Stories That Really Sing

Our folktelling three explore stories in music, questioning whether we have lost the richness, depth and communal spirit that great music brings. Our harmonious hosts also connect the dots with KISS and INXS business manager, Angus Vail, who shares his perspective on all things lyrical and loud.

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#Shakespeare

 

Well, welcome everyone to the Folk Tellers Stories to be shared podcast. My name is Joseph Bastian. Today we are talking about music as story and I'm also here with Kurt David and Steve Sadler, the Mali Lewis gentleman. You, you guys, I, I made them look that word up last week. So look up Mali Les, if you don't put that one, please. Well, today, so we've got a guest, uh a very cool Angus Vale who is the financial manager for Kiss and was for in excess and he's building a Shakespearean theater out of shipping containers which so uh he's gonna talk to us about music and the communal nature because one of the things, one of my questions, so I kind of want to begin with this. This is sort of a, a clarifying quote uh by Victor Hugo. So Victor Hugo says, music expresses that which cannot be said and on which is impossible to be silent. So let that soak in a little bit. Give me a few hours. Yeah. So that's, that's our clarifying thought for the day. And uh I think our challenge is, is my challenge statement is I'm gonna put forth to you two gentlemen, to the audience that music has lost its communal spirit and its storytelling power. And I say that and I want, I want you guys, I wanna talk about this. Uh I think with music when music went digital, when we lost albums and we lost artwork and liner notes and people began just putting ear buds in their ears and listening to music a alone. Uh We lost that. Uh A lot of that storytelling power in my mind. Storytellers are the ones that stood out in front of the fire and people gathered around the campfire. Well, when you talk about music, I mean, it dates me back as well to those album covers, right? That was a story in itself. You always looking forward to what's gonna be on the album. What's the story behind that album cover? What is, what is that album cover telling us as a story? I mean, just that visual alone if you don't get nothing else. But uh I think somebody mentioned also um about the, the storyline inside it, it was insert that was how were you getting your music, Steve, where were you getting your music before you could get it online when you were a kid? What, where were you getting your music from the record store? And so where, what did you do when you heard a new album went out? Well, obviously there was radio back then too today. So are you sure you're not that old and it was ok. Radio's been around. Ok. No, no, there's, you, you hear the song on the radio and then you're off to the record store and when you're looking for music, you're not just looking for a specific song. You're actually, there's a, an experience of flicking through all of the albums in a certain, you know, um, uh, indexing of letters. Right. So, if I'm looking for in excess, I go to I, and there's all the eyes, I'm looking at all the albums and, and, and the artwork, you know, which is obviously the marketing part, but it's more than marketing uh look at the Journey album covers, for example, they were amazingly done and they told a story like right in it, it was very science fiction and that type of thing. Um I can remember one in specific and being uh you know, growing up in Canada is uh is laying on my bed and opening up, you know, rush 21 12, throwing the record on there and as soon as it hits, you know, you turn the lights down, you open up the cover and, and you start to, to read and 21 12 is literally a story, especially the first side. It's, it's, it's a complete story, you know, and that experience to me went away after C DS um because you really lost the combination of the art and the music together as one which created a beautiful package, a comp a beautiful user experience which everyone talks about these days. I mean, being from tech, it's all like, oh, we need to have a really nice UX on this app that we're building or this website. It's like, well, yeah, you're worried about that. But what about the content? Where is the user experience gone on the content? It's all based on the workflow now and it makes no sense. But to that point too, Steve, it wasn't an overnight transition, right? We went from album covers, right? With the art, whether it be a or, or a graphic art to then the C DS, right? So we had C DS for a while and they still had some graphic art on them. But then the, as you mentioned at the beginning, Joseph was the full transition to digital. Took that communal experience away for the story for the communal experie