8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Milk Crate of Forgotten Playlists

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The best and truest discourse regarding Twitter’s predicament (and that of its users) expresses the sentiment of just letting it go. This is a hopeful stance, so don’t misconstrue it with surrender or giving up. Folks obsessed with fixing, preserving, or even finding an equal replacement for Twitter are embracing a defective template. Like arguing with Spotify to change its ways, a focus on what’s clearly an unsolvable problem distracts us from creating ‘first-principles’1Yes, I’m cheekily using a term popularized by that billionaire knucklehead. alternatives. Rip it up and start again.

Ryan Broderick in Garbage Day:

I’ve seen arguments on Twitter from liberal users this week saying things like, “Twitter is a public square and the front page of the internet, we must stay and fight the Musk fans and conservatives for it.” lol with all due respect, but why? The main benefit of the internet is that it’s infinite. There doesn’t need to be a public square! And there can also be many! […] Twitter, though smaller than other platforms, still monopolizes our culture more than any other. And very soon it will be owned by the richest man on Earth… But we don’t need to stay there. There’s nothing keeping us there. And I’d argue we can take it further. We now know that centralized feeds are just easy targets for despots and oligarchs (and whatever Mark Zuckerberg is) to capture and control. We need to throw it all out. Make websites and message boards and Discords and become ungovernable. Kill the central feed.

Robin Sloan:

There are so many ways people might relate to one another online, so many ways exchange and conviviality might be organized. Look at these screens, this wash of pixels, the liquid potential! What a colossal bummer that Twitter eked out a local maximum; that its network effect still (!) consumes the fuel for other possibilities, other explorations.

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Brian Eno with guitar

I appreciate Gary Hustwit’s approach to documentary film-making, and his feature-length profile on designer Dieter Rams is a total joy. So, under Hustwit’s steely direction, I’m more excited than hesitant about a documentary on Brian Eno. But will it be generative?

From the press release:

Befitting its subject, Eno will utilize proprietary generative software developed by Hustwit and digital artist Brendan Dawes to provide unique viewing experiences via multiple digital formats, cinema screenings and site-specific installations. “You can’t make a conventional, by-the-numbers bio doc about Brian Eno,” said Hustwit. “That would be antithetical and a missed opportunity. What I’m trying to do is to create a cinematic experience that’s as innovative as Brian’s approach to music and art.”

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Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss (Published 2022)
In tragedy, music provided solace during the AIDS epidemic, and newly discovered cassette tapes captured two decades of parties and pain.
Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss (Published 2022)
In tragedy, music provided solace during the AIDS epidemic, and newly discovered cassette tapes captured two decades of parties and pain.

This moving NY Times article explores how mixtapes can capture and contextualize historical moments. In this case, a stash of recordings discovered in a former ‘party house’ on Fire Island documents the escape and loss experienced by the island’s community throughout the tragic height of the AIDS crisis. There are many other histories told through hand-designed mixtapes — the genesis of hip-hop and the ebbs and flows of the original rave movement, for two examples. However, these histories are confined to the period from the mid-70s to the late ’90s. Future accounts told through music will take other forms, but it’s not like anyone will stumble across a milk crate packed with forgotten playlists.

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I can’t get enough of this cover version of Black Flag’s “Rise Above” from the French duo Ibeyi. It’s as perfect for 2022 as the original was for 1981. The predictably angry reactions peppering the song’s YouTube comments section miss the point entirely — the fed-up spirit of punk rock is for everyone, no matter the race, nationality, or musical genre. Nobody exclusively owns that.

Undermining, Not Underlining

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Discovery vs. Intention → What a fun conversation between Brian Eno and Stewart Brand, promoting We Are As Gods, a new documentary on Brand’s fascinating life. The first half uses Eno’s soundtrack contribution as a topic launching pad. The conversation touches on the intersection of film scoring with ambient music, how multi-track recording brought music closer to painting, and how endless options are making us all permanent curators. My favorite part comes at 17:00 when Brand asks Eno to differentiate, in terms of the creative process, discovery from intention: 

I think the thing that decides that is whether you’ve got a deadline or not (laughs). The most important element in my working life, a lot of the time, is a deadline. The reason it’s important is it makes you realize you’ve got to stop pissing around. You have to finally decide on something. Whether I finish something or not completely depends on whether [a piece of music] has a destination and a deadline.

Eno goes on to describe his fabled archive of half-finished music — “6790 pieces … I noticed today” — most of which is created through discovery, i.e., “pissing around.” Then, when he gets an assignment (a destination with a deadline), he pulls something relevant to the project from the archive and finishes it. That’s an inspiring process and one I’d love to replicate. 

I wonder how much time Eno spends “pissing around” and building this archive. I imagine an ideal would be one or two hours a day. And I’m curious how he decides on and enforces self-imposed deadlines to move his own projects forward.

Oh, and this quote in the video from Eno is a keeper: “What I like better than underlining is undermining.”

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Etcetera → Seth Godin’s advice on how to make your Zoom calls better. Now I want a beam splitter. ❋ This 2015 compilation is a psychedelic overview of On-U Sound’s post-punk dub: Trevor Jackson Presents: Science Fiction Dancehall Classics. ❋ Writer Ernest Wilkins explains why he’s joining the parade of newsletter publishers leaving Substack. This part is especially eye-opening: “I’ve lost anywhere between $400 and $1100 in churned subscriber revenue due to paid subscribers not wanting to give money to this platform anymore. I need it to be clear that for the two years on Substack before this, I had a 0% subscriber churn rate.” ❋ I’m excited about this forthcoming documentary on ‘sound activist’ Matthew Herbert, A Symphony of Noise. ❋ Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine in The New York Times: “My nieces and nephews — they would complain to me, ‘Why are you so purposely obscure? You know, it seems stupid.'”

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Rachika Nayar – Our Hands Against The Dusk → I’ve been delightfully obsessed with Rachika Nayar‘s debut album over the past couple of weeks. The Brooklyn-based artist (in both visuals and sound) has accomplished some heavy-lifting with Our Hands Against The Dusk — the album is unabashedly experimental and uncompromising but somehow remains accessible and, yes, beautiful. Guitar is the main instrument throughout, but it’s looped, processed, and sometimes ‘glitched’ into unfamiliarity. The opening track, “The Trembling of Glass,” is an introductory window to Nayar’s technique, with layers of texture and manipulation swept away in the last half to reveal a bare acoustic motif. It hooked me in straight away.

Interviewed in Magnetic, Nayar explains her method: 

I see one aspect of my process on this album as tearing up an instrumental sample into a million pieces and then putting those fragments through cycles of recombination … these processes feel to me like exploring a single idea through multiple and multiplying perspectives — seeing one thing in all its different realities and selves. 

When one listens closely, there are many opportunities to identify what Nayar is up to, but her execution is nuanced and organic, despite the music’s inherent digitalness. One hears these ‘million pieces’ as a whole, as guitars ring with hopeful tones on “New Strands” and pianos and cellos combine and intertwine on “No Future.” The effect is mesmerizing — dancing somewhere between music that’s ambient, experimental, and influenced by modern classical — but, most of all, it’s affecting. The emotion that went into creating this album is anything but disguised. 

Our Hands Against The Dusk is the most impressive debut I’ve heard in a while. Don’t hesitate to open your ears and heart to it.

Generous Expertise

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The terrific documentary about Other Music popped up on Prime Video last month. I’ve wanted to see this for a while — the NYC store, much mythologized, really was the ideal of an indie record shop. It had it all: a niche selection curated by the owners and staff, records filed under sometimes-baffling genre section names, cards with reviews filled to the edges with jumbled handwriting affixed to releases, store layout and organization to the point of disorganization, and so on.

The documentary made me miss New York City (I’m so happy I got to visit a few months before The Strange Times) and, of course, browsing in record stores. But, most of all, I miss the communities and interactions that revolve around great shops. This aspect of music culture was fading, along with independent retail stores, with or without COVID interference.

Other Music, New York City

Record store clerks get a bad rap for being smug jerks, judging customers’ musical tastes from behind the counter. Sure, I know a few of those —perhaps on a bad day, I’ve been one of those — but I think the cliché is overblown. As the Other Music doc shows, record store employees are often helpful experts in their chosen fields. As Caroline said as we watched the movie, “I could listen to them talk about records all day.” They know a lot about music, they listen to a lot of music, and their favorite thrill is turning someone else on to great music. People who work in record shops live for that.

There’s a moment in the documentary when a customer says to the clerk, “I’m looking for something like Lou Reed that’s not Lou Reed.” We wait for the side-glance, or a snarky response, or the indignant huff. The legends and depictions of pretentious record shops train us to believe this might be a terrible thing to ask. The customer is brave even to bring it up. 

But record store staff enjoy questions like this. The request is open-ended but has a launchpad. It’s an invitation to explore, and, most of all, it’s the customer saying, “I trust you to turn me on to something I haven’t heard yet. And I’m inclined to love it.” Maybe that’s just my own experience (I owned a record store once, remember), but I think I’m right. 

I can’t imagine the response if that person asked for “something like Lou Reed but not Lou Reed” on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe he’d get a handful of helpful replies in the spirit of a record shop clerk, but the snark would cover those over like a storm cloud. I don’t know of an internet equivalent of a space where one stranger can ask another for an open-ended recommendation without fear of trolls or insults or intimidation. 

Record stores are places of generous expertise. It’s sad that the concept almost seems quaint in this volatile age. And that’s what I miss the most about stores like Other Music. Hopefully, these stores — Other Music not included, unfortunately — will be around once we get out of this mess. In the meantime, watch the documentary. If you ever had — or have! — a favorite record store, this movie will move you.

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A couple of weekends ago, 1200 record stores participated in Record Store Day. I don’t need to tell you that this was a weird edition of the annual tradition. Record store day occurs typically in April but, this time was pushed to June, as there was a thing called “wishful thinking” back then. As that plan fizzled out, we’re now celebrating RSD 2020 through three ‘RSD drops’ on the last Saturdays of August, September, and October.1One wonders if this monthly schedule was inspired by ‘Bandcamp Days.’ In part, the idea is that spreading it out will thin the crowds showing up at actual record stores. This schedule, in theory, will also help space out the releases, so they’re not all hitting on a single day. I’m not so sure.

The decision exists in our current retail paradox of ‘less physical customers, more physical sales.’ The dramatic lines in front of record stores (which you can see in photos from a year-old blog post of mine) are no longer welcome. Elbow-to-elbow bin browsing is not allowed. That’s a shame as peeking at the person’s selections next to you is how vinyl junkies make friends. 

Most record stores won’t open their doors to the record-collecting masses. The RSD organizers frowned on online orders of exclusive releases, but this year it’s acceptable. Stores are trying to restrict orders of these limited items to local addresses, which sounds like a losing battle. Some stores are using a lottery to determine which customer snags a rare vinyl release or who gets to step in the store for an allotted time. Others are using platforms like Instagram, posting a photo of the record. Then it’s ‘first come first serve’ among the commenters. And, appropriate for this year of live-streaming, Zoom-led RSD tours from stores are happening.

In Variety, Mick Pratt of the Northeastern US indie chain Bull Moose says of the challenges, “I choose to be optimistic about it and hope that it will be great and it will not result in too much stress, either for staff or for customers who are like, ‘Damn, what I really needed to get through 2020 was this record.'”

How did it go? It seems like it went okay, but shifting vinyl fans from crowding the stores to crowding the internet had foreseeable problems. Here’s a tweet from Damon Krukowski, whose old band Galaxie 500 released the live album Copenhagen for RSD:

Regardless, the point is to support these stores (among all the other independent businesses you’re supporting) during this difficult time. You don’t need to wait for the next Record Store Day to do so. We can’t lose these places of generous expertise: the record stores, the bookshops, the locally-owned restaurants, the farmer’s markets, etc. I have the feeling once we get out of this, we’ll need these places more than ever. I don’t know how we’ll manage if they’re gone.

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John Shepherd has a generous expertise. You’ve probably heard about the short documentary John Was Trying To Contact Aliens by now. So you know Shepherd’s expertise wasn’t only his musical selections. Though I’m not convinced all those knobs and wires and screens and machinery actually did anything, you know, scientific. You might also know that his generosity extended to alien life forms. He DJ’ed to the great unknown, an audience that may or may not be out there. I know the feeling — I used to have an overnight slot on college radio.

As evidence of my embarrassing music-nerdom, the most crucial part of the documentary, to me, is when, in vintage footage, Shepherd pulls Musik Von Harmonia out of his vinyl collection for a local TV crew. As obscure as that album is now, it was but a rare fossil when that television ‘human interest’ piece aired — sometime in the ’80s is my guess. Shepherd’s geek move was strategic. He knew this would go out on television, potentially to an audience in the hundreds of thousands. So what album does he choose to show? And then he plays some of the music, announcing “now here’s a song from Harmonia” into the microphone. Shepherd’s audience is now more than extraterrestrial, and he knows it. 

Like making friends with the person browsing next to you at the record store, John Shepherd aims for connection. He’s satisfied if that connection is with aliens or a TV viewer left dumbfounded at a Harmonia album on the evening news. The film’s director, Matthew Killip, speaks about these connections in The Guardian: 

Killip was interested in extraterrestrial life less as scientific inquiry than cultural phenomenon – “if you make a film about someone trying to contact aliens, there’s an in-built narrative problem, which is that they don’t contact aliens,” he said. But he found Shepherd’s lifelong interest in contacting someone, or something, in outer space to be “deeply romantic”, and more universal than a guy rigging thousands of dollars of radio and electrical equipment in his grandparents’ living room might seem. “We’re all sort of sending out a message hoping that someone else will pick it up and understand us and understand who we are,” Killip said. “We’re all trying to make contact.”

The compact but poignant documentary John Was Trying To Contact Aliens is streaming now on Netflix. And, John is right — Musik Von Harmonia is an album worth hearing.

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.

Starting Points

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• As a former niche record store owner, I can’t wait to see Other Music, the documentary on New York City’s much-loved and much-missed outsider music shop. Writer and investor Om Malik beat me to it, giving the film an enthusiastic thumbs up. He found a profound message about how the discovery of music we love attaches to a moment in time. There are people, memories, and places forever associated with songs and albums. Unfortunately, algorithmic discovery doesn’t connect itself to our memories, and the music becomes dissociated from personal meaning. Malik writes:

While the film is about a record store, it is really about serendipity and the emotion of discovery. We need a story to make something a memory. I watched the documentary and instantly remembered every single salesperson, their quirks, and even their snobbery. […] This is the missing piece of Spotify as we know of it today. The faceless algorithm does nothing to cement the moment of musical revelation in our memories. I am currently tripping on Oceanvs Orientalis, but I have no idea how I ended up finding them and liking their music. By comparison, a friend’s beau introduced me to El Jazzy Chavo. Every time I play his music, I think of the two of them and our bumpy car ride together.

Even if algorithms are efficient at providing basic “if you like this, then you might like this” music recommendations, they deprive us of the joy of discovery.

This sentiment is on point now more than ever. We’re living sequestered thanks to COVID-19, and opportunities to hear songs for the first time in clubs, restaurants, or in cars with friends are rare. That said, I wonder how much the music we’re finding now will live on in our emotions as the ‘songs of lockdown.’ [LINK]

• Shawn Reynaldo’s latest First Floor newsletter is remarkable. He asks himself, “What does ‘doing better’ actually look like?” Shawn refers to his desire to confront systemic racism, especially as part of the electronic dance music industry. His piece starts with a lay of the land and what others are doing — or are trying to do. Then Shawn leads into a self-examination:

Looking back at my own career, I’d like to say that I had avoided these traps, but the truth is that I’m just as guilty as most other music professionals I know. I admit that before last week, I hadn’t really considered some of these issues, as I was complacent in the fact that because I had written about and booked countless black artists over the years, I was doing my part to help. After all, even though my colleagues and I had been mostly all white, we were also “progressive” people with good intentions and the right politics, which placed us on the right side of this struggle. It almost feels ridiculous to be writing these things now, but after doing a lot of reading, reflecting and listening in recent days, it’s now obvious to me that I wasn’t doing enough.

Shawn goes on to list how he plans to start ‘doing better.’ These suggestions are thought-out and I’m making note, adopting them as well. And, as Shawn knows, these serve as a starting point. The changes we need to make go deep — both outside and within — and they will evolve as addressing lingering issues will reveal new challenges. Be sure to read Shawn’s full article — it’s powerful, and I can’t stop thinking about it. [LINK]

• Related to ‘doing better,’ One Little Indian Records has been using that name since 1985, releasing seminal records from Bjork, The Shamen, Chumbawamba, and others. As of yesterday, the label has renamed itself One Little Independent Records.

• I’m learning about Czech performance artist Milan Knizak, a ‘member of Fluxus behind the Iron Curtain.’ Like Christian Marclay, who followed him, Knizak broke, burned, soiled, and tormented records. Then he put them back together with glue, tape, and who knows what else. Much to the chagrin and detriment of his turntable and needle, he played these reassembled records. If you’re curious about what that sounded like, then hold on to your hat … here you go:

• Today’s Lake Holden photo at dawn is a pretty one = [LINK]

Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise, a Son’s Tribute

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The documentary Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise was more touching than I expected. The film is a collaboration of director Reto Caduff and Stephan Plank, Conny’s son. Stephan drives the documentary as conversations with musicians who worked with Conny Plank help him understand and rediscover his father.

Conny Plank died of cancer at 47 when Stephan was just 13. A lot of Stephan’s memories of his father revolve around these odd musicians who stayed and worked at the farmhouse studio. Often the musicians would join the family for dinner (indulgently prepared by Stephan’s mother Christa), and they would become Stephan’s temporary playmates in between sessions. So, in this documentary, Stephan is meeting people who not only have perspectives on his father but are also part of shadowy childhood memories. The musicians are also taken aback — the last time they saw Stephan he was a child and an oblivious studio mascot.

The highlight of the documentary is Stephan’s meeting with the classic rap duo Whodini. Did you remember that Conny Plank produced part of Whodini’s first album? I forgot, too, until this film pleasantly reminded me. Whodini was an upstart act in their late teens, suddenly flown to a farmhouse in rural Germany in a bold choice by their label. The duo grew to love the eccentric but brilliant Conny Plank, and this love and respect pour out of their interview segment. Stephan is visibly emotional as he hears another warm story of the universal impact and guiding influence of his father. Even I choked up a little.

There’s so much more in this film, including interviews with Michael Rother (Neu! and — early on — Kraftwerk guitarist), Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart (who may have been the last to work with Plank), and Holger Czukay (Can). Czukay comes off as kind of a jerk in his honesty about how Conny cared more about his studio than his relationship with his young son. It seems that Stephan has come to terms with this.

Noticeably absent is Brian Eno who stepped into Plank’s studio on more than one occasion. A section on the recording of Devo’s first album allows Eno most of his screen time, and that’s given to Gerald Casale talking about how he didn’t like Eno’s attempt to add his ‘pretty’ vocals and synth lines throughout the record.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise is inspiring and a stirring tribute to a person who lived the creative life. But most of all it’s the story of a son finding his talented but distant father. With Father’s Day approaching, I can’t think of a better movie to watch, especially for those of us missing our dads.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise currently streaming on Amazon Prime and available as a ‘rental’ on other services. And here’s a fine interview with Stephan Plank about the documentary. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the no-show Stephan refers in that piece is Eno, not Bono.

An Amazing BBC ‘Bootleg Report’ from 1971

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I previously wrote about bootleg culture in the age of streaming and reminisced on the simple days of CD bootlegs sold in my own record shop. Now my pal Kenn Richards — via his essential Research {Curation} Reduction newsletter — alerted me to this 14-minute BBC documentary from 1971 examining the bootleg scene in London at the time. Holy cats, this is wonderful.

The video features incredible quotes and contributions from Led Zeppelin manager Peter ‘no one heavier than me’ Grant, ‘The’ Pink Floyd, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon who prefers to be in a bag. Also, it’s so quaint how the guy who manufactures bootlegs and the other guy who sells them (at a Virgin Records, no less) are so open and casual and like ¯_(ツ)_/¯ about it.

Here’s some bonus content from the same year: Neil Young discovering bootlegs of his own work in a Los Angeles record store. Watch the guy behind the counter — his uncomfortable body language as Young starts flipping through the bins is priceless.