#98

Robert Wyatt

Rock Bottom (1974)

About a year and a half ago, just after obtaining (legal) access to the daunting mass of relatively obscure music this feature is devoted to, Rock Bottom was one of the first albums I started listening to on a regular basis.  Probably because it was so close to the "beginning" of the list, and seemed like the obscure, avant-garde music I'd always been intrigued by, but with no context an no place to start.

Given the thumbs up by the faceless taste gods at Pitchfork, I jumped right into this album, dissonance, jazz time signatures and apparent nonsense and all, and loved it.  According to the Pitchfork blurb, Wyatt completed this album while convalescing after a drunken fall from a fourth-story window left him paralyzed from the waist down.  This knowledge allowed me to instill the music with raw loss and confused, subdued rage.  I turned to it for sad, meditative moments when I wanted to stoke the emotion rather than shoo it away.

Thing is, while researching for this post, I found out Wyatt had completed most of the music for Rock Bottom prior to his injury, completely removing the factual emotional underpinnings for my enjoyment of this album.  So, thanks, Wikipedia, for the bitter truth juice, and as for Pitchfork, I just...*sigh*...I mean, c'mon I fact-checked it in two seconds on Wikipedia.   Goddamnit.

Anyway, this information has forced me to completely reconsider my reasons for enjoying this album in the first place, and the conclusion I've come to is that I really can't separate it out.  I created an entire character and a distinct emotional experience over the course of familiarizing myself with this album, one that was very powerful.  

The power of any story comes from the clarity with which it reflects reality.  While Wyatt may not have actually intended any of that emotion to be there, the character of Wyatt I created out of misinformation did, and he is more real to me than the actual Robert Wyatt will ever be.  From now on when I listen to  Rock Bottom, I will pretend Wyatt was just finishing up a concept album about a convalescing paraplegic prog rock drummer mere months before he actually became one.

God damn it.

I had intended to write about the appeal of art rock/avant-garde music until these new facts pulled me away.  There is plenty more of that shit coming, so it can definitely wait for another day.

Mix Singles:

Not too many songs here I would want to listen to with other people around, or out of context.  This is just not a record you can really drink beers and bullshit to, unless that bullshit usually happens to be about jazz time signatures.  If you put a synthesizer to my head I would say Sea Song would be your best bet, but man, you throw some weird ass parties.

Next:

Jimmy Cliff (and various artists)

The Harder They Come (1972)