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the scene celebrates itself

Hitting the Links: Chris Bell, Sci-Fi Buildings, Viva La Spicy Food

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In short, and as part of our unpredictably recurring feature, here are five online articles I’ve enjoyed recently:



The Genius of Chris Bell, One of Rock’s Greatest Tragedies

Gradually fading out towards the end of “I Am The Cosmos,” Bell eerily repeats: “I’d really like to see you again.” He died just a few months after the single’s limited release on indie label Car Records in 1978, driving into a pole on the way home from a late night studio session.



The Sublime Sci-Fi Buildings That Communism Built

These are not your parents’ dour architecture monographs, complete with such entries as “On the problems of developing the center of Kishinev” or “Approaches to using the vernacular in Tashkent and Navoi” (real items from a 70s-era release) but are lavish, glossy, and handsome. One of these volumes was released in 2007, the rest date from within the last two years. What does this all mean?



The Next New World

It’s a fearful sight in a way, the Port of Long Beach, this endless, crushing vista of metal and dust, with not so much as a blade of grass to relieve the impression of an infinite, silent or clanking perpetual machine, of a global engine, of “global industry”; compare this to say, a view of Central Park, and you’ll feel you’ve landed in a nightmare scene out of Mordor (or Isengard, I guess).



Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food

The Soviet agent’s tender taste buds invited Mao’s mockery. “The food of the true revolutionary is the red pepper,” declared Mao. “And he who cannot endure red peppers is also unable to fight.’”



Where Did Son Of Bazerk Go Wrong?

This astonishing record sank more or less without trace. There are reasons for this – and some of them, with the benefit of hindsight, are teeth-looseningly obvious. Yet Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk is a record that still, 25 years on, sounds like it’s crash-landed on your stereo from some indeterminate and unknowable point a long way in the future.

Trevor Horn: Digital Sampling with a Sense of Humor

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Thanks so much to Jaco & Co. for turning me on to this fantastic three hour (!) conversation with production hero Trevor Horn:

Hearing Horn’s ’80s production work when it was new and still otherworldly had the hugest influence on me, as his sound transformed my teenage daydream goal of rock star to music producer. When I heard Frankie’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome (with its insane technical details in the CD liner notes), Propaganda’s A Secret Wish, and – especially – (Who’s Afraid Of) The Art Of Noise? I had to know exactly how these recordings were made. This led me down a rabbit hole that I’m still enjoyably descending.

Fondest memory of the time: via Art Of Noise, learning about this thing called a ‘digital sampler’ and then, mind blown, writing down a long list of all the household objects I would sample once I eventually acquired one. That record rewired my brain and the way I listened to everything around me. And, before you ask, I, unfortunately, have no idea what happened to that list.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation (hosted by Trevor Jackson who gets some delightful anecdotes out of his subject) is when Horn talks about his Fairlight CMI sampler, bought using “Video Killed The Radio Star” royalty. (An aside: this made me think how different music production history would be if that record hadn’t been a hit!) Horn reckons that he was the only prominent Fairlight owner who treated the device with a sense of humor, the other early UK Fairlight-ers being Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. This was cool to hear as the fun and levity that Trevor Horn (and Fairlight engineer / Art Of Noise member J. J. Jeczalik) brought to sampling was one of my attractions to this work, and shaped how I approach my time in the studio. I think you can hear this in my own music.

Trevor Jackson’s musical selections in this show lean toward rare remixes from the period and it’s fascinating how prescient they were, and how Horn somewhat humbly downplays their brilliance. I was reminded of this stunning (and, yes, humorous) 1986 remix of Frankie’s “Rage Hard” which I hadn’t heard since it was relatively new, and I’d totally forgotten about it:

Watch on YouTube

Previously.

Eno Achieves the Endless

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Brian Eno:

“Recordings – whether vinyl, cassette or CD – are limited in length, and replay identically each time you listen to them. So in the past I was limited to making the systems which make the music, but then recording 30 minutes or an hour and releasing that. ‘Reflection’ in its album form – on vinyl or CD – is like this. But the app by which ‘Reflection’ is produced is not restricted: it creates an endless and endlessly changing version of the piece of music”.



Complete Music Update:

Brian Eno has revealed that his new album, ‘Reflection’, will see him achieve a long held goal to create an ambient record that does not end.



As well as releases in time-limited standard formats, the album will be available through apps for iOS and Apple TV on which the music on the record will play endlessly until the sun explodes and destroys all evidence of the human race having ever existed. Either that or until you get bored and turn it off. Whichever comes first.



Reflection is released on January 1. In the meantime, this video from Pitchfork spotlights a previously time-constrained Eno:

Watch on YouTube

Music Matters In Our New World

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The Undefeated:

{Nina} Simone revealed the inspiration for her “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life” from 1968’s ‘Nuff Said! (RCA/Victor) and gracefully transitioned into talking about another song from the same project, “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”. Composed by bassist Gene Taylor 24 hours after the murder of {Martin Luther King Jr.,} in Memphis, Tennessee, the ode became a haunting soundtrack as uprisings ignited across the country. Simone posed an open-ended question to a country eviscerated over civil and human rights and one barreling toward an election that would alter the course of America. “Folks, you’d better stop and think,” she crooned, “Everybody knows we’re on the brink / What will happen / Now that the King is dead.”



“The song is extremely powerful. There’s no conclusion,” she said of the song in PBS’ Blank On Blank. In a time when every slab of concrete was seemingly red with black blood and wet with black tears, she displayed strength, and found vibrancy. “It’s a good time for black people to be alive,” she said. “It’s a lot of hell and a lot of violence. But I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life.”



And here we are, nearly a half-century later.

A Comprehensive Reissue Of Big Star’s Third Album

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Complete Third, a three volume (CD) reissue of Big Star’s convoluted but brilliant third album is out now on Omnivore Recordings. The set features loads of demos and outtakes and is an illuminating look at an album I thought I knew inside-out. A fine article from A.V. Club explores the album’s inception:

Due to the heavy amounts of alcohol and pills that were being consumed by all concerned in the fall of ’74, the accounts of the Ardent sessions differ. In the broadest sense, this appears to be what happened: After Big Star finished another disappointing tour, {Alex} Chilton returned to Memphis and put together acoustic demos of some offbeat new songs, then recruited respected local musician/producer Jim Dickinson to help bring them to fruition at Ardent. {Jody} Stephens came along for the ride, as the only other remaining original member of the band, and contributed one song (the gorgeous “For You”) plus some string arrangements; because Chilton didn’t share what he was doing with his drummer, the percussion tracks were sometimes improvised. The sessions were long and contentious, with engineer John Fry often begrudgingly spending his days cleaning up whatever madness a stoned Chilton churned out in the middle of the night.



The project just sort of trailed off when no one could stand each other’s company any more, after which Dickinson and his Ardent cohorts shopped around their finished versions of the songs without Chilton’s input. Whenever he deigned to talk about the record at all, Chilton would often say that no released version of Third represents what he had in mind. Sometimes he’d even say that the sessions was never meant to be for a Big Star album. The original tapes were labeled as “Alex Chilton,” “Alex & Jody,” or “Sister Lovers”—the latter of which may have actually been a proposed new band name, referring to the fact that Stephens was dating Lesa Alderidge’s sibling, Holliday.



I was lucky to meet and have a short chat with Alex Chilton on a few occasions. The first time I was introduced by a mutual friend who warned me beforehand to not mention the Third album, and especially not the song “Holocaust”. “Alex is a bit touchy about that period,” my friend said, and alluded to having made this dire mistake previously. Regardless, despite his moody reputation, Chilton was always warm to me. He remains one of my favorite songwriters.

 

A Quick David Mancuso Memory

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It was the late nineties (I think, my memory is a little fuzzy) and I was wandering Manhattan with a couple friends hitting all the necessary record stores. One friend mentioned this new shop opened by a Japanese millionaire that specialized in hard-to-find jazzy disco type fare and Asian vinyl imports. Completely up for it, we made our way across town and into the shop which was compact, clean, and immaculate and we might have guessed a Japanese millionaire was involved if we didn’t already know. The only people in the store were us, the Japanese man behind the register, and a familiar figure in the corner set-up to play tunes for the shopkeeper and anyone who happened to enter. This guy apparently had the job to sit and play records all day, drawing from a combination of his collection and the store’s stock … we did see him pull something off the racks and place it on the turntable at one point. One of my friends leaned over and broke the mystery by whispering in my ear with awe: “That’s David Mancuso.” And we spent more time than planned in that small shop having a semi-private listen to Mancuso’s selections. Since then I’ve often wondered about the unique mix of notoriety and obscurity that would grant such an influential selector the day job of Manhattan record store atmosphere-maker.

The New York Times

David Mancuso, a self-described “musical host” who revolutionized night life in New York with weekly dance parties he gave at his downtown loft, beginning in 1970, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.

Mr. Mancuso brought to his Saturday night gatherings the values of the 1960s counterculture, an audiophile’s fascination with sound technology and a voracious appetite for all styles of music. The parties at the Loft, as Mr. Mancuso’s apartment came to be known, became a near-religious rite for the city’s underground.

A Mancuso party was a ’60s dream of peace, love and diversity: multiracial, gay and straight, young and old, well-to-do and down-at-heel, singles and couples, all mingling ecstatically in an egalitarian, commerce-free space.

Mr. Mancuso did not call himself a D.J. He shrank from the limelight. His goal was to disappear into the music and allow its power to transform the audience.

The True Story of the Fake Zombies

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Buzzfeed:

Before the decline of the major label system and the rise of the internet and social media, enterprising and less than scrupulous businessmen ran the industry with relative impunity, with artists serving primarily as commodities to be exploited. Famously, Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker pocketed anywhere from 25 to 50% of the star’s gross income for the duration of his career. Allen Klein, who managed the Rolling Stones after the release of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in 1965, promptly signed the band’s publishing rights to his own company ABKCO, resulting in a string of lawsuits spanning decades. If this treatment was the norm for the era’s biggest stars, it’s not hard to imagine how lesser lights would fare.

The Zombies, unaware of their stateside success — this was possible in 1969 — had already moved on to new musical projects or day jobs. This vacuum meant anyone could tour the United States pretending to be the Zombies, even a four-piece blues band from Dallas.

There were in fact two different bands touring the United States in 1969 calling themselves the Zombies. Both impostor groups were managed by the same company, Delta Promotions, the owners of which insisted they’d legally acquired the songs of the Zombies and other bands. It was an operation that would be impossible to attempt today, perpetrated in an era when fans didn’t have unlimited access to artists’ whereabouts, or, in some cases, even know what they looked like.

The plan was simple: Find competent musicians, convince them Delta was on the level, get them to a reasonable point of Zombies-like ability, and send them on the road. Once the prep was completed, they’d send the bands on tour while Delta took a healthy slice of the profits.

As for the fans who were getting swindled, {Delta Promotions employee Tom} Hocott says, “When they were told, ‘Here’s the Zombies,’ they bought it. Even the strange parts, like the fact that they were touring without a keyboardist.” Fans left disappointed and the bands left town as quickly as possible. The less remembered, the better.

The full article is totally worth a read. And, of course, shenanigans like this aren’t unique to the ’60s / ’70s … remember fake Frankie Goes To Hollywood?

When Classic Rockers Embraced The New Wave

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Writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine has tackled a fascinating (to me) subject for Medium’s Cuepoint: the odd collision of classic rockers and the emerging ‘new wave’ in the late ’70s.

Cuepoint:

Three or four years after the revolution, all the upheavals of the back half of the 70s were no longer contained in the underground. Disco and punk, synthesizers and drum machines, hip-hop and new wave — these strange new sounds started to seep into the mainstream and not just through new acts. Baby boomers facing their forties decided to try to dig the new breed, albeit on their own terms.

Erlewine goes on to document amusing efforts of varying success by Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop (working with XTC / future Shriekback keyboardist Barry Andrews), Robert Palmer (collaborating with Gary Numan and Chris Frantz), and even Shaun Cassidy (who enlisted Todd Rundgren to help with his attempted transformation). But he saves most of his wonderment for Paul McCartney’s unlikely embrace of these sounds:

Of all these odd records reckoning with new wave, none were as surprising as Paul McCartney’s McCartney II. Decades later, its cloistered, claustrophobic single “Temporary Secretary” can still startle and so can its accompanying, misshapen album.

On “Temporary Secretary,” McCartney sets his whimsy — which arises in the form of a rhyming, murmured sing-song appropriated from Ian Dury — to a frenzied synthesized loop that undercuts whatever cutesiness he utters. Sounding like a computer in collapse, that loop leaves the lasting impression that McCartney really was attempting to be fashion forward.

Watch on YouTube

The results of these pre-synth era artists coping with onrushing trends would make for a fun compilation album … has anyone done this? Anyway, this is a fine article and worth some time and thought.

Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life

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A.V. Club:

2016 marks the 15th year since [Michael] Azerrad’s seminal anthological survey of the ’80s underground punk and rock scenes was published. Despite its subject matter detailing the histories of 13 different bands, Our Band Could Be Your Life isn’t really a book about music at all. It’s a collection of stories about people creating amazing art out of sheer compulsion and love of the process. It’s a story of doing it yourself and helping others along the way. It’s a story about communities built, whole cloth, from the ground up to express like-minded ideas and lifestyle choices. Throughout the years, the spirit of that particular period has endured as a guiding light to thousands of bands for whom there is no place in the mainstream. And on the flip side, the enthusiasm of Azerrad the historian has inspired countless writers to dig deep and tell the tales of less-heralded musicians so that their art would receive its due.

Michael Azerrad: "The epigram for Our Band Could Be Your Life comes from William Blake: ‘I must create my own system, lest I be enslaved by another man’s.’ All of the bands in the book were creating their own system.

“The spirit of DIY wasn’t just critical to the success of that community. It was an entire way of life. You didn’t have to be a huge rock star; you just had to do well enough to continue doing what you wanted to do. It wasn’t about hitting the jackpot, it was about sustainability. That was a revolutionary, or at least heretical, idea—especially in a culture that valued getting rich even more than it already had. This idea could apply not just to music but to just about anything—that’s why the book is called Our Band Could Be Your Life.”

I’m not alone in naming Our Band Could Be Your Life one of my favorite music history books. I know that’s in part because I was immersed at the time (as a fan) in the scene it documents. I’m not sure how much enjoyment one could get out of it if unfamiliar with the bands or distanced from the period, but I’d like to think it remains entertaining with many great lessons for those struggling with the art vs. making a living conundrum. Of course there were independent, DIY scenes before the ’80s, but it’s special how the community and interconnectedness of the labels and bands at this time created a modest and lasting ethos. You can see fingerprints all over the independent creative industries today, and not just in music.

Here’s Our Band Could Be Your Life on Amazon
or you could pick it up Powell’s, which is where it beckoned to me from a shelf over a decade ago.