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slavghoul · 3 years ago

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Something from the archives.. Tobias talking about what he loves talking about the most - the music he listens to. I lost the original source but I think it was an issue of Classic Rock from around 2018?

Your first record LOVEGUN by Kiss. Around the same time I also got SHOUT AT THE DEVIL by Mötley Crüe and STAY HUNGRY by Twisted Sister. As a kid I bought a lot of albums, a lot of sixties and Kiss records. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors. Stuff like that.

The last record you bought I buy a lot of old albums. And also a lot of records that I already have. And this tour was so busy that I actually bought very few because I didn't have time at all and normally I buy something almost every day. It can be anything - from a new album to another copy of LED ZEPPELIN II. One of the last records I bought was an original pressing of the debut of a band called Affinity.

A record that changed your life A lot of them! I've been listening to rock records since I can remember. A lot of them had a big effect on me. SEVEN CHURCHES by Possessed had a big impact on how I feel about death metal. Because the temperament of that album is so youthful - and as a teenager I could relate to that.

A record you have listened to the most It circulates with me, I rotate through them. There are about 50 albums that come into mind. I'm bad at answering questions like that, because I don't listen to just one thing. One moment I think I need to listen to FROST by Enslaved, which brings me to IN THE NIGHTSIDE ECLIPSE by Emperor. So I spend a whole afternoon listening to Norwegian Black Metal. And then suddenly I think: Oh, Foreigner! Which brings me to Jefferson Starship and Toto. Next up is Discharge and GBH. But what I always like to listen to are, for example, STRANGE DAYS by The Doors, A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS by Pink Floyd or STRANGER THAN FICTION by Bad Religion.

Favourite album cover art Again: many. I don't think I have one in particular, but there are a few designs that hit the nail on the head. Even though I like big graphic artwork like Iron Maiden's or Pink Floyd's, I think some of the coolest ones are very simple; you could easily make a poster or t-shirt of them. Venom's BLACK METAL, for example. Simply because it's so iconic. Or MORBID TALES by Celtic Frost, which people can easily paint on their jackets.

A record you would recommend to your best friend There are definitely a few records that I wish my wife would like as much as I do. I listen to a lot of music that other people might not find very interesting: prog. Twenty minutes of instrumental drone. It's almost a joke in our house: she always comes home just as someone is screaming or the drum solo is playing. IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING has these beautiful, melancholy ballads, but there are also a few sections bordering on noise. SHEIK YERBOUTI by Frank Zappa is the same. There are a lot of real songs on it, but there's a side on the record that's basically just noise. When my wife comes home, it's always at that exact moment and she’s like "Why do you only ever listen to noise?"

A record you would offer to your worst enemy An album I like but can't listen to that often - and I know if people don't see its humorous side it's hard to listen to - is PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD by The Shaggs. I can imagine that many people find it excruciating. Sadistik Execution or Impaled Nazarene is pretty unpleasant too if you're not a fan of extreme music.

An album you listen to in the car I have a bunch of CDs in my car and I usually go with samplers or best-of compilations. I mostly get them at the gas station when I stop to fill up the car. I have best-of compilations from Ozzy Osbourne, Fleetwood Mac, Judas Priest, Johnny Cash, Dio and some Swedish stuff you might not know. I like to listen to feel-good music that I can dream to and lose myself in when I drive.

A record on which you would have liked to play yourself I don't know. That would suggest to me that I would want to live someone else's life or change something. There was a big rock wave in Sweden and Norway in the early noughties - and sometimes it upsets me when a guitar solo stays too bluesy. I want the solos to be bigger, more meaty, to have a bigger ego. Show that you have balls!

Favourite albums from your parents' record collection I inherited a lot of records from my mom. She reacquainted herself with numerous albums when I was a child too, because she lost a lot of records in a divorce in the early seventies. So in the mid-eighties - because I was so interested in it - we bought many of them again. Before that we only had a handful of Beatles albums. We'd go to record stores and she would see a record she remembered and go "Oh, this one is good!". She liked LET IT BLEED by the Rolling Stones and played it for me a lot.

#tobias forge #interview

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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How The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street Earned Its Rep

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Apple TV+’s docuseries 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything makes it seem like The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street album was more fun to record than listen to, and that sets a high standard. The record distills the band’s sounds, from acoustic world music political ballads, through deep heartfelt blues, to honky tonk so funky you have to shake your ass. The group plays country, Southern blues, R&B, and the almost-punk-before-punk “Rip This Joint.” “Tumbling Dice,” is a radio staple. Keith Richards even took the lead vocals on a track to keep you happy. There was so much material, it came out as a double album. What could be more fun than that?

Richards’ Nellcôte mansion, on the Côte d’Azur in the South of France, was the hardest rocking musical getaway paradise in 1971. It was a Rock and Roll Main Street, and even the most mainstream players mainlined the exile vibe. Guitar god Eric Clapton and underground country legend Gram Parsons mixed drinks and drugs with movie stars like James Caan and Faye Dunaway, while playwright Terry Southern stopped taking note, according to Robert Greenfield’s book Exile on Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones.

William S. Burroughs inspired Mick Jagger to cut and paste a word collage together to form the lyrics to “Casino Boogie.” Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr dropped by the almost-week-long afterparty for Jagger’s wedding to Nicaraguan-born model Bianca Pérez Morena de Macias in Saint-Tropez. John Lennon, who was on methadone treatment, reputedly threw up at the foot of the grand staircase and passed out in it.

“The sunshine bores the daylights out of me,” Jagger sings on “Rocks Off,” the album’s opening song. The Rolling Stones strolled through their recent past darkly. The murder of Meredith Hunter at the Altamont speedway concert in late 1969 signaled, to many, the death of decade’s peace-and-love counterculture. But the band’s troubles went all the way back to the Redlands drug bust of 1967, and the death of Brian Jones. Adversity worked well, creatively, for the Stones, and they continued to pump out classics like “Gimme Shelter” in 1969, and controversy like “Brown Sugar” in 1971. Sticky Fingers, their ninth album, hung nicely at the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

The songs, and Allen Klein’s aggressive managerial money-making maneuvers, put the band in the 93% tax bracket for Britain’s highest earners. The Stones owed more than they could pay. To avoid penalties, they moved to France. Mick went to Paris. Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts bought or rented places along the French Riviera. Richards and his girlfriend, German-Italian actress and model Anita Pallenberg, moved into Nellcôte, a villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice. During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the seaside mansion was the headquarters of the local Gestapo. Swastikas were carved into floor vents, staircases and ventilator grates.

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As pointed out in 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, the Stones had recently signed with Atlantic Records, and the label wanted an album. The band scoured the Riviera for a suitable recording studio, but wound up parking their mobile studio next to Keith’s house. Richards transformed the basement into a recording studio, and the band stole electricity from the railway tracks across the street to power amplifiers and the mobile recording truck.

The layout wasn’t the best. Bill Wyman, who is only credited for eight of the album’s songs on bass, plugged into an amp which was mic’d up in the hallway. Producer Jimmy Miller ended each take by running from the truck into the basement to check sound. The humidity caused the guitars to go out of tune. This gave the album its working title: “Tropical Disease.” The song “Ventilator Blues” was inspired by the conditions.

The band also had to deal with Keith’s erratic schedule. “I never plan anything,” Richards says in the documentary Stones in Exile. “Mick needs to know what he’s going to do tomorrow. Whereas I’m just happy to wake up and see who’s hanging around. Mick’s rock; I’m roll.” Richards, Taylor, Watts, pianist Nicky Hopkins, saxophonist Bobby Keys, drummer Jimmy Miller, and horn player Jim Price would jam all night while engineer Andy Johns ran the reels. Sessions would start when the guitarist rolled out of bed, or before he slipped off to put his son Marlon to sleep. After that Keith might pull a disappearing act, playing guitar in the un-mic’d second floor bathroom, or passing out. Richards was open about pot and alcohol, sharing liberally, but quiet about his heroin use.

Richards got clean in the spring of 1971, but hurt his back in a go-kart accident, according to Greenfield’s book. His vehicle flipped while racing his friend Tommy Weber at a track in Cannes. Richards took morphine for the pain, and within a few months, was using again. For sessions, he’d down a Mandrax, which is like a Quaalude, with whiskey. Charlie Watts was drinking brandy until he was past sloppy, and Jagger was taking speed to keep up with the hours Keith set. It was Richards’ place, and Mick was almost a hostage. When he left, it seemed nothing got done. Richards, left alone, could be downright dangerous. He almost burned himself, Anita and the entire house down when he fell asleep with a lit cigarette.

Richards was buying pure, uncut heroin from Castilian dealers. He was getting it by the kilo, and it became part of the social regimen of the villa. He shared so regularly with Gram Parsons that Mick got jealous, professionally. Parsons wanted Richards to produce his next album and join him on tour, which would have left the Stones without their guitarist for two years. Parsons was quietly asked to leave. Drugs split the Stones into two camps: Jagger, Wyman and Watts stuck to pills, booze and softer drugs. Richards, Taylor, producer Jimmy Miller, sax player Bobby Keys and engineer Andy Johns shot dope.

It cost them their gear. Wyman’s bass, Keys’ saxophone and nine of Richards’ guitars were stolen by dealers from Marseille who were owed money, while the entourage was watching television during the day. The Stones’ lawyers bribed local police to keep the party going, but even the most corrupt French cops, like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, have their limits. Besides, the Stones were welcomed in France because they were rich rock stars who were going to spend lots of money. If all their cash went to illegal and nontaxable drugs, the French government didn’t have much use for them.

The tipping point seems to have come with Anita Pallenberg. She maintained a steadily rocky relationship with the Stones. Richards stole, or saved, her from a paranoid and abusive Brian Jones, and there were rumors Jagger had an affair with her while filming Nic Roeg’s Performance in 1968. According to Greenfield’s book, Mick also slept with her while Richards was on the nod during the Exile sessions. Police came knocking to ask about a claim that Pallenberg had given heroin to the 14-year-old daughter of the villa’s chef.

The French police left without validating the charge, but said they’d be back to have a better look around the mansion. Richards and Pallenberg took off on his speedboat, fittingly named Mandrax II. The rest of the band slipped out soon after with the tapes. Pallenberg and Richards were charged with possession of heroin with intent to traffic in 1973. They were then exiled from France for the next two years.

The party continued when the Rolling Stones reconvened in Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles. The band tossed TVs off the balconies of hotel rooms with Marc Bolan and Neil Young. The tapes for the album stretched from 1969 to 1972. The band edited hours of jams into song structure. Jagger scatted melodic placeholders for unfinished lyrics, and recruited session players like Billy Preston and Doctor John to fill in any sonic emptiness. The words to “Tumbling Dice,” for instance, were written last minute. The song has an unusual structure, as the verses become shorter, the choruses get longer. It may have Watts’ best drum performance.

Exile on Main Street contains some of Richards’ best guitar work. The album really belongs to Keith. “Happy” is almost entirely his. He’s on vocals, guitar and bass, with Miller on drums, Keys on maracas, overdubs from Taylor, and backing vocals from Jagger. “Sweet Black Angel” is a political love letter to civil rights activist Angela Davis. “Shake Your Hips” put the hair on ZZ Top’s lips. The album cover set the visual tone for punk. Some people claim it’s the Rolling Stones’ best work. It is a classic which catches them at their hedonistic peak. Its dirty, loosely played backing created an identifiable sound. The Stones’ first double LP, it is best heard in its entirety, and earned its street cred.

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1971: The Year Music Changed Everything is available to stream on Apple TV+ now.

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broken-clover · 5 years ago

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Because I am an idiot who has no self control allow me to introduce you to yet another GG AU.

I got hooked on Actor!AU’s so here, an au where everything is pretty okay

Sol- Believe it or not, those muscles are 100% real, but that’s pretty much the only character-accurate part about him. He’s a massive softie off-screen and has a habit of stopping halfway through fight scenes because he’s afraid he accidentally hit someone for real and injured them. He especially adores younger fans and loves doing autographs or photos with them.

Ky- He’s been in acting for a bit of time doing small characters, but this is his first big role and he’s constantly afraid of fucking it up. Thankfully his constant stressing out over it is very in-character. He went all-in for it, taking swordsmanship lessons in order to make the fights more realistic.

Sin- A college student who basically got the role on a joke after ditching class to audition. He likes the idea of being a ‘cool big brother’ to his younger crewmates and is prone to swiping them and piling everyone in his shitty beat-up car for ice cream runs between scenes. He’s still not completely used to the lack of depth perception the eyepatch gives him, so he has a habit of bumping into the sets.

Elphelt- Child actor who’s finally moved onto bigger productions. A very frequent victim of the paparazzi, who seem to believe the young starlet has some sort of secret racy pastime or double life. Somehow, she’s still got a squeaky-clean record and seems genuinely very sweet. Uses social media to interact with her fans, offering sneak-peeks and backstage glimpses and occasionally posts impersonal interviews with some of her castmates.

Faust- Yes, he is actually that tall, and the oddity of his appearance is the main reason why he ended up in acting. But a lot of his more dynamic scenes either use CGI or a stunt double on stilts because his extreme height means he has circulation problems and issues with his joints. He has a bit of a grumpy streak when his joint pain flares up but otherwise he’s a pretty affable guy and uses his fame to act as a charity spokesman, mostly for children with disabilities

Venom- Incredibly outspoken and a real chatterbox, he constantly has to be reminded to rein it in during scenes to try and seem more ‘cool.’ The hair is fake, no matter how hard they tried it was impossible to get the symbol to work with his real hair. Off set, he’s happily married and has adopted three kids with his husband. The gay subtext for his character is something he keeps ad-libbing and slipping in.

Millia- A world-class ballet dancer who got into acting, she does all her own stunts and refuses to use any doubles or CGI enhancements except for on Angra. She has a pretty severe fur allergy, so even though Millia loves cats they can’t have them on set for long or else she’ll start breaking out.

Zato- A veteran actor mostly known for his heroic characters or bad-boy antiheroes, they weren’t sure if he would work as a villain but he’s getting an absolute kick out of it. He’s actually blind in real life (though he doesn’t wear the blindfold around), and has named his most recent seeing-eye dog Eddie because he’s a massive dork.

Zappa- got hired mainly on the fact that he’s a ridiculously good contortionist and that helped with a lot of the ‘possession’ scenes, though the wardrobe department had a hell of a time finding something that worked with all the weird poses he had to make. He’s a bit of a prankster about it too, always scuttling around backwards on all fours on set to freak people out.

Bedman- The youngest actor on-set, and right now he’s still in middle school. He spends a lot of time around the other younger actors and admires them a lot. Kind of an anxious mess, but he’s just figuring things out with time. The bed mecha is mostly practical effects, but he’s always slightly afraid that it’s going to collapse or fall over when he’s on it.

Baiken- They primarily did stunt-double work for samurai movies/period pieces until taking on this role, and their popularity skyrocketed because of it. They really have no idea where it came from, but not like they’re really complaining. While they may come off as cold and prickly as their character, it’s mostly because they’re a non-native speaker and have trouble communicating with a lot of the cast.

#feel free to add on if you wish #I'd love to hear any ideas!#OP back on her bullshit #guilty gear #AU #Actor au

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of-faunsandyellowflowers · 5 years ago

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I was tagged by @louder-than-love for this. Thanks!

How did you get into metal?

My brother introduced me to a lot of bands when I was a kid. It started out as punk, such as old green day, blink 182....and then it turned into progressive metal and old metal such as metallica, tool, a perfect circle, etc. Since then I've really dived into punk, pop punk, a HELL OF A LOT OF GRUNGE, and tons of different types of metal amongst other stuff.

Least Fave Subgenres?

I really hate Cradle of Filth and Ghost. Just absolutely despise it. The vocals for cradle of filth make my skin crawl and ghost...just isnt metal to me but I dont wanna be an elitist ass about it. I dont really know many subgenre names to list tbh lol

Fave subgenres?

Folk, doom, death, progressive, classic, pagan are the ones I listed to mainly. sometimes industrial but the only one I truly like is NIN. I do like some black metal but its tricky when some of those bands are straight up nazis

Last band you saw live?

Tool early March!

Do you play instruments?

I used to play fiddle, flute and guitar but no longer....

Most prized metal possession?

My band shirts. I will wear those fuckers until they turn to dust

Fave non metal bands?

Off the top of my head and certainly not a complete list: nirvana, alice in chains, soundgarden, several norse and irish bands that I wont get rhe spelling right cuz they are in different languages and I'm just a shit American, vitas, led zeppelin, eagles, FRANK FUCKING ZAPPA!!!! Jimi Hendrix, janis Joplin, John prine, john Denver, allison krauss, the steeldrivers, tyler childers, the white buffalo, SHAWN JAMES (god I love that man), elliott smith, iron and wine, paramore, old old avril lavigne (when she was actually good), Jefferson airplane, silverchair, seether.....so many others I know I'm forgetting

Metal wishlist?

Probably just ticket stubs from going to see more concerts. I really wanna see Behemoth live so so much because I love them, and I really wanna see November Doom as well.

Fave thing about being a metalhead?

Most other metalheads I meet are actually the coolest and nicest people because they just GET me. Some are elitist assholes but the ones I've talked to or loved are just really into all sorts of music and I love talking to people about a variety of genres.

I'll be an ass and tag @lord-worms-shakespeare-class cuz hes the only other metalhead I talk to on this site 😂😂 love you friend 🥰

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250in2018-blog · 6 years ago

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Yoko Ono “Plastic Ono Band”

115. Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band

Vinyl LP, 1970, 2016 re-release by Secretly Canadian

If I had any actual morals I would stop ordering music off Amazon. Along with putting every other store in the country out of business, they treat their employees shamefully. Warehouse workers, especially, are made to hit ridiculous performance standards and are penalized steeply for falling off pace even a little bit. That’s why they aren’t allowed bathroom breaks.

It’s also why, here and there, you’ll order an album and a completely wrong record will show up, replete with packaging that says it’s actually one you ordered. The worker had an imperative to complete the order as fast as possible, and if a record is harder to find (in this case, Helloween’s Keeper of the 7 Keys), they just grab something from a nearby bin. That’s how I wound up in possession of a vinyl copy of Plastic Ono Band, the debut LP from an artist I had mindlessly been taught to dismiss.

So instead of sending it back, let’s give it a spin. Yoko is one of the most maligned solo artist of all time. She is unfairly blamed for John Lennon being an asshole. Thousands of writers have already covered this, and if you’re reading this particular blog you don’t need me to rehash it. But even though I always sensed she had been treated unfairly, and even as I love the younger artists she’s come to be associated with, even though her terror-vocals absolutely rock in this cover of “Baby Please Don’t Go,” I still never felt compelled to give her solo records a chance. Everyone said they were bad, so they must be bad.

And, indeed, Plastic Ono Band is a fucking trip, even in 2018. In 1970, it must have sounded like alien bullshit to most people. Yoko ululates with panicked ferocity over slow-moving blues guitars provided by John, drums by Ringo, and bass by Klauss Voorman. The desperate opener, “Why” is very pleasantly scary. Not for everyone, sure, but enjoyable for me. It’s followed by the slower, blusier “Why Not,” which is just kind of boring. The track’s got a slow build up and ends with a kinda-cool freakout but if you start by scaring the shit out of people you need to keep that up. The side’s closer, “Greenfield Morning I Pushed and Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City,” is a much more fully realized pastiche--less unsettling than “Revolution #9,” but with the same general sense of focused meandering. You’ll either like it or you won’t, but it’s much more carefully composed that most listeners gave it credit for when it was first released.

Side B opens with “AOS,” in which Yoko is accompanied by Ornette Coleman and his band. I don’t know if I should be surprised that this is the album’s weirdest track, or if that makes perfect sense. Yoko squeal-sings, yes, but she has an impressive range and can hit difficult notes at will. Her squeals harmonize with Ornette’s trumpet to create a fugue state droning that moves into sex moans and then finally a Zappa-esque breakdown very similar to the something off of Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Again, this ain’t for everybody. But I like it.

Look, I’m not going to convince you to like something like this. All I’m gonna say is, if you’re like me, and you enjoy at least some experimental music, you should probably give this a try. I didn’t for decades out of dumb prejudice, and now I’m glad I did.

As to the release itself, Secretly Canadian has done a great job. The mix is wonderful and clean, and the LP comes with the same feelies as the original release--a printed sleeve, glossy full color booklet, a poster, and a weird little piece of cardboard art.

youtube

#Yoko Ono #Plastic Ono Band

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years ago

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1031.

5k Survey LXXV

3826. Why do most people associate being spiritual or connected to the world as being a hippy? >> Okay, so the first 25 questions in this section were all specifically about LOTR The Two Towers, for some reason? I’m not interested so I just skipped them entirely and am smushing the remaining 25 questions in this part into the other 50. Whatever. Anyway, because that’s the stereotype they’ve internalised, idk. Looking down on non-materialistic worldviews is a common modern pastime in the Western world, just in general. (Not that being a hippie is inherently a negative or stupid thing to be, but that’s definitely the sort of context this stereotype is going for.)

3827. Why is passion and honest emotion equated with hallmark cards? >> I feel like my answer to this would just be similar to my answer to the previous question. These ideas don’t necessarily have the same root, but they’re definitely related. 3828. What words set off alarms in your brain (for me it's anarchy, pagan, etc)? >> *blinks* Certainly not those words. Usually it’s words like, idk, “American values” and “lizard people”... 3829. Are you dancin in the dark? >> No. 3830. Name 2 things you have never done in public: >> I’ve never done the Charleston or the Riverdance in public.

3831. If you had to choose out of what you just named, which one WOULD you do in public? >> I don’t even know how to do those dances, which is part of the reason why I’ve never done them in public. 3832. Challenge yourself. Do whatever it is in public. Why not? What are you so terrified of? >> ... 3832. Is hell REALLY other people? >> The actual context of that quote is so much more interesting than seeing people using it as some kind of antisocial mantra. 3833. Or would it be more hellish to live totally without other people? >> We’re all aware that humans are social creatures, correct? Just making sure. 3834. Leggos or linkin logs? >> I had Lincoln Logs as a kid but not LEGO. 3835. What books have you read more than once? >> I’ve read The Fountainhead three times. 3836. Do you get different things out of reading a book a second time a year or more after reading it the first time? Is it because you are a different person after time passes? >> Yeah, I do, and yes, that’s why -- but first I have to convince myself to read a book more than once. My to-read list is so long all the time and then I learn about yet another interesting-sounding book and jump on that and the cycle never ends... it feels like a waste of time to go back and read books I’ve already read. Even though I know that’s not a logical way to think at all. 3837. The person who goes to ____ is not the same person who comes back. Fill in the blank with anything you think fits. >> Whatever. 3838. Quick! Empty your brain here! >> ... 3839. What's the best movie soundtrack? >> I’m partial to Clint Mansell soundtracks, personally. 3840. Tissues with or without aloe? >> I rarely even use tissues, but when I do, I’m not terribly precious about what kind they are. I just use whatever Sparrow bought. 3841. Are you on any medication? >> No. 3842. Does any part of your own body disgust you? If yes, isn't that odd? What could have caused that feeling of disgust with your own body? >> Having a body disgusts me, overall. Yeah, I’m not fond of the relationship I have with my body either, but it’d be one hell of an uphill battle to reprogram my brain to not think I’m gross. I’m doing my best, all right. 3843. Want some popcorn? >> No. 3844. What if Atlas shrugged? >> I imagine he’d do it in far less time than it takes to read that book. 3845. Who has led the most interesting life? >> ... 3846. What movies are comming out next year that you are looking forward to? >> Ha, what movies are coming out next year... that’s the question, innit. 3847. If someone is half man and half dog is he his own best friend? >> --- 3848. Paper or plastic? >> I usually get plastic bags. 3849. Why did things make sense in childhood, but they don't now? >> What things? 3850. Is it crazy time? >> --- 3851. If there is a lotto with 50 numbers, and a player picks 6 numbers without repeating any, what are their chances of getting all 6 winning numbers? >> I don’t know, dude.

3852. If there were no laws and no rules name 3 things you would do that you don't/wouldn't/can't do now? >> --- 3853. It's a costume party. What will your costume be if the theme is: the 70's? 80's? under the sea? 3854. Have you ever wanted to release the lobsters from those tanks in restraunts and put them back in the sea? >> Nope. 3855. How funky is your chicken? How loose is your goose? >> --- 3856. What's your favorite animal out of these: emu, otter, duck billed platypus, moose, skunk? >> Otter. 3857. priest, rabbi, or other religios leader, a judge, or a sea captain to perform your wedding? >> We had a nondenominational minister for ours. I’m sure we would have rather have gone with someone who wasn’t any flavour of Christian, but going through the French Quarter Wedding Chapel kind of was a path of least resistance. It’s hard to plan a wedding from a completely different part of the country than the place it’s being held, and the Chapel did a lot of the legwork for us. 3858. Do you think that it's okay for people to write their own wedding vows? >> What on earth would possess me to think otherwise? 3859. Rank these as places to be married. 1 = best. Your House or Yard The Beach A Park Disneyland A Forest A Catering Hall Las Vegas A church or temple A Courthouse On a Boat On a Space Station 3860. The Earth is doomed. A giant asteroid is headed our way. It will decimate the planet in 3.2 days. You and your family own a space pod and you have room for 7 people from the list below. Everyone else dies. Who do you pick? Orlando Bloom, Justin Timberlake, Joan Jett, John Denver Baby Eve (the first human clone), Jennifer Lopez, Johnny Depp, George W Bush, David Bowie, Charleton Heston, Ralph Nader, Moby, Jeff Bridges, Kelly Osbourne, Frank Zappa, Bill Clinton, Britney Spears, Osama Bin Laden The Pope, Eminem, Madonna >> *longsuffering sigh* 3861. Rank the following dead people in order of who you would like to spend the day with. 1 = you'd like to hang out with them the most. Joan of Arc Groucho Marx John Lennon Joey Ramone Anton Levay Tupac Jack Kerouac Aaliyah John F Kennedy Lucielle Ball Jim Morrison 3862. If you could grant immortality to one person you know (can't be yourself) who would you give it to? >> I don’t want to grant immortality to anyone. 3863. If you could grant immortality to one person who you do not know personally but know of (writer, politician, etc) who would you give it to? >> --- 3864. Name a person you love: Name a person you admire: Name a friend: Name a relative: If you had to condemn one of them to death to save the lives of the others who would it be and why? >> Just... not even going to touch this one. 3865. Would you rather be one of Santa's elves or a dentist? >> What... 3866. When you first meet people what do you talk to them about? >> There’s no one specific thing that I talk to people about... it’s obviously dependent on many factors (at least one of them having nothing to do with me). 3867. You have been invited to a party with any sports team in the world. Which one? >> No. 3868. Finish the sentances. In a world where: He was: She was: Together, they were: Why do so many movie trailers start off by saying 'In a world..'? >> I had a feeling this was about movie trailers, lol. I’m guessing it’s just convenient or something. (Also, that doesn’t happen much anymore. There’s a new set of trailer tropes now.) 3869. Make up a superhero with really unhelpful powers: >> --- 3870. A couple of days ago this guy won 14 million dollars and tried to donate 1 million to the salvation army. The salvation army turned the money down saying they didn't want dirty gambling money. Did they do the right thing? >> They did what was right from their point of view, which is a dogmatic conservative-Christian POV. 3871. If you had a spare million for charity work who would you donate it to? >> --- 3872. What's the craziest most shocking moment of rock and roll history that you can think of? >> --- 3873. Why is it that if a man kills another man in battle it's called heroic, but if he kills a man in the heat of passion, it's called murder? >> Perspective. 3874. What kind of punishment do you feel the following crimes deserve: premeditated murder? date rape? drug sales? drug use? burglery? 3875. If you could kiss anyone in the world on midnight at new year's eve, who would be the lucky one? >> ... 3876. You have just taken two sexy people prisoner because they found your hide out and you think they are spies. What do youd do: kill them, hump them or have crumpets and tea? >> What the fuck. 3877. What is your new year's resolution? >> --- 3878. Should the U.S. focus more on the threat from N. Korea or Iraq? >> --- 3879. Would you ever have plastic surgery? >> I don’t know, maybe. Mostly I just can’t afford shit like that, so the answer’s “no” by virtue of that alone. 3880. How can George Bush be considered a Christian when he a war-monger and the ten comandments say do not kill? >> Oh, you know. 3881. What is the most interesting premise for a reality tv show that you can think of? >> --- 3882. Who is the Hollywood Star next to die of a drug overdose? >> --- 3883. Do you find yourself caring a lot about online people, even if you haven't met or spoken to them off of the computer? >> Not... like, as a rule... 3884. When you hear the song puff the magic dragon what do you think? >> Weed, I guess. I don’t have any other associations with that song. 3885. Let's give you a tarot reading. Go on, ask any question: first card: the reversed high preistess. you may be expecting things to come too easily. You should be careful not to give up if they dont go your way. You're feeling a desire to escape, to withdraw into yourself. Shrug off your current lack of focus and work diligently to acheive the goals you want. second card: the reversed hanged man. You shouldnt be close-minded with your situation. There are many alternatives and possible solutions to your problems. Try something new. The last card: Justice. what goes around comes around. Seek advice on the matters at hand from elders. Do healthy things, spiritually and physically. 3886. What does 'boo' mean and how did it become a slang word of affection? >> www.dictionary.com 3887. How often do you stretch? >> Whenever I feel like it. I don’t schedule it or anything. 3888. Have you ever wished that you didn't have to be yourself? >> Yep. 3889. Would you rather wear shoes full of earthworms or a hat full of spiders? >> --- 3890. What are some things that for most people go unsaid? >> Bold of me to assume I know what most people are not saying out loud. Pretty sure mind-reading ain’t a thing. 3891. I said, 'Play me the best song in the world.' You put on: >> --- 3892. What happened last year that you would like to forget? >> --- 3893. What are you not able to do alone? >> Operate a seesaw. 3894. Do you feel more connected to earth air fire or water and why? >> Air, because I have a lot of it in my birth chart, I guess. Also, I just like space. (Both in the sense of “having physical space around me” and “outer space where all the stars and shit are”, although the latter isn’t air per se.) 3895. Which two words belong together and why: life, seawater, chocolate, blood, hair piece >> Depends on what you’re trying to reference, I guess. I can go with “life and chocolate” (obvious movie reference) or “blood and chocolate” (less obvious YA book/movie reference). 3896. If con is the opposite of pro, what's the opposite of progress? >> Yeah, we all know this joke. 3897. Have you ever wanted to meet the inspectors with the numbers for names(i.e. inspected by 36)? >> What? 3898. Who is the most thought-provoking person you know, &why? >> Me. I stay thinkin about myself. 3899. If you could change 1 thing you did in the last 24 hours, what would it be & why? >> Meh, nothing. 3900. What is the most bizarre thing you've ever done? >> I’m not sure.

#surveys #survey #5000 question survey #not for reblogging *glare*#yeah sometimes i regret still taking this survey. sue me

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kokania0 · 4 years ago

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Electronic Music History and Today's Best Modern Proponents!

Electronic music history pre-dates the rock and roll years by decades. Most of us were not even on this areas when it began its often obscure, under-appreciated and misunderstood development. Today, this 'other worldly' herdsman of sound which began close to a century ago, may no longer appear strange and unique as new appointment have accepted much of it as mainstream, but it's had a bumpy rising and, in prognosis mob designation acceptance, a slow one.

Many musicians - the modern backer of electronic singing - developed a luster for analogue synthesizers in the late 1970's and early 1980's with signature songs like Gary Numan's breakthrough, 'Are Friends Electric?'. It was in this age that these pole became smaller, more accessible, more exploiter friendly and more affordable for loads of us. In this article I will tests to phantom this history in easily digestible endings and withdrawal model of today's best modern proponents.

To my mind, this was the beginning of a new epoch. To create electronic music, it was no longer necessary to have entrees to a roomful of technology in a senate or live. Hitherto, this was solely the crew of artists the ambition of Kraftwerk, whose daybook of electronic instruments and cocaine built gadgetry the extent of us could only have dreamed of, even if we could understand the logistics of their functioning. Having said this, at the time I was maturing up in the 60's & 70's, I nevertheless had little uptake of the experience of handling that had synopsis a predecessor in previous decades to arrive at this point.

The history of electronic music owes much to Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Stockhausen was a German Avante Garde copier and a pioneering figurehead in electronic singing from the 1950's onwards, influencing a occurrences that would eventually have a powerful look upon nickname such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Brain Eno, Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, not to remark the experimental crannies of the Beatles' and others in the 1960's. His cover-up is seen on the lid of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the Beatles' 1967 expert Opus. Let's start, however, by traveling a little further back in time.

The Turn of the 20th Century

Time stood still for this stargazer when I originally discovered that the first documented, exclusively electronic, observance were not in the 1970's or 1980's but in the 1920's!

The first purely electronic instrument, the Theremin, which is played without touch, was invented by Russian scientists and cellist, Lev Termen (1896-1993), circa 1919.

In 1924, the Theremin made its concert debut with the Leningrad Philharmonic. Interest generated by the theremin drew appointee to exactness staged across Europe and Britain. In 1930, the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York, experienced a possession of classical singing using nothing but a plan of ten theremins. Watching a amounts of skilled musicians playing this eerie sounding medium by glimmering their hands around its feeler must have been so exhilarating, surreal and group for a pre-tech audience!

For those interested, team out the recordings of Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). Lithuanian born Rockmore (Reisenberg) worked with its researcher in New York to perfect the hindrance during its early era and became its herdsman acclaimed, brilliant and recognized comedian and spout throughout her life.

In retrospect Clara, was the first celebrated 'star' of genuine electronic music. You are unlikely to discovery more eerie, yet beautiful aspect of classical singing on the Theremin. She's definitely a longing of mine!

Electronic Music in Sci-Fi, Cinema and Television

Unfortunately, and due mainly to problem in aptitude mastering, the Theremin's future as a musical stipulation was shot lived. Eventually, it found a nook in 1950's Sci-Fi films. The 1951 cinema classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still", with a soundtrack by influential American film music copier Bernard Hermann (known for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", etc.), is rich with an 'extraterrestrial' score using two Theremins and other electronic flight melded with acoustic instrumentation.

Using the vacuum-tube oscillator technology of the Theremin, French cellist and radio telegraphist, Maurice Martenot (1898-1980), began composition the Ondes Martenot (in French, known as the Martenot Wave) in 1928.

Employing a order and familiar fingerboard which could be more easily mastered by a musician, Martenot's obstacle succeeded where the Theremin failed in beings user-friendly. In fact, it became the first successful electronic medium to be used by copier and orchestras of its energy until the gift day.

It is featured on the topic to the original 1960's TV cell "Star Trek", and can be heard on contemporary recordings by the say of Radiohead and Brian Ferry.

The expressive multi-timbral Ondes Martenot, although monophonic, is the closest medium of its legislature I have heard which approaches the sound of modern synthesis.

"Forbidden Planet", released in 1956, was the first major commercial section cinema to feature an exclusively electronic soundtrack... aside from introducing Robbie the Robot and the stunning Anne Francis! The ground-breaking score was produced by husband and spouses squad Louis and Bebe Barron who, in the late 1940's, established the first privately owned booking boldness in the USA booking electronic experimental artists such as the iconic John Cage (whose own Avante Garde boldness challenged the definition of singing itself!).

The Barrons are generally credited for owning telegram the retreat of electronic singing in cinema. A soldering iron in one hand, Louis built circuitry which he manipulated to create a excess of bizarre, 'unearthly' artfulness and motifs for the movie. Once performed, these sounds could not be replicated as the mouseover would purposely overload, smoke and burn out to exponent the desired sound result.

Consequently, they were all recorded to tape and Bebe sifted through hours of reels edited what was deemed usable, then re-manipulated these with subordination and reverberation and creatively dubbed the endings role using multiple tape decks.

In supplements to this laborious money method, I sense compelled to include that which is, arguably, the record enduring and influential electronic Television signature ever: the topic to the long jogging 1963 British Sci-Fi look series, "Dr. Who". It was the first time a Television design featured a solely electronic theme. The themes to "Dr. Who" was created at the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop using tape loops and tests pendulum to run through effects, entrance these to tape, then were re-manipulated and edited by another Electro pioneer, Delia Derbyshire, interpreting the order of Ron Grainer.

As you can see, electronic music's prevalent custom in vintage Sci-Fi was the odds source of the general public's opinion of this music as beings 'other worldly' and 'alien-bizarre sounding'. This remained the proceedings till at least 1968 with the sovereignty of the bins scrapbook "Switched-On Bach" performed entirely on a Moog modular synthesizer by Walter Carlos (who, with a few surgical nips and tucks, subsequently became Wendy Carlos).

The 1970's expanded electronic music's silhouette with the pause through of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and especially the 1980's when it found more mainstream acceptance.

The Mid 1900's: Musique Concrete

In its segment through the 1900's, electronic music was not solely confined to electronic circuitry creature manipulated to group sound. Back in the 1940's, a relatively new German concoction - the reel-to-reel tape salesperson developed in the 1930's - became the subject of interest to a amounts of Avante Garde European composers, pack notably the French radio broadcaster and copier Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) who developed a montage medium he called Musique Concrete.

Musique Concrete (meaning 'real world' existing sounds as opposed to artificial or acoustic ones produced by musical instruments) broadly involved the splicing together of recorded segment of tape containing 'found' sounds - natural, environmental, industrial and human - and manipulating these with kingdom such as delay, reverb, distortion, speeding up or slowing down of tape-speed (varispeed), reversing, etc.

Stockhausen actually held symmetry convention his Musique Concrete happenings as promoting tapes (by this platform electronic as well as 'real world' sounds were used on the recordings) on apex of which live instruments would be performed by classical player responding to the understanding and motifs they were hearing!

Musique Concrete had a wide impressing not only on Avante Garde and composition libraries, but also on the contemporary music of the 1960's and 1970's. Important proceedings to summary are the Beatles' use of this senate in ground-breaking tracks like 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 'Revolution No. 9' and 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite', as well as Pink Floyd albums "Umma Gumma", "Dark Side of the Moon" and Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy". All used tape cut-ups and home-made tape loops often fed live into the main mixdown.

Today this can be performed with guiltlessness using digital sampling, but yesterday's heroes labored hours, age and even weeks to perhaps complete a four minute piece! For those of ourselves who are contemporary musicians, understanding the history of electronic singing helps in appreciating the portion leap technology has taken in the recent period. But these early innovators, these pioneers - of which there are many more down the queue - and the important figure they influenced that came before us, created the revolutionary foundation that has become our electronic musical legacy today and for this I pay them homage!

1950's: The First Computer and Synth Play Music

Moving striker a few years to 1957 and enter the first computer into the electronic mix. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly a portable laptop escape but consumed a whole room and user friendly wasn't even a concept. Nonetheless creative fly kept pushing the boundaries. One of these was Max Mathews (1926 -) from Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, who developed Music 1, the original singing program for computers upon which all subsequent digital synthesis has its roots based. Mathews, dubbed the 'Father of Computer Music', using a digital IBM Mainframe, was the first to synthesize singing on a computer.

In the peak of Stanley Kubrik's 1968 cinema '2001: A Space Odyssey', utility is made of a 1961 Mathews' electronic stall of the late 1800's poetry 'Daisy Bell'. Here the musical accompaniment is performed by his programmed mainframe together with a computer-synthesized human 'singing' voice section pioneered in the early 60's. In the movie, as HAL the computer regresses, 'he' reverts to this song, an cheerfulness to 'his' own origins.

1957 also witnessed the first advanced synth, the RCA Mk II Sound Synthesizer (an enhancement on the 1955 original). It also featured an electronic sequencer to program music property playback. This massive RCA Synth was installed, and still remains, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York, where the legendary Robert Moog worked for a while. Universities and Tech laboratories were the main outcome for synth and computer singing trying in that early era.

1960's: The Dawning of The Age of Moog

The logistics and experience of composing and even owning entrees to what were, until then, comedian unfriendly synthesizers, led to a occurrences for more portable playable instruments. One of the first to respond, and definitely the prince successful, was Robert Moog (1934-2005). His playable synth employed the familiar piano loci keyboard.

Moog's bulky telephone-operators' profile plug-in makes of modular synth was not one to be transported and design up with any prince of instinct or speed! But it received an enormous boost in commonness with the fate of Walter Carlos, as previously mentioned, in 1968. His LP (Long Player) best merchant entryways "Switched-On Bach" was unprecedented because it was the first time an albums appeared of fully synthesized music, as opposed to experimental sound pieces.

The albums was a complex classical music lineup with various multi-tracks and overdubs necessary, as the synthesizer was only monophonic! Carlos also created the electronic score for "A Clockwork Orange", Stanley Kubrik's confusion 1972 futuristic film.

From this point, the Moog synth is prevalent on a sum of late 1960's contemporary albums. In 1967 the Monkees' "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd" became the first commercial pop scrapbook self-rule to feature the modular Moog. In fact, singer/drummer Mickey Dolenz purchased one of the very first conveyance sold.

It wasn't until the early 1970's, however, when the first Minimoog appeared that interest seriously developed amongst musicians. This portable little group with a fat sound had a significant gradations becoming fragments of live music outline for dozens touring musicians for years to come. Other firm such as Sequential Circuits, Roland and Korg began producing their own synths, assigning onset to a music subculture.

I cannot close the intensity on the 1960's, however, without caution to the Mellotron. This electronic-mechanical medium is often viewed as the primitive announcer to the modern digital sampler.

Developed in early 1960's Britain and based on the Chamberlin (a cumbersome US-designed media from the previous decade), the Mellotron keyboard triggered pre-recorded tapes, each key corresponding to the equivalent recollection and endings of the pre-loaded acoustic instrument.

The Mellotron is legendary for its use on the Beatles' 1966 ballad 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. A flute tape-bank is used on the haunting introduction played by Paul McCartney.

The instrument's popularity burgeoned and was used on dozens recordings of the age such as the immensely successful Moody Blues epic 'Nights in White Satin'. The 1970's saw it adopted more and more by progressive rock bands. Electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream featured it on their early albums.

With time and further overtures in microchip technology though, this charming medium became a relics of its period.

1970's: The Birth of Vintage Electronic Bands

The early fluid scrapbook of Tangerine Dream such as "Phaedra" from 1974 and Brian Eno's currency with his self-coined 'ambient music' and on David Bowie's "Heroes" album, further drew interest in the synthesizer from both musicians and audience.

Kraftwerk, whose 1974 seminal albums "Autobahn" achieved international commercial success, took the medium even further adding precision, pulsating electronic beats and meter and noble synth melodies. Their minimalism suggested a cold, industrial and computerized-urban world. They often utilized vocoders and conversations synthesis device such as the gorgeously robotic 'Speak and Spell' voice emulator, the latter creature a children's education aid!

While inspired by the experimental electronic subroutine of Stockhausen, as artists, Kraftwerk were the first to successfully combine all the elements of electronically generated singing and noise and group an easily recognizable ballad format. The supplements of vocals in dozens of their songs, both in their native German tongue and English, helped earn them universal acclaim getting one of the hordes influential contemporary singing pioneers and actor of the past half-century.

Kraftwerk's 1978 gem 'Das Modell' punch the UK sum one loci with a reissued English language version, 'The Model', in February 1982, structure it one of the earliest Electro sketch toppers!

Ironically, though, it took a impression that had no association with EM (Electronic Music) to facilitate its broader mainstream acceptance. The mid 1970's hoods movement, primarily in Britain, brought with it a unique new attitude: one that gave impulse to self-expression rather than performance dexterity and formal training, as embodied by contemporary progressive rock musicians. The initial offensive of metallic neighborhood transformed into a less abrasive word during the late 1970's: New Wave. This, mixed with the comparative affordability of lots small, easy to utility synthesizers, led to the commercial synth detonation of the early 1980's.

A new adeptness of cub flight began to explore the potential of these instruments and began to create soundscapes challenging the prevailing spotter of contemporary music. This didn't arrive without batalla scars though. The singing trade establishment, especially in its media, often derided this new example of word and accomplishment and was anxious to consign it to the dustbin of history.

1980's: The First Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Gary Numan became arguably the first commercial synth megastar with the 1979 "Tubeway Army" handcuffs 'Are Friends Electric?'. The Sci-Fi ingredient is not too far away once again. Some of the imagery is drawn from the Science Fiction classic, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". The 1982 box cinema "Blade Runner" was also based on the same book.

Although 'Are Friends Electric?' featured conventional drum and bass backing, its dominant use of Polymoogs gives the songs its very distinctive sound. The booking was the first synth-based self-sufficiency to achieve quantity one unit office in the UK during the post-punk years and helped manager in a new genre. No longer was electronic and/or synthesizer singing consigned to the mainstream sidelines. Exciting!

Further development in affordable electronic technology placed electronic squarely in the fins of pups researcher and began to transform professional studios.

Designed in Australia in 1978, the Fairlight Sampler CMI became the first commercially available polyphonic digital sampling barricade but its prohibitive betrayal saw it solely in use by the fondness of Trevor Horn, Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel. By mid-decade, however, smaller, cheaper instruments entered the market such as the ubiquitous Akai and Emulator Samplers often used by musicians live to replicate their studio-recorded sounds. The Sampler revolutionized the stipulation of music from this sequences on.

In sum major markets, with the qualified zone of the US, the early 1980's was commercially drawn to electro-influenced artists. This was an exciting years for dozens of us, myself included. I know I wasn't alone in closeting the distorted guitar and amps and immersing myself into a new kind of musical manifestation - a sound shore of the conscription and non traditional.

At home, Australian synth based bands Real Life ('Send Me An Angel', "Heartland" album), Icehouse ('Hey Little Girl') and Pseudo Echo ('Funky Town') began to schemes internationally, and more experimental electronic design like Severed Heads and SPK also developed cult followings overseas.

But by mid-decade the first global electronic succession missing its boldness amidst appeal fomented by an unrelenting old seminary singing media. Most of the artists that began the decade as predominantly electro-based either disintegrated or heavily hybrids their sound with traditional rock instrumentation.

The USA, the largest ore market in every sense, remained in the conservative music wings for scads of the 1980's. Although synth-based records did box the American charts, the first being Human League's 1982 US design topper 'Don't You Want Me Baby?', on the whole it was to be a few more era before the American mainstream embraced electronic music, at which spunk it consolidated itself as a dominant last for musicians and officer alike, worldwide.

1988 was somewhat of a watershed year for electronic music in the US. Often maligned in the press in their early years, it was Depeche Mode that unintentionally - and mostly unaware - spearheaded this new assault. From cult period in America for much of the decade, their new high-play revolution on what was now termed Modern Rock radio resulted in mega stadium performances. An Electro accomplishment playing sold out dock was not common fare in the USA at that time!

In 1990, Quaker chaos in New York to greet the fraction at a central entrance firm made TV news, and their "Violator" albums outselling Madonna and Prince in the same year made them a US household name. Electronic music was here to stay, without a doubt!

1990's Onward: The Second Golden Era of Electronic Music for the Masses

Before our 'star music' secured its hold on the US mainstream, and while it was losing commercial lands elsewhere throughout much of the mid 1980's, Detroit and Chicago became unassuming laboratories for an outburst of Electronic Music which would see out much of the 1990's and onwards. Enter Techno and House.

Detroit in the 1980's, a post-Fordism US industrial wasteland, produced the harder European influenced Techno. In the early to mid 80's, Detroiter Juan Atkins, an obsessive Kraftwerk fan, together with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson - using primitive, often borrowed appointments - formed the flock of what would become, together with House, the predominant singing club-culture throughout the world. Heavily referenced artists that informed early Techno clause were European pioneers such as the aforementioned Kraftwerk, as well as Yello and British Electro acts the yearning of Depeche Mode, Human League, Heaven 17, New Order and Cabaret Voltaire.

Chicago, a four-hour cultivation away, simultaneously saw the section of House. The name is generally considered to be derived from "The Warehouse" where various DJ-Producers featured this new singing amalgam. House has its roots in 1970's disco and, unlike Techno, usually has some making of vocal. I think Giorgio Moroder's undertaking in the mid 70's with Donna Summer, especially the poetry 'I Feel Love', is pivotal in appreciating the 70's disco influences upon burgeoning Chicago House.

A many of variants and sub troop have developed since - crossing the Atlantic, reworked and back again - but in many spirit the popular success of these two soul forms revitalized the entire Electronic landscapes and its associated social culture. Techno and House helped to profoundly challenge mainstream and Alternative Rock as the preferred listening variety for a new generation: a meeting who has grown up with electronic singing and accepts it as a given. For them, it is music that has always been.

The history of electronic music continues to be written as technology advances and people's anticipation of where singing can go continues to push it forward, increasing its vocabularies and lexicon. https://kokania.com/product-category/electronics/

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krispyweiss · 7 years ago

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The Sound (Bites) of Live Music - 2017 in Review

It was another fabulous year in live music.

Concerts big and small; acts Sound Bites has seen scads of times and acts that broke his Sound cherry; festivals and “an evening with;” old timers and newcomers. These concerts were the sound of live music in 2017 and Sound Bites has the best of them below.

Shows are ranked in the approximate oder of quality with the number of times seen in parentheses. The concerts took place in Columbus, Ohio, unless otherwise noted and are ranked by grade. Any shows that merited a B+ or lower are excluded.

A+

Rhiannon Giddens/Steep Canyon Rangers (6)/Pokey LaFarge/Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Music Hall, Cincinnati, Nov. 12: The third of three concerts/recording sessions took place on a Sunday afternoon as Giddens, the Rangers and LaFarge focused on post-World War I American compositions. A sublime mixture of classical music and Americana’s best contemporary artists and the show of the year. It’ll be released sometime in 2018 as the second in an ongoing series.

Punch Brothers (3)/I’m With Her/Julian Lage, Taft Theatre, Cincinnati, Aug. 12 Playing alone, together and in various combinations on the American Acoustic tour, the co-headliners slayed the audience with originals and covers of everyone from Adele to Randy Newman.

Tommy Emmanuel and David Grisman, Speaker Jo Anne Davidson Theater, Nov. 10: Emmanuel played an opening solo-acoustic set before appearing with Grisman for songs from their duet LP, Pickin’, and other selections. Pure, jaw-dropping virtuosity.

Roger Waters (2), Nationwide Arena, July 20: A left-wing, multi-media assault on the senses that found Waters revisiting politically minded tracks spanning from Pink Floyd’s Meddle to his own Is This the Life We Really Want?

Steve Martin (2)/Martin Short/Steep Canyon Rangers (5), PNC Pavilion, Cincinnati, Sept. 16: Mostly a comedy show - and one so hilarious Mr. and Mrs. Sound Bites walked out with sore throats and tummies from laughing so hard - this concert also featured the Rangers playing bluegrass alone and with their patron, Martin. And when Short danced across the stage in drag and with humongous fake boobies during “Pretty Little One,” the two art forms merged in perfection.

Willie Nelson (11)/Van Morrison (3)/Avett Brothers, et al. Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, Pa., Oct. 10: At the Hershey stop of Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, Nelson was in top form with an expanded, guest-filled band; Morrison played a spellbinding concert that was the best of the three the Sound Biteses saw this year; and the Avetts proved all the fuss is legit.

Brian Wilson, Palace Theatre, April 21: Backed by an enormous band that included former Beach Boys Al Jardine and Blondie Chapman, Wilson revisited Pet Sounds and surrounded it with big hits (“I Get Around”) and deep cuts (“California Saga”). Sublime doesn’t touch it.

Van Morrison (2), Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, Fla, Jan. 18: After seeing Morrison for the first time the night before and thinking nothing could be better, the man came back and proved Mr. and Mrs. Sound Bites wrong, playing a different set and wailing away on saxophone, guitar and harp.

Van Morrison, Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, Fla., Jan 17: The only thing better than seeing Morrison for the first time is seeing him subsequently.

Los Lobos (13), Music Box Supper Club, Cleveland, March 31: The band played Kiko in its entirety and stretched it to two hours, keeping the essence of their high-watermark album while futzing with the arrangements enough to keep things interesting for those of us who have the LP tattooed on our brains from repeated listenings over the past 25 years.

David Crosby & Friends, Kent Stage, Kent, Ohio, Nov. 5: Sound Bites endured a solo, three-plus-hour drive through thunderstorms and a tornado warning and arrived at the Kent Stage stressed out, soaking wet and with just minutes to spare. The bad vibes melted away about 40 seconds after Crosby and his stellar band took the stage with “In My Dreams” and the ride home was just fine after an amazing performance from rock’s premier male singer.

Tedeschi Trucks Band (8)/Wood Brothers (3)/Hot Tuna (7), Rose Music Center, Huber Heights, Ohio, July 22: All three bands were in top form on this stop on the Wheels of Soul tour, even if the Woods and Hot Tuna didn’t get enough stage time. All was forgiven when each band joined in during Tedeschi Trucks’ typically searing headlining set, which featured high-test originals and covers and made Mr. and Mrs. Sound Bites wish they had attended the previous evening in Cincinnati.

Chicago (12), Rose Music Center, Huber Heights, Ohio, May 20: Playing a set short on schlock and long on tracks from the Terry Kath era, Chicago played the best of the dozen concerts Sound Bites has seen of the band since 1982. Chicago was a rock band at first and it is a rock band now.

Robert Cray Band (8), Midland Theatre, Newark, Ohio, Sept. 29: Cray doesn’t mess around - he plays his songs in a workmanlike manner, plays them well and still sounds almost exactly like the guy who first came on to the scene nearly four decades ago. Ageless. And timeless.

Wood Brothers (4) Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio, Nov. 9: Debuting tracks from their forthcoming album and playing old favorites, the Woods played the best of the four concerts Sound Bites has been lucky enough to see from the band. Though their named after brothers Oliver and Chris, multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix is the trio’s secret weapon.

Martin Barre (2), Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza, May 3: Playing acoustic and electric sets, Barre and his spectacular, three-piece band nailed Jethro Tull songs from across the band’s catalog, mixing them in with periodic selections from Barre’s solo career.

Rosanne Cash (2), Kuss Auditorium, Springfield, Ohio, Feb. 11: Performing in an acoustic-duo setting with husband John Levanthal, Cash showed herself a better singer live than in studio and Leventhal’s arrangements made her songs sparkle in the sparse, in-concert setting.

Dweezil Zappa (6), Express Live!, Jan. 22: Fomerly known as Zappa Plays Zappa, Dweezil and his crack band somehow managed to pull off Daddy’s songs in a way that was both appropriately reverent and appropriately irreverent. Don’t think of Dweezil and company as a tribute group. Think of them as a rock ‘n’ roll symphony interpreting one of the 20th century’s most-important composers.

Los Lobos (14), Music Box Supper Club, Cleveland, April 1: With Kiko in the rear view, a looser Lobos took the stage the following evening with a retrospective set of originals and covers that found the band members switching instruments, taking requests and inviting up a local ringer on stage to shred with the wolf pack. On any given night, Los Lobos are capable to going places only a few bands can go - this was one of them.

Leo Kottke (4), Thirty One West, Newark, Ohio, Oct. 24: All by his lonesome but sounding like a quartet, Kottke showed once again why, like Tigger, he’s the only one.

Old Crow Medicine Show (2), Express Live!, May 31: Playing Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde from front to back, the Crows put a new twist on an old standby, adding a bunch and taking away nothing. There was a nice tribute to the recently departed Gregg Allman via “Midnight Rider” in the encore, which also featured (natch) the Dylan co-write “Wagon Wheel.”

Bruce Hornsby (10), Midland Theatre, Newark, Ohio, Sept. 22: If there’s anyone more versatile than Hornsby, Sound Bites is yet to meet him. This solo-piano workout took the concept of recital to a whole ‘nother level.

Southern Culture on the Skids (2), Skully’s Music Diner, May 9: “Too Much Pork for Just one Fork.” “House of Bamboo.” The only thing that outshines SCOT’s sense of humor is SCOT’s musicianship. Flying fried chicken and fans dancing onstage only add to the shenanigans when they come to town.

Bob Weir & the Campfire Band, Proctor & Gamble Hall, Cincinnati, Jan. 12: Backed by members of the National in an acoustic-centric set that was heavy on songs from Blue Mountain, Weir put on the best performance Sound Bites has seen out of him in a decade or more and proved he should do more shows that move away from his Grateful Dead legacy. When “Oh Boy” popped out of “Dark Star,” all was right with the universe.

Del McCoury Band (2), Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio, March 4: There’s bluegrass. And then there’s the Del McCoury Band.

The HillBenders, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, Ohio, Aug. 5: The Who’s Tommy is even creepier when performed in a bluegrass setting. The HillBenders opened for themselves with a set of originals before diving into the tale of the deaf, dumb and blind kid. If this tour comes to your town, go.

Tedeschi Trucks Band (7), Palace Theatre, Jan. 23: This was the weakest TTB show Sound Bites has ever seen. It was astounding.

Lake Street Dive, Newport Music Hall, Aug. 10: Rachael Price is mesmerizing - impossible to take your eyes and ears off. The rest of the band is just as potent and Lake Street Dive is probably the only band in the world that could make Sound Bites shake his tail feather to George Michael’s “Faith.” Their version of Wings’ “Let Me Roll It” - like the rest of their performance - also did not suck.

A-

Ray Wiley Hubbard (2), Woodlands Tavern, June 23: Hubbard likes to call his music “an acquired taste.” It takes about three seconds to realize this guy should be at the top of everyone’s must-see list.

Elizabeth Cook (2), Rumba Cafe, Oct. 23: At turns funny and heartbreaking, Cook possesses a gorgeous voice and an irresistible, smart-ass stage presence. She’s like Todd Snider in drag and her solo-acoustic show is anything but a drag.

Todd Snider (9), Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio, Feb. 4: At turns funny and heartbreaking, Snider possesses a laconic voice and an irresistible, smart-ass stage presence. He’s like Elizabeth Cook in jeans and his solo-acoustic show is a terrific mix of music and comedy.

Jerry Douglas Band, Thirty One West, Newark, Ohio, Aug. 15: Eschewing bluegrass for jazz, the Dobro player extraordinaire brought a huge band to Newark and nullified any disappointment by delivering a barnburner of a concert that made you wonder why he didn’t do this sooner.

Los Lobos (15), Stuart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, Ohio, Aug. 20: With bassist Conrad Lazano and guitarist Cesar Rosas MIA, the Wolves nevertheless delivered with a set heavy on rarities and covers. The pit was packed with dancers for most of the second set, proving a short-handed Los Lobos is still among the country’s best live acts.

Yonder Mountain String Band (2), A&R Music Bar, July 6: Adding more heat to an already sweaty and packed bar, YMSB proved there is life after Jeff Austin.

Holly Bowling (2), Woodlands Tavern, Feb. 10: The classical pianist who specializes in Phish and Grateful Dead covers delivered two sets of Phish and Grateful Dead covers arranged for classical piano and knocked off plenty of socks in the process.

Steel Wheels (2), King Center for the Arts, Dec. 9: When a bluegrass band features a drum solo early in the concert, you know you’re in for something different. The Steel Wheels are something different. And they’re something else as well.

12/20/17

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sinceileftyoublog · 5 years ago

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Chuck Mead Interview: Hit It, Get It, and Quit It

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Context isn’t everything, but it can often shape the mood of a record. Such is the case with Close To Home, the new one from Nashville-based Americana artist Chuck Mead. Recorded in the legendary Sam Phillips Recording studio in Memphis and produced by Matt Ross-Spang, Close To Home is a record of true stories and legends, featuring with some Memphis stalwarts, exemplary of the loose expansiveness of the Home of the Blues as opposed to the concision of Music City, laden with Mead’s quintessential sense of humor and just enough sincerity to evade corniness.

On Close To Home, there are songs of devotion that tackle both moods: For instance, “My Baby’s Holding It Down”, Mead’s sweet tribute to his wife who looks after his home when he’s on tour, is a non-traditional juxtaposition with a song like “Daddy Worked The Pole”. That one’s about a man who got a job hanging telephone wire so his wife wouldn’t have to work the kind of pole that normally comes to mind--until she started stripping so he didn’t have to work. “Billy Doesn’t Know He’s Bad” and “There’s Love Where I Come From” occupy two sides of the same coin, the former an exasperated look at a sociopathic outlaw and the latter an ode to inclusiveness, both songs in it for the good guys. The distorted country rock of “Big Bear in the Sky” references Native American lore; the title track tackles the eerie prescience of songs on the radio. But as serious as Mead gets, he’s also having loads of fun, with the bayou grooves of “Shake”, barroom piano of “Tap Into Your Misery”, and reggae blues of “I’m Not The Man For The Job”. Perhaps the most ramshackle is the old-school hillbilly burner “Better Than I Was (When I Wasn’t So Good)”, which ends with a snippet of the recording of the song itself. “Did that sound drunk enough?” asks bassist Mark Andrew Miller with an appropriate drawl.

I spoke to Mead over the phone last week about Close To Home, and my main takeaway was that his personality was reminiscent of the album itself. Friendly, engaged, unafraid to tell me when I was wrong about the record, and possessing of a penchant for quotes, quotables, and non-sequitir, Mead was a delight to talk to. He’s coming to City Winery on Thursday for The Cosmic Honky-Tonk Revue, a co-headlining tour with Jim Lauderdale and Jason Ringenberg, all backed by his band, the Grassy Knoll Boys. Read the interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What about Close to Home is unique to you as compared to your previous records?

Chuck Mead: The lion’s share of what I record is in Nashville, so going to Memphis to do it is a departure. To put yourself in a different place--and there were a couple of songs we had been playing for a little while that took on a different dimension just because of where we were and the studio we were in, the Sam Phillips Recording studio he built in 1962 when he left Sun [Records] and had enough money to do what he wanted to do. My buddy Matt Ross-Spang is a great producer and is the manager for the place now doing a lot of great work. Just tapping into the spirit of Sam Phillips, where anything can happen.

SILY: The title of the record is taken from the idea of songs that “hit close to home.” Were you playing with the idea that home is not as much a concrete place as it is a feeling?

CM: Yeah, I guess you could say that. You’re always close to home. Home is where the heart is...on the bus! Sorry, that’s a Frank Zappa quote. But it’s true, nonetheless. I think you hit on something. But that particular song [the title track] is about how some weird song on the radio explains exactly what you’re going through. How does that happen? Man. That thing you said last week that came true. It makes it seems like there’s some order in the universe when probably there’s not. It seems like it happens a lot. I don’t want to get too spacey or hippie-dippie about it.

SILY: You mentioned working with Matt. How did the record have a different instrumental vibe than your previous ones?

CM: We never had someone coming into play like during this one. Don Herron who used to be in BR549 played some fiddle. Critter Fuqua from Old Crow Medicine Show came in and played accordion. It was still very Nashville-centric, but because we were in Memphis, we got Rick Steff to play the keyboards. John Paul Keith came in and played guitar. It lent more of a local flavor to it. It led to a slightly different vibe, which is great. Doing the same thing every time would be pretty boring, don’t you think?

SILY: And the album within itself has a nice variation--speaking of which, how did you decide upon the sequencing?

CM: You know, I don’t know. I just went through different sequences the songs were in, and it just seemed to flow the best the way it came out. It’s not like we were trying to tell a long story or anything. The songs seem to go together even though there’s a lot of different kind of things on it, and I guess that’s just because it’s us.

SILY: I want to ask you about a few specific tracks. First up: Is “Big Bear in the Sky” literally about stargazing?

CM: Well, no, it’s about that particular constellation. Many different cultures have a legend that they put a bear up there in the constellation. This particular story is an Indian legend from up in Canada. Originally, the song was for the Bear Family label out of Germany. [Founder Richard Wieze] asked me to write a bear song for their 40th anniversary.

SILY: I like the juxtaposition in the track “My Baby’s Holding It Down” between “holding it down” and “holding me down.” What’s the difference to you?

CM: Well, she never holds me down. She’s holding it down because I’m not there. But she’s not holding me down at all--though she could probably kick my ass. People who travel a lot, the people at home have to take care of stuff. And when you’re home, you have to take over, because they’re holding it down the rest of the time. She’s also probably holding down her anger. [laughs] But not really. People suck it up and they get through life. That’s just kind of what that song’s about. She doesn’t need me around. I guess I’m kind of nice to have around sometimes.

SILY: It’s about your wife, presumably?

CM: Yeah. I wrote it with my friend Paul Cebar, who also travels a lot and has been married about as long as I have. But you can write only so intimate a song. It’s general. It’s a tribute to significant others who hold it down a lot.

SILY: In the song “Better Than I Was (When I Wasn’t So Good)”, at the end, when you say, “Did that sound drunk enough at the end?”--

CM: That was Mark Andrew Miller who said that. [laughs, then imitates] “Did that sound drunk enough?”

SILY: Was that the type of thing you simply left in because it was so funny?

CM: Well, yeah. When we got the rough mix of it back, and that was in there, we thought, “Well, that’s gotta stay.”

SILY: Let’s talk about “Billy Doesn’t Know He’s Bad”. In so much of traditional music, you have murder ballads where the murderer has a clear intention and a lot of agency, and here, it’s a song where you have a lot of empathy for this murderous outlaw who doesn’t know why he’s doing the things he’s doing.

CM: No, I don’t have a lot of empathy. It’s a comment on sociopathic people. They think everybody thinks exactly like them, but they don’t care. They don’t know they’re being bad. They don’t know they’re assholes. I’m not excusing anything. Billy was an asshole. He lit up his neighbor’s house for no reason! It was a comment on someone like Jesse James or Billy The Kid who were kind of glorified for the way they lived their lives. Jesse James robbed and killed people. He’s a sociopath. You try to be understanding of it. When I wrote that song--Logan Ledger and I wrote that song--it seemed like it needed something. Mark Miller said, “Hey man, I think I have a good bridge for that.” So he comes up with that middle part that takes it to a whole new level of people trying to understand the way they are, nature, and nurture. It really ties it all together. I was really happy to have that happen. It’s kind of different. Those songs aren’t usually about that. It’s usually about a guy who kills his girlfriend because she’s pregnant or something.

SILY: Do you think the instrumentation of that song was an intentional contrast to how you’re viewing the character and subject matter?

CM: No, that was just kind of the way it came out. We went through it a bunch of times. I guess Rick added a Mellotron on that song to make it more dramatic, which helped out the bridge. In that sense, I guess you’re right. But it was one of those things that evolved in the studio. When we were originally working it out, it was just us four. That’s the thing that can happen in Memphis that doesn’t always happen here in Nashville, though that’s less true as time goes on. A lot of people own their own studios and cut their records so they can take as much time as they want. I don’t have that luxury. Usually, you just go into a studio and bang it out because everybody’s so damn good. In Memphis, you like to kick it around a little bit. That’s why we were able to chase that one around the room a little while.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the cover art of the record?

CM: I’ve been working with Jim Herrington for a long time. He’s my best friend. He’s done all of my solo records. He did the first couple of BR549 records, too. He’s photographed tons of great people over the years, and he and I have this consistency of getting something slightly noir that doesn’t look like your average album cover. Probably one of my favorite things someone said--there was a review of the record where the guy didn’t know anything about country or Americana but was drawn to the record because he thought it looked like Bryan Ferry. He liked the record, and he said, “It’s the most curious record you’ll hear all year.” For him, I guess. I don’t seem so curious. But it’s a tribute to the mysteriousness of Jim Herrington’s photo.

SILY: How are you adapting these new songs to the stage?

CM: Just goin’ out there and playin’ ‘em. [laughs] We’ve been playin’ ‘em over in Europe. Just bangin’ it out. We really did it pretty much live right there in the studio. More than a few songs, that was the vocal I was singing while we were cutting. Of course, we did overdubs where necessary, but there’s a certain liveness you want [in order] to capture the spirit of what’s going down. But when you start playing them after a while they do take on a certain dimension?

SILY: Extending a part or jamming.

CM: We don’t do too much of that. Sometimes, we’ll cut loose. We’re not a jam band to play a song for 30 minutes, although there’s nothing wrong with that. But I like to hit it, get it, and quit it.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

CM: I’m reading a Lightning Hopkins biography right now. That guy recorded a lot of songs. [laughs] He’s one of my favorites though. I just finished this novel called Country Dark that was pretty damn good, about people up in Kentucky. Listening--I’ve mostly been listening to a lot of Jim Lauderdale and Jason Ringenberg. Gettin’ ready for the tour. We all have records out. Of course I like Margo Price’s record.

Album score: 7.1/10

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zandraneville6-blog · 7 years ago

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10 Lethal Mistakes Small Company Owners Make With Their Web sites.

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/a-brief-comedy-history-of-the-beastie-boys/

A Brief Comedy History of the Beastie Boys

Photo: Paul Natkin/WireImage

“Our main goal was really just to crack each other up,” Mike “Mike D” Diamond writes in the new Beastie Boys Book, the massive memoir-cum-mixtape that’s bursting with seemingly every anecdote, photograph, paean, and, well, mixtape he and bandmate Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz could fit into its nearly 600 pages, alongside a miniature cookbook, an oral history of a fictional alien made out of ice cream, and a letter from Sasquatch. Diamond is referring specifically to the lyrics on Licensed to Ill, but he may as well have been talking about the Beastie Boys’ entire career — more than 30 years that Diamond, Horovitz, and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch spent goofing on each other, and generally behaving like the smart-assed punks they were. Comedy was always crucial to the Beastie Boys’ success, of course, as essential as their race; as novelist Jonathan Lethem articulates in one of many guest essays, it was comedy that allowed three nice Jewish boys to posture as rhyming-and-stealing street toughs, holding hip-hop at an ironic distance in a way that played off “the special cognitive dissonance of the white boy possessed by culture not possessible to him.” The Beastie Boys debuted at a time when hip-hop was already being dismissed as a fad, evident in the contemporary flurry of novelty rap singles. (Remember “Rappin’ Duke” — duh-ha, duh-ha? “Rappin’ Rodney”? Mel Brooks’s “The Hitler Rap”?) In this case, the Beasties were the novelty. They styled themselves as dopes pretending to be rock stars, which absolved them from so, so much. Comedy allowed them to sneak in the side entrance, bum-rush the whole show.

That said, the Beastie Boys weren’t really a comedy act — at least, not in the sense of someone like Weird Al, or “nerdcore” rappers like MC Chris. They wrote a lot of funny lines, but they mostly fall under the rubric of daffy wordplay over straight-up zingers. And while they were masters of the studio goof-around like “Netty’s Girl” and “Heart Attack Man,” it was usually a lot funnier to just imagine the addled, 4 a.m. context of their creation than to listen to their actual content. (Although, “Boomin’ Granny” is just funny.) Rather, where Beastie Boys intersected with comedy — the source of their quick rise to fame and their continued vitality — lives in that private space of the laugh shared between childhood pals: “We assume they’re joking, and many of us feel let in on the joke,” author Ada Calhoun writes, much more succinctly. Here are some of the most notable times they let us in.

“Cooky Puss” (1983)

The Beastie Boys officially transitioned from hardcore punks into hip-hop pranksters with this single built around a ramshackle dance beat and some rudimentary scratching — although it doesn’t feature much in the way of actual rapping. The vocals, such as they are, consist of a series of obscene prank calls placed to a local Carvel Ice Cream, with Horovitz demanding, with increasing hostility, to talk to Cookie Puss, the chain’s popular alien ice-cream character. As Horovitz explains in the book, “Cooky Puss” was conceived as a parody of Malcolm McLaren’s rap-and-punk-fusing “Buffalo Gals,” a song the group genuinely loved and therefore had to mock, as is the way of the New York hipster. Like “Buffalo Gals,” it became an underground club favorite, too, encouraging the Beastie Boys to pursue hip-hop full-time. But while “Cooky Puss” barely hints at the Beasties’ musical future, it does contain an embryonic form of the band’s doofus savant approach, not to mention kicking off the band’s venerable tradition of telephone skits and stand-up comedy samples. (That’s Steve Martin’s “Wild And Crazy Guy” getting shredded on the turntables). It was a juvenile way of getting noticed, but it worked — though Horovitz now says he feels bad about harassing that poor underpaid Carvel employee who unwittingly became part of hip-hop history, “we thought it was funny at the time”

“(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” (1986)

“We thought it was funny at the time” ends up being a common refrain in the book, especially when it comes to the song — and video — that broke the band wide. “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” was conceived as a parody of “party” songs, part of the group’s general mocking of knucklehead culture. But whatever irony was lost on the listener was completely flushed with the clip, a punk slapstick masterpiece that only crystallized the group’s image as beer-swilling, porno-loving dirtbags. It’s a spoof of “cheesy pop-metal videos (Motley Crue, etc.), with a healthy dose of Blackboard Jungle,” Diamond writes, beginning with two nerds who decide to throw a get-together while their parents are gone, only to have the Beasties crash it with a gaggle of “bad people” (including producer Rick Rubin, young LL Cool J, and a pre-fame Tabitha Soren). The clip played incessantly on MTV, and while Diamond writes that “obviously, us being white had a ton to do with that,” it also helped that it was wacky and louche in all the right ways, a Three Stooges short as filtered through Porky’s. Unfortunately, its massive success meant the Beasties had to play up those stereotypes to a live audience that was increasingly filled with the kind of assholes they were mocking. Eventually the group lost sight of the irony themselves, right around when they started closing every show by inflating a giant, hydraulic dick. (Again, “it seemed funny at the time,” Horovitz writes.) It was a gag they’d spend decades trying to distance themselves from.

The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers (1987)

Although the Licensed to Ill–era Beastie Boys were stomach-scratching caricatures, they still boasted some pretty quick wits. You can see that dichotomy on this legendary appearance on the Joan Rivers–hosted Late Show, which begins with Rivers introducing them by mangling the title as Licensed to Kill, then — upon being corrected — sarcastically shooting back, “That’s a stupid name for an album!” But any potentially awkward trainwreck became accidental TV magic as soon as the trio sloppily draped themselves across Rivers’s set, taking her snarky questions in stride (“How’d you all three get together — Juilliard?”) and playing dutiful, if feisty foils, with Yauch donning Rivers’s glasses and providing snappy retorts about his age (“I’m 12”), and Horovitz insisting he’s actually Frank Zappa’s son (“It’s Dweezil, Moon Unit, and me”). Not all their jokes land, and they probably didn’t do much to dissuade audiences who saw them, to quote Rivers’s intro, as “loudmouth brats,” but it was just an early glimpse of their improv skills, which led to a long, storied tradition of the Beastie Boys hilariously fucking with interviewers.

“Hey Ladies” (1989)

“Sabotage” gets all the attention, but “Hey Ladies” was really where the Beastie Boys’ whole ’70s fetishism began — and arguably, that of the entire 1990s. Like “Sabotage,” the clip’s comedy is largely steeped in costume design, with the Beasties donning wide lapels, garish-print polyesters, neon-yellow pimp suits, and a giant fake butt to strut around a disco floor, Saturday Night Fever–style. But the laughs also come from some surreal sight gags (Vincent van Gogh sitting at the bar; a deadpan mariachi band doing the cowbell break), as well as the group’s unwavering commitment to their characters. That’s particularly true of the blowdryer-toting Horovitz, who tries out his best Travolta with the line, “I’d really love to do your hair sometime.” Cementing the comedy bona fides, “Hey Ladies” was directed by Adam Bernstein, who went on to do the pilots for 30 Rock, Scrubs, and Strangers With Candy, and who directed the similarly funny, fake-butt-adorned video for Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”

Roadside Prophets (1992)

Horovitz’s acting ambitions weren’t limited to just Tony Manero impressions. The same year “Hey Ladies” was released, Horovitz landed the lead in Lost Angels, playing a soulful teen delinquent whom Donald Sutherland tries to rescue. Two years later, he briefly turned up in the neo-noir A Kiss Before Dying, playing a drifter who picks up Matt Dillon. He also had an episode of The Equalizer under his belt. The book barely mentions Horovitz’s acting career, even his more recent, more dignified turns in indies like Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young. (Of Lost Angels, he says only, “Please, if you care about me, do not look it up.”) Meanwhile, it completely ignores his foray into movie comedies, 1992’s Roadside Prophets, a relentlessly quirky, record-geek spin on Easy Rider (crossed with Straight to Hell) that finds Horowitz and X front man John Doe riding motorcycles around the desert, witnessing eccentric cameos from the likes of John Cusack, David Carradine, Timothy Leary, and Don Cheadle. It’s not a great movie; less funny ha-ha, more funny ha-Hey, is that Flea? Still, Horowitz is funny in a squirrelly sort of way — and as in his dramatic turns, Horovitz has a certain likable, sensitive stoner magnetism. Who knows? In an alternate universe, Horovitz might have been chosen to be Keanu Reeves, and Dogstar would have become huge instead of the Beasties.

“Sabotage” (1994)

As Amy Poehler writes of Spike Jonze’s addictive 1994 clip for the Ill Communication standout, “I truly believe there would be no Anchorman, no Wes Anderson, no Lonely Island videos, and no channel called Adult Swim if this video did not exist.” She may be overstating it a tad, but you can see where she’s coming from. There is a shared metamodernist streak, one that film scholar James MacDowell once identified as “a tightrope between a cynically ‘detached’ irony and an emotionally ‘engaged’ sincerity” — something that certainly describes the Beastie Boys paying loving yet ludicrous homage to 1970s cop shows. Plus, as in Anchorman, “Sabotage” gets a whole lot of comic mileage out of bad hair and silly clothes. (“Once we discovered wigs and mustaches, we just couldn’t stop, and would go out in disguises every night,” Jonze writes.) One thing it definitely did do was make Jonze’s bones, paving the way for a foray into movies that walked a similar edge between aloofness and vulnerability. “Sabotage” also significantly raised the bar for all future Beastie Boys videos, which would go on to riff similarly on kaiju (“Intergalactic”) and ’60s spy films (“Body Movin’”). But regardless of whether you consider “Sabotage” some Rosetta stone for millennial humor, it still remains as funny and badass the 1,000th time as it was the first (a hypothesis MTV certainly put to the test).

Nathanial Hörnblowér (1994)

Most of the world first met Nathanial Hörnblowér in 1994, when he stormed the stage at the 1994 Video Music Awards. Taking some much-needed piss out of R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” beating “Sabotage” for Best Direction, Hörnblowér — dressed in lederhosen and carting an enormous pipe — railed against the entire “farce” while a baffled Michael Stipe looked on, blurting out, “I had all the ideas for Star Wars!” in his cartoonish Swiss accent before security finally carted him off. But Beastie Boys obsessives and a few unsuspecting journalists were already well familiar with Yauch’s yodeler-auteur alter ego, a filmmaker and renaissance man (he was said to have “pretty much invented snowboarding” and “built his own helicopter out of wood”) who also happened to be Yauch’s uncle. Hörnblowér was credited with directing nearly a dozen of the group’s videos as well as the artwork on Paul’s Boutique, but his greatest contribution to the Beastie Boys was as Yauch’s Tony Clifton–esque escape valve, a mythic personality he could escape into to say the most bizarre shit he could spin — like that time he wrote a letter to New York Times critic Stephanie Zacharek over her negative review of the “Ch-Check It Out” video, demanding she send him a goat. Yauch kept the joke running for years, even directing a 2006 short, A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hörnblowér, in which David Cross assumes the role to cross-country ski across Manhattan and play chess with a dog.

The Hello Nasty Infomercial (1998)

Released into the bowels of basic cable in 1998 (and today rescued on YouTube), the late-night infomercial created to promote the release of Hello Nasty took the group’s zeal for character work and bad wigs in an especially surreal direction. Tamra Davis, who’s helmed comedies like CB4 and Billy Madison (and is married to Diamond), stitched together this parody of low-rent miracle-product pitches, with each member taking a turn in the spotlight: Horovitz as an audience member freaking out over a juicer that plays Beastie Boys songs; Diamond, barely keeping it together as a braying fitness guru; Yauch as a Don Lapre–esque, get-rich-quick schemer. Although the infomercial was a joke, offering things like the all-in-one shampoo, cleaner, and spermicide called Sure Shine, viewers really could order the album via the 1-888 number on the screen, which also directed them to the just-launched website for the band’s Grand Royal record label. All in all, it was a brilliantly ahead-of-the-curve marketing scheme, one couched in a form of anti-comedy whose deadpan non sequiturs, deliberate shoddiness, and butt-ugly sweaters predated Tim and Eric Awesome Show by nearly a decade. So maybe Amy Poehler is onto something.

Futurama (1999)

Joining an esteemed list that includes Leonard Nimoy, Conan O’Brien, and Beck(’s disembodied heads), the Beastie Boys guest star as themselves in the first-season Futurama episode “Hell Is Other Robots,” still headlining arenas in the 31st century — and still doing “Intergalactic” — despite being craniums in jars. The group does a corny a cappella rendition of “Sabotage,” gamely plays along with cracks about the long wait between records (Fry: “Back in the 20th century, I had all five of your albums!” Ad-Rock: “That was a thousand years ago. Now we got seven”), and even turns up in Robot Hell, tormenting Bender with a little rap about the eternal punishment awaiting music bootleggers. The cameo reportedly came about because the Beasties were big fans of creator Matt Groening — “particularly Adam Yauch,” according to their publicist. Unfortunately, conflicts with the recording schedule meant that Yauch had to bow out; that’s Horovitz doing his best MCA impression instead.

“Triple Trouble” (2004)

In the book, Horovitz is a little down on To the 5 Boroughs, saying that the pall cast by September 11 inspired an album where “the serious ones feel a little forced, and the funny ones are a little flat” — an embodiment of a panicked and melancholy time when everyone, quite understandably, got in their own heads. Still, you’d never know it from watching the video for “Triple Trouble,” another Hörnblowér special that finds the group donning outlandish, Dave Navarro–meets–‘N Sync costumes to strut the red carpet and talk shit about Sasquatch, who then kidnaps the Beasties and forces them to play Pong and participate in a drum circle in his cave. As video concepts go, it’s kinda just one long pothead reverie, but it still gets in some decent jokes about celebrity culture and MapQuest — and at a time when dumb shit was more than welcome. Not to mention, it gave us 15 of the greatest seconds ever committed to video: Kanye West learns about Sasquatches.

30 Rock (2009)

The year 2009 was a dark one for the Beastie Boys. While readying an album and another major headlining tour, the group was forced to put everything on hold after Yauch was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his salivary gland. Yauch’s illness also meant that he had to sit out on this guest appearance on 30 Rock, where the group was meant to be part of a star-studded, “We Are the World”–style benefit song being put together by Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, solely to find his ailing father a kidney. Instead, Talib Kweli subbed in, joining Horovitz and Diamond — as well as Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Adam Levine, Norah Jones, and too many others to name — as they rapped about how sometimes it’s better to just have one of something: heads, dogs attacking you (“There, we’ve proved our point!”). The episode ended up airing just a month before the Beastie Boys would play their final live show, a context that makes the otherwise very funny moment feel bittersweet.

Fight for Your Right Revisited (2011)

The same could be said of Yauch’s final video for the group, which brought everything full circle — its dizzying assemblage of celebrity cameos paying testament to the incredible influence the Beastie Boys had, across so many spheres, while also going back to where it literally all began. Picking up where “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” leaves off, the short finds Mike D, MCA, and Ad-Rock — now played by Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, and Elijah Wood — continuing to wreak drunken havoc across town, having run-ins with so many more famous people that it would be far more efficient to say who isn’t in it. (Okay, here’s a sampling anyway: Amy Poehler. Ted Danson. Rashida Jones. Steve Buscemi. Susan Sarandon. Robert Downey Jr. Maya Rudolph. Dan Aykroyd. Alicia Silverstone. Stanley Tucci. Kirsten Dunst. You get the idea.) Finally, the young Beasties come face to face with none other than their older, time-traveling selves played by Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Jack Black. The generational friction culminates in a dance contest, ending in everyone peeing on each other before they’re arrested by the cops (played by the actual Beastie Boys). It’s crude and sweet, ironically self-aware yet still deeply sentimental, painfully hip but also absurdly dumb — much like the Beastie Boys themselves. All in all, a fitting capper to such an accidental legacy, one created by three dudes who were always just out to make each other laugh.

Source: http://www.vulture.com/2018/11/a-brief-comedy-history-of-the-beastie-boys.html

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victoriagloverstuff · 6 years ago

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5 Great Books of Hollywood Outsiders

The Los Angeles literary genre became a household staple when my family moved there from Italy in 1994. My parents unloaded garage sale finds of Joan Didion, Nathanael West, Christopher Isherwood, and Raymond Chandler, and countless celebrity biographies at the house every weekend. The books were intended as literary tour guides to understand a certain kind of loneliness, a feeling of being unhinged that was specific to the city, particularly Hollywood; the pinnacles of success and dark areas of addiction of Jerry Stahl’s Permanent Midnight, the sordid repertoire of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, and Marya Wyeth’s painful meanderings in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays were a warning about the things that could happen to the women of the land: psychiatric ward internments, suicides, divorce, and nocturnal excursions on freeways.

For me, the texts functioned as group therapy, introducing me to a circle of ghosts and living legends that provided much needed comfort: everyone went through it—brutality, fear, solitude, miraculous streaks of good luck, bursting bank accounts and overdrawn notices. Whether or not you became successful, the toll was always the same. Nathanael West’s The Day of The Locust reassured me that madness was not elitist. It visited the rich and the poor, the industry’s insiders and newcomers without distinction. Jean Stein’s oral history West of Eden, Eve Babitz’s L.A. Woman and Slow Days Fast Company, and David Ulin’s anthology Writing Los Angeles live by my bedside table and serve as a plane ticket from Italy whenever I want to escape to grandeur, desperation, and lust.

But as much as I love a good LA-based novel or essay, I’ve noticed that the stories that truly kept me company were the ones about outsiders, the people who lived on the fringes of show business and re-invented the rules according to their own vision. Maybe everyone in Hollywood feels like an outsider, but below are my favorite ones.

Christopher Isherwood Diaries, Volume 1, 1939-1960, ed. Katherine Bucknell

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A European writer in exile, Isherwood immigrated to the United States in 1939 with his friend W.H. Auden and joined the community of expats, artists, and intellectuals who had fled Nazism. As uncontrollably cool as Isherwood was, there was no way he could not have been an outsider: British, gay, a pacifist, an ardent explorer of Hinduism, mysticism, and vedantic consciousness, and the future life partner of a man thirty years younger than him.

He worked in Hollywood as a writer for hire, but to him it was a way to have an income: “The studio, is just an office I visit in the daytime.” His diaries offer a unique insight into the feelings of those who had been lucky enough to escape the war. He essentially became an outsider observing outsiders, people striving to find a moral balance between everything they had left behind (war, deportations, bombings, persecution) and everything they were stepping into (sunshine, movies, ocean).

How did they navigate the duality of this shaky territory? Where and how did their sense of guilt for having escaped come into play? The diaries are also filled with observations about Hollywood figures like Greta Garbo. In particular I adore his account of a picnic with the diva and the guru Krishnamurti: “Garbo was anxious to meet Krishnamurti. She was naturally drawn to prophets––genuine or otherwise . . . She wanted to be told the secret to eternal youth, the meaning of life—but quickly in one lesson, before her butterfly attention wandered away.”

The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, ed. by Katherine Bucknell

Katherine Bucknell deserves a monument for the archival work she’s done editing Isherwood’s diaries. It’s thanks to her research and drive that I encountered the epistolary relationship between Christopher Isherwood and his lover, the American portrait artist Don Bachardy. The two met in 1952, becoming involved shortly thereafter and openly living together in Hollywood for decades as a gay couple with a big age gap. Through their letters (and the subsequent podcast curated by Bucknell, where Simon Callow interprets Isherwood’s letters and Alan Cumming plays Bachardy) I fell in love with this brave and visionary couple.

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The letters reveal what it means to be a real artist, true to your calling, essentially timeless and disconnected from fashion, moralist impositions, and lifestyle trends. Isherwood allowed their love story to develop over years and long distances (Hollywood, New York, London, and continental Europe) so that Bachardy could develop his artistic career and see the world. The Animals is both a book about love and a book that teaches us the grace of being part of one’s artistic milieu (literature, film, art, ballet in this case) without falling into the trap of having to adhere to its rules. Isherwood and Bachardy wrote to each other for years in the guise of horse and cat. Bachardy was “Kitty”, “Fluffcat,” “Sweetpaws,” and Isherwood is “Drub,” “Dobbin,” “Old Pony.” The safe animal world they created was their way of making sense of their existence, lived simultaneously on the fringes of society and in extreme engagement with it.

Peter Viertel, The Canyon

This somewhat autobiographical coming of age gem from 1940 is virtually impossible to find today. The protagonist, George, grows up in a canyon by the ocean with a small gang of friends, a delightful cast that includes Betsy, a sensual tomboy who opens him up to his budding sexuality. As the kids grow they become more aware of their class differences, and the wild, free life of the canyon grows more complex and layered. At 17 the group breaks up for good. In the novel, a twenty-something George ponders those days of early youth and the way in which a small neighborhood was once considered a town.

Even though this is not a proper Hollywood book, it is written by a personality who is Hollywood as they come. Peter Viertel was the son of poet and theatre director Berthold Viertel, and screen and fiction writer Salka Viertel, who was a great friend of Greta Garbo and a godmother figure to Isherwood. They immigrated to America during the First World War when Peter was still a boy. On Sundays, the Viertel house hosted members of a certain kind of bohemian expat community, including Marlene Dietrich, Charles Chaplin, and Aldous Huxley. This novel is in a way a reflection of Peter’s own relationship with the land and people he was tied to from an early stage in life. Somewhere beneath the surface is the suggestion that if you move to Los Angeles, Hollywood will find a way to creep inside the hidden canyon of your community, break up your friendships, and instill its barriers, determining from early on who is in and who is out.

Isis Aquarian with Electricity Aquarian, The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family

Thanks to the documentary Wild Wild Country, it has become easier to understand why hundreds of wide-eyed young people would live communally, run organic restaurants, and follow a charismatic guru who acts like a rock star. I have always been fascinated by Father Yod, an otherworldly Hollywood Hills figure who started a commune and married 14 women, all of whom were young, beautiful and seemingly either pregnant, breastfeeding or with small children on their hips.

This book, edited by one of these very women, Isis Aquarian, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing for Document Journal has been an essential travel companion for me since I first discovered it. Part oral history, part photography book, it documents the lives of the members of the Source family, the other side of the coin of the Manson family. As Isis says: “We were the beautiful, rich and generous. We had sex, drugs and rock and roll, but we encountered the spirit.” Father opened The Source Cafe in the late 1960s on Sunset strip, hosting a bunch of kids in a mansion in the hills in exchange for their work at the restaurant.

In its heyday, the Cafe’s patrons included Jack Nicholson, Frank Zappa, Julie Christie, Marlon Brando, and Warren Beatty. But not long after the Manson murders of 1969, Hollywood had little patience left for white robes and polyamorous cult leaders, and the very people who had enjoyed the “divertissement” of this peculiar gang of Hollywood cool kids were the ones who drove them out of the city. Though the family possessed the aura of rock stars (father fronted a psychedelic rock band called Ya Ho Wa 13. The CD is included in the book) this remains a story of outcasts and lost souls. When the family broke up, several of them relocated together to Hawaii in 1974, only to be rejected by the locals there. With nowhere to go and very little money left, Father Yod made a grand exit by jumping off a cliff with a hand glider on a windy day. He broke his back, refused to go to a hospital, and died surrounded by his most faithful “children.” This exceptional book goes hand in hand with the The Source Family a feature length documentary directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos.

Michael Frank, The Mighty Franks

The Hollywood memoir as a genre in itself deserves a whole other best-of list in my personal repertoire. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, Drew Barrymore’s Little Girl Lost, Priscilla Presley’s Elvis and Me, and the classic Mommy Dearest by Christina Crawford. Within this genre, Michael Frank’s recent memoir, The Mighty Franks, is a tsunami of everything I love most: a dysfunctional family with no sense of boundaries, Laurel Canyon, European Jewish émigrés, amazing style, and a passion for arts and film. At the center of this story is the relationship between young Michael and his mercurial, seductive aunt Harriet, or “Hankie,” who elects him as the heir of the family’s artistic legacy––aunt Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch are screenwriters and producers, and the title The Mighty Franks is Hankie’s way of addressing the family.

Good read found on the Lithub

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