Nick Drake and the Fine Art of Getting Your Money

I recently re-read Amanda Petrusich's book on Nick Drake's Pink Moon. I've read it before, and found the book to be a pile of hipster garbage along with the album. I didn't sell my CD of Pink Moon, and hadn't listened to it since this time last year. When I first heard it, it broke my little heart, but not for the reasons people would expect.

I heard so much about Nick Drake at this point and when I read that one of my favorite music critics, the late Ian MacDonald, loved Nick Drake, I decided to inspect it. At this point, Ian MacDonald hat yet to steer me wrong. It was through his mentions of great albums and musicians like The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan that came along side our love band The Beatles that I grew to appreciate popular music alongside classical and art music. So I took his advice on Nick Drake, and when I had to go on break for work, I took the light rail a few feet away, ran to the record store about four stops away in the heavy rain, which was another four blocks from the station. I ran back to the train station in an attempt to avoid getting as wet as possible and to get back to work on time. As soon as I arrived, the train did too. I went inside, took out Bringing It All Back Home from my CD player, and plopped in Pink Moon.

I wasn't at all prepared for what I heard. At this point everything I was hearing was radical or different that I felt was pushing the boundaries of music. When I hit play, all I got was a guy with a tired voice singing alongside a guitar with one piano overdub. Keep in mind, at the time, I was listening to a lot of Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Stockhausen, and Ligeti, all drastically different music than I was hearing. I gave the CD a couple more play through the following week and came to the conclusion that it wasn't my cup of tea.

So I picked up the 33 1/3 book on Pink Moon to help give me deeper understanding of the music. Instead, I found the book almost intolerable stuffed with lots of filler and a third of it dedicated to how Volkswagon used his song to hock their new car. Everyone she interviews, her self including go on about how the commercial pushes the boundery of the short film and how they won countless awards and got tons of recognition. What no one ever mentions is that IT'S A FUCKING COMMERCIAL!



This is the commercial in question. It's not art. It's seconds of footage designed to sell you a car in hopes to eventually get your money. It's a bunch of attractive people living their cool hipster life, and really, you're not invited. It's all made up, it's fake, yet everyone in the book gushes about how beautiful it is and how it does justice to the music. It made me even more sick and motivated me to put the album away for a long time.

For some reason in my mind, names will come up again and I'll want to study them again. Recently it was Thomas Pynchon and Nick Drake. After having a nice meal with a friend, I was a little mentally shaken up from the intense conversation her and I had. Nick Drake had been on my mind the entire week, so first thing I did when I got home was put on Pink Moon. Just like the first time I listened to it, I was totally unprepared. Suddenly, every pluck of the string, every soft lyric, even the lack of sound rang true with me. The album was absolutly beautiful and one of my happiest encounters with music in recently memory. In the twenty-eight minutes of me lying on that sofa, every word and pluck of the string resonated in me, even giving me trembles. It wasn't music I normally connect to, but something did it to me this time. I even felt the boundaries of music being pushed with it. Considering what sort of music was popular at the time, it's a miracle something like that came along.

Since that experience, I've listen to the album a couple times a day, and this was only a few days ago. I thought after bestowing negative judgement on Mr. Drake that a year later I regretted, I decided to give Ms. Petrusich's book a second chance. Now that I loved the music, maybe I would see something new. Instead I hated the book even more, but it got me thinking one thing: Can a commercial be art?

I don't watch much TV outside of the occasional viewing of Alton Brown's "Good Eats", so I don't know what's happening in the world of advertising. Well, a few days ago, me and a colleague from work were discussing Vincent Gallo when he brought to my attention that about a year ago, Vincent Gallo did a vodka ad. My automatic response was "What?". I Googled the video, went on YouTube, and saw the ad.



That's the ad in question. If you're too lazy to watch a few seconds, to summarize it, a couple of dirty hipsters ruin a party full of elitests, the room starts raining, and Vincent Gallo and a girl start making out under a piano with a bottle of vodka between the two. I checked peoples thoughts on the commercial and they were usually on par with "Wow! This is great!" and then gush about the choice of director. But it brings to mind if it's a commercial or art. In the end, it's meant to sell you a product, vodka, and the vodka embodies everything that can go right. You can make out with attractive women, bring down the bourgeoisie, but look good all the meanwhile. But some would argue that it's art, getting a highly paid photographer and a hipster god to collaborate on something is enough to warrant it art. In the end, though, art doesn't try to sell you something, but instead would rather tell you a story, share an experience, or express things that normally can't be expressed fully.

So is the start of 21st century film, music and art so pathetic we have to look toward commercials for a break out? I'm not as pessimistic to say "yes", but more than ever we're bombarded with advertisments. I suppose this could be a continuation of what I was writing yesterday, but we're living in a culture that more than ever is based in the world of advertising. Even when something like Nick Drake's music is played in a commercial, can we be led to think anything is sacred anymore or can we break free from the clutter of our consumer world?