Jennie’s Comments (group member since Nov 04, 2013)

Jennie’s comments from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Library and Archives group.

Do you all feel that the music of ( ) makes Hopelandic somehow more intelligible, more able to communicate meaning; or has Sigur Ros managed to present the album in a true vacuum, devoid of any meaning imposed by the band in its creation?

Personally, I find it hard to think about music as lacking the meaning or intent of its creator. I find any instrument capable of expressing meaning, but I suppose the difference is in knowing that meaning versus providing your own interpretation of it, as in performing Rachmaninoff's Vocalise.

Thank you so much for this! I'm incredibly interested in the chanted epic poetry connection and how the Sundlaugin studio helped to change the sound of the artists who recorded there. I have so much more music to go listen to now!

Hi Ethan, While I was reading your book I couldn't help wondering more about Icelandic music. What musical history - what sounds - has Sigur Ros developed from? Beyond the Sugarcubes and Bjork, I'm not really familiar with the history of Icelandic music. I know you mentioned in the book how the music of Iceland is often depicted as "spacious," reminiscent of the Icelandic landscape, but I'm wondering if in your research you came across who their influences are; whether the musical development of the country in general is reflected in what Sigur Ros does and how they do it?

So I finally finished this last night. It took me a bit longer than the other texts in the 33 1/3 series because I found myself going back to listen to the songs over and over again to make sure I was hearing everything discussed by the author Ethan Hayden. Much like when I listen to the album, the book left my mind buzzing. What are the ramifications of Hayden's discussion on my perception of music, particularly music without words, or music without semantic context? I'm not sure yet...

I often listen to Sigur Ros in order to relax--to be swept away by the pure emotion and exhilaration that the music provides and overwhelms whatever I'm currently feeling, taking me away from it all. I get this less from ( ), and perhaps it is this sense of being unable to fill the gaps that Hayden discusses, the lack of semantic context that leaves me feeling less satisfied, less content.

My first question to all of you would be, how does the music of ( ) make you feel? Did you listen to the album before you read the book? If so, did Hayden's interpretation make you hear it or feel it any differently?

Ethan Hayden, author of Sigur Ros's ( ), has joined our Goodreads group and will be participating in our discussion next week! I hope that you've all been reading...

Our book club discussion on Sigur Ros’s ( ) by Ethan Hayden from Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series starts Monday on Goodreads. Join us!

Words like “inspiring,” “expansive,” and “moving” are regularly used to describe Sigur Ros’s ( ), and yet the only words heard on the record itself are a handful of meaningful nonsense syllables. The album has no title—or rather, its title is no title: just an empty pair of parentheses. The intention being that listeners will fill in the parentheses with their own title, their own interpretation of the sounds on the record. And then there are the lyrics, sung in a deliberately unintelligible tongue called “Hopelandic” which the band invites listeners to interpret freely.

Ethan Hayden’s book doesn’t try to fill in the gaps between the album’s parentheses, but instead explores the ways in which listeners might attempt to do so. Examining the communicative powers of asemantic language, the book asks whether music can bring sense to nonsense, the book asks whether music can bring sense to nonsense. What happens to the voice when it stops singing conventional language: does it simply become another musical instrument, or is it somehow more “human”? What role does space play on ( )? And how do we interpret music that we cannot possibly understand, but feel very deeply that we do?

Ethan Hayden is a composer and performer, currently pursuing a Ph.D. in music at the University of Buffalo.

Hello everyone and welcome to our December read, Sigur Ros's ( ) by Ethan Hayden! This is an amazing album (available here on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/35aAMMFurDWUvb6DAxFttv), and I've found Hayden's discussion of it so far to be pretty fascinating!

Released in 2002, all of the tracks on ( ) are untitled. The song "lyrics" are sung in Vonlenska, also known as Hopelandic, a language without semantic meaning that resembles the phonology of the Icelandic language.

I'm really looking forward to the discussion on this, and I hope you're all able to join us the week of December 15!

Best,
Jennie

Don't forget that tonight between 8-9pm Eastern time, Songs in the Key of Life author Zeth Lundy will be available to live tweet with you. Use #rockhalllibrary in your questions/comments and to follow along.

Jennie Thomas Lindsey: We did record the Author Series event with Greil Marcus the other night, and that footage will be preserved and made available here at the Library and Archives. We're still working on getting the best system in place to make our digital content available world wide, so keep up with us in the coming year as we get that all that figured out and set up and start being able to share this and other Rock Hall events and born-digital and digitized materials from our archival collections with a much wider audience!

Like Lindsay, whenever I need a pick me up, I am right there listening to Stevie Wonder, because how can you be down in the presence of so much joy and optimism? Whether he's performing or just being interviewed, he seems to radiate positivity. I find that even as a non-religious person, it's hard to ignore the transcendence and uplift all his music makes me feel.

Similarly, the way you crafted this book, Zeth, really made me think about so much in life and the interconnectedness of everything. I wholeheartedly agree that it was a fitting treatment of the album!

Was Songs in the Key of Life a large part of your musical experience before this? Is it your favorite of Wonder's albums, or is there another that you feel more of a connection to?

When Greil Marcus spoke last night for our Author Series about his new book, The History of Rock 'n' Roll in 10 Songs, he discussed how the "standard version" of rock and roll history - whether as told by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a rock music historian, or through the chronology of the music as it was created - can be detrimental to how individuals define their own personal musical experience.

I'm not exactly sure how this relates to what I'm asking here...but I thought it was a really interesting concept - particularly if I try to consider how my musical experience up to this point defined how I heard Songs for the first time; since I wasn't yet born in 1976, and didn't perceive the album through the lens of the Motown machine and other records of the time but rather through the Classic Rock of my parents and the New Wave and Alternative music of my adolescence. I don't have an answer for myself yet, but I thought I would put this out there...

Songs in the Key of Life was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Pop Albums Chart on October 8, 1976, becoming only the third album in history to achieve that feat and the first by an American artist. Songs remained at No. 1 for 14 weeks, topping off a 44-week chart residency in the Top 40. Songs also reached No. 2 in the U.K., remaining on the charts for over a year, and was a worldwide best seller. Two singles from the album, "I Wish" and "Sir Duke," both reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and were also U.K. Top 10 hits. It was the second best-selling album of 1977 (behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumours). Songs won Wonder Grammys for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best R&B Vocal Performance, and Producer of the Year. Listening to the album, after reading more about its historical context and Wonder's creative process, how do you feel about its place in the cannon of popular music? Do you feel the acclaim is/was deserved?

Like Stasia, I had a hard time initially with the structure of the book - mostly because I was listening to it on vinyl though! I quickly gave that up and switched to CD so that I could listen more carefully as Will mentions. I do wonder, however, if you examine Songs in the context of the order of the songs as they appear on the album if it yields a different interpretation?

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed reading Zeth Lundy's Songs in the Key of Life as much as I did! I thought Lundy did a great job of putting the album in historical context, within both the other music of the time and the technological advances that made much of the sound on Songs possible. This, coupled with Lundy's discussion of the album in comparison to the work of other Motown artists and Wonder's overall output, was really helpful to me in understanding the impact the album had at the time as well.

Were there aspects of the album, or of Wonder's life during (or leading up to) the release of the album, that you felt needed additional examination? Did Lundy's exploration of the album through the lens of birth/innocence/experience/death/transcendence change how you viewed/heard the album?

What did everyone else think? Did you read the book first, or listen to the album, or go through them both together? Did you feel like the story fit the mood; could you see connections between the two?

I read the book first a couple weeks ago; then I got the album and listened to it. But now that I rather foolishly realize that each chapter goes with a track on the album, I have to go back and reread/listen simultaneously! That being said, I enjoyed the story a lot on its own, so dark and sexy and empowering and fairytale-like. It's fascinating to see how the music, listened to so obsessively, writhed its way into the author's subconscious and into this work.

So guess what my dad got me for my birthday this year, completely out of the blue? The CD for Rid of Me! I made sure to listen to it while I was finishing the book on Saturday.