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Let Nico Drive the Bus

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The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground is the kind of thing I only dreamed about as a VU-obsessed teenager in the late ’80s. The way I learned about the band was akin to a game of telephone, relying on fanzines and tall tales from older acquaintances. Someone mentioned a girl in my high school was also “into that Velvet Underground you listen to,” so I tried to talk to her, not so much because I wanted to talk to a girl but also because I wanted to talk to someone about VU. There was no one to talk to about them. (She ended up completely ignoring me.)

That’s why, from that perspective, I find it hard to believe this documentary exists, especially with a logo from the largest corporation in the world displayed at its start. And with such reverence — there’s no condescension, no attempts to invite those who don’t care in the first place, no Dave Grohls or Henry Rollinses strategically placed to tell us that “they were great, take my word for it.” 

There’s a lot of talk about the visual style — the split screens, the use of Warhol’s screen tests, etc. — which is refreshingly distinctive. But what really sets the tone for a new type of music documentary is this immediate immersion into the subject at hand and the culture that spawned it. Most striking is the section in the first half covering 56 Ludlow Street, La Monte Young, and Tony Conrad. It’s heady and perhaps difficult if you don’t expect something like this in a rock n’ roll story. And most music docs would have spent just a few minutes on the happenings on Ludlow Street. But Todd Haynes understands how vital that mini-scene was to VU and modern music/art in general, and he doesn’t shy away. It sets the context, something lacking in most other docs (music and otherwise).

I have heaps of bias here, but my love for VU also makes me protective. I procrastinated on seeing this film until recently for that reason. It’s easy to dismiss when the things you treasure aren’t portrayed in a way you find deserving. But I’m overjoyed by this treatment. And all this footage I’d never seen before and all the new things I learned about VU — in my music snob smugness, I didn’t think there was anything left.

This film significantly recharged my fandom — no small feat — and has astonished the 17-year-old in me.

Stray thoughts:

  • I am so curious to hear from those who knew little about The Velvet Underground going in — how convincing is Haynes’ testimonial? Please comment if you’re in that camp.
  • I can’t be the only one who got major chills as the opening title crawl kicked in. The sequence leading up to it was an editing and sonic masterclass intricately designed for maximum chill-deployment in longtime VU fans.
  • I wish Doug Yule had participated (anyone know why he didn’t?). He’s a bit of an enigma, and his contributions to the Velvets’ third album are sadly underrated.
  • I’m now itching for a biopic/road movie centered around Nico driving the band bus.
  • Here’s a fascinating Twitter thread about how The Velvet Underground weren’t as unpopular as the myth tells us to believe.
  • I walked up to Jonathan Richman after he played a show here in Orlando in 1990. Others were talking to him, and he was being friendly (as he is) but also in that “nice to meet you now move along” kind of way that’s understandable. So when it was my turn, I asked, “Jonathan — what was it like to experience the Exploding Plastic Inevitable?” He beamed just like he does when he talks about The Velvet Underground in this documentary. “Oh, man,” he said. “You have NO IDEA.”

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Kenny G

I worked at the Camelot Music in Alexandria, Louisiana, when Duotones and its ubiquitous “Songbird” were released. So, yes, I can remember when I first heard ‘The G-Man’ (a question posed in the unexpectedly fascinating documentary Listening to Kenny G). 

I was still in high school, so I always took the evening shifts. That meant I would be working under one of two assistant managers. One of those managers was obsessed with Duotones and incessantly played our in-store LP copy. Sometimes two or three times in a row. Often even after the store closed while I was mopping or whatever as she counted out the register. That album drove me crazy.

One day, after a few months, the album disappeared. This assistant manager was distraught. She looked everywhere for it. She asked if anyone in the store had any idea where it went. She even made some mild accusations, though there was nothing to back up any suspicion. The album was gone — poof, no trace at all. And as we could only play promotional in-store LPs sent by the home office, there was no more Kenny G at Alexandria’s Camelot.

To that assistant manager: 36 years later, I have a confession. One night when you weren’t working, as I was taking the day’s trash out to the dumpster, I shoved Duotones in the plastic trash bag. The other assistant manager knew — he goaded me into doing it. Nothing personal. I just couldn’t bear to hear that album one more time.

Oh, as far as this documentary goes, I thought it was good. Kenny’s got chops and seems like a nice guy, so I have no issue with what he does. It seems to me that the problem is a combination of other people (and record executives) labeling him as ‘jazz’ (when even he seems to admit that’s a stretch) and Kenny’s love of the spotlight alongside a bit of light trolling (c’mon, he totally gets a kick out of irritating his anti-fans). And this is a documentary where I actually liked the inclusion of critics and academic talking heads who have nothing to do with the subject. Their carefully chosen words of disdain provide the film’s biggest LOLs.

This documentary, and Kenny G’s career, is just a bit of harmless, goofy fun. But I still don’t want ever to hear Duotones again.

Stray thoughts:

  • Kenny’s apparently all for defunding the ‘jazz police.’
  • I love how he hangs out a little bit with Kanye, and now Kenny thinks he will win all the film-scoring Oscars. I guess kooky bravado is contagious.

Commodifying Coziness and the Rise of Chill-Out Capitalism

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In the article Why Are So Many Brands Pivoting To Coziness?, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings reveals a curious marketing trend: brands displaying promises of comfort to attract millennials and Gen Z’ers. In youth-oriented magazine advertisements, we’re used to photos of adventurous consumers climbing mountains or traversing an exotic, unfamiliar city. Now you’re as likely to see a picture of someone sitting at home seated on a couch or maybe even — gasp! — reading a book. Combined with emerging products like weighted blankets and CBD shampoo, it’s evident that chill is ‘in.’

Media theorists point out that horror movies are popular during times of unease and distrust in society. Jennings has a similar reason for the rise of coziness: “Things are bad, and people are anxious about whatever ongoing horrors are metabolizing in geopolitics, the environment, and capitalism.” However, there’s an always-online twist to this movement. “The selling point is that this product will make you feel calm and safe, but the experience of using it is still supposed to look good enough for other people to see.”

Ambient music isn’t exactly mainstream, but it’s more in vogue — and pervasive — than it’s ever been. The flavors are varied, from dark drones to nature noises, from New Age throwbacks to chill-hop YouTube streams. If we’re defining ambient music as music that sits in the ambiance, politely ignored as we go about our lives, then all of those styles qualify. And, like brand-marketed coziness, the music is often pushed as an antidote for a hectic life. There’s something spacey and unobtrusive playing in the background as that person sits on the couch reading his book.

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Streaming has enabled an even more utilitarian strain of ambient music, something that The Baffler’s Liz Pelly refers to as “emotional wallpaper” and “music that strategically requires no attention at all.” This music is made to fall into playlists that play on repeat as we study, or meditate, or slowly fall asleep. The primary purpose isn’t to calm our brains but to rack up Spotify plays as the playlists churn in repetition. Ambient music is perfect for this — we can only listen to the same pop hook so many times. An ambient drone might as well be endless.

Of course, music has always had calming and self-healing properties. That’s ancient history. And it’s untrue to say that ‘western’ music ignored this aspect, with blues and — of course — gospel as examples of genres containing elements of spiritual remedy. But the connection came as a surprise to many of ambient music’s forerunners. Take John Cage, whose life and direction changed after a conversation with Indian composer Gita Sarabhai in the 1940s. She pointed out that it’s okay for music to be meaningless, to exist solely to “sober and quiet the mind.” It makes sense to us. But this was a revelation for Cage, a stone thrown in the pond with ripples continuing outward.

What’s new is our era’s odd commoditization of relaxation music. Sure, the New Age genre was a small phenomenon in the late ’80s — those Windham Hill CDs flew off the shelves at the Camelot Music I worked at as a teenager. But playlists targeted to sleeping ‘listeners’ for money-making purposes is a bizarre twist. Consider the Sony-affiliated Sleep & Mindfulness Thunderstorms playlist, featuring 990 one-minute tracks containing sounds of rainstorms. Why a single minute each in length? Because Spotify will deliver a micropayment to a track that plays for at least 30 seconds.

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But let’s get something straight. Personally, I love ambient music. I work to it. I relax to it. I sometimes sleep to it. And, if you can’t tell, I’m fascinated by it. That presents a quandary as I’m using the music in the same way as those studying to ChilledCow’s YouTube channel. What makes my cozy space so sacred?

Simon Reynolds’ recent Resident Advisor long-read about the state of ambient music is worth a look. He grapples with chill-out capitalism in his article, stating:

Still, there is something unnerving about the idea of ambient and New Age music uncoupled from any higher purposes and applied to the task of self-repair. Like power yoga or microdosing, it is taking an agent of change that was originally part of a culture of liberation and discovery, and putting it in service of the status quo. As David Toop, author of ambient bible Ocean Of Sound, wrote recently, “if ambient music only serves as an app to incentivise or a backdrop to productivity, networking and self-realisation, then it has no story of its own, no story worth hearing.”

Are we adding too much baggage to ambient music? Perhaps it’s just meant to be, like a soothing wallpaper hue or the bird sounds outside my window. Burdening this music with a special purpose or the responsibility of solace might be self-defeating. But, true enough, so is placing a profit incentive on our coziness.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Vaughan Oliver’s Invitation to Decode

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Vaughan Oliver - Pixies Cover Art

My first job was at a record shop (Camelot Music, a staple of ’80s shopping malls), and I enjoyed a generous employee discount. That offered the freedom to purchase records based on the cover art — if the cover’s cool, the music’s gotta be cool, right? — and a lot of those records would be released on the seminal British label 4AD. The enticing cover art was by 23 Envelope, the design team of Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson.

Years ago, I wrote about the power of cover art in a tribute to Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. There was a cool record shop in the beach town where my grandmother lived. It was next to the grocery store, so, while visiting my grandmother, I’d pop in to look at records when she’d go for groceries. I was 12 or 13 years old and recall seeing those early New Order records — Movement and Everything’s Gone Green — sitting in the mysterious bin labeled ‘imports.’ These records were strange, not like anything that I’d seen, and it was impossible to resist their vibe. It would be a couple more years until I heard these records, but the sound, the feeling, wasn’t that far off from the cover art’s first impressions. The designer was Peter Saville, often mentioned in influence alongside Vaughan Oliver, and it was like he was transmitting signals to me across the Atlantic.

That’s what remarkable cover art — or design in general — does to us. It’s an invitation to decode, revealing (or hinting at) the intention of the creator. Or, as Oliver told an interviewer, “[An album] cover should work as an entrance door that invites you to cross it.”

Clan of Xymox - cover art by Vaughan Oliver

It’s not a stretch to believe there would be a lot fewer graphic designers in the world if not for Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville. I can’t think of a single designer friend of a specific age range that wasn’t significantly inspired by the outputs of 4AD and Factory. But it wasn’t only budding designers who received inspiration. There are also a lot more independent labels because of these designs. Or a lot more labels that approached everything they did as a representative package.

Oliver understood that the appeal he added to 4AD was emotional, that fans of the label picked up on common threads and identified a community. Oliver stated, “This was kind of branding before branding—and I generally don’t use the word branding—but it was creating a vibe that made you trust in something.” He continued:

I was always a bit wary of putting an identity on the label itself, but I wanted individual identities for the bands that were consistent. Then, with time, you would see a thread start to appear. There was a unity, but without a corporate branding stamp on it. It was very fluid. Eventually, it became an emotional response that people had with the work. Thirty years later, I’m talking to students who call it “emotional branding”—how people become emotionally involved in what we were doing. I’ve got clients who ask, “How can we have that now?” I say, “We don’t have that now. It builds with time; it also builds with the quality of the product.”

It’s a challenge to create this emotional community without the tangible effects of a physical totem. It’s not impossible — many well-crafted artist websites successfully transmit intention to potential fans. But basing an artist’s vibe on the limitations of a social media platform’s template or a thumbnail in a streaming app is a losing battle. The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas said it well: “[Vaughan Oliver’s cover] design tells you that you’re about to go on a journey. With streaming, you’re suddenly teleported in without a map.”

Unlike Oliver, I’m not afraid to use the term ‘branding’ as long as I get to define how I use it. And I define branding, in music, as the promise an artist makes to her audience. That’s the vibe of trust that Oliver refers to above, and it’s essential. An artist or label that gains that trust, that cultivates a community, that repeatedly transmits a signal, becomes a cultural curator. An expectation grows in the listener, and this expectation is a necessary tension. What’s next? Will this label fulfill my expectations? How will this artist continue to reward her community of fans?

That’s how we felt about 4AD. The cover art, the music, the ambiguity allowing us to fill in our own interpretations — these worked together to build our tribe. If, circa 1985, I saw you pick up a Cocteau Twins album in the record store I’d strike up a conversation. We’re in the same club.

I’m sure that Vaughan Oliver, 23 Envelope, and label founder Ivo Watts-Russell partly knew what they were doing. But I also think they stumbled into a lot of this. The point here is that it’s not that difficult. It’s all about developing intention. Understand who you want to reach, as narrowly as possible, and create only for them. Cohesively apply that aesthetic to everything you deliver to the world.

Vaughan Oliver passed away in the final days of 2019. As I commented on Twitter, it’s a triumph to be remembered for a distinctive contribution to culture and style; one that’s identifiably his own as well as freely lent to others. Oliver transitioned to education in his last decade, and that’s fitting. Many of us in the music industry were his students. He taught us all a lot, and, in a more ephemeral digital age, these lessons now serve a higher purpose.

🔗→ Lost worlds of sex and magic: Vaughan Oliver’s album sleeves for 4AD
🔗→ Sight, touch, hearing: an interview with Vaughan Oliver
🔗→ Vaughan Oliver (Interview Magazine)
🔗→ Cover Star: Vaughan Oliver interview
🔗→ interview with graphic designer vaughan oliver