silly self-deprecating pop-punk-noise thing. musically, this is pretty tight. neat bassline. the percussion, i clearly remember, was tapped out onto a wood desk with two bic-style pens. try it. it's fun.
well, actually, i should add a few more words because it otherwise seems rather pointless.
i was at the time talking about starting a punk band with a friend of mine, named matt. there was actually a song recorded with matt on vocals and bass and myself on guitar (i can't remember the name of it, and don't have a copy of it). the name of the project was meant to be "second class citizens", with an acronym stylized as 2CC. nothing else came of it.
but i had initially written this song for that purpose and demoed it out to show him. that kind of explains why it's different than the other stuff on these early demos.
eventually, it became clear that the project wasn't developing, so i just added my own vocals. as the song was meant for matt to sing on, i didn't have any thematic concept attached to it. so, what i did was take random words out of the dictionary. it was honestly just a close-your-eyes-pick-a-page-pick-a-word process. then, i added the chorus in reaction to the random dictionary process.
....except the bridge. that's an nwa reference.
i guess you could maybe pull something accidentally insightful out of it regarding my view of lyrics in mainstream punk (or grunge) at the time. it could be interpreted as a parody, but i wasn't consciously thinking of it like that.
recorded in march, 1997. remastered on nov 3, 2013.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
i wish you could hear how good these phones sound, though....
....i just compared them to a newer model of sennheisers i got last year and they're just not on the same level...
when i put the 440-IIs back on, all i could think was "why did i ever take them off?".
it was like taking a pair of ear plugs out.
like switching from grey-scale to colour.
like walking out of the city and taking a breathe of fresh air...
like, the way they're able to separate the fuzz guitar in the middle section of mountains made of steam so that it's directly harmonic to the guitar part is...it's almost impossible, really....there's *no* blur....
and, then when the bow comes in, i can clearly hear the buzz on the fucking string. spectacular!
i'm wondering if the model name is a coincidence or a hint.
something about these sennheisers, though, is that they don't have those big muffy ear pieces - and that's an asset, as i find they muffle. all the new phones come with all this noise cancelling stuff that fucks with the signal. no. i want clear, crisp, perfect reproduction...
about five or six years ago, i picked up a pair with some funny digital processing in them that reduces more or less to a boost on the high and low; it was meant to compensate for mp3 compression, and it did give the sound a nice boost through an mp3 player. but, they were impossible for mastering. that's what i'm trying to avoid.
but the market has changed. back in the 80s and 90s, people bought high-end headphones to listen to record player and cd player signals through high end amps. so the focus was on reproducing the signal exactly. that's sort of rare nowadays; the market now is for mp3 players, laptops, djs...
...and because the sources suck, the phones companies have come up with all these digital tricks to try and make their product sound better. basic reproduction is a niche market, now.
....i just compared them to a newer model of sennheisers i got last year and they're just not on the same level...
when i put the 440-IIs back on, all i could think was "why did i ever take them off?".
it was like taking a pair of ear plugs out.
like switching from grey-scale to colour.
like walking out of the city and taking a breathe of fresh air...
like, the way they're able to separate the fuzz guitar in the middle section of mountains made of steam so that it's directly harmonic to the guitar part is...it's almost impossible, really....there's *no* blur....
and, then when the bow comes in, i can clearly hear the buzz on the fucking string. spectacular!
i'm wondering if the model name is a coincidence or a hint.
something about these sennheisers, though, is that they don't have those big muffy ear pieces - and that's an asset, as i find they muffle. all the new phones come with all this noise cancelling stuff that fucks with the signal. no. i want clear, crisp, perfect reproduction...
about five or six years ago, i picked up a pair with some funny digital processing in them that reduces more or less to a boost on the high and low; it was meant to compensate for mp3 compression, and it did give the sound a nice boost through an mp3 player. but, they were impossible for mastering. that's what i'm trying to avoid.
but the market has changed. back in the 80s and 90s, people bought high-end headphones to listen to record player and cd player signals through high end amps. so the focus was on reproducing the signal exactly. that's sort of rare nowadays; the market now is for mp3 players, laptops, djs...
...and because the sources suck, the phones companies have come up with all these digital tricks to try and make their product sound better. basic reproduction is a niche market, now.
sent to sennheiser support (via online form)
sent to sennheiser support:
hi.
i've had a pair of hd 440-II's for about twenty years now. that's two thirds of my life. these 440-II's have followed me everywhere - from bus rides to high school in the 90s with a cassette player right into recording studios for mastering processes. every piece of music i've ever connected to or created has been heard through these phones.
after 20 years, they're getting a little shorted, and i feel it's time to replace them.
i would like to replace them with another set of 440-IIs. otherwise, the world would just sound entirely different. better specs, worse specs - it wouldn't matter. my recordings would all sound wrong; my favourite records would become alien. my universe would just implode in on itself...
yet, they appear to be discontinued. i am very distraught by this thought.
and, so, i have two questions:
1) do you have any hd 440-iis sitting around somewhere?
2) if not, what is the closest model?
if you end up answering (2), i would like to request that you take the time to run the question by some engineers that can answer it properly, rather than try and sell me on something. i'm not looking for the phones with the best specs, or the cheapest phones or any other such thing - i am looking for phones that can replace the 440-ii's with the least amount of variance.
thank you,
jessica
hi.
i've had a pair of hd 440-II's for about twenty years now. that's two thirds of my life. these 440-II's have followed me everywhere - from bus rides to high school in the 90s with a cassette player right into recording studios for mastering processes. every piece of music i've ever connected to or created has been heard through these phones.
after 20 years, they're getting a little shorted, and i feel it's time to replace them.
i would like to replace them with another set of 440-IIs. otherwise, the world would just sound entirely different. better specs, worse specs - it wouldn't matter. my recordings would all sound wrong; my favourite records would become alien. my universe would just implode in on itself...
yet, they appear to be discontinued. i am very distraught by this thought.
and, so, i have two questions:
1) do you have any hd 440-iis sitting around somewhere?
2) if not, what is the closest model?
if you end up answering (2), i would like to request that you take the time to run the question by some engineers that can answer it properly, rather than try and sell me on something. i'm not looking for the phones with the best specs, or the cheapest phones or any other such thing - i am looking for phones that can replace the 440-ii's with the least amount of variance.
thank you,
jessica
why does this model of headphones have to be discontinued? FUCK.
they're still kicking, somehow. but, they're dying a slow death and i need to replace them. i really, really, really want to replace them with the same model. even if i get something with drastically better specs, it's going to sound different, and it's going to throw me for a loop. these are literally the only headphones i've ever had to record with.
any headphone geeks out there reading this? suggestions for something that sounds similar? anybody happen to even have a pair?
sennheiser hd-440 IIs.
guess i'll look on ebay. but if you have a pair or know somebody that does....
they're still kicking, somehow. but, they're dying a slow death and i need to replace them. i really, really, really want to replace them with the same model. even if i get something with drastically better specs, it's going to sound different, and it's going to throw me for a loop. these are literally the only headphones i've ever had to record with.
any headphone geeks out there reading this? suggestions for something that sounds similar? anybody happen to even have a pair?
sennheiser hd-440 IIs.
guess i'll look on ebay. but if you have a pair or know somebody that does....
Saturday, November 2, 2013
an adventure
i was just sitting here, very late on a friday night, reading a book, and something sort of triggered your memory.
i don't know if anything ever triggers my memory, or if you've burned everything that might, or if that's even possible - if you can ever really contain the smoke that rises, phoenix-like.
this isn't meant to be a flowery email.
i just wanted to say that you and i need to go on another adventure one day, somewhere, somehow...
i think we will, once you can get out of that blasted orb...
j
i don't know if anything ever triggers my memory, or if you've burned everything that might, or if that's even possible - if you can ever really contain the smoke that rises, phoenix-like.
this isn't meant to be a flowery email.
i just wanted to say that you and i need to go on another adventure one day, somewhere, somehow...
i think we will, once you can get out of that blasted orb...
j
demo #19: confusion
continuing on with the theme of exploring mental illness, in this song i'm trying to get in the head of somebody who has difficulty controlling the penis and ends up resorting to self-mutilation. in a sense, it's a sarcastic allegory on the question of thinking with one's cock. in another sense, it's a transgendered teenager carrying out a sort of morbid fantasy.
musically, this is the first song-oriented keyboard-driven track in my discography. it's not the last one, but these tracks are relatively rare, coming from me. production wise, it's also a huge step forwards.
recorded in mar, 1997. remastered on nov 2, 2013.
musically, this is the first song-oriented keyboard-driven track in my discography. it's not the last one, but these tracks are relatively rare, coming from me. production wise, it's also a huge step forwards.
recorded in mar, 1997. remastered on nov 2, 2013.
Friday, November 1, 2013
demo #18: bipolarity
the idea here was to jump from the "super happy fun song" to a very dark ambient piece, thereby emulating a deep mood swing - and setting the tone for the rest of the demo. i think i pulled this off remarkably well, for a 16 year-old.
the super happy fun song consists of me playing the same guitar pattern through different patches on my zoom 1010 multieffects pedal - a spectacularly terrible all-in-one digital effects pedal, but the source of essentially all the effects on my first several demos. the super happy fun, though, doesn't quite feel genuine. it seems to become saturated and overtaken by it's own monotonous pretension, eventually imploding into itself....
the second half of this is my first attempt at effects-based ambient music. it's just a few simple patterns on the keyboard, and a lot of effects work. that's the 1010 again. nothing fancy. no computers.
i should point out that i had to sneak into my sister's room to use the keyboard (and her electric metronome).
recorded in march, 1997. remastered nov 1, 2013.
the super happy fun song consists of me playing the same guitar pattern through different patches on my zoom 1010 multieffects pedal - a spectacularly terrible all-in-one digital effects pedal, but the source of essentially all the effects on my first several demos. the super happy fun, though, doesn't quite feel genuine. it seems to become saturated and overtaken by it's own monotonous pretension, eventually imploding into itself....
the second half of this is my first attempt at effects-based ambient music. it's just a few simple patterns on the keyboard, and a lot of effects work. that's the 1010 again. nothing fancy. no computers.
i should point out that i had to sneak into my sister's room to use the keyboard (and her electric metronome).
recorded in march, 1997. remastered nov 1, 2013.
windows
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
hi again.
the windows aren't perfect, and i overheard the conversation you had about the people upstairs; i wouldn't ask for new windows. but, they do need to be weather-sealed. i'm happy to just go around with saran wrap, but i thought i'd ask if you have some other idea before i do that.
j
To: the initial landlord
hi again.
the windows aren't perfect, and i overheard the conversation you had about the people upstairs; i wouldn't ask for new windows. but, they do need to be weather-sealed. i'm happy to just go around with saran wrap, but i thought i'd ask if you have some other idea before i do that.
j
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Re: shower - success. i think. but the handle needs some attention.
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
also: there's a water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom tonight, and it's been raining again all day.
i don't know how it makes any sense, but everything seems to be random except the rain...
j
To: the initial landlord
also: there's a water coming from the ceiling in the bathroom tonight, and it's been raining again all day.
i don't know how it makes any sense, but everything seems to be random except the rain...
j
Re: shower - success. i think. but the handle needs some attention.
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
aaaaaaactually, i just checked a second time and the caulking may be a little bit weak right over the spot it was previously leaking. that could explain that bit of moisture.
j
To: the initial landlord
aaaaaaactually, i just checked a second time and the caulking may be a little bit weak right over the spot it was previously leaking. that could explain that bit of moisture.
j
shower - success. i think. but the handle needs some attention.
From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord
hi.
i just got out and i didn't notice any actual leaking.
i'm going to * this mildly, though. see, it's a little damp (very, very mildly) on the tile in the same spot as it was before. it doesn't seem to be leaking from the shower. i don't know if that's a reason to be concerned or if it's condensation from the wood ceiling or even just me dripping. i'll keep you updated, i guess.
i did notice some kind of little insect, though, as i was looking around. i've seen bugs around there before and just killed them. this one got away, though - and seemed to disappear into the concrete. i wasn't sure if it was an ant or a baby centipede. it was fast. is it possible that there could be some ants in the concrete causing the leak?
google suggests this is possible, but only if there are existing cracks in the concrete. i don't know. i know i saw something appear to disappear into the concrete.
*but i also know i see things sometimes and shouldn't rely too heavily on isolated experiences*. i was thinking about that being a possible problem, and that's when i tend to imagine things. it's actually reasonable to suggest that the reason i couldn't kill it is because i hallucinated it.
so, i guess i'll have to let you know if i see that a second time...
i have seen the odd ant in here, all in the living room near that little storage room, but i've lived in basements most of my life and know it's not really unusual to see what they call 'explorer ants' - even in brand new, finished basements. they're just looking around, and won't come back if there's nothing there to get. it's important to get them when you see them, but it's not necessarily a sign of infestation. the fact that i leave all my food in the fridge should dissuade them. the best way to avoid bugs is to not leave food out...
the handle, though, needs some kind of fix. i sort of assumed that you just had it oriented backwards, which i wouldn't care about, but it's worse than that. the way it was before was how you'd expect it to work - off when it's to the far right, then moving from cold to hot as you turn it to the left, reaching maximum flow somewhere about halfway. somehow, the blend between hot and cold seems to have been broken. *when you turn it to the left it's pure cold, and when you turn it to the right it's pure hot, with no way to blend the two*.
the way i got around that today was to rely on the amount of time it takes for the water to turn from cold to hot. so, i'd turn it really cold for a bit, then pull it back to a very low flow on the hot side and wash while i was waiting for it to warm up. then when it got too hot, i'd turn it back to cold and repeat.
but that's not just ridiculous, it's also really wasteful, and requires a very mild flow to be workable. i don't know how this works, and it doesn't really matter to me if it's lined up right (i don't care if hot means cold), but i think it's really important to get the blend of hot/cold working again so that the temperature is actually adjustable.
j
To: the initial landlord
hi.
i just got out and i didn't notice any actual leaking.
i'm going to * this mildly, though. see, it's a little damp (very, very mildly) on the tile in the same spot as it was before. it doesn't seem to be leaking from the shower. i don't know if that's a reason to be concerned or if it's condensation from the wood ceiling or even just me dripping. i'll keep you updated, i guess.
i did notice some kind of little insect, though, as i was looking around. i've seen bugs around there before and just killed them. this one got away, though - and seemed to disappear into the concrete. i wasn't sure if it was an ant or a baby centipede. it was fast. is it possible that there could be some ants in the concrete causing the leak?
google suggests this is possible, but only if there are existing cracks in the concrete. i don't know. i know i saw something appear to disappear into the concrete.
*but i also know i see things sometimes and shouldn't rely too heavily on isolated experiences*. i was thinking about that being a possible problem, and that's when i tend to imagine things. it's actually reasonable to suggest that the reason i couldn't kill it is because i hallucinated it.
so, i guess i'll have to let you know if i see that a second time...
i have seen the odd ant in here, all in the living room near that little storage room, but i've lived in basements most of my life and know it's not really unusual to see what they call 'explorer ants' - even in brand new, finished basements. they're just looking around, and won't come back if there's nothing there to get. it's important to get them when you see them, but it's not necessarily a sign of infestation. the fact that i leave all my food in the fridge should dissuade them. the best way to avoid bugs is to not leave food out...
the handle, though, needs some kind of fix. i sort of assumed that you just had it oriented backwards, which i wouldn't care about, but it's worse than that. the way it was before was how you'd expect it to work - off when it's to the far right, then moving from cold to hot as you turn it to the left, reaching maximum flow somewhere about halfway. somehow, the blend between hot and cold seems to have been broken. *when you turn it to the left it's pure cold, and when you turn it to the right it's pure hot, with no way to blend the two*.
the way i got around that today was to rely on the amount of time it takes for the water to turn from cold to hot. so, i'd turn it really cold for a bit, then pull it back to a very low flow on the hot side and wash while i was waiting for it to warm up. then when it got too hot, i'd turn it back to cold and repeat.
but that's not just ridiculous, it's also really wasteful, and requires a very mild flow to be workable. i don't know how this works, and it doesn't really matter to me if it's lined up right (i don't care if hot means cold), but i think it's really important to get the blend of hot/cold working again so that the temperature is actually adjustable.
j
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
record runner valued customer card
i also found a debit card for steves that has roughly $50 on it, iirc.
remastered inri000 re-release completed
these are the first demos i recorded, written 1994-1996 and recorded in the second half of 1996. this corresponds to the end of my 15th year and the beginning of my grade 10 school year. on the one hand, it's an intriguing document of a socially maladjusted teenage punk. on the other hand, it's a 15 year-old kid learning how to use a recording studio (and how to play the drums). influences are displayed on my sleeve just a little too loudly at times.
i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of very early nirvana, very early sonic youth and soundtrack-era swans, as well as fans of the more difficult passages present in mid-90s nine inch nails. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point.
that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points.
this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been limited to a single friend, an aunt, a sister and an ex-girlfriend. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness.
the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, sounds, percussion, production.
released December 25, 1996
i was attempting to create something that could be described by the words disturbing, schizophrenic, unique, bizarre, twisted. looking back, i think i succeeded more than i realized at the time. this is a difficult listen that would be appealing to fans of very early nirvana, very early sonic youth and soundtrack-era swans, as well as fans of the more difficult passages present in mid-90s nine inch nails. i manage to maintain a strange sense of melody, though. in truth, my current adult self is somewhat impressed with my teenaged self at this current point.
that being said, it should not be forgotten that i was fifteen. i am at times rather crude, and i display a childlike understanding of certain issues. most poetry written at the age of fifteen is not particularly insightful. again, though, i surprise myself at points.
this is the first time i'm publishing these demos in any form. i've remained frighteningly self-conscious of them over the years. over the last seventeen years, the audience has been limited to a single friend, an aunt, a sister and an ex-girlfriend. initial reactions suggested i take some time to perfect my performance skills, particularly my drumming skills. however, this indicated a lack of understanding of my intent in the overall sound. the playing is quite purposefully abstract with the aim of exploring mental illness.
the demos were initially dub-mastered onto a 110 minute tape that would have flipped after the eighth track. that tape was at some point recorded into a soundblaster and compressed very heavily; this is the only source of the material that i still have. so, i had to decompress the files from those 128 (or worse) kbps mp3s and run them through some digital mastering equipment in an attempt to "undo" the compression. what that is is a half-effective trick to recover data that is in actuality forever lost. nonetheless, i should point out that while these files were recorded entirely in 1996, they were substantially digitally modified in late 2013. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards, tapes, sounds, percussion, production.
released December 25, 1996
demo #17: suicide
the second part of the two part suite that ends this mess.
it's probably predictable that i ended with a song about suicide. i had to fast forward a section, though, because i don't want to get sued. it remains legally sketchy in a way i'm very self-conscious of.
i guess there's been a lot written about this, and it was a long time ago. that being said, maybe this is interesting in the sense that it's one kid's reaction to it - albeit a few years later, so there was a bit of time to process it.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered on october 30, 2013.
it's probably predictable that i ended with a song about suicide. i had to fast forward a section, though, because i don't want to get sued. it remains legally sketchy in a way i'm very self-conscious of.
i guess there's been a lot written about this, and it was a long time ago. that being said, maybe this is interesting in the sense that it's one kid's reaction to it - albeit a few years later, so there was a bit of time to process it.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered on october 30, 2013.
demo #16: viewless
this is the first section of a two-part suite that ends this demo tape.
i was simply being incredibly facetious through the track, to the level that i think my point got lost in the sarcasm. ignored youth, and whatnot; not the tv, so therefore not worth listening to.
musically, this is a bit of a step forward into a bigger type of epic rock. the production is awful; i corrected that when i re-recorded it. the tape, here, gets mangled and blurry at points entirely on purpose.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered oct 30, 2013.
i was simply being incredibly facetious through the track, to the level that i think my point got lost in the sarcasm. ignored youth, and whatnot; not the tv, so therefore not worth listening to.
musically, this is a bit of a step forward into a bigger type of epic rock. the production is awful; i corrected that when i re-recorded it. the tape, here, gets mangled and blurry at points entirely on purpose.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered oct 30, 2013.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
listening to lee ranaldo's last night on earth...
this may be a little out of fashion right now, but maybe that's exactly why it's so refreshing to hear.
Monday, October 28, 2013
on the death of lou reed
well, that's a shame.
i'm not much of a fan. i don't really see how the velvet underground were, sonically, that different than the byrds. i don't hear the novelty, i just hear rather substandard mid-60s hippie folk bullshit. nor was i able to connect with reed's later music or writing very well - it just moved so slowly, and with such pomp. really, i'd consider him to probably - bar none - be the single most over-rated artist of the 20th century.
however, i can hear and acknowledge the direct and substantial influence he had on a large proportion of the artists that i hold in the absolute highest regard. michael stipe. sonic youth. swans. throbbing gristle. peter gabriel.
i guess he's like that distant grandfather that you only met a few times and didn't really connect with, but that you heard stories about your whole life. i may not feel his absence, but i think i can feel his departure - whether actually or merely as a symbolic date, an era very seriously just ended.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-lou-reed-dead-20131027,0,4221650.story
i'll acknowledge that part of it is a generation gap. i'm so far removed from the 60s pop sound that....it's just entirely alien. i have no first hand experience. neither of my parents listened to this stuff. nor did my grandparents. it was something i'd seen in movies, and never had much of an attachment to.
so, the subtle and supposedly revolutionary differences that existed between the byrds and the vu are just glossed over as minor production differences, which is in truth what they actually are; the velvet underground are only radically different from the byrds if you've been living a reality saturated with byrds-like pop, mass produced as a product, for the last five+ years. if you have no measurable consciousness of anything at all until 15 years after they broke up, and no reference point to approach the era with, the vu and the byrds seem to be remarkably similar.
certainly, the velvet underground seem to have more in common with the byrds than they do with any punk band.
i've tried. a few times. but in the sense that it acts as a precursor to 70s, 80s, 90s acts i like, it fails because it's far more rooted in an era that i don't remotely understand - the 60s - than it is in anything that i do.
i guess it's sort of ironic. you put on an old beatles or hendrix or floyd or crimson record and it still sounds modern. it could have been recorded last week. however, you put on the velvet underground and you're instantly transported to 1966. it is far more tied to it's temporal surroundings than any of the other major, influential acts of the period.
influential or not, they sound far more like their era than they do like anything that followed - meaning that you have to understand and/or like 60s hippie folk pop in order to connect.
...and that it should be understood more in relation to what existed around it, which is what it was in truth a part of, rather than in relation to what followed from it, which it in truth was not a part of.
to put it another way...
the vu are often understood in terms of what they were reacting against. in order to really understand a reaction, you have to understand the whatever that's being reacted against. that's the part of the whole thing that falls apart and that i suspect may fall apart for most people in the long run. i was never normalized to the byrds, the mamas and the papas, the animals and whatnot (i was normalized to the beatles, the who, the pink floyd, frank zappa, led zeppelin, cream, hendrix, king crimson, yes, genesis... ), so the jump from normal to abnormal is entirely lost on me - it just all sounds the same.
but that inherently links them to the 60s, and seals their fate as a "60s folk band" rather than some kind of proto-punk act.
zappa is not a bad comparison as he did the same thing to heavy blues on some level. a flower child may not really hear the difference between zappa and zeppelin, but somebody that likes "progressive music" would instantly.
i'm just showing my ignorance, right? why don't i go listen to those old byrds records over and over so that i can understand them properly so that i can react to the velvet underground properly? if i had any respect for the classics....
but, can't you see that i'd be intimately familiar with those byrds records if they had any legitimate claim to being labelled classics?
so, why should i go listen to bad pop music from an era that ended before i was born in order to properly understand the reactions to it?
see, these are some of the problems inherent in canonizing the velvets. i don't think the music holds up on it's own, and the context is too convoluted to reconstruct. the canonization is premature; within a generation, they will be forgotten.
well, maybe not forgotten entirely, but reduced to a footnote as an influence on more radically creative music.
just to point a last thing out - a lot of the things that the vu get credit for were actually done by pink floyd first, or borrowed from people like reich and xenakis. i don't doubt that the velvets were directly influential. but even if you strip out the "it really just sounds like a byrds 8-track that got warped in somebody's car" criticism, there's *still* not much novel there....
it's really floyd that gets the "first underground rock band" award. and if you've never heard early floyd from this period, you probably wouldn't recognize it.
this is a taste, afaik the only thing that ever made it out to record.
(note that floyd would cite zappa, who would cite varese. but also that there was a fair bit of free jazz produced in the period.
i know, i'm missing the point, it's the lyrics.)
ok. to be balanced. and to backtrack to the "official narrative" of the velvets influencing punk. it's convoluted. i think it should be largely rejected, except in the local scope of the velvets influencing the new york "downtown" scene.
see, you can give the velvets and their members some credit for helping form a bridge between the beat movement and what got labelled the new york punk movement, although it's never been clear to me exactly what new york "punk" had in common with british punk or detroit "proto-punk". don't get me wrong. i like a lot of bands that came out of new york in the mid to late 70s, although maybe more so the stuff that came out in the very late 70s and early 80s. if you toss out the stuff like the ramones, new york "punk" was always very consciously difficult in whatever form it took. that makes it rather unpunk, relative to the initial british meaning of the term.
it's not like i'm the first person to draw a contrast between british and american punk. but it's less pronounced if you're discussing the ramones v. the clash, or the damned, or the sex pistols. there are a lot of similarities there. but going a little under the surface, if you try and draw a comparison between patti smith or television and crass then it's clear you're not in the same genre anymore. "punk", in this context, becomes a sort of buzzword without meaning. the new york "punk" scene, in this context, is hard to understand as anything other than an art rock scene grasping onto a trendy term. but, it was an art rock scene in an artistically dead society; in england, it was more like over-stimulation. so it's not just different genres, but reactions to fundamentally different pressures. in time, ironically, it was the new york sound that dominated london (see joy division), while the uk sound got shipped out to california.
see, if punk in britain was a mod movement about rejecting prog and getting back to the basics of rock then new york was a different thing altogether, partly because prog wasn't as entrenched in the united states. instead, you had disco. and new york punk was definitely explicitly anti-disco. so, there was a shared sort of theme there, but very different in scope. in new york, it almost seemed like there was a push to become *more* prog in rejecting the vacuousness of disco - which became post-punk/industrial - after it accepted a shared theme of beat-driven music *from* disco. yet, a lot of the early new york bands were more a type of art-rock, and it's that art-rock that eventually developed into what became alt rock through the influence of new york "punk" bands like sonic youth.
(although sonic youth is the exception, here. they were initially punk as fuck, even if they were clearly influenced by psych rock and maybe, in the end, became a psych band.)
all that to say that there's a continuity from ginsberg through to ranaldo that passes through lou reed, and that the velvets had a role to play in keeping that "downtown scene" alive during those dark days when disco dominated. but it's a relatively minor role - a curator role.
but, yeah. i like this. you can quote me on it.
"the banana record? yeah, it sounds like somebody took a byrds 8-track and left it out in the sun."
i know, i know - “i think there was a lot of elegance in the lyrics he wrote.”
yeah, i'm familiar with the material, and i know that's what people get out of it. and i've been inspired by a lot of people that he inspired, so i'm getting a lot out of it second hand. i cited stipe and ranaldo specifically.
it just seems to me like he's writing from behind this sort of dramatic screen that exists, that he's presenting very carefully worded works of fiction and passing them off as experiences. it's not just him, i have this criticism of a lot of folk music. it seems like it's an act, in other words. well, of course it's an act, on some level - all art is, and if i was walking around rejecting everything on that level i'd be rejecting all art, which i'm not doing. it's just that, with him, it seems really transparent. so, you're claiming it's honest and naked and whatnot, but what it strikes me as is very produced to *seem* honest and naked and whatnot. which is sort of the definition of contrived.
i'm kind of arguing in the form of a conspiracy, though. the more evidence you present that it's raw, the more contrived it's going to seem. but, isn't it a conspiracy, seriously, when you really analyze it?
i'm getting kind of meta and confusing, but i think what i'm trying to get across there is clear.
i guess relating to it sort of relies on giving in to the fantasy, and ignoring the truth that it's an act. which i'm not usually able to do.
“i think a lot of his lyrics are really personal.”
well, if you work in the warhol perspective, which is deeply relevant in reed's case, it sort of cheapens it by reducing it to a product. it doesn't help that he's so deadpan all the time - it just sort of stresses the feeling that it's constructed.
”maybe his lyrics don't seem lived in because they're often observational and in the third person.”
i think it's more his presentation, but, putting that question aside, i don't generally find myself at all interested in the subjects he's exploring, either, which is more of a subjective criticism. but i have a general disinterest in music that's focused largely around discussing relationships or largely focused around drug addiction. if i were to name my 100 favourite artists or something, almost none of them would be that type of songwriter or exist in the singer/songwriter/folk kind of category. i could probably ignore the deadpan, perceived lack of sincerity and generally not particularly interesting music if i could relate to his topics of choice a little more readily. when i look at what he influenced that i can relate to, it's often more in the writing style than the subject matter. stipe, for example is quite political; ranaldo is very introspective. stuff like swans and throbbing gristle took the nihilist themes to a different level, and inserted the emotion that reed tends to lack...
i'm not much of a fan. i don't really see how the velvet underground were, sonically, that different than the byrds. i don't hear the novelty, i just hear rather substandard mid-60s hippie folk bullshit. nor was i able to connect with reed's later music or writing very well - it just moved so slowly, and with such pomp. really, i'd consider him to probably - bar none - be the single most over-rated artist of the 20th century.
however, i can hear and acknowledge the direct and substantial influence he had on a large proportion of the artists that i hold in the absolute highest regard. michael stipe. sonic youth. swans. throbbing gristle. peter gabriel.
i guess he's like that distant grandfather that you only met a few times and didn't really connect with, but that you heard stories about your whole life. i may not feel his absence, but i think i can feel his departure - whether actually or merely as a symbolic date, an era very seriously just ended.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-lou-reed-dead-20131027,0,4221650.story
i'll acknowledge that part of it is a generation gap. i'm so far removed from the 60s pop sound that....it's just entirely alien. i have no first hand experience. neither of my parents listened to this stuff. nor did my grandparents. it was something i'd seen in movies, and never had much of an attachment to.
so, the subtle and supposedly revolutionary differences that existed between the byrds and the vu are just glossed over as minor production differences, which is in truth what they actually are; the velvet underground are only radically different from the byrds if you've been living a reality saturated with byrds-like pop, mass produced as a product, for the last five+ years. if you have no measurable consciousness of anything at all until 15 years after they broke up, and no reference point to approach the era with, the vu and the byrds seem to be remarkably similar.
certainly, the velvet underground seem to have more in common with the byrds than they do with any punk band.
i've tried. a few times. but in the sense that it acts as a precursor to 70s, 80s, 90s acts i like, it fails because it's far more rooted in an era that i don't remotely understand - the 60s - than it is in anything that i do.
i guess it's sort of ironic. you put on an old beatles or hendrix or floyd or crimson record and it still sounds modern. it could have been recorded last week. however, you put on the velvet underground and you're instantly transported to 1966. it is far more tied to it's temporal surroundings than any of the other major, influential acts of the period.
influential or not, they sound far more like their era than they do like anything that followed - meaning that you have to understand and/or like 60s hippie folk pop in order to connect.
...and that it should be understood more in relation to what existed around it, which is what it was in truth a part of, rather than in relation to what followed from it, which it in truth was not a part of.
to put it another way...
the vu are often understood in terms of what they were reacting against. in order to really understand a reaction, you have to understand the whatever that's being reacted against. that's the part of the whole thing that falls apart and that i suspect may fall apart for most people in the long run. i was never normalized to the byrds, the mamas and the papas, the animals and whatnot (i was normalized to the beatles, the who, the pink floyd, frank zappa, led zeppelin, cream, hendrix, king crimson, yes, genesis... ), so the jump from normal to abnormal is entirely lost on me - it just all sounds the same.
but that inherently links them to the 60s, and seals their fate as a "60s folk band" rather than some kind of proto-punk act.
zappa is not a bad comparison as he did the same thing to heavy blues on some level. a flower child may not really hear the difference between zappa and zeppelin, but somebody that likes "progressive music" would instantly.
i'm just showing my ignorance, right? why don't i go listen to those old byrds records over and over so that i can understand them properly so that i can react to the velvet underground properly? if i had any respect for the classics....
but, can't you see that i'd be intimately familiar with those byrds records if they had any legitimate claim to being labelled classics?
so, why should i go listen to bad pop music from an era that ended before i was born in order to properly understand the reactions to it?
see, these are some of the problems inherent in canonizing the velvets. i don't think the music holds up on it's own, and the context is too convoluted to reconstruct. the canonization is premature; within a generation, they will be forgotten.
well, maybe not forgotten entirely, but reduced to a footnote as an influence on more radically creative music.
just to point a last thing out - a lot of the things that the vu get credit for were actually done by pink floyd first, or borrowed from people like reich and xenakis. i don't doubt that the velvets were directly influential. but even if you strip out the "it really just sounds like a byrds 8-track that got warped in somebody's car" criticism, there's *still* not much novel there....
it's really floyd that gets the "first underground rock band" award. and if you've never heard early floyd from this period, you probably wouldn't recognize it.
this is a taste, afaik the only thing that ever made it out to record.
(note that floyd would cite zappa, who would cite varese. but also that there was a fair bit of free jazz produced in the period.
i know, i'm missing the point, it's the lyrics.)
ok. to be balanced. and to backtrack to the "official narrative" of the velvets influencing punk. it's convoluted. i think it should be largely rejected, except in the local scope of the velvets influencing the new york "downtown" scene.
see, you can give the velvets and their members some credit for helping form a bridge between the beat movement and what got labelled the new york punk movement, although it's never been clear to me exactly what new york "punk" had in common with british punk or detroit "proto-punk". don't get me wrong. i like a lot of bands that came out of new york in the mid to late 70s, although maybe more so the stuff that came out in the very late 70s and early 80s. if you toss out the stuff like the ramones, new york "punk" was always very consciously difficult in whatever form it took. that makes it rather unpunk, relative to the initial british meaning of the term.
it's not like i'm the first person to draw a contrast between british and american punk. but it's less pronounced if you're discussing the ramones v. the clash, or the damned, or the sex pistols. there are a lot of similarities there. but going a little under the surface, if you try and draw a comparison between patti smith or television and crass then it's clear you're not in the same genre anymore. "punk", in this context, becomes a sort of buzzword without meaning. the new york "punk" scene, in this context, is hard to understand as anything other than an art rock scene grasping onto a trendy term. but, it was an art rock scene in an artistically dead society; in england, it was more like over-stimulation. so it's not just different genres, but reactions to fundamentally different pressures. in time, ironically, it was the new york sound that dominated london (see joy division), while the uk sound got shipped out to california.
see, if punk in britain was a mod movement about rejecting prog and getting back to the basics of rock then new york was a different thing altogether, partly because prog wasn't as entrenched in the united states. instead, you had disco. and new york punk was definitely explicitly anti-disco. so, there was a shared sort of theme there, but very different in scope. in new york, it almost seemed like there was a push to become *more* prog in rejecting the vacuousness of disco - which became post-punk/industrial - after it accepted a shared theme of beat-driven music *from* disco. yet, a lot of the early new york bands were more a type of art-rock, and it's that art-rock that eventually developed into what became alt rock through the influence of new york "punk" bands like sonic youth.
(although sonic youth is the exception, here. they were initially punk as fuck, even if they were clearly influenced by psych rock and maybe, in the end, became a psych band.)
all that to say that there's a continuity from ginsberg through to ranaldo that passes through lou reed, and that the velvets had a role to play in keeping that "downtown scene" alive during those dark days when disco dominated. but it's a relatively minor role - a curator role.
but, yeah. i like this. you can quote me on it.
"the banana record? yeah, it sounds like somebody took a byrds 8-track and left it out in the sun."
i know, i know - “i think there was a lot of elegance in the lyrics he wrote.”
yeah, i'm familiar with the material, and i know that's what people get out of it. and i've been inspired by a lot of people that he inspired, so i'm getting a lot out of it second hand. i cited stipe and ranaldo specifically.
it just seems to me like he's writing from behind this sort of dramatic screen that exists, that he's presenting very carefully worded works of fiction and passing them off as experiences. it's not just him, i have this criticism of a lot of folk music. it seems like it's an act, in other words. well, of course it's an act, on some level - all art is, and if i was walking around rejecting everything on that level i'd be rejecting all art, which i'm not doing. it's just that, with him, it seems really transparent. so, you're claiming it's honest and naked and whatnot, but what it strikes me as is very produced to *seem* honest and naked and whatnot. which is sort of the definition of contrived.
i'm kind of arguing in the form of a conspiracy, though. the more evidence you present that it's raw, the more contrived it's going to seem. but, isn't it a conspiracy, seriously, when you really analyze it?
i'm getting kind of meta and confusing, but i think what i'm trying to get across there is clear.
i guess relating to it sort of relies on giving in to the fantasy, and ignoring the truth that it's an act. which i'm not usually able to do.
“i think a lot of his lyrics are really personal.”
well, if you work in the warhol perspective, which is deeply relevant in reed's case, it sort of cheapens it by reducing it to a product. it doesn't help that he's so deadpan all the time - it just sort of stresses the feeling that it's constructed.
”maybe his lyrics don't seem lived in because they're often observational and in the third person.”
i think it's more his presentation, but, putting that question aside, i don't generally find myself at all interested in the subjects he's exploring, either, which is more of a subjective criticism. but i have a general disinterest in music that's focused largely around discussing relationships or largely focused around drug addiction. if i were to name my 100 favourite artists or something, almost none of them would be that type of songwriter or exist in the singer/songwriter/folk kind of category. i could probably ignore the deadpan, perceived lack of sincerity and generally not particularly interesting music if i could relate to his topics of choice a little more readily. when i look at what he influenced that i can relate to, it's often more in the writing style than the subject matter. stipe, for example is quite political; ranaldo is very introspective. stuff like swans and throbbing gristle took the nihilist themes to a different level, and inserted the emotion that reed tends to lack...
Saturday, October 26, 2013
demo #15: permission
see, i was never very rebellious. no, honestly, i wasn't. i just sort of didn't care. it was really never a question of rebelling against authority because the mere idea of authority was clearly preposterous. so, it was sort of more like i found myself laughing at the idea that other people thought they had some kind of "authority" over me....even as i found myself in logical agreement with those supposed "authorities" 95 times out of 100.....
i probably would have rebelled a little harder if my upbringing was more strict. it wasn't, though. authority was just something that never really existed, except as a rough set of largely rational suggestions.
you know those charlie brown episodes where adults are all squeaky and weird sounding? that's what i was thinking. although, again, the downward spiral appears as an embarrassingly strong influence. it's sort of ironic to write a song like this based on lines from some other person's songs. thankfully, we don't need to rely on the ingenuity of teenagers to keep the world spinning.
the backing vocals are my little sister. she was pretty little at the time, too. 12, even. also ironic: i told her what to do and what to say. i at least got *that* irony at the time, though.
i still like the bridge section, though.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered on oct 26, 2013.
i probably would have rebelled a little harder if my upbringing was more strict. it wasn't, though. authority was just something that never really existed, except as a rough set of largely rational suggestions.
you know those charlie brown episodes where adults are all squeaky and weird sounding? that's what i was thinking. although, again, the downward spiral appears as an embarrassingly strong influence. it's sort of ironic to write a song like this based on lines from some other person's songs. thankfully, we don't need to rely on the ingenuity of teenagers to keep the world spinning.
the backing vocals are my little sister. she was pretty little at the time, too. 12, even. also ironic: i told her what to do and what to say. i at least got *that* irony at the time, though.
i still like the bridge section, though.
recorded in december, 1996. remastered on oct 26, 2013.
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