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I’m a constant self-promoter but your journal is by far the best
No offense to anyone else but the detail and information on here ****ing fantastic |
I'll be honest I don't listen to a lot of your recs but I still want to read them cause they're so interesting. I've listened to more of your music than I ever would have without your treatises.
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Thank you both, sincerely. Batty that especially means a lot coming from you because I know we don't have a tremendous amount of overlap in our respective tastes. It's a pure joy to know that I inspire musical curiosity among my readers.
I almost wish I could make a living blogging but then again doing it for joy without the burden of attaching income to the task really frees me to just enjoy it. I'll keep at it. |
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An Echo of Nothing: Archival Recordings From the John Cage Trust
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I am so honored to have received this historic collectible as a gift from a dear friend. This is a promotional copy of the new recording of Nurit Tilles' superlative performance of John Cage's classic Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-1948), commissioned in honor of Cage's Centenary and produced in conjunction with the John Cage Trust. Commercial copies of this deluxe 3LP audiophile set were limited, (befittingly) to just 433 copies worldwide. The performance was recorded March 21 - 23, 2011 on a Steinway Model-D Piano at The Fisher Center For The Performing Arts at Bard College under the supervision of creative directors Donna Wingate and Naomi Yang for the John Cage Trust. The set was released on September 5, 2012. Most critics agree that Sonatas and Interludes is the finest composition of Cage's early period – his magnum opus for prepared piano, and this release serves as the definitive archival audiophile edition for collectors and lovers of Cage's work. The set includes a handsome heavy hard-shell slipcase containing a custom 10-page gatefold sleeve with metallic foil stamps and imprints, archival material, a 40-page color companion book with an introduction by Anthony B. Creamer III, as well as photographs and essays by Mark Swed and James Pritchett. The discs are pressed on 200-gram vinyl with archival audio at 45RPM. The packaging is exquisite and thoughtful and the set is a wonderful celebration of Cage's 100th anniversary. The John Cage Trust was established in 1993 as a not-for-profit institution whose mission is to gather together, organize, preserve, disseminate, and generally further the work of the late American composer. It maintains sizeable collections of music, text, and visual art manuscripts. The Trust also houses extensive audio, video, and print libraries, which are continually expanding, including two piano preparation kits created and used by Cage for this composition, as well as a substantial permanent collection of his visual art works, which are made available for exhibitions worldwide. Save for a 2011 CD recording of Cage's 1989 performance at Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, California titled, “How To Get Started,” this is the Trust's lone public audio release. From the official press statement: Quote:
As Creamer mentions above, Sonatas and Interludes is likely the most recorded work in the Cage edifice. As such a listener might ask why we need another recording of these works? Amazon Vine Voice member, Scarecrow notes that each performer brings their own emotive world to these pieces. And the magnificent attention toward sonic quality and archival production makes this an unparalleled and definitive edition for Cage collectors. For musicians interested in faithfully performing Sonatas & Interludes, Jesse Myers' Piano Studio website offers a comprehensive performer's guide to the prepared piano for this piece. John Cage Sonatas And Interludes - Nurit Tilles Track Listing: LP1 1. Sonata I 2. Sonata II 3. Sonata III 4. Sonata IV 5. First Interlude 6. Sonata V 7. Sonata VI 8. Sonata VII LP2 1. Sonata VIII 2. Second Interlude 3. Third Interlude 4. Sonata IX 5. Sonata X 6. Sonata XI LP3 1. Sonata XII 2. Fourth Interlude 3. Sonata XIII 4. Sonata XIV and XV Gemini (after the work by Richard Lippold) 5. Sonata XVI https://i.imgur.com/hH7bAyUl.jpg Packaging fetishists will also enjoy this black-gloved unboxing feature produced by Acoustic Sounds in Salina, KS for the city's own Quality Record Pressings who produced the LPs for this set. I have two other vinyl recordings of Sonatas & Interludes in my library. The first was pressed in 1977 on Tomato Records and packaged with A Book Of Music (First Recording). The recording is of Joshua Pierce's performance from July 26 & 27, 1975 on a Baldwin piano. https://i.imgur.com/cLayATml.jpg The second is featured on side B of disc 1 of The 25-Year Retrospective Concert Of The Music Of John Cage, recorded in performance at Town Hall, New York, May 15, 1958 issued by Italy's Doxy label. https://i.imgur.com/vicdVPjl.jpg But unequivocally, this promotional copy of the John Cage Trust edition instantly became my favorite Cage artifact. It will be treasured and enjoyed for years to come. A very special thank you to my dear friend for this generous and thoughtful gift! (Photos 1 of 2) https://i.imgur.com/yyXXgOLl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/HkwHmG2l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/2pBYWYGl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DrcDecHl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/UX7N5eUl.jpg |
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Stunning
I almost feel guilty for coveting a material object this much That is absolutely beautiful Thank you so much for sharing. |
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Will Pop Eat Itself? - A Contextual Examination of The Golden Age of Sample Culture
Every once in a while, a book finds its reader, in a strange and inexplicable fashion. I happened upon Will Pop Eat Itself? while visiting a massive three-story used bookshop in Niagara Falls with a friend. I wandered to the basement after requesting the lights be switched on by the proprietor, and quickly found myself in the music section where the title practically leapt off the shelf insisting that I pick it up.
A quick scan of the back cover seized my attention as The KLF were mentioned repeatedly, and leafing through the pages I beheld countless references to their work. And no fewer than three paragraphs into the first chapter I found the author drawing comparative parallels between postmodern music and Finnegans Wake. I absolutely needed this book in my life. I read it voraciously in the days ahead, pacing myself to take careful notes. What made my discovery particularly serendipitous was that I was at the very same time exploring other historical examinations of sample culture, most notably Benjamin Franzen’s 2009 documentary film, Copyright Criminals which tells the story of the golden age of sampling - precisely the period about which the book was written. https://i.imgur.com/sID3FI0l.jpg In the introduction, Beadle states that “If you really want to know what's going on in a society look at its popular culture” and that pop had invariably always been eating itself. He cites Elvis’ covers of other musicians and how “Rock Around the Clock” was just a rework of the earlier hit “Shake Rattle & Roll” as early examples. Beadle presents one of his main points here: 'Pop’ as we understand it was - whether you date it from Haley, Presley or some other more recondite marker of your own devising - born around 1955 or 1956, and reached a point where it seemed exhausted about thirty years later. The digital sampler proved the ideal tool for pop to take itself apart, thus arriving at modernism and postmodernism simultaneously. He asks, “is there any future in this autocannibalism? Or is this idea that pop will eat itself a much older one than we realize?” 1. Things Fall Apart The first chapter wastes no time in diving into the history of artistic self-consumption. Finnegans Wake is offered as an early example of how popular culture can be enlightening and how every artefact somehow reeks of the period of its creation. Other significant works cited include the cultural escapism of Gone With the Wind and The Sound of Music. Beadle begins to examine the temporal nature of cultural phenomena, describing the disintegration of cultural hegemony - the Soviet Union lasting fewer than 75 years and America’s economy being mortgaged to the Chinese. He notes how the sixteenth century established forms of tonality were rejected by the composers of the Second Viennese School and explores medieval allegorical writings segueing to staples of modernist literature to contextualize the evolution of the arts. Henry James’ In the Cage and The Golden Bowl, Eliot’s The Waste Land, JosephConrad's Heart of Darkness, and Joyce’s Ulysses are visited to frame the deconstruction of literary tradition and cultural ideals. And with the birth of the gramophone record, the teenager, disposable income, and the consumer came the concept of the pop star. Beadle explains: The pop-star business was the child of two particularly twentieth-century phenomena - the technology of recording and mass marketing. And succinctly describes the dilemma of pop thusly: Pop music is after all a necessarily limited form - a simple, memorable melody, which requires a relatively simple tonality and series of tonal relations, usually over a regular four-in-a-bar beat. There is only a limited number of permutations through which these basic requirements can be met. And when forms are exhausted the tendency is to turn inwards. Beadle closes the chapter demonstrating that, with the advent of the sampler, pop music endeavored to rip it all up and start again, just like The Waste Land, Schoenberg, and cubism - examples he explores in greater depth in subsequent chapters. 2. Bricks in the Wall of Sound The second chapter explores milestone events which shaped the nature and influence of the gramophone record. At the outset Beadle explains that the sampler empowered the producer to emerge as the artist themselves and cites several pivotal moments of recording history. The first example he offers is Caruso’s 1902 performance of 'Veste la giubba’ where the recording offered listeners the closest thing to the real experience of a live performance. He goes on to describe Walter Legge’s notorious recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde - likely the first known example of 'dishonest dubbing’ wherein the voice of Legge’s wife was substituted for the credited performer in order to hit the highest notes of the piece. And with Culshaw’s recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle for Decca, Beadle explains, the studio became an art form itself rather than merely a tool, as studio effects rendered a produced recording arguably superior to that of the concert hall experience. The production wizardry of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and George Martin are discussed, as well as Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Brian Holland, (each of Motown fame) and a host of others. 3. Stars on 45 Pressing on through history, Beadle describes how punk briefly revitalized the concept of the single in the uncertain marketability of the post-Beatle age. Anti-racist sentiment helped usher in the reggae revival and the rise of ska with 2-Tone Records. The Jam similarly spearheaded the mod revival. The chapter explores the Stars session musician medley phenomena in parallel to the birth of the political soundbite era of Margaret Thatcher, before moving onto the image-focused pop icons of Michael Jackson and Madonna. He closes with a summary of other aspects of the mid-80s musical landscape, from Christmas novelties to dance pop, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Wham!, and the academic wave of British art-school neo-minimalists. 4. Scratching Where It Itches examines the emergence of the scratch-mixing DJ, the birth of rap, and Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty’s visionary sampladelic work as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. A brief history of black music is chronicled, from early spirituals to jazz to blues, then onto reggae and ‘toasting’, funk, and eventually to DJ and rap culture. 5. Kick Out the JAMs dives into the anti-song anti-instrument philosophy of Drummond and Cauty's first album, 1987 (What the **** Is Going On?). Their outright cynicism and straightforward purloining of other artists’ work was a direct challenge to copyright and Beadle notes that “for all its cynicism about much contemporary pop music and public attitudes, [was] a deeply serious social and political statement.” Only 500 copies of their debut single, “All You Need is Love” were produced, and all were court ordered to be seized and destroyed elevating the cult iconic status of the duo. The chapter analyzes the raw and subversive nature of The JAMs’ 1987 and gives the record the detailed examination warranted by such a surreally iconic moment in contemporary music history. Beadle observes, “The point about this chaotic collage - chaotic in the sense that no apparently consistent frame of reference is maintained - is precisely that the listener is left without an objective correlative.” The epitome of postmodernism. 6. Hitting the High-tech Groove (Not Entirely Legally) provides a history of the sampler and examples of its execution from the author's own experience in the studio. Beadle touches upon “The Singing Dogs (Medley)” novelty recordings, early synths, the Mellotron, and the Fairlight before describing the studio production process of his own experiments using an Apple Macintosh and an Akai S100 sampler with an 8MB board for the sample bank. (This was, after all, 1990.) It's amazing to reflect on what was achieved with such minimal computing power at the dawn of the digital age. 7. Pump Up the Volume considers the single of the same name that Beadle argues marked pop music’s advance into modernism. He parallels its revolutionary impact to that of Schoenberg's aforementioned chromaticism and to Picasso's post-impressionist creations in that each of these artists purified their respective artistic landscape by reducing visual and auditory objects to their constituent elemental parts, abandoning conventions, and starting anew. Beadle critically examines the studio perfection and the artistic merit of this watershed recording. He concludes the chapter posing questions to the reader about the artistic merit of sampling, noting that any critic claiming that samplers merely reuse prior materials would have to say the same of Eliot's The Wasteland or Joyce’s Ulysses, and that the very same could be said of Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Mahler, Beckett, and countless others. The remaining chapters further contextualize the then-emerging story of sampling. 8. Dirty Cash outlines the flood of sampler cash-in records that followed the release of “Pump Up the Volume.” 9. Mix-omatosis examines the decline of the pop single around 1989 and the nostalgia-soaked commercialism of the era’s advertising, and the hollowness of the Jive Bunny phenomenon. 10. And The Law Won (But the Jury is Still Out) presents several examples of sampled music in the courtroom, including the Biz Markie case and the DNA remix of “Tom’s Diner.” But it is the book’s finale which properly and most thoroughly addresses the question of the title. The final chapter, 11. Justifiable or Just Ancient? is a fantastically analytical framing of The KLF’s later catalog. Here Beadle approaches the exhaustive and intricate cultural contextualization later perfected by John Higgs in his book, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds. Beadle notes that “As The KLF they have managed to create a myth which is self-propagating, self-sufficient, self-consuming, and self-referencing,” which is precisely what makes the duo’s zenarchistic career so fascinating to critique and to curate. Beadle concludes touching upon other artists who at the time were employing the sampler more as a natural production tool than a novelty and appropriately discusses the gritty, anti-consumerist recordings of the band Pop Will Eat Itself. He surmises that the sampler will find greater acceptance into the rock ethos in the years ahead and closes the text re-examining the question of the book’s title. Beadle successfully reinforces the twin points of his primary theme - that the sampler is a viable tool for composition, and that pop inevitably MUST eat itself by its very nature. Thus, Beadle demonstrates that the sampler is the most important creative innovation of the postmodern age and a principal figure in the future of music. Will Pop Eat Itself? stands as a fitting historical document of the events and philosophies of the golden age of sampling, and is a wonderful addition to The Innerspace Labs’ library. |
Personal Collection or Archive? A Closer Look at What Defines a Library
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I was recently contacted by Dan Gravell, founder and programmer of the server-based music management software, bliss. Bliss received praise from Andrew Everard of What Hi-Fi and their official website calls it a tool “for people who care about their music collection.” Dan posed several questions about my library, and about what differentiates an average personal music collection from a true archive. He suggested that my response might prove useful as a journal entry at Innerspace Labs, so I’m sharing my response for others who might ask the same questions about their own meticulous collections. So let’s dive right in - Regarding the difference between run-of-the-mill “playable” music libraries and what one might call an “archive,” there are a few primary factors which could differentiate the two. The first is one of practical function and intent. If a library is for personal use for playback alone it is most likely the former, whereas a consciously organized collection of significant size and scope which is representative of a particular period or culture and which sheds contextual light on that era might serve a greater, almost scholarly purpose as an archive. Uniformity of structure, organization, navigability, and accompanying supplemental metadata enhance a library such as this to greater usefulness than mere playback. And it appears that it is precisely this focus on consistency by which Dan has endeavored to empower users like me with his bliss project. Another important factor is the long-term sustainability of an archive, which I’ll touch upon momentarily. Next Dan asked whether my source media is exclusively physical. My collection comprises only a few thousand LPs, with a significant focus on the history of electronic sound. This spans the gamut from early notable works of musique concrète to the Moog synthesizer novelty craze, all the way through the international movement of ambient electronic music. I’ve also a predilection for archival box sets, like the Voyager Golden Record 40th Anniversary set with companion hardcover book and the special release from The John Cage Trust, as well as the previously unreleased collection of Brian Eno’s installation music issued earlier this year on vinyl with a new essay by Eno. But the bulk of my library is digital. This is both for practical and financial reasons, as digital libraries are far easier to maintain. (I don’t blog about digital nearly as often, as 450,000 media files are nowhere near as fascinating as a handsome limited edition LP!) Dan also inquired about my workflow, which is critical to any archive. Early on in the development of my library, (around 2002-3), I began ripping LPs with the following process: Exclusive analog recordings are captured using a Denon DP-60L rosewood TT with an Ortofon 2M Red cart, powered by a McIntosh amplifier (later replaced with a vintage Yamaha unit), and are saved as lossless FLAC via an entry level Behringer U-Control UCA202 DAC. I previously utilized a Cambridge Audio DacMagic DAC but after it failed I opted for the Behringer and it has been more than sufficient for my needs. Audio is captured using Audacity on my Linux-based DAW and basic leveling and noise reduction are performed but I minimize post-processing to maintain as much of the original audio's integrity as possible. Dan specifically inquired as to where the library information was stored (barcodes, etc) and asked about my policies on which metadata are included. This is fairly straightforward, as nearly all of the vinyl recordings I ripped pre-date the use of barcodes or were limited private releases with only a catalog number, which I bracket as a suffix in the release folder path. Polybagged LPs are stored vertically and organized by primary genre, then by artist, then chronologically by date of issue. Due to the entropic property of vinyl playback, discs are played once as needed to capture the recording and subsequent playback is performed using the digital files. I employed a dozen static local DB applications over the years for my records, but eventually migrated to a Discogs DB which increases accessibility while crate digging in the wild and provides real-time market value assessment for insurance purposes. But honestly, I almost never need to perform the rip myself, as the filesharing ecosystem has refined itself to the point where even the most exclusive titles are available through these networks in lossless archival FLAC with complete release details. There has never been a better time to be alive as an audio archivist. Once digitized to FLAC, my assets are organized with uniform file naming conventions with record label and artist parent folders and parenthetical date of issue prefixes for easy navigation. gMusicBrowser is my ideal playback software for accessing large libraries in a Linux environment. Release date and catalog numbers have been sufficient metadata identifiers, as subsequent release details are only a click or a tap away on Discogs. Occasionally I will include a contextual write-up in the release folder where warranted, like in the case of William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops 9LP + 5CD + DVD set as it related to the events of 9/11. Next Dan inquired about how my archive is accessed. I employ Sindre Mehus’ Subsonic personal server application on my Linux DAW to make all of my audio and music video film content accessible from my phone, tablet, or any web-enabled device. I use both the official Subsonic app and the independently-developed Ultrasonic fork by Óscar García Amor for remote access of my library, (about eight hours daily). You can see a short video walkthrough of the features of the app that I put together here: To return to his initial question about what differentiates a playback collection from an archive, my own library incorporates a few key factors which might lend itself to the latter:
And scale is another noteworthy factor in my circumstances. Just to cite one example, I've collected every LP and single issued by the electronic duo Underworld that I've been able to get my hands on, and the digital audio branch of my Underworld collection comprises 482 albums, EPs and singles, including 2850 tracks and DJ sessions totaling well over 385 hours of non-stop music, spanning 36 years of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith's work in all of their many incarnations. This collection is uniformly tagged, organized into a network of categorical root folders, and substructured into chronological subfolders by date of release. And the complete record label collections are a definite differentiator from the majority of casual-listening libraries. I understand that my archive is small compared to the 12-20 TB libraries of some more seasoned users, but I feel that discretion and selectivity are virtues of my personal collection so that I can focus on only the most exquisite and remarkable recordings of my principle genre foci. So what about your own collections? Do you employ standardized uniform file naming conventions and organizational standards? Do you supplement your library with relevant documentation to add context to your media? Does your collection offer insight into a particular era or musical culture? And do you take measures to ensure the longevity and sustainability of the work? If so… you might just have an archive. |
Supplemental Note:
A good friend was kind enough to offer his thoughts about what sets an archive apart from other collections, and his remark was too good not to share. He said - Quote:
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Just a quick peek-in to share something I'm really enjoying this morning - here's a 2017 interview piece with Brian Eno exploring his powerful generative music application, Reflection. Over a half an hour Eno demonstrates how incorporating a few rules for randomness can create an incredibly human touch to simple drum loops and ambient tonalities.
Here's the full interview, and I'll link some highlight snippets below for those without a half hour to spare. And for highlights... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tURRSJ-q4bg |
I've watched the drumloop video a few weeks ago and I was extremely disappointed. One plays around with this kind of stuff in the second week of working with a program for creating electronic music. I really had expected more from Eno than something that basic.
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And that fundamental process is extremely basic and uninventive. This is drum programming 101.
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I just expected more from Eno, I guess.
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I mean seriously **** this **** |
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This very week for my birthday in 2008 I had the most incredible thrift store haul of my life. I walked into a Volunteers of America and they had just set out these 17 original blues classics all in great shape including Howlin Wolf, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Albert King, The Super Blues Band, Hound Dog Taylor, and Freddie King.
It was an incredible birthday surprise, and hauls like this never happen at thrift stores anymore. I'm giving them another loving spin tonight to celebrate. https://i.imgur.com/GEaDkbNl.jpg |
Damn, nice. I gave up on thrift stores for records since they always seem to be cleaned out.
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Quite right. 2008 was a different story. A few years later at a Goodwill, I found a mint sealed Elliot Smith Either/Or 1997 Kill Rock Stars first pressing in a box of Christmas records. Seriously baffled how it ended up there for 99 cents.
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^I have both From A Basement On The Hill and XO (still sealed) on vinyl:
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Well done, Kiiii! Great albums!
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Faithful always to my birthday tradition, I'm starting my morning spinning Captain Zoom From Space Command's "Happy Birthday Jamie" flexidisc on my Fisher Price My First Record Player.
Here's a 2-minute video of my spinning this childhood favorite. Cheers everyone! |
Happy birthday!
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Not a proper journal entry but a quick update on today's project.
I'm getting into The Goon Show tonight after reading that the show was cited in the Firesign Theater Lexicon (a context database of every sub-sub-sub reference dropped by the surrealist comedy troupe). Here's my favorite entry - the lone Google search result of which brought me to the Lexicon: QUID MALMBORG IN PLANO: A mysterious phrase which recurs in BOZOS. It was first exclaimed by the discoverer of FUDD'S LAW. No one (yet) seems to know its true origin, although it is said to have been written on a cigarette lighter that Phil PROCTOR used to have, and belonged to a person named Malmborg, who lived in Plano, Texas. This has since been confirmed by Peter BERGMAN. Another listener is convinced that he saw this pseudo-latin phrase inscribed in a drawing by Albrecht Duerer. The phrase seems to be a mixture of latin and middle-english: "Quid" may be translated from the latin root meaning "this/something/that", and "plano" simply means "flat/horizontal/smooth". The nearest translation of "malmborg" we are willing to conjecture is based on the Middle-English word "malm" which the OED tells us is a type of man-made chalky clay, which is often worked into "malm-bricks", so perhaps this phrase refers to the conversion of this(quid) clay into flat (plano) bricks, as consternation turns to lucidation. The mixture of ME and latin, together with the brick reference, may indicate a Freemason influence, but this is wild conjecture on the part of the editor. Many other theories abound. For example: malborg sounds suspiciously like 'malbolg' (malbolgia?). Malbolgia, as read-ers of Dante may remember, are the "bad pockets" of Hell, where the corrupt and treacherous souls simmer. Here one finds thieves, hypocrites, whores and panderers. Schismatics are ripped to pieces and reconstituted in an assembly-line manner, liars are steeped in a sea of ****. It is lower than that part of the Inferno where the sensual and brutal are found, and just above the lowest part, where Judas and a coterie of betrayers sit. Dante puts several nasty folks in Malbolgia, including a few popes. Nixon probably has (had) a reservation. For anyone out of the loop, The Goon Show radio broadcasts of the 1950s featured anarchic, ludicrous comedy characterized by absurdity, manic surreality and unpredictability. The program was also highly innovative in its use of sound effect production techniques borrowed from the realm of musique concrete. The Goon Show inspired the humor of The Firesign Theater, The Beatles, Monty Python, and Douglas Adams, among countless others, and evidently was also the inspiration for the band Ned's Atomic Dustbin's name, lifted from an episode in 1959. The audio quality of the shows varies as tape was a new technology when the show premiered, but the filesharing community has assembled a complete catalog of all surviving recordings spanning 1952 to 1960 as well as the two specials in 1972 and 1991. I had to do a little work to refine the file naming, folder, and tagging structure of the library but with a few batch scripts I've tidied it up to an archival standard including all broadcast dates and re-broadcasts variations. (I don't half-ass any of this stuff.) Official commercial releases are less-consistent so this will be something I'll hold on to. Now that I've done all the work, I can start listening to the stuff. https://i.imgur.com/eOmGsay.jpg |
I've had this t-shirt for years:
http://tinyimg.io/i/YlAvS8x.png I've always gone along with the theory that it was my nearby neighbor, Mr. Malmborg, in Plano. |
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Seriously impressed. Thanks for sharing it! :) |
I'll share a quick thought on the subject of Bozos - I have a hunch about the answer to the riddle, "why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?" which I've never seen suggested. As the question corrupts the logic circuits of The President, sending him spiraling into free association, it occurred to me that perhaps the operative word of the riddle is his. As Uh Clem says, it is a question he won't be able to answer, because - male porridge birds don't lay eggs.
Just my two cents. Back to the Shadows again! |
The real story behind this sounds like something you'd hear from Chiomara.
Phil Proctor had a girlfriend who, as a little girl in Texas, used to run around in her backyard "playing" with leprechauns. She claimed that one of them asked her this question about the "porridge-bird" and then laughed and ran away, so Phil (and Co.) thought it'd be a good koan for Ah-Clem (the hacker) to use to introduce a virus (before the term was used in this way) into the Direct Readout Memory (hence: Dr. Memory). If you ask Siri this question, you get a unique response. |
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Gettin’ Sentimental Over You: Diving into Classics of The Big Band Era
Lately, I’ve found myself with a considerable amount of quiet and reflective time which has been profoundly enjoyable. It's afforded me the opportunity to explore thousands of albums in my library that I’d not previously had the time to experience. Recently I recalled a Tupperware storage box of cassettes that I have from my late father containing archives of big band radio broadcasts which he’d taped off the FM dial in the early 1990s, and I remembered his fondness for swing and standards.
Feeling inspired, (and admittedly a bit sentimental and nostalgic), I researched vinyl collections of big band and jazz classics and discovered a 10-volume box set issued by Reader’s Digest produced by RCA Victor in 1964 which did a magnificent job of showcasing the most beloved standards called, The Great Band Era (1936-1945). All of my favorites are here, from “The Music Goes Round and Round” to “Serenade in Blue.” https://i.imgur.com/AKT6Anvl.jpg I was also delighted to see that the set includes the beloved Glenn Miller classic, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” which had been a favorite of mine ever since I saw the live rehearsal segment of the track from the 1941 film, Sun Valley Serenade. Annie Van Auken of Amazon remarked of the collection’s sonic merit: Every one of its 120 tracks are original recordings, dubbed from restored 78 rpm master plates or archived discs. RCA's simulated stereo effect has been sparingly used and filtration is minimal. The result: sparkling tracks that sound better over speakers than the shellac records. She also made note of the exquisite quality of the packaging: Each album has a stock paper sleeve, all of different colors and finely illustrated. The ten LPs are stored in an incredibly strong box with a drop-down door to make access a snap. This box slides into an outer case of similar thickness. It's an set seemingly built to last centuries! https://i.imgur.com/AKzyEFYl.jpg Also included is a 24-page 12"×12" booklet containing notes for each song, synopses of events for individual years, an essay on the Big Band era and a layman's description of how transfers from record to tape was accomplished. There's also bios for 36 band leaders and two contents list breakdowns: by bands, by songs. From the musical selections (offered chronologically) to the quality of the mastery and packaging, The Great Band Era seemed like the perfect keepsake for any fan of 1930s standards. Only one other set appeared to compare to the Reader’s Digest release. Time-Life Recordings issued a 29-volume half-speed mastered big band series on vinyl between 1983 and 1986, and later on compact disc between 1992-94. These were mail order subscription releases and as such are quite costly if one wishes to assemble the complete catalog. Each volume included an illustrated portrait of the band leader and accompanying liner notes. But as each individual set of the 29 Time-Life volumes command a price of ~$20, and as the Reader’s Digest set is readily available any day of the week for only $5, ordering the 10-volume collection was clearly the more sensible choice. I also remembered that I have a sizable collection of yet-unplayed big band classics in my digital library. I’d previously assembled a 72-hour playlist titled, Shirt Tail Stomp: Swing & The Big Bands comprising 181 LPs and broadcast archives. This collection includes a chronology of Benny Goodman’s complete discographic catalog spanning 1928-1949, a library of 89 radio performance broadcasts, the six-volume big bands series from Archive.org, both the Glenn MIller and Glenn Miller Gold Collection releases, and the four-disc Smithsonian - Big Band Jazz: From the Beginnings to the 50s box set. This library will prove useful for mobile listening, but for my quiet evenings, dropping the needle on the Reader’s Digest box set will fill my home with the warm sounds of the golden age of swing for an experience that no digital playlist can match. |
Brian Eno: Oblique Music
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Oblique Music is a 2016 collection of essays examining Eno's work as a musician, as a theoretician, as a collaborator, and a producer. It was published by Bloomsbury Publishing, who also released my favorite musicological text, Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. The book is divided into two primary collections of essays - the first pertaining to Eno as composer, musician, and theorist, and the second section on “The University of Eno” exploring his work as a producer, collaborator and ethnographer. The book’s introduction dives right into Eno's early influences. Crucial to Eno’s early development as an artist, in addition to his experiences at The Fine Art Department at Ipswich in the mid-sixties, was Beers’ book The Brain of the Firm which Eno received from Jane Harvey, the mother of his first wife. The central insight of the text was this idea: “instead of specifying it in full detail, you simply ride the dynamics of the system where you want to go.” This resolved the stubborn dilemma of how one can get anywhere creatively if they don't know what or where their destination might be. Beer’s insights were incorporated into Eno's strategies as he moved from the quasi-hierarchical working structure of Warm Jets to his present position - that of a key part of the creative system, but not necessarily its centre. It is this very tenet of Eno's philosophy which attracts me to his generative work - that Eno endeavors to remove the ego from his artistry and instead he merely engineers the conditions from which his process music will commence and then permits the system to run its course. There seems to be an almost Eastern / Buddhist perspective about this approach to musical composition, and I find it infinitely more satisfying than the proud and declarative concrete structures typical of rock music. Chapter 1: The Bogus Men explores the forcefully and glamorously modern synthesis of style and experimentation pioneered by Roxy Music in the early 1970s. Quoting Allan Moore, essayist David Pattie describes how the band managed to create a sound world in which 'the traditional instrumental relationships are frequently and subtly overturned.’ The virtual environment of sonic space is examined structurally as three component parts - localized space, spectral space and morphological space, and contrasts are drawn between the sonic environments of Roxy Music’s “Do the Strand” from 1973 and Eno’s “Discreet Music” from 1975. The essay closes touching upon the creative divergence of Eno and Ferry and the unsustainability of the Roxy Music project. “Ferry,” Pattie describes, “was drawn towards the shaping of a musical object; Eno, then and now, preferred to explore systems and processes.” This tension led to the breakdown of their relations. Chapter 2 explores Eno's non-musicianship, his experimental tradition, and his strategy of deliberately selecting musicians who would be incompatible with one another, as well as creating conditions wherein the performers are not able to hear each other to introduce unexpected interactions. Both the Portsmouth Sinfonia and The Scratch Orchestra are examined. The chapter closes drawing parallels between the non-musical properties of Discreet Music and Satie’s Musique d’ameublement (“furniture music”) from a half-century before. The chapter addresses the fundamental differences between the teleological nature of traditional musical structures and what Eno calls the 'hypothetical continuum’ of experimental music. Describing his 'non-musicianship,’ Eno remarks, “Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to say, I tend towards the roles of the planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results.” In chapter 3: Taking the Studio By Strategy, David Pattie offers an examination of Eno’s creative process. Pattie calls attention to Eno’s serendipitous taxi accident which created the circumstances inspiring his discovery of ambient listening, via the now legendary tale where Eno was bedridden and unable to turn up the volume on a barely-audible recording of eighteenth-century harp music. He also describes Eno's incorporation of chance into otherwise strictly-structured systems. And like his contemporary Cornelius Cardew, his approach to composition permits hierarchical structures to give way to a more heuristic process. However, Pattie notes, Eno endeavored not to simply recast the compositional framework of Reich’s Music As a Gradual Process, but incorporated the artists’ response to the introduction of chance, via what Eno termed, “scenius” or communal genius. Chapter 5 by Mark Edward Achtermann entitled Yes, But Is It Music? views and analyses Eno’s earliest ambient works through several lenses and philosophies of established artistic theory beginning with Tolkien’s critique of allegory and aesthetic theory, as well as Collingwood’s 1938 Principles of Art. Eric Tamm’s 1989 book, Brian Eno: His Music and The Vertical Color of Sound is also touched upon to frame the merit of music employing static harmony and timbral homogeneity. It was interesting to see ambient music framed by Tolkien’s theory, specifically his argument that art provides three great benefits: escape, recovery, and consolation. Achtermann proposes that Eno both confirms and challenges this theory. Further parallels are drawn between the systems at play in Eno’s ambient compositions and Lazlo’s evolutionary theory. The final chapter of Book One entitled The Voice And/Of Brian Eno examines Eno’s post-humanist use of voice in song “to chart the convulsions at the boundaries of race, gender, and the human.” The use and manipulation of voice on albums released between 1991 and 2014 are explored, as are other artists who have synthesized and otherwise technologically manipulated voices of “post-human ventriloquism” in popular song from the 1940s to contemporary artists like Boards of Canada, DJ Shadow, and Giorgio Moroder. Sean Albiez quotes P.K. Nayar’s Transhumanism proposing that Eno “explores strategies that emphasize co-evolution, symbiosis, feedback, and responses as determining conditions rather than autonomy, competition, and self-contained isolation of the human.” And it is that “loss of ego,” that concept of “scenius” which makes him such a powerful critical force of the post-human perspective. https://i.imgur.com/kcdqaH8l.jpg Part 2 is entitled, The University of Eno and explores his work as a producer and collaborator. Chapter 8: Before and After Eno contextualizes Eno’s seminal lecture, 'The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool’ and how Eno “acts as a nexus between historical and contemporary currents in experimental, avant-garde, and popular musics.” Parallels are drawn between Eno’s musical philosophy and that of John Cage, as well as those of Satie, Varèse, Russolo, Schaeffer, and other pivotal music theorists of the era of recorded sound. Albiez and Dockwray demonstrate that Eno reiterated ideas many decades in the making but that his work is noteworthy due to his unique position in bridging the early & twentieth-century avant-garde with later experimenters in popular music. Interestingly, not all of the essays are voices of praise. Elizabeth Ann Lindau offers some important criticism in chapter ten of the 'ethnographic surrealism’ of Byrne and Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and its role in cultural anthropology. Further criticisms are presented in the final chapters detailing Eno’s role as producer for Devo and U2 as well as in the closing chapter where Martin James’ briefly examines Eno's curation of the no wave scene in 1978 with the album, No New York. Oblique Music effectively contextualizes the many facets of Eno's work throughout the course of his illustrious career. And I appreciated that the text wasn't all one-sided praise, but instead sheds light on the friction between Eno and his many collaborators. The book also excels at outlining Eno’s musical philosophy without being overly academic and makes for a stimulating survey of one of the most influential artists and producers of the century. |
Simple Pleasures
Not a formal blog post - just a quick check in for a success of the day.
I’ve been very selective with my spending, continuing my mantra of investing in experiences rather than material goods, but this special purchase seemed like it would serve my happiness well. As good luck would have it, I was able to sell a rare audiobook box set read by Douglas Adams to a gent in Australia and made back every penny of my investment just a few hours after my purchase! Slowly but surely I’ve been dressing the windows and walls of my home to mask the spots of peeling paint from where my ex-wife removed all her former adornments. There were just two spots remaining on either side of the picture window in my dining room left to fill. I’d been eyeing these two rare promotional prints for a long time. The first showcases Brian Eno’s innovative generative art installation, 77 Million Paintings featured at Moogfest in 2011. The other is a UK promo print for Underworld's 1994 debut LP Dubnobasswithmyheadman with award-winning artwork by their design collective which directly inspired my pursuit of a design degree and my passion for typography. They represent my two greatest musical and artistic inspirations and they fit the space perfectly. These complement the other inspiring works I’ve framed to make my house a home and a gallery of all my favorite art. It feels like a good investment. https://i.imgur.com/xPBR8Ksl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ymy551Vl.jpg |
Just Keep Spinning - Reflections on Music Collecting
A friend kindly recommended my latest film screening - So Wrong They’re Right, a low-budget indie VHS documentary on offbeat 8-track collector culture and the 8-Track Mind zine. I've been exploring UK hauntological music and art lately so the retro subject matter fit right in. It was great to hear Wally Pleasant's "Rock n' Roll Yard Sales" on the soundtrack.
And serendipitously, while watching the film a related short appeared in my social media feed - an informational demo film to educate consumers about the upcoming compact disc format produced in 1982. Much like the VHS culture documentaries, Rewind This and Adjust Your Tracking, the film made me reflect on my own music collector hobby and how in the past year I’ve really put the breaks on my vinyl habit. Unlike vinyl, most 8-tracks are practically given away and as interviewees of the film profess, they’ve had to plead with Goodwill store managers just to get them to put their 8-track stock on the sales floor. (There are exceptions, of course. Discogs currently offers over 8,000 8-tracks in its marketplace, the second-most-expensive of which is a mint tape of Trout Mask Replica presently priced at $1,500.00.) https://i.imgur.com/eUHntu5l.jpg But conversely, with vinyl, I’ve reached a point in my collecting where all the remaining titles on my wish list command $80-$550 apiece. And the days of scoring elusive original pressings of releases you’re after at your local VoA are long gone after the store’s inventories have been thoroughly picked over by eBayer resellers or by hipster employees who pull all the good stuff before it has a chance to hit the floor. And for my personal tastes, thrift shops have never been a good resource for the kind of content I seek. Thankfully a lot of the rare early electronic, drone, and import tape music of the last century, and even of the 90s during vinyl’s darkest days, are being remastered and reissued by Dutch, German, and UK specialty labels, but with shipping you’re still looking at $60 minimum per release so I’ve resolved to reel in my habit and to spend more conservatively this past year. It’s left me to wonder what the future holds for my hobby. I really enjoy the research and the unconventional subcultures surrounding the format, I just don’t know to what degree I can continue to participate in the acquisition and trade of the albums, themselves. And vinyl has been a significant part of my identity for many years, so I question how I’ll continue to occupy myself beyond this bizarre little pastime. Thankfully, I have more music at present than I could experience in a lifetime, so at the very least I can kick back and enjoy exploring my archives. And I can continue to supplement my web-based research with more contextual studies from books specializing in my favorite genres. My next read will be Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music by David Stubbs and should provide hours of reading enjoyment and hopefully an intimate understanding of a century of electronic sound. Whether as a collector or just a researcher, this is indeed the finest time to be alive. Sites like Discogs and RYM provide instantaneous access to release data and listener reviews which previously took days or weeks of calls and form submissions to the LoC to obtain, and every day more and more fans upload thousands of hours or rare and exotic content from their collections to YouTube and file-sharing networks. It’s a curious phenomenon because when everything is accessible, nothing is rare. So, arguments for the paradox of choice aside, this is the greatest time in history for the inquiring listener. I plan to keep reading and listening, and maybe one day score a few of my remaining white whales. Whatever your preferred format, be it 8-track, LP, cylinder, cassette, CD… just keep spinning. |
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Reynolds, yes. Fisher, no. I've been introducing myself to the Ghost Box label and enjoyed Simon Reynolds' book, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. Is there a particular text you'd recommend? |
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one of which is right down the street here. We run into each other at the store on occasion. |
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