#330 with Craven Rock: Razorcake Podcast
Ryan Mishap made the argument in the recent book review issue of Mishap Zine thateverything we hear or take in is somehow a story. Even if it isn’t a story, it tells a story. He believes the way we interpret what we take in defines our reality. It’s also what drove us out of the caves and developed our consciousness, making us human. Now we live in a world where stories are all around us: the news, commercials, billboard ads and smart phone apps, Hollywood movies and television shows.
These stories are defining how we think and they are often put there to make us, to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, feel small, too poor, too ugly, or too beaten down. What Woody said still holds true and like Woody, I don’t want anything to do with those stories. So give me music that tells true stories, not lies that, over time, become true.
Give me something that rocks with the added element of a well-turned phrase, music with a lyrical pop that hits me right in the guts. Give me a song that burns into my memory like a won fight or a lost love. Give me something I want to scribble on the wall of a bathroom stall. Give me dark, pensive, poetry for three AM walking. Give a song that encourages, like a warm, knowing embrace, or a fist-pumping anthem of resistance. Give me such torch songs. Give me these stories and I’ll keep coming back to them.
–Craven Rock