Well I’d wager its not.
Authenticity to me (and if we’re creating our own artificial distinctions, we’ll say “it is”) is more of the peripheral. It would suggest they are creating music for the right reasons.
But passion suggests a reading between the lines almost. As if the music was written, and practiced and the lyrics were set and agreed upon, but when they get to the mic or their playing it live, their in the moment, and they know what’s right for the song. A band here, a held note there. Even in the studio it tends to be at least to be something where the artist has no history of playing or doing something in a particular fashion, but they know the music to be its own living character, it has its own personality and that you can dress it up as something else, but it just doesn’t work.
I remember reading this musical theory book from a Russian Pianist (I’ll edit in his name, I’m at work right now) and he was saying on any given rest, there is a potential 4 rests that could be there. It basically relied on the theory that you would have it be played as the entire rest was functional, the front half, the back half or nothing at all was factored in. And I thought this was brilliant because even in classical music where the notes are the most adhered to in all of music, people still could understand that there was a need to know the music, not just play it off the page like some instrumental karaoke.
But some lines have to be drawn; all change is not good change. There has been many an artist who has stood on stage and went from an emotionally strenuous studio track to thinking the apathy of talking through a piece of a song was doing it justice. Let us not confuse change with passion. Jagger covering “like a rolling stone” is not passion, its awful.
I think passion also comes from knowing what a song needs in the context of an album, or when we’re considering live shows, a play list. I remember seeing Metallica at a shed show in the summer of ’99 and they played Master of Puppets better than I’ve ever heard it. All the “obey your master” lines held the E int her “er” of master and behind it they the constant rattle of a double-kick on the bass drum and it did the song justice a thousand times over. They knew that on that night at that moment, the studio version would have to wait, and the crowd, entering into an old classic being given its greater due responded as they should have.
I’ve seen cake, at every show they do, take a track in the studio that had all the harmonics built in, extend it further, and do it more fully when the crowd would sing parts traditionally taken up my other vocalists, freeing another band member to sing something else. And McCrea like the brilliant leader he was, conducting the madness as it needed that evening.
Passion is how a note is played, a word is sung, and an arrangement changes to meet the needs of the moment. Its got nothing to do with what the intentions were behind creating it, its got to do with knowing a song as a living breathing thing. To rehearse a song to the Nth degree because you’re never satisfied, to change the feel of a song from night to night as Dylan does because you’re always searching for something more. When you become enveloped by the music and the other musicians are in tune with each other and everyone can turn on a dime because their not going on a planned pattern of attack their going on the sound at that moment. That’s passion, and I can’t explain it much better. You froth at the mouth, you bleed from the eyes, and you are ten pounds lighted from the amount you’ve sweat. Even if you’re playing lounge jazz.
Last edited by TheBig3; 06-23-2008 at 02:46 PM.
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