| Issue
#88 Aug.
'06
We all like to climb on our soapbox every
now and then – lately
my diatribe has been the loss of the art of the album. In this age of
.mp3 format, not
only do we take a giant step backwards to a time of inferior quality of
music (let’s
face it, when you chop off the high highs and the low lows, then take
what’s left and
compress it into a space almost half of the original, you lose music
[the high highs and
low lows] and you lose the dynamics, the warmth, the range, the soul if
you may, of the
music, of the art), but we also lose the full effect of the package
– think of it as
looking at the Mona Lisa with magnets holding it to a refrigerator
door, instead of in a
frame on a museum wall. That is what individual 99 cent downloads are
robbing from us. I
recently was lamenting this saddening loss when in my mailbox arrived
“Everybody feels the same.”
By Jamieson Tobey. And I was saved.
How many people nowadays take a CD and treat
it as an album? As a piece of art, as a
conceptual vision of the artist? Not many one song downloads offer you
the opportunity to
leave your present train of thought and escape into the minds (or mind
altering) landscape
of the artist presenting the work. How many times have people read the
liner notes while
listening to an .mp3? Or, take the lyrics and decipher, connect,
puzzle, contemplate, and
try to understand what the artist is trying to get across? How can
anyone use one song (or
even a few various singles) to connect to the whole, the passion, the
vision? Granted,
some songs are just that, songs. But, when an artist can take 10 or so
songs and create an
album, well then, that canvas is much more intriguing within the
spectrum of the art form.
What sets Jamieson
Tobey apart from most is
the liner notes that state: “All
instruments
were played by Jamieson Tobey, including the following: drumset,
acoustic and electric
guitars, electric bass, ukulele, glockenspiel, keyboards, organs,
Roland TD-8, melodica,
hammer chimes, harmonica, bird calls, marimba, melotron, three wine
glasses and two empty
bottles played with chopsticks, piano, shakers, maracas, sleigh bells,
tambourines, and
handclaps.” Add to that, the recording and
producing, all done by Jamieson,
and where the hell do I begin to gush
about what is spilling off this canvas? The glockenspiel? Wine glasses
and bottles played
with chopsticks! How can you not be intrigued?
Opening the album in a highly spiritual
vein, Jamieson
stretches the boundaries of the aural equations of love with a sound so
pure in essence
that it can only uplift us. Using sound layering and production
techniques that instantly
bring to mind some of the greatest conceptual music artists of the past
4 decades, Everybody feels the same,
takes on the whole
artistic Album worthiness bestowed upon it. Throughout we find
ourselves aligning this
work with that of present visionaries such as Mark Oliver Everett,
also know as E, the main force behind Eels (Everybody feels the same, The black will turn to
blue, faith).
As well as past greats like Pink
Floyd (Smoke,
Where the waves begin, A perfect rose, walls),
overlooked masters Jeff Lynn/ELO (Everybody…,
faith, Golden wing), revered ambient artists,
Phillip Glass (Cars
crash),
and ultimately the greatest songwriting conceptual artists of all time,
The Beatles,
drawing heavily from George Harrison’s cannon as well as
McCartney (and Wings), and
Lennon. The title track, Everybody
feels the same, could be a lost White
Album track, The
black will turn to blue deserves to be on Abbey
Road, and walls,
even owing as much as it does to Syd Barrett, could also nestle into
Magical Mystery Tour
quite nicely.
This album is love, spirituality, intensity,
insanity, madness, joy, belief, and the
purity of a musical landscape painted in broad, vast, encompassing
strokes. It spills
forth from one man’s mind and his ability to take the
materials present to him and
bend, shape, strum, pluck, pound, pick, caress, finagle, twist, turn,
and tweak to create
a piece of art. Art that is so intriguing, so rewarding, so amazingly
complicated, yet
instantly accessible to anyone willing to sit and absorb the haunting
beauty of a mind at
work in the medium of sound. To break that down into individual pieces
would be like
taking that picture of the Mona Lisa off the fridge, cutting it into
pieces, present each
piece solo and asking people to enjoy it as art. Absurd!
Everybody feels the
same is a museum piece.
An extraordinary excursion from deep within the fragile space of a
human being which
reaches further into the soul of those who allow it to enter. While
many songs point in
obvious directions, the artist breathes more into the area of listener
interpretation than
most, which in turn gives the album a uniqueness to each individual.
Thus, creating a
multifaceted work not meant for mass consumption.
Is the album format a lost art? A dying
breed? Maybe in the mainstream or the broadband
.mp3 stream, but for now we can count on independent artists like Jamieson Tobey to rescue us when needed.
I’m
stepping off my soapbox for now and putting on
Everybody feels the
same.
By Jamieson Tobey.
Everybody
feels the same. by Jamieson Tobey
is available now for: $11.98 +s/h*
 View
Shopping Cart / Checkout
Accepting Credit Cards and PayPal
*Shipping
&
Handling charges:
USA - $3.00
for the first 2 CDs
ordered,
Add $1.50 per each CD after.
Canada - $5.00 for the
first
CD ordered,
Add $2.00 per each CD after.
Everywhere else -$7.00
for the
first CD ordered,
Add $3.00 per each CD after.
|
