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Blue and Brown Books

Blue and Brown Books

Released on Dec 22, 2009

Replay value is at an all time low.  This has not so much to do with radio or the kind of music being made, as it does with the way we use music now.  Consider, e.g., “Empire State of Mind,” last fall’s monster smash from perhaps New York City’s most persistent hip-hop icon, the lyrics to which consist of Jay-Z namedropping other NYC icons and attractions and is just generally very self-congratulatory.  He is, however, accompanied by Alicia Keys, and she’s what makes the song worth listening to over and over.  And yet, it’s not her vocals qua meaningful or message-carrying lyrics; it’s just the sound of her voice, the melody, I think, that gives the song such incredible replay power.

The way Ms. Keys belts out “New York” in what sounds like three syllables, with what seems like real passion and conviction and couples rhyming vowel sounds with strong chords (the F# offsets the /u/in “New” and the /ɔ/ in “York;” the inverted Bbm matches the /æ/ and unstressed ʊ in “can’t do” with the /æ/and /u/ in “brand new”) makes for an absolutely mesmerizing piece of music.  (“Empire State of Mind” also contains a sample of “Love on a Two Way Street,” originally written by one Ms. Sylvia Robinson [the rights to which Broadcast Music Incorporated regulates, and the interests of whom BMI represents, respectively], which means that every time J. Z.’s rendition airs or is performed, Ms. Robinson receives some tiny slice of the profits via licensing fees collected on her behalf and distributed as royalties by BMI.)  The choral “New York” (which is not the song’s title, but which made the song so memorable) eventually rendered the whole thing intolerable when the song was repeated ad nauseum, everywhere.

As if the song’s persistent, always-on-the-airwaves presence wasn’t enough to drill the song into the collective subconscious, there’s also the myriad marketing and promo usages to consider:

“Empire State of Mind” was featured in live broadcasts of no less than four high-profile performances in two months’ time, including the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13 and the American Music Awards on November 22. 

NY Yankee Derek Jeter used the song as his entrance music before every single at-bat during the Yankees’ run to the World Series (FYI, Jeter appeared at the plate 64 times in the 2009 postseason [he did, to his {or perhaps the song’s?} credit, manage to bat over .400 during the WS, easily one of the most intense and high-pressure situations anyone could hope to find themselves in]).

The song was also licensed for use in the teaser trailer to the feature-length Sex and the City sequel, likewise for segments of NYC-based TV shows Gossip Girl and The City, as well as by World Wrestling Entertainment for an event at Madison Square Garden. 

All of which speaks to a question the composition’s title seems to suggest but neither Jay-Z nor Ms. Keys nor anyone else involved with the song’s production seems to care to answer: What is an “empire state of mind,” exactly?  Why not call it “New York,” since that’s what we remember anyway?

If I’m left with the question as to why an artist would choose to title a work w/o/r for the work’s content or subject, it’s only important here because the self-titled debut from Blue and Brown Books takes its name from the work of one Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein.  (I’ll here revert to underscoring L.W.’s work, in order to differentiate between the artist/album/book.)  The Blue and Brown Books consist of notes L. Wittgenstein dictated to students at Cambridge in the mid 1930s, and preliminary sketches of arguments and ideas that would become the rather-important-to-the-future-of-Philosophy-at-large and masterful Philosophical Investigations, respectively.  All you really need to know about L. Wittgenstein and his work w/r/t to this review is that L.W. emphasized the importance of words and things, and especially on words’ usage(s).  This will be important shortly. 

Blue and Brown Books, a.k.a. singer/songwriter, Philosophy student/teacher Kyle Ferguson et al., first received exposure when Ferguson entered the BMI Foundation’s ninth-annual John Lennon Scholarship songwriting competition with a track entitled “Notes from a Solipsist.”  The song centers on the idea that no one can really know about anything other than his or her own existence.  The lyrics are introspective and nigh narcissistic and could-be egotistical and so not your usual pop folk topic (world-weary reportage or pseudo-political discourse or what have you): 

“I remember watching / Yellowed leaves fall from the tree /

And what are the chances / This could happen without me?” 

“Notes from a Solipsist” takes up the intersection of art and philosophy too often forgotten in any kind of contemporary art qua entertainment and, as often occurs when inquiry and expression come to a crossroads with commercial interests, a curious thing happened.  As the contest’s final rounds were winding down, Ferguson was contacted and asked by a BMI rep to change the name of the song from “Notes from a Solipsist” to “Don’t Forget to Breathe” (the latter lyrics from the song’s chorus [and readily more memorable]), which raises another interesting question, succinctly stated by another interviewer: “If a song's title is arbitrary, then it can be changed without worry; but if a song's title is irrelevant, why does it need to be changed at all?”

And this is where Wittgenstein might help.  He might ask: Well, what’s the function of this title we’re talking about?  And not just “Notes from a Solipsist” or “Don’t Forget to Breathe,” what of titles, in general?  What about them, and what can we know about them and how they work and the people who use them?

These are important questions (questions, mind you, thought up and about while enjoying the seamless and soothing melodies of “Whereof” and “Thereof” and of more conventional tracks like “The Weary are Wise,” all of which feel like excellent, eloquent parts of something larger than themselves, much of which is due to K. Ferguson’s articulate vocals and improvisatory guitar-playing, but also the accompaniment on assorted other string instruments by Peter and Tim Bowling) especially when so much music is downloaded and a song’s title is not just an arbitrary name or a few words isolated from the chorus, but also always a potential keyword, another part of the product to be monetized.  What all of this has to do with the album in question has less to do with salability or mass-market appeal, than whether Blue and Brown Books can even be called an album.

On 22 December 2009, Davenport, IA-based Future Appletree Records announced the availability of a “group of songs” that “may be the only release” from K. Ferguson et al. a.k.a. BBR.  Dubbed one of the best ‘“New Dylan” musicians’ by the Rock Island Argus, Ferguson is an Illinois native and Augustana grad, a lanky skinny dude with dark features and a perpetual five o’clock, and was more than willing to assist in small ways with my terribly rudimentary interpretation of L. Wittgenstein’s notoriously thorny work(s).  He’s classically trained and can’t read music, and told the River Cities’ Reader “he doesn't envision a career in music.”  So, when prodded by higher-ups at BMI to change the title of his entry, he acquiesced, and tied for second place.  He won a scholarship, and moved to Manhattan and continues his Ph.D. studies at City University of New York.  Moreover, he retained the rights to his song and the recording, and replaced the original name for its current offering.  This doesn’t so much restore the integrity of the song or speak to some noble principle against compromise in the name of commercialization, as much as it simply fits the composition.

Blue and Brown Books, by Blue and Brown Books, is well worth the $0.99/track or ten bucks/album or whatever on iTunes, and very much lives up to its legacy.  The sound is minimalist and instrumental and Arvo Pärt or Steve Reich-inspired, but more than anything, I’m drawn to the clarity and simple cadence of the name: Blue and Brown; two distinct colors with their own connotative weight, seemingly discrete but still part of a spectrum, an unexpected dyad. The Blue and Brown Books were things L.W. never intended to publish, and thus, as another reviewer put it, “reveal the germination and growth of ideas which found their final expression in his later work.” This reviewer can only hope to say the same about Blue and Brown Books.

Posted by Diego Baez on Jan 12, 2010 @ 9:00 am