Showing posts with label mind meld. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mind meld. Show all posts

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Mind Meld

I gave everything I had. I wasn't holding back…
~Jimmy Page

Mage Music 72
Mage Music 72 Mind Meld  jimmypagemusic.blogspot.com

The best music isn't always the most beautiful or melodic.  It isn't always the catchiest tune or the most easily hummed or whistled while you work. Sometimes it's so unlike anything that’s come before it that it’s hard to grasp. 

Sometimes the best music is raw and ugly, jagged and hard to bear.  Sometimes it is sloppy. It can be sweaty and dirty and offensive. And sometimes it’s so starkly beautiful you have a hard time breathing because of it.

Sometimes, without you ever being able to figure out why, the best music is so good it hurts to hear it and it makes you cry.

The best music is the music that the musician falls into and pulls meaning from, and that the listener falls into and receives from the Universe through the music. It doesn't matter who the musician is - what matters is what he can do.

The best music is all the above and more, because the best music has Magick in it. The Magick grabs the soul and shoves the Universe right in. Mage music is life itself and we recognize it. That’s what makes it the best.

It’s dangerous. It’s risky. But you still have to let it in. You still have to open up. You have to still give it everything you have. That is the price of Magick.

[Opinion alert!  What follows is personal opinion of the author!*]

Blending, merging, becoming something new

Ironically, Jimmy Page’s full immersion in Led Zeppelin, with the extraordinary results that came from his doing so, has been a major obstacle to his continuing forward musically. Robert Plant has moved on by taking a different musical path. But Jimmy Page, who I believe has unfinished business with the path he started out on, is held back by the public’s refusal to let go of Led Zeppelin.

How can new music stand on its own merits if it is always faulted for not being something else? How can Jimmy Page’s musical vision be appreciated if instead of hearing the message of his guitar people are listening for a singer’s voice that isn't there?

But it works both ways. Listening well to Mage music can be an act of Magick just as a Mage’s making the music is. It takes desire and will on the listener's part: desire to fully hear, will to not allow outside influences to deter the listener from the path. The ritual: The music itself, the point where it all comes together.

Coverdale - Page

I highly recommend that you decide to listen well to Coverdale/Page. This means listening with the desire to fully hear what is there in that music, not what is missing from it.  There is power in this music, music that - like almost everything Jimmy Page has done post-Led Zeppelin - has never received as much acclaim as is deserved.  Here are two mature and accomplished musicians, each with their own power, who attempted a two-way musical mind meld in order to create something new, and yet so many people have missed what was going on entirely.    

Look at the album cover: a merge sign.  It's the first hint.

Look at the titles.  There is a story being told.  

Then open yourself to the bigger message. This music is dangerous. It is full of brutality and anguish, hope and forgiveness – and it is an invitation. If there is not so much light in it, the dark is so dark as to make the slightest gleam a blinding laser. Follow the light where it leads.

Can I say for sure that Jimmy Page meant what I believe is going on? Of course not. But what I can say is this: Jimmy Page is not known for creating music by accident. Pay attention.


*The usual caveat applies: My opinion does not have to become your opinion. I merely offer these ideas as food for thought.