Does Music Still Matter?

Jarvis Cocker is guest editor of this weekend's Observer Music Magazine and he assembled a group of friends in Dublin to debate the present state of music for the lead article. There was Nick Cave, Paul Morley, Beth Orton, Antony, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Jarvis and the singer of some up and coming band called The Hours. I was starving this morning when I stumbled into Garfunkel's for a grizzly breakfast-luncheon but still managed to let my food go cold as I read the article. I'm sure it will prove perfect source material for a sweeping narcissistic post about the nature of music. Oh look! It has!

I've been meeting a lot of people as I head around the city looking for a place to live over the last week and the first thing that everyone asks is what type of music you listen to. I have put my foot in it innumerable times at this stage. The usual exchange goes something like -

Housemate: So what kind of stuff do you listen to?
Me : Everything really. The only types of music I have a real problem with are hip-hop and jazz.
Housemate: I ONLY listen to hip-hop and jazz.

So I suppose the experience has brought it home for me how much music matters to people. But the question Jarvis' group is really trying to get to grips with is what does music do for us? From the point of view of the musician, Nick Cave reckons that making music is a simple act of survival. It's about looking for something sacred and getting lost in the experience. No surprise that St. Nick looks to bring religion into the bargain. But the group generally agrees that people aren't commited to music in the same way that previous generations were.

One reason for this that there seems to be no political message or uniting factor driving the music that is popular today. There's an unbelievable amount of choice and diversity available nowadays but music communities seem to be divisible more on the basis of tacky retro appeal and cosmetic choice than anything else.

You could also say that the experience of those of us who have grown up with electro might explain why nobody seems that bothered with big music anymore. If there's one thing that we've learned from electro over the last 20 years or so, it's that the experience of everyone coming together to enjoy music is ultimately a hollow one. You might hug complete strangers in the throws of a mashup but come, 5am, you'd probably find it hard to resist the compulsion to punch anyone who attempted the same thing. In Jarvis' own words - Is this the way they say the future's meant to be? Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?

So - cue inane Sex and the City plot hook - what do we actually get out of music? Well the most obvious benefit as far as I can see is to give our lives a narrative. I can trace my history of listening to music along the following line - Prince, U2, Gun'N'Roses, Metallica/Sepultura, Radiohead, Nick Cave/Tindersticks, Tom Waits, New Order, Brian Eno; ultimately arriving at joyous and very silly Electro-pop. You might indulge yourself in a little existential panic from time to time, but I think if you look back on your musical appreciation, you will probably indentify some class of a worthwile progression.

An even more important quality as far as I can see is to allow for some kind of small triumph over death. I don't mean in terms of the musicians themselves but that our appreciation of certain songs tends to outlive as much as they define certain points in your life. Friendships will deteriorate over time and groups will disperse but all that has to happen is for you to hear Blue Monday or Windowlicker and you are immediately dragged back to the underground space-cadet missions you took part in during your early twenties.

But finally the most obvious and simple reason why rabid music fans haven't actually died out, despite what the group might think about the shallowness of this generation of music fans, is because music still manages to lift life out of the humdrum every so often.

As a rabid music fan myself - although shallower than most - I can still pinpoint a few moments when I had that sacred experience that Nick Cave talked about. The last time I can remember it happening was on a bus into New York a couple of years ago. My brother and I had been convinced to spend a day in an outlet centre somewhere outside New York. Horribly hungover, we took one look around the centre and ran for the first bus back. We weren't seated long before my brother, exhausted from the experience, fell asleep with his face squashed against the window. I was a little more disorientated and spent 20 brain freezingly painful minutes trying to get my horribly malfunctioning ipod to offer one song to resurrect the situation. The bus moved off and all I could do was stare at my brother's face with utter hatred. Broken, I dropped my ipod and slumped into the chair.

Just as the ipod fell into my lap, my earphones blasted into life - a noise too loud to be deciphered immediately. My head rocketed forward and I stared blindly out the window with what seemed like every synapse in my brain blown to bits. Miraclously, it had started to snow at that exact moment and as the quietly tumbling guitar of These Days by Nico registered in my head - I noticed that the snow was falling impossibly slowly and for the duration of the song there seemed absolutely no distinction between me, the window, the snow and the song.