The Importance of History to Emotional Human Connection

Photo of Jeremy and Brennan at the former site of Caribou Ranch Studios in Nederland, CO

There’s no such thing as immortality in this life.  It’s true.  You may say, “the music of the Beatles will live forever.”  Maybe, maybe not.  In 2019, High Resolution Audio posted this story: Half of Americans Can’t Name a Classical Composer. 

Classical composers consist of people like Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. 

There are people who think Nirvana is a clothing brand. 

Most Gen Z I talk to, some of them haven’t heard of artists like Bob Dylan, some of them have, but couldn’t name one song he wrote. 

I’m not trying to be Walt Kowalski telling you to get off my lawn.  Time marches on, it waits for no man.  However, I do think it’s sad.

I won’t extrapolate this out into the wider context of society as a whole, but as we move deeper and deeper into fast, cheap, disposable entertainment, we’re losing a lot of art that has real value.  We’re losing the best human connection to our ancestors.  I can look at a painting by Edward Hopper and feel like, although one hundred years apart, I know exactly how he felt.  Because as humans, we’re not as unique as we like to think we are.  Almost all of human life, no matter your immutable traits or the choices you make, is a shared experience.

I’m not a hooey fooey, hippie dippy kind of guy, but I can tell you I have felt a connection to the past many times.  In 2003, when I would go into Track Record Studios in North Hollywood late at night to record for free with Ryan, I was always in Studio B.  I knew I was in the same vocal booth cutting vocals that Mike Ness had been in in 1990 singing “Ball and Chain”.  I stared at the cigarette burn on the window sill put there by Stevie Nicks.  I sat and played the piano that Tori Amos recorded Little Earthquakes on.  I was tangibly connected to those moments through that room.

It’s not magic.  It’s not even real any place other than my mind.  It’s a connection I am making through a combination of a knowledge and love of history and my own imagination.  Standing on the stage at 924 Gilman with Kittenhead, thinking about how Green Day, Operation Ivy, Rancid, AFI, Bad Religion, Tiger Army, etc., etc. had all stood on that same stage and looked out onto the same room.  Or conversely, sitting in a pew at the Ryman Auditorium watching the Gaslight Anthem standing on the same stage that, literally everyone, has stood on from Hank Williams to Nick Cave. 

Walking into these rooms, participating in the tradition, as old as humans ourselves, of musical performance, connects us to the earliest of our ancestors.  Whether it’s a recording studio, concert hall or perhaps the fields outside Louisiana’s Angola Penitentiary, knowing something important happened right where you’re standing connects you to it if you’ll allow it.  It’s one thing to know something, it’s another thing to experience it.  Did I see the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl?  No, but I saw Dolly Parton at the Hollywood Bowl.  You know when you’re in the presence of greatness and you can understand how the audience might have felt fifty years before with the Beatles.  They experienced the same thing I did.  Different people, different artist, different times… but the experience was the same.

It’s important to do this.  When you see the rooms in which Robert Johnson and The Carter Family recorded in, with the equipment used, then you see Sun Studios, then you see modern home recording?  Man, it makes you appreciate how much Robert Johnson and The Carter Family did with what they have.  They had to be on another level.  There were no punch-ins, there wasn’t the possibility of taking a year to make a record.  They rarely got more than two takes.  And, as good as they were, it was inevitable to still have imperfections.  Because they were human.  Their humanity wasn’t edited out in ProTools as it is today. 

Which leads me to my last point.  Are we even creating anything these days that will stand the test of time as much as the artists I’ve mentioned?  Or, are they doomed to be forgotten faster than Nirvana turned into a clothing brand sold exclusively at Hot Topic?

I don’t know, you tell me.