A 26-Hour Playlist Featuring Music from Haruki Murakami’s Latest Novel, Killing Commendatore

in Literature, Music | October 16th, 2018

We know well the role music plays in the work of pro­lif­ic Japan­ese nov­el­ist Haru­ki Muraka­mi. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his pas­sion for jazz, his first love. He began as a jazz club own­er in Tokyo, and he has writ­ten two col­lec­tions of essays titled Por­trait in Jazz and Por­trait in Jazz 2. But Muraka­mi is no less a fan of clas­si­cal music and rock and roll—all three forms inter­twine in his nov­els and sto­ries, pro­vid­ing recur­ring motifs, sound­tracks, and back­drops. Music is more than the­mat­ic; it defines his lit­er­ary style, as he told lis­ten­ers on “Muraka­mi Radio,” his stint as a DJ on Tokyo FM.

“Rather than learn­ing sto­ry­telling tech­nique from some­one,” the nov­el­ist explained, “I’ve tak­en a musi­cal approach, while being very con­scious about rhythms, har­mo­ny and impro­vi­sa­tion.” Per­haps this approach explains the won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive qual­i­ty of his prose.

Read­ing his books, “you feel sad with­out know­ing why,” writes Charles Finch at The Inde­pen­dent, in a review of Murakami’s lat­est, Killing Com­menda­tore, “and yet, with­in that sad­ness glows a small ember of hap­pi­ness, because to feel sad is at least to feel hon­est­ly.” We could say some­thing sim­i­lar about the feel­ings evoked by an aria, a blues, or a Dylan song—music helps us access emo­tions for which we don’t have ready words.

Muraka­mi trans­lates that “inef­fa­ble yearn­ing” into writ­ing. “The obscure­ly lone­ly domes­tic images that run through his novels—rain, swim­ming, pas­ta, jazz, a par­tic­u­lar sort of warm, imper­son­al sex—root that yearn­ing in the truth of every­day life.” His newest nov­el brings in a third art, paint­ing; its pro­tag­o­nist, seek­ing to rein­vent his life and work, comes to dis­cov­er an impor­tant mes­sage through a series of mag­i­cal events. It’s famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for Muraka­mi, but don’t ask him to explain any of it. As he told Sarah Lyall at The New York Times, “I can­not explain any­thing at all… you just have to accept the form. A book is a metaphor.”

Bet­ter to get him talk­ing about music, which he is hap­py to do, mov­ing smooth­ly between styles with the same imag­i­na­tive leaps he makes on the page. Above, some fine soul has put togeth­er a playlist (listen to it on Spo­ti­fy here) for Killing Com­menda­tore and it is clas­sic Muraka­mi, a col­lec­tion of music from Sheryl Crow, Puc­ci­ni, the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet, Mozart, Thelo­nious Monk, Ver­di, Dylan, The Doors, Beethoven, Bruce Spring­steen, Rober­ta Flack, The Bea­t­les, The Beach Boys, and more. How do all of these artists fit togeth­er? Like the strange hap­pen­ings in Murakami’s world, you have to stop try­ing to make sense of things and just go with it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Became a DJ on a Japan­ese Radio Sta­tion for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delight­ed Lis­ten­ers

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Haruki Murakami Became a DJ on a Japanese Radio Station for One Night: Hear the Music He Played for Delighted Listeners

in Literature, Music, Radio | October 15th, 2018

In his native Japan, Haru­ki Muraka­mi has pub­lished not just fic­tion but all sorts of essays deal­ing with a vari­ety of sub­jects, from trav­el to music to writ­ing itself. One col­lec­tion of these pieces came out under the title Muraka­mi Radio, a pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tion for a broad­cast of the same name this past sum­mer on Tokyo FM. For its 55-minute dura­tion, Muraka­mi took the DJ’s seat and spun records (or rather, files from sev­er­al of his music-filled iPods) from his famous­ly vast per­son­al library, includ­ing The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA,” Joey Ramone’s ver­sion of “What a Won­der­ful World,” Eric Bur­don and The Ani­mals’ “Sky Pilot,” and Daryl Hall and John Oates’ ver­sion of “Love Train.” You can lis­ten to all his selec­tions in the Youtube Playlist above.

“It has been my hob­by to col­lect records and CDs since my child­hood, and thanks to that, my house is inun­dat­ed with such things,” wrote Muraka­mi in a mes­sage post­ed by Tokyo FM. “How­ev­er, I have often felt a sense of guilt toward the world while lis­ten­ing to such amaz­ing music and hav­ing a good time alone. I thought it may be good to share such good times with oth­er peo­ple while chat­ting over a glass of wine or a cup of cof­fee.”

He also chat­ted a bit him­self between songs, answer­ing lis­ten­er ques­tions and explain­ing the rela­tion­ship between the music he loves and the books he writes. “Rather than learn­ing sto­ry­telling tech­nique from some­one, I’ve tak­en a musi­cal approach, while being very con­scious about rhythms, har­mo­ny and impro­vi­sa­tion,” he said on-air. “It’s like writ­ing as I dance, even though I don’t actu­al­ly dance.”

For many of Murakami’s fans, Muraka­mi Radio (full record­ings of which do exist on the inter­net) marks the first time they’ve ever heard his actu­al voice, and it turns out to have a thing or two in com­mon with his autho­r­i­al one: take, for instance, his use of boku, the infor­mal per­son­al pro­noun favored by most of his nar­ra­tors. With the broad­cast ini­tial­ly announced as a one-off, it might also have seemed like the last chance to hear Muraka­mi speak, but the offi­cial Muraka­mi Radio site recent­ly announced two more edi­tions. The next one, sched­uled for Octo­ber 19th, will deal with not just music but anoth­er of Murakami’s pas­sions, run­ning. Any­one who’s read Murakami’s 1979 debut nov­el Hear the Wind Sing will remem­ber the talk­a­tive Sat­ur­day-night radio DJ who makes occa­sion­al appear­ances in the text — and may won­der if, near­ly 40 years lat­er, Muraka­mi chan­nels him again when he gets behind the micro­phone him­self.

via The Vinyl Fac­to­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979, Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground
Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Origins of the Death Growl in Metal Music

in Music | October 11th, 2018

When Arab-Span­ish Sephar­di Jew­ish mer­chant Abra­ham ben Jacob first encoun­tered the Vikings in Den­mark, he had this to say:

“Nev­er before I have heard ugli­er songs than those of the Vikings in Slesvig. The growl­ing sound com­ing from their throats reminds me of dogs howl­ing, only more untamed.”

Now what Mr. ben Jacob actu­al­ly heard we will nev­er know, but the descrip­tion does sound a lot like the “Death Growl” famil­iar to fans of death met­al. (The appear­ance of Vikings and the pre­pon­der­ance of Scan­di­na­vians with­in the genre cer­tain­ly make this tale sound true.)

Cheek­i­ly referred to by non-met­al fans as the “Cook­ie Mon­ster Voice,” this par­tic­u­lar style has evolved over time as met­al changed in the 1980s, from the pierc­ing screams of Dio and Iron Maid­en to the growl of Sepul­tura and Can­ni­bal Corpse. And that’s matched by the demon­ic and doom-laden sound of the music and the Grand Guig­nol hor­ror of the lyrics, which delight fans with its deprav­i­ty and dis­gust, the gross­er the bet­ter.

Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, you have to admit that the ‘80s and ‘90s saw the growth of a brand new vocal style that seemed to come out of nowhere.


YouTu­ber Poly­phon­ic tries to unrav­el its ori­gins in the video above, which, we have to admit, fol­lows the Wikipedia arti­cle on the Death Growl point by point. But that’s okay–imagine if all Wikipedia arti­cles had their own videos…would that be a bad thing?

On the oth­er hand, Polyphonic’s video does leave out some antecedents to this style, all of who get named checked by var­i­ous folks in the com­ments. (Yes, YouTube com­ments that are worth read­ing!)

In par­tic­u­lar, there’s no men­tion of African-Amer­i­can artists like Howl­in’ Wolf, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, or Clarence Frog­man Hen­ry. Wolf in par­tic­u­lar became a huge influ­ence on anoth­er incred­i­bly gruff and gut­tur­al singer, Tom Waits, who often sings like the Dev­il has his lar­ynx.
And do the dis­tort­ed vocals on Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” or on King Crimson’s “21st Cen­tu­ry Schizoid Man” real­ly count? Or the var­i­ous screams on Pink Floyd songs?

When Poly­phon­ic returns to the 1980s, he’s on firmer ground. Lem­my from Motör­head makes more sense as an influ­ence, and by the time we get to Ven­om, then Death, then Man­tas, it is eas­i­er to see where the Death Growl came from. (But come on, no men­tion of Napalm Death? They were the first growl­ing band I ever heard, and hats off to BBC DJ John Peel for not only play­ing them when the debuted, but he had them in ses­sion.)

If inter­est­ed, I would rec­om­mend explor­ing the YouTube com­ments fur­ther and make up your own mind. And if you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing this tech­nique, there are folks who will teach you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bat­tle-Scarred Heavy Met­al Musi­cians Play Rock ‘n’ Roll Clas­sics on Hel­lo Kit­ty Instru­ments

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Wendy Carlos’ Switched on Bach Turns 50 This Month: Learn How the Classical Synth Record Introduced the World to the Moog

in Music | October 9th, 2018

When the Moog syn­the­siz­er appeared in the late 60s, musi­cians didn’t know what it was for, so they found some very cre­ative uses for it, includ­ing mak­ing nov­el­ty tracks like “Pop Corn,” a huge hit for Ger­shom Kings­ley from the 1969 album Music to Moog By. But the Moog was more than a quirky new toy. It was a rev­e­la­tion for what syn­the­sized sound could do, of a tech­nol­o­gy that seemed like it might have unlim­it­ed pos­si­bil­i­ty if har­nessed by the right hands. The Moog showed up in 1967 on albums by the Doors, the Mon­kees, the Byrds—psychedelic bands who under­stood its futur­is­tic promise.

Yet it also entered the homes of mil­lions of lis­ten­ers through a clas­si­cal album. In 1968, the Moog fea­tured solo on the high­est-sell­ing clas­si­cal album of all time, Switched on Bach, by elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and pianist Wendy Car­los, known for her work with Stan­ley Kubrick on the scores of films like Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing. Car­los met Moog in 1964 at a con­fer­ence for the Audio Engi­neer­ing Soci­ety and had the chance to inves­ti­gate one of his ear­ly mod­u­lar synths. “It was a per­fect fit,” she says, “he was a cre­ative engi­neer who spoke music: I was a musi­cian who spoke sci­ence. It felt like a meet­ing of sim­pati­co minds.”

Car­los helped Moog devel­op his designs, he helped her find her voice, the fuzzy, buzzing, dron­ing, hum­ming sound of an ana­log synth, which some­how made a per­fect fit for selec­tions from Bach’s Well-Tem­pered Clavier and Two-Part Inven­tions. When Car­los released Switched on Bach, her first stu­dio album, it was “an imme­di­ate suc­cess,” as Moog him­self said. “We wit­nessed the birth of a new genre of music”—fully syn­the­sized key­board music, with­out any acoustic instru­ments involved what­so­ev­er. The Moog proved itself, and Car­los impressed both pop fans and the clas­si­cal com­mu­ni­ty, many of whom ful­ly embraced the phe­nom­e­non.

A record­ing of Switched on Bach pre­miered at Carnegie Hall, Leonard Bern­stein pre­sent­ed an arrange­ment of Bach’s “Lit­tle” Fugue in G minor arranged for Moog, organ, and orches­tra at one of his Young People’s Con­certs, and no less a Bach author­i­ty than Glenn Gould praised the album, not­ing that it had “made elec­tron­ic music main­stream” even as it intro­duced entire new audi­ences to Bach. Car­los has since pre­served her mys­tique through intense per­son­al pri­va­cy and strict con­trol of her copy­right. You’ll find pre­cious lit­tle of her music on the inter­net: a snip­pet here and there, but no Switched on Bach stream­ing online.

It is well worth pay­ing for the plea­sure (I’d rec­om­mend doing so by track­ing down an orig­i­nal vinyl press­ing.) Car­los released a fol­low-up the next year, The Well-Tem­pered Syn­the­siz­er, then anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion of Switched on Bach for the album’s 25th anniver­sary. This year it turns 50. You can cel­e­brate not only by lis­ten­ing to the orig­i­nal, but check­ing out its equal­ly majes­tic fol­low-up albums, the Spe­cial Edi­tion Box Set, and a recent “spir­i­tu­al suc­ces­sor” to Car­los’ orig­i­nal, Craig Leon’s 2015 Bach to Moog, a re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Bach using the very same syn­the­siz­er Car­los did those many years ago. Almost.

The Sys­tem 55, the col­lec­tion of large, clunky banks of patch bays, oscil­la­tors, fil­ters, envelopes, etc. that Car­los used, was reis­sued three years ago. In the short doc­u­men­tary above, you can see pro­duc­er and com­pos­er Leon talk about Car­los’ con­tri­bu­tions to mod­ern, and clas­si­cal, music and his own hybrid use of the ear­ly syn­the­siz­er with midi and a string sec­tion. He demon­strates how rad­i­cal­ly the dis­tinc­tive Moog sound can be shaped by its wonky dials and switch­es, but also how it can sub­tly col­or the sound of oth­er instru­ments with­out impos­ing itself. Such a rev­o­lu­tion­ary instru­ment required a tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary album to announce it to the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Aphex Twin’s Massive Catalog, Including Rare Unreleased Tracks, Is Now Free to Stream Online

in Music | October 9th, 2018

Few things con­nect the elec­tron­ic music of the 90s to that of today like Aphex Twin. The long career of Richard D. James—he of the sin­is­ter grin­ning face plas­tered on bux­om mod­els and a gang of vio­lent chil­dren in his ear­ly NSFW videos—anticipated and in some ways invent­ed the glitchy, clat­ter­ing, squelch­ing, cacoph­o­nous, alien sound of the dig­i­tal 21st cen­tu­ry. The release of his entire cat­a­log, includ­ing sev­er­al unre­leased tracks, on his web­site to buy or stream for free shows his clear aware­ness of how sem­i­nal his music has been for over three decades.

James became a crossover super­star in the late 90s, grew irri­tat­ed with imi­ta­tors, got lumped in with so-called IDM (“intel­li­gent dance music”), and threat­ened retire­ment many times. Then he did retire the Aphex Twin name in 2001 after releas­ing Drukqs and mak­ing music for the next few years under oth­er monikers. He also claimed he’d nev­er release his most inno­v­a­tive music “because I don’t want peo­ple rip­ping me off.”

In the mean­while, a cou­ple or so major glob­al eco­nom­ic changes came about, new younger fans came of age, and bed­room pro­duc­ers armed with lap­tops instead of the bat­tery of syn­the­siz­ers James com­mand­ed sprang up around the world. It might have seemed—as it did for a num­ber of peo­ple who grew up mak­ing, buy­ing, and danc­ing to elec­tron­ic music at the end of the 20th century—that it was time to pass the baton to anoth­er rave gen­er­a­tion.

Instead, James returned in 2014—after his infa­mous logo popped up on NYC sidewalks—with a new album, Syro, a huge suite of songs that won Aphex Twin near-unan­i­mous crit­i­cal ado­ra­tion and a Gram­my. The her­met­ic musi­cian had pre­vi­ous­ly summed up his rela­tion­ship with his audi­ence by telling an inter­view­er he hat­ed them. He appeared to hate the press even more. Return­ing thir­teen years lat­er as a 43-year-old father seemed to have mel­lowed him.

James is pos­i­tive­ly chat­ty in a lengthy Pitch­fork inter­view. He begins by explain­ing the ori­gin of the word “syro.” It came from his son, who “doesn’t know what it means, either. But it means some­thing. And it sounds cool.” He might have been talk­ing about the titles of near­ly every track on the album, his lat­est EP, or his retire­ment album, Druqks.

For James, a blan­ket con­tempt for the sta­tus quo man­i­fests in scram­blings of sense and sound.  Syro’s only deci­pher­able title, “minipops 67 [120.2] [source field mix],” may or may not refer to the 1983 British children’s show fea­tur­ing pre­teens singing con­tem­po­rary pop songs while dressed up like the orig­i­nal per­form­ers. Could be a pis­stak­ing nod to his gen­er­a­tion or an earnest vis­it to child­hood mem­o­ries through the por­tal of his own kids’ non­sense word, or both.

The Aphex Twin come­back saw James open­ing up about his process in inter­views and releas­ing a list of synth instru­ments used on Syro in the form of a dense info­graph­ic, above. (The dots in con­cen­tric cir­cles “line up with the track list,” notes Syn­th­topia, “so they graph­i­cal­ly indi­cate the gear that was used on each track.”). These ges­tures to his fans pre­saged the release of his entire cat­a­log for stream­ing on his site, “a near-com­plete col­lec­tion of James record­ing out­put since 1991,” as Ars Tech­ni­ca writes, includ­ing “hours of pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased mate­r­i­al from pret­ty much every phase of his career.”

Check out the site here to stream Aphex Twin’s record­ed out­put in chrono­log­i­cal or ran­dom order, buy each track in a num­ber of for­mats, includ­ing the unre­leased rar­i­ties, and read the exten­sive Aphex Twin inter­view at Pitch­fork, a con­ver­sa­tion that sees him mus­ing on aban­don­ing all pre­vi­ous human influ­ences and mak­ing music from out­er space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

Free, Open Source Mod­u­lar Synth Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate 70s & 80s Elec­tron­ic Music—Without Hav­ing to Pay Thou­sands for a Real-World Syn­the­siz­er

The 50 Best Ambi­ent Albums of All Time: A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Brian Eno’s Ringtones Composed for Mobile Phones

in Music | October 4th, 2018

In a Bri­an Eno inter­view from 2007, writer Gem­ma Win­ter remind­ed him of some­thing she had read about him and ring­tones:

GM: I read an inter­view with you in Q mag­a­zine about sev­en years ago, and you were asked had you ever com­posed your own ring­tone. You respond­ed by say­ing you would­n’t be that sad! But you’ve just com­posed ring­tones for Nokia — please explain.

BE: Heh heh! At that time they were ask­ing you to com­pose a piece of music, but you could only use those sounds. They would com­pose ring­tones out of these — beep boo boop, beepy nois­es. So I thought, ‘That’s hope­less — what can you do with that?’ You know the sound I mean, neep neep neep; so peo­ple were com­pos­ing neep-neep neep-neep nee-nee nee-nee. In the mean­time things changed so they had poly­phon­ic tones; so you could actu­al­ly have more com­pli­cat­ed sounds. It’s not real­ly a great medi­um for writ­ing music.

It’s a shame we don’t have the audio of this inter­view, because I would dear­ly like to hear what “neep neep neep” actu­al­ly sounds like. But in lieu of that, we have the above video, which col­lects all of the ring­tones Eno com­posed for the Nokia 8800 “Siroc­co”.

Eno was no stranger to writ­ing in minis­cule–he com­posed the Win­dows 95 open­ing chime. But in 2007 the “beep boop” lim­i­ta­tions had gone away and he was able to draw from a much larg­er palette. Now, we don’t know the para­me­ters of the assign­ment, but then again, look at what he was giv­en for the Win­dows chime, accord­ing to the same inter­view:

The music should be active, young, inspi­ra­tional, wise, stim­u­lat­ing, catchy, mem­o­rable, thought­ful, err glossy, futur­is­tic, nos­tal­gic — hon­est­ly a para­graph of adjec­tives. At the bot­tom it said the piece should not be more than three and a quar­ter sec­onds in length!

This time he was able to cre­ate over a dozen ring­tones along with alarms and alert sounds, all includ­ed above. The ques­tion might be: if we didn’t know this was Bri­an Eno, would we be able to rec­og­nize his music in such a small work? Also: Are these minia­tures inher­ent­ly more inter­est­ing than any oth­er com­pos­er?

For the first ques­tion, I did notice that some of the bright gui­tar tones sound a bit like his work with dul­cimer artist Laraa­ji, and the tone, the echo, and his choice of scale on some of the piano pieces come from the same world as his ambi­ent pieces, as do the round tones of his “alarms,” which are more of a con­cerned fur­rowed brow than a yell.

To the sec­ond ques­tion, I would say there is a cer­tain con­sis­ten­cy to this group than the grab bag of sounds on my iPhone. And if I used ring­tones anymore–does anybody?–I might be jeal­ous of the per­son with the Eno­phone.

Final ques­tion, prompt­ed by the nos­tal­gia in the YouTube com­ments: How many Nokia 8800 users bought a Bri­an Eno ambi­ent record because it remind­ed them of their phone?

Note: You can appar­ent­ly down­load Eno’s ring­tone col­lec­tion at this web­site.

via @darkshark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Reich is Call­ing: A Min­i­mal­ist Ring­tone for the iPhone

Down­load Jim Rockford’s Answer­ing Machine Mes­sages as MP3s

Bri­an Eno Reveals His Favorite Film Sound­tracks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How Joan Jett Started the Runaways at 15 and Faced Down Every Barrier for Women in Rock and Roll

in Gender, Music | October 3rd, 2018

These are dark days for every­one who cares about equal­i­ty. After decades of painful progress and some hard-won vic­to­ries for women in the U.S., the guardians of patri­archy seem hell­bent on undo­ing moder­ni­ty and set­ting the clock back decades to keep pow­er. The misog­y­nis­tic spec­ta­cle is nau­se­at­ing. One rem­e­dy, Rebec­ca Trais­ter rec­om­mends in her new book of the same name, is to get “good and mad.” The voic­es of women resist­ing the cur­rent wave of polit­i­cal attacks can guide right­eous out­rage in con­struc­tive direc­tions, and we can learn much from women who pushed past the same bar­ri­ers in the past through sheer force of will.

Women like Joan Jett, who, in a recent inter­view with Court­ney Smith at Refin­ery 29 expressed her thoughts on the chal­lenges of the present (“I think it’s still very much the same as it was many years ago”). Her advice: con­quer fear.

“Peo­ple count on you being fear­ful,” she says, “as a woman or who­ev­er you are and what­ev­er you want to do. They count on that fear to keep them from forg­ing ahead and fig­ur­ing that out. It’s def­i­nite­ly fear-induc­ing, and it’s not a fear you want to face. But it is doable.” The rock icon direc­tor Kevin Ker­slake (who has just released a Jett doc­u­men­tary) calls a “fem­i­nist man­i­festo in the flesh” should know.

Jett her­self express­es some dis­com­fort with the label of fem­i­nism (“I’m for peo­ple being what they want to be”), but her career has served for decades as a mod­el for women seiz­ing pow­er in the music indus­try, and she’s nev­er had any patience with sex­ist dis­crim­i­na­tion. She “want­ed to be a rock­er ever since she got a hold of a gui­tar, even though she was told girls don’t play rock and roll. That didn’t stop her from form­ing The Run­aways despite the sex­ist road­blocks the band faced.” So goes the descrip­tion for Marc Maron’s recent inter­view with Jett on his WTF pod­cast. The ugli­ness women in rock faced in the 70s is depress­ing­ly famil­iar. Before she even learned to play, Jett was told by a gui­tar teacher, “girls don’t play rock and roll.”

Undaunt­ed, she quit lessons, taught her­self, and learned her favorite songs (Free’s “Alright Now” topped the list). Then, when her fam­i­ly moved to L.A., she sought out oth­er like minds to form an all-girl rock band. With no exam­ples to look to, Jett fig­ured it out on her own, find­ing a club that played glam rock for teenagers and find­ing her peo­ple. At fif­teen years old, with­out songs or a demo tape, she called pro­duc­er Kim Fow­ley, then start­ed assem­bling the Run­aways, start­ing with drum­mer Sandy West, then, after play­ing as a trio with Mic­ki Steele, recruit­ing lead gui­tarist Lita Ford, bassist Jack­ie Fox, and singer Cherie Cur­rie. “We went in the stu­dio right away,” she tells Maron.

The Run­aways were “try­ing to express our­selves the way we knew how,” Jett says in her inter­view with Smith. “Not much dif­fer­ent from what the Rolling Stones were doing. We didn’t want bar­ri­ers put up on what we were allowed to sing about, say, or play.” By 1976, they were signed to Mer­cury Records, releas­ing their debut album, and tour­ing with Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Talk­ing Heads, and Tom Pet­ty and the Heart­break­ers. The fol­low­ing year, they released Queens of Noise and quick­ly became asso­ci­at­ed with punk. Amer­i­can crit­ics sav­aged the band, and they faced vio­lence and sneer­ing con­de­scen­sion at home but were beloved super­stars in Japan (see them play “Cher­ry Bomb” live in Japan at the top).

When Cur­ry left The Run­aways that year, Jett took over as the lead singer, and when the band broke up in 1979, she put her­self back togeth­er, moved to New York, cre­at­ed her own label after a cou­ple dozen rejec­tions, and formed The Black­hearts. An unstop­pable musi­cal force, Jett still plays and tours and still refus­es to back down for any­one, even though, she tells Smith, “on some lev­el, it can be eas­i­er not to fight and to go along. That’s what women have to decide: do you want to go along, and maybe your life will be a lit­tle bit more com­fort­able if you don’t make waves?”

Her advice is as straight­for­ward as her path has been rocky—“stand up for your­self… You’ve got to resist that. Find some­one to sup­port you…. We’re still fight­ing the same issues that I was dis­cussing years ago. There’s a thing on a loop about what girls can achieve. When they come up, you’ve got to chal­lenge those assump­tions at every turn.” If anyone’s earned the right to give advice like that to young musi­cians, it’s Joan Jett. Check out the trail­er for her new doc­u­men­tary Bad Rep­u­ta­tion just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Blondie Drummer Clem Burke and Scientific Researchers Show That Drumming Can Help Kids with Autism Learn More Effectively in School

in Music | October 3rd, 2018

Pho­to via the Clem Burke Drum­ming Project

Musi­cians from clas­sic bands take all sorts of unex­pect­ed paths in their late careers. We’ve seen Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart col­lab­o­rate with NASA, Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne take on—among a dozen oth­er roles—the man­tle of librar­i­an, and Bruce Spring­steen gui­tarist Steven Van Zandt become a cur­ricu­lum devel­op­er. Turn­ing musi­cal expe­ri­ence to con­scious­ness-expand­ing avo­ca­tion has pro­duced very admirable results—perhaps no more so than in the case of two musi­cians who have used the lat­est research on music ther­a­py to help kids with autism.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Cheap Trick bassist Tom Petersson’s “Rock Your Speech” project, inspired by his autis­tic son Liam’s pos­i­tive response to music. Now reports from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chich­ester describes how drum­mer Clem Burke of Blondie fame has invest­ed his celebri­ty into research on how drum­ming can help kids on the spec­trum improve learn­ing and enhance social inter­ac­tions. It must be not­ed that Burke has not come late­ly to the sci­ence. His Clem Burke Drum­ming Project (CBDP), an asso­ci­a­tion of aca­d­e­mics, drum­mers, uni­ver­si­ty part­ners, and hon­orary “Doc­tor of Rock” Burke, just cel­e­brat­ed its 10-year anniver­sary.

The project has pre­vi­ous­ly researched “the phys­i­cal demands of drum­ming; enhanced health and well­be­ing of drum­ming; enhanced brain struc­ture and func­tion fol­low­ing drum­ming prac­tice,” and oth­er drum­ming-relat­ed sub­jects, includ­ing a drum­ming video game for stress relief. The lat­est find­ings, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chich­ester and Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre Hart­pury, show that “drum­ming for 60 min­utes a week can ben­e­fit chil­dren diag­nosed with autism.” The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chich­ester notes that pre­lim­i­nary results of a ten-week drum­ming inter­ven­tion com­pris­ing two 30-minute drum­ming ses­sions per week showed:

  • A vast improve­ment in move­ment con­trol while play­ing the drums, includ­ing dex­ter­i­ty, rhythm, tim­ing.
  • Move­ment con­trol was also enhanced while per­form­ing dai­ly tasks out­side the school envi­ron­ment, includ­ing an improved abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate dur­ing home­work.
  • A range of pos­i­tive changes in behav­iour with­in school envi­ron­ment, which were observed and report­ed by teach­ers, such as improved con­cen­tra­tion and enhanced com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peers and adults

These sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits do not apply only to stu­dents with autism; “Rock drum­ming,” says lead researcher and CBDP co-founder Mar­cus Smith, can be “a potent inter­ven­tion for indi­vid­u­als expe­ri­enc­ing brain dis­or­ders” of all kinds, and can also improve dex­ter­i­ty, rhythm, and tim­ing (nat­u­ral­ly).

Although a num­ber of stud­ies over the years have made head­lines with sim­i­lar claims, the Clem Burke Project’s ten years of research into the effects of drum­ming on brain health and behav­ior give this study par­tic­u­lar weight. Still, as always in sci­en­tif­ic research, more evi­dence can help refine the appli­ca­tions. Anoth­er researcher in the study, Dr. Ruth Lowry, sounds both excit­ed and cau­tious­ly opti­mistic in her assess­ment of the find­ings, express­ing hopes that more research will “pro­vide fur­ther evi­dence that not only does rock drum­ming have pos­i­tive ben­e­fits in terms of changes in dex­ter­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion but that wider social and behav­iour­al con­duct ben­e­fits can be observed.”

Maybe Dr. Clem Burke and his team should start a side project with Tom Peters­son, whose musi­cal inter­ven­tions in the lives of kids with autism seem to be find­ing exact­ly such wider ben­e­fits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cheap Trick’s Bassist Tom Peters­son Helps Kids With Autism Learn Lan­guage With Rock ‘n’ Roll: Dis­cov­er “Rock Your Speech”

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Steven Van Zandt Cre­ates a Free School of Rock: 100+ Free Les­son Plans That Edu­cate Kids Through Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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