Begin Again and Fighting Against the Corporate Take Over of Music

by Christopher Barr

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” 

- Plato

“Play it fuckin’ loud!!”

 - Bob Dylan

Begin Again is about the love of music, it is about the love of real, organic, earthy music.  The film is also about finding passion when one is drifting without direction, this passion often allows focus.  The film is also about New York City, a city that’s had many love songs written about, a city that pushes the human condition to break and crumble or rise to a level of the unimaginable.  New York City is not without its mechanized, advertisement saturated spaces but it’s also a global market of multicultural people and filled with diverse opportunities, thus allowing for a parade of creative inspiration for those seeking it.   

Begin Again is a story about a weary, nearly off the cliff, lost everything he has, music producer and a young singer songwriter that wondrously cross paths.  This synergetic, cosmic connection results with them creating a record together on the acoustical rhapsodic streets of New York City.

Dan, drunk and having suicidal thoughts meets Gretta in a little smoky bar, watering hole with a small stage and a drunken crowd.  Gretta is playing guitar and singing a song on that small stage when Dan looks up, and with a wave of inspiration slashing over him, he focuses his rusted eyes on her.  With the magic of imagination, the unmanned drum set, double bass and violin come to life and assist Gretta in the artistic space in Dan’s mind.

Gretta sings in the tradition of Nora Jones, Jewel and Aimee Mann, with personal lyrics and melodious chorus’ driving each soulful song.  What’s great about her singing and what Dan sees in it is its freeing quality, the music isn’t fake like so often the music of today is.  This film explores music as it is meant to be, from the creative side of living, filled with poetic expression and naturally flowing musical articulation.

In the case of the film, they take their love of music to an extreme by recording her album, not in the environmentally controlled darkness of a sound studio, but rather falling prey to the colliding and convoluting sounds of the city, along with the elements of weather.  Gretta stretches her wonderful voice, along with the accompaniment of some local talented musicians, over car alarms, subways, birds, traffic, the marching of thousands of sidewalk commuters and the hum of electricity surging through the circulatory, ubiquitous systems of the city.

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom.  If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” 

- Charlie Parker

This fantastic collaboration pulls Gretta and Dan out of their respective holes they have been digging for themselves to climb into, hiding from everything.  Music makes an often unbearable existence livable; it creates a universally welcomed ambassadorship by bringing people, who otherwise might never meet - together.  The idea and love of music transcends cultures much in the same way New York City does, at least the good parts anyway.  Discrimination in music comes down to talent because at the end of the day, all Gretta and Dan want to do is make beautiful music, while simultaneously recognizing talent when they see it.

The music business has become the lowest common denominator in order to reach the widest possible audience; they cast a massive untalented net over a population of people that are merely rationed talent.  Skill, trained or untrained, is unfortunately becoming more and more scarce as we commit to the most shallow form of musical ‘progress’ to ever exist on our planet. CBS Newsman Dan Rather, after decades of bringing news to the world was ‘removed’ from his position for breaking a story about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service, a service that was in question because Bush was often unaccounted for when he was supposed to be so-called serving his country.  The fact is, he was being groomed for big things politically but he was rich and from a rich family, meaning the elite doesn’t go to war, and in this case the elite faked it.  Dan Rather was simply doing what he’s always been doing, trying to bring the truth to the news and he was fired for it.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured us.  It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.  Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

- Carl Sagan

There has been a massive shift of ideology in America in the last couple of decades.  There’s always been corruption, there’s always been lying but there hasn’t always been this governmental and corporate 'gag-order' forced on the news and the entertainment industries of the country.  Certainly on levels there has been, for instance during World War 2 with movies were reaching a high in propaganda but never to the degree that it is today.

Music, like the news, has been assimilated and coopted into the corpovernment, propaganda industrial apparatus.   Music’s function these days is damage control and distraction while the oligarchy of the world reign supremacy over the population.  Rolling Stone magazine isn’t a credible music news magazine anymore.  The old days are gone where musicians spoke their minds and sang from their truthful souls.  Now popular music is a not-so disguised commercial and a form of misdirection where the ignorant, take what they want because Beyoncé says so while looking corporately stylish doing it.  Music these days is an embarrassment for those that no better and a tragedy for those that don’t.  The latter gets to live their lives thinking that the current musical hits are the best there is.

Movies like Almost Famous and Begin Again are fighting back and attempting to turn the volume down on this impending and now pervasive calamity.  As much as I’d love to say that the musical revolution is a foot and the radio waves will be reclaimed by artistically driven musical poets, the reality is I’d be operating under an illusion of hope.  The power of dissent is too well known to the disingenuous elite of the world to allow a ‘grunge movement’ of sorts to ever go mainstream again.

Credible news and authentically inspired music will have to remain in the shadows of the un-surveilled corners of rustic, antiquated bars and in specialized areas on the internet.  As imagination becomes a commodity for recycled blockbusters it’s refreshing to watch a film like Begin Again, reminding its audience of a time when music was revolutionary and more importantly, that now today in this technopolis, there are still people out there with the same verve as Bob Dylan had in the 60’s.

“Music is everybody’s business.  It’s only the publishers who think people own it.”  - John Lennon