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The Man I Trust
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I’ve been fooling around with an ebay bass!
Noise, Lou Reed & The Thing
You have to admit that consistently doing this to critics and fans for almost 50 years is a feat.
“If you don’t think this is music, you can get the fuck out of here.” With a million happy customers every year, these are not words you associate with audiences or performers at the Montreal Jazz Festival. But John Zorn’s F-bomb from the stage was aimed at one of many agitated audience members who expressed their displeasure over the evening’s all-star trio of himself, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. No doubt a large part of the audience was expecting “Sweet Jane,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” or even Anderson’s “O Superman.” Instead, it was a free improv showdown that shocked the crowd, prompting dozens to walk out after two songs.
Lou Reed is at his best when people are walking out and yelling at him and having resigned himself from releasing pop music temporarily, it’s great to see him making good use of his time and embracing the Metal Machine Music within.
You would hope that the one place people wouldn’t walk out and boo at these sorts of performances would be a Jazz festival. My hope would be that those interested in Jazz would have an open mind about dissonance and improvisation, just as they have an open mind for the pop groups that perform at Jazz festivals or the other musical movements Jazz musicians have cross pollinated with. I’d also hope they’d consider the…
Zunguzungu v. Clapton
Over at zunguzungu, there’s much talk about Eric Clapton, electrification, manipulation, authenticity and Robert Johnson:
From the Guardian:
Eric Clapton once described Johnson as, “the most important blues singer that ever lived”…[but] nearly 50 years after Columbia first packaged his work as King of the Delta Blues, we discover that we’ve been listening to these immortal songs at the wrong speed all along. Either the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78, or else they were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting. Whatever, the common consensus among musicologists is that we’ve been listening to Johnson at least 20% too fast. Numerous bloggers have helpfully slowed down Johnson’s best-known work and provided samples so that, for the first time, we can hear Johnson as he intended to be heard.
I, like many people, only know of Robert Johnson through Eric Clapton; I know Cream’s Crossroads a lot better than Johnson’s, and like it more too. But I love the fact that the figure of origin, used to authenticate electric blues by so many white electric bluesmen like Clapton, cannot now be disentangled from studio gimmickry. Part of the Clapton thing was that he was supposed to be taking the acoustic, rural, old, and black song of the Robert Johnson figure and making it young and white and modern and urban and electric. Rock and Roll as the electrified blues is every hack music journalist’s favorite cliche. And now it turns out
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Cluster’s Sowiesoso
EDIT: I’m proud to say that I anticipated the importance of Cluster today. After I posted this The Quietus posted an interview with Cluster. Coincidence? I think not.
Destruction of Apparatus
Helicopter Quartet
I’m making my way through Krautrocksampler, the out of print Julian Cope book about the first German rock movement, and I happened across a this helicopter string quartet. Stockhausen decided to record and film a string quartet traveling in separate helicopters performing an original composition. The blades cutting the air make trance-like percussion supporting the gliding strings.
Part1: Part 2:
Musically, I’m not sure if the piece is that interesting with the conceit of the helicopters removed, but the point of the piece is surely the removal of conceit itself. It was no coincidence, in fact it seems barely an insight, that Stockhausen and Cage achieved prominence at the same time as American Pop Art.
In Cope’s Krautrocksampler, he writes of the outrage in response to a Stockhausen composition that was based on ideas taken from the American Pop Art movement. At certain points, the composition Hymnen takes national anthems and toys with them. What caused a great deal of distress in West Germany was the use of their national anthem in the composition. Cope writes, “The German public ALL furry-freaked. The left-wing didn’t see the funny side at all and accused him of appealing to the basest German feelings, whilst the right-wing hated him for vilifying their pride and joy, and letting the Europeans laugh at them.”
In this regard, Stockhausen is again borrowing from Pop Art, particularly its infuriating lack of orientation…
Waterproof Jacket & Gonna Gay Marry You
Waterproof Jacket
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I’ve been working on this for a while, but I think it’s where I want it to be now. Made mainly from loop manipulations, most of which originally standard garageband loops if I remember correctly. It is contrived, but at least I mean what I’m saying.
Gonna Gay Marry You
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If you’re looking for something a little more down to earth, I also finished this song titled “Gonna Gay Marry You”. It features an extended section with sequence manipulated tone potentiometer accompaniment.
Iggy Pop is angry and Johnny Rotten is Sigmund Freud.
I happened across this while doing a little research. I’m trying to get to the root of what separates the labels New Wave and Post Punk. Obviously they’re useless as a means to segregate music, but I think the way the labels are used and by who is significant.
In this interview, it’s hard to get past Iggy Pop’s intentional, passionate naivety, but I think the point he’s trying to express is strong, if cloudy and overtly confrontational. Which could also be said of the new popular music of that (and possibly this) era. More on this later.
Foam Rubber, USA
Chris Frantz thought of the titular chorus after seeing a Parliament-Funkadelic show where the crowd chanted “Burn down the house.” The initial lyrics were considerably different, however. In an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” aired on December 2, 1984, David Byrne played excerpts of early worktapes showing how the song had evolved from an instrumental jam by Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums). Once the whole band had reworked the groove into something resembling the final recording, Byrne began chanting and singing nonsense syllables over the music until he had arrived at phrasing that fit with the rhythms— a technique influenced by former Talking Heads producer Brian Eno— “and then I [would] just write words to fit that phrasing… I’d have loads and loads of phrases collected that I thought thematically had something to do with one another, and I’d pick from those.”
According to Byrne in the NPR interview, phrases he tried but ultimately didn’t use in the song’s recorded “verses” included “I have another body,” “Pick it up by the handle,” “You travel with a double,” and “I’m still under construction.” As for the title phrase in the chorus, one early attempt (as heard on a worktape) had him singing a different line, “What are we gonna do?”, and at another point in the process, “instead of chanting ‘Burning Down the House,’ I was chanting ‘Foam Rubber, USA.’”
Reggie Watts Is About to Explode
He just did a battery commercial and this Pepsi product tie-in. I have no objections because I think he rightfully deserves to be the most famous and well paid man in the American ecosystem.
The Sinking of the Titanic
A composition by Gavin Bryars. A year after first hearing it, it’s still my favorite piece of music. The recorded version is below, a live performance is available at the linked site.
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I am not a poster, but a positive toaster.
Watch as Lee Scratch Perry confuses Jools Holland:
Nick the Stripper
He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit. He’s in his birthday suit.
The Quietus Reductive & Subjective Albums of the Year 2009
If you’re looking for all the interesting, challenging and great music you missed this year, this is the place to find it.