A few years ago I was out wandering the streets looking at nothing in particular with a friend of mine. We happened upon a record store – because that’s what we do, we happen upon them – and he (of more senior age than I) recommended that I buy Forever Changes, the apparently classic album by Love. I did. I’d never heard of them, I wasn’t one to just leap head-first, willy-nilly into these kind of things, but the price was right and I really haven’t looked back since. Just one of those random things.
Speaking of random, I got an email from a publicist looking to spread the good word on Auditorium, a one-man outfit who was being touted as a ‘musical genius’. It was random, in that publicists usually don’t contact me. But there you go. There was a link to a music video, which I eventually was able to play once I found an internet connection that was open to playing clips from You Tube (ie, not work) and upon listening to the music (in this case, the single ‘The Enforcer’), I thought, yes. I like this. It reminds me of Love.
See? Synergy. One thing leads to another and it’s all connected and the circle of life and everything.
Auditorium is the stage name of one Spencer Berger, a Los Angeles troubadour (and how often do you hear that word used as a modern-day descriptor?) cut from the same cloth as Tim Buckley, Ralph McTell, Steve Poltz and the like. Sung and performed with a unique kind of ethereal earnestness, Auditorium’s self-styled melodies and harmonies are nothing if not earnest and resonate with lyrics that don’t stray too far from the journeyman-singer-songwriter-balladeer playbook.
I would sincerely hope that this, or any future efforts that Mr Berger puts out gets a solid, proper, professional mixing job done on it, as it seems Auditorium is aptly named as on occasion Be Brave sounds like it was recorded inside an empty football arena. More solid production values would have made this admirable effort shine.
You know what? I’m impressed with the fact that he went out and did this. Steven Soderbergh won a Best Director Oscar in 2001 for Traffic, and in accepting his trophy said that he wished everyone watching would go out and do something creative every day. That’s what’s been done here. While major labels are falling over themselves trying to sign the next teenage sex gimmick to fill the void when Lady Gaga self-destructs, there are actual musicians, passionate ones at that, who are out there, toiling in the fields of performance and doing what they can to get their voice heard. Spencer Berger is doing just that, which is more than me, and I think he deserves all the credit in the world.
