Saturday, October 28, 2000

Dr. Andrew Weil made a double CD in 1997. Music "made" by a guru of alternative medicine -- I expected Indian drone instruments and nine hours of humming a single note. Actually, "Sound Mind, Sound Body" (or was it "Sound Music, Sound Mind" or ... oh, who cares what the exact title was) is 99% propaganda. One CD was mostly spoken word by Dr. Weil's friends, outlining their medicinal theories while speaking so slowly it makes "Eyes Wide Shut" seem like an afternoon at a cattle auction. The other CD was intended as healing through sound. From the extensively detailed liner notes, I surmised that the listener was meant to feel the vibrations, and the body would synchronize itself to the resonances, and heal itself, or something to that effect. But the music was an ordinary excursion through "themes" of Bach, Mozart and other mega-famous classical composers. Jeez, since that music is more than 200 years old, people must have been healing themselves with it for at least that long, in which case why on earth would anybody need to buy a CD from Andrew Weil? Millions of people have found themselves transported by Mozart's music, and they certainly didn't need Andrew Weil's approval. If they didn't want to make a recording of hundreds of people saying "AHMMM", if they wanted to put out a CD of classical music, wouldn't the music of a composer such as Debussy (La Mer) or Satie (endlessly repetitive piano pieces) have been more appropriate? If they REALLY wanted to convince anybody that music has the power to disrupt body chemistry, record some SCHOENBERG for God's sake!! I guess they figured that hardcore Andrew Weil fans would buy any CD with his name on it no matter how low the musical quality, hell, Limp Bizkit rode that pony to the tune of a million sales last week.