rooshvforum.network is a fully functional forum: you can search, register, post new threads etc...
Old accounts are inaccessible: register a new one, or recover it when possible. x


The Jacob Seales Appreciation Thread
#1

The Jacob Seales Appreciation Thread

If you are one of the many of us who followed the impossible, miraculous, and ultimately unstoppable Trump campaign through its many rallies on the Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) Youtube channel, you already -- whether you realize it or not -- know the music of Jacob Seales.

All through this unforgettable year, as Trump's rallies criss-crossed the country, ranging from Warwick, Rhode Island to Costa Mesa, California, and from the comically inspired to the thuddingly rote -- the instrumental songs of Jacob Seales formed their ever present background, playing on RSBN's loop as one waited for the often much-delayed arrival of Trump Force One in some Louisiana hangar.

The strains of Seales' masterpiece, "The American Dreamer", greeted the entrance of the man with the golden hair onto the stage and then sounded again as he was rounding off the MAGA rhetorical period at the end of the speech, muting the absurdity that was Trump's insistence on ending his rallies with "You Can't Always Get What You Want"; and between the warmup appearances of a Stephen Miller, or a Jeff Sessions, or a screaming Rudy, we had whiled away the time to the plaintive sounds of Seales' "One Last Chance" or the energetic movement of "Pride". Whether we knew it or not, that music formed the deepest soundtrack of our lives, and it will be forever associated in our memories with the glory that was this year. For that reason alone, we will never forget it.

But -- and this is one of the many miracles that this sublime year has blessed us with -- Jacob Seales' music deserves to be appreciated on its own terms. In my opinion, his is the most unique, original, and unplaceable musical talent to come onto the scene in a decade, if not more; and it is an absurdity that will sooner or later be remedied that his songs are not much more widely known and recognized. As they say, you heard it here first.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Seales' songs -- and it is so strange as to be beautifully and memorably eerie -- is that they seem to be out of time without ever feeling self-consciously, or even unselfconsciously, retrograde or dated. They take their place within the great and infinite tradition of American guitar rock, but are not of this or any time; it is as if they inhabit the tradition as a whole. They seem to recall a past that one cannot quite put one's finger on; and yet their freshness and originality is obvious and undoubted. In this too, they are a fitting echo of the great Trump campaign that, in strange ways, brought back a remote and almost musty American past, the past of Page Six of the New York Post of the '80s and '90s, and made it, through the unstoppable youthful vigor of the 70 year old Donald Trump, the freshest thing going and the thing that is going to restore and rekindle the new American energies of today.

Jacob Seales' music is the voice of these American energies. Here are a few other things that characterize it:

-- The songs are compositionally tight -- effortlessly so, it seems -- without ever feeling dull or constrained.
-- They are characterized by a sublime purity of tone, like the taste of very good water. And this is true of both the faster and the slower compositions.
-- They are soulful -- there is no other word and none is needed. It's been a while since that quality was successfully present in music.
-- Most of all, they have the quality that characterizes great music: they are dreamy. The dreaminess is something that exists beside and somehow beyond the song -- it's as if the music opens out to something outside itself. Songs that are tight must have this dreaminess to avoid feeling constrained, and Seales' songs have it.

I would like to embed two songs in this thread that I consider Seales' masterpieces; for the rest, I strongly encourage all of you to go and buy his music, which is on sale here:

http://rsbnmusic.bandcamp.com/

The first, and the rightly best known of his songs, is "The American Dreamer", the RSBN Trump rally intro and outro song. This is an outright rock guitar masterpiece, and its energies and forward propulsion are the best new thing I've heard in ages:






The second is called "One Last Chance" and it is Seales' most melancholy and soulful meditation. I will never forget how it transformed and expanded time as the crowd awaited Trump on some blazingly hot July afternoon, perhaps somewhere in Seales' Iowa (he describes himself as a "music teacher / tall goofy white guy" who hails from Bettendorf, IA -- one of the quad cities on the Mississippi river along the Iowa/Illinois border). One felt the flow of time and the lengths of the Trumpian summer as one listened again and again to Seales' modest and magical guitar:






There are many other beautiful songs beside these two, and I hope that over time you will listen to all of them -- and perhaps to more to come. They form a particularly unexpected and memorable part of the sweet and unlikely windfall from this sweetest and unlikeliest of all years.

same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...
Reply


Messages In This Thread

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)