Headphones On

Quite often I'll love an artist without knowing exactly why. Something in my subconscious has fallen in love at first listen with the familiar and comfortable... like that favorite old sweater I love to wrap around my arms on a chilly fall day¹. The problem comes when I identify a sample as the source of the love. Let's use Jens Lekman² as an example³:

I LOVED this song "Black Cab" when I first heard it, loved it like a newborn puppy whose tiny squinty eyes were melting my very guts. And then one day on random...

I've been a fan of the Left Banke for years. I have no idea why i wasn't immediately smacked upside the head with the obvious sample the second I heard "Black Cab". I guess I wasn't expecting something so blatant so the sample instead warped into that familiar love feeling. When I brought this up on a mailing list of similar musical geeks such as myself, someone else brought up another Jens example:

This was horrible! This was bad! He can't really do this can he? He can't really float samples of the Left Banke through all of his music and get away with it, can he? Wait a minute... what am I so upset about? I can't have a problem with sample-heavy musicians? Hell, I am a huge fan of Saint Etienne aren't I?

What have I proved? Absolutely nothing other than when Jens Lekman samples from The Left Banke it irritates me, yet every Saint Etienne song has bits and pieces of other artists scattered throughout. Why does it irk me when Jens does this and not when Bob Stanley does? Perhaps because when Bob (and Pete Wiggs too eh) never shed their fan status when they became musicians, instead they've put it proudly on display since day one. Case in point... anyone who samples Rush at the beginning of a song (Conchita Martinez) wants to be called out on it. They have been as obvious in their musical adoration as humanly possible... they've named whole records after the Beach Boys; songs after Tammy St John lyrics; covered bands like The Fall, The Springfields, The Field Mice, Neil Young, Gary Numan, etc; collaborated with countless other musicians; curated their own compilation CDs; run their own record label (twice!); and on and on.

So wait a minute... why is it OK for Saint Etienne to sample the hell out of Paul's Boutique and get indie cred for it, yet when Jens Lekman samples The Left Banke I get noticeably irritated? I can't answer that.

¹ Nothing makes me fall in love with music like the ability to label it a "fall" instead of a "winter" or "spring". Summer songs are strangely on a completely different scale and not subject to the seasonal prejudices.
² I really do like Jens Lekman. I do appear to be picking on him here but I think in general he is a great songwriter and an even better live performer.
³ Also, I have no real reason for picking on Jens today. His Left Banke samples were discovered some years ago yet today when "Black Cab" came up on random again it reopened the wound.

Buy some: Jens Lekman, Saint Etienne