On Experimentation: Musicians Spooky Tooth, Pierre Henry, Carlene Carter, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Nick Lowe, and painter Amy Sillman
I’ve got experimentation on my mind today. “My first five albums were experiments, experiments in mixing these different things, to find my own style of music.” This is what singer songwriter Carlene Carter told reporter Jeff Spivak in his 2016 profile of her in the Democrat & Chronicle. Why did I pull Carter’s debut record off the shelf today, decide to listen to it, read the liner notes after all of this time, and even look up an interview with Carter that discusses her experimental process? I just set up a new painting studio in part of a cabin that my wife and I own about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. The cabin is furnished with hand me down furniture, hand me down books, hand me down records, mostly from my parents’ home that we sold ten years ago after my father died. (How is the meaning of a record impacted by its having been owned previously?) Between cleaning up the studio and cooking meals today, I sifted through my smaller record collection there and
