It's the hardest thing to feel

"Love is the only thing that matters,
Love is the only thing that's real.
I know we hear this every day,
It's still the hardest thing to feel."

- Suzanne Vega, Ludlow Street off of her excellent Beauty & Crime album.

First Lines of David Browne's "Goodbye 20th Century"

 "On the night they met, the summer evening when it all began, the first thing he noticed about her was her height. Since she was a good foot shorter than he was, he had to bend down to say hello. Even when he did, it was hard to see here petite, lean face. She was wearing a cap and sunglasses, the latter with the shades flipped up, and only her long, slender nose poked through."

David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century: A biography of Sonic Youth

First Lines of Paul Trynka's "Starman"

 "It was a cold, wet November in 1991, like the cold, wet Novembers of his childhood, when David Bowie asked his driver to take the scenic route to the Brixton Academy. The smoke-filled coach pulled slowly down Stansfield Road, just a few hundred yards from the venue, and paused outside a large, anonymous three-storey Victorian house, before moving on."

- Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie - the Definitive Biography

 An excellent summary of David Bowie's life and career. Like most music bios I got lost a bit in the voluminous wash of names and locations, but I appreciated Trynka's unflinching picture of the different aspects of Bowie's career. In particular, I liked the quotes that he included from people who were left behind in Bowie's wake - many rock bios can wallow in celebratory histrionics, but Trynka's felt well balanced and informative. And it inspired me to do a deep dive into some of the more obscure albums in his discography - Earthling was a decent album of which I had only heard "I'm Afraid of Americans" - so that alone is a success. 

Summerlicious Tab Dump

 Some interesting things I've read:

• A persuasive case that, despite its very real cultural value, no successful business makes money supporting the Long Tail
  
• So You've Decided to Bungle your Company's Flexible Work Plan. It's funny because it's true. 
• A few reads about current musical trends:
• Why Music has Lost it's Charms. Risk-adverse labels yes, but also this: "[Labels realized that] they were being paid exactly the same amount per song whether the song was brand new or 50 years old. They quickly concluded that if their customers (stations and streamers) were indifferent to the age of the content and the end users were actually looking for the older music, there was little or no reason to rock the boat and push for new material. Investing in new talent turned out to be an incremental cost which they chose to avoid." 
• The above quote is most likely at the core of why The New Numbers on Music Consumption are Very Ugly
• Umair Haque makes the case that while the above is true, technology and algorithms are a technical reason why music doesn't sound like music anymore, another factor contributing to the problem
• In The Lost Art of Looking at Nature, Rachel Reiderer astutely observes that in our current environment of terrible climate change and ecodoom stories, she appreciates the genius of David Attenborough: "The bulk of the screen time is spent shoring up this anodyne, if novel, notion: plants are sensory marvels. The beauty and strangeness acts as a spoonful of sugar, so diverting that you hardly notice the fleeting discussions of the ecological importance of plants and how they are endangered by monocultures and climate change. These less frequent passages are the series’ medicine. Attenborough’s films often end with a call to action. But it is savvy of him, both as an artist and as an activist, to make plenty of room for pleasure. ... To pause for a moment, guided by an old naturalist’s eye for curiosity and beauty, is restorative. It gives a viewer the energy to face the hard truths of the rolling crisis and serves as a reminder of the wonders outside the human world that are also at stake."
• A visual guide to the Aztec Pantheon
  
• Six Zen Buddhist livelihood guidelines
  

Related:

• Tab Dump 2021: Music
  
• Time for another Tab Dump
• Bride of Tab Dump

First Lines of Rob Young's "All Gates Open: the Story of Can"

 "Can Studio, Weilerswist, February 1997.

It's the mattresses that strike you first. There must be scores of them, fixed to these walls, floor to ceiling. And the ceiling is a good eight meters above our heads."

- Rob Young, All Gates Open

This is probably the best musical bio I've ever read. Young combines the history of the band and interweaves it with the contextual story of the post-war German musical scene and cultural happenings. His insightful and poetic deep listens of album tracks help those of us who may not know what it is that we're listening to (even if we like it). Like all musical bios, it runs out of steam at the end as the musicians do, but Young combats this with a nice summation of the band's influence. The second part of the book is a series of interviews and journals from Irmin Schmidt, the last surviving member of the band, and is interesting but not essential reading. My only quibble with the book is that Young obviously relied a lot of Young - I didn't get a sense of who some of the other band members were as people. I would have loved to learn more about the upbringing and history of Jaki Liebzeit, Can's drummer and the engine behind their propulsive music. Regardless, I learned a ton about a band I admire and came away with an even greater appreciation for their work.

Here's a good overview of the Can story to wet your appetite.

Tab Dump 2021: Music

As with the 2021 in Art: The Tab Dump, this is a collection of interesting links both for you and for my personal reference. Enjoy!

Catching Covid in late 2021 gave me an opportunity to lay around and listen to all of the Can re-releases. More on this later, but for now, check out these summaries of their complication of The Lost Tapes - a collection of music they discovered when cleaning out their old studio. Like all albums of that kind, it's a grab bag, but both "Millionenspiel" and "Grablau" are powerful improvisational epics, and "Oscura Primavera" sounds like it could have been recorded by Sonic Youth 10 years before they were formed.

1. Freq's summary
   
2. Pitchfork's review
   

David Toop's Oceans of Sound  exposed me to a lot of new musicians and musical styles, including:

• The minimalist influence of Erik Satie. His Early Piano Works are absolutely compelling solo piano pieces, slow, halting and haunting piano sketches.
  
• Gamelan was a genre to which I had never been exposed. Listening to this long, rhythmic, pulsing music reminded me of Can or Stereolab. Lou Harrison is a good introduction to this type of music; his The Gamelan works of Lou Harrison is a great listen.
•  Edgar Varese: a composer who envisioned electronic music before the capability existed.
•  Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist who wrote a manifesto called The Art of Noise and invented a wide array of bizarre instruments. Bizarre but inventive!

I get a huge kick out of Børns' video for the Faded Heart sessions.

Growing up, my love of electronic music was sparked by "Headphones Only" every Sunday on WIZN. I used to record some of the shows onto cassette so I could listen to the music all of the time as opportunities to hear electronic music was limited in Burlington, VT. One of the cassette songs that I loved but never knew what it was - and finally realized this year was Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Computer Game" off of their eponymous album. Great music! (Note: some listings divide the song into the "Computer Game" and "Firecracker" tracks - but it's all one song to me.)

My favorite ambient artist is Tetsu Inoue. His classic Ambient Otaku LP is a perfect album; I only wish I could purchase a copy for less than hundreds of dollars. You should know more about him, so here's a collection of some writings.

Another good ambient album I enjoyed was Meg Bowles A Quiet Light - particular the track "Chant for a Liquid World." Here's Meg talking about her music.

Brian Eno's Neroli is perhaps one of the most relaxing pieces of music I've ever heard. The technical reason for this, as Pitchfork’s Chris Ott wrote is that “The hidden side of Neroli appeals to a select class of music theory buffs, fascinated by the flattened second and seventh of this Phrygian modal, and an insistent hang on the scale’s fifth.” 

Public Image Ltd (PiL)'s box set The Public Image is Rotten - especially the live tunes - reminded me of how much great music Johnny Lydon produced after the Sex Pistols. Streaming it while doing a woodwokring project inspired me to read up on what might have been the most powerful incarnation of PiL - the studio magicians who Lydon and Bill Laswell recruited for 1986's Album. It was always mysterious who exactly played what - this PopLife article details who did what. I mean: Tony Williams and Ginger Baker on the same album! You've got to give it a listen. Williams work on "FFF" might be my favorite power rock drumming of all time.

Running in Las Vegas recently I laughed at a street sign that literally read "Road to Mandalay." It immediately lodged Midnight Oil's "Mountains of Burma" in my head. Not being an Australian, I never knew what the song was about: mystery solved! 

 Related:

Time for another Tab Dump

Science Tab Dump 

Bride of Tab Dump

First Lines of Tony Fletcher's "Perfect Circle"

 "Athens, GA, April 5th 1980.

All week long the word had been passed around town. Party this Saturday. Three live bands. Free beer.Now with thousands of people converging upon the old Episcopal Church on Oconee Street just around the corner from the University of Georgia, the Athens grapevine was proving unfailingly effective." 

- Tony Fletcher, Perfect Circle, the Story of R.E.M.

The two or three frequent readers of this blog know that I fall into musical obsessions. For the last few months, it's been rediscovering the genius of R.E.M., from my favorites Document and Murmur to listening to maligned Fables of the Reconstruction with new ears, it's been a joy to listen to it all. And so it was time to learn more - to dive into what the internet tells me is the best R.E.M. bio. And I agree: Fletcher exhaustively documents the birth, rise, and success of the band in a compelling and readable way. Fair warning tho -- he's done his research; it's a long book and contains all of the gigs and side projects details. As such, the book doesn't have a narrative flow as much as a propulsive push to get through it all. (To be fair, the ingrained structure of many rock books.) But the beat is smooth, Fletcher's writing moving cleanly from one event to another with no discordant notes. In fact, I hardly noticed the transitions from one album to the next, and it's a mark of his deep knowledge and empathy with the band that he's appropriately glowing about the amazing music that they produced while also calling them out on their missteps.

Not that they made many. R.E.M. is fascinating for many reasons: the great music, their interesting chemistry, their ability to have complete artistic control of their songs - but also their ability to become the biggest band in the world without major compromises or making enemies along the way. Hell, they don't even have any drug problems! Fletcher tells this admirable story while pointing out how their ability to "close ranks" when needed was an essential, if cold-hearted, element of their success (How they treated poor Peter Holsapple (an essential collaborator on Out of Time) is a rare misstep.) 

My only problem with the book is not Fletcher's fault: as R.E.M. became more and more famous, the narrative began to involve lists off high-profile gigs with other celebrities and long, drawn out recording sessions across several continents, with lots of talk of "overdubs" and "remixes." This, combined with my disinterest with the music they recorded after the amazing New Adventures in Hi-Fi, made the final portion of the book a bit of a slot. Despite this, a solid narrative of the group and I highly recommend for any fan of R.E.M.

First lines of David Toop's "Oceans of Sound"

"Sitting quietly in never-never land, I am listening to summer fleas jump off of my small female cat into the polished wood floor. Outside, starlings are squabbling in the fog tree and behind me I can hear swifts wheeling over rooftops. An ambulance siren, full panic mode, passes from behind the left centre of my head to starboard front."

David Toop, Oceans of Sound

Subtitled "Ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication," Toop's book so far is an idiosyncratic examination of what it means to listen in a world where are inundated with inputs, with stimulus - with all sorts of sounds. I've been enjoying his take on what music is, his observations and thoughts on music both old and contemporary. In just the first third of the book, I've been exposed to  interesting music I was not aware of - from the wondrous ringing of gamelan orchestras to the quiet, halting piano of Eric Satie, to the "machine music" of Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori.  

 

First 2021 Tab Dump

I've been reading much more than i've been writing. Here's some of those things for ya:

Looking at QAnon in the light of a long line of conspiracy magical thinking linked to divine and religious thinking.

 A dramatic, but not untrue, plea to see how Facebook fosters cognitive bubbles for people, and what it means for American democracy

"America, the idea of America, is on the brink. And at the cold, dead heart of the suicide mission it has set itself on, is Facebook. Facebook and America are now indivisible. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, these are now the bloodstream of American life and politics."

An examination of two types of Chinese military leadership: between that of Sun Tzu (cynicism and  deception) and Zhonghang Wu (civic engagement). 

The Art of limiting yourself to the Essential.

I used the lockdown to do some weight work. This minimalist's strength workout has helped.

Ambient music is often seen as boring. But in fact it can pay an important role in our society. It might even save your life. 

 To that end, i've been enjoying Brian Eno's "Neroli" - part of his "Thinking Music" series. 

Pilots of Purple Twilight, Tangerine Dream's new box set covering their output from 1980 - 1983, has been on heavy rotation. I find most of TD hit or miss, but "White Eagle", "Dominion", and "Logos" are all solid song journies.

Fascinating Rich Roll podcast with Matthew Walker: "Sleep is your Superpower." Such an interesting exploration of what sleep is, why it's important, and how we can optimize it.

As a parent, I do what I can to avoid "punishing through rewards"

Maslow may have misinterpreted his hierarchy of needs when he adapted it from native tribes - the Blackfoot tribe in particular.

How to be happier.

First Lines of Rob Hirst's "Willie's Bar and Grill"

"On 10 September 2001, Midnight Oil were in a Sydney studio mixing 'Poets and Slaves', from our latest album, Capricornia, and preparing for a handful of local shows before a seven-week tour of North America. The following morning we woke up to find that nineteen terrorists had attacked the United States, killing an unknown number of innocent people."

- Rob Hirst, Willie's Bar and Grill

It's Midnight Oil's turn. My current obsession - I go through phases where I listen to nothing but one artist for months at a time - is revisiting the powerful albums of Australia's best rock n' roll band: 10-1, Red Sails in the Sunset, Blue Sky Mining. The music's "Power and Passion" has always transported me, and their 1990 show is one of the best i've ever seen. I've just never been sure what some of their songs were about, and so I picked up this fun book by Rob Hirst, Midnight Oil's drummer, major songwriter, and key backup vocalist to fill in some of the gaps.

The book is not a typical "rock memoir". While he does tell some good stories about the band's history - recording the amazing drums to "Best of Both Worlds" in a Tokyo bathroom is a good one - Willie's Bar and Grill is about his observations about the towns, clubs, and the country through which the band traveled in Oct/Nov 2001. He's a natural storyteller, and the book reads extremely easily - leaving you with the effect of a great conversation. Hirst is an astute observer, and pays close attention to what's going on in the world around him, commenting on current events, band dynamics, and the state of the music business. A fun narrative that's more than just a numbing list of gigs, recordings, and relationships, I recommend it to anyone who's a fan of Midnight Oil or music in general.

Book Review: Bob Mehr's Trouble Boys

The Replacements are an odd band. I feel that they're both over and under rated. They created some powerfully melodic rock n' roll that, underpinned by Paul Westerberg’s clever word play, provided a template for many to express sensitivity disguised by loud distortion and bluster. On the other hand, they were sloppy and in desperate need of editing – some of their music and lyrics sound tossed together at the last minute.

Trouble Boys explores this dynamic and much more. Bob Mehr spins a comprehensive (and well documented) look at the band, painting a vivid picture of early 80s Minneapolis, and the often heartbreaking background of the ‘mats – especially Bob Stinton, who had a truly horrific childhood. It’s almost enough to excuse how often the band sabotaged their career by falling (drunk) on the wrong side of the fine line between good ol’ rock n’ roll rebellion and plain old assholery. I knew they behaved badly, but I wasn’t expecting them to be as horrible and offensive as they come off here.

All this lead me to read Trouble Boys as an addiction book. The drinking and drugging stories – and there are a LOT of them – can be amusing, but the more they pile up, the more difficult it is to observe so much self-destruction. They were fucked up drunk addicts and I left the book pondering what their lives would have been like if the band could have coped – even just a little bit! – with their talent and success.

But their myth is all about that they couldn’t: that they felt too much, drowned it in booze, and paid a heavy price. Poor Bob died, Tommy grew up to be a professional musician (and member of Guns n' Roses!), Chris (a strangely vacant presence in the book) faded away into visual art, and Paul never found that illusive balance of improvisation and polish that could endear him to the masses. While Bob’s story is interesting, Paul’s story is riveting, from watching him struggle to come up with his moments of musical genius to the story of him clean and sober (the tale of him coaching little league with a SpongeBob hat is priceless).  I also appreciated Mehr’s insights into the music, which let me hear their albums – especially Tim and their requiem All Shook Down – in a newly revelatory light.

The Church at SXSW

I'm so happy that a recording of The Church's electronic show from this year's SXSW show is online. I'm listening to it now and having very pleasant flashbacks to the show I attended in March. Damn these guys are good. And listening to them live gives you a sense for the dynamic kick-ass guitar interplay, Powles' modern-day Bonham-style drumming, and sheer joy of their music. My favorite is their update of You Took (skip ahead to ~21:00).

Related Posts:
You Took
Further/Deeper

You Took

I heard this song for the first time at The Church's amazing show at The Sinclair in Cambridge MA a few weeks ago. Simply amazing. Kilbey's voice is so much richer than it was back in the day. And as good as the studio version is - it rocked incredibly hard on stage. Take it away boys...

Further/Deeper

Two news items from The Church:

1. They have a new album coming out on October 17th! According to the press release, their 25th studio album is going to be called Further/Deeper. Being a big fan of the poppy space jazz of their last album Untitled #23, I’m intrigued to see if they can follow up on its success.
   Stream one of the songs here: https://soundcloud.com/muchobravado/the-church-pride-before-a-fall/s-72pol
2. Marty Wilson-Piper has been replaced with Ian Haug from Powderfinger. (In Kilbey's inimitable fashion, he blogged about MWP's apparent retirement by stating "this is my fucking band after all.") I know nothing bout Haug, so I'm not sure what this will mean, other than i'll miss the interplay between MWP and Peter Koppes. Not being a musical expert, I can't tell you that I know anythning about which guitarist played what, but The Church's sound has been driven by the interplay of two lead guitarists with lots of cool ideas. Although both MWP and Koppes have left The Church at different points, leaving the other to take on all of guitar duties (see Koppes work on The Refo:mation LP), this didn't result in any major changes of direction. We'll find out soon!
   I'm also curious to see how MWP's absence affects their live show. You know i'm going to see them on tour, and will be looking to see if the experience misses  MWPs undeniable charisma.

Happy Ghost World Day!

Free!

I've had this song in my head all week.

Our Acknowledgement

"You and me are molded by things
Well beyond our acknowledgment"

- Stereolab, from anonymous collective off of their great 1996 LP Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Friday Tab Dump

The Guardian's George Monbiot has a great rant about what's behind the incredible flooding in Britain this season. After detailing what's happening, he concludes:

It's hard to get your head round this. The crop which causes most floods and does most damage to soils is the only one which is completely unregulated.
...
So why did government policy change? I've tried asking the environment department: they're as much use as a paper sandbag. But I've found a clue. The farm regulation task force demanded a specific change: all soil protection rules attached to farm subsidies should become voluntary. They should be downgraded from a legal condition to an "advisory feature". Even if farmers do nothing to protect their soil, they should still be eligible for public money.
You might have entertained the naive belief that in handing out billions to wealthy landowners we would get something in return. Something other than endless whining from the National Farmers' Union. But so successfully has policy been captured in this country that Defra – which used to stand for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – now means Doing Everything Farmers' Representatives Ask. We pay £3.6bn a year for the privilege of having our wildlife exterminated, our hills grazed bare, our rivers polluted and our sitting rooms flooded.

The Guardian keeps the optimism flowing with an interview with the prescient James Lovelock who predicts that climate change has already reached the tipping point:

It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do." ...
What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

Weird magna short horror stories! Just some creepy stuff. I can testify to how powerfully macabre Junji Ito's Uzumaki is. Shudder.

This seems interesting. I know nothing about Bartók, and my library has none of his music. Any suggestions to what I should listen to first?

Dorthe Nors muses on solitude being a condition for art:

Solitude, I think, heightens artistic receptivity in a way that can be challenging and painful. When you sit there, alone and working, you get thrown back on yourself. Your life and your emotions, what you think and what you feel, are constantly being thrown back on you. And then the “too much humanity” feeling is even stronger: you can't run away from yourself. You can't run away from your emotions and your memory and the material you're working on. Artistic solitude is a decision to turn and face these feelings, to sit with them for long periods of time.
It takes the courage to be there. You run into your own pettiness. Your own cowardice. You run into all kinds of ugly sides of yourself. But the things that you've experienced in your life become the writing that you do. And there's no easy way to get to it, if you want to write literary fiction. 

What is Music?

Music is noise submitted to order by wisdom.
-Puccini

RIP J.J. Cale

J.J. Cale, a fantastic musician, played his last note last Saturday. He was 74.

Famous for authoring some classic rock n' roll tunes such as Clapton's "Cocaine" and "After Midnight," he also was a talented musician and guitarist in his own right. I've got copies of the Guitar Man and To Tulsa and Back albums and enjoy them both very much. His "mellow rock" sound feels like it influenced Dire Straits, among others, and while this "heels up" attitude isn't for everyone, I find it a refreshing antidote for the stereotypical rock bombast. He'll be missed.