Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spotify Playlist of Your Selections

in Music, Writing | May 26th, 2014

AliceColtraneUC

What music puts you in the mood to write? At the moment, I have on Alice Coltrane’s “Bat­tle at Armaged­don” from her 1971 Uni­ver­sal Con­scious­ness, a work of psy­che­del­ic free jazz that makes my fin­gers skit­ter over the key­board and sends thoughts rac­ing through my mind. Should Coltrane’s mys­tic jazz counter the mood I want to sum­mon, I might find some­thing less syn­co­pat­ed, more lugubri­ous, omi­nous, melan­choly, serene, etc. (Per­haps Grouper’s atmos­pher­ic suite of reverb-drenched tone-poems The Man Who Died in His Boat.)

This inter­ac­tion between the ears, the fin­gers, and the writ­ing mind struck our inter­est back in 2012, and we put out a call to read­ers to sug­gest the best pieces of music to write by. Some read­ers found that silence made for the best—or only—accompaniment. Many more made rec­om­men­da­tions rang­ing from Miles Davis, to min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich, sitar mae­stro Ravi Shankar, the clas­sic Krautrock sound of Neu!, the dub reg­gae of King Tub­by, the vio­lin Sonatas of Bach, and the ambi­ent sound­scapes of Bri­an Eno. We took it upon our­selves to com­pile a sam­pling of your sug­ges­tions with Youtube videos at the time. Now we offer above a more portable Spo­ti­fy ver­sion of our “music to write by” playlist—over 13 hours of music. (Stream it above. Or find it online here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.) I’ve added Alice Coltrane, Grouper, and the beau­ti­ful …Until We Felt Red (2006) from one of my favorite gui­tarists, Kaki King.

I hope this playlist inspires you, or at least inspires you to make your own. While it could go on indef­i­nite­ly, the key to a good mix­tape is the art of judi­cious selec­tion. Please tell us in the com­ments, what would you absolute­ly have to add? What artists, com­posers, and musi­cians get you in the mood to write, help you shift tem­pos, or move you from major to minor keys while you com­pose, whether you write non­fic­tion, poet­ry, tech­ni­cal man­u­als, or the Great Amer­i­can What­ev­er? We’ll add many of your sug­ges­tions to the playlist over the next few days.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Rec­om­men­da­tions

The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your Favorites Brought Togeth­er in a Spe­cial Playlist

Lis­ten to Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

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

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Audio: The Beatles Play Their Final Concert at Candlestick Park, 1966

in Music | May 24th, 2014

Aside from a sur­prise send-off per­for­mance on the roof of their own Apple build­ing in 1969 (which you can see here), The Bea­t­les played their last offi­cial con­cert on August 29th, 1966 at Can­dle­stick Park in San Fran­cis­co before mov­ing on to make their most icon­ic stu­dio albums, then split­ting up three years lat­er. Know­ing it would be their final show, the band brought a cam­era onstage to take pho­tos of the crowd and them­selves. Paul McCart­ney asked the band’s press offi­cer Tony Bar­row to record the con­cert on a hand-held tape recorder. Bar­row described the atmos­phere as an “end of term spir­it,” even if “it wasn’t a spec­tac­u­lar occa­sion […] noth­ing like Shea Sta­di­um.” His rec­ol­lec­tion might seem strange, but we should keep in mind that the band had been tour­ing inces­sant­ly, play­ing mas­sive shows to are­nas packed with scream­ing fans. The Can­dle­stick Park con­cert by con­trast had large sec­tions of emp­ty seats, with only 25,000 tick­ets sold in a sta­di­um with a 42,500 seat capac­i­ty.

Bar­row record­ed the show, then, as he recalls, made one copy and locked the oth­er away:

Back in Lon­don I kept the con­cert cas­sette under lock and key in a draw­er of my office desk, mak­ing a sin­gle copy for my per­son­al col­lec­tion and pass­ing the orig­i­nal to Paul for him to keep. Years lat­er my Can­dle­stick Park record­ing re-appeared in pub­lic as a boot­leg album. If you hear a boot­leg ver­sion of the final con­cert that fin­ish­es dur­ing Long Tall Sal­ly it must have come either from Paul’s copy or mine, but we nev­er did iden­ti­fy the music thief!

Who­ev­er it was, we have that per­son to thank for the record­ing above. The audio qual­i­ty is what might be expect­ed from a hand­held recorder in a huge sta­di­um con­cert, but the his­toric val­ue of the doc­u­ment is ines­timable. See the com­plete track­list below and read more about that final show at The Bea­t­les Bible.

01 — Rock And Roll Music [0:00]

02 — She’s A Woman [1:40]

03 — If I Need­ed Some­one [4:53]

04 — Day Trip­per [7:50]

05 — Baby’s In Black [10:58]

06 — I Feel Fine [13:43]

07 — Yes­ter­day [16:24]

08 — I Wan­na Be Your Man [19:10]

09 — Nowhere Man [21:48]

10 — Paper­back Writer [24:36]

11 — Long Tall Sal­ly [27:20]

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

The Bea­t­les: Live at Shea Sta­di­um, 1965

Watch All of The Bea­t­les’ His­toric Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show, 50 Years Ago

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

 

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Edgy Bible Study: Jim Jarmusch & Neil Young Read The Old Testament

in Film, Music | May 23rd, 2014

Jim Jar­musch, that gor­geous­ly coiffed doyen of cin­e­mat­ic cool, made movies slow and under­stat­ed at a time when Hol­ly­wood increas­ing­ly cranked out flicks that were quick, slick and vac­u­ous.

From his ground­break­ing, huge­ly influ­en­tial sec­ond fea­ture Stranger Than Par­adise (1984), Jar­musch made a string of movies filled with lacon­ic down-and-out hip­ster, clever nar­ra­tive eli­sions and great music. Jar­musch was a vocal­ist for the No Wave band The Del Byzan­teens and his affin­i­ty for musi­cians is clear in his movies. Tom Waits played lead in Down By Law, Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer had a major role in Mys­tery Train and his omnibus movie Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes fea­tured Iggy Pop, the White Stripes and a good chunk of the Wu Tang Clan. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films.)

So it sur­prised pret­ty much nobody when Jar­musch came out with the con­cert doc­u­men­tary Year of the Horse in 1997, about rock god Neil Young and his peren­ni­al band Crazy Horse. Young pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed the haunt­ing sound­track for Jarmusch’s psy­che­del­ic West­ern mas­ter­piece Dead Man (1995) and appar­ent­ly they hit it off. Jar­musch fol­lowed Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour and the result was a messy, ram­bling work that mir­rored the rough, ram­bling music of Crazy Horse. Jar­musch shot much of it in Super 8mm film stock and then blew it up to 35mm. For much of the film, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the con­cert sequences, you get the sense of watch­ing a Seu­rat paint­ing in the mid­dle of a jam ses­sion.

The movie didn’t do well com­mer­cial­ly. Roger Ebert, for one, hat­ed the movie with a white-hot pas­sion. But there were moments in the film that are pret­ty great. One, which you can see above, shows Jar­musch and Young hav­ing a dead­pan con­ver­sa­tion about the Bible.

The clip opens in 1978 when Young has been but­ton­holed by some kook who says that he’s Jesus. Just before he ducks out of the con­ver­sa­tion Young quips to the would-be prophet, “hope you make it this time. Last time was rough.” Cut to 1996; Jar­musch and Young are in the back of a tour bus and may or may not be high. Their con­ver­sa­tion, how­ev­er, is def­i­nite­ly stony. It wouldn’t be out of place in one of Jarmusch’s fic­tion films either. Young states, “The Bible is quite a book… What’s the old tes­ta­ment?” The film­mak­er responds, “The Old Tes­ta­ment is before Christ… It’s Moses and all that. And it’s when God is real­ly pissed all the time.” Jar­musch then reads a par­tic­u­lar­ly gory pas­sage from the Book of Ezekiel to illus­trate his point.

Below you can watch a video of Young and Jar­musch talk­ing about how they came to col­lab­o­rate with each oth­er.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Unseen Scenes from Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 Jail­break Movie Down By Law

Har­vard Presents Two Free Online Cours­es on the Old Tes­ta­ment

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Revisit the Golden Age of Max’s Kansas City With Film & Audio From The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Devo & Talking Heads

in Music | May 21st, 2014

You know the old joke: “if you don’t like the neigh­bor­hood, wait ten min­utes.” New York­ers know it the oth­er way around, too. If you like the neigh­bor­hood, wait ten min­utes; your local haunts will dis­ap­pear. But while the phys­i­cal mark­ers of my own New York era shut­ter one by one, dur­ing said era all I ever want­ed was for it to be the late 70s again, when you could catch such upstarts as the Talk­ing Heads, Devo, the Ramones, Tele­vi­sion, or Pat­ti Smith at Max’s Kansas City. Or even ear­li­er in the decade, when Max’s served as the NYC home base for David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and even a young Bruce Spring­steen.

Despite Max’s hal­lowed sta­tus in the New York rock scene, pre­cious lit­tle footage sur­vives from its hey­day. The film at the top shows us what pro­duc­er David Weis­man says in voice-over nar­ra­tion is to his knowl­edge the only 35mm, motion pic­ture-qual­i­ty film of “the renowned, leg­endary, unfor­get­table Max’s Kansas City,” where Andy Warhol “held court every night from mid­night till dawn.” Weis­man points out local stars of the Warho­lian scene in the vin­tage film, rem­i­nisces about his own time there, and describes a light­ing sit­u­a­tion that made film­ing in the club very dif­fi­cult. Just above, hear what those denizens in the footage heard: live audio of the Vel­vet Under­ground play­ing “I’m Wait­ing for the Man” and “Sweet Jane” live at Max’s in 1972.

Film­ing at Max’s may have been chal­leng­ing, but clear­ly, as you see above, one could get it right, even in less­er for­mats. Here we have clas­sic 1976 film of the Ramones play­ing “Havana Affair” and “Lis­ten to My Heart” at Max’s dur­ing its post-Warhol sec­ond phase, when the club became sec­ond only to CBG­Bs as the home of New York punk rock and new wave.

The Ramones film may not be 35mm, but the qual­i­ty of sound and image sure­ly excels that of every oth­er doc­u­ment from the peri­od, like the short, blur­ry film above of Devo play­ing their bizarro take on “Sat­is­fac­tion” in 1977.

Yet anoth­er pre­cious arti­fact from the late-70s Max’s scene comes to us with­out any mov­ing images at all, but the audio is quite good and rep­re­sents a for­ma­tive moment in the evo­lu­tion of the Talk­ing Heads, only a trio at the time. Hear them do “Artists Only” above in 1976.

Max’s didn’t only shel­ter punks and strung-out art rock­ers. In the ear­ly sev­en­ties, book­er Sam Hood also secured six­ties folk main­stays like Dave Van Ronk and new­com­ers like soon-to-be wild­ly famous Bruce Spring­steen. See the young Boss open for Van Ronk above with an acoustic ver­sion of “Grow­ing Up” in 1972.

Max’s closed down in 1981 with a head­lin­ing per­for­mance by DC hard­core punks Bad Brains, but it has since reopened in anoth­er loca­tion (1998). The new (gasp!—Midtown) Max’s isn’t Max’s Kansas City in any­thing but name, but its web­site at least pre­serves the mem­o­ry of the old club’s heady 70s days with more live audio and mem­o­ra­bil­ia from The Vel­vets, Sid Vicious, John­ny Thun­ders & The Heart­break­ers, and many more “Max’s Icons.” Also don’t miss this Fla­vor­wire gallery of clas­sic pho­tographs from 70s-era Max’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

1976 Film Blank Gen­er­a­tion Doc­u­ments CBGB Scene with Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

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Thomas Dolby Explains How a Synthesizer Works on a Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)

in Music, Technology, Television | May 21st, 2014

We’ve all heard the musi­cal fruits of audio syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly if we reg­u­lar­ly lis­ten to the pop of the 1980s. But how, exact­ly, does a syn­the­siz­er work? Ask a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­ast and the answer may come out too tech­ni­cal, and at too much length, to bear. But pio­neer­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed singer-song­writer Thomas Dol­by, he of “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence” (though I’ve always pre­fer his more ele­giac num­bers like “Air­waves”), can give you a clear­er, more con­cise expla­na­tion.


In fact, he gets it sim­ple to the point of child-friend­li­ness — so sim­ple that he gives it on a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram. The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall, which ran in late 1989 in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, taught lessons about music with a gallery of famous per­form­ers — Bob­by McFer­rin, Joni Mitchell, James Tay­lor, Mark Knopfler — in a pup­pet-rich set­ting. Those pup­pets, the denizens (liv­ing and dead) of the tit­u­lar Faffn­er Hall, came built by Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop, known for their mas­tery of Mup­pet craft.

Dol­by’s illus­tra­tion of a syn­the­siz­er’s oper­a­tion involves an unusu­al work of Mup­petry: a fly in a match­box. “A syn­the­siz­er con­sists of two things,” he says, “an oscil­la­tor and a fil­ter. The oscil­la­tor con­trols the pitch of the sound, and the fil­ter con­trols the tone.” Out, then, comes the box and its slight­ly unwill­ing (Mup­pet) inhab­i­tant. “I want you to imag­ine the fly is an oscil­la­tor, and this box is a fil­ter.” Dol­by shakes the box, rep­re­sent­ing elec­tri­cal cur­rent through an oscil­la­tor, which makes the fright­ened fly buzz. “The hard­er I shake the box, the high­er the pitch!” To demon­strate fil­tra­tion, he opens and clos­es the match­box, harshen­ing the fly­’s wail (until, indeed, it turns into a cry of “Help!”). If you’d like to hear Dol­by talk more about the inter­sec­tion of his art and his tech­nol­o­gy at a high­er, albeit Mup­pet­less lev­el, have a lis­ten to his appear­ance last year on the Nerdist pod­cast. He long ago, in anoth­er con­text, stat­ed his goal of teach­ing peo­ple that syn­the­siz­ers “don’t have to sound like a crate of mori­bund wasps” — an inter­est­ing thing to accom­plish with a match­box and a super­in­tel­li­gent fly.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dol­by Geek Out and Sing “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jack Kerouac’s Poems Read by Patti Smith, John Cale & Other Icons (with Music by Joe Strummer)

in Literature, Music | May 21st, 2014

Jack Ker­ouac was cool before it was cool.

Kerouac’s break­out nov­el, On the Road, influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of artists, writ­ers and musi­cians. His prose was vital and messy and new. He wrote frankly about sex, drugs and spir­i­tu­al yearn­ing. He was young and movie star good look­ing. And he was a friend with just about every oth­er lit­er­ary rock star of the era – William S. Bur­roughs, Allen Gins­berg, Gary Sny­der and Neal Cas­sady — many of whom end­ed up char­ac­ters in his books.

Though Ker­ouac was best known for his nov­els — Dhar­ma Bums hap­pens to be my per­son­al fave — he also wrote poet­ry. His poems read like dis­tilled ver­sions of his prose – freeform, flow­ing and musi­cal, laced with themes of death, drink­ing and Bud­dhism. He once wrote that he want­ed his poet­ry “to be con­sid­ered as a jazz poet blow­ing a long blues in an after­noon jazz ses­sion on Sun­day.”

So it isn’t sur­pris­ing per­haps that back in 1997 some very cool peo­ple like Hunter S. Thomp­son, John Cale, Joe Strum­mer and Michael Stipe got togeth­er to record the spo­ken word trib­ute album Ker­ouac: Kicks Joy Dark­ness (down­load on Ama­zon or iTunes), which sets his poems to music. Or hear it below on Spo­ti­fy.

Pat­ti Smith, the god­moth­er of punk, reads his poem “The Last Hotel” accom­pa­nied by music from Thurston Moore and Lenny Kaye. You can lis­ten in the video above and read along below.

The last hotel
I can see the black wall
I can see the sil­hou­ette on the win­dow
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
He’s talk­ing, at a rhythm
But, I don’t care
I’m not inter­est­ed in what he’s say­ing
I’m only inter­est­ed in the last hotel
I’m only inter­est­ed in the fact that it’s the last hotel
Deep, dis­cor­dant, dark, sweet
The last hotel
The last hotel
Ghosts in my bed
The goats I bled
The last hotel

Per­haps Kerouac’s best-known poem is “Bow­ery Blues,” which com­bines Bud­dhist notions of “sans­gara” (aka sam­sara), the karmic cycles of birth and death, with a very Beat-like dis­gust of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. You can imag­ine this being absolute­ly spell­bind­ing when read out loud in a smoky cof­fee shop. Lydia Lunch’s read­ing is above. The text below.

The sto­ry of man
Makes me sick
Inside, out­side,
I do not know why
Some­thing so con­di­tion­al
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I do not know
Where to turn
In the Void
And When
To cut
Out

For no Church Told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the Cafe­te­ria
We hear
The Sax­o­phone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thir­ty Two,
Sound­ing like old times
And de bombed
Emp­ty decap­i­tat­ed
Mur­der by the clock.

And I see Shad­ows
Danc­ing into Doom
In love, hold­ing
TIght the love­ly ass­es
Of the lit­tle girls
In love with sex
Show­ing Them­selves
In white under­gar­ments
At ele­vat­ed win­dows
Hop­ing for the Worst.

I can not take it
Any­more
If I can not hold
My lit­tle behind
To me in my room

Then it’s good­bye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren’t as good
As They look
And Samad­hi
Is bet­ter
Than you think
When it starts in
Hit­ting your head
In with Buzz
Of Glit­ter­gold
Heav­en’s Angels
Wail­ing

Say­ing

We’ve been wait­ing for you
Since Morn­ing, Jack
Why were you so long
Dal­ly­ing in the sooty room?
This tran­scen­den­tal Bril­liance
Is the bet­ter part
(of Noth­ing­ness
I sing)

Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop

And final­ly, you can lis­ten to Ker­ouac read his own poem “Mac­Dou­gal Street Blues” set to some beats laid down by the late, great Joe Strum­mer.

Writ­ten in Jim Hud­son’s win­dow lookin’ out on Mac­Dou­gal Street
Sum­mer of 1954, when he left me his whole apart­ment
He went away with his girl some­place:

Parade among Images
Images Images Look­ing
Look­ing -
And every­body’s turn­ing around
& point­ing -
Nobody looks up
and In
Nor lis­tens to Samantab­hadra’s
Unceas­ing Com­pas­sion

No Sound Still
S s s s t t
Seethe
Of Sea Blue Moon
Holy X‑Jack

Mir­a­cle
Night -
Instead yank & yuck­er
For pits & pops

Look for crash­es
Pic­tures
Squares
Explo­sions
Birth
Death
Legs
I know, sweet hero,
Enlight­en­ment has Come
Rest in Still

In the Sun Think
Think Not
Think no more Lines -
Straw hat, hands a back
Classed
He exam in atein dis­tinct
Rome prints -
Trees prurp
and saw

The Chess­play­ers Wont End
Still they sit
Mil­lions of hats
In under­wa­ter foliage
Over mar­ble games
The Greeks of Chess

Plot the Pop
of Mate
King Queen

- I know their game,
their ele­phant with the pil­lar
With the pearl in it,
Their gory bish­ops
And Vital Pawns -
Their devout front­line
Sac­ri­fi­cial pawn shops
Their state­ly king
Who is so tall
Their Vir­gin Queens
Pree ing to Knave
The Night Knot
— Their Bha­gavad Gitas
of Igno­rance,
Krish­na’s advice,

Com­ma,
The game begins -

Jean-Louis
Go home, Man

- So tho I am wise
I have to wait like
Anyother­fool

Lets for­get the strollers
For­get the scene
Lets close our eyes
Let me instruct Thee
Here is dark Milk
Here is Sweet Mahameru
Who will Coo
To you Too

As he did to me
One night at three
When I w k e i t
P l e e
Knelt to See
Realit ee
And I said
‘Wilt thou pro­tect me
for ‘ver?’

And he in his throat­less
deep moth­er hole
Replied ’ H o m ’

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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David Bowie Remembers His Ziggy Stardust Days in Animated Video

in Animation, Music | May 21st, 2014

When you think about Zig­gy Star­dust this week, you’ll prob­a­bly think first about the sto­ry mak­ing the rounds — that Cana­di­an astro­naut Chris Had­field­’s cov­er of Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” has dis­ap­peared from the web, thanks to a copy­right claim by David Bowie. Bowie gave Had­field per­mis­sion to use the “Space Odd­i­ty” track for a year. The time is now up. The viral video, gone. We mourn. But not for too long. Yes­ter­day, Blank on Blank released the lat­est in its series of ani­mat­ed videos. Based on an inter­view record­ed by Joe Smith in 1988, the video (above) ani­mates Bowie’s reflec­tions on his Zig­gy Star­dust days, from whence “Space Odd­i­ty” came. He recalls how Zig­gy was “half out of sci-fi rock and half out of the Japan­ese the­ater.  The clothes were, at that time, sim­ply out­ra­geous. And sim­ply… Nobody had seen any­thing like them before.” We have much more on Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust peri­od in our archive. See the posts below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

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Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Classical Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

in Literature, Music, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2014

Image by Pete Welsch

What did Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? and A Scan­ner Dark­ly author Philip K. Dick, that vision­ary of our not-too-dis­tant dystopi­an future, lis­ten to while he craft­ed his descrip­tions of grim, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly (and some­times psy­che­del­i­cal­ly) har­row­ing times ahead? Mozart. Beethoven. Mahler. Wag­n­er.

Yes, while look­ing tex­tu­al­ly for­ward, he lis­tened back­ward, sound­track­ing the con­stant work­ings of his imag­i­na­tion with clas­si­cal music, as he had done since his teenage years. As Lejla Kucukalic writes in Philip K. Dick: Canon­i­cal Writer of the Dig­i­tal Age:

After grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1947, Dick moved out of his moth­er’s house and con­tin­ued work­ing as a clerk at a Berke­ley music store, Art Music. “Now,” wrote Dick, “my long­time love of music rose to the sur­face, and I began to study and grasp huge areas of the map of music; by four­teen I could rec­og­nize vir­tu­al­ly any sym­pho­ny or opera” (“Self-Por­trait” 13). Clas­si­cal music, from Beethoven to Wag­n­er, not only stayed Dick­’s life­long pas­sion, but also found its way into many of his works: Wag­n­er’s Goter­dammerung in A Maze of Death, Par­si­fal in Valis, and Mozart’s Mag­ic Flute in Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?

At his Forteana Blog, author Andrew May cred­its Dick with, giv­en his pop-cul­tur­al sta­tus, “a decid­ed­ly uncool knowl­edge of clas­si­cal music.” He cites not just Wag­n­er’s Der Ring des Nibelun­gen in the intro­duc­tion to A Maze of Death, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis in Ubik, or the part of The Game-Play­ers of Titan where “a teenaged kid forks out 125 dol­lars for a vin­tage record­ing of a Puc­ci­ni aria,” but an entire ear­ly sto­ry which func­tions as “(in my opin­ion) a pure exer­cise in clas­si­cal music crit­i­cism.” In 1953’s “The Pre­serv­ing Machine,” as May retells it, an eccen­tric sci­en­tist, “wor­ried that West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is on the point of col­lapse, invents a machine to pre­serve musi­cal works for future gen­er­a­tions” by encod­ing it “in the form of liv­ing crea­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as soon as the crea­tures are released into the envi­ron­ment, they start to adapt to it by evolv­ing into dif­fer­ent forms, and the music becomes dis­tort­ed beyond recog­ni­tion.”

Though no doubt an astute spec­u­la­tor, Dick seems not to have fore­seen the fact that our era suf­fers not from too few means of music stor­age but, per­haps, too many. None of his visions pre­sent­ed him with, for exam­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy of the Spo­ti­fy playlist, an exam­ple of which you’ll find at the bot­tom of this post. In it, we’ve assem­bled for your enjoy­ment some of Dick­’s favorite pieces of clas­si­cal music. The songs come scout­ed out by Gal­l­ey­cat’s Jason Boog, who links to them indi­vid­u­al­ly in his own post on Dick, clas­si­cal music, and May’s writ­ing on the inter­sec­tion of those two cul­tur­al forces. Lis­ten through it while read­ing some of Dick­’s own work — don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free PKD — and you’ll under­stand that he cared about not just the anx­i­eties of human­i­ty’s future or the great works of its past, but what remains essen­tial through­out the entire human expe­ri­ence. These com­posers will still appear on our playlists (or what­ev­er tech­nol­o­gy we’ll use) a hun­dred years from now, and if we still read any sci-fi author a hun­dred years from now, we’ll sure­ly read this one.

The 11 hour playlist (stream below or on the web here) includes Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, Beethoven’s Mis­sa Solem­nis and Fide­lio, Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute, Wag­n­er’s Par­si­fal, and Mahler’s Sym­pho­ny No. 2 (Res­ur­rec­tion). If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, grab the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

33 Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books & Free eBooks

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

The Penul­ti­mate Truth About Philip K. Dick: Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mys­te­ri­ous Uni­verse of PKD

Philip K. Dick The­o­rizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Com­put­er-Pro­grammed Real­i­ty”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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