Finding the Gold in a Mountain of Coal

One of the tragedies of today’s record industry is the sheer number of albums released each week: Hundreds if not thousands of recordings by every kind of act imaginable, and plenty that are literally unimaginable, find their way out the doors of the various record companies.

Clearly, too many.

The reason it’s a tragedy--instead of a glowing tribute to the egalitarian nature of business in a democratic society--is that the vast majority of these recordings quickly disappear into the black hole of obscurity. Truth is, while all musicians may be created equal, they sure don’t end up that way.

It used to be the rule that record company talent scouts signed someone because the scout personally liked the act. In today’s world, governed as it is by the profit-loss sheet, that’s the exception. The two guiding principles, at least for the major labels, seem to be:

1) Sign whatever sounds just like whatever is already a hit.

2) Sign anything else, regardless of whether you have the slightest intention of promoting it, lest the other guy get a hit with it first.

While many untalented acts get the inattention they deserve, other, massively talented musicians languish at the bottom of the heap.

There is a glimmer of a silver lining here, in that some dutiful college-radio programmer or music critic might stumble across a gem hidden among all the paste that passes over his or her desk. Indeed, for me, one of the great rewards of writing about pop music for the last 15 years has been the surprise discovery that crops up from time to time.

Though it may seem as the years go by that such finds are fewer and further between, each time it does happen, the thrill is greater. The thing that makes music infinitely worthwhile to me is knowing that no matter how curmudgeonly I might feel sometimes, deep down I realize that--VH-1’s latest slogan notwithstanding--I never will have seen, or heard, it all.

I still remember walking into an inconsequential community center auditorium in Huntington Beach in 1982 to see a local rockabilly band and being completely bowled over by the opening act--the Wild Cards, an Orange County band that still gives me chills whenever I hear it.

Yet, eight years later, the Wild Cards still haven’t found the widespread exposure they deserve. (If you haven’t enjoyed this group’s rollicking blend of R&B;, jazz, blues and rock, don’t miss the opportunity when the Cards play a rare show on their home turf Wednesday at Peppers Golden Bear in Huntington Beach).

I came across another musical nugget more recently while I was at home painting the walls--an activity that gave me time, as I rolled and brushed my way around the living room, to sift through several promotional albums among the stacks that had remained unopened.

While listening to a sampler of various world-beat artists issued by Warner Bros., I was struck by a haunting track featuring an Armenian musician named Djivan Gasparyan, who plays the duduk , an Armenian wind instrument distantly related to the oboe and bassoon. With it, he produces some of the most eerily beautiful, profoundly emotional music I’ve ever heard.

The sampler was several months old--I had no idea how long it had been since Warners released the Gasparyan album, “I Will Not Be Sad in This World.” (Luck be with you if you try to find this in a record store.) When I called the label’s publicity department to get more information about it, the album didn’t seem to exist any more. After getting bounced around a half-dozen departments, I found one person who still had a single copy she was willing to send me.

An unusual three-page, handwritten biography accompanying the album explains that the duduk is “especially liked by the Armenian people. Due to (the) light and colourful timbre and warm sound, the instrument became part of the everyday life, and today no festive occasion, wedding party or family feast is conceivable without (it).”

Beyond that, the bio notes, “ Duduk has soul and feelings in itself. It is a unified symphony of human spirits. In its tiny holes, it bears the cry of our bitter past, the hymn to the present bright life, our faith, our rightness, titanic strength. . . . Duduk is the breath of life to every Armenian. It is believed that no other instrument is able to convey the emotions of our people so exactly, perfectly as the duduk does.”

A pragmatist quickly would point out that this expansive, ethereal folk music isn’t the kind of stuff you’d expect to replace Jon Bon Jovi at the top of the pop charts. Then again, who would have predicted the surprise pop successes of France’s Gipsy Kings or the Bulgarian State Female Vocal Choir?

The upside of the record glut that deluges us is that it’s possible to find a wider variety of music, both from within the United States and from around the world, than ever before. The sad fact is that to dig out that rare diamond, you need to be willing to paw through an awful lot of coal.

Fortunately, the occasional Djivan Gasparyan that one finds can make the search seem worth every dirty, grimy minute.