I suppose this form of witness could happen aurally; perhaps it’s as easy as hearing an Andy Gill riff or a Kim Gordon cadence and knowing intuitively how that all works. Then you form those sounds yourself, with your own hands and your own voice. Or maybe you see it on a video, in footage of a musician who finally translates and unlocks what you thought was a mystery. For me, however, I needed to be there—to see guitarists like Kim Warnick and Kurt Bloch of the Fastbacks or Doug Martsch of Treepeople play chords and leads, or Calvin Johnson and Heather Lewis from Beat Happening, in the wholly
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