Back To Our Roots

It's probably not quite as important as returning back to your root note, but Sasha Frere-Jones makes an interesting point.

In A Paler Shade of White, she describes her experience and observations of a rather successful Indie rock band, Arcade Fire, whom she criticized as missing the mark.

While I've never seen the band myself, Arcade Fire does exactly what most bands now do.

They play.

Yes, well, of course they do.

That's precisely the problem. Their music is lost in the commotion.

Creating a balance that individualizes notes (or beats) while still managing to keep those patterns intertwined is exactly what occurred in rock-and-roll and blues music, the roots of every subgenre in guitar-wanking goodness that has ever existed.

Artistic expression is what makes music great, but music must exist in order to provide a foundation for that expression.