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littlemisslipbalm · 4 years ago

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“you get me” (famous!y/n x harry)

Famous!y/n x Harry Styles

First Harry fic so please be kind, but feedback is SUPER appreciated

Initially inspired by the picture of Harry leaving the Gucci store with 15 bags but barely has anything to do with that lol

Definitely thought of Ellen for the interview idk why tho - also I struggle with writing Harry’s dialogue because I really want to get it right, but hopefully the more practice I get, the better/more natural it will sound. ALSO i have like no music or music industry background lol. Somewhat proofread, but its 2:30 am so it could be shit

Fluff!

Warnings: maybe some angst over being famous per say, past loneliness

Word Count: 3.7k literally howwww, i’m going to do a pt. 2 though because it was kind of a long set up and feelingsssss

---

Interviewer: Please, welcome our next guest, a woman who’s sure to have her name written up beside the music greats someday, Ms. Y/N L/N!

You can’t contain the grin that spreads to your face as you carry yourself out onto the stage and see the audience cheering for you. It was your third big interview since your first album had been released and you’d seen your fame skyrocket over night. This being the third one this week meant you’d gotten comfortable getting asked questions, but you also weren’t bored of it yet. It was exhilarating being the center of attention, especially for something that had been your life’s work up until this point. You always had to fight for whatever you got and the recognition you were starting to have was reassurance that you hadn’t been a fool to risk a safe and certain life for your dreams.

The interview begins as the rest had, a few pleasantries, how you were feeling, and then the introduction of the album. The host asked you what your inspiration was for some of the songs and the album name and cover. You loved to talk about the music, it was the whole reason you were there. The meaning, the sound, the name, it all meant so much to you and you talked about how music can be interpreted differently by everyone and even the shifts in someone’s mood can change a song’s meaning, but what it meant to you at the time of writing was always something specific. You practiced those answers in the mirror before the interviews because they were important to you and you didn’t want your words on your art to ever be misconstrued. The host then complimented your style and you were at the point where you thought your interview should be wrapping up when they asked you one more question, and it threw you for a loop.

Interviewer: So Y/N, we’ve been hearing some rumblings around, about you and another famous musician, Mr. Harry Styles. Anything going on there?

Your face heated up, you hadn’t been expecting a personal question about possible relationships. Nothing like this had been asked of you at your previous interviews. It’s about the music, the art, and who you were, it’s always about that and nothing more. To be honest, you were a bit annoyed the host had chosen to stray from those topics. You didn’t care for the celebrity side of being a famous musician, the lack of privacy, the prying eyes of media and the general public. They saw enough of you through your art, you bore your soul through music why did they want to peak into your heart as well?

Y/N: I don’t know if I’d rather be with Harry Styles or actually be Harry Styles. Like, he’s literally such an icon, I want to be able to walk out of a Gucci store after spending hours there with 15 bags full of my purchases and helpers to carry it all out c’mon… He’s also an amazing songwriter, musician, and performer, of course. Didn’t mean to sound superficial, but I’d also love to own even half of his closet.

You hadn’t really answered the question, but the audience laughed and the host obviously got the hint that you weren’t interested in fanning any flames of romance with Harry Styles or anyone else. For one, you didn’t even know the man, but you had always been a loving fan of his. You cited him as one of your role models when you were first starting to try and break into the music world. Second, if you did know him, that wouldn’t be an appropriate topic for your album press junket going on, even if it meant more publicity because of Harry’s big celebrity status. The host decided to qualify their original question with a final sentiment.

Interviewer: I totally feel the same way! I only ask because the outpouring of support you’ve received seems to be from similar groups who also follow Harry. Many have been comparing your sound to his solo career work.

Y/N: Ah...well that’s very kind of people to say. He’s definitely a big inspiration, his creativity and drive is incredible. I’d love to be as successful as him someday.

The interview ended. You and the host shook hands and you waved and sent kisses to the crowd before retreating backstage. You were exhausted, but happy. You hoped to avoid anymore stressful interview questions that didn’t truly revolve around music. Of course, life is never that simple.

One month later

You had done countless more interviews and talk shows as promo for your album and the buzz around it had continued to grow. Your fame continued to rise as well and that one question you had dodged at your third interview had come back around to bite you, naturally. Daily Mail’s dumb headline read: “Y/N can’t decide! Date Harry Styles or Steal His Closet?” The Sun was also running with your response and miscontruing it completely, something about how you were madly in love with Harry but jealous of his designer partnerships, you couldn’t even stomach reading the garbage. This was your worst nightmare. Not only was it taking away the focus from your album, but you were also sure this dumb gossip had reached the very set of ears that the gossip was allegedly also about.

You had signed with Columbia Records for your first album, the same record label as Harry Styles, so managers had been in contact with one another about the whole fiasco trying to get the actual truth - which was that the two of you didn’t even know each other and there were no problems whatsoever. Your manager also brought along the good news that Harry had actually listened to your album and loved it, “He said ‘Congratulations’ by the way, loved the sound. Said he’d heard you were very music focused and be open to do some mentoring on songwriting and vocal specifics, if you wanted. It’d have to be in private though, obviously.” She had added the last bit, but you understood why. To have the opportunity to discuss your music with one of your longtime role models, heroes even, was beyond anything you could have imagined coming from your album’s success. And it made the drama all the more palatable because now you at least got to talk to Harry like the media was so adamantly saying you were doing already.

You nodded quickly and agreed, while trying to keep your teenage fangirl excitement hidden below your mature now-famous musician facade. Like you said, Harry was your hero, he’d been your hero since you were in middle school and had Up All Night downloaded on your iPod touch, blasting it as loud as possible, sound hitting your poster-filled walls. You weren’t the same girl as you were then, obviously, you had grown up to be a strong, independent, and confident woman. But, you still smiled at the thought of your younger self with your baby face squealing in the nosebleeds at the Take Me Home Tour (where you swore Harry had looked straight at you) and her seeing you now, dressed in a sleek outfit setting up an appointment to meet with Harry to discuss your first album, a success.

The next Thursday evening

You took a deep breath, in through your nose and out through your pursed lips. You were anxious and excited at the exact same time. Your meeting with Harry was tonight, right now actually, and you hadn’t been able to think about much else since your manager had confirmed the meeting last week. She got you the details a couple of days ago, the location: his house in Malibu, the time: 5:45 P.M. You had brought along a copy of your album on vinyl because you thought it sounded best this way, second only to performing it live.

Choosing your outfit for tonight was probably the toughest decision you’d ever made, harder than choosing between an education and following your dreams, harder than choosing your favorite Beatles song. You didn’t want to worry so much, this wasn’t a date you kept reminding yourself, but everything you tried on earlier kept having something wrong with it, too dressy, too boring, too ‘not yourself’. You had settled for these blue high-waisted pants that you’d worn to your first ever podcast interview, a thin black long sleeve, and a brown leather coat that fell below your hips with vans sneakers, casual, simple, yet still true to you and your vibe.

You raised your free arm and formed a fist, hesitant to knock, as if you’d damage Harry’s seemingly perfect Malibu beachfront home by knocking too hard on the wooden front door. You waited a few moments and could here some shuffling behind the door, some incoherent words were seemingly said, but the walls muffled them before they could reach for ears. Soon enough, Harry Styles in the flesh was before you. He beamed down at you, huffing, slightly out of breath as if he had been clear across the house when you knocked. His strong figure towered above your far smaller stature. He was hanging onto the door since he had opened it only slightly. “Hello, Y/N?” he greeted and questioned simultaneously. “Hi,” you responded and extended the same hand that had just rapped against his now open door. He gripped it, ushering you into his home, “Come in, come in, it’s nice to meet you, don’t want you to catch a cold now do we?” He took note of your strong handshake and ring clad fingers.

He walked you into an area between the kitchen and a sitting area. The kitchen was open aside from a bar high top between the two rooms. You sat down at his prompting and made yourself comfortable. “I brought my record on vinyl, sounds best in my opinion, otherwise I’d recommend seeing it live,” you laughed as you handed the vinyl to him and took off your coat. “Technically, y’know, I could hear it live right now, if you were willin’ f’course,” Harry had responded over his shoulder as he placed the vinyl by his idle record player, “Anything to drink?” “Just water for me, please.” His accent was even stronger in person, especially since he had moved back to London and seldomly stayed in California, except for business and quick trips. As far as you knew, he had already been here on business for the week and was able to pencil you in.

You two settled in, with your waters, seated at the bar top beside each other, but swivelling the chairs to face one another more. Again, you were overwhelmed with the reality of the situation, sitting beside Harry Styles as professionals, peers even. He had heard your work and liked it enough to want to discuss it with you. It was a day you never thought would come to pass. He started off not by asking about the music right away, but about how you were doing with the whirlwind that stardom is. “How are you, Y/N? It’s been somewhat of a out of the frying pan into the fire kind of moment for you?” He stared at you intently, caring to hear your answer.

You couldn’t help but chuckle again and contain your smile, “Thank you for asking, Harry. Yeah, its been definitely stressful, but it’s everything I’ve ever wanted and more so the good is still outweighing any bad. Definitely, fucking exhausted though, dunno how many more interviews I can do before my jaw goes completely rigid from talking so much.” It’s Harry’s turn to laugh, his eyes shone with intrigue at what you said and how you said it. You were gorgeous, but it was how your hands helped you through what you were trying to say and the small laughs you tried to keep in while you amused yourself with your words that really made him want to hear you talk all night long.

He agreed about how the promo junket for an album can get tedious and tiresome, but also the absolute fulfillment you get from people loving the music you’ve made. The two of you chatted about surface level personal matters for a little more, but quickly moved to the music. “I took a listen a couple weeks after the album was released. I especially loved the last track. It reminded me so much of a song I never released, actually…” he trailed off.

Your final track had been a ballad, an homage to George Harrison with your use of guitar and sitar, but the lyrics were a story based off of a poem you had written one night in high school. It surrounded a girl never feeling quite good enough for the person she wanted to be with and how it happened everytime, everytime she was ready to giver herself to someone, they were always closed off. Of course it held some truth to your own life and feelings, but you wrote this girl as someone with a seemingly perfect life - when yours was obviously far from any semblance of perfection.

You wondered what Harry’s song would have sounded like, had it been about a seemingly perfect girl or a guy with a seemingly perfect life, always giving himself to the wrong person and getting destroyed by that very fact because he was impatient as the girl in your song had been. “Can I ask, how so? How’d it remind you of your own song, the words or the music?” “Oh, the story, I felt like that for a time in my life and I like to be vulnerable in my songs because it helps me process, but listening to it back has always been too painful. Could never release that or perform it, it’d wreck me.” You nodded, you completely got where he was coming from. You noticed his downcast eyes and his somber tone, you knew not to push it any further.

It was quiet and you decided it’d be okay to take his hand resting between the two of you. “Harry, I understand,” your sincerity spilled into the words, filling the quiet house, “It’s not easy. Feeling that way. Thinking you’re the only goddamn one and why the fuck does it always happen to you? I used to ask my ceiling ‘why me?’ every night of high school” you smiled then. “But you know how it is,” you rubbed your thumb over his large warm hand and he lifted his head, “it gets so much better - c’mon look at us now! It can get hard, too, all this, I’m sure. But our lives? They’re amazing!” He beamed as he had when he had first seen you at his door and when you’d first really spoke. He moved his hand from under your palm to weave your fingers with his, both of your hands with covered in rings and they clinked to fit together, finally resting perfectly fitted. He shook your two hands up and down, “God, you’re so right! That damn song, m’sorry always puts me in a mood,” he shakes his head, “not yours though, f’course, s’lovely, better than my sodding song” he finishes quickly.

After that, the mood lightened right back up. It filled you with such appreciation for Harry that he would trust you so much with such a personal detail since you two had just met. But maybe, he had trusted you because he had felt that same spark between you. It wasn’t necessarily a romantic spark, but it was obvious the two of you were kindred spirits. Besides your album, the two of you talked about everything. You loved the same bands, movies and books, you both loved to cook and had similar fashion taste, you even had the same person type - something you found out late into the night.

At the end of the Side B of your album, Harry switched to a Bill Evans record that had ‘Peace Piece’ on it. You loved that song. So did he. “So...planning to raid my closet?” Harry raised his brows from the record player and walked back to you. You almost sputtered the water in your mouth. Luckily, you got it down. “Pardon?” “All that bad press the two of us have been getting...I watched the interview that kind of ignited the tabloids. You’re obviously not used to those overstepping personal questions.” You nodded. “It’s fine, even if you’d completely shut it down, the tabloids probably would have picked it up still, they snap up anything and everything, true or not.” You softened at his reassurance. You hadn’t expected Harry to bring the interview up, but you were sure he wasn’t happy about it, he was so private, especially about his love life. “Thanks, I’m sorry I tried to laugh it off, kind of made it worse, didn’t I?” “No! Thought it was hilarious and I totally appreciated the sentiment. Little ol’me, an icon? And an amazing artist? All I gotta do is watch that clip and I’ve fed my narcissistic side for the week!” You giggled and replied slyly, “So does that mean I can raid your closet? As compensation, of course.” Harry threw his head back in an all consuming laughter, when he’d composed himself he looked in your eyes again and said, “You just...God, you get me.”

Harry had continued to put records on throughout the night, diligently flipping sides and asking for requests, he of course had an extensive collection. The two of you had moved onto his plush couch that looked out his french doors to the beautiful ocean view. Finally, your exhaustion caught up to you, mid-Harry describing his latest travel fiasco, you glanced up at the clock. You gasped. Harry stopped. “When did it get to be half 12?” you questioned almost incredulously, “I’ve gotta get home, Harry, but this has been truly amazing, more than I could have asked for, so thank you.” Your speech began to rush as you started to get up and gather your things, that had slowly scattered as you’d gotten more comfortable, jacket by the table, shoes around the back of the couch, your phone forgotten somewhere in the couch. You couldn’t believe you’d spent almost seven hours just talking with Harry Styles.

Harry quickly stood up from his relaxed positioned on the couch and asked if you were alright to drive this late. You scoffed, “Oh please, I’ve driven around at 3 am before, I just have to turn up the music and I can cruise.” He smiled, “This was great, Y/N, I know we didn’t really go super in depth into your writing process, but I’d love to write with you sometime or just hang out again f’course. Your seriously talented and obviously a wonderful person.” He didn’t include that he felt like he’d never met anyone like you, never met someone so perfectly matched to himself, in passions but also in work ethic and demeanor - compassionate yet confident. He felt like you got him perfectly and he got you. You had stopped your scramble to gather yourself and now you were both smiling at one another.

This had really been an unforgettable night, you couldn’t believe how well you two had meshed, like childhood friends reconnecting after years apart. “Can I give yeh a hug before you go?” Harry’s voice had grown raspier as the night had progressed. He had grown rather tired an hour ago, but had pushed through because they had been having so much fun and you hadn’t noticed his physical fading or the time, obviously. You stepped toward him and his large tattooed arms enveloped you into his body. His body truly dwarfed yours now as he held you to his chest. You both were warm and soft. He tucked his head on top of yours that rested on his chest. Your arms were loosely resting where his back met his waist because you would have had to strain to get them to encircle him. His arms rested around your small frame. “Love your jacket,” he mumbled into your hair. His rough voice was quiet, but the house was silent otherwise, Tusk Side C had finished around when you had noticed the time. The embrace lasted long, but it felt so amazing you had a hard time pulling yourself away, but you had to get back home.

“G’night Harry” you said softly at the threshold of his home. He had insisted on walking you to the front door at least, since you had declined his offer to walk you out to your car on the street. “G’night. Safe travels.”

You got in your car and headed to your apartment in the city. You didn’t bother digging for your phone so you turned on the radio and drove home singing whatever came on, including your own song at one point. The whole time you drove with a grin. Harry was the nicest person you’d ever met and you were confident that the two of you were friends now. As you pulled into your parking garage it dawned on you why you hadn’t connected your phone immediately when you got in your car. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” you put the car in park and rested your palms in the depressions of your eyesockets, over your closed eyelids, and rubbed hard. “Fuck!” It was far too late to drive back out to Malibu for your phone and you obviously couldn’t text Harry that you’d left your phone at his place, despite the two of you exchanging numbers during the night for future hang outs, so they didn’t have to be arranged through your managers, like playdates. Even if he found your phone between the cushions, he couldn’t drop it at your place in the morning because he didn’t know your address. This was a whole mess, you thought. You’d have to drive over in the morning and hope he was still there or email your manager from your computer. The former meant you got to see Harry sooner and likely your phone, too.

part 2

@berrynarrybanana

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #har #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fan fic #I DID IT #I sat down and wrote it #and it took forever #and I need to write a second part but I made something coherent #one direction fanfiction #not my gifs #my writing #I love you h #you get me #my writings

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cowb0ygenius · 4 years ago

Video

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Interview with Julien Baker | From the Music Desk

Julien Baker is set to release a new album, "Little Oblivions" on Feb. 26. Baker is coming off the heels of her collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus in their group Boygenius, and she played at Eaux Claires one year, playing background as Hanif Abdurraqib read poetry. Abdurraqib also wrote Baker's bio for the "Little Oblivions" release and once we started on our shared love for his work, there was no stopping our conversation. -88Nine Radio Milwaukee

[transcript under the cut]

Hi Julien!

Hello Justin!

Hey, how ya doing?

Uh, doing pretty well! Yeah, how are you?

I’m good. Uh, even before going into- even before reading your bio I was going to ask you about Hanif Abdurraqib, and then-

Yeah!

And then I was so fortunate to read the bio [laughs]

I, when he agreed to do that, I was like- [gestures] I was like, emotional? I was like, “I love Hanif!” I actually met- it’s so weird, I like, met/heard, became familiar with his writing, his poetry at, like, a christian writing conference in Grand Rapids?

When?

Um… Oh my gosh, was it 2017? Had to be 2017. Because 2018… yeah. I think it was like a couple of years ago. Um, and then like-

Why were you both there? … Speaking on Christian writing?

Okay so here- the, um, the person who ran it, um, was so sweet, and had like- so we had played there… “we.” This was before I toured with a band. But uh, played with violin. We had played there at this Christian college, um, in Grand Rapids, like just on tour, because whoever ran the events was like- I don’t wanna say “really cool” as if that’s an anomaly for people who- for people of faith, but like-

Sure!

I played there, they had asked Torres to play there, you know-

Hanif was there…

Hanif was there. Yeah, it seemed like the people programming wanted to have a dialogue that wasn’t so- like- the- I don’t- man. It’s funny, ‘cause now I don’t really like using words like “secular.” Um.. [laughs] There’s just this weird otherness, when you call something “secular.” You’re like, “oh…. Secular.”

[laughs]

But uh.. yeah! Just wanted to incorporate, like, non-faith based art as an exploration of like, more abstract ways of how, how we see God?

Mhm.

Umm… like, what that even is? Which I- I like, of course, I was like 20 years old and I was like “THIS IS MY LANEE” Um, I gave at- at that- I’m s- I’m a little embarrassed, but also…. God bless young Julien. I gave like a fucking powerpoint presentation at that conference-

Wow!

AT THAT CONFERENCE, about how [laughs] about how hardcore music, um, was an analog to the tenets of the Gospel.

How so?

Oh my gosh. I don’t know. I-

Hit me with the thesis!

Man, I don’t wanna- I just- It’s funny because I- back then I was trying to have a thesis. And I thought I ha- I had a lot of philosophies to deploy. And now I don’t. [long pause] Uh… Now I don’t. I’m not so- It’s not like I’m not so sure of them but I just have… you know, even back then where it was like this weird disclaimer I would put at the beginning of everything, like, “well I don’t know anything, but what I’ve found and how I understand faith,” and it’s just kind of like… I… I now feel responsible for, kind of, representing an ideology, or trying to pitch people an ideology that was not realistic. [chuckles] Or like-

What was your ideology?

I don’t know! I thought that, that…. [scoffs] It was a lot of stuff. Um, I thought, you know, I thought living out my faith, and- God, this is probably- I don’t wanna do this to another artist, uh, and be like, “Well I really liked what they said, so I did just like them!” Uh, but I- my favorite band was mewithoutYou? And,

Mhm.

It still is! mewithoutYou rocks. Um, but, I like…. Took everything about their ethos and how... Aaron like, characterized God and like the things that they did and tried to apply it to my own life in this way that when I look back on it now was really like- it was like, not that extreme but I wanted to be? You know? I wanted to have like, one shirt.

Oh, yeah.

And to not have- and like, take all the rider food and walk around outside and give it to homeless people.

Yeah.

That’s not- like, okay.

I get that, I get that.

That’s not inherently bad! That is not inherently bad. But, like… I think that I like, hung all of those actions on this belief that like, there was a true- like if I could only just find out what being right is.

Mm.

What God wants. What, uh- how to best love other people. What the right thing to do is.

Mm.

Then I could- and I was like- but you know, it’s because I held all these crazy standards for myself, of being like… ultimately kind? Then when I was like human and I did something shitty, I would have a panic attack about it. You know?

Yeah. Yes.

Like… and, I was just like- but it’s basically so I’m standing up here in a frickin’ tweed blazer, at this Christian conference, trying to be like, “Here’s how I learned love.” Right? Like, “I learned love because people at a church that was a little bit more progressive than the churches I had been to in high school, um, invited me over for dinner, no strings attached, and I was happy that someone was taking interest in me and being kind to me and loving me with no caveat?”

Mhm.

And the other place I found that was.. punk shows. The other place I found that, was, you know, and it was all wrapped up to in like… me being attached to like, straight-edge ideology. Which ha- like, can be useful as like an offshoot of like an understanding of sobriety but also has a lot to do with purity culture? And like… [gestures]

Yeah.

You know? It’s- it’s just- difficult! And so now, I’m like- I just have less to say. You wouldn’t know it ‘cause I just talked, like-

[laughs]

I just had like a 10 minute run-on sentence, obviously. But like, I have- I have less.

You think that’s ‘cause you have a larger audience?

Woah!

You think it’s harder to say something if you have a larger audience?

…. Oh god. You know what? I was gonna say no, but actually that might be a part of it. Like, I’d never thought of it like that before, but- man. I used to, like, if I were gonna tweet something, something that I f- that I shouldn’t feel so anxious about like, like- tweeting.

Yeah.

Like, first of all, it’s Twi- it’s like an imaginary digital realm. Like, i- it’s powerful! It’s powerful to educate, to organize, to um- you know, especially like... whatever, I’m not even gonna get off on that, ‘cause that’ll be like the whole interview. But, I would st- I would have to- I would be like visibly sweating and have to turn my phone off if I was just like, “Hey! please like donate to this organization that’s trying to not put children in cages at the border.” But it’s like, why? I have- with my- with the whole fabric of my being believe that’s the right thing to do, and I have this like, “well what if, what if you’re wrong? What if you hurt someone’s feelings?” And I’m just like, dude- I- I- it’s just like, the more people- I didn’t even… When I was a kid, I just wanted to play music, and I pretty much thought that I was going to be a teacher, and then I was going to use summer break to tour with my band. And just kinda be… a thirty-year-old, like, rock chick.

Cool. Mhm.

Who was just… touring bars.

Cool teacher.

And like, I don’t- I don’t know! I didn’t want- but the same thing is, like, I had somebody say to me really early on, I was like- I said to them—it was my friend Ryan Rado, who made the painting for the Turn Out the Lights album cover—I was like, “Man, the most- I feel like the only thing I wanna do with a microphone when I get it is turn it away because I always learned about shows being about… gang vocals! And like-

[laughs]

And that’s kind of- that’s like- that’s literal, but also, it has implications on how you understand… your platform as a musician. It’s like yeah, I’m just, like… you know? All the people watching my band are just the other bands that just played. So we’re all kinda on the same…

[laughs]

…plane?

Uhuh? [laughs]

Um, and it’s like- now- and i- he said to me- he was like, “But you can’t change the fact that you have the microphone.”

Mhmm.

“So you’re going to have to say something into it anyway.”

Yeah.

And then I was like, “Well what do I say?” [chuckles] What do I say if I wanna- if I truly want the world to be a better place. What can I say, to make whoever follows the Julien Baker music account on Twitter-

[laughs]

-think about being a better person! And I’m not- like, it sounds like I’m be- I’m being so mean to myself, because like… that’s true. Like I want to put ideas and links to articles and history podcasts about like- I want to put that in front of the people that trust me enough to smash that follow button. You know? Like-

Yeah.

I- I wanna try. But I… I can’t, like, I think I- I really just wanted to be good. And-

Yeah.

But it’s so… I don’t wanna be like, “it’s hard to be good,” because that’s like a cop out of like, “Well, I should just be average.” [laughs] But like.. yeah man. It’s difficult, to all of the sudden have-

The-

Yeah-

There’s a low threshold for forgiveness on twitter, you know?

Good God, yeah. Yeah.

I mean it’s like that, you know, it’s hard!

Yeah!

I mean I- I- I read a tweet that Hanif liked today, you know it was like in my feed of, like, “Hanif liked this.” And it was like something about Ocean Vuong—who I love—um, but I guess like, Ocean like, said something today or something like that? And then it was like a… there was like a poet that was like, “This should also be a place for learning.” This- like, if someone said something, this should also be a place for forgiveness. And sometimes, we’re- sometimes we’re still figuring it out! And that’s okay-

Yeah!

-And that’s a really tough thing to do.

No, um, Ha- uh, I was just reading like, I think it was Hayley Williams was tweeting this whole long thing about like saying “womxn” with an x? And then like, like all- like, I didn’t even understand it. Like, what was the- I was just like, “okay!” I guess there was somebody that had a problem with this, and then she was just like, “Thanks. Thanks for letting me know that was problematic, I won’t do that anymore.” And I wish- I wish that I… ha- like- maybe I will get to a point where I’m like- It’s like, “I know I’m problematic! I’m- everybody’s problematic!”

[laughs]

But not least of all, me! You know?

[laughs]

Um, but I’m so afraid it’s like I will sit there and concoct what I want to say in an interview, or like- like when I have to do email interviews my manager will send me like four- like, “Hey, you- you really need to get this done”

[laughs]

Because I will sit here for seven hours, in this spot in my apartment, and be like, “That’s not the best way to say that! I could say it better!” You know, I’m just like- and then inevitably I’ll read it the next week and I’ll be like, “still sounds dumb.” Like, I just-

[laughs] You can’t win, Julien!

Can’t win! Yeah but it’s- it’s freeing. Its freeing to know that you can’t win.

For sure. Um- I’m going to have to wrap this up. We’re-

I’m so sorry!

Um- er- I think we have like two more minutes- I know, it’s been a quick 15. Yeah, um, you had said that mewithoutYou is, um, is your favorite band? And I would- I wanna come out of this with a song to play- could you tell me a mewithoutYou song that we can play? And why you like it?

Wowwww… okay. I’m sorry. I’m like a stan of them so I’m like mulling through their entire discography in my head right now.

Sure.

Um- oh my God. You know what? It’s a weird one, and I feel like.. mewithoutYou fans don’t hate me for not saying, like, 19- 1979 or whatever? But… um… play King Beetle and the Coconut Estate. That one’s really cool. It’s about beetles who think that God is like a light and then they all fight it- it’s like a really cool microcosmic little fable that is a really merciful way to look at humans trying to figure out what heaven or god or rightness is. But it’s just little bugs. [laughs]

[laughs]

Talking to each other! It’s really cute. King Beetle and the Coconut Estate.

Perfect

Yeah. Yeah!

Um, and thank you. I mean, that’s- that was the fastest 15 minutes I’ve uh ever spent!

Oh my gosh! We didn’t even- We just talked about a Christian music conference!

[laughs] We didn’t even really like get to Hanif, or-

I’m so- I’m so sorry!

Oh no, oh my God! The best is when you, uh, make a plan and then you throw the, you know, road map out the window.

Yeah!

This is my dream conversation!

Okay! [laughs] Well good! Thank you! It’s been- I’ve enjoyed this conversation quite thoroughly.

Me too! Thank you! Uh- and thank you for the, thank you for the music! Consistently throughout your career, and-

Oh! Yeah, I try!

And thanks for the, for the new record.

#julien baker #interview #little oblivions #2021 #88nine radio milwaukee #this interview is so good and cute!! she talks about the powerpoint she gave at that christian conference #transcript

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brokenbuttonsmusic · 4 years ago

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Laura Cantrell: Nashville-born, New York-based, Acclaimed Country Singer-Songwriter & DJ (& Kitty Wells Fanatic)

This post is a near- transcript of the Broken Buttons: Buried Treasure Music podcast (episode 2, side B). Here you’ll find the narration from the segment featuring the pioneering rock band Fanny, along with links, videos, photos and references for the episode.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Anchor or Mixcloud.

Music blog Stereogum used to have a running feature called “Quit Your Day Job” where they interviewed indie musicians about their current or former jobs. There was one with Marty and Drew from the band Blitzen Trapper. The two discussed being torn about walking away from teaching as their third album, Wild Mountain Nation, was starting to blow up. There was another where the lead singer of War on Drugs detailed some of the disgusting things he had to clean up while working as an apartment property manager. Mostly dead rats and clogged toilet stuff, but he did walk into an apartment that had been converted into a porno set. I remembered this discontinued “musician day job” feature while reading up on my next featured artist and it got me thinking.

How many professional musicians do you think have a full time day job? How many juggle multiple side gigs and still manage to tour and put out records regularly? How many have really successful careers all while trying to make it as a musician?

I don’t actually know. I did some research and there aren’t any reliable stats that I could find. There is a lot of anecdotal discussion on the topic. The consensus seems to be that most musicians are not getting by with music as their only, or even their primary source of income. I don’t think anyone is surprised by that.

One Reddit user said less than 5% of musicians derive all or most of their income from music. He didn’t offer a source or anything, but he seemed very authoritative in his post. And then after a few more Google searches I lost interest and listened to more Laura Cantrell.

Laura Cantrell’s story is what got me pondering how indie musicians go about juggling making art with the necessity of, you know, making a living to survive. In 2003, after two critically acclaimed albums, including a tour opening for Elvis Costello all across the United States and Europe, Cantrell was at a similar crossroads. Laura had risen to the position of Vice President of Equity Research at Bank of America in New York. Yes, you heard me right. Laura Cantrell was working as a corporate executive and touring with Elvis Costello at the same time. She actively worked on the road during the day and then performed for thousands of people each night.

Before we get further into what led up to this point and what came after, let’s hear a song from Laura Cantrell’s debut album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind. Here’s the title track.

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That was Not the Tremblin’ Kind from Laura Cantrell’s first album back in the year 2000.

Laura grew up in Nashville. She played a little bit of piano and sang in the church choir, but did not get into performing music and playing out until her college years. As a teenager she worked at the Country Music Hall of Fame as a tour guide. This job, in addition to the influence of the diverse musical tastes of her parents, sparked an interest in traditional music, particularly classic country. She also became somewhat of an aficionado in this area.

This love and knowledge of the early days of country music would help differentiate Laura as she honed her sound and selected her songs while developing as a performer down the road. Before that, however, it would make her an excellent college radio DJ and later an even more excellent DJ at WFMU, one of the best and longest running free-form radio stations in the country. Out of the New Jersey/New York area, WFMU is awesome to this day, with a wide array of programming where DJs still get to play whatever they want.

Laura is my favorite kind of DJ, and the kind that has been dwindling in numbers since the rise of music downloads, which then gave way to streaming and endless algorithms. First off, she’s knows her stuff. She carefully curates each shows, and thoughtfully sequences each set within every episode. She packs in history, context and story to create something that transcends your typical weekend-afternoon-background-radio-soundtrack. I know this show is about under appreciated bands and artists, but Laura Cantrell’s contributions to radio deserve to be heard by more people. You can find her past WFMU shows, called The Radio Thrift Shop, archived on the WFMU website. You can hear her present day on her “States of Country” radio show on the Gimmie Country radio app, or on her SiriusXM George Harrison themed show “Dark House Radio,” on The Beatles station.

This concludes the part of the show where I babble my enthusiastic endorsement of Laura Cantrell’s past and present radio career.

Laura began playing music with others in college at Columbia University. Her jam pals included Andrew Webster, future member of Tsunami Bomb and Mac McCaughan, who would go on to form Superchunk and Portastatic + found Merge Records. The friends would call their band Bricks. A lo-fi, mostly apartment recording projects that played sporadic gigs over the years.

Here’s the Brick’s song, The Girl with the Carrot Skin.

Living in New York, Laura began playing guitar and writing her own songs. She also plucked some choice classic country finds and incorporated them into her own performance catalog. One day she met a guy named John who asked her to sing on a song that would appear on his band’s next major label release for Elektra.

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That’s The Guitar from They Might Be Giant’s 1992 album, Apollo 18. John Flansburgh asked Laura to sing on that recording. It was the first time Laura recorded in a professional studio. John Flansburgh became a fan of Laura’s music and released her first recorded material as part of his Hello CD of the Month Club, an EP called The Hello Recordings in 1996.

Let’s hear another Laura Cantrell song. This time one that she wrote with Amy Allison. From Laura Cantrell’s 2014 album, No Way There From Here, this is All the Girls are Complicated.

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That was Laura Cantrell with All the Girls Are Complicated from her last full length release, No Way There From Here. Actually, that was her last full album of new material, but Laura did release an album a few years back of her BBC recordings on John Peel’s radio show. That album is called At the BBC: On Air Performances and Recordings 2000-2005.

I mentioned earlier that Peel was a big fan. Again, here’s John Peel’s full quote about Laura’s first album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind: "[It is] my favourite record of the last ten years and possibly my life.” Having the endorsement of the legendary English disc jockey was enough to give Cantrell wider exposer throughout the UK. She developed a loyal fanbase through regular appearances on Peel’s show, as well as US and European tours, including the opening slot for Elvis Costello. Which brings us back to Laura’s fork in the road. Before her third album, Laura decided to walk away from the corporate gig. She was excited to focus on music full time, but a little worried about walking away from the security of a successful career she liked and position she was good at.

From a spotlight CNN Business did on Cantrell in 2004:

“For several months until she finally quit, Cantrell balanced her day job with a growing schedule of rehearsals, gigs, recordings and publicity. On the day she appeared on the Conan O'Brien show she was at her desk until lunchtime.”

“And while life as a professional musician is a dream come true, Cantrell still looks back with fondness on more than a decade on Wall Street.”

“‘I came into Wall Street with a very typical kind of stereotype that it was all going to be people just obsessed with money. What I found was that there were just loads of interesting people who were a lot like myself, just doing it as a job and who had lives that were full of other things.’

‘So I miss some of the contact with people I met. Ironically it was a very supportive environment for me as an artist.’”

Laura’s first two albums were released on the the indie label Diesel Only, which was founded by her husband, Jeremey Tepper. Her third album was released by Matador Records, also an indie label, but with an impressive roster that included Liz Phair, Modest Mouse, Pavement and Sleater-Kinney. Released in 2005, Humming By the Flowered Vine continues Cantrell’s classic country sound, but with some evolved production and arrangements. Laura’s mastery as a song selector gets more and more impressive. This album includes a cover of a rare, unreleased Lucinda Williams song form 1975 called, “Letters.”

In fact, Lucinda Williams herself was thoroughly impressed with Laura’s cover of “Letters.” She attributes the cover to bolstering her confidence to go back through her earlier material and look for her own buried treasures.

From Blurt Magazine:

“The inspiration for her journey through the past struck when she heard Laura Cantrell’s version of her song ‘Letters,’ which Williams wrote around 1975 and recorded on a demo but never officially released. Explains Williams, ‘She got a copy from a mutual friend and did a beautiful, really sweet version of it that made me think wow, she brought this early song back to life, maybe I should go back and review some of my old stuff. I’ve got all these tapes of old little songs, but I never thought they were good enough to do anything with.’”

You know you’re an ace at finding under appreciated gems when you surprise Lucinda Williams by helping her discover one of her own songs. Let’s hear Laura Cantrell’s version of Letters.

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That was Laura Cantrell with Letters from her 2005 release Humming by the Flowered Vine.

In 2008, Laura returned with an EP called, Trains and Boats and Planes with 9 songs about… trains, and boats and planes. It’s very good and it includes a fun cover of New Order’s Love Vigilantes.

Throughout this time, Laura continued her radio show. She also started a family and became co-owner and co-operator of Diesel Only Records.

In this clip from an interview with Face Culture, you can really hear Laura’s passion for country music and its roots. She talks about the importance of country’s influence on rock n’ roll, and how each artist is inspired by something great that came before.

And Laura continuously pays tribute to the greats that came before through her radio show and on her own records. In 2011, Laura released a tribute to Kitty Wells called “Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music.” The collection includes nine Kitty Wells covers and one original, the title track, Kitty Wells Dresses.

From the Washington Post:

Here’s Laura talking about the inspiration for the album.

“Kitty wore very typical stage clothes for women who performed at barn dances and in early country music shows,” says Cantrell, a Nashville-born, New York-based country singer and host of an old-time music show on the legendary radio station WFMU.

“They were these frilly gingham dresses, non-threatening and cutesy. It became this uniform that all the women of the era wore, and I always thought it was a great metaphor for how you can underestimate the strength of the person or the value of the artist underneath.”

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That was the song Kitty Wells Dresses from Laura Cantrell’s tribute album of the same name, released in 2011. Wells was the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame upon its release. She was also the first woman inducted into the hall. Cantrell met and talked to Kitty about her album. She said that Kitty asked which songs were selected and as Laura began calling them out, Kitty would sing each one.

I’ve mentioned all of Laura’s past and present DJ efforts, all of which I’ll link to on my website, brokenbuttons.com. Laura also continues to release music. She had planned a host of special activities for the 20th anniversary of Not the Tremblin’ Kind, which had to be put on hold due to all things 2020.

You can contribute to Laura’s IndigGoGo campaign to help fund her new digital singles collection that she’s already started releasing. The plan is to release six singles with an A and a B side, all working with different musicians and producers. I’d recommend the $50 Kitty Wells Dresses Pack, which gets you access to the digital singles as their released, a signed CD copy of both the singles collection and the Kitty Wells Dresses album, as well as a copy of Laura's essay on Kitty and Patsy Cline from the book "Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries"

Laura Cantrell is the rare performer whose work is deeply rooted in its original source material while still feeling fresh and exciting. Laura’s radio shows can be described the same way. A buried treasure unearthing buried treasure and taking the old and classic and making it new and lasting and so much sweeter. Laura Cantrell.

References and other stuff to check out:

Laura’s Indiegogo campaign for her digital singles series

The Radio Thrift Shop - Laura’s prior radio show. You can stream past episodes and check out her playlists

Gimmie Country, where Laura hosts her current show States of Country. New episodes air 3:00 Monday EST. Laura chats during the show with listeners in the app.

Darkhorse Radio on Sirius XM. Laura’s other show dedicated to George Harrison. New episodes air Thursday at 3:00.

John Peel wiki entry about Laura

TMBG wiki entry about Laura

A Wall Street journal feature on Laura

An NPR feature on Laura

A CNN Business Week feature on Laura

Stereogum archive of the Quit Your Day Job feature

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aturtleinmiami · 4 years ago

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INTERVIEW WITH ALEXA LASH 11.3.20 If you don’t know who Alexa Lash is, then you must “like” her on Instagram and follow her immediately. She has her very own “Sound check song” in which she’ll include a stranger or a friend in the lyrics and makes up an interesting story to begin her set. I find myself singing it sometimes so it’s quite catchy. Alexa has a powerful voice to match her lyrics. She began playing locally with a ukulele, then during quarantine picked up an acoustic guitar and learned to play on her own. Now, she feels more empowered than ever and her craft has taken a fiercer shape, just like the tattooed phoenix on her back. My personal favorite is, “Every Little Thing I Do” where she pleads for her lover to say those magic words, we girls desperately want to hear and then strums along to a frustrated rap because the lover isn’t responding. Although most of the songs Alexa sings are originals and her new EP is due out shortly, she covers anything from “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse, “Zombie” by The Cranberries to the local’s favorite, “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. Alexa has diamond eyes and a beautiful smile with a quick wit that will have you singing along with the crowd to “MIA” and cheering during breaks as she sips on her old fashion. Our Interview went like this:  VA: It’s difficult for me to pinpoint your style of music, how would you describe it? AL: It’s funny, I always have trouble answering this question because I feel like I sound a little different with the band and as like when I was with November May I felt that I sounded like you know, more like alternative, soulful, a little funky. Now what I’ve been doing is singer-songwriter stuff; I guess my style is storyteller with soul. A little folksy but not. I don’t know my inspirations are drawn from various places including like 80’s music and Hebrew songs from JCC, Jewish camp. VA: What inspires you to write? AL: Well, what inspires me to write now and what has been I mean are mostly just experiences either that I have been through or that people I know have been through like I’ve actually written songs for other people who are about other people’s life you know, telling a story, like if it’s my story that’s great, if it’s another person’s story that’s great or made up stories like I just imagined something happening or how I would react or a collection of things that have happened over the course of whatever amount of time. I like telling stories about real life or fictional life, a lot of it was about relationships but now it’s kind of transitioned. It went from just you know a lot of oh, heart break and you know, I’m suffering to now it’s emotions that I’m experiencing in quarantine and those trigger song ideas. I wrote about anxiety during quarantine, that was one of my first songs that got a lot of connectivity and traction during quarantine, people were like, “Alexa, I really like your song, I connect with it” and people would start telling me that, since that song. Then I wrote some songs about thinking about death, about loneliness, about stress and just like all those feelings combined and then just kept writing. I wrote more and more and more. I just finished a song the other day about thinking about my future because music has become a priority. VA: When you sing, “She’s Gonna Be Fine” I feel the hurt from your gut, it’s a beautifully painful song, do you harvest the emotions of when you wrote that song right before you sing it? AL: Yeah; She’s Gonna Be Fine is such a special song to me. I actually recorded it recently so it’s going to be on my EP that I release out of the four songs and trying to replicate how I sing it in person is not easy when you’re in a room by yourself and I’ve noticed that I sing that song very differently depending on the audience and when the audience is engaged in my story telling like I can feel it throughout the night, I tend to sing it with more backing so when I start to sing that song, I don’t know if I’m conjuring up emotions but that song makes me sing emotionally because I know the words, they’re very measured and that song is based on a true story so it’s very easy for me to fall into it. I recorded it originally and then showed it to someone and they were like, “Alexa the pacing is kind of fast, can you redo it?” and I was like, shoot, you know, I really like the way that this sounds, I did some cool stuff with my voice but she was right. I didn’t draw the same emotional pull that I do when I’m in person and I don’t know why, I think I was just too excited to record it so last night, I re-recorded it and you can hear me like almost crying in it. Yeah, that song always makes me want to cry when I sing it. It takes a lot of out of me. When I’m done singing it, I feel like I can take a nap or go crawl in a corner and just keep crying or something. VA: What is your favorite song to perform and why? AL: There’s a mix. She’s Gonna Be Fine is one of my favorites to perform now, just because it tends to silence a room and there’s something special to be said about that for me because I’ve never been able to command a space as much as that song’s given me the power to do so. Beyond that song, I really like singing Sunrise, it’s also new, it’s one of the new ones because when I sing that, there’s a part that’s like with you, with you, with you, like I yell it and now everyone yells it with me but my favorite that’s kind of always been my favorite to sing with everybody has probably been MIA. I wrote that on the ukulele, and everybody’s just has always been really down to sing along and I love when the audience comes into the picture and sings it with me. There’s something special about even strangers who don’t know the song start to sing it, it just is a nice community exercise. VA: You play the ukulele and more recently learned to play guitar; are there any more instruments you have thought about playing in the future? (In my view, a keyboard is set up next to her) AL: I was telling somebody the story on a podcast that I did recently about my dad supporting my music. There’s more backstory to that but basically lately, my family, my friends have kind of all been into this dream of mine and I was thinking about getting a keyboard for a while. When quarantine started, I just, I wanted to learn everything and then I saw a friend of mine play the keyboard and I was like, oh my god I want one so badly and I was like, oh well you know if I have a keyboard and the band wants to come over then my keyboardist doesn’t have to drag his, then I’ll have it so I just have all these random instruments that everybody can, so now I’ve got to get drums or something. Quarantine stopped from a lot of things being delivered and I ordered this keyboard about three months ago. My dad got it for me as like a, I want to support your dream kind of gift and I was like, are you sure? Like, I was going to get it anyway but like, are you sure? I was going to go broke dad. And I fell in love with this one and I ordered it and I was like, this thing is never coming in, ever. On that podcast I just did, I mentioned the keyboard and like two days later, after that podcast aired, I get the call from Sweetwater that it was in and it was being shipped. It got here on Halloween, but I couldn’t open the box yet and on November 1st I opened it for the first time, and I haven’t moved from this spot. VA: During quarantine, you have made new musician friends and have brought them to share your stage; how does it feel to be a talent scout of sorts and do you think it is something you would like to continue to do? AL: I’ve been very lucky and it’s funny because your question lead into my day. Tonight, is my 90’s night, which is why I’m rocking the Jurassic Park shirt (I love it) for my zoom open mic that I’ve been doing since April. I’ve done a lot of stuff during quarantine, I did a song writer exchange, I did an Instagram takeover for Make Music Miami, I did some weird Jewish events, I got called the funky Zionista and I was like a little bit like, alright, chill that’s a little too much for me. Any chance I got to make music, I tried to do during quarantine; I dressed as Elsa for god’s sakes. All of these things that I did then lead to people coming to my open mic night from all of these different resources so during the song exchange, that person, her name is Rew, came on to my open mic like I went on to hers and she came to mine and then she brought her friends who are now are regulars of my night. Rock-n-roll Johnny always likes to be called out but all these people you know, come on and they were supporting me while I was trying to do my song writing lessons like trying to teach people how to write lyrics and to write music or to write songs. I tried different stuff and these people supported me and when I got a chance to go on a stage I could have played by myself for three hours but I was like, you know why not share the love with some of the people who have made quarantine more manageable so people like Clover, April I already knew before quarantine who just went on stage with me, my friend Cynthia same thing before quarantine, Luis was a friend of mine and then he brought the flute player in. This whole network of people that have just been supporting each other during quarantine are the ones I put up on stage, like you didn’t have to show up to my open mic night, it was helpful if I didn’t know you already or wasn’t too familiar with your music because Bar Nancy is a scared place for me like, I worked there pre quarantine that’s my family, that’s my home so who I bring into it is important to me like if you’re a jerk or an asshole, I’m not going to put you on stage with me and everybody’s attitude changes from day to day so you could have been nice prior to quarantine and then become not the nicest person. I’ve just gotten lucky, I’ve met all these talented people and I’ve gotten a chance to put them on a stage and I’ve tried to get them paid as much as I can, it’s not easy but I’m trying to create the opportunity for them. Honestly, it gets exhausting so as much as I want to say I’m going to keep scouting talent, I just keep hoping that I get lucky that people show up either to the open mic that I’ve never met before that live in Miami or that somebody introduces me to someone just because of the networking opportunities here because talent can be easy to find in Miami but talent with a heart and a solid, kind personality that’s not the easiest to find like people who aren’t out just for themselves I guess is what I’m saying. I feel very lucky for the people I’ve met Honestly, if Johnny didn’t live in New York, I’d put him on a stage in a heartbeat, if Rew didn’t live in New York, same thing. If my new California friends didn’t live in Cali - stage. I wish I could put more people on the stage that I’ve gotten to meet through quarantine. VA: If you had your choice of an artist to collaborate with, who would it be?  AL: Like Famous? Are we talking dead or alive? For a living artist, the first person who came to mind is Lady Gaga. I don’t know why that was the first name that came to my head, but I think it’s just because I admire her musical style like a lot. The way she sings, that would be amazing. I want to see how she writes. So probably her, I can’t even like think of anyone right now if you’d had asked me a while ago, I would have been like Meatloaf or Queen. Apparently, Lady Gaga because that’s where my mind just went. Alexa is finalizing her four song EP and her release party is scheduled on January 1st at none other than Bar Nancy. AL: The four songs are Sunrise, She’s Gonna be Fine, Sage & Wine and Who Knows Me. I was trying to tell a story and it was written in the same time period so I guess the idea is that the person you’re enjoying the time with somebody, know that they’re going to leave, they leave, she’s going to be fine, she cleanses her space and then she’s like, who even knows me anyway so it’s like the story.

Please come out to support Alexa and other talented local artists Friday nights at Bar Nancy on Calle Ocho. Bar Nancy is a great spot for drinks, food and live music. If you are hungry, The Cheese Stands Alone serves amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and if you’re vegan, don’t worry, Amanda has you covered.

#@AlexaLashMusic #AlexLashMusic.com #Nancy305.com #@barnancy305 @thecheese_stands_alone_

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adrianalvas · 5 years ago

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Podcast 188: Figure Section [aufnahme + wiedergabe] [ +Interview]

Figure Section arose from the meeting of Austrian-French musician and actress Olivia Carrère - aka Olive - and Belgian artist and producer Yannick Franck (RAUM, Orphan Swords, Mt Gemini), who first crossed paths on a theatre stage in Brussels.

Although founded on an acknowledgement of these styles, their execution is experimental, idiosyncratic and entirely modern in spirit, guided by an intent to revise their influences and an approach shaped by romanticism and a surreal, Dadaistic sense of humour. The recurrent themes of the project address friendship, love, loss, existential angst, survival, irony, degeneration, queer culture, non-conformity and ‘the expiation of tensions through modern day rituals’.

The duo’s first single ‘Teutonic Knights’ was hailed by The Brvtalist as an illustration of ”infectious wave [music] with an eerie atmosphere and frigid vocals”, a track that subsequently generated widespread acclaim. In October their debut EP was released on the cult Berlin based label run by Phillip Strobel, aufnahme + wiedergabe.

TF: What motivates you to create Figure Section?

O: My collaboration with Yannick is an intersection between a strong friendship and similar interests and tastes in music. What’s more, the collaboration between us is really complementary in the creative process and allows us to explore new musical playgrounds which neither of us would probably reach if we were working separately.

Y: There are certain musical realms I wanted to explore for a long time whilst doing very different projects (Orphan Swords, RAUM, Y.E.R.M.O.), and since we met and started to experiment together, we dreamed of having a proper duo. It took time but here we are, I am very glad the project exists and I couldn’t dream of a better companion to do it with.

TF: Tell us something about you. What’s your background? Where did you studied and who influenced you to explore musical processes?

O: My background is rather diverse, and it took me a long time to discover how intimate I was with music as a listener, but also as a composer. I come from a theatrical background. I trained as an actress, though I started my studies with a degree in communication – specifically in socio-cultural animation - knowing that I would change path after obtaining it. It’s quite funny to see how tortuous life can be before finding your way through and beyond all these experiences. When I started as an actress ten years ago, something was missing in my professional contribution. I was desperately looking for some creative language that I could develop on my own. I was already familiar with singing since my childhood, so I started learning the basics of music theory online, and quickly I realized that I wanted to compose songs, and to find the easiest way of recording them without any external help. I got my hands on a keyboard and software and started composing, singing and producing at home. It was more a secret process for a few years, until I created a solo piece in the National Theatre of Belgium, which involved performing some of my compositions. This was a fundamental step where I learned that, with the music, I could be really free in the writing and performing process.

Y: I studied painting, but it quickly became clear that music was a territory worth exploring and one that I had to invest my time and energy into. Since I was pretty disgusted by the blatant materialism and the general mindset of the art world; the galleries, and a lot of the attitudes adopted by other artists (competitiveness, individualism, tendency to follow an art world, scale version of the Star System), I found there would be more freedom making music. People attend a concert to have an experience. Anyhow I love art, all sorts of art and my friends are usually creative people. Also, there have never been any boundaries for me, you can build sonic sculptures or paint rhythms, you can conceive a concert as a performance, you can do whatever you want. I recently moderated a panel at BOZAR about the underground art scene in New York in the 80’s, in East Village in particular. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dany Johnson (she was a resident DJ at Club 57 and later at Paradise Garage), Leonard Abrams (he ran the fabulous magazine The East Village Eye) and Gil Vasquez (DJ and president of the Keith Haring Foundation) and what struck me was the fact that at that particular moment in that scene you had zero boundaries between visual art, music, dance, performance… Klaus Nomi shared the bill with Ann Magnuson and John Sex and Haring curated shows and painted almost 24/7 while listening to music. It was all about energy. It’s academicism and speculation (art as a luxury product) that kills such energies (and eventually did in that case) Two different problems, both normative and alien to any creative essence. I stumbled upon a Serge Daney quote lately: ‘Academicism is the aesthetics of nihilism.’ And I agree with that, once you “do things because that’s the way they’re done”, reproduce them in blind fidelity and separate, classify, and annihilate boundary breaking forces, you start producing numb, meaningless objects. In this case a painting has to go from a gallery to a living room or a collection where it belongs. Is it a nice base material for speculation or a good way to seem educated and exhibit your taste as a buyer, to impress others? Hell no…a painting is rather an expression of life itself, a celebration, an exhibition of the worlds revolting features, its horrors, its injustice, its sadness, qualities and themes such as these…in every case it is an essential, vital gesture. Otherwise why even take a look at it? Music should be just the same.

TF: Do you spend all your time for your musical activity or do you have another job?

O: Yes, I do now. The musical activity has taken the vast majority of my time even though I’m still performing as a theatre actress, but that part of my professional activity is becoming more and more scarce. I’ve been recently offered to create music for theatre. So, my work today is divided between Figure Section, and other emerging projects for which I compose and produce for other artists, and my work as a music composer for the theatre. Maybe one day I will come back to the stage with a performance in which I’ll be the actress as well as the musician. I do keep an eye on that prospect even though it’s not the priority for the moment.

Y: I teach sound in cinema. We analyze movies and their soundtracks most of the time. It is a very interesting way to make a living next to music making.

TF: How is your live set up going to be? Any particular equipment? What’s your favourite track to play live and why?

O: We are working on the simplest and most efficient way of touring. So, our set is based on live keyboard playing, voice mixing, and equalizing the tracks live. So, there’s no particular equipment at the moment.

Spectral Dance, is one of my favourites to play live. It’s a more nostalgic synthpop song that offers a vast sense of space for the vocals and the keyboard parts. I just love its simplicity, almost naïveté, contrasted by lyrics about pernicious ghosts from the past that try to keep us from moving forward.

Y: There is a lot of different processes and ideas colliding and merging in Figure Section. It is always quite challenging for us to write a new song and perform it on stage. I think my favourite live song is currently Disfigured Section. We both sing on that one and I love that. Lyrics and vibe wise it’s sort of a Neo Dada track, maybe a tad surrealistic too, from apparent nonsense a lot of sense can emerge from the lyrics. Also, it is nervous, rough, noisy, kind of pissed off. At the same time desperate and full of energy. A union of opposites.

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TF: What new hardwares did you apply to make 'Spectre' LP? Do you have a particular method while working in the studio?

O: There’s no new hardware utilized, but we have a more precise choice of instruments these days as well as a particular approach in the production process. Yannick and I work just as well separately as together in the studio. It just helps us to be more efficient because of our very different schedules. We both share online a musical file filled with musical ideas, loops, drums and lyrics. We are both the composers and mixers of the songs, but Yannick is more the writer and the producer and I’m more the arranger and singer. I think that we have now reached the perfect balance in the creative process, which is almost symbiotic.

Y: Yes, it is super interesting because I never know where Olive is going to take a song to when she starts working on it with her great skills and sensibility. What I know is that great stuff will eventually happen, leading to things that will stimulate us and give us even more ideas.

TF: How do you compose this tracks? Do you treat them like musical narratives or more like sound sculptures or images?

O: It really depends on the material. Sometimes Yannick comes with a very complete composition and I add the keyboard and voice arrangements, sometimes I come with a proposition and he completes it. Our strongest asset as a duo is that we started music completely differently, Yannick as an electronic experimentalist and performer, and I as a pop songwriter and singer. So, what we do is bring these assets together in our songs. I think the first track of the Spectre release is the perfect example of that symbiosis. This is what we aim for.

Y: Yes, it is a creative adventure, we have no such thing as a clearly established routine, it’s more laboratory like. It is not “experimental music” but the way it is done is not conventional either.

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TF: Any movie, documentary, album (not electronic music) that you would like to share with our readers?

O: We are big fans of horror, thrillers and sci-fi. The last movie that left me fascinated as well as horrified is Midsommar by Ari Aster. I loved that movie because its director knows how to subtly inject weird elements of comedy that make you feel uncomfortable, as well as conveying an ice-cold intrigue about ancient pagan practices and rituals. Loved it.

Y: +1 for Midsommar. I loved that the movie never seems to bring any judgment about the neo-pagan community it depicts, it is just utterly different from what we know but it seems to make sense no matter how shocking it can be. It gives us a break from the ethnocentric attitude of many North Americans and from the extreme arrogance of modern western civilizations, which seem to be absolutely convinced of their superiority to any previous or different civilizations. Also, the visual effects are amazing. Der Goldener Handschuh (The Golden Glove) was quite a great movie too. Being utterly disgusted by this ugly, messy, desperate serial killer’s gruesome murders without being able to restrain myself from laughing was for sure a wild experience. And it really triggers thoughts afterwards. Moral thoughts especially. I found it pretty strong. A non-electronic album: Lux perpetua by Ensemble Organum, which is a very particular version of the Requiem by Anthonius de Divitis. It is such a beautiful requiem and such an incredible interpretation; it even features throat singing which is very unusual in the context of European polyphonic reinterpretations. 15th century art tends to focus a lot on death and mortality. And as Regis Debray said in his 1992 book The Life and Death of Images: “Where there is death there’s hope, aesthetically speaking.”

TF: What are the forthcoming projects?

O: Wrapping up our debut LP.

Y: We are also planning tours, confirmed dates are in Israel and the US so far but more will be announced later on. It would be fabulous to come play in Mexico too!

source https://www.tforgotten.org/single-post/Podcast-188-Figure-Section-aufnahme-wiedergabe-Interview

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perfectscoreblog · 5 years ago

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Perfect Score Visits BBC Introducing!

Welcome to our latest Perfect Score update! On Thursday 31st October Perfect Score tutors Tyler Clacey and Naji Richards spent their Hallowe’en accompanying participant Tian Mhende to BBC Introducing at Tobacco Dock in East London. We had an in-depth chat with Tyler about the day and what they learned.

Tell us about the Perfect Score trip to BBC Introducing!

We had a nice smooth journey and we got there promptly on time; a lot different to last year when we were stuck in traffic for six hours! It was a great day all in all, I feel like there were so many people who were at the same point in their journey musically. For the younger people there were a lot of their peers there, but there also people my age and Naji’s age who are a bit older and more experienced in the music scene but who are trying to bring the younger people in and give them knowledge and insights based upon our own experiences. I felt having that mix there was really beneficial.

The day was fairly focused on songwriting, performance and mental health/mindset. There was also some information about how to make money in the music industry. Mental wellbeing is very important to make sure you stay on track as an artist, though I noted there didn’t seem to be much on music technology or production on the day that we visited.

What was the highlight of your day?

Seeing a lot of Leicester people! It was great to see the community that I’m already in expanding and going out into the rest of the UK and spreading our knowledge and reputation in a united way.

Playing with new bits of kit like DJ gear was really fun. It was interesting to see someone like Naji, who’s grown up in the era of vinyl DJing, try some of the new equipment available at the event and show him how that works. Watching him learn something new was really cool, and demonstrates that no matter how far along you are in your musical journey, there’s always something new to learn! For my part, I learnt some new skills too, especially networking (I met lots of nice people). I’d also like to mention the great food!

What were the activities throughout the day?

The activities consisted of masterclasses, talks and events featuring PPL and PRS. We went to an interesting masterclass called Spotify Presents: Who We Be Talks With DJ Semtex and Keith Dube. Keith talked about making podcasts, so the focus was on spoken word and presenting rather than just music. That showed to me that there’s multiple ways of getting into the music industry and overlaps with other disciplines.

What happened during the masterclasses?

The masterclass would be lead by a host who would do a short interview with the artist; the floor would then open for the audience to ask questions. After that there was a practical aspect where the artist would demonstrate their skills, then ask members of the audience if they wanted to try it for themselves. So there was a nice mix of activities going on.

Did you enjoy the masterclasses you went to?

Of course the masterclasses were wicked! Craig David was probably the most high-profile artist; he’s had a twenty-year career so there was so much knowledge to gain from that.

The masterclasses were from really established artists, so were valuable and had a lot of great knowledge, though they also said some things that I did already know which in a way was rather comforting as it shows just how much I’ve grown in experience and confidence. A really cool experience for me was seeing a masterclass by DJ and Producer Eats Everything – I was lucky enough to be called up to mix with him! It was a nice feeling to be able to do what I do in front of him, when before I’ve been in a crowd of twenty thousand people watching him perform. I was a little bit starstruck, to be honest!

Which was your favourite masterclass?

There were three masterclasses that stood out to me, the first of which featured novelist Maverick Sabre and Rachel Furner, who spoke about song writing: methods for writing songs, what puts them in the right mood for being creative, as well as stories from the course of their careers. That was really eye opening in terms of the depth and breadth of the topics covered.

The second was the insights from podcaster Keith Dube, who spoke a lot about mental health. It’s really relevant to a lot of people today as we’re seeing a movement towards being more open about wellbeing. Keith also spoke a lot about the importance of talking to people and realising you’re not alone, which can be difficult for a lot of men. He didn’t realise that so many people felt the same as him until he started communicating.

Finally there was the talk by Craig David, which was really interesting because he’s had a career spanning twenty years or more so it was great to hear his perspective, including the difference between being a one-hit wonder and having an enduring musical career. He talked a lot about the roller coaster ride of the music industry (and life in general!), which was really insightful.

On the topic of mental health, what do you feel are the potential pitfalls for people entering today’s music industry?

Craig David touched on the danger of being sucked into your own hype: ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you need to keep it under control and not get wrapped up in your own success. It’s important to take a step back and remain humble.

Another thing he mentioned was that you can get addicted to success and ‘one-upping’ yourself: his first album sold seven million copies and the second three and a half million. Some people would be disappointed with the reduction in sales, but to him it was a huge achievement and something to be proud of. His message was to appreciate what you’ve got and enjoy the journey, because whatever pinnacle you get to, it’s never enough! You’ll always be searching for the next horizon: it’s human nature.

Any other thoughts to add?

I think events like BBC Introducing and the Perfect Score Young People’s Music Careers Conference are the bridge we need between elite artists and those just beginning their musical career, in order to share the personal in-depth knowledge that you can’t really express in a tweet or Instagram post. In a more intimate setting musicians can meet their community: real sharing, understanding and connection are made possible.

Insights from Naji Richards

We also had a brief chat with tutor Naji, who had the following to say:

It was a really good day! I enjoyed using the DJ kit and trying out different music equipment. It was absolutely packed with like-minded people, so networking and making new connections was great. We also saw Craig David, who hosted a seminar about his journey as an artist. It was interesting and full of useful advice for the young musicians, artists and producers we’re working with. In particular he emphasised the importance of remaining grounded: fame can come quickly but that can change in the blink of an eye, nothing is certain or permanent. He struck a good balance between that and the need to be confident and sure of your skills, talents and abilities.

The whole team really enjoyed visiting BBC Introducing and connecting with other musicians. We look forward to next year’s event!

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murdocsagaypirate · 6 years ago

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The Fall of 2D

A Character Essay

So.. this ended up being a nice long read.. but.. I think some of y’all might enjoy it. I just kind of got carried away. But I’m done~ Back to fanfiction~ I’ve done more thorough analyses of most of these songs that I touch on here in the past. If you go to my blog and type in the songs name in search you’ll find it ... unless I haven’t done it yet... and in that case go ahead and request it if you like.

Remember when you were a little kid and you would look at the clouds in the sky as the sunlight bounced off them? And something that simple would make you feel a part of everything, and all alone at the same time. And the feeling’s not something you can ever put into words, so you spend your whole life chasing it. Making music, taking pictures, painting, whatever. In the hope that other people will understand that sense or… feeling. As creative entities, we look for signs of life outside ourselves for a connection to alleviate the sense of solitude. That’s why we all do what we do. Whether we know it ourselves or not.

Phase 1: Someone Else’s Dream

2D never dreamed he’d be famous, or even successful, in any capacity. No one ever treated him like he possibly could be because he was disabled. He had chronic pain and hindered cognitive ability from childhood that shaped how others perceived him. His bright blue hair growing out of his damaged head made it so that everyone knew he was different- he was stupid. And that perception shaped him. It shaped him into someone with no big dreams, someone that tolerated being bullied, someone with poor self-efficacy and no sense of independence or developed sense of identity. He liked films and he liked music and it didn’t go much deeper than that. Not because he was stupid and shallow, as he’s clearly always been a very deep and creative thinker, but because no one ever gave him the options and opportunity to pursue something bigger. He says in the phase 5 football interview, “My mum and dad taught me not to aim too high.” No one ever believed in him....

Until Murdoc came along. 2D’s blue hair is directly associated to the event that handicapped him but to Murdoc it represented anything but a handicap- it gave 2D the unique looks that would make him a priceless asset in Murdoc’s pursuit of his personal dreams. For the first time in his life, Murdoc made 2D believe he was capable and valuable because he was talented and attractive. 2D didn’t need to be worshiped like Murdoc, he just needed to be worth something, and Murdoc gave him a way to do that. That’s what 2D means when he says that Murdoc “saved his life”, that’s a big reason WHY he idolized him in addition to the fact that 2D appreciates that Murdoc is genuinely talented and driven.

I can’t impress this enough: 2D was only 19 years old. Old enough to know you’re expected to be an adult, to make something of yourself, but for many still not old enough to be one - especially for someone that grew up disabled, whose independence wasn’t fostered ... Make no mistake: 2D was vulnerable and Murdoc, who was 31, took advantage of him. This is a 2D analysis so I’m not going to go into why Murdoc did this, but at the end of the day, Murdoc was a fucking shitty shitty person and there no good excuse.

Already by the time the first album came out, 2D had already figured out he’d been taken advantage of. That’s what New Genius (Brother) is about. It’s about Murdoc and the promises he made him about the path to success he was going to take him on, about the river they were going to ford together and how 2D felt betrayed.

Besides what we learn in RoTO, there are some songs that you can’t totally parse out what lyrics on Gorillaz debut album belong to 2D and which belong to Murdoc besides simply what makes sense. It’s interesting though you can easily argue that there are shared sentiments in songs like Slow Country about working hard to succeed and being lonely. In RoTO a lyric for this song is included, “City life, leave my soul in deep water.” which mirror’s “The river ain’t deep.” in New Genius (Brother). Sound Check (Gravity) is a song he sang straight from his heart on a rooftop in Jamaica with Noodle, that repeats themes of feeling pressured and betrayed and the theme of a confusing and broken love which will reoccur, over and over. At that time (in Jamaica, no less) that love is actively breaking, not broken yet, but he doesn't know what to do. Latin Simone characterizes his depression and the realization that he’s just not happy on this path he’s started on, but there’s no escaping it now. Then you have a song like 12D3, that very directly characterizes him as a simple person that takes simple pleasure in music. There are various songs and lines on Self-titled that characterize drug dependency both for 2D and for Murdoc. Phase One, overall, sets us up with a picture of a 2D who is still enthusiastic about his future as a musician for no other reason than his passion for music, yet disillusionment is quickly setting in, both toward the lifestyle of fame and his idol and best friend.

Phase 2: Feel Good?

This is where 2D starts talking about his never-ending quest to “find himself”. 2D never got to gain independence. He went straight from dependency on his parents to dependency on Murdoc, living at his mansion studio and literally letting him tie his shoes. His parents never fostered an ability to self-care or a sense of ambition, so Murdoc gifted him his ambition and without Murdoc, 2D doesn’t have his own sense of identity.

So, of course, leaving Murdoc after phase 1, he went back to his parents, to work for his dad. He returned to his hometown, to a bunch of people that treated him like a worthless idiot. But now he’s famous. So now he’s surrounded by people that want to validate him... Which he fucking eats up, because it fills the hole left by his upbringing... Not to mention all the very fucking irresponsible sex. There is much that goes unstated about this phase of 2D’s life, it seems he chooses to paint it as wholly positive, yet we know the lasting consequences of it (child support for for several kids for the next 18 years) as well as the fact that he ultimately chose to leave it behind and return to Gorillaz and back into the same lifestyle that he hated and is only getting worse as Gorilaz’s popularity hits it major peak in 2005:

The Feel Good Inc music video give shit tons of insight into the characters and the lyrics. Notably, the way that 2D is placed at the center, on a throne, and how utterly miserable he is on that throne. It’s not JUST the debauchery he struggles with, but the position of stardom and idol worship he’s been thrust into.

“Take it all in on your stride” run’s parallel to Latin Simone’s “Give up, if you want to survive.” He’s resigned to this path, never exhibited any desire to fight it really, because he’s never known another path. Without Gorillaz, he’s aimless. “Turn forever, hand in hand... It is ticking, falling down. Love forever, love has freely turned forever you and me. Windmill, windmill for the land. Is everybody in?” The windmill represents freedom, Noodle’s freedom contrasted with 2D’s imprisonment specifically, yet here he sings about it “falling”, foreshadowing El Manana. He talks about the utter destruction of hope happening to all of them. “Is everybody in?”

Remember the theme of a “breaking love” I’d say would be returning over and over? 2D is trapped in the tower with Murdoc who watches him like some kind of predator throughout the video. Russel is there too, which characterizes him as lacking the freedom that Noodle has but coping through staying focused on drumming, making music. This person that 2D is turning with forever, falling, hand in hand is mainly Murdoc.

While much of this album was written by Noodle, 2D has specifically talked about writing chorus of Feel Good Inc. And there are other songs on the album I’ll touch on that, although lore never specifically states, I can only assume are written by 2D by how well they fit into his character arc at this point in his life and make no sense in characterizing Noodle.

O Green World continues with the themes of Feel Good Inc with the line “Hope, sex and drugs will rust into myself holy. It feels holy,” further characterizing the disturbing dichotomy of pleasurable addiction as a destructive force. Placing “hope” on the list of things that 2D clings to for comfort that destroy him is heartbreaking and we’ll watch how this “hope” becomes more and more painful to hold onto throughout the years. The larger focus of O Green World is the narrative about a failing relationship: the current state of his relationship with Murdoc. A desperation and confusion over a crumbling relationship is also explored in Every Planet We Reach is Dead. Lines like “For all the sacred selfless days, only left with heartache. I want to see you again. I love you... But what are we going to do?” paints the same picture 2D will eventually paint for us again in The Now Now. He will look back on this era of their relationship where he clung to hope that they’d be close, happy and healthy again. And yet... we know how that turned out...

Phase 3: Alone Together

I only really joined the band to make music, and now, I'm being held captive by a bastard bass player in an underwater submarine, being attacked by sodding pirates who are trying to take over this rotten piece of broken plastic in the ocean that Gorillaz call 'home'. All this, just to make a video. It's making me want to die!

So... this is a major phase for 2D, but of course, that fact is often overshadowed but what a big deal it was Murdoc. We have hours of podcast and a whole album to witness Murdoc’s deterioration and precious little to witness 2D’s, though there is certainly enough to analyze especially later in the phase.

2D doesn’t seek attention like Murdoc does. He’s motivated by validation, sure, but not in the practically narcissistic way Murdoc is. 2D isn’t the one that is constantly engaging with fans, soaking up our attention and admiration. He wants to connect to people through music, not as a celebrity, just as a musician. He’s private, and that loss of privacy that comes with fame is probably yet another factor that caused him to hate it.

2D struggles with emotional isolation like Murdoc but in a completely different way. It’s not that he fears and avoids connection and vulnerability like Murdoc, in that quote I started this with he shows that he finds it to be something important and profound. It something he simply finds difficult for many reasons. One, his disability that clearly effects his communication skills. Then the inherent isolation that comes with stardom. And finally, an inability to connect with himself first and foremost, his undeveloped sense of personal identity comes back into play, that theme of struggling to “find himself”.

Little Pink Plastic Bag characterizes the isolating feeling of drifting through life without purpose. 2D has lost control of his life, knowing he was going to school before this phase might indicate he was beginning to find purpose but once again (and in a much more literal sense) he’s forced away from his own dreams to serve Murdoc’s. “What you want in life? Someone here'll gonna get past by” hearkens back to so many themes present in the first album. In New Genius (Brother) he sings, “People passing through me.” 2D still feels overlooked, underappreciated, so many years later.

2D talks about Revolving Doors: “As I was walking through the doors of the hotel - the revolving doors - and the dislocation of being away, you know, out of sorts, away from home. and the image of this door permanently revolving, the endless repetition and the pointless rhythm of it all I guess struck like, a melancholic image within me. It paints a similar aimless image to pointlessness of plastic bag floating on the highway. Revolving Doors also pretty explicitly references drug use, specifically about buying drugs and getting shorted by the dealer. It’s not news, just notable that substance abuse is still very much present. Another major theme is 2D lamenting how much fame has changed him and his fear of what more is to come which come up again in Amarillo.

Amarillo is such a fucking beautiful song. “I got lost on the highway. But don't ask me where I've been. Or what I've done.” The trials of the last few years have changed 2D, he recognizes this and fills him with regret. And again, he expresses that utter lonely we’re familiar with by now.

Finally, we have DoYaThing giving us incite at the very tail end of this phase of the state of 2D’s relationship with Murdoc, which has quite obviously suffered but enough time is past that they are ready to start healing again. The line “If you're thinking that I don't know what you're thinking, baby. You do more thinking and I'll go out and make it alright“ expresses a concept 2D explored a few times on Demon Days, “I know you now, I know you know me too.” in O Green World characterizes there relationship as legitimately intimate, they understand each other. This sort of relationship is suggested in interviews too, mostly Murdoc relying on 2D to help handle a crisis, while it doesn’t seem that Murdoc is emotionally equipped to return the favor, yet another way Murdoc contributes to 2D’s chronic loneliness. Despite how much 2D is struggling with at the end of phase 3 he still expends energy worrying about Murdoc. After their live recording of Detroit, 2D responds to Murdoc thanking him, presumably just for the fun of the moment, “I was just glad to help, really.”

DoYaThing expresses this dynamic of expending energy and getting little in return with frustration. Before, 2D was confused and hurt, now he’s angry and impatient. “Every time we try, we get nowhere“... “I've got no patience. Oh, it's all a part of the process. Nothing's new, it's true, cool, I admit. Shit, I guess you're right“ 2D is holding on but growing bitter...

Phase 4: Gone Gone Gone

It’s obvious in this phase that his drug abuse is at an all-time high. The entire phase, songs, pictures, interviews, portrayed the band as going all out partying, which, of course, involved drugs. Recreational is one thing, but we know it’s more than recreational for 2D. Sleeping Power was the big 2D song of this phase. All the way back to Tomorrow Comes Today’s music video we see 2D’s drug abuse almost being portrayed as a fun aesthetic as brightly colored pain pills fly at the screen and now with Sleeping Power 2D is having a hell of a good time singing about a day he spent “gone”, completely strung out. He starts the video with the old “This is your brain on drugs” ad, which is practically become a joke in modern culture. and it’s an interesting contrast with the extremely emotional way Murdoc writes about his alcoholism in Plastic Beach, or the dark and completely unflattering way it’s portrayed in White Light.

There’s no denying 2D is depressed, but when it comes to his coping methods it seems he copes even further by making it a part of his identity. It’s not difficult to understand why he’d be so inclined to see his addiction as a positive thing, not only does it help his mood but it manages crippling chronic pain. No matter what though, addiction and substance abuse are never sustainable for mental health and 2D has struggled with this issue or a long.. long.. time.

As for his relationship with Murdoc at this point, it remains in pieces. We see the bitterness 2D feels toward him throughout phase 4. We lose 2D’s voice on Humanz but find so much incite exploring his phase 4 room. Murdoc’s face is plastered on his wall vindictively covered in darts. And yet we find his poems promising, “Yes I am still with you.” and “I will stay. The storm abates. The levy holds.” He’s angry but still refuses to give up. Whether you want to interpret it romantically or not, he clearly still loves Murdoc and we see this even more in The Now Now...

Phase 5: Reflection

On Plastic Beach, if 2D is trapped on an island of isolation then it’s only because Murdoc is the ship that stranded him there. In Magic City, if 2D is on the moon - shining brightly for everyone to see - it’s because Murdoc was the rocket ship that crash landed him on it. The Now Now is chalk full of callbacks and beautifully shows where 2D has come from and where he is now, especially in his relationship to Murdoc. “You put me up here in the penthouse.” Murdoc is the force that made him successful, the reason he’s famous. "I filled the canyons with my ego” The canyon, the hole in himself. We get a call back all the way to New Genius (Brother) as he changes the effect on the vocal’s to sound like some distance voice from the past of someone promising 2D ease of passage only to betray him by leading him to danger, “Let me take you this far. This crossing isn't much to me. There's lightning in the storm clouds. And I'll send you there to stay” and of course, that voice is Murdoc’s.

Like he’s been for years, he’s trapped in this lifestyle. Looking all the way back to 5/4. He talks about the same debauchery and spoils of fame he feels trapped back in Feel Good Inc and calls them “magic”. It’s ironic but at the same time addresses the fact that he was promised they would be magic, promised they would feel good, only to feel betrayed when they weren’t. “Magic on me. Really got me down... Magic’s funny. Magic get me through.” The same magic that depressing him, he relies on to get through: drugs, sex, the validation of fame, you name it. It’s a common tale we see for celebrities time and time again. Trapped in this “Magic City”, he wants to make it “home”. He talks about making his journey home in Kansas as well... where exactly does 2D consider “home”? I wonder if even he knows. Our sense of home is so tied to our sense of security and identity, something 2D has always struggled with. On his quest “home”, by the end of the album the thing that he truly returns to.. is Murdoc. In Souk Eye he decides to come back for him... after all this... he’s still willing to give him yet another chance. Throughout the years he’s had one anchor and one anchor alone: Murdoc. So in the absence of this anchor, his sense-of-self changes dramatically as he tries to emulate the man that was once his idol. Of course, we see this play out in the lore... But... at this point (9/28/18) anything I say about 2D actions in this phase beyond the early characterization through the album is just speculation... So, back to the album...

There are few places where 2D talks about how much he’s sacrificed for Murdoc’s sake, how he’s stood by and suffered for him, even made music for him when he really just didn’t want to anymore. Idaho references this and the level of idolization he once felt for Murdoc so long ago, “Playing it all for gods Yesterday/Faraway” and the role of Murdoc in pressuring him, ““Ride on," said the king of cool. you've got nothing to lose“ and how his hope faded through the years, “Silver linings getting lost”. Fireflies again frames Murdoc’s role in driving him, “You were in the kind of game that put the force in me“ and overall speaks to his desperation to hold onto hope throughout the last 20 years.

The lore supports these songs are about Murdoc in far more obvious ways then has ever been done. Between the Souk Eye visualizer and 2D’s journal, the depths for which he feels for him becomes undeniable. The deterioration we’ve witnessed has caused him so much pain and yet his love remains. “If loving you’s a felony now, then I’m a renegade.”

2D’s story serves as a tragic retelling of the path that so many real-life famous musicians have taken. Being in the limelight is rarely something normal people are able to cope with, and clearly, 2D is no exception. It changed him, caused him to make decisions he hated. He never would have chosen this lifestyle without Murdoc pressuring him, and returns over and over even when he has the choice to stay away because it’s one of the few solid things he can grasp as part of his identity. Meanwhile, he’s bound to an individual that’s even more unhealthy then he is, enabling his isolation, denying him support, taking advantage of him from day one, manipulating his poor sense of self-worth. All of it crushed his once child-like spirit... only time will tell where he goes from here. Maybe one day he’ll finally see the end of his abuse, heal with the man he’s forgiven too many times, and find security in his own self-worth...

Now if all that made you too sad here’s a video of 2D being absolutely adorably happy because he has the opportunity to connect with fans through sharing his passion for music.

#character analysis #2d #i hope you cry

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rorypcarson · 6 years ago

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it’s hope??? again??? yes u read that right here’s my son rory love us this blog is so new so nothing will be in the tags i hate everything lmao anyway like this or message me to plot ily bye

triggers: car crash, drunk driving, stroke, abortion, death, depression ( mention )

╰☆╮ DACRE MONTGOMERY ─ RORY PEARSON identifies as CISMALE and uses HE/HIM pronouns. they’re a YOUTUBER/MUSICIAN, and they’re only TWENTY-TWO ! they’re said to be +CANDID, but also -DESPONDENT. i guess that’s why they’re known as THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRE in the tabloids. ( kendall schmidt, logan henderson )

did i use two btr bois as his vc??? u bet ur ass i did & i have no regrets ok anyway on to my son

background:

rory pearson was born and raised in fairhope, alabama. his parents were teenagers when they had him and lived with his grandma scarlett. his mom jean marie was ousted by her parents when she told them she was pregnant and his dad’s mom took her in with open arms.

of course his grandma wasn’t going to let them live in the same room in her house without being married, especially with her grandbaby on the way. so after talking with them, and his parents agreeing, they went to the courthouse and got married three months before rory came into the world.

rory was born on april 20th, 1996 and he was without a name for six days. his parents couldn’t decide so they named him rory wyatt vincent pearson. he was always told that since his parents couldn’t decide on naming him after jean marie’s grandfather or greyson’s father, they picked a third name and gave him both of their names for middle names.

when rory was two and a half years old ( not really half, it was june ?? ) his parents graduated high school and went out for a party. unfortunately their designated driver wasn’t so sober and the group of four recent graduates crashed into another car.

his father was in the passenger’s seat and died on impact, his mother was pronounced dead in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

scarlett legally adopted rory after that and raised him. she always told him stories of his parents, but avoided telling him anything about what happened to them for as long as she could.

he was ten years old when he saw the memorial and recognized his parents from their yearbook photos and came home asking about it.

honestly this is jumping ahead a bit but rory didn’t learn to drive until he was twenty years old. and even now, esp now, since he lives in nyc he doesn’t drive often.

okay when he was seventeen years old he met bethany in an airport. he was on his way to a college interview on a connecting flight that got cancelled due to weather conditions. they were both sitting in the same terminal so they got to talking and !!! hit it off

bro legit asked her out 5 seconds after their flights were announced to be back on

“hi yeah we just met but we’ve got two hours before your flight leaves so wanna go grab some food with me???”

and the rest was legit history

he can remember every moment of their conversation and first date like it was yesterday. oh my god he was SO IN LOVE

the human embodiment of the hearteyes emoji

and so the pair stayed in touch and went on a couple more dates and the boy was so gd smitten that grandma scarlett took his phone during one of their phone calls and was like “darlin if you don’t fly down here to meet me i’m going to think my grandbaby is just talking to a complete stranger on here.”

and then bethany flew down and met scarlett and she was so excited because !!!! her grandson had a girlfriend !!!!

grandma scarlett was the biggest supporter of anything rory did in life oh my GOD

at his graduation it was just grandma scarlett in the crowd for him but boy did it sound like the whole crowd was cheering for him when his name was called

anyway flash forward to he’s in college and he’s moved away to be closer to bethany. which should not have affected his life but when he was looking at colleges fr fr after acceptances the boy chose one closer to his girl

we love a softie ok

anyway on bethany’s 19th birthday he took her to an airport and was surprising her with a trip to disney that he’s been saving up for for MONTHS !!!!

and at the airport he was like all jittery and nervous bc in his pocket he had an engagement ring but he did his bEST to hide it all from beth bc surprises

not that he planned the whole thing ( he did ) but it just so happened they were in the same restaurant waiting for their flight as their first date way back when

and in the middle of dessert, the waiters singing happy birthday this boy attempts to be sly and gets down on one knee. but didnt realize there would be someone coming up behind him to keep up the singing and he ..... kinda caused a mini avalanche of people

and he apologized and is like still on one knee and now he’s looking at bethany with a BRIGHT RED face and he had had this whole speech worked out in his mind ok but all that comes out is, “i love you, please marry me?” in like an awkward stutter because he just TOOK OUT AN ENTIRE WAITSTAFF

somehow bethany said yes ??? and they’re engaged ???

oh and someone got the whole thing on camera and like that happened

the video skyrocketed to the most viewed video entitled “i witnessed an awkward proposal???? and she still said yes?????”

which is also lowkey how he started his youtube channel ??

“hi yes it’s me the guy who proposed to an olympic athlete while taking out a whole waitstaff?? i dont know why she said yes either but i love her??”

and for a long time it was mainly vlogs of him and beth and him and his friends

okay so fast forward and rory’s graduated college with a degree in history education bc he wants to be a teacher and he’s got to fly back to alabama and miss his graduation because he got a phone call and grandma scarlett had a stroke

so the boy is freaking out but it’s fine !!! grandma goes home and he winds up staying down and now he’s trying to figure out how to be with beth, find a job in ny, but also take care of his grandma

for a while he toys with the idea of moving grandma up to new york and helping her find a place. so he goes back to new york to talk to beth about it and he’s freaking out and he gets home and she tells him she’s pregnant

of course he never expected to be like 20 and having a baby but ??? whatever. now he’s freaking out because his grandma is not doing good and he’s worried about her and now he’s got to figure out what to do with a BABY ???

and bethany then tells him she wants to get an abortion and rory’s already stressed and so he flips bc of emotions and they get into a huge fight and it just winds up with him leaving and heading back to alabama and bethany in their apartment

so rory goes home to alabama and he keeps getting notifications on social media about bethany so he just shuts his phone off and i’m talking like he goes days without touching his cell phone. he takes a hiatus from youtube because he’s freaking out and

two months after he’s home he seemed like scarlett was doing better so he took her to a party in town to see some of her friends and at the party scarlett had another stroke.

she died six days later, never waking up from the medically induced coma they put her in.

flash forward a couple more weeks after he’s working with lawyers for his grandma’s estate and rest assured scarlett pearson had nothing but her house, her garden, and her beat up corvette that her deceased husband wyatt bought her for their anniversary one year

so its a shocker to find out that scarlett pearson was worth 43.7 billion dollars

and now that money all goes to rory because he’s her only living heir ???

so rory gets this BOATLOAD of money and the local newspaper picks it up which brings it to the national news and somehow it made international news

“local alabama boy from youtuber to billionaire overnight”

so he kept his grandma’s house in alabama because ..... he can’t seem to let that go and why should he ?? its a good house and holds a lot of memories

but he does in fact buy a brownstone in manhattan its HUGE and he doesn’t have enough things to fill the whole space up but ??? he’s working on it slowly.

he created a makeshift recording studio in one of the upstairs rooms and has been working on music, which is new to him ?? he was always a bit artistic but never sure enough to like try it out

oh and he’s returned to youtube, he’s got a decent following i guess

i mean lbr he’s hot ???? and sings ??? so ??? ya know

personality:

okay so this is long already so im gonna keep this short n sweet

rory is a sweet boy, never really an athletic type always more focused on his studies than sports.

spent a lot of time with his grandma and he’s very easily attached to people he’s close to. not exactly clingy, but it’s really hard for him to let people go i guess ???

used to love shows like survivor and big brother and amazing race. always toyed with the idea of applying to be on amazing race but he never had anyone who would go with him, or could for that long.

he’s a real kind hearted guy and clumsy as fuck

a bit awkward when you first meet him but ??? you warm up quickly and so does he

clumsy af as noted earlier

kind of depressed ??? idk he’s not seeing anyone for it but post losing beth, his grandma, and like the possibility of a family in the future he’s kinda ..... morbid

puts on a happy front for youtube

oh and he does a podcast talking about stuff with his friends idk what exactly but ?? its prob music and movies lbr

connections:

best friend(s)--self explanatory; people who he gets along with and they’re like his ride or dies.

nerd friends--give him someone to geek out with please he’s SUCH A NERD !!!! or someone who likes learning random things he’s got u

musical friends--people who he met through starting to delve into music

youtube community--give me people who !!! met through youtube and often do colabs together. probably ppl who were shooketh when he came back and was like “bro i have 40 billion dollars????”

wealthy friend(s)--give me someone who will teach this boy how to be wealthy ??? like cause he knows nothing about that he struggled a lot growing up and with college and several part time jobs he doesnt know how to like party or anything

idk anything else

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fullfrequencycollective · 6 years ago

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What is the purpose of a small, independent record label in 2018?

That’s the question I’ve been turning over in my head these past few months. I think I have an answer, but it’s gonna take some explaining. Stick with me.

Why Bother Records, the record label I started with my best friend Christian back in 2015, slowed down considerably over the past two years. The last release I was substantially involved with the release of was the Halogens / Staten split at the end of 2016. After that, I used the name to help Justin Fernandez release Staten music in a much more hands-off manner. Things slowed down because I was a senior in college, preparing to full-time student teach the following spring, and thinking probably a bit too much about my “future” or whatever. It felt like just one more thing I had to deal with during a period when I had an exceptionally high number of things to deal with, so I put it on ice.

Now, in my second year of grad school, my fourth and final semester, nearing a career path in education that seems manageable if slightly creatively unfulfilling, I feel decidedly stable. A month or so ago, I caught the feeling that I should bring the label back. That’s when I started thinking about what a small independent record label looks like now, after the time I’ve spent away from one.

I guess it starts with what a record label like Why Bother does. When I was operating Why Bother a few years ago, after an artist agreed to work with us, I did a number of discrete things. I hand-produced cassettes that I was able to produce for cheap. I redesigned and laid out album artwork to fit the unique cassette layout, then took the art to the printer and cut inserts to fit by hand. I assembled the product. I did publicity for all of our releases.

So what was all of that for? What was the purpose? I think it falls into three categories.

1. I wanted to financially support artists.

I got the idea to make WBR a cassette label after reading this Pitchfork op-ed back in my very first week of college. A selection:

“Speaking of vinyl, which is an expensive gamble for a small label, I like that cassettes are inexpensive. I buy them in bulk from National Audio Company in Missouri for around 50 cents each, and jewel cases are about 22 cents each. Usually I end up doing my own artwork and labels. Runs of 50 or 100 are small by any standard, but if you want to do everything, they take more time than you might think. I don’t like the word “cheap” here, but I like the situation that not having to worry about money puts me in. It’s just a cassette. I don’t feel bad about giving them away to people. Most people I don’t expect them to even listen; I doubt they have cassette players. But I’m interested in those 10 or 15 people who end up trying. Those 10 or 15 people are more interesting to me than Soundcloud plays.”

Tapes are inexpensive. You can turn a profit from them much more easily than you can from CDs or vinyl. I think we usually broke even on a tape run after we sold 8 or so. Toward my desired goal of putting more money in the artists I liked’s pockets, I think the math works best with cassettes at this scale. So I liked that part of it as a broke college kid.

But there’s more to the story as well. That’s not the only reason. Another selection:

“Music released on cassettes doesn’t feel desperate or needy or Possibly Important. It tends not to be concerned about The Conversation. It resists other people’s meaning. That’s what I like about the cassette. It whittles down our interactions with music to something bare and essential: Two people, sometimes more, trying to feel slightly less alone.

…

I like the community of labels. It’s small, humble, not exactly well organized. You meet people in a stumbling, haphazard way, which is refreshing in the age of the targeted ad. Steve at Moon Glyph. Tom at Mirror Universe. Emily at Love Lion. Opal Tapes, Trilogy Tapes, Leaving Records. I usually have not heard of the artists, who usually do not have publicists “working” the record. I often buy five or six tapes at a time, whatever releases are available. Sometimes they come right away, other times they take three weeks and two of the cassettes don’t have music on them. I listen to cassettes on a small Sony boombox (with Mega Bass), usually when I do the dishes or get ready in the morning. The music feels like a secret between friends.”

That brings me to another important ideal:

2. I wanted to build a community.

Music communities changed my life. From those first Marlboro Rec Center Now or Never/Feverview shows, to hearing “Red Floral Dress” for the first time in a basement filled with my friends, to all of those weekends at the Asbury Lanes, to every friend I’ve made at grad school that started with some conversation about how Against Me! kick ass. All of those moments are what draw me to music. Music communities are the rope that tethers me to this world.

When WBR started, we had the Mayflower Collective. We had friends who were all into the same things. We had something. I wanted WBR to co-exist with that something. One of my most firmly-held beliefs is that there is power in numbers. We take what successes we’re blessed with and use them to lift the family around us. We take care of our own. To elaborate on that Springsteen reference:

“In art and love, one and one makes three. In music, if it makes two, you’ve failed, my friend.” — Bruce Springsteen

To make three:

3. I wanted to curate what I thought was the best of the best.

One of my more vivid memories from the NJ scene was On Your Marks’ album release show at the Lanes in 2013. Standing there, watching whatever band was playing, I looked around and noticed that the place was damn near sold out. That my friends who were just trying to play shows with their friends and write dope songs, had somehow convinced two-hundred or so locals to pay money to see them play. I tried to scale that in my head—how long until it’s the Stone Pony? Then Starland? Then the Arts Center? What was the ceiling?

That was the moment that I felt an obligation to show my friends off to the world. That was the moment that I decided that I wanted to write about music. I started my dinky little blog later that week to get some work done that summer.

I carried that mentality with me when I decided to start the label. “How can I show the world this awesome thing my friends did? What’s the best way of doing that?" I only ever reached out to artists who I genuinely believed in. The musicians making songs that I felt in my body. The people I knew were good people. I only worked with *music* and *people* that I had faith in. I can’t speak to how much money we would have made if we didn’t pass on a few opportunities, but it kept the drive going. It still does.

This is running long, so I’ll summarize here. I want to reboot the label with those three concepts in mind. I want to get to the base of them. I want to try something new. Full Frequency Collective is that something:

The new Why Bother Records will have two facets:

1. A traditional record label that will dub cassettes to financially support our artists

2. A podcast that serves to explain why I love the music we release so much

Because I don’t want to make money off of this, and instead focus my efforts on supporting artists and causes I believe in, Full Frequency Collective is primarily going to be subscription-based. I’ve launched a Patreon where subscribers can get in for $1 or $5 each month. They can get in or out whenever they choose, but I’m hoping some folks will stick around. I am aiming to release a tape from a Featured Artist every other month. The podcast is going to be weekly, with every other episode being subscriber-exclusive. After the manufacturing prices, hosting prices for the podcast (extremely low), and whatever unforeseen cost it takes to create this endeavor, all money from the Patreon will be split between the Featured Artist and a charity of their choice (pending my approval—we ain’t shipping money out to hateful causes and we ain’t getting scammed).

To elaborate a bit on what you’re getting for your money:

If you pay $1 each month, you’ll get access to the subscriber exclusive podcast episodes. The regular podcast will come out every 14 days and consist of interviews with the featured artist about the creative process, the making of their records, their artistic ideals, etc. I’ll also get guest on to talk about the world of music news, music we get down with, happenings in the arts communities. Kind of structured. The subscriber exclusive episodes would be something more like “Jake and I talk about Karl Marx and economics for an hour,” more freewheeling and off-off-topic.

If you pay $5 each month, you’ll get every tape we put out, every subscriber-exclusive podcast episode, a shoutout in the podcast each week, a copy of every zine I make, and the satisfaction of knowing that you’re contributing to both the arts community and charity.

Here’s the thing—

I know this is weird. I know this is not a “traditional” record label business model. But I think it works better. I think it’s a way to put money in the hands of artists who make the work I feel passionate about. I think it’s a way to give back to the communities that need us. I think it’s a way to put your music in the inbox of people who may or may not have heard of you before. I think it’s a way to combine the parts of the creative process into a larger, more complete picture, like the channels in a full-frequency stereo sound system. I think it’s a way to build a new type of community.

Thanks. You can subscribe here. If you have any questions, reach out. Let’s make something.

#day 1 #full frequency baby #it's finally launching #hell yeah dude #hellllll yeahhhhh dude

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christimesteele · 3 years ago

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Transcript - Time Talks Ep 40 - Melancholy Joy Mixtape ft. carla joy bergman

Transcripts for Time Talks Ep 40 - Melancholy Joy Mixtape w ...

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

song, melancholy, music, joy, talking, people, melancholic, love, feel, listening, thought, big, play, life, hear, playlist, sad, carla, called, sole

SPEAKERS

Tracy Chapman, Pet Shop Boys, Holy Cole, Sade, Burial, Final Straw Podcast, Bobs Your Uncle, Sole, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, SBTRKT (feat. Sampha), Chris, carla, Andre 3000 - Me&My, Time me, Jason/Maudlin Magpie & produced by A Thousand Vows, chris, Juice WRLD, Nat King Cole., Organized Konfusion

chris time steele 00:04

Welcome to Episode 40 of the time talks podcast part of the channel zero network. This episode I'm joined by another channel zero network member. My wonderful friend carla bergman. carla is co-author of Joyful Militancy with Nick Montgomery. carla edited the book Radiant Voices and put together the Emma Talks series, and collaborated on the work Pandemic Solidarity. Along with being an author carla is a filmography checkout joyful threads productions. On top of that, check out the podcast carla collaborates on. There's the Silver Threads podcast and the Grounded Futures podcast. These links are in the show notes. For this episode, we had a conversation and put together a playlist on the topic of melancholy joy, sharing some of our stories and the ways we use music to navigate life and living. Thank you to Awareness for the music and here's a brief jingle from a fellow channeled zero network member.

Final Straw Podcast 00:59

The final straw is a weekly anarchist radio show. It's fucking awesome and you're never gonna hear me say fucking awesome on our show. Because we're FCC regulated, there's a black part of my heart that that just flutters when you when you talk like that. Talk, then more yelling. it's a weird sort of like nice thing in a way but also can get kind of crushing at times the finalstrawradio.noblogs.org

chris 01:32

I just wanted to begin and say that you're a wonderful writer, poet, curator, conductor, filmographer, author, revolutionary, Joyarchist, artist, kinetic thinker and so much more and just wanted to thank you for doing this Melancholy Joy Mixtape. I was wondering if you could kind of open with what you kind of frame what melancholy joy is? Because when you first mentioned it to me, just the phrase put together a lot of things that in a way that I like sad music and how sad music brought me relief, and how I've been attracted to two minor notes and all that and just the vibe so I really meant a lot to me when you mentioned it to me.

carla joy bergman 02:14

That's really nice. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. And I would repeat all that back to you, that you are too - kinetic thinker and Joyarchist, and all that.. thank you means a lot. I'm a bit nervecited as the My Little Pony say, Just give me a second. Yeah, if it's okay if I can give a little bit of a historical story around it because it like everything with me and always has this like, aha moment. So similar. I've always been attracted to sad music. And it was actually we have a radio station in Canada, that's, I guess, a public radio called CBC and did really good shows on it. And there was an episode on this idea of melancholy music, and so I was what's that? And of course, they talked about Joni Mitchell a lot, a Canadian sweetheart. And I was like, yeah, that's real. And they had said the person I can't even remember who was on probably a musician in Canada, but they said, you know, melancholy just means a thoughtful sadness. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's what I am. I'm like, thoughtfully sad. But as time went on, I went through just stuff that was happening on the global like, collective grief 911 happened, some other stuff, some personal stuff. I really noticed that through all my sad periods of time, I always had a belly full of joy. Best way to describe it, I just, Joy's just really, really big in me. So I thought about a decade later, I I think I tried to create a handle on Twitter, melancholy joy, but I had done a few forums, online forums... And a part of it was because, I had a bit of a judgment that if you weren't melancholic, you weren't paying attention to the world, and but that you could still have a thriving life. So it has a kind of a political resonance to it like it will not even it went beyond music. The story moves into militant joy, because militant, to me is more has more power, I guess, or more collective power. It's more active than melancholy. But the pandemic hit again, or hit and melancholy really resurfaced in my life. Collectively, I could feel that collective grief. And I was just really attracted again to listen to melancholy joy music and, really listening to your album that you put out this year. reignited that again in me and I think that's why I said sent it to you because I was like, Oh, this is melancholy, joy, music, then your newest one that you've put out.

chris 04:44

Thank you so much. That's so kind. And I also see the phrase you use of melancholic hope. And that's a really powerful word too. And I think that's kind of what you find in the melancholy joy is this hope of kind of listening to sad music or music that helps you reflect and re energize yourself again, and there's a hope in melancholy, of just even being able to verbalize or feel that you're melancholic is the hope because you're able, then you're reflecting and saying, like, I'm sad, I have sadness and anger. And I'm able to work with those now, and kind of water those seeds to work through problems. And I think that's one thing that music does so well.

carla 05:30

Yeah, I love that. Nick Montgomery, who co wrote joyful militancy started talking about Empire and joy, and our book, using music as an example. And that Empire has this really loud music that's really loud and drowns everything else out. And when I started, when you asked me to do this show, I was like, Oh, I wonder how melancholy joy music fits into disrupting that, because one of the things that I added to the conversation was that it's, the problem is listening. It's not so much that it's louder. I think that we, all the other music or other sounds are the other ways of talking with each other is there, it’s present. And there's something about that melancholic hope, like you say that it's there. Like the possibilities are there, the seeds are there, and they just need us to water them, as you so graciously said to me once, that I loved. Yeah, so yeah, I love that.

chris 06:23

Yeah, what you say of how it's there. That's really, I feel the explanation and so hard to explain it with melancholy joy in those terms, like it's something that's there, it's something you can feel, and it's like a vibe, and joyful militancy. I really liked the quote from Glen Coulthard. When you mentioned you all had mentioned that he put his finger on something of sadness and anger and how they often stem from love. And just a little bit of this quote is: "I think that for the somber, melancholic militant, I get it, I understand it, how could you not be, and this is my point, the only way you respond to the world like that is because of some base sort of individual and collective self respect, some love for oneself and others, were the land that you are being violated in a profound way. This produces melancholy, anger, whatever, they're not separable." And I really thought that that whole quote is just powerful. And for anyone who has a book, it's on page 175. So there's no citation violations there.

carla 07:27

Nope. You can also get the book for free online.

chris 07:32

Yeah, I wanted to. I really thought that that quote was, he added more to this conversation too.

carla 07:38

Thanks for finding it. I need to put his whole interview up. It's so incredible.

chris 07:43

That'd be awesome.

carla 07:44

Yeah, that's really good. Because we interviewed him, obviously, because he talks about resentment and anger so much. And it was, like affirmative theory. It includes anger and rage. It's not negation, right, like, negation something else. And so I, thank you for bringing him in. Because I think that's a really important distinction about where melancholy fits into the conversation right now. I worked really hard to not be a melancholic person. So it's like dang, it's back again.

chris 08:17

Well, yeah, I hope it's like a productive melancholy joy. I mean, that's what I wanted. That's what I really felt with this mixtape. And then it brings up deeper discussions on our end. And, feelings and, and just other reactions that I feel are productive in thinking deeper about society. And a lot of these things are produced from such a disgusting messed up society, at least with my picks that helped me find ways to navigate through these parts of society. So before we start, I was just going to just give a little intro on why I picked these, a whole foundation of how I picked them. And I just wanted to say that I framed how I picked my choices with assuming that there's a lot of nuances and and I'm sure that's why you picked yours as well, that they have nuances that they're not just the songs but they relate to life, your life and timeline. And I picked these songs for a few reasons. For one, they may sound like they're more melancholy songs, but they bring joy and solace. They are often songs I go to when I feel no more hope or little hope, songs I go to, to recharge, to recalibrate, to keep reminding myself that I'm not going to feel this way forever. And along with these choices, when I'm stressed I often find I get attached to a song and it becomes my crutch. I don't know if you're that way. They become my friend when I'm lonely and alienated, usually from work and ironically self imposed isolation that I often do unknowingly and then realize ...these were also songs that were some of my only friends during tough times that helped me build me back up again. Hopefully they can be tools for others and spark other discussions, another playlist like this.

carla 10:02

Oh, that's really beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, definitely some of that. For me the friend part for sure. The helping me move through like, I think melancholy is something that is imposed on us from the conditions of the world we're living in. And I think joy maybe is something that's within us that we can... Ursula Le Guin in the dispossessed talks about it as something that you can't control at all, It just will come in and do its thing and leave. I just really love that distinction. It was the seed for me thinking about joy differently. So yeah, when I think with my playlists, there's a couple things. I physically get affected when I'm sad. So my body gets, I get sick. I can't move. So for me, music has to have an element that makes me move. And I think that joy moves - when I move it moves with me or it moves first. I don't know what you know, is what comes first. But the music definitely, because thinking about like, part of whether it's collective or individually, like we try to find some harmony, and you think about that in terms of music, right? Like, what is that about? Like, what was that? What are we looking for ourselves, when we're not doing well, when were depleted and stagnated? and sad? Yeah, so I think that, that played like a role. I also thought about my personal journey in terms of finding freedom within myself. From stagnant music, what do you call it? First Family, our family of origin stuff that I needed to get away from some of those songs are about that and becoming a parent. I have like a definitely a theme of Don't tell me what to do. And I don't want to grow up. I think all of that kind of fits in. And it's kind of covering up Mushishi

chris 11:49

Yeah

carla 11:49

Because it's connected. I have a question for you before we maybe share playlists but I was rewatching Mushishi, maybe you can explain what Mushishi is after people need to but just google it. It's an animation. It's beautiful. Zen Buddhist healer Guy Ginko. But one of the episodes was about I think it's like the second or third one of the first season. I'm not gonna go into details of it because it's a small part of the story but Mushi comes in... mushi are these things that are not human, they are not fauna or flora, they're in between. And it comes into when there's no sound around. It burrows into the human's ears and eats their sound. I don't know if you remember that one. But, so it made me think about like, what is my sound? because I think this is connected to what music I'm drawn to. Because maybe that counterpoint or, or where's the harmony, from my sound to the sound from music. And in the show the woman who talks about it, her sound is lava, which is really intense sound to have to live with, holy. I asked my friend in Japan if it's a Japanese thing, and she said it's not but maybe regionally. I tried to find it, but there's probably not an English translation for it. But it feels pretty human. Like, I think it's pretty pan human probably that we can think about this. So I was thinking about like, my sound feels like if I feel into it, it's like the wind is collaborative. It's like the wind off of like a soft ocean, but it it has to go up into the trees too, like it's like this.woosh woosh. So when I thought about all the music I picked, I could hear it, I could feel it in it. So I'm curious if you've ever thought of that? Do you have a sound?

chris 13:34

That's an awesome question. I love the wind that you're talking about. The wind. I like wind in music. Sometimes I hear that a lot like Kate Bush's music, she creates these atmospheres. And a lot of her songs are about the mountain to go on top of the mountain. I would say a sound that I really resonate with is something I resonate most with is rain. So in a lot of my lyrics I'll use different words for rain like the typewriter rain tapped on the roof or the Fred Astaire rain or something like I'm always trying to get back to rain and I find it comforting and I live in a desert in so called Denver so we don't get a lot of rain. And, I also I like water too, sounds of water I find that calming, in Mushishi really has its soundtrack is very calming to the Anime. And I think it's the episode you're talking about when the mushi is in the pillow and going into people's ears, and the mushi turns into almost like conjis and it's dancing and going into people's ears or something. That one is so powerful. And one thing I really like about Ginko is he kind of does this mutual aid where he's going around town to town just helping people in educating and he's very introverted, he's not the most outwardly kindest person but Ginko has so much love in him. He just has a different way of his love language speaking.

carla 14:20

Yeah, everyone should watch Mushishi, or read the manga because they're equally as good if you need books.

chris 15:08

So good. Yeah, I love it.

carla 15:11

Yeah. And I think, yeah, we could we could do a whole show on Ginko

chris 15:16

That would be great.

carla 15:17

Because, ok just real quick the thing I always tell people why they should watch it is because there's no there's no judgment on the mushi or on the person who has it. The only judgment really is the people who don't help the person who's not well, that's the only time I see Ginko get upset with somebody is when they've done the wrong thing in terms of helping somebody, like they've judged them or something. And we could just all embody a bit of that we'd have a better world. You know?

chris 15:42

Yeah, I love that. I love that interpretation.

carla 15:45

Also, I need to say because any of my friends who are listening in family, I need to respond and say that rain is like, my favorite thing in the world. I did a whole project called rain. It stood for radical art in nature.

chris 15:58

I love that

carla 16:02

Yeah. rain is and I live in a rainforest. So I get a lot of rain. Yeah. So much of my son's music, Zach's music has rain in it. I am with you on that one.

chris 16:12

That doesn't surprise me. We have so many commonalities.

carla 16:15

I know.

chris 16:16

So I'm gonna start with Bob's, Talk to the Birds by Bob's Your Uncle.

carla 16:22

Okay, so this came out in 1985. I was living in so called Victoria, which is like the capital of British Columbia. And I was 18 just going on 19 and I hung out at a punk bar. With all the punk bands that played there that came through No means No, Dagloabortions, a lot of local people, but also Black Flag came through and so on and so forth. And when Bob's your Uncle came through, it was so exciting. First of all, a woman front person was really quite rare. A woman of color was even more rare in punk. And they were just they talk about joy, but it was also about feeling alienated as young people and poor people. And so it had that melancholic energy to it. And I bought their tape and I had a little yellow Walkman and I played it so much that it died. And she's at she's went on Sook Yin Lee has gone on to be she was like a vj for Much Music, which is the Canadian version of MTV which was really big back, and she was in Shortbus the movie. Now she's on CBC and does other stuff but yeah, I talked to birds I still do. I still talk to the birds.

Bobs Your Uncle 17:35

SONG: Talk To The Birds

chris 21:12

I love that song. When I heard this song, it really made me think just like the rebelliousness of school at first. Kind of imagine the teacher and then ditching class and then getting your real class from talking to some birds, or your real education from leaving school and going into nature. Also thought of it as an overarching ideology as well.

carla 21:40

Oh, yeah, say more

chris 21:42

Or just, they'll tell you, they tell you to do this, they say do this. But usually everything that they tell you to do with an ideology or hegemony is some form of coercion to get you to start renting somewhere, because you need to have all of these things, but you have to sell your time and your body for money. And people will tell you, well, if you don't have enough money, ideology, and capitalism says well get two jobs, you know, and they are always telling you something that's going to lead to more coercion instead of any form of liberation.

carla 22:19

Yeah, they're really fun. People should look them up. They have this one song. If I knew baking a cake or something. It's probably a cover. If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake. You know that song?

chris 22:30

Oh, yeah.

carla 22:31

Yeah, they do it really well

chris 22:33

Anything else you want to add on that song?

carla 22:36

Oh, just I mean, I think like, the big thing was that they were just, it was just really great to encounter them during a time when punk was really important to me. But alongside that in a city that racism is really, really ramped. I was just everywhere, Victoria is very British. Like you cannot always tell the difference between the skinheads and the punks. So I don't know. They were just really great.

chris 23:02

That's awesome. Thank you for showing me their music. Okay, so this song is by Organized Konfusion. Who is Prince Poetry and Pharoahe Monch. And they're, they're an older group. And Pharoahe Monch has turned out to be one of my favorite lyricists when I got older. And Prince Poetry was amazing. And this song is probably one of my biggest go tos when just feeling down or, or depressed or existential. Yeah, that song is just really deep. And it talks about these two fetuses inside of their mother. And they're kind of just rapping about life.

Organized Konfusion 24:07

SONG Invetro

carla 24:33

I love that one really speaks to that power of the joy. You know? Despite everything, be curious and dream. I Love it. And it also makes me want to move, which is like my criteria for melancholy joy music.

Chris 27:44

It's a great beat. I love it. And one of the lines that when I was re listening to this song is by Prince poetry, he says, “overshadowed in darkness where curiosity is my light.” And I just love that bar so much. And it reminded me of our conversation. But like the deeper, like a deeper meaning to this song is I don't know, it just makes me think about mortality a lot. And when my mom was pregnant with me, she smoked. And the whole time I resonated with what Pharoahe Monch was talking about. And he was born with asthma, actually. And I think he struggles with that during shows but is an amazing performer. And then another thing is when my mom I think was about eight, nine months pregnant, she fell down the stairs. And she landed on her stomach. And she was bleeding profusely and she was crying. She's freaking out. She went to the hospital. And the doctor told her that her baby was dead, which was me. And she needed to have it removed. And she was just in shock. So she left the hospital and was like, oh, I'll deal with this tomorrow. And then when she went back to her own doctor, they were like, No, your baby's alive has a heartbeat. So it must have been knocked out or something. I don't know.

carla 29:15

Wow, that is beautiful.

chris 29:17

Yeah. crazy story.

carla 29:21

So my mom was told that I wasn't gonna I was dead too. I wasn't gonna live.

chris 29:26

Wow. And

carla 29:30

yeah. She didn't have an accident. I was like, it was just, it was a situation and during labor. And they had to make a decision to save her or me, they chose her because obviously she had four children.

chris 29:44

Wow. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that story. That's so powerful

carla 29:50

Well same, I guess we really needed to be here.

Chris 29:55

Yeah,

carla 29:55

or wanted to be here

chris 29:56

Alright, so I'm going to play the next song, which is Don't Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

carla 30:03

I mean, first of all, that hug in the video, just the beauty of the like friendship that they have for each other and the intimacy that's just so pure. I tried to post it early on in the pandemic, because I was like, Who else needs to see this all the time? But I kept getting taken down because I didn't have rights to it. But, yeah, it's kind of like an ethos that's run through my life. I even had a campaign during the Thistle days that I went around to all the schools me my friend, I probably shouldn't say whatever, it doesn't matter. We had stickers that said, don't give up quit. Because to me, it's like part of not giving up is not giving up on yourself. And so that means you sometimes gotta quit a whole pile of things. Especially with young people I like to frame it that way. And yeah, this song just when I'm at my like, lowest lowest point I always go to it I mean, I Gabriel is just so important when I was a teen and Kate Bush especially later on... also other people who have performed it with it. I loved it too like Paula Cole, who was his backup singer for years and then went on to her own career. Yeah, just, it's just a it's a it's a love story about friendship. I think a lot of people think it's about a romantic relationship but I mean she she even talks about like what your your your friends we have you we got you, you know? Yeah, somebody on the brink helped remember that friends. It's so good.

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush 31:30

SONG: Don't Give Up

37:22

Yeah, I love this song

chris 37:24

Yeah, I love this song and I really hadn't really heard it much until you had mentioned it to me. And I've been listening to it all week. And yeah, you're right. It's like a love story about friends. So cool and people need to hear those words don't give up but they also need to hear you worry too much. Just move on with it. So those messages

carla 37:48

Yeah, and on a personal trajectory like that last part. When Gabriel goes into the big reveal walking across the bridge like that. I listened to that probably on repeat when I was making the decision to leave my family behind. And like I would put it on my headphones and walk over these bridges. Like, act it out, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. So yeah, just like finding belonging. They talked about that in the song. It's so powerful. And what gets me is that it is still powerful, you know, after all these years, because it's speaking to our alienation from each other. And

chris 38:28

Yeah, that's how you know, it's, it's so real. I think another thing really cool about Kate Bush, and she actually incorporates her family a lot in her music. You know, her son was the one who encouraged her to go back into performing live again. And then she has him on her last live album. He's singing like three different songs with her. And I didn't know he was the one who made her start doing live shows again, and his voice is awesome, too.

carla 38:55

Thanks for sharing that I had no idea about that. And of course, as you know, I collaborate with my kids so that..my eldest had everything to do with helping you pick out this list.

chris 39:07

Exactly. It made me think about that.

carla 39:09

And that's really nice. And he's actually a huge Kate Bush fan bigger than me, so that's really nice. I wonder if he knows he probably does. Sole actually texted me the other day and said, it must be amazing to collaborate with your kid like, holy shit.

chris 39:26

This song is by Andre 3000 from OutKast, and he's taken a big hiatus, aside from doing features and stuff. He's been just learning to play the clarinet and diving into jazz more, but he came back and did this song, I believe with James Blake, who did the piano and the song is another song that I go to. It's a heartbreaking song called Me and My To Bury Your Parents.

Andre 3000 - Me&My 40:05

SONG: Me and My

carla 43:48

I had never heard that song until I saw your list and it's really sad. But also has this thread of like I can feel the light in it , and the joy. I mean, personally, it may not think about my parents, but it made me think about my eldest brother who died. Who was like my... there's the chorus of me and my and my and they don't say, he doesn't say anything else. Oh, yeah, that.

Chris 44:14

Yeah. And when you mentioned that, I noticed today that he goes, me and my mother. At the end, he goes, me and my mother, me and my father, me and my, me and, and then me as he ends it, and I had never noticed that breakdown until today. It was like, gave me goosebumps.

carla 44:36

Totally.

chris 44:37

Yeah, and it's such a heartbreaking song. But yeah, you're right. It has this joy in it. It has this nostalgic joy of even though, you know, he had to bury his parents. He has these memories and he has love with them. And as we talked about, time not being linear, so much. That's the beauty of nostalgia and the beauty of music that can conjure those time frames.

carla 45:01

You have an album called Newstalgia, did you come up with that?

chris 45:05

Like at the time I thought I did, but I don't know if I really did. Because I think there's even a producer or a rapper that goes by the name Newstalgia

carla 45:13

Right. Well, first of all, I heard it. And what I liked about it, I think there's an eagle right over my head. PS like, five inches. Okay, we talked about this a lot on this Silver Threads podcast, because I'm really interested in like, grabbing stuff from like, from the past and the future. But making sure we weave it into right now in the present. And newstalgia just captures that in a way that I hadn't really, I didn't have a word for it. I was just like, grab the thread from there and there and make a thing. And that's what I hear in the song. It's really great.

chris 45:56

Yeah, that was my exact thought with the album. I was like, I’m such a loser. I'm always like, with nostalgia. I'm always going towards it. It's like, but you have to love the present too. And I was like, what if I you know, the present could feel like nostalgia. If you were making those, those memories and those feelings and feeling them as nostalgia feels in the present. I feel there's a danger of just going to nostalgia all the time.

carla 46:24

Totally. Yeah.

chris 46:25

At least for me.

carla 46:26

Same, that's where depression links. lingers. Yeah.

chris 46:32

Okay, we're going to go to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

carla 46:36

We won't play this whole song.. cry. Well, first of all, Tracy Chapman is like, where I really learned my politics. You know, like, you know, I grew up in around a lot of punk music and stuff, but I have a joke where like, there's sex pistol anarchism, and then there's anarchism, right? Or anti authoritarianism or whatever. Anyways, Tracy is like her music just educated me in a way that the other punk didn't - she's just incredible. I saw her live. It was like the best thing ever, outside... And this song as someone who grew up pretty poor in a dysfunctional home and when I met my partner like it's just our song just everything about it. And you know, it is our trajectory like if he could just like give me the foundation I will take us places kind of thing and even after it's been moving together over 30 years and we still like hear it and go it's feels like yesterday, but we had to take this leap of faith together and run away or run towards joy in our life and yeah, it's just I think it's like a pinnacle melancholy joy song because it's a lot of loss wrapped up in it but it's also about freedom and liberation and finding your way.

Tracy Chapman 48:37

SONG Fast Car

chris 52:00

I love that song. The way that she goes from narration to heart so effortlessly is just amazing. I love the lyrics so much. And I was wondering when you said that, along with punk because I know you have a history with the punk scene, the different branches that Tracy Chapman gave you maybe with like a political vocabulary or outlook?

carla 52:26

Right, I mean, I guess it was just, you know, to borrow the phrase intersectionality I mean, that it had also had especially to that album, like it had a lot about forgiveness on it and love. And yeah, finding the path towards liberation versus just always in fighting against or negation. And that was something I really needed. You know, early on, when my brother was into punk, I used to say, I don't know how you can listen to this. It's just all negative. And like, No wonder you're depressed all the time. Like, you know, I listened to The Police instead. This is like 77/78. So finding her like she had that kind of like, you know, things are bad. Call things what they were, she was, you know, obviously, pointing out the horrors of the world. But within this framework of a container of like love and kindness, forgiveness, that was really beautiful. Like the other song on the album, though. Chris, my partner, when I met him he had played on the guitar. Three of the songs he played and sang.

chris 53:35

No way. That's awesome.That's so cool.

carla 53:40

I don't know. What about you?

chris 53:42

When I first heard this song, it really brought out a lot of the just the stories that you don't often hear about, of a really just class issues. And of course, race and white supremacy tied into these. But when you hear the the one that really resonates with me is the man who was drinking becauses his body, he felt had no more use, but his he was much too young for how his body looked... that's so powerful, just that, that phrasing of the way that she took it. And it really just made me think of when I worked in the Union. I worked in the stagehands Union for a while, right before COVID or year before COVID. And I was on the carpet duty which was a horrible thing. So I would lay miles of carpet a day in the convention centers for Comic Cons and stuff. And these guys that I worked with that had been there for years, they could only be comfortable when they were laying carpet when they were trying to walk out to the light rail station, it brought them horrible pain to walk and they had their legs had so much arthritis and stuff and these guys weren't even that old. It really, that lyric really resonated with me when I heard this again.

carla 54:56

Yeah, yeah, the working class stuff was really. It's a big part of why that song works for us.

chris 55:03

Do you want to add on this?

carla 55:06

Just that it had the theme of finding belonging again, which was like oh, there's that that's probably what's underneath all of my play song

chris 55:14

this story behind this song too, that you shared. So I'm gonna play the next song is miserabilism by Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys 58:12

SONG: Miserabilism

chris 59:20

The way I got into this song was actually when I started working from home during COVID. I've been laid off from my other job, and I started at the call center job I was talking about. And this was like a hellacious job in between calls which was usually only about 20 seconds. I would throw on I was like I'm gonna try to get through all these discographies of people I like, and I was like I was going through Pet Shop Boys, I had never heard the song it was on some B-side and I was like this song is amazing. It's because I've always thought that the whole Disney narrative has messed up so many people of this capitalist thing of working hard. There's someone for everyone you'll find love, all these things. They create a golden, a gold plated lust. That is a form of what they call love, and dusted with capitalism or something like that. And when he's talking about just that life will be disappointing and all these things and not having expectations. It's just so well said and comforting. I found, especially while working in a call center.

carla 1:00:25

Yeah, thanks for sharing that story and re-listening to that and hadn’t listened to it years, but there was a line in it. I think, I hope, it's in it. Oh, my gosh, it made me think: I wonder if this was some seeds around the melancholy thing of being like wearing it as a badge of honor because it there's that line where just for the sake of it, make sure you're always frowning It shows the world you're got substance and depth. Like I was quite judging of you if people were not melancholy. I was like, You can't be paying, you're just not paying attention. How many people are suffering?

chris 1:00:58

Yeah, that's actually yeah, that's the third verse. Yeah, it's it's one of my favorite lines, because it's just it's funny for one, but then yeah, it's kind of deep too. And it's like, there's a lot of people who, and I know there's so much to you know, different neuro divergence of sometimes people who smile the most are actually very depressed. I just like how he plays with this whole thing of you have to show that if you see someone frowning, they understand this philosophy of miserabilism. There's no happy endings just a message to depress and it's so funny and true.

carla 1:01:35

And it has a beat that makes you move so that the joy can move. Yeah, they always said the great dancy beats. Okay, so now we're going to Nat King Cole. Song Nature Boy. Oh, I didn't have the song on my first playlist. I think first one, I sent to you didn't have this. I do have it on the large original one. But I was on a walk with Zach and he reminded me that I sing the song all the time. When I am not doing well. And also because like love was like the thing like you centering everything in love is what actually got you healthy. It's not It's not about the negative and fighting back and Don't tell me what to do and don't want to do this and I don't want to it was all about actually more affirmative and really big fan of Moulin Rouge, seen it more than I want to admit and including seeing it in San Francisco at the Castro with everyone's with a sing along. So the song is just incredible and because there is the melancholic energy throughout it but you know, the message is so short and so quick, but it's everything.

Nat King Cole. 1:02:44

SONG: Nature Boy

chris 1:05:10

I think that is just such good advice, this song and I wish I would have heard this when I was young. The the message is so powerful. Oh, you were speaking of the Moulin Rouge

carla 1:05:36

Actually been there I haven't been inside but I've seen it outside of Paris - that's really good to know. Have you not seen the movie?

chris 1:05:45

I'm not in a long time. I haven't No.

carla 1:05:48

Yeah, it's we have a joke in our family that it's actually Christian that is actually the character not Ewan McGregor but the joke is a Ewan McGregor gave me a call tomorrow that I dumped the whole family. But it's it's really that character just heartache, and so beautiful.

chris 1:06:09

Love it. And this is the most common song that you you actually verbalize when you're stressed out?

carla 1:06:16

Yeah. that's one of those things I didn't even know I did it can reflect people you live with reflect back to you did this thing

chris 1:06:25

I love that your kid collaborated and got this song on here and then got this song into my into my heart in my mind. Okay, so I'm going to now play Sade - When Am I Going To Make a Living?

Sade 1:07:20

SONG: When Am I Going To Make a Living?

chris 1:09:56

So aside from this, it has been an amazing song, and I am a big Sade fan, when I was in high school, I stopped playing basketball, and for the school, and I broke my knee and had surgery and then to play basketball. So I started working at the hospital. And I was working at Rose Medical Hospital in Denver. And they had this free jukebox in the cafeteria. And this was one of the albums that was on there. And there was this this woman who I worked with in the cafeteria and in the kitchen and she showed me this song. And she was kind of like my real teacher, she was teaching me through Sade. She was saying, she would always tell me the line that the waste your body and soul if you allow them, and she was an older Black woman from the south, and she was like a mentor to me, she was like you need to do good in school, would talk to me about getting out of there getting out of the kitchen, if I could. So I was a pot washer, was probably there till I was 19, so probably about five years. And the jukebox had all kinds of other annoying albums. And this was the one that was great. I remember they had a Who let the Dogs Out by the Bahama Men, and it was a single, and this one cook he put in the code like six times to drive people crazy. And then we'd have to unplug the jukebox. But I really just learned a lot from this song. This song just has such a powerful message.

Carla 1:11:14

I love that story. Holy moly. Is that like layers? Yeah, she's amazing, big on the playlist of me, choosing joy over sorrow, really, at that time in 2001. And listen to her a lot. This song is really important for me too, because I was in the restaurant business for years. It's like generational, like my grandmother owned restaurants. And I was really good at it. And I was in Toronto and I was the the owner wanted me to open a restaurant with him in Vancouver and be partners and I was listening not to the song, but to some part of my playlists and other people and just like I'm gonna not be working class anymore which is a joke ,because you can't actually say you're not going to do anymore. But I decided that I had a retirement party. And I've never turned back. I've never worked in a restaurant since I was 35, I think it's just a really important message in there is just an important nuance because people like capitalists, what's that shit line of like, do what you love, the money will follow bullshit. But there's the thing with like working class folks that we do to ourselves where we don't we don't believe in ourselves and I love that in this line. But in that line in the song I think yeah, there's just a nuance in it that it's not about playing the capitalist game, but it's about believing in yourself so that you can find thriving. Yeah, thanks for picking it.

chris 1:12:49

Yeah. I love that. Thanks for adding that. We're doing the Holly Cole version. So this next song is I Don't Want to Grow Up

Holy Cole 1:13:26

SONG: I Don't Want To Grow Up

carla 1:17:00

Yeah, so this song has played a factor, since I was a teenager because the Ramones did it first, much more upbeat, funnier version. Really, I think, the perfect version for a teen to listen to, really resonated. I have fought so called adultism all my life in terms of the rigidity that I seen the suffering and whatever that meant. And then fast forward bunch of years, just after I gave birth to Zach my oldest son in 94. That's around when she came out with this album, she covered a bunch of Tom Waits songs. Which is funny because Tom Waits version is actually the one that resonates the most with me now because it feels so playful and he's older and I don't know I just relate to him more I think but this was really I was really stuck with what does it mean to not want to grow up in this way but be a parent and i just yeah, I listened to it often and with you know, my baby on my on my chest, thinking about it didn't give in didn't grow up in that way.

chris 1:18:09

I love those threads that you put through it. Yeah, I do. I think the Ramones is the the you know the most playful and then Tom Waits is kind of the middle, which Tom Waits is what Tom Waits is so good at, of being melancholy and playful and funny at the same time. And then Holly Cole just really brings out, takes takes away that sarcasm and you really just feel the the rawness of the lyrics, which is why I love this version it's Yeah, it's so powerful, but still resilient at the same time.

carla 1:18:40

Totally. Yeah. Tom Waits. Exactly. And I originally picked his version because it is melancholic joy. But the story is better.

chris 1:18:48

No, yeah, thank you for something that all together. We messed around and made a really good playlist.

carla 1:18:54

Yes. Totally fun. It was Yeah, melancholy joy.

chris 1:18:59

So I'm going to play the track Legends by Juice WRLD who recently passed away rest in peace Juice Wrld

Juice WRLD 1:19:06

SONG: Legends

chris 1:22:15

You can hear Juice WRLD’s, his heart and his music and his his soul and just the vulnerability of mostly Juice WRLD's music is so powerful and his voice the the beats that he uses too. And I really just resonate to the song because I don't know if it goes back to when my mom was smoking when she was pregnant, but my lungs, they they collapse randomly and actually collapsed four times one right when I turned 18, just back to back and then I had up surgeries. And the top lobes of my lungs had to be removed. And I was going in and out of the hospital for probably about a year or two. So I was always on dilaudid in the hospital, just messed up my head so bad. And then they would give me like percocets and all this. And, you know, it's essentially like battling with addiction of pain pills, just because I was depressed. But I didn't think I was I think that was the scariest thing. It just was like, Oh yeah, I'll take one because I have all these and I have a little bit of pain. And then it was turning into, you know, a hole to dig down that that was a dangerous hole. And I really just relate to what, what Juice WRLD’s talking about in this on top of this. And the things that he struggled with. I know there was another artist that was lost who had a similar vulnerability to their lyrics was Lil Peep. Couple years ago, too. It's just had this amazing way of writing too. And the lyrics that really resonate with me in the song is that I usually have an answer to the question but this time I'm going to be quiet. Ain't nothing like the feeling of uncertainty that eeriness of silence. And so powerful. When I work with a lot of youth in high schools, I know a lot of them relate to juice wrld too, because they're going in school at this time that's worried about school shootings, worried about climate change. So many existential things are already heavy on top of just being in high school, those feelings at the time. So there's just a lot of intersections and things that collide with this song and why I relate to it.

carla 1:24:25

Thanks for sharing about your story and being vulnerable. I am so sorry. That's a lot to contend with. Glad you

chris 1:24:32

Thank you.

carla 1:24:34

Yeah, music really helps, right?

chris 1:24:37

Yeah.

carla 1:24:38

I love that song, too. I actually had the same quote pulled out so not surprisingly, I just yeah, I had shared the list with Zach today. And he was blown away that the song was on it. And he was like, Oh, it's just too sad. Lil Peep and they're all dead...Yeah. But yeah, the love for each other, though that comes through in the song. Like about, you know, like the music will live on it's one of the things that writers die to like I'm like, I'm so grateful that I still have their their words to carry me, carry generations, not just me. I really like that in that too. Yeah.

chris 1:25:17

Yeah, and like one beautiful thing about art is that it literally saves lives. And I know that this song saves lives every day. And that's another thing of just beautiful art.

carla 1:25:30

Yeah. yeah

chris 1:25:31

Okay, so this next track is better by Burial. The new song is Untrue.

Burial 1:25:35

SONG: Untrue

carla 1:31:15

Feelings, feelings and saw because you girl, man Yeah, there's like many stories for this. I think probably why I I think probably why I chose it is in 2017 I got really sick and was in bed for about eight months. I love to dance. It's how I like how I move through being sad, and I couldn't dance. So I kind of came up with this plan that if I put a record on and laid on the floor, like on the hardwood floor, I would feel the vibrations of the music. And my body would get my Vegas nerve activated. Move. And Zach put on this and yeah, it just became like a healing theme song. Especially Untrue. And then during the pandemic, it just, you know, that feeling of being in quarantine and stuff and being stuck at home like, had a similar feeling even though I could physically dance. So, you know, I just listened to it every day. And I mean, we have all of Burial's stuff. But this is the one that I go to. And then I think I shared this with you. But Mark Fisher writes about a story about him writing this this particular song with his mom and him being really sad. I think if their dog his dog just died or something. And he wrote something, and his mom didn't like it and told him to like, just go make some tea and fuck everybody and do his work, find his passion or whatever. I can't remember the exact quote. It's really good. And that just made me love it even more, because he immediately went and wrote this song Untrue, and she loved it.

chris 1:33:02

And then it turned to be his breakout hit right?

carla 1:33:04

Yes.

chris 1:33:06

I love his story so much I had never known until you told me it's so cool. So when you started using the song kind of as a ritual for healing Did you notice a big difference right away?

carla 1:33:18

Yes. Sorry, the wind

chris 1:33:19

It’s fine. This episode is featuring the wind.

carla 1:33:23

Yes. Which is our sound?

chris 1:33:25

Yeah. It's a form of music. I mean, I first heard Burial, it was on a Thom Yorke remix and I just love the haunting syntha but it's still dancey and some my favorite type of music, a reason why I love the new wave so much and Trance and some EDM and stuff like that. I love that this pick is on the playlist. So next we're going to a Channel Zero Network friend, Tim who is Sole and the song is called Last Earth.

Sole 1:34:08

SONG: Last Earth

chris 1:36:22

So, for one, Sole is one of my favorite lyricists, one of my favorite writers, I don't know how many albums Sole has, it's gotta be, it's in the 20s it may be in the 30s, a prolific writer. And the reason I like this song is it has a melancholy joy to it. It's a lot of Sole's music does, but this is more of a dancey beat. It has William Ryan Fritch, from Sole and the Skyrider band singing with him. Just the beginning bars, so cool, I might be dead, but no flies on me. And he lived in Denver for a while. And we would often go to protests together. And I remember one day we were at one of these protests and he disappeared and he was arrested, kind of just for stepping off the curb for a second you know, the average blocking traffic or something. And the line all up in the cell talking FTP, is just so funny to me, but so Sole at the same time, and so true. And the just the way that he gets into other topics too, he says that's a bad trip, like when whites cross the sea, talking about colonialism, questioning dogma, which is something he does so well with his the way that he intervenes with anarchy and anarchism. And the course to the planet Earth, you don't belong to anyone, we will undo the feudal age. And then he always gets into little sci fi tangents as well like talking about the simulation theory or are we in a projection, and then the playfulness of Sole as well that sometimes he dreams he's flying through space to sees other just all these images of liberation will talking about desecration at the same time, which is I find inspiring and comforting and reflective.

carla 1:38:07

Thanks for putting the song on. I hadn't heard it. Already adore Tim/Sole. So I had pulled out similar lines as you but I'm the one in the chorus that we will die trying, I love so much because I mean that's that willingness, you know? I think like in all my social media bios I just wrote, I try... because I think that's like the least we, I mean, it's the most we can do actually. And I think isn't there like a Rebecca Solnit told me this, like, it's actually what an essayist is, like somebody who writes political stuff for the world is at the ideas you try. So just really gravitates to that, so hearing that in the song with that, with those lyrics, I was like, that's the point. That's the whole entire point is to try.

chris 1:38:53

It really reminds me of the whole, Sole always did the whole détournement of Guy Debord and kind of see this in three parts. So the first one being 50 cent, Get Rich or Die Trying. And then Dead Prez, they kind of did a détournement and they said Get Free or Die Trying and then Sole, kind of Sole is in that vein very much with his music of or we will die trying

carla 1:39:16

Nice connection. Nice weaving. took what I said, no grounding and grounded it Thank you.

chris 1:39:27

No way. I didn't even think of it. until you brought it up. So yeah, that's the beauty of collaboration. Oh, you're so nice. You picked our song for the last song, which is I've always loved the monsters by by me, Jason/Maudlin Magpie & produced by A Thousand Vows

Time (me), Jason/Maudlin Magpie & produced by A Thousand Vows 1:39:58

SONG: I've Always Loved the Monsters

carla 1:43:26

So I wanted to pick something on the larger playlist too I also just picked something that just came out from Kinnie Starr... I just really wanted to bring it current. I listen to this song more than I'd like to admit it.. thank you so much for creating it both of you. It just. Yeah, it does bring that melancholy joy because it roots me into like a lot of things. I mean, almost every line, it's something that I've like, pondered or thought about, not in the exact same way or not in the same poetic way. But one of the things I'm really trying to figure out is like how to get out of my head and be more present so that I can just live more of a thriving life and so much of my work was about like creating thriving environments and containers for people but then I overworked myself and didn't thrive myself. Then there's just you have that in there and, and on the one hand like, like, the Jason's melody, like, it's kind of this counter to it because it's it's like this dilemma that I have around like more thought is like, takes me way out of presence, but yet your thoughts do untangle it all for me. So anyway, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put your lyrics back to you.

chris 1:44:37

I love that. Thank you, it's an honor that you feel that way. And to just give a little bit of context to this song is I had, I believe I've told you the story, but I had recorded this song, and this song talks about death like a lot of my songs which I get made fun of for. I had recorded this song. and it even says the one one day years hard will be beating the the next it might not be. And literally the next day, I got in a horrific car accident, almost died and had internal bleeding and stuff. And then my mind didn’t work that well for a while. It's such a severe concussion. And when I kind of came back to and I was able to write again and work on this album, I wanted to redo this verse, the song and Jason was like, no, that you recorded that. It's like, it almost was your last recording. Like you have to keep it. It's crazy. It's eerie. And maybe he's kind of a macabre person for wanting to keep it like it was but it was a good idea. But then I found out later that he actually wrote the chorus when I was injured pretty much, and he said he was kind of talking about how my mind is it always like can make a lot of connections and goes places so I was like wow, I never knew the chorus had to actually do with me and that he was worried about me when I was injured, so it kind of made, ties the song more together.

carla 1:46:04

Wow, that is probably what I've like it just has such it's so affectual like it's kinetic. Like I feel it in every way and also like I do a lot of work with my ancestral stuff and you just you cover it all like yeah my my sights.. What is it, my thoughts steal my sight? Oh man. Yeah, my daily. I apologize to my kids and my partner for that.. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that story. And I'm so glad you survived that accident. Yeah. And not to mention the title because we both love monsters.

chris 1:46:42

Yeah, no, definitely. That was that was the other thing of yeah, always, always love the Yeah, the monsters are not always the heroes of the stories or what's really strange is this last track that I picked by SBTRKT featuring sampha trials of the past is a song that actually was one of the ways I healed after my car accident. I didn't even think about how these lined up. I was I never took a day off of teaching after the car accident, which was a really dumb idea because I was throwing up after a lecture, anytime I use my my brain even if I read a text message, it would make me nauseous. And I was stubborn and took place in this debate I had already said I would go to on fracking, which I was glad I did because the fracking debate was horrible. And I threw up after that too. But this was a song that I would always listen to on the light rail. And it brought me peace and it made me feel free.

SBTRKT (feat. Sampha) 1:47:45

SONG: Trials of the Past

carla 1:51:15

I really like the songs, how does it help?

chris 1:51:19

Back to that thing where you say like it's just there, that vibe of this melancholy joy. For one, it's just the beats. I love this like tube synths in the minors in it and then some - Sampha's voice, it's just so soulful, and so calming and poetic. But when I would be on the light rail, and I was trying to get to like the front or the back of the car, and I stand up, and then I would pretend I was flying. And I didn't feel good, you know, because I couldn't really think, so I feel kind of weird too. I felt spacey. So I actually felt like I was flying above the light rail while listening to this over and over again for about a month. And then I love the second verse where he says I was always floating around the city, going with the flow without ever knowing where I want to be. So I got into crazy situations. And a loyal soldier who acts who acts who acts but never asks, that was my favorite line. And I just love that. And I know you and me, we really resonate about talking about questioning and questions.

carla 1:52:23

I really liked flying on my back, the looking down. Really, really related to that I think it has like it had this sense of like astral projection or something in it. I think there's some kind of like, beyond this physical realm. I mean, that's the joy. I think I pulled from it out of that.yeah

chris 1:52:44

Yeah, it reminds me of your story about Burial a little bit too, about how you were trying to get the nerve nerve activated going and like that form of dancing. And we had talked about in an email before this on other topics of what music is and music and ableism. And I was telling you about a friend I have who's a non hearing friend, and they told me, they were explaining to me about going to shows and that they enjoy going to shows where they can just feel the bass and the bass in their chest. And just the vibes of the energy of a show and all of those things. And just those things to consider when people are talking about music and ableism and all those things that tie in, and how music is part of everyone's realities.

carla 1:53:32

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. It's really important. That's the thing like rhythm. Yeah, even a non hearing person they can feel it in their body. And I think that's really important because that's like I shared that quote. It's Zach's favorite quote the one about like that sound is you can't have music without sound but you can have sound without music and so therefore sound is more important. But it makes me think about that just opening up what sound is and how how we experience it and in even like a harmonic way or harmony way, like that's probably a whole other conversation that I'm probably not the best person to have it with because I don't really understand music, but just even the western narrow version of what music is versus the east. Just continues on the white supremist hegemonic road even what constitutes music.

chris 1:54:24

Yeah, like always trying to categorize and break things into binaries that are not necessarily. Going back to what you were saying about how you enjoy dance. And that's a way that you're able to express, just yeah, the music of that and just the rhythm of movement

carla 1:54:42

Even separating that in the West.

chris 1:54:47

I love that bird

carla 1:54:48

A little music

chris 1:54:51

And is a perfect book end because that's how we started it with talking to the birds.

carla 1:54:55

Yes. Nice. Nice. Did you want to say anything about your larger list before we wrap it up?

chris 1:55:03

Like the ones that I really picked on my extra was a song that I really grew up listening to which was Respiration by Blackstar. It's talking about the city and the beat by Hi Tek is really contemplated and I love like the poetry of Mos Def (Yasiin Bey). I had Prince on there, which we're both big Prince fans, I have a lot of jazz that was on there like Archie Shepp, big Tom Waits fan like you were talking about. So I had stuff from nighthawks at the diner, which was, you know, kind of a play into our newest album Nighthawks at McCoys, Stevie Wonder is one of the greatest of all time, I just love, everything Stevie does, going back to the hospital when I worked there, Frankie Beverly and The Maze of a co worker taught me about them in the song Joy & Pain ties in so much into this. And then the Priests, I really love the Priests and their music in Earth, Wind and Fire, one of the members from Earth Wind and Fire's from Denver. I am a big Frank Ocean fan as well. New wave, so Joy Division, and I probably end up putting a New Order or someone else on there if we kept going with this playlist.

carla 1:56:08

Well, I did 13 so you can add a couple more. I'm so excited to share this list. I'm gonna start with the couple that like we're in that we got booted out of the top seven which is Sun Ra, Blue Soul, So I mean, I just, I don't know, I feel like I'm from another planet most of the time, so I really relate to Sun Ra's stuff and, and really get lost in it. And then Sinead O'Connor really, really important. I mean, her and Tracy Chapman, you know, are my political educators. Oh the song that I kicked off right away was for the one that Zach told me to do nature boy, but This is for Life from Luka Bloom. I don't know if you know his stuff, but he's Irish. Just an incredible singer, singer songwriter, and it's really about a song during the troubles where a man or woman fall in love and he gets put in prison because he kills somebody. But they stay together despite it all and it's all about time and how he can't actually watch the moon because he's in jail and it's really really sad but there's like a beauty about it that they commit to life together their love their love is going to transcend this physical distance. Yeah, so and Prince, of course, it was really hard to pick a Prince song. I was really wanting to do something from his early stuff that Purple Rain is the one that had to be and then The Cure. Aw, man, I probably listened to Cure like three times a week because it's a dance. It's not you know, it is melancholy Joy to the max because it has the beat to dance. But the songs are so sad. Sigur Ros is another, all of it. It's my every time I go on a flight. I listened to Sigur Ros. I love it. The Police's like circa you know, teenager, I just felt completely lonely. It's from their first or maybe their second. I thought it's from the first album. And then I have a couple jazz stuff on there to Steal my Joy from Lee Williams. Do you know that song? So good

chris 1:58:09

No, no.

carla 1:58:11

it's about not stealing, It's like don't steal my joy is actually the song

chris 1:58:15

Nice.

carla 1:58:17

Sounds really, really beautiful. And then of course, At Last lost I borrowed from a friend who did a playlist about hope and Rebecca Solnit actually, she had it on there. Because she's you know, sometimes sometimes we have to wait for it. Sometimes there's patience in the fight, in the build. So I thought it was a good one in terms of ending my playlists. Sometimes the Joy has you have to wait a bit.

chris 1:58:45

I love that.

carla 1:58:46

They cover them all. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, Walkabout real quick. I love Atlas Sound. And I really wanted the song on the film I made about the purple thistle and I went through a lot of networks to get it but of course, you know, you're in the business. He didn't he doesn't actually have rights to the song so I ended up not using it but yeah,

chris 1:59:05

on dang. Yeah, I love your extras on here.

carla 1:59:10

Oh my god. I missed Sour Gout. Yeah, that's my kid. It was hard to pick but I picked the one that resonated the most. He's written a couple songs for me. I should probably have done one of them but had a lot of rain in it.

chris 1:59:26

Awesome. All right, carla. Well, I'll talk to you soon. Bye

carla 1:59:30

Bye.

1:59:32

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the time talks podcast part of the channel zero network. Please check out carla bergman work and support their endeavors. Links to carla's works are in the show notes. Please send me an email and tell me some songs you listen to when you're feeling blue, or share a playlist with us. My email is [email protected]. thanks to awareness for the music, share the show around, rate it up and give someone some water. peace.

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years ago

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A Tale Of Two Ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify And The Wide-Open Future

Spotify and Bandcamp could not be more opposite. Where Spotify highlights playlists, most often of its own creation, Bandcamp sticks to the album (or any other format, as determined by the artist). Where Spotify pays royalties according to little-understood formulas that can only be analyzed by reverse calculation, Bandcamp lets artists and labels choose their own prices. Where Spotify requires working through a limited number of distributors to access their services, Bandcamp is open to anyone. Where Spotify has revenue streams dependent on ads and data, Bandcamp operates on a simple revenue share with artists and collects no information on its users.

Spotify is now worth an estimated $54 billion on the stock market, despite having never shown an annual profit. Bandcamp is privately owned, has been in the black since 2012, and continues to grow... slowly. You might be tempted to say that one is a 21st-century business, and the other belongs to an earlier age. But neither could exist at any other time.

Which poses the question: does our 21st-century business world really have to be so much like Spotify, and so little like Bandcamp? I spoke with Bandcamp CEO and co-founder Ethan Diamond to try and understand better how and why his company does business the way they do.

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Given how differently Bandcamp has behaved from a typical startup, I asked Diamond a fundamental question: Is Bandcamp a digital business?

There was a long pause. "Yeah, I'm not sure," said Diamond. "I think of Bandcamp as a music company first, because I think of who we serve as first and foremost the artist. And the way to best serve artists happens to be through technology, a particular model of technology that our business is based on. But we're definitely – no question – we're different than a lot of digital businesses. I mean, the mission of the company is, I think, fairly unique. ... There's this great story – there was a New Yorker article about it – about how Prince was working on his autobiography just before he died. And he had picked a co-writer and in one of their initial meetings together he said, 'Music is healing. Write that down first.' He said that he wanted it to be the guiding principle they used in the book. And if you start with this idea that music is healing, that is obviously a power that should be in the hands of everybody who has the talent to wield it. ... And so that's what Bandcamp is. That's what I feel like we're here to build – that system. And the way you do that is by ensuring that artists are compensated fairly and transparently for their work. And that is through the direct support of their fans."

NATIONAL

Comments From Spotify CEO Anger Some Musicians

Try going into an investor earnings call with that! Actually, what does a proper earnings call in the digital music business sound like? Daniel Ek, CEO and co-founder of Spotify, peppered his on April 29 with the phrase, "audio-first strategy." He uses "audio" rather than "music" because podcasting has become an important element of Spotify's strategy. But strategy toward what, exactly? Here are more of Ek's own words, from his Q1 2020 earnings call:

"When I look ahead both short- and long-term, I'm always thinking about what's Spotify's role within the larger ecosystem. And while most focus is on competition between streaming services, we continue to be focused on the billions of users that are listening to linear radio. The 20-year trend is that everything linear dies and on-demand wins. This is a trend that we suspect will be accelerated by the COVID pandemic. ... So in my mind, our competition is actually those learned and long-held user behaviors. For us, it will always be about capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere and prove out [sic] that their time is far better spent with us."

Spotify is focused on "capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere." This is why Ek talks about "audio" generically, because it doesn't matter specifically what those listeners are doing elsewhere, Ek just wants them doing it at Spotify instead. Spotify is not a "music company first," as Diamond describes Bandcamp, because music plays a role only insofar as people spend some of their time listening to it, and Spotify wants all their time. What truly comes first for Spotify is competition – the company is focused on eliminating other places for time spent listening to... whatever. If it's to conspiracist shock jock Joe Rogan – now signed to Spotify for exclusivity of his podcast, reportedly for upwards of $100 million – then it's Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan is anything but healing. Indeed, health clearly has nothing to do with this. As Ek makes clear, even the COVID pandemic can be put to use by Spotify's strategy, as can the death of an existing medium for music, "linear radio" (more commonly known as "radio").

To be fair, Ek says he does have another mission in mind for Spotify. It's one he spelled out a couple of years ago, before podcasting entered the picture but right before the company went public on the stock exchange: he said he wanted Spotify to help "one million artists to be able to live off their art." This sounds good, especially if you're one of a million artists, rather than one in a million. But what can it mean, when Spotify's royalty rates are so low that to earn a living wage of $15 an hour, a musician needs 657,895 streams per month*? (And if you aren't a solo artist, multiply that by the number of people in your band.)

*Some streaming napkin math: A $15-an-hour minimum wage is $2,500 in revenue per month (pre-tax). Calculating Spotify streaming payout as $0.0038 per stream, then $2,500 equals out to 657,895 streams. It's important to note that this is necessarily an estimate, because each artist makes a slightly different amount per stream — but many use this average figure to estimate Spotify earnings.

It's this discrepancy, between stated goals and reality, that has led many musicians to become more vocal about their dissatisfaction with Spotify. So many that Ek himself recently complained, in an interview with MusicAlly, that: "In the entire existence [of Spotify] I don't think I've ever seen a single artist saying 'I'm happy with all the money I'm getting from streaming.' " Tellingly, Ek didn't follow this with an acknowledgement of why artists are unhappy with the money they get from streaming. Instead, he drew a rather Trump-like conclusion: they are happy, they just don't say it in public. "In private they have done that many times, but in public they have no incentive to do it. But unequivocally, from the data, there are more and more artists that are able to live off streaming income in itself."

Ek continued to swallow his foot in that same interview. "Obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can't record music once every three to four years and think that's going to be enough," he said. The reaction from musicians on social media to this particular statement was swift and loud. Musicians do not see themselves as audio machines, able to increase output to make up for the falling unit value of their product. To anyone who knows what goes into recording an album, and how few albums one is likely to make over a career in music, this may well have been the proverbial final straw.

EDITORS' PICKS

A Borrowed World: Streaming As The New Reality

Which brings us back to the anti-Spotify. It's becoming more common, especially among younger bands, to eschew Spotify altogether and post their digital music files on Bandcamp exclusively. [Ed. note: We've been noticing, anecdotally but with increasing frequency, that many new releases we'd like to include on our playlists don't make the jump from being posted on Bandcamp to appearing on platforms like Spotify.] But does it function as a replacement? When I talk about Bandcamp to music fans, especially younger ones, they often say, "but it doesn't stream." You can stream from it, I always point out – just album by album rather than playlist. But I can see their attention has already wandered.

So I put this other very basic question to Ethan Diamond: Is Bandcamp a streaming service?

His answer surprised me. "No," he said. "I don't think of this as a streaming service. I consider us a record store and a music community. The primary difference being that we're a way to directly support the artists that you enjoy listening to. You know, half of the sales on Bandcamp at this point are for physical goods. ... Digital has also seen really strong growth. And when you buy digital on Bandcamp, what you're buying is access. So you can grab a download – you know, there are people who want to grab the high-quality file – but you can also stream through our app, unlimited once you've purchased the music. But yeah, I don't think of us as a streaming service. Definitely."

Bandcamp does stream music – I'm still going to give the same argument to those who tell me it doesn't – but it's so far from the mission of the service, it doesn't even play into Diamond's view of it. Simply put: streaming doesn't support artists. So even though Bandcamp does stream (see, I'm making that argument again!), that's not how it supports artists. Which is what it really is about as a service.

Another striking aspect to Diamond's answer is Bandcamp's connection to physical goods. It is a digital-only business: it has no warehouses or delivery service, like Amazon. But Bandcamp allows artists to take orders for physical goods that they can fulfill however they choose – from their homes, from record labels or distributors, or from third-party merch services. Bandcamp simply takes a 10% revenue share of these sales. For bands, it's a bit like setting up a merch table at a virtual venue. (Venues, especially big ones, typically collect a percentage of merch sold on their premises.)

But if half of Bandcamp's revenue is from physical product, is it a digital platform?

"It definitely started as a digital platform," says Diamond. "In 2007, when we started the company, streaming didn't exist in the United States and our competition essentially was piracy. And the idea in 2007 primarily was that nobody was going to pay for music anymore. And it just seemed very obvious to me that if you like some music from one of your favorite artists, you should be able to support them directly. And so we built the platform to do that. My reference point for this was blogging services. In 2007, you had Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, services that were essentially like white label services for writers – you could set up a site within minutes and tap this direct relationship with your readers. And it seemed crazy to me that if your artistic output happened to be music instead of words, you were just out of luck."

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"And the most promising thing that happened in the early days," Diamond continues, "was we immediately saw people start to actually buy music, which was very exciting. I wasn't sure that was going to happen! And then, one of the fun things that happened was we started to look at the search terms people were using that brought them to a Bandcamp artist's site that led to a purchase. And several times per hour, we were seeing search terms like the name of an album or name of a track plus the word 'torrent,' or plus the word 'Limewire' or 'Kazaa.' You know, this was somebody whose intent initially was just to get the music – I don't know if they were thinking 'I'm pirating the music' – but they were trying to get it for free. But when they saw that they could make a direct purchase to the artist, they wanted to do that. And that just warmed my heart. So that's really what we were trying to do from the beginning, was just make it clear that this was a way to show your direct support for an artist."

Whether that direct support entails a digital exchange seems immaterial to Diamond. And the platform – unlike any others that come to mind – seems equally indifferent to whether you stay on it. Diamond says this, too, was deliberate from the start.

"That's a lot of the reason why, for a long time, there were not community features on the site. The MySpace community example that I had to go on was just all these people saying 'thanks for the add,' and posting their fliers for their own shows on sites, and basically, you know, polluting somebody else's space. So I said, 'Nah, let's just have no community at all.' And then what happened slowly evolved, because a lot of people started asking us 'Hey, you know, what are the other, like, math-rock artists on Bandcamp?' And my first reaction was, 'Why do you care?' Like, we're not – just go use Google or whatever. Type 'math rock' into Google. But then I started to understand that what was really going on here was a community of like-minded people forming around this idea of direct support of artists. And so then we introduced fan accounts, and collection pages, and discovery tools. And now that drives a significant percentage of the sales on the site. And again, that's just super encouraging."

Ethan Diamond's indifference to the time and money spent by users off his platform would be anathema to Daniel Ek. I am sure any Spotify employee who suggested that their users just type "math rock" into Google would have their desks cleaned out by the end of day. The differences are so extreme, Bandcamp may not just be the anti-Spotify; it may be operating in an entirely different world. I asked Diamond what digital businesses he feels a kinship with now, the way he did with blogging services when he started the company. He didn't name a music platform.

"I would say Etsy. You know, Etsy is similar in that it's a marketplace, right. They connect buyers and sellers, but they're not trying to create competing goods. And they're not fulfilling the goods or anything like that. So it's a community, and they're creating those tools to help connect those artists or sellers and buyers directly. And I think they offer everybody on that platform a fair deal. They've grown into a big company doing that, and I think like every company they have had their fair share of criticisms. But I feel like that's probably the closest."

Music as a craft, as a cottage industry? This may well be the future for many of us in the profession. In my own career, which started in the late 1980s, the type of music I play has gone from subculture to the "alternative" wing of the mainstream and now back, it seems, to subculture. Spotify is built for an economy of scale: it needs and wants to occupy all of everyone's listening time. My music and the milieu it is part of was never intended for that environment – I would worry about anyone who listened to nothing else! Are we, as Brian Wilson sang, just not made for these times?

Bandcamp's counterexample suggests that the problem I and many musicians in my situation face isn't about the digital age per se. It is possible to build a different kind of environment for music online, one that subcultures can recognize as their own and maybe even use to thrive. Or heal, at least, while we dream up new ways to connect with one another in the 21st century.

Damon Krukowski is a musician (Damon & Naomi, Galaxie 500) and writer (Ways of Hearing, The New Analog). He contributes frequently to journals including Art in America, Artforum, Pitchfork, and the New Yorker.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future?utm_source=Jocelyn+K.+Glei%27s+newsletter&utm_campaign=a6cdd34d99-Newsletter_12_07_17_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0d0c9bd4c2-a6cdd34d99-143326949&mc_cid=a6cdd34d99&mc_eid=1dbb9b3296

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