman say that Ravel's "Bolero" is difficult music (because it is classical music, I guess) and that is why she won't listen to it, I have constantly lost hope in the musical taste and interest of the broad masses. Just check the top-seller-lists in any country and you'll know what I mean. The mass of people, who doesn't care about music, nevertheless buys about 8 CDs a year according to some official statistics. And these 8 CDs a year make up the biggest part of the trade business. And because these people will only buy what they already know, they are going to buy music by someone who has had a lot of press, whose song was played a million times on the radio and whose CD everybody else has already bought. You know the deal. My interest - and I guess yours, since you are really reading this - is quite different. To me, music has to fit a certain moment. Ever on the search for the perfect song to fit the perfect moment, or even to make the certain moment, I am constantly adding music to my collection. And because I change, my musical tastes change, and that keeps the whole thing interesting. Read through the reviews in the review-section and you will see that I use this a lot to describe music. There have to be at least some dozen records that are best listened to on easy weekend-afternoons, which might be because this is the time I have the most time to listen to music. Then there are records which are so great, that you just have to make space and time to listen to them. To just let them play in the background would be to waste them. Plus, there are more and more records that just need a lot of time, because they dwell in the building of dynamics in time and they use up a lot of time. Personally, I hope that this is an artistic pre-cognition that things will get slower and people will have more time. But that is just an aside. Music has to fit the moment, in a symbiotic relationship between the listener and the moment it just has to fit. To a certain extent it is possible to let the music shape the moment, but only if the listener is ready to get into that, if he lets the music do its magic. Which makes us step out at the same stop in the circle, because if the listener is ready to let the music do its magic, then he is already shaping the moment in anticipation for the music. Surely, this is the positive formulation of events, and it is definitely possible that the events formulate in a negative fassion, for instance when you walk into some room and you don't like the music any. But then you have already decided that there is no musical value right there. Seems as if we keep getting back to the same point. Music has to fit the moment. So, go out there and try to find some music to listen to while reading a book in bed, or to play Tetris on your PC to or to put on your walkman and go for a walk, or to make love to or one of the thousands of other things you can do that are better done with music in your ear. Ever asked yourself why movies use songs so much in soundtacks to give the movie-scene a bigger impact - because what a movie tries to imitate from real life is just that: a perfect moment. Walking in slow motion dressed in black suits and ties, white shirt and with sunglasses on just needs a cool seventies-funk soundtrack. Try it, if you don't believe me. Art imitates life and vice versa. Listening to the newest sampler of releases on 555 records while typing this, I wish the relationship was stronger.

(Georg Cracked)