A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy was this- Towards the insignificant- and my song choices went all existential, Pixies, Julian Cope and Tim Burgess. Suggestions from readers (Ernie, Khayem, JC, Walter and Chris) took in Talking Heads' Road To Nowhere, Nic Roeg's film Insignificance and its soundtrack song by Glenn Gregory and Claudia Brucken, The Indelicates and The Last Significant Statement To Be Made In Rock 'n' Roll, John Martyn's Solid Air, Richard Norris' Music For Healing series, anything by Nick Drake, and Frazier Chorus' Nothing (Land Of Oz Mix). That's as good a playlist about insignificance as we're ever going to assemble.
Today's card is this- Put in earplugs.
Which made me laugh out loud when I turned it over.
Friends of mine attended the recent My Bloody Valentine gig at Factory Aviva Studios in Manchester (I missed out on tickets). They all wore earplugs, all found it deafeningly, unbelievably loud and couldn't tell, despite being confirmed and long time MBV fans, which songs were actually being played. Their account made me regret even more that I missed it in a way.
The loudest gig I've attended in recent years was Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 in March 2019, a gig that in retrospect I should have worn earplugs for. The hearing in my right ear has not been the same since. I wrote about it at the time...
Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 on Sunday night, twenty years after I last saw him play there. Back in 1998 he played almost entirely solo stuff, promoting his then new record The Last Dog And Pony Show, with just a Sugar song held back for the encore. This time around, promoting his current new album Sunshine Rock, he plays songs from the last forty years of playing and making records, from their earliest recordings to his latest. Backed by a high kicking bassist and a drummer engaged in a one man war of attrition with his snare drum Bob hits the stage loud and fast and doesn't really let up. His guitar/pedals/twin amp set up makes Bob sound like two or three guitarists and it's loud, really loud, with those crystalline melodies fired off within the sheets of distorted riffs.
There are few gaps between the songs, no light show to speak of, no projections or backdrop- just songs from the Bob Mould back catalogue. He opens with 2014 song The War and then blasts straight into Sugar's A Good Idea, the bass riff on its own for a few seconds before being submerged in Bob's wall of guitars. Three songs in and we're into I Apologise off Husker Du's 1985 New Day Rising. There is then a liberal smattering of songs from Sunshine Rock, Bob's self-willed optimistic, happy album, an album written in the aftermath of the death of both parents and Husker drummer Grant Hart, songs like Thirty Dozen Roses and Sin King, and highlights from Sugar's 1992 album Copper Blue (Hoover Dam sounds enormous, bigger than the guitars and keyboards of the album version). People around me are adjusting their earplugs.
Husker Du's 1982 hardcore single In A Free Land has been dusted down and in Trump's wake sounds no less relevant and no less alive. Bob has been unwell in recent days and on antibiotics for a chest infection, not that you'd guess- Sugar's If I Can't Change Your Mind roaring out of the amps, noise plus melodies, punk plus choruses. He pauses three quarters of the way through to thank us for coming and introduce Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster on bass and drums and then its back to business. Something I Learned Today, one of Husker Du's most vital songs, is a ferocious blast, spitting fire and piss and from this point, for the final fifteen minutes or so Bob and band go off setlist, launching into one Husker Du song after another, almost a medley- Chartered Trips, their cover of The Mary Tyler Moore theme Love Is All Around Us, a beautiful and raging Celebrated Summer with Bob stretching out the pause into the guitar picking section at the end, finishing with Makes No Sense At All, the single that paved the way for Pixies and Nirvana to name but two. No encore. Lights on. Ears ringing. Home.
Neither of those mp3s give any idea of how loud Bob was that night. At one point people were physically flinching and stepping back from the stage. I remember moving forwards into a gap and turning my head sideways on at one point as Bob turned the single guitar he was playing into three, all at max volume.
Bob recently announced Sugar's reformation and a new single, Long Live Love. And gigs including one in Manchester at the end of May. Put in earplugs.
5 comments:
I wonder if this card isn't really about silence and moreso about changing how we listen.
Let's say we have diminished the capabilities of our ears by putting in the earbuds...
Doing so probably hasn't excluded all sound, instead, we start noticing different things... vibration, resonance, texture and the way sound hangs in the air, perhaps?
Some music just seems to operate best on that principle. Instead of presenting clear melodies, or clean production, it creates an atmosphere where you are sensing the space around the sound as much as the sound itself.
A good example of that is probably Burial's music and especially his Untrue album, which is often described as feeling like something remembered or overheard...
Muffled voices, distant beats, rain-like hiss. It’s less like standing inside the club and more like catching fragments of it from outside.
Almost as if you’d metaphorically put in earplugs and started listening to the shape and residue of sound instead of the actual song!
We can all remember the pleasingly enclosed post-club disconnect between the real world and our altered state. Negotiating the requirements of basic function while cognitively impaired!
Burial's music and this track in particular...
https://youtu.be/cqXtNXf8zh4?si=2USggR5MGaqZonLY
...is made for exactly that in between moment - a moment that is also very much in keeping with the instruction of the card you pulled.
Love all of that Drazil- you're much better at coming up with a considered, lateral response to the OS cards than I am.
I remember seeing MBV at the Roundhouse many years ago. I foolishly declined the offer of earplugs as we walked in. Like your friends, I couldn't tell one song from the next, except for You Made Me Realise and maybe a couple of other "quieter" ones :)
In terms of 'Put in earplugs', well, any Mumble Rap makes me want to put in earplugs....
Saw MBV at The Ritz, Manchester, in 1991 sans earplugs. My ears were ringing for 3-4 days after. Next saw them at Manchester Apollo in 2013, during a trip back to the UK to visit family. This time with earplugs, and was glad I wore them. Both experiences were sonically shattering.
Darren
I never wore earplugs at concerts, but I would have liked to have had some with me at a Motörhead show sometime at the beginning of the century.
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