David at work.

Every summer I have the opportunity to dive deep into music books that have been burning a hole on my shelf…

This year’s trip to Surf City allowed me to further explore David Byrne’s “How Music Works” — a wonderfully presented squarish white leather bound book.  Reading it a second time cover to cover was revealing.

Byrne curates his thoughts on music in its current state — venues, music production, consumption, distribution and creation have evolved.  Byrne helps me better accept the reality of digital music, licensing and live music ticket prices, but also the mind of today’s working musicians.

Most of all it helps me reshape my own thoughts on music and where it is heading next.  For me, like many others, music is a journey not an end.

There are many book excerpts I could share with TBR Ramblers… but I will keep it simple and share just this one.

Page 211.

“We’ll always want music to be part of our social fabric.  We gravitate to concerts and bars even if the sound sucks; we pass music from hand to hand (or via the Internet) as a form of social currency; we build temples where only “our kind of people” can hear our kind of music (opera houses, punk clubs, symphony halls); and we want to know everything about our favorite bards (one of my new favorite words)  — their love lives, their clothes, their political beliefs.  Something about music urges us to engage with its larger context, beyond the piece of plastic its came on — it seems to be part of our genetic makeup that we can be so deeply moved by this art form.  Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated things.  It’s whom you were with, how old you were, and what was happening that day.  Trying to reduce and package such a changeable and unwieldy entity is ultimately futile. But many try.”

Friends and neighbors..flap your wings.

As someone told me this week…F.Y.W.  I asked him what does that mean, he said “flap your wings brotha.”