In this edition of The Out Door, we speak with three artists who’ve pursued their visions over multiple decades: 77-year old Swedish legend Bo Anders Persson of Träd, Gräs och Stenar, zither player and New Age pioneer Laraaji, and Californian improv-rock outfit Gang Wizard. But first, we touch on the recent controversy stirred by a Tumblr account about someone's reactions to her husband's record collection. (Follow The Out Door on Twitter and Tumblr for all types of experimental music news and information.)

I: Hearing It All for the First Time

Photo via My Husband's Stupid Record Collection

I’m more than a little jealous of Sarah O’Holla.

In late February, the New Jersey librarian and writer launched the Tumblr My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection. The premise was simple but fascinating: Listen to the 1,500 or so albums and singles in her partner’s record collection and write about them, without much of a filter, in a public forum. The quest, as she noted, began as a whim. Her own musical collection and knowledge were both rather thin, she admitted, and after living with someone for nine years, she decided it was time to hear what he’d heard, or at least cared enough to buy.

Word of the blog spread quickly, with each post suddenly generating dozens of notes and thousands of social media shares. O’Holla landed in New York’s “Approval Matrix” and dutifully blogged that her placement represented the realization of a lifelong dream.

Then, of course, a wave of stringent analysis and backlash followed: O’Holla’s naiveté and lack of critical context insulted women by reinforcing gender stereotypes, some said. Others lamented that O’Holla’s sudden popularity undermined the work of female music critics who had battled institutional sexism for years or decades to be taken seriously. And still others noted that it simply swiped the premise of another long-running music column by another woman, but added nothing except a cute gimmick and a few Vines.

I admit that, when I first read My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection, I quickly decided I probably wouldn’t read it again. It did reinforce customary ideas of taste and fandom, and initially, its tone didn’t interest me. I wanted less winks, more thought. But I stuck with O’Holla, and I’ve since grown jealous because I realize that she gets to hear nearly 1,500 records—many of them duds, lots of them landmarks—for the first time. What’s more, she gets to tell us exactly how she hears them, no matter how inchoate the responses or context-free the analyses may be. And for me, that’s always been the thrill of experimental music—or, really, anything that orders and reorders sound in an unexpected way.

When I think about each major phase of my listening life, I realize that what impacted me most was encountering the un-encountered and letting these new ideas run wild. I’d find something that shattered the nice little framework I’d made for myself, and then try to find records that took those ideas further. I think about the first time I heard Tony Conrad’s Four Violins or Harvey Milk’s Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men, Led Zeppelin’s III or John Fahey’s Of Rivers and Religion, albums that revealed new worlds that I’ve spent the years and decades since exploring. I wish I could go back and read the thoughts I had upon first hearing that music. I’d like to laugh at my own naïve impressions or mismanaged facts and consider, retroactively, the course that each of those albums set me upon, even if the road ahead was uncertain.

“I don’t think I really realized how tense this music was making me feel until the reggae jam came on,” O’Holla writes upon first listening to Bad Brains. But she keeps listening and starts to get a sense of what the band is doing, to situate their sounds according to her own personal musical world. And suddenly, she starts to like it. “I think knowing a little more what to expect the second time around I can actually hear how the songs are all different, and I think I have totally changed my mind.”

As O’Holla finished the set of records her husband filed under “A,” she squared with at least one quantum leap in the history of jazz. Not long after reviewing two Louis Armstrong records, she put Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice on the turntable. “UGH! I WANT TO TURN IT OFF! Louie, I miss you so!” she wrote. Perhaps you’ll roll your eyes at that, but O’Holla subsequently asks a series of salient questions that should feel familiar to any of fan of noise, metal, free jazz or, you know, Wagner—basically, any music that works with ideas of torment and tension: “So is that the point of this music? To concentrate not only on what you feel while it’s playing but also how you feel in its absence?” It can be, absolutely. Some of my favorite records push me to the point of hoping that, soon, their intensity will soon collapse only into silence. And when they finally do, I just want to hear it again. That’s exactly how I’ve felt about Four Violins since the first time I’ve heard it. O’Holla articulates that sentiment with laser precision, and I think it is exactly because she’s chronicling the experience of hearing these revolutions for the first time.

Upon listening to the final Arab on Radar album, Yahweh or the Highway, O’Holla writes, “Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like music. It just feels like sounds.” To me, at least, that’s a thrilling feeling, to hear something you can’t quite define and then take the time to decode it. Man or woman, stubborn novice or zealous expert, wouldn’t it be fun to see a guide to how your perceptions about and definitions of music you now love and hate have changed? If O’Holla finishes the project, she’ll have nothing less than a map of her tastes—not only as they exist, but of how they morphed during the years it will doubtlessly take to finish writing My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection.

Again: I’m jealous of Sarah O’Holla. —Grayson Haver Currin

Next: Bo Anders Persson on life before Träd, Gräs och Stenar