Tag Archives: Music

January 7, 2014 · 11:58 am

Stairway

TunesDay, and we’ll use the occasion to talk about a song that makes every “Best Rock Songs Of All Time” list.  It is, as Robert Plant says in the performance below, a song of hope:

That was from a 1973 performance of Stairway To Heaven.  I used this song while teaching poetry to a high school English class (the class and I made a deal – they’d learn all the correct terms with which to analyze poetry and pass a test on them; I’d only use rock lyrics for poetry study).  It’s a really interesting piece in terms of how the meter changes from anapestic (dah dah DAH) to dactylic (DAH dah dah) to iambic (dah DAH) to match the increasing pace and intensity of the song.  The music isn’t too shabby either!

There been a lot of debate over the years what it’s about.  I’m not a believer in the whole myth about a Satanic ritual song if you listen backwards.  I do, however, know that the stairway image comes from the Bible (Jacob’s Ladder – another oft used image in music) and much of the rest is kind of English pseudo-medievalism.  I don’t really read into it a lot except for two points I think are useful as we think about business.

The first is in the first lyric:

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.

You can’t buy a stairway to heaven – it’s something that’s earned.  Plant’s being snarky but he makes an excellent point.  We often don’t understand the value of some things or people because we’re looking at the next shiny object.  We also underestimate the work involved in achieving success.  It’s not something that one can queue up and buy – like the stairway, it’s earned.

The next is probably the more important lesson:

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

In other words, there comes a time when every business – and every business person – might need to stop, reassess, and change direction.  Conditions change, priorities change, and the people who are successful learn to change with them, modifying business models and career paths along the way.  That’s why, in my opinion, it’s a song of hope.  More importantly, it reminds us that business (and life) is a journey, and maybe that journey is every bit as important as the goal, which is where that stairway leads.

What do you think?

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December 17, 2013 · 10:53 am

What’s That Sound?

For our TunesDay installment this week I want to write about a style of music rather than a particular song.  As with most musical styles, nearly any song can be rendered this way although I’m not completely sure why anyone would want to do so.  That style is what many of you would call “elevator music.”  Don’t confuse that with “easy listening.”  The folks who created the latter meant you to listen.  The former, also known by the main practitioner of the style commercially – Muzak – is meant to create a mood while staying in the background.

In the late 1930’s and 1940’s, the sound of Muzak was used as “stimulus progression” to improve productivity.  The music wasn’t meant to be listened to, just to set a mood.  The increasing pace of the music  was meant to keep workers energized and was popular through the 1960’s.  It was background music – the stuff you heard in elevators: comforting, unobtrusive, and inoffensive.  By the mid 1980’s, background music had gone out of fashion.  Besides on-going accusations of “brainwashing”, the fact was that musical tastes has changed.  Music was more a part of people’s lives and the stimulus part of the program died.

The music we hear today in malls, airports, restaurants and, yes, elevators is meant to be in the foreground.  The mood music we hear can often be anything but comforting, unobtrusive, and inoffensive.  It can be hard to ignore.  Maybe that’s what many people just opt out by plugging in to the ubiquitous ear buds and creating their own aural environment.  Which raises the business point.

If you’re trying to move your marketing from being “elevator music” that plays in the background to being front and center, you run the risk of people opting out altogether.  I’m not advocating staying in the background.  There is too much marketing noise, I know, but standing quietly in a corner hoping a potential customer will take pity and bring you a glass of punch won’t work either.  The real challenge is to attract attention the way a skilled teacher does in a noisy class: by continuing to do your thing at a volume that requires people to pay attention and delivering information that people find important when they do so.

Is your marketing going to be Muzak – forgettable background sound that attempts to alter people’s moods –  or is it going to be something people hum to themselves because it’s had an impact?  Which sound is yours?

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November 19, 2013 · 11:28 am

Standing On The Moon

It is TunesDay and this week we’re going to have a dose of Good Ol Grateful Dead.  At the end of the 1980’s, the Dead released “Built To Last” and the song “Standing On The Moon” from the album became a standard part of their concert repertoire from then forward.  Have a listen but I’ll tell you up front that while the quality of the music is superb it’s not a great video.  I chose this performance because it’s 1989, it’s an earthquake benefit the Dead played in Oakland, and yes, that’s Clarence Clemons sitting in on sax:

Pretty, right?  And the “Such a lovely view of Heaven/ I’d rather be with you” part while we look at Jerry and Clarence gets more poignant every day.  So what does this have to do with business?

There is a tendency for all of us to have a “grass is always greener” mentality both in life and in business.  This song captures that as well as how one’s perspective can have an awful to do with one’s happiness.  Jerry sings about a number of things in the world that are pretty bad (war, children starving, etc.) and about standing on the moon, happy to be away from all of it.  In fact, with a broader perspective, they appear kind of small as he “watches it all roll by.”  The singer then realizes that while it’s serene on the moon with a lovely view of Heaven, the person he loves is still on earth.  Despite all the ugliness of the world, he wants to be back there.

It’s always a good idea to keep the broader perspective in business.   Be aware of the details but like the protagonist in the song, see them as part of a much bigger whole.  Things that may seem important up close are, in fact, relatively trivial.  It’s also an example of how things can take on added meaning when we use that additional perspective.  Jerry would be gone (along with Brent, the Dead’s keyboard player) in a handful of years after this was released.  I can’t listen to this without getting chills – he has a lovely view of Heaven but would rather be with us.  In fact, Garcia had almost died shortly before this song was written – I’ve always thought Robert Hunter was writing these lyrics with that in mind.

As businesspeople, a little time on the moon is a good thing.  Take a step back and don’t get caught up in any one moment or weekly report.  Stand on that proverbial moon.  You’ll “hear a cry of victory/And another of defeat” and realize that it’s the journey as much as it is the destination.  Coming along?

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