This entry was jotted down earlier, on a handy piece of paper. Two notes follow.

Writing this after listening to Steinski's "The Motorcade Sped On" for the first time. I wanted to try to capture this before I lost the feeling to the abstraction of memory.

I'm not quite sure what it is I just heard. I had heard good things about this album (What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Rertrospective), but I didn't really know what to expect. I listened to the Lessons sort of indifferently; I recognized skill in it, danced a little to the beat (I mean, I'm not in a club). Then I listened through "Motorcade", and I had to hit pause. I get this way after seeing certain good movies, but it's a new experience to be left processing a four minute track. From the booklet:

The US reaction was mixed, edging toward bad; it wasn't a party record, it was kinda on the arty side, and it offended quite a few people. In the UK, where the original event was somewhat more abstract, reaction was better.

The event is fairly abstract to me -- through time, not distance. And so I wonder if the lore spreads stronger down the generations than it does across an ocean. Was the offense in the States part of a generation gap? Did a Briton hearing it at the time of release feel it as powerfully as I did over twenty years later?

I certainly hope so. Because, though I want people to hear "Motorcade", and I hope it's not found offensive, it seems like there's often this tragedy in art where as fewer people are offended by something, fewer people are moved. And when a piece of art has lost its power, so has some legacy.

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I realize that I didn't actually provide any defense of "The Motorcade Sped On" in my thoughts above. It didn't really cross my mind, since I was too busy thinking about my own feelings on the song to consider other critiques. Afraid I was mostly alone in my thoughts, I took a look at some reviews. Even now, reception is mixed, although professional reviewers seem to appreciate it more. However, even among defenders, opinion varies. The introduction in the liner notes calls it a "sigh", and Nathan Rabin for The Onion A.V. Club calls it "an exquisite exercise in flagrant bad taste". My feelings echo those of Nate Patrin of (the often overly pretentious, I admit) Pitchfork: "...tasteless in theory, but the sense of panic and confusion that Steinski puts together through repetition and multi-layered, often-clashing sounds manages to give it an unnerving gravity."

"Number Three On Flight Eleven" seemed to me like a nightmare in musical form. That is not a criticism.