music tests, 1

Goal: To test the value (real and/or subjective) af an album as a whole.
Elements: The album to be analysed, a CD/MP3 player, time.

Procedure:
1. We choose an album to be analysed. In this particular occasion, for this test, I have chosen The Bends, by Radiohead.

2. Write down any reaction prior to the audition of the album. Why have we chosen this particular album, which feelings, emotions does it arise...
- This album has been chosen because I have not listened it in almst a decade, because it is extremely relevant in the band's evolution and also because it belongs to our collective past.
- It is just touching the album, seeing the cover art, that emotions are triggered, the album seems to talk directly to our brain, to the forgotten areas of our brain were we stored the album years ago. In other words, the cover art seems to prepare us for the emotional ride we are about to initiate. The pain in the face, the half-naked body, the anxiety... an image, a thousand memories.

3. And now, we start playing the album. From beginning to end. With a pen and a notebook handys to take notes of the whole process.
- A familiar sound, not even music yet, surrounds us. "Planet Telex" begins. Before the start of the first verse, we remember the lyrics. From who knows where, without being aware of remember it, the words came back to us. And we mumble the melody, we sing the chorus.
With the second song, "The Bends", we even remember its three guitar chords . Time, suddenly, seemed to have not gone by.
And its the turn for "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" and we are touched. They haven't aged at all! They still have all theyr energy, all their dramatic power. We remember the black and white clip for "High and Dry", how it rained at the very end and how the music didn't stop. We remember who we were (or who we thought we were) the first time we listened to this album. How we lived our teen years, how we thought that we were gonna succeed in life, how we desired to escape from our family house, from our town, from everything and from everyone, how those songs seemed to talk to us, how we used to spend the Saturday afternoons locked in our bedrooms listening to the radio. Everything comes back. Painfully.
The remaining of the album keeps us going up and down, through guitar strokes ("Bones", "My Iron Lung", "Black Star"), through desperation ("Nice Dreams") until we reached the cathartic end. After shaking us, phisycally and emotionally for 50 minutes, once we are soft, fragile and with our heart wide open, here it comes "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". And its simplicity overcomes us. Its delicacy embriagates us. Life, suddenly, has a purpose: listen to music, re-live these 50 minutes again, return to our past forgetting that the present scare us and the future doesn't exist.

4. Extract conclusions from the test.
- There was a time when we were young, when we were lucky to experience the birth of Trip Hop, the explosion of Grunge, the hyperactivity of Brit Pop, the very end of Rock Català, as we were learning to live, to think, to have fun. And that is something that noone can take from us. Therefore, let's allow ourselves, every now an then (there is no need yet to live only in the past), a trip to the past. Music can be our vehicle. Let all those memories forgotten blossom. All those worries that we thought unsolvable, show themselves as small and insignificants as they really are. But be careful. Time-travel has its consequences: not everything awaiting for us is good. Let's be prepared, then, to go back to our fears, our worries, the lost goals, the unreached dreams... and maybe, only maybe, by the time the music test ends we won't know if our eyes are wet due to the emotional strengh of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" or because we have realised that we are not who we thought we were going to be.