Episode 326 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.
In this week’s episode, I talk with the Orlando legend, Patrick Greene, about the power of being an autodidact, the importance of curiosity outside of one’s area of expertise, and the struggles of trying to live the life of a writer.
NOTES
To get some idea of Pat Greene’s influence, here’s a video featuring his 60th birthday celebration at the gallery earlier this year.
Episode 326 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #11 by Stephen McClurg and John King
Deep Purple: Machine Head(1972)
In my weekly blog post, I discussed the recent circumstances that led me to hearing Deep Purple’s classic album for the first time. John won’t shut up about it.
JOHN: Turns out a “machine head” is the part of an instrument for tuning strings. Hmmm.
STEPHEN: Yeah, it is a “machine head,” but I’ve never heard a musician call it that. Everyone calls it a “peg” or a “tuner,” though “machine head” may be more common in England. I just figured it was a not-so-subtle sexual reference like their name.
Is the cover supposed to represent the title? Heads reflected in a metal machine? It freaks me out, like they’re all standing behind me in an elevator and I’m looking at their reflections on the door desperate to get to my floor. Maybe they’re all staring at a metal sex doll trying to figure out how it works and wondering who will go first.
I had written about how I happened to hear the album. What about you? When did you first hear it?
I’d also be interested in what your experience of the record is as a non-musician—or do you play guitar? The song (you know which one) is so attached to guitar playing that it’s almost impossible for me to divorce my listening experience from my musical apprenticeship. [In my original post, I discussed how “Smoke on the Water” was verboten in most musical contexts.]
JOHN: I got the LP of Machine Head around ‘87 or ‘88 if memory serves. Vinyl was cheap then, a dying format, and I got it out of a pure dumb hunger for more music. The crudeness of the cover is exactly how I felt, and I was pretty sure it couldn’t be any worse than Quiet Riot, who invited us to bang our heads in 1983.
I don’t remember if I cared about “Smoke on the Water.” What I remember is that I was wowed by the organ and the drums on this record, much more than the guitars. One of my favorite records at the time was Long Player by the Small Faces, and I also had this 45 of theirs that had an instrumental called “Skewiff (Mind the Fuse)” that was a good jam. Deep Purple felt like a hard rock version of them. Side 1 of Machine Head grooves.
STEPHEN: I like that the criteria for the purchase was “this can’t be worse than Quiet Riot.” Well, that and a “pure dumb hunger for more music.” I can still relate to that sentiment.
The drums haven’t struck me one way or another. It’s possible I haven’t listened to the record enough. Paice is a crisp, tight player, but I love Jon Lord’s organ work on it and I quite like Blackmore’s guitar playing.
I think I like “Highway Star” much more than you do.
JOHN: “Highway Star” is an okay vamp, but it never quite goes euphoric. The lyric conceits seem to be that the inamorata of the rock singer is a car, or is like a car, or he is some sort of trans-dimensional god zooming over the highway trying to keep up with a nymphomaniac’s libido. The music is good, and the lyrics weird enough to be listenable, but it doesn’t really get over.
STEPHEN: After “Highway Star,” “Maybe I’m a Leo” had some good lines, but didn’t strongly catch my ear.
JOHN: “Maybe I’m a Leo” is a funky groove that’s so desultory it’s beautiful. In 1972 when this record came out, being conversant in astrology was a prerequisite for getting laid—poor dumb bastards trying to walk in bell-bottoms—so the lyrics come off as really funny to me. Paice’s fills and the guitar and keyboard solos all seem to soar off the general sloppiness of the tune.
STEPHEN: I knew I would listen to the whole album when I got to the lines “I’m alone here/with emptiness, eagles, and snow” in “Pictures of Home.” That line works for me on multiple levels.
The first level was just how surprising it was. It caught me off guard with the connection of multiple levels of abstraction. Visually, it mentions mountains and such, too, and reminded me of Rush’s concept songs and albums—which I love. It’s a Dungeons and Dragons image.
But the lines are also interesting poetically. The repetition of the vowel sounds, especially how the “e” sounds are used, is nice. Also, that it sets up the long “o” early and comes back to it. In the full chorus, it plays off the assonance of “alone” and “snow” with “home”—a home that isn’t there. The words are connected by sound, but contrasted in terms of image. The syllables count down in an effective way: emptiness (3), eagles (2), snow (1).
This connected to my memory of Anglo-Saxon poetry with its ubi sunts, imagery, and alliteration. Making the literary connection, whether they intended it or not—really endeared me to the track. And it connects to both the outsider image, the Byronic aspect of rock’n’roll, and the warrior image of hard rock and metal.
Plus the bass solo! It’s kind of sloppy and raw, but punchy. I hear a lot of Mike Watt, or I should say that I think Roger Glover influenced Watt’s playing.
JOHN: “Pictures of Home” is bouncy like “Highway Star,” but really the song is an excuse to jam, and Ritchie Blackmore’s quivering guitars and that Jon Lord organ droning work well, and the singing is strong. I don’t listen to the lyrics too much, or else I’d probably have to stop listening to most rock music period. You’re a better listener than I am.
Perhaps it’s my tinnitus—SUPER FUCKING LOUD since seeing George Clinton earlier this month—but I can’t find the bass through the organ.
“Never Before” is a pulsing groove that sounds a lot more earnest than “Highway Star.” I am charmed by the chorus, “I’ve never felt soooooooo baaaaad … before” sung so prettily by Ian Gillan, the way no sad person could ever sing … unless one is a highway star.
Tracks 2-4 are truly great to drive through.
STEPHEN: That’s exactly what stands out to me on “Never Before.” I wish my heartbreak and sorrow sounded as sweet. Overall, it’s a groove and a chorus and not much else for me.
“Lazy” is the longest track on the album, but it’s ultimately a blues jam with vapid lyrics. It also gives them a chance, for maybe a minute, to almost play some “classical’ music. I would have liked more of that, especially the noisier possibilities, but I wonder if where the organ sounds novel to me, if it wasn’t something that people had gotten used to and were maybe tired of after the ‘60s. I’m sure a ton of psych-rock covered that territory.
JOHN: “Lazy” begins sounding like some live Doors vamp then veers into what could almost count as straightforward blues of that era, hints of Booker T and the MGs. Note: Ian Gillan is actually singing to himself, I think, as a lyric writer.
Lazy just stay in bed You’re lazy just stay in bed You don’t want no money You don’t want no bread If you’re drowning you don’t clutch no straw, no If you’re drowning you don’t clutch no straw You don’t want to live you don’t want to cry no more Well my trying ain’t done no good
I said my trying ain’t done no good You don’t make no effort no, not like you should Lazy you just stay in bed
Lazy
you just stay in bed
You don’t want no money
You don’t want no bread
That was one unmotivated cat. Good harmonica, though. They do have the good taste to wait 4 minutes into a 7 minute song to start the singing. A minute and a half later, the band returns to jamming.
Actually, “Lazy” is fucking superior to Mick Jagger’s variation on this theme, “Let’s Work,” which should count as exhibit A in why Mick isn’t cool—not primitive cool, either.
Clearly the director of this video thought, “Mick means every word of this ironically, doesn’t he? Let’s have clichés of workers trying to prance along with Mick in the middle of dangerous vehicular traffic.” My favorite part is when pallbearers drop a coffin on the highway.
STEPHEN: I know the song preceded both of these films, but I was hoping “Space Truckin’” would be more Alien than Flash Gordon. But despite that silliness, it’s a rockin’ track. I’ve always liked that kind of Motown beat with the snare on all four, and in a rock situation it often gives the drummer space to do some interesting bass work.
I love how the gnarly, weaving chorus riff is an unexpected, but really cool, transition in and out of the verse, which has the same beat. That might be my favorite riff on the record.
The verses wouldn’t be as great if the band didn’t experiment with texture. The verse as it is isn’t that special, but right before the solos, Blackmore plays a choppy, muted rhythm against the verse, while Gillan goes shrieking full-on, like a Muppet in space on fire. For a verse! Of course, he brings it back and goes even higher for the conclusion of the song.
Also, that spacy chromatic transition from the solos seems out-of-place and perfect at the same time. There’s some string-bending like the beginning of “Iron Man.”
JOHN: The rollover riff to “Space Truckin’” is okay, I guess. Angus Young would speed up the tempo to that trick with “Who Made Who” and then more with “Thunderstruck” (which I always thought was an overblown copy of “Who Made Who”).
The lyrics of “Space Truckin’” are there maybe as part of the rhythm section, just to give Ian Gillan something to do. Clearly they could have taken more drugs, lyrically speaking. Really, this whole record belongs to Jon Lord and Ian Paice. If you think that Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars came out a year later, “Space Truckin’” is even more lyrically disappointing.
In 1996, there was a movie called Space Truckers starring Dennis Hopper. It didn’t use the Deep Purple song. Or special effects better than what MST3K was using at the time. Ash vs. Evil Dead used the song, though.
STEPHEN: I think part of the elevator pitch for Alien was that it was part Jaws and part truckers in space. It makes sense someone just ran with it.
How did you get into Small Faces/Faces? You mentioned them earlier, but even at the height of Rod Stewart’s fame I don’t remember hearing much about those groups. I think there was a lot of British rock that just didn’t make it over. I’m guessing anyway.
JOHN: I just had the one LP from The Faces (Small Faces), and it really came down to the randomness of what records I came across cheap in my teens. Rod Stewart confuses me in that he could be a hard rocker (“Hot Legs”) or disco trash (“Do You Think I’m Sexy?”) or treacly pop (“Forever Young”). Liberace had more musical integrity.
STEPHEN: There was a Zappa fan in our college orchestra. He was a percussionist who sat behind me and was a good-natured snob who was really into prog rock. I used to warm up every day with something like “Smoke on the Water” just to drive him crazy. “In a Gadda Da Vida” or even parts of “Do You Think I’m Sexy?”—etc. Sometimes I threw in some Police songs. I loved to see how much I could make him cringe.
Then again, he could have been cringing at my intonation on upright bass, but I like to think it was more about my skill of finding the most annoying riff at the right time.
JOHN: Yeah, out of context, the riff on “Smoke on the Water” sounds dumb. It doesn’t sound much better in context—like a satanic bowel movement. Come on cheese!—come on donuts!—get this evil—out o’ me! I loved when the song was on season 2, episode 1 of The Sopranos. Tony is driving around in jersey and bopping awkwardly in his seat, and the CD glitches on Frank Zappa’s name, and goes Zap-Zap-Zap-Zap-Zap-Zap-Zap-Zap, and Tony blacks out crashing his goddamn SUV.
One of the reasons Deep Purple doesn’t get half the respect it deserves is because this one song is their legacy according to classic rock stations. I fucking hate classic rock and all its two to five hundred song-lists set to replay and replay and replay and half of those were utterly fucking stupid the first time. No more “Hotel California” or “Paradise City” or anything by Bon Motherfucking Jovi. This isn’t the death of rock and roll. This is the zombie afterlife of actual rocks. It grinds my last fucking nerve, this bullshit.
STEPHEN: I think I used to know what “classic rock” is, but I don’t know anymore. It just so happens I’ve never been a fan of any of the bands you mention as “classic rock.” The Eagles just never caught my ear. I remember being a kid and being trapped in the car with my parents listening to the radio. My mom has always liked and still likes Top 40 music—-whatever happens to be Top 40. She heard Kanye before I did, though she’s never liked his stuff. When I was a kid she liked Devo, Talking Heads, and Blondie, so that’s what I heard growing up. But if I were in the car and “Hotel California” came on, I just hated how long and boring it seemed. I still don’t like the Eagles, but I’ve also never heard a whole album, which is the same situation I was in with Deep Purple which sparked this whole conversation to begin with—so I don’t know. Maybe I do like The Eagles and I just don’t know it yet.
I was already into Jane’s Addiction and Metallica when I heard Guns N’ Roses. Overall, I just wasn’t interested, I think I peaked in hard rock around White Lion and Def Leppard and just wasn’t interested anymore. It’s good that I’ve always been ready to hear something new, but bad in a sense that I think I understand something more than I do based on genre. Sometimes I’m just wrong. I’m willing to admit that. I think a lot of us do this. It’s partially survival—-otherwise the world is overwhelming, but there is something about getting into the details. They almost always subvert our shorthands.
I never liked Bon Jovi either, though “Runaway” cracks me up and that talk box effect on “Living on a Prayer” I always liked, but I always turned it off when the verse started.
But I actually like a lot of classic rock. Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, etc. I still love “White Rabbit” or “Barracuda” or….Is Lou Reed classic rock? Velvet Underground? I guess sometimes.
JOHN: I saw both Aerosmith and AC/DC in 1988, and White Lion was the opening act for both of them. GNR was the opener for Aerosmith for half of their tour, but nope, not for the Hollywood Sportatorium date. Wait? Wait? Why, White Lion, will you fucking get better if I wait? How about you wait, you skinny bitches.
Everything about Bon Jovi fills my heart with hate. They make White Lion sound like Slayer.
STEPHEN: I love “Wait.” That would have been an exciting time to see GNR.
I admire your ability to be angry about these things. I think for many years I felt poisoned by music around me and felt physically affected by music I didn’t like. These days I just say “not for me” and move on. I can be moved to tears by music, but I rarely react negatively to it.
I do not like that almost every public place I go to pipes in music.
JOHN: Now I lock myself into my iPod as much as possible when in public, which keeps me saner. I mean Taylor Swift’s music is purely anti-human and Katy Perry is a triumph of cliché, but I have mostly avoided them, whereas Bon Jovi and Poison and Van Hagar and a lot of other shit got their toxic tentacles into my ears as a teenager because iPods didn’t exist and I had to rely on the radio and (shudder) MTV.
Wait, you think I’m angry? What the fuck makes you say that?
Technically, the machine head is the peg, plus the gear and housing. The back of the LP featured the whole back neck of a … bass?
I guess they thought that out of context “machine head” sounded really cool. They were kind of right.
STEPHEN: The digital age allowed me to call this album up and listen to it, but one of the things I don’t like, and maybe this is a “get off my lawn” moment, is the lack of artwork, lyrics, and notes. I’ve never seen the back cover, even after all those years of shuffling around used copies.
I agree. It’s a cool name! It cracks me up that they put the bass headstock on the back of the album. It’s so obvious that I find it as confusing as the cover. That looks like a Fender bass, but someone more eagle-eyed would be able to tell if it’s a Precision or Jazz bass.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #10 by Stephen McClurg
Diamanda Galás with John Paul Jones: The Sporting Life(1994)
[…]For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies, trans. Stephen Mitchell
“My voice was given to me as an inspiration for my friends, and a tool of torture and destruction to my enemies. An instrument of truth.” ~Diamanda Galás
In listening to this album again, I remembered how often I heard Diamanda Galás referred to as either “the crazy one” or “the one who shrieks.” There’s a certain amount of truth to this. Galás frequently portrays characters that run the border between sanity and insanity (a few examples–just on this record–include “Skótoseme,” “Devil’s Rodeo,” and “Baby’s Insane”), though I think she’s performing “madness” in a way to comment on what she sees in the world.
An Anne Carson essay, “The Gender of Sound,” is useful here. Carson writes, “It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God.”
While Galás can conjure seemingly anyone or anything with her voice, she is often remembered for the high pitches and wailings which Carson says go “together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self control. […] Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable.” I think this effusion, this overflow of sound and energy, levels this traditional idea of quiet or silenced women. I believe Galás is playing with the tensions that Carson discusses, reappropriating these gendered ideas similar to how Kara Walker reappropriates racist and sexist imagery in her art.
Carson writes that “Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public, in ancient as well as modern contexts.” Galás is no stranger to performance art (she also uses glossolalia, or speaking in tongues), even her persona as an artist could be described as a kind of possession or a kind of ecstatic ritual. Other than being “that one who screams,” she’s probably best known for performing topless and covered in cow’s blood in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during her Plague Mass, part of a body of work protesting the Catholic Church’s treatment of those suffering during the AIDS epidemic.
In discussing a poem by Alkaios, Carson writes, “the women are uttering a particular kind of shriek, the ololyga. […] It is a highpitched piercing cry uttered at certain climactic moments in ritual practice (e.g., at the moment when a victim’s throat is slashed during sacrifice) or at climactic moments in real life (e.g., at the birth of a child) and also a common feature of women’s festivals.” The sound can represent either “intense pleasure or intense pain.” These outpourings had to be regulated in that they could either represent madness or create madness in the listener. Much of Sporting Life’s material represents scenes of amour fou, or obsessive love, also a weaving of pleasure and pain. It’s interesting to note that her music is called “sexy” by some and “demonic” by others. In other words, Galás reappropriates elements of the oloyyga and its rituals, and spins them into modern narratives.
One set of songs on the album is built out of the rhythm section of John Paul Jones and Pete Thomas (of Elvis Costello and the Attractions). The eight-string bass that Jones plays on the record mirrors the effect of a tightly played riffs played on both guitar and bass. In effect, he sounds more like Jesus Lizard on “Skótoseme” than Led Zeppelin. The title track riffs sound similar to Rage Against the Machine. “Do You Take This Man?” is built on a structure reminiscent of Morphine and the keyboard line on “Hex” could be on an early-post pop Ministry record.
The album opens with Jones tremolo picking on a reverby eight-string bass and Galás mirroring this on voice, similar to many styles of Arabic music. Galás doesn’t simply mimic musical genre, she incorporates textures and techniques from various sources and synthesizes them to express seemingly anything at whim. Galás often performs multiple voices like multiple characters in these songs. She sings in Greek, English, Spanish, and glossolalia–maybe even other languages I didn’t pick out–on this track alone. Each character seems to speak a different language and if you listen to the record on headphones, these voices float around you, an effect I think of as “The Furies.” At the end of this track, as on other tracks, she manages so much vocal force she overdrives the recording equipment, but controls it, similar to a guitarist using feedback. While the track features her fusion of extended vocal techniques, operatic vibrato, and blues, this overdriven effect is nothing I’ve ever heard another singer do.
The title track is in some ways an extension and lyrically an inversion of this opener (called “Skótoseme,” which means “kill me” in Greek). If “Skótoseme” is directed inward, then “The Sporting Life” is directed outward and ponders a variety of ways of destroying the once-beloved.
The other strand on the record includes ballads, particularly blues and soul ballads.“The Dark End of the Street” is unexpected, but magnificent. It’s a song frequently covered, and Galás and Jones perform a particularly gorgeous one here. The song is originally out of the Memphis Soul tradition, which Jones nails, while adding lines similar to James Jamerson of Motown fame. He spent several years as a session musician before Led Zeppelin, and at least at the recording of Sporting Life, hadn’t lost any of those chops.
Galás’s performance on this track, hammond organ and vocals, is sublime. In relation to the gendering of sound, this song is normally performed by men, so she also flips the power dynamic on the song, telling the man not to cry and just “walk on by.”
“Baby’s Insane” is a favorite not only of this album, but also of her catalogue, and it’s a gospel tune–of sorts. The hammond organ began as an alternative for churches that couldn’t afford a pipe organ. The musicians here are cheekily playing within the idiom, which often features vocals, hammond organ, drums (often tamborine, too, but they don’t go that far), and bass. The melody is fairly simple, as many sing-alongs are supposed to be. The refrain of “Baby’s Insane” is frequently repeated. The song is in a way an extension of how Galás uses ritual and music, and often fuses the sacred and profane. Here the lyrics provide the profane. They begin:
Arms covered in blood, the war has begun. Hide the straight razor ’cause Baby’s insane.
New telephone number, new lock on the door.
Hide all the knives, ’cause Baby’s insane.
On top of incredible vocal technique, an intensity of performance, and sometimes serious and disturbing subject matter, Galás is often wickedly funny.
While Diamanda Galás still records and performs, Sporting Life is out-of-print, though there are copies floating around for sale online and in used bins. You can hear the record on YouTube, and see a few live videos, including a performance on The John Stewart Show.
Carson, Anne. “The Gender of Sound.” Glass, Irony, and God. New York: New Directions,
1995: 119-142.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #9 by Stephen McClurg
Stump: Quirk Out (1986)
Stump, a band difficult to categorize, is compared most frequently to Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Stump formed right around the time that Beefheart’s last official album, Ice Cream for Crow (1982), came out, so maybe something in the ether passed on there, but Stump rarely reference the blues, a basic ingredient in the Beefheart stew. Stump comes out of pop-rock in terms of melody and punk in terms of aggressive, emphatic rhythms–though they share a similar sense of arrangement with the Magic Band: independent, weaving guitar and bass parts that lock up with the drums on certain beats, and sudden shifts of tone or tempo. Stump also reminds me of Wall of Voodoo, The Residents, or early DEVO, and were precursors to ‘90s bands like Primus or Mr. Bungle.
One characteristic that all of these bands share is a sense of humor, which turns some listeners away, something I’ve never understood. Maybe my predisposition for it was growing up and reading MAD or listening to The Muppet Movie soundtrack and enjoying the funny songs as much as the tender ones. I’ve had more than one person tell me that humor in music “makes me feel stupid.” It makes me feel human, and many of these bands revel in a type of humor that can be gleaned from literature like Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (if read as a mock epic), Beckett’s Endgame (“If you must hit me, hit me with the axe.”), or Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Despite having turned into “vermin,” Samsa’s worried about getting to work on time.)
But I digress.
Quirk Out opens with “Tupperware Stripper,” a song that showcases a punk approach to the Beefheart aesthetic. Mick Lynch, the singer and songwriter, opens the song chanting about a housewife looking forward to a Tupperware party for reasons other than the plastic. Lynch frequently tells absurdist stories built from quotidian elements, yet steeped in beautiful and bizarre imagery. Don Van Vliet (the “Captain” of the Magic Band) is known for a similar approach, but Lynch doesn’t use Van Vliet’s growled dadaisms. Lynch leans toward more traditional senses of narrative and melody.
This song also showcases Kev Hopper’s idiosyncratic playing. Hopper plays fretless electric bass and utilizes the expressiveness of the instrument, and at once exploits the characteristic smooth glissando and works against it with a variety of rhythmic clicks. His lines weave traditional roots with harmonics, sliding harmonics, chords, and ghost notes that become either rhythmic or melodic depending on how he deploys them.
The second song, “Our Fathers,” is a kind of rock ballad, reminiscent of Tears for Fears or Big Country, with the exception of Hopper’s harmonics and chorusy, sliding octaves, which would have likely been performed on a synthesizer in those other bands. Stump scattered a few pop-rock ballads throughout their brief catalogue. “Our Fathers” is surprising in how comfortably one can imagine it on Top 40 radio or on a film soundtrack, yet the song has probably rarely been heard out of the UK, especially pre-Internet. The song’s lyrics are about “the sins of the fathers” or how, as Philip Larkin put it, “man hands on misery to man” without learning anything from the process.
Built out of wobbly, skronky guitar and bass lines, the verse (and guitar solo) on “Kitchen Table” is probably the most Beefheartian piece on this record. The chorus switches into a more traditional rhythm and sing-along that eventually becomes a dense, roiling noise of an ending.
“Buffalo”–their “most famous” song–was my introduction to the group. While watching the video, it’s hard to deny the charisma of Mick Lynch despite the fact that (or because?) he looks like a rubbery, spastic Tintin spouting seemingly jejune lyrics like “Swing bottom / Swing big bottom / Swing-a ling-a” or “How much is the fish? / How much is the chips? / Does the fish have chips?” My children have been dancing and singing to this song since they can remember and still request it. So it’s childish, but maybe in the purest sense. Besides, how many times can one hear “The Hot Dog Dance” or “Let It Go” and not lose it? Lynch says in a few live videos that this song is about the reincarnation of the American Buffalo, which I presume means, given the song narrative, that they come back as American tourists, “bulls” in the “china shop” of London.
Chris Salmon’s guitar solo is sublime, stuttering wonkiness. There are moments in his output with the band that sound like Snakefinger or D. Boon. He plays country licks on a few tunes reminiscent of other ‘80s oddball groups like Wall of Voodoo that had similar forays into the genre. One of my favorite songs by any group, and one that highlights Salmon’s use of country-styled guitar is “Charlton Heston” on their only full-length release A Fierce Pancake (1988). While Salmon pseudo-chicken picks, the backing rhythm is built out of a plague of croaking frogs. The lyrics are built out of puns of Biblical language along with references to film and the apocalypse. Fishbone’s “Party at Ground Zero” is a similar example of Cold War apocalyptic anxiety filtered through humor.
“Everything In Its Place”–a sort of song built out of chorusy bass and country-esque yelps and phrasing–delineates a crude Panglossian approach to human biology, including lines like “You should be glad he put two nostrils / in the middle of your head. / You might have to smell the roses / through your underpants instead.” “Bit Part Actor” reels like a noisy punk stomp, with a snaky, scalar guitar line that ends the verse phrases. Drummer Rob McKahey anchors this last track with what sounds like violently-played homemade percussion. Another comparison to Beefheart may be how Rob McKahey drives Stump’s music similar to how John French’s drums anchored the Magic Band. McKahey favors high hat patterns more than French, who is known for his tom and full-kit patterns. McKahey, on other releases, also plays bodhran, an Irish frame drum frequently played with a double-headed stick or tipper.
None of Stump’s work is in print, though there is an odd early and late collection available. Their other albums are worth hearing, especially if you like Quirk Out, which in some forms includes their first EP Mud on a Colon (1986). A Fierce Pancake, mentioned above, is worth hearing along with the disc of unreleased material on The Complete Anthology (2008, now also out-of-print). Their music does exist in various forms digitally, and maybe the Anthology will get released again.
In 2014, the band released a YouTube video called “Finding Mick Lynch” in which the members had gotten back together and tracked down their vocalist. Evidently this led to rehearsals and spots on the festival circuit. Unfortunately, none of it panned out as Lynch died in December 2015.
Since Lynch’s death, there has been more discussion on the Internet and more video uploads about the group. Lynch helped found an Irish puppeteering group that is still going. I would love to see any puppet work that he had either performed or had written. He also evidently did a one-man show of songs on a guitar with no strings. More recently, I’ve discovered Kev Hopper’s music. Along with free improvisation, Hopper also recorded a pop album with a single and video that is like Thomas Dolby and David Lynch collaborating with Peter Greenaway.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #8 by Stephen McClurg
Oumou Sangaré: Mogoya (2017)
Innovation in pop music seems connected to production rather than musicianship. I hear great sounds and textures sometimes in pop music, but it’s rare I get excited by musical performance. Maybe that’s my own failing in not putting in the listening hours in the genre. Whatever it may be, I’ve been enchanted by not only the production, but also the depth of musical performance on Oumou Sangaré’s recent album Mogoya.
The initial allure was a pop record played by humans. Sangaré’s voice isn’t overproduced or layered in effects. Sometimes it’s bare and raw, yet still melodic. She’s effective and beguiling in any dynamic—understated or soaring—though I do not understand the lyrics. I still enjoy music, especially pop music, with lyrics I can’t understand. Even my elementary school-age children were undaunted by the language barrier. Their reaction to this record was to simply dance.
From what I understand she sings in Wassoulou, the name of the language and region in Mali in which she lives. She has been a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations and is frequently working for and singing about women’s rights. Part of me dismisses needing to know anything about her biography or the lyrics in order to enjoy the music. Another part of me rejoices that she does humanitarian work and is a role model for women in and outside of Mali. Like Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, Sangaré’s music is proof that politics, poetry, and dance do not have to exclude each other. Incidentally, master drummer Tony Allen, who helped create Afrobeat with Fela, appears on Mogoya.
The album opens with the track “Bena bena” and the now iconic sound of Malian acoustic guitar. The other musicians come in together with a bass riff that drives the song–a line that plays off of the rhythmic tensions of a meter based on 3 and 4. Sangaré is also called “The Songbird of Wassalou” and as on many of the tracks, this one highlights her and her fellow singers’ voices.
“Yere Faga” carries an anti-suicide message, according to NPR. The groove and some of the synth sounds are similar to those from the Talking Heads Speaking in Tongues-era. Dark, rolling marimba chords provide an atmosphere punctuated by distorted slide guitar licks.
“Mali niale” is a ballad that is undergirded by polyrhythms, and initial chord changes that are reminiscent of the beginning of the Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.” The similarities end there. The stars here are not surprisingly the choral and solo vocals that are powerful, but still tender enough to make the song work as a ballad.
“Kamelemba” features a syncopated bass groove that accents the and-of-2 and the 4 (as a reference, the stereotypical classic country bass plays on the one and three–the BOOMS of the BOOM-chicka rhythm). Like “Fadjamou,” it’s a nice groove-oriented dance track, but like “Mali niale” the vocals are a highlight. The interplay of the choral vocals and Sangaré’s solo voice is one of my favorite performances on the album. Complementing the weaving of the voices is the exchange between the guitar and the n’goni, an African harp with a rustic quality to it used throughout the album (a likely ancestor of the banjo).
“Koun koun,” another ballad, develops throughout the track. The bass line begins with a three note phrase and lots of space over several measures that becomes more complex as the song continues. Again, the n’goni provides a foundation and the drums eventually slide into a double-time feel. It’s a dreamy, low-key track, but one that is far from filler. “Mogoya” is a tender, gorgeous closer featuring strings and synth washes and other abstract electronic sounds that help build the soundscape for the vocals.
Song order matters and care has been taken in organizing this record. The performances and both the attention and restraint of the production team make this an overall exceptional selection of pop music. I intend to dig into Sangaré’s earlier recordings, but I am a little wary given how high the bar is set with Mogoya.
Oumou Sangaré’s Mogoya is available through her label, No Format, and other online distributors. World Circuit carries her previous releases.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #6 by Stephen McClurg
John Maus: Screen Memories (2017)
The less music is a language sui generis to them, the more does it become established as such a receptacle. The autonomy of music is replaced by a mere socio-psychological function. Music today is largely a social cement. […]
Individuals of the rhythmically obedient type are mainly found among the youth—the so-called radio generation. They are most susceptible to a process of masochistic adjustment to authoritarian collectivism. The type is not restricted to any one political attitude. The adjustment to anthropophagous collectivism is found as often among left-wing political groups as among right-wing groups. Indeed, both overlap: repression and crowd mindedness overtake the followers of both trends. The psychologies tend to meet despite the surface distinctions in political attitudes.
—Theodor W. Adorno, “On Popular Music”
It’s rare that I find new music on the radio, and I haven’t seen MTV on purpose this century, though when I grew up these were still the places that allowed one to hear new music. I used to look through my local library’s music section, but then I moved and my current library has no music. I look through local record stores when I get a chance, hear about music through word-of-mouth, or dig digitally the way I used to comb through dusty boxes. This is how I came across John Maus’s Screen Memories, which I listened to because I liked the cover art, especially that staticky old TV.
I had never heard of John Maus, and when I found out he has a political philosophy doctorate, I was intrigued: that doesn’t seem like the norm for rock and pop musicians. He also built all the synths used on this record. This record and subsequent tours will also debut his backing band. Previously, he had presented his music karaoke-style. His live persona is part Ian Curtis (Joy Division) and part Casey and His Brother (Tim and Eric).
Driving bass anchors most of the songs that are textured with synths and drum programming. “Driving” is a simplistic way to describe the bass tracks, but on one level, the bass is the leading instrument on this record. The bass is often accenting an upbeat, and the chord changes aren’t always where one expects. The way textures and vocal melodies weave in and out of songs and the timing of when phrases begin and end is dynamic, but these are musical qualities that don’t call attention to themselves. On the one hand, he’s not amazing anyone with chops in the stereotypical way progressive rock musicians are talked about. On the other hand, if one digs into the songs, one would notice how solidly, and interestingly, they’re built in a musical sense. There are layers and textures and phrases (the horizontal plane of melodies), but they are built upon each other in what sounds like formal ways (the vertical plane of harmony). In other words, there’s a musical crafting to the songs that extends beyond something like “let’s jam” or “punch in a tabla here and see what happens.” For example, you can dance to these songs, but at least one (“Teenage Witch”) is mostly in 10/4. There are extra measures in other songs that alter rhythmic expectations.
The lyrics on Screen Memories are almost haiku, rather than narratives. “The Combine,” the lead track, shows Maus crafting a distinctive pop song out of two sentences (“I see the combine coming. / It’s going to dust us all to nothing.”). Considering the repetition in pop songs, it’s surprising he makes that tradition even more concise, yet it still feels whole. The Residents constructed something similar on their Commercial Album of sixty second songs. The theory behind the record was that most pop songs were about three minutes long, but the chorus and verse repeated about three times, so the project was an attempt at making concise, though narrative, pop songs by cutting those repetitions. Maus simultaneously maintains traditional repetition and enigma without falling back on noise.
This track gets better every time I hear it. I recently saw the video and it’s interesting to use farm imagery in what has been called “electropop retrofuturism,” a Janus-faced vision, a kind of technology of the past representing a technological future that doesn’t exist. The farm imagery inverses Sun Ra’s imagery of spaceways and rockets. But in a digital society with various types of synthesizing processes at our fingertips, the combine is an interesting and effective image, regardless. A combine gets its name from the combining of actions that actually separates physical ears from stalks, or grains from grasses. The combine, like the computer, has altered labor forces. In the video, we see chaff and dust whirl, which matches up visually with the frequent pixelated images, even that static on the cover image from the television age. The combine could be the computer, the internet, the “matrix,” or whatever dystopic vision, including nuclear holocaust, one would want to feed back into the machine of the lyrics. The dust is the chaff, the ones and zeroes, the pixels, ashes, all that information. And like the antithesis of a combine that separates, the lyrics tell us “all” will come “to nothing.”
Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that, “knowledge itself is power.” It would make sense then that controlling information, mediating it (and our memories), is also a form of power. Maus uses the form of pop music, which itself is tied to commerce, capitalism, and power. The church, also historically a sign of power, is represented here through choral elements and a organ/synth-horn combination fanfare that within this context sounds nothing short of apocalyptic.
“Teenage Witch,” at first, seems out of character for the record, though not for pop music. The speaker says, “Want to start a fire, witch? For that icy titty?” There are no other potentially sexist lines like this on the record that I’ve heard. For me the key is the synth solo that reminded me of Rush. I thought about this as an outsider speaking: what if this song were from the point of view of the id of the kid in Rush’s “Subdivisions”? I hear the Puritanical echoes (and the fantasy imagery that Rush used) that many subcultures create or define for themselves in the track. Even outsiders burn others.
It feels like more of a comment on sexism than simply repeating it, especially when paired with “Touchdown,” which could be commentary on toxic masculinity and the cultural energies of competition and domination. The song and video represent clearly the retrofuturism that he’s been labeled with. “Touchdown” reminds me of the masculinity of ‘80s TV shows. The mood, music, and images reimagine something like the original Tron (1982), or action shows like Airwolf or Knight Rider. Just look at those titles: wolves, knights, gladiators. “Forward drive across the line!”
There are other ‘80s touchstones throughout the recording. “Walls of Silence,” “Sensitive Recollections,” “Decide Decide” sound like songs for disappointing school dances or end credits in John Hughes movies. “Find Out” features lo-fi guitar and bass interplay reminiscent of early Cure (particularly Three Imaginary Boys era), where there is this developing element, Goth rock or whatever, traditional bluesy guitar licks, and punk influences. I hear elements of Devo in “People are Missing,” “Pets,” and “Over Phantom.”
There are textures that will be familiar on Screen Memories. I don’t make any of those connections or suggest any of those influences (and there could be more: there is a baroque undercurrent or something–I’m not sure how to phrase it– to a lot of the record, but also little bits of Wire, Falco, Bauhaus, Tomita, etc.) The music looks forward as much as backward. Screen Memories, like any dystopian or retrofuturist vision, while reconstructing out of the past and envisioning possible futures, is even more about the present moment.
Screen Memories and other recordings by John Maus are available here.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #3 by Stephen McClurg
Sparks: Hippopotamus (2017)
The writers and composers work the street.
Bach’s new score is crumpled in his pocket,
Dante sways his ass-cheeks to the beat.
~ from “Hollywood Elegies” by Bertolt Brecht (trans. Adam Kirsch)
Sparks has maintained their standards and strangeness throughout more than a four-decade career. Their new album broke the top 10 in England, the first time they’ve been on the charts since the ‘70s. They are also in their 70s and, thankfully, not an easy band to describe. Much of their work reminds me of Roxy Music filtered through musical theater. Since most of their output features songwriter Ron Mael’s keyboard and piano playing, they’ve been called “baroque pop,” which as a genre seems to mean pop music with a dash of classical instrumentation, such as the piano pitched up to sound like a harpsichord in the Beatles’ “In My Life,” or the grand little symphonies of mid-’60s Beach Boys. They’ve been called glam, and even electropop, and I can’t think of another band that has been described as a The Mothers of Invention meets the Monkees. All of that really means one never knows what to expect from a Sparks album. While not perfect, some songs lack the expected vibrancy of a Sparks track, Hippopotamus is a fun pop record, made with intelligence and wit.
“Probably Nothing” is a gorgeous opener and one of several places on the record that reminds me of Michael Nyman’s work, particularly with director Peter Greenaway. At less than two minutes of piano and vocals, with maybe four chords of strings, and a cymbal wash, it somehow manages to tell the story of almost every love song–without a chorus, or at least not a traditional one.
“Missionary Position” seems like a bad joke, but somehow they make it work. It’s a track that feels like it could be a part of a Broadway show and is an ode to either practicality, even comfort, or to a lack of adventurousness, depending on how you interpret lyrics like “You might pride yourself, you’re so Avant garde/ But we’re neoclassicists, I guess, at heart/ Patronise all you like, we both like the missionary position.” If we take that baroque pop tag seriously, Sparks is a neoclassicist group, but not just because of the piano. They aren’t working with the hippest producers, making the sickest beats, but that, overall, works in their favor. At once it announces a songwriting tradition, but also renounces fads or noise as the only options for sounding new.
I may be misreading it, but “Scandinavian Design” seems to be a response to “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles, but for an Ikea generation. “Norwegian Wood,” about an affair involving John Lennon, is a reference to a type of cheap paneling that was in style at the time. In the song, a girl leaves a guy and he gets his revenge by burning the paneling to keep warm, or in some readings, by setting their love nest on fire. There is a similar relationship, in “Scandinavian Design,” though it doesn’t end in fire, but in the icy “elegance [and] simple lines” that offer “no escape.” Neither partner is happy. Neither is angry. With or without the connection to a classic song, the last twenty seconds with slide guitar are sublime.
Sparks’ lyrical wit oddly balances with a penchant for the absurd, even silly.
Thetitle track makes me think of the Residents writing children’s music. It’s about things stuck in a pool, including a hippopotamus, which is later joined by a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. “Giddy Giddy” is at once funny and nightmarish; I envision rapping aristocrats. “Giddy” fills in for whatever slang is being used for being happy or with-it or whatever. The track feels like a dig on our culture’s frequent default to entertainments that mask deeper anxieties and resentments
“I Wish You Were Fun,” an almost perfect ballad to me, wryly takes on pop sadness. They even work in some “la la las” and lyrics like, “In every other way I find you amazing, but one / I wish you were fun” and “Glad that she’s no Ayn Rand, humorless to the nth degree.” A few tracks later, “A Little Bit Like Fun” plays like a lost ELO / Beach Boys collaboration track for an ‘80s movie soundtrack that I never knew I wanted.
“Life with the Macbeths” is powered by stately piano reminiscent of Moonlight Sonata that turns both baroque and Rosemary’s Baby with the addition of harpsichord. Lady and King Macbeth sing to each other in this bizarre, but effective, showpiece that closes the record. The lyrics reimagine the Macbeth’s on a reality show whose ratings soar with their increasingly bad behavior. Like the band itself, not everyone will enjoy this conceit, but it becomes that much better for the particular listener who does.
You can findSparks records, interviews, and videos online.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
LostChordsand Serenades Divine #2 by Stephen McClurg
Junk Genius,Ghost of Electricity, (1999)
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off …
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
~ from “Visions of Johanna,” By Bob Dylan
I’ve been haunted by this Junk Genius recording for almost two decades. The next record that Junk Genius never made, but that I badly wanted, haunted me, too. I suppose we all have a secret playlist of the soul.
During the ‘90s, I had an obsession with Bay Area jazz and free improv recordings. Junk Genius was a Bay Area quartet of serious and exploratory musicians. Both of their records take on large song and music forms and then use their personal and group interests as filters to de-code and recombine the elements of the genre traditions they happen to be tackling.
In both instances, these musicians spent a lot of time playing from a particular tradition (bebop for the first record, the American folk tradition for the second) and then they used that musical knowledge as inspiration for sets of new tunes that explore the tones and textures of the precursor compositions and recordings. It’s not homage or throwback music.
I’m still processing their first record, butGhost of Electricity immediately spoke to me. The photo on the cover is perfect to complement the music. This was released during the CD-era and vinyl hadn’t found its way back, but if it had, this would have been a beautiful record cover.
I like dense music, but I also like it when musicians let sounds breathe, when they use silence and space as much as knotty, note-filled passages. There is a lot of breath on this record and a spareness, maybe, again, that haunting quality. Melodies flicker and cough, and are frequently played softly.
John Schott and Ben Goldberg are precise musicians, with intelligence, wit, and soul, and this record is often about how their musical voices interweave, fray, and meet again. It’s a small version of some of the traditional American themes of there-and-back again: hobo boxcars, road trips, migrations, homecomings, rags to riches to rags.
“Gone Away,” the opening track, begins with a lilting, plaintive melodic line that captures what so much American music is devoted to: loss. What makes Junk Genius’s approach different is that they are not trying to echo these themes in lyrics or in getting a string section or toy piano, or even trying to be Ye Olde String Band. They filter that past through their own contemporary approach to improvisation that is influenced by Bill Frisell, Albert Ayler, late-era Coltrane, and angular jazz from the Chicago Art Ensemble or ECM recordings.
“Long Way” opens with the earthy, dark tones of bass and clarinet. Then the percussion rhythms are echoed by guitar arpeggios. Schott plays snippets of melodic pieces that recall the melody from “Gone Away,” though the tone is more restless, morelost. If “Angle,” the third track, were a kind of descent, “Long Way” is a floating in the darkness.
“Aberdeen” reminds me of the moment in a noir when a down-on-his-luck man wanders the streets, dusty or rain-beaten, no hope. A slight lilt here hints at the Tramp or Harold Lloyd’s Man with the Glasses.
“When” resounds with dreamy hopefulness, and with dissonant guitarchordsbacked by soft, malleted percussion. Goldberg plays long tones over the rest of the group. There is a buoyancy that has enough brightness to be hopeful that spills over in cymbal washes. It’s possible the title is a reference to how the American Dream seems to be something not in the present, maybe even that possibility of reaching a “when” provides some sort of hope, no matter how small or quiet.
“Indication” contains a lyrical, tuneful melody and also opens with the duo of Goldberg and Dunn. The tune finds a darker tone towards the end when after a short drum section, Dunn plays arco long tones that slide and descend. The interplay throughout this section is interesting because you can hear all four musicians pick up threads of melody or rhythm from each other and reconfigure them back out into the group. There is a restlessness, a searching quality, in the performance that realizes an ideal Americanness.
You can get Junk Genius’s records from online distributors and their labelSonglines.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
LostChords and Serenades Divine #1 by Stephen Mcclurg
Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band: II (2016)
Music has all encompassing merits,
its worth is of a city, it can be as useful as you wish…
—from Phra Aphai Manee, by Sunthorn Phu
Certain sounds are familiar, but as a whole, this music has a welcome strangeness. Melodies like surf ballads or slightly delayed minor pentatonic electric fiddle tunes rise over the thuds and clangs of marching band percussion and groovy electric bass ostinatos.
I’m introduced to this on YouTube, which reminds me of being a kid and seeing, as much as hearing, new music on MTV. The musicians wear matching red vests and sit in plastic white lawn chairs surrounding a booming pillar, a column of amps and horns wired together. The handheld camera wobbles around them and skims across a table topped with beer and whiskey and tip buckets. Unclear and at a short distance away, under a pavilion, A young person holds hands in prayer at the center of a gathering. Someone seems to snip locks of hair from the young person.
I’m not sure what celebration Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band is playing for in the video, but over the last few years, I’ve listened to Thai music around the New Year, when we’re prone to thinking about new projects, new selves, and wishing for more happiness, more love, or maybe just for more. I’ve found Thai music brings me joys that other New Year’s rituals don’t, and rather than trying to create a new self, this column will be more about connecting with an older one.
I’ve spent decades as a music lover and musician. When I had my first child, the time I could spend playing music disappeared. As someone who enjoyed the pre-internet dives into dusty bins of used vinyl, library discards, and flea market castaways, I’ve found little reason to explore music online until now. In some ways, this column is a return to a former life as an independent music store clerk. I now have access to more music than I did in that mom-and-pop, and I’ve found my interest in all things increase along with my urge to have something like the conversations I had in that little store. Khun Narin’s music instantly resonated with whatever musical soul I could be said to have and reminded me of pricing new trades, picking something I’d never heard, and after the silence of pressing play, the flash of unexpected sonic joy.
A similar thrill has been finding music played on the phin, a three-stringed lute, often elaborately carved with dragons or serpents, and now frequently run through amplifiers. One of my favorite groups is Narin’s Band, whose recent album II is available on Innovative Leisure Records.
“Rin,” as the bandleader is known, also carves his own instruments and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s responsible for their electric amp icon.
The music is frequently described as psychedelic, sometimes even (eye roll) Thai-chedelic. While I can hear that, it resonates as dance music in my mind. It’s music to move by. And I can listen to it with my children, who are still too young for The Fugs or the other music I like which I’ve been told sounds like household appliances. But when we have dance parties and I get tired of Taylor Swift or “The Hot Dog Song,” and they get tired of James Brown or Talking Heads, we can dance and be wild with Khun Narin. This is party music.
Though less noticeable on the records, the repetitiveness that makes the music danceable makes some of the live shows that stack up at two-plus hours difficult to absorbed. I imagine that this is less bothersome the more one is enveloped in Dionysian pursuits. Good news for writers out there, though, I’ve found that the repetition has the same effect as works by Steve Reich or Philip Glass in making a music I can write to. Such music creates a mood that keeps my thoughts and feet moving. When I was growing up, I did almost everything with music. As I get older it becomes increasingly more difficult to do that, and I never read with music these days, but occasionally I like the energy music gives my writing process.
Ultimately, Khun Narin makes perfect tracks for a party mix. They divide often into two types: the shredder and the slow jam. Many of the songs do both—begin slow and increasingly shred. This gradual tempo increase is a part of some traditional Thai folk forms. Melodic hooks, tremolo picking, and trills make up much of the language of the melodies. Occasionally, they will throw in a descending set of Iron Maiden-esque riffs or disco-octave bassline accompaniment.
I’ve been struck how when Rin switches tones, from delayed to distorted and back, he has the effect of multiple lead guitarists or voices, not simply someone stomping on an effect and changing one voice. I’m still not sure how he pulls it off.
You can listen to the Khun Narin albums on the label’s YouTube channel or Bandcamp page.
Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.
In memory of George Young, the co-writer of ‘Walking in the Rain’; and for John King, who shares the passion.
Melbourne, 1981. It was the height of the New Romantics movement. I was twenty years old and enamoured of the Blitz Kids in England’s club scene and Patrick Cowley’s high-energy dance music coming out of New York. Gender bending, as practiced by Boy George, Sylvester, and Annie Lennox, was the last word in cutting edge radicalism. I lapped it up hungrily, searching for something that would define me.
One Sunday my friend Sal turned up at my parents’ house. I was in my room, frittering away yet another humdrum weekend. ‘I just bought this at Mighty Music Machine,’ he said, shoving a new album in my face. The minimalist cover art showed a blue-black androgyne in an Armani jacket, flat-top haircut, cigarette in the mouth. The words ‘Grace Jones / Nightclubbing’ floated across the top.
Sal and I weren’t sure if Grace Jones was a man or a woman. She looked more like a sphinx or a cyborg from the future, rather than someone you’d encounter on the street.
He put the record on the turntable, dropped the needle and said, ‘Listen.’
The first track was ‘Walking in the Rain’. The vocalist — you couldn’t call her a singer in the conventional sense — performed a dramatic kind of talk-singing over a sonic layering of percussive reggae rhythms and melodies crossed with disco futurama. It was an hypnotic sound that indicated what Studio 54 and a fashion catwalk might be like on Alpha Centauri:
Summing up the people
Checking out the race
Doing what I’m doing
Feeling out of place
Walking, walking in the rain…
I was transported. Vanda and Young’s lyrics and Jones’s detached delivery captured the restlessness, alienation and pent-up emotions of a stifled adolescence. From that moment on Grace Jones, her music, her image, her style, became emblematic of cooler-than-thou sophistication, sark, celebratory and joyous. By the end of the track I was liberated, lifted out of a traditional Greek upbringing and pointed toward a future filled with wide horizons.
Grace Jones said anything is possible. Be who you want to be. Don’t let others cramp your style. I swallowed her philosophy, hook line and sinker, going so far as to emulate her haircuts and clothing, especially the outlandish Miyake outfits and hoods and hats.
Sal and I fell out soon after. But my love of Grace Jones stood the test of time.
‘Walking in the Rain’ was not a hit when it was released as a single. Today it’s considered a classic. Soon after its release an extended remix appeared on the market. It added to the theatricality of the earlier version with thunder, lightening and the sound of rain falling against the masterful Compass Point All Stars instrumentals. Jones’ insouciant voice echoes as though in celestial void, giving the song a late-night, dangerous edge. I remember dancing, or more accurately posing, to it in my shiny electric blue Armani suit, black gloves and sunglasses at Inflation nightclub in King Street; walking out at five a.m., having breakfast at Stalactites on the corner of Lonsdale Street and arrogantly going to work in the same clothes, ‘Walking in the Rain’ holding out the promise of a brighter future in my head. The song hasn’t dated. It’s as infectious as ever. The production values are a testament to producers Alex Sadkin and Chris Blackwell. They rescued Jones from the 1970s disco treadmill and fostered her ability to do a cover version that blows the original out of the water.
When I drop off the twig, I want ‘Walking in the Rain’ to play full blast while my body is consumed by flames in a crematorium, the ashes scattered to the four winds. That way I can continue to…
Trip the light fantastic
Dance the swivel hips
Coming to conclusion
Button up your lips.
Walking, walking
In the rain.
Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.
