Though considered the absence of sound, an entity defined by lack, silence is its own swollen signifier. We often find it awkward in social situations, public forums, on the radio. Anywhere we expect the sound of a voice, silence is suspect. “Uncomfortable silences,” Mia Wallace complains in Pulp Fiction (1994), “Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?” We fill every space with sound. But, as the sultan of silence, John Cage (1991), taught us, “[S]ilence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around” (p. 59)
The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of words, and ask no more than complicitous silence.
— Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice
Silence indicates unheard voices, both figuratively and literally. In The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge, 2012) edited by Jonathan Sterne, Mladen Dolar writes, “The absence of voices and sounds is hard to endure; complete silence is immediately uncanny, it is like death, while the voice is the first sign of life” (p. 540). Orfied Laboratories’ Anechoic Chamber, built by Eckel Industries and pictured above, is a foam room within a room, built on i-beams and springs, surrounded by steel. The outer room is encased in foot-thick, concrete walls. There’s a running bet at the lab offering a case of beer to anyone who can stay in it with the lights off for over 45 minutes. In a rather psychological example of what Douglas Kahn (1999) calls the “impossible inaudible” (p. 189), no one’s been able to stay inside for more than half an hour. Its death-like silence makes its Guinness Book of World Records award as “The Quietest Place on Earth” seem sinister.
In her investigation of silence in fiction, Alix Ohlin (2012) notes, “Silence, created through ellipsis, white space, and repetition, is another form of erasure; it tells the reader of a pain that is too great to bear, yet must be borne” (p. 58). As Susan Sontag (1969) writes, “Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech” (p. 11). The complaint is often hidden until heard. Breaking the silence is the first step to its resolution. Tara Rodgers’ essay in Sterne’s collection, “Toward a Feminist Historiography of Electronic Music,” also equates silence to a unspoken grievance, quoting poet Adrienne Rich: “The impulse to create begins–often terribly and fearfully–in a tunnel of silence… [T]he first question we might ask a poem is, What kind of voice is breaking the silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?” (p. 478). Similarly, in “The Audio-Visual iPod,” Michael Bull equates it with isolation. Silence makes an uneasy companion.
Air has so much to say for itself. Sound is just bugged air.
— McKenzie Wark, Dispositions
Bugging the air and bugging the airwaves, sound surrounds us. In his essay, “The Auditory Dimension,” Don Ihde phenomenologically relates hearing to seeing, the silent to the invisible. Rephrasing the age-old, tree-falling-in-the-forest question, he writes, “Does each event of the visible world offer the occasion, even ultimately from a sounding presence of mute objects, for silence to have a voice? Do all things, when fully experienced, also sound forth?” (p. 27).
Tackling the presence of no object, Sterne’s other new book, MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke University Press, 2012), investigates the evolution and epistemology of our prevailing sound format. Originally intended as a way to transfer sound over phone lines, the MP3 has become a case study in the digital reorganization of an industry. “Chances are,” Sterne writes, “if a recording takes a ride on the internet, it will travel in the form of an MP3 file” (p. 1). Identifying the internet as its native environment, the “dot-mp3” file extension was born on July 14, 1995. “At some point in the late 90s,” says Karlheinz Brandenburg, whose Ph.D. work in 1982 landed him in the middle of the development of the format, “MP3 was technically the best system out there, and at the same time, it was accessible to everybody.” These two aspects gave the MP3 an early foothold, it was patented in 1989, and now every device that plays digital audio files can play one (Wikström, 2009). With the introduction of the first portable MP3-player in 1998, the record industry’s early-eighties nightmares were coming true (Coleman, 2004), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) started its ongoing legal battle against the digital revolution. Once online file-sharing and the iPod came online around the turn of the millennium, the floodgates were open, and music was liberated not only from the dams of physical formats but also physical spaces. What once took rooms of equipment and stacks of physical media to enjoy is now in everyone’s pocket.
Where the printing press gave us “an eye for an ear” (McLuhan, 1962, p. 27), the MP3 gave us all an endless, solitary soundtrack. The visual is still culturally privileged over the audible (Kahn, 1999), but studying sound has never been more imperative. The Sound Studies Reader and MP3: The Meaning of a Format, along with Sterne’s earlier book, The Audible Past (Duke University Press, 2003), provide a solid foundation.
Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.
— Sam in Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet
Sharing silence can be the ultimate sign of intimacy. The unspoken solace of a loved one close by manifests a complicit quiet. Mia Wallace continues, “That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.” Amen.
References:
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 188.
In late May of 1980, Joy Division had planned their first tour of the United States. Planned, that is, until just a few days before they were board the plane, Ian Curtis committed suicide. Life had been a few notches higher than hectic for Curtis for the months before the planned tour. He was juggling a family (Debbie and their one-year-old daughter Natalie), a girlfriend (Annick Honoré), and a band on the verge (they’d just recorded their second record, Closer, and were all set to tour the world), not to mention his epilepsy getting the better of him both on and off stage. They’d had to cancel several shows in England, and he’d already made an attempt on his life on April 6. All of the above would have been heavy load even without the disorder. Something had to break.
Even with his life’s story on film with the Anton Corbijn-directed Control (2007) and many books written, there remains so much mystery around Ian Curtis. “He seemed able to surrender control of his life as if it was nothing to do with him at all,” his widow Debbie writes of him at the time of his overdose (p. 115). Indeed, he wasn’t much in control as the band went straight back to doing shows. “Ian went straight from his suicide attempt to a gig at Derby Hall, Bury, on 8 April 1980,” Debbie writes. He only sang two songs at that fabled show, which ended in an outright riot. Something, nay, many things had to break.
Just four years earlier on June 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols played another much-fabled show in Manchester to a few dozen people and even more empty chairs (the scene in the movie 24-Hour Party People supposedly has it about right). Supposedly everyone there left that show dead-set on starting a band. There’s even a book about it: I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed the World by Dave Nolan (Blake Publishing, 2006). In attendance were Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto (of the nascent Buzzcocks, who organized the gig but weren’t ready to play), Kevin Cummins (photographer who took many great pictures of the British punk and post-punk scene, including the one above), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Mick Hucknall (Simply Red), Tony Wilson (TV personality and future Factory Records owner), Paul Morley (writer; chronicler of the Factory scene for NME; future co-counder of The Art of Noise), Rob Gretton (future manager), Martin Hannett (future producer), Morrissey (duh), and Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook (who of course went on to immediately start the band that would become Joy Division). Peter Hook gets all of this down in his newly released Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division (!t Books, 2013), and like Debbie Curtis, he was right there when it all went down, albeit facing a different facet of there.
“Inside Joy Division” is an apt subtitle for this story as Hook was as inside as one gets. Playing high on the bass, as apparently Ian liked it, Hook’s bass-lines are some of the most distinctive in rock music of any kind. Hook’s prose in the book is even-handed, heartfelt, and hilarious. He’s open about what he remembers and what he can’t, and he struggles throughout with the mystery surrounding Curtis. As troubled and tortured as he was, Curtis always said he was okay, and everyone believed him to the very end. A lot of it was apparently written right in his lyrics, giving them an eerie hindsight prescience. Debbie, Annick, Tony, Martin, Rob, Steve, Bernard, Peter–no one near him believed he was singing about himself. It was his art.
Like Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and Darby Crash, Ian Curtis was the stormy center of an iconoclastic young band. They were all “serious young men with important things on their minds,” as Tim Keegan describes Joy Division in The First Tim I Heard Joy Divsion/New Order (see below). All of these singers left behind a legacy of longing, but Peter Hook’s book helps explain the groupthink that may have contributed to their early deaths. It’s tragic and truthful, complex and comedic, and essential reading for any fan of the band.
As many did at the Sex Pistols gig above, everyone has that moment with a band. Scott Heim has set out to capture them–poignant and palpable–in his The First Time I Heard... series. The Joy Division/New Order entry boasts tales from members of Lush, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Maps, Rothko, Stereolab, Swervedriver, The Wedding Present, Bedhead, Silkworm, and Jessamine, as well as writers such as James Greer (once of Guided By Voices himself), Daniel Allen Cox, Sheri Joseph, Mark Gluth, and Sylvia Sellers-Garcia, among many others.
Having missed his one chance to see Joy Divsion before Curtis died, Philip King describes seeing New Order for the first time a few months later: “My memory of the show was the band looking very numb and solitary as though they were all on their own separate islands, having to deal with their grief on their own–and there being a very conspicuous space, center stage, where Ian Curtis would have stood.” The song “Ceremony” stands in that liminal space between Joy Division and New Order, between the presence and absence of Ian Curtis. Joy Division only performed the song live once just a week before Curtis died, and it became New Order’s first single. Illustrating that middle, and the lasting influence of both bands, here’s Radiohead doing a rather Pixiefied version of “Ceremony” [runtime: 5:01]:
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Like that song, The First Time I Heard Joy Division/New Order illustrates the how important the Ian Curtis mythos is to the experience of these two bands but also how much it’s just about rocking out to great music.
I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling.
— Joy Division, “Disorder,” Unknown Pleasures
Chris Ott describes Joy Division’s music as “potent as any drug: overwhelming, stupefying, and certainly addictive” (p. xvi), and Simon Reynolds cites Unknown Pleasures as one of the trinity of “postpunk landmarks” from 1979, along with Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box (p. 164; to which I would add Gang of Four‘s Entertainment!). Joy Division’s odd conventions are among the “hallmarks of indie sound” (Reynolds, 2007). One can hear their punky proto-goth in everything from Low, Codeine, Radiohead, and Godflesh to the more obvious Bedhead, Bloc Party, and Interpol — the latter of whose resemblance prompted my friend Max Bristol to quip, “Joy Division is a band, not a genre.” Joking aside, their legacy still lingers.
Listening to Joy Division as much as I have over the years and particularly in the past few weeks, a few key things about them emerge. As most of the above witnesses and writers are quick to point out, their chemistry is undeniable. As large as the presence and subsequent absence of Ian Curtis looms, Joy Division was the distinct product of these four guys. Think about most other truly great bands: They are something beyond their sum. It wouldn’t be what it is otherwise. Another thing that becomes evident is that they were still growing. Joy Division only recorded two full-length records and a handful of singles. Some of them are rock n’ roll romps reminiscent of Chuck Berry, some of them are Sex-Pistols punky, some of them hint at the goth/industrial bent that others would later pick up, and some of them are something else entirely. Their sound just wasn’t quite developed yet. With that said, it’s also obvious that they are one of the greatest groups to ever do it. There’s no mystery about that.
References:
Astor, Tom (Producer), Gee, Grant (Director), & Savage, Jon (Writer). (2007). Joy Division [Motion picture]. United Kingdom: Hudson Productions.
Corbijn, Anton (Producer/Director), & Greenhaigh, Matt (Writer). (2007). Control [Motion picture]. United STates: 3 Dogs & a Pony.
Curtis, Deborah. (1995). Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division. London: Faber & Faber.
Eaton, Andrew (Producer), Winterbottom, Michael (Director), & Boyce, Frank Cottrell (Writer). (2002). 24 Hour Party People [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Revolution Films.
Heim, Scott (ed.). (2012). The First Time I Heard Joy Division/New Order. Boston, MA: Rosecliff Press.
Hook, Peter. (2013). Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division. New York: !t Books.
Nolan, Dave. (2006). I Swear I Was There: The Gig That Changed the World. London: Blake Publishing.
Ott, Chris. (2004). 33 1/3: Unknown Pleasures. New York: Continuum.
Reynolds, Simon. (2006). Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. New York: Penguin.
Reynolds, Simon. (2007). Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing about Hip Rock and Hip-hop. London: Faber & Faber.
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Full disclosure: I have an essay in the forthcoming collection The First Time I Heard My Bloody Valentine.
Early in the 21st Century many media technologies and their attendant corporations advanced cultural co-option to a nostalgic phase. With the spread of mass media and technological artifacts, memories once firmly rooted in places in the past now float free of historical context, their auras lost, their eras unknown. “By replicating the work many times over,” writes Benjamin (1968), “it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced” (p. 221). Benjamin argued that the reproduction of art democratized its experience but also rid a work of its aura. With the mass mediation of cultural artifacts since Benjamin’s time, nostalgia has become its own aura.
The memories are priceless. You lean on the memories.
— R.L. Osborn, Generation F
In his book Culture Jam (1999), Adbusters Magazine founder Kalle Lasn describes a scene in which two people are embarking on a road trip and speak to each other along the way using only quotations from movies. We’ve all felt our lived experience increasingly slipping into technological mediation and representation (Debord, 1994). Based on this idea and the rampant branding and advertising covering any surface upon which an eye may light, he argues that our culture has inducted us into a cult. “By consensus, cult members speak a kind of corporate Esperanto: words and ideas sucked up from TV and advertising” (p. 53). Indeed, we quote television shows, allude to fictional characters and situations, and repeat song lyrics and slogans in everyday conversations. Lasn (1999) argues, “We have been recruited into roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose” (p. 53).
Lasn writes about this scenario as if it is a nightmare, but to many of us, this sounds not only familiar but also fun. Cultural allusions invoke a game of sorts. They create a situation that one gets or one doesn’t. To get it is to be in on the gag. Our media is so saturated with allusions that we scarcely think about them as such. A viewing of any single episode of popular television shows Family Guy, South Park, or Robot Chicken yields references to any number of artifacts and cultural detritus past. Their humor relies in large part on the catching and interpreting of allusive references, on their audience sharing the same cultural memories. Hip-hop, with its rife repurposing of sounds via sampling and lyrical allusions, is a culture built on appropriating cultural artifacts and recognizing shared memories.
Memories… You’re talking about memories.
— Rick Deckard, Blade Runner
In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the advanced humanoid androids, known as Replicants, base their “human” past on implanted memories. Their intelligence is impressive but not grounded in a larger cognitive context. They are programmed with memories to make them more human (Bukatman, 1997). As CEO Dr. Eldon Tyrell explains to Deckard,
We began to recognize in them strange obsession. After all they are emotional inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we gift them the past, we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently we can control them better.
The cushion of nostalgia buoys us all. We often feel not only justified but emboldened by superior claims of previous times, even if we don’t quite remember them the same. “Of course things used to be better!” we think. “The past is not the issue at all,” writes Norman M. Klein (1997), “it serves merely as a ‘rosy’ container for the anxieties of the present” (p. 11). In the face of current complications, much like the Replicants in Blade Runner, we long for times we never knew. Lasn argues that this makes us victims of corporate commodification of culture. We’re no better than Replicants, walking around with implanted memories courtesy of the mass media, and its rampant reproduction of artifacts. To most of us though, the sharing of memories, of cultural allusions, bonds us together, gives us a sense of belonging. A lot of this togetherness is due to the technological reproduction of media. As Benjamin (1968) writes,
…technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway, be it in the form of a photograph or a phonograph record (p. 220-221).
Replicants are obsessed with photographs. Where the Replicants can’t be sure of what they know (Tosca, 2005), the pictures provide a visual totem, a physical connection to the implanted “cushion” of their memories (Bukatman, 1997; Heldreth, 1997). Where such photographs, as well as phonograph records, are reproductions of scenes and sounds respectively, those forms have given way to digital reproductions of both. Another layer removed lies the manipulation of the digital to replicate its previous analog form. Their remediation represents a crisis of context when filters on digital photos that make them look old and a digital effects that make recordings sound like scratchy vinyl (Katz, 2004). It’s not only longing but also the undermining of that longing.
Because the search for authenticity is a well without a bottom.
– Vanessa Veselka, Zazen
Like Lasn, whether mass culture is a site of exploitation or emancipation was a crucial concern for Benjamin as well (Scannell, 2003), but he was equally concerned with authenticity. “The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity,” he writes (1968, p. 220). The empty nostalgia of our implanted memories holds no original and no original context. Benjamin continues,
The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical–and, of course, not only technical–reproducibility. Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis à vis technical reproduction (p. 220).
All of these tribulations may seem trivial, but, as Jaron Lanier (2008) writes, “…pop culture is important. It drags us all along with it; it is our shared fate. We can’t simply remain aloof” (p. 385). If pop culture is just recycling plastic pieces of the past, where exactly it is dragging us? Simon Reynolds (2011), who calls our obsession with the past, “retromania,” draws a parallel between nostalgic record collecting and finance, “a hipster stock market based around trading in pasts, not futures” (p. 419), in which a crash is inevitable: “The world economy was brought down by derivatives and bad debt; music has been depleted of meaning through derivatives and indebtedness” (p. 410-420). In such a scenario the “original” is even more revered (i.e., maintains its aura) not only in spite of but also because of its replication. It’s hard to be a purist when nothing is pure.
Popular culture is the testbed of our futurity.
– Kumayama in William Gibson‘s Idoru
Nostalgia is now its own aura. The digital reproduction of cultural artifacts, images, sounds, events, and moment-events has rendered authenticity irrelevant. With an empty past to fill with greatness unattainable, context has become a floating concept. Technological mediation does a great deal of its work by manipulating context through the replication, reproduction, and circulation of moment-events. For example, quotation, which, by definition is to use something deliberately astray of its original context (Schwartz, 1996), is the most transparent form of allusion. All of the pieces of the process are present: the allusion itself, its source, and its appropriation. Allusions work by mapping one context to another. By translating something from one context to another, a new meaning is brought to bear. All meaning is in some way mediated by a mapping as such (Hofstadter, 2007). The new meaning is dependent, however, on recognizing both the original and new contexts. George W. S. Trow (1980) writes of television, “The work of television is to establish false contexts and to chronicle the unraveling of existing contexts; finally, to establish the context of no-context and to chronicle it” (p. 82). Debord (1994) said the same about mass media, that it had no historical context, no stable memory. Now media has gone not only digital but also global via the internet, the web, and mobile technologies of all kinds. The aura of the artifact is all but completely disconnected from the artifact’s historical context.
Below the surface of these new media, distinguishing context is even more dodgy. As Clay Shirky (2010) writes, “Since all the data is digital (expressed as numbers), there is no such thing as a copy anymore. Every piece of data… is identical to every other version of the same piece of data” (p. 54). Unlike most analog media, there’s no such things as an original in the digital. And like some technological “Funes, The Memorious,” our digital archives hang around to haunt us. They never forget.
…the need for preservation experts to develop a keen understanding of the context in which non-object based information is used, in order to ensure capture of all the vital data necessary to meaningful retrieval. When all data are recorded as 0’s and 1’s, there is, essentially, no object that exists outside of the act of retrieval. The demand for access creates the “object,” that is, the act of retrieval precipitates the temporary reassembling of 0’s and 1’s into a meaningful sequence that can be decoded by software and hardware. A digital art-exhibition catalog, digital comic books, or digital pornography all present themselves as the same, all are literally indistinguishable one from another during storage, unlike, say, a book on a shelf (p. 6).
Analog media show their wear through patina of use. Books show “shelf-wear.” Vinyl records–even compact discs–display gouges and scratches. Scratches, scrapes, scars, stretches, tears, marks, and grooves: These are analog concepts. Digital artifacts black-box their wear, hiding their story and its context from us. We have to hold it all in our heads.
Implants! Those aren’t your memories. They’re somebody else’s.
— Rick Deckard, Blade Runner
If we are to avoid being or becoming mere Replicants, we have to be more mindful of the contexts floating around us. Being able to translate data into meaning requires our paying closer attention to the banks it bridges.
References:
Benjamin, Walter. (1968). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Illuminations. London: Fontana, pp. 217–252.
Bukatman, Scott. (1997). BFI Film Classics: Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute.
Borges, Jorge Luis. (1962). Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. New York: New Directions.
Debord, Guy. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
Heldreth, Leonard G. (1997). “Memories… You’re Talkin’ About Memories”: Retrofitting Blade Runner. In Judith B. Kerman (ed.), Retrofitting Blade Runner. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 308-313
Hodstadter, Douglas. (2007). I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books.
Lewman, Mark, Jenkins, Andy & Jones, Spike. (2008). Freestylin’: Generation F. Wizard Publications/Endo Publishing, p. 19.
Katz, Mark. (2004). Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Klein, Norman M. (1997). The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. New York: Verso.
Lasn, Kalle. (1999). Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: William Morrow & Co.
Reynolds, Simon. (2011). Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. New York: Faber and Faber.
Scannell, Paddy. (2003). Benjamin Contextualized: On “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Elihu Katz, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, & Avril Orloff (eds.), Canonical Texts in Media Research. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shirky, Clay. (2010). Coginitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin, p. 54.
Smith, Abby. (1998, May/June). Preservation in the Future Tense. CLIR Issues, (3), 1, 6.
Tosca, Susana P. (2005). Implanted Memories, or the Illusion of Free Action. In Will Brooker (ed.), The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic. London: Wallflower Press, 92-107.
Veselka, Vanessa. (2011). Zazen. Brooklyn, NY: Red Lemonade, p. 31.
David Byrne is generally known for his abstract, arty lyrics, with a touch of the cerebral. In his solo performance of ‘Lilies of the Valley’, he sings about being alone and scared. Part of our appreciation for this lyric is enhanced by knowing something about the artist, or at least the artist’s persona, as an eccentric intellectual, who rarely revealed something as raw and transparent as being afraid (p. 244).
In How Music Works (McSweeney’s, 2012), Byrne reveals less fear and more fearlessness. He eschews what he calls the “crowded shelf” of aging-rock-star biographies and instead brings together a career’s worth of insight on the practice and process of music-making, from performing and using studio technology to building a business and maintaining a community. Byrne’s attention to the neglected factors that contribute to music-making (e.g., the physical context of its performance, the physical context of its reception by the listener, the available recording technology, live amplification, collaborators, producers, instruments, etc.) make this book a must-read for anyone interested in music or making it. It’s also beautifully put together, with tons of color photographs and an elaborate, cushioned cover.
Twenty-six years ago, Byrne predicted that computers would have little influence on the arts by 2007 (Long, 1987, p.94), but How Music Works more than makes up for his former oversights. It’s as comprehensive as it is constructive. As with previous books, Byrne strays in ways one wouldn’t expect, and always in ways you’ll want to follow.
Byrne credits CBGB for the scene he and Talking Heads came up in. “The mere existence of CBGB facilitated the creation of the bands and songs that touched our hearts and souls,” he writes. “It was the right size, the right shape, and in the right place” (p. 253). In relation to the other New York bands of the time, James Wolcott describes Talking Heads as “deceptively light, a model airplane with a erratic flight pattern” (p. 135). NME‘s Paul Rambali wrote that their 1979 record, Fear of Music, “doesn’t sound like an album at all, just songs caught in full flight and grouped together in a pleasant combination” (quoted in Sheppard, 2008, p. 322). Jonathan Lethem, who wrote one of my favorite novels of all-time partially concerned with flight and partially set in the New York of the time (Fortress of Solitude; Vintage, 2004), triangulates his musings in Fear of Music (the book; Continuum, 2012) using Fear of Music (the record), his adolescent self (who first heard the record), and his grown-up self (who’s writing the book). Initial sketches of the album were recorded by a mobile studio van parked outside Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz’s apartment in New York. With cables running from the van up through the windows, they hashed out the basic tracks. It was art as ephemera, a provisional situation at best, and it gave them the creative constraints that both Byrne and collaborator Brian Eno crave so much.
On “Mind,” David Byrne adopts the voice of a “paternal narrator without flaw or dysfunction,” as Ian Gittins (2004, p. 53) puts it. Lethem characterizes the song as decidedly liminal, a narrator arising from the negative space between identities. Much of Fear of Music (the book) emerges similarly in interludes between Lethem’s song-by-song analysis. The interstitial chapters pose such questions as “Is Fear of Music a Talking Heads Record?,” “Is Fear of Music a David Byrne Album?,” “Is Fear of Music a Text?,” “Is Fear of Music a Science Fiction Record?,” and “Is Fear of Music a New York Album?,” Lethem looks for the heart of the record from all angles. The Bottom Line is that if you love this record, you’ll love Lethem’s book — and that’s not necessarily true of all of the books in this series.
Brain Eno, who’d also produced 1978’s More Songs About Buildings and Food, joined in again as the fifth Talking Head on Fear of Music. His collaborations with Byrne and the band redefined the studio-as-instrument idea. On the funked-up “Animals,” Eno ran the bass drum signal through a synthesizer, added an echo, then filtered out the distortion (Tamm, 1995). Practices like this eventually became commonplace, but Eno and Talking Heads were pushing boundaries. All of their pushing on “Animals” landed them squarely On the One (that start-stop hallmark of Classic Funk). “A studio is a situation with literally infinite possibilities,” Eno would later say (quoted in Sheppard, 2008). Even so, as Byrne discusses at length in How Music Works, as a band Talking Heads were still very much a live act. Eno pushed them beyond that on Fear of Music, with “more overdubs and wiggly treatments,” as Byrne (2012) puts it (p. 46). Ever tying the record and book together, Lethem relates the urgency of “Animals” to “I Zimbra” and its structure to “Memories Can’t Wait.” If he didn’t find this record’s heart in this book’s pages, no one else is likely to locate it.
Most of the entries in the 33 1/3 Series show a propensity for close reading, but Lethem’s Fear of Music is exactly what these books were made for: lyrical geeking-out, unfettered fandom, great writing about great music.
A conversation between Jonathan Lethem and David Byrne would be undeniably generative, especially given their obvious overlapping areas of interest. Reading these two books together hints at a small piece of the awesomeness that such a dialogue might entail.
References:
Bly, Adam. (2010). Science is Culture: Conversations at the New Intersection of Science and Society. New York: Harper Perennial.
Byrne, David. (2012). How Music Works. San Francisco: McSweeney’s.
Gittins, Ian. (2004). Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime: The Stories Behind Every Song. London: Carlton Books.
Lethem, Jonathan. (2004). The Fortress of Solitude: A Novel. New York: Vintage.
Lethem, Jonathan. (2012). Fear of Music. New York: Continuum.
Levitin, Daniel, J. (2006). This is Your Brain on Music. New York: Penguin.
Long, Marion. (1987, January). The Seers’ Catalog. Omni Magazine, pp. 36-40, 94-99.
Sheppard, David. (2008). On Some Faraway beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Tamm, Eric. (1995). Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound. New York: Da Capo Press.
Wolcott, James. (2012). Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies. New York: Anchor.
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Special thanks to Doug Armato for the tip on James Wolcott’s book.
* Both of these conversations are included in Adam Bly’s SEED Salon anthology, Science is Culture (Harper Perennial, 2010).
Now that it’s definitely happening, I’m all abuzz with possibilities. The only hints Thomas is revealing are,
Life has taken Veronica away from Neptune. In the years since spoiling Keith’s chances to be reelected sheriff, Veronica hasn’t taken a case. But something big is about to bring her back home and back to her calling. My goal is to include as many of your favorite characters as possible. It is, after all, time for Veronica’s 10-year high school reunion.
In the preview to the doomed fourth season, Veronica had joined the FBI. That direction has clearly been scrapped, what if there’s the second or third of a serial murder spree that happens in Neptune around the time of Neptune High’s reunion and Veronica, already in town for to catch up with her (and our) old friends, is tapped to investigate? What if Kyle MacLachlan, reprising his role as Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks (one of Mars’ obvious influences), is involved (he could have played her boss at the FBI!)? It looks like Logan, Dick, and Keith are definitely on board, but here’s hoping Wallace, Weevil, Vinnie, Mac, Piz, and even Corny find the time and interest to join in on the fun.
Few other shows have made me want to write as much as Veronica Mars, so the movie becoming a reality has me taking frantic notes. Regardless, I am a proud backer of this project and it illustrates the power of fans in our current media-state. A long time ago, we used to be friends, and now, we can be again.
I remember the first Aggro Rag I ever got. It was the thickest zine I’d ever seen. Its sixty pages weren’t folded as much as they were just curved in the middle, struggling against their own bulk. The product of one Mike Daily, Aggro Rag was the premier BMX zine. Heavy on the goings-on of The Plywood Hoods out of York, Pennsylvania, their tricks and travels, and the national BMX scene of the time, Daily’s rag rivaled the national glossies for writing and relevance.
For life. [reppin’ at Nemo HQ; photo by Jared Souney]Daily came to visit me a couple of times when I lived in San Diego the first time. This was early in the millennium and he lived just up the 5 in L.A. At the time, Daily was easing out of the BMX scene having worked at both Go: The Rider’s Manual and BMX Plus! during the 1990s. All of this is significant because I’ve been in touch with Daily since the mid 1980s through Aggro Rag and The Plywood Hoods’ Dorkin’ in York videos. For those spinning outside the orbit of freestyle BMX for the past thirty years, more background will be needed here.
The Plywood Hoods were like an indie-BMX Bones Brigade, like the Bulls with Jordan: a tight-knit crew of innovators who fidged high-tech, flatland maneuvers that it took the rest of the sport years to catch up to. It’s no hyperbole to say that Kevin Jones, Mark Eaton, Brett Downs, Mike Daily, Dale Mitzel, Jamie McKulick, John Huddleston, John Doenut, Jym Dellavalle, and various others utterly revolutionized flatland BMX. The rest of us only knew about this because two members of the crew were also budding media-heads. Mark Eaton made the legendary Dorkin’ in York videos that made the Hoods legends themselves, and Mike Daily made Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag. In the pre-web underground BMX network, those were the go-to sites.
Aggro Rag documented Hood hijinks from 1984 to 1989 the went on hiatus until last year’s reunion Hip-hop issue (to which I was proud to have contributed an interview with Aesop Rock). Now, like Garry Scot Davis’s Skate Fate, all the old ones have been collected into one, bright pink anthology of underground 1980s BMX freestyle history. As Mark Lewman put it to me: “If you want to know how it felt to be a 16-year-old freestyle fanatic in the mid-1980s, this is your manual re: how to roll. Those who recognize the name Aggro Rag, this book is already on your want list.” Oh, and it’s not just the zines bound up all pretty, there’s a bunch of new content as well, including exclusive new interviews with Kevin Jones and Dave Mirra, a foreword by Andy Jenkins, and an introduction by Mark Lewman.
As if that weren’t enough, Daily teamed up with Sub Rosa to put together a limited edition, Aggro Rag frame. It’s a new version of their already limited Pandora DTT (double top-tubes, holmes) frame, an updated version of the very one I currently ride. Along with Daily, Chip Riggs (whom some of you might know from later issues of Aggro Rag) did the graphics on this thing, and he had this to say:
The main goal with the project from Sub Rosa’s end was to pay tribute to what Mike had done with Aggro Rag and the Plywood Hoods to contribute to the sport and culture of Freestyle. We certainly wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for what Mike and the rest of the Hoods did. In regards to the frame we were trying to put together something that had a direct connection with the zine and that time period while still making something that was modern and ridable by today’s standards. I feel like we achieved everything we set out to do with the project and I hope people are as stoked with the outcome as we all are.
In keeping with other zine-like ephemera, Sub Rosa only made 43 of these things.
More than just a highly motivated, well connected, BMX media-maker, Mike Daily is a man of letters, a one-man creative spigot constantly spewing out inspiring solvents. During our time in Southern California, Daily released a collection of poetry and artwork (Stovepiper with contributions from Charles Bukowski, Bill Shields, Hugh Gallagher, Andy Jenkins, Greg Higgins, and many others) and wrote not one but two novels (Valley and Alarm). I used the release of the Aggro Rag collection as an opportunity to get dirty with Daily.
Roy Christopher:Let’s go all the way back: What prompted you to start Aggro Rag in the first place? I didn’t start a zine until I saw them in Freestylin’. What gave you the initiative to get one going?
Mike Daily: You’re talking with a guy who had Max Leg Gaters. Remember when some Pro BMX racers sported “gaiters” on the lower legs of their leathers? I know Clint Miller wore them when he was sponsored by Torker. So did Mike Miranda and Billy Griggs when they were on CW. Gaiters kind of made sense for motorcycle motocross racers because they kept high-velocity mud splatter out of the insides of their MX boots. The fad didn’t last long in BMX, though. How could it? Leg Gaiters were basically ventilated-mesh/nylon bell bottoms. (And the ‘70s were over.) The extra space to display company logos wasn’t worth the hazard of getting your pant-legs caught in the chain/sprocket. Pro Guard plastic chain covers failed for the same reason. However, Toby Henderson did make Pro Guards look cool when he was on Hutch.
Terrycables were a different story. I loved Terrycables: the dual rubber hoods for both the brake lever and the barrel adjuster on the caliper, the rectangular checkerboard logo silver foil stickers, the black and white patches for the jerseys. Terrycables were expensive, but I thought they were worth it because of how totally trick they looked. I took my first Terrycable (which I had mail-ordered direct from the California manufacturer) to Brian Peters’ house and asked Brian’s dad if he could install it for me. Terrycables were an MX-influenced aftermarket BMX product, and Brian’s dad Rich was handy with motorcycles. Mr. Peters removed the Terrycable from the bag, selected a wire-cutter from his wall of tools, and in one fluid motion–with absolutely no wasted energy–he clipped the metal cylinder off the end. I knew enough to know that the part he’d just cut off was the cylinder head made to fit inside the brake lever. Mr. Peters read the directions from the cardboard packaging, and confirmed. He apologized and began setting up soldering equipment. Two hours later, installation was complete. Brake-pull was crunchier than a rusted-out hand-grip exerciser, but damn did that Terrycable look trick on my Supergoose. T-rick…
Accessories. I went all-out on the BMX accessories: Haro lightning bolt number plate, SST Dirt Skirt, JT Racing wet weather gloves and Flite donuts to protect your thumbs from the grip flanges. Taking cues from Deric Garcia and “Chicken George” Seevers, I stacked multiple donuts on my grips to get maximum power-pull from the ends of the handlebars. My friend Dan Ahearn took donut-stacking to the next-level: his MXL-gloved hands barely fit onto his Oakley B-1B grips that were mounted on Galindo bars that already had bar end extenders inserted in them. I lived and breathed BMX, as they say—as so many of us did. My zeal for BMX accessorizing carried over into freestyle when I got more into “trick riding” in 1984. The GT that I’m riding in the photo taken at the first performance of the Plywood Hoods—one of the photos introducing Aggro Rag #4 (March ’85) in Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag: Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection—had been my dialed-to-the-max race bike. I’d added grip tape to the top tube and installed Skyway Tuff Wheels with Tioga Comp ST (stadium) tires, Skyway thread-on “axle extenders,” GT bolt-on fork standers, a front brake with Potts Mod and, of course, a Dyno D2 brake guard. I’d also replaced the three-digit number on my Haro number plate with “PLYWOOD HOODS” and added an abundance of stickers including Michigan J. Frog, which I got for a quarter from a gumball machine. I was 16 years old in that photo.
Printed matter, I found—ZINES–could be “tricked out” very much like a bicycle. It was such great fun accessorizing the pages with photos, stories, drawings, random clip art and ransom note-style lettering techniques, then immediately photocopying them “on the cheap” in an array of colors. Not too many different colors, though: Zines needed to be reproduced with enough black and white inside to give them the proper lo-fi look, and readability.
RC:I totally agree. There was a while there where you purposefully drifted away from BMX. What caused your turning more toward the cultural marginalia?
MD: “Purposefully”—I like that. The astounding heat of the San Fernando Valley where I lived from 1992-2001 would seem to be the main contributing factor in my drifting away from BMX over the years. Reluctance to put myself in more danger than I might’ve been able to handle at the time. In ’96, I broke my ribs on a shopping carts-railing at a Safeway on Reseda, for instance. I focused on writing a sustained work, which became my first novel, Valley. Andy Jenkins helped me edit the work-in-progress and later accepted Valley for publication. Andy designed the book and released it on his imprint Bend Press, “The Smallest Book Company,” in November 1998. Andy organized a book release party for me at L.A.’s The Garage, and Flogging Molly played at the event. When he was Editor and Art Director of Freestylin’, Andy had occasionally taken time to correspond with me by mail—often enclosing stickers. He’d always encouraged me since I was a teenager living in York, PA. Here’s the summary that Andy wrote about Valley:
Valley is a humorously visual story narrated by main character, writer/student, Mick O’Grady, as he ambles through his days in a sort of haze attempting to make sense of the numerous mysteries unraveling before him—from the odd-ball people he meets and associates with (a giant poet, drunken ex-linebacker, lost master journalist [Earl Parker], wired meth-head, etc.), to the margin scribblings, receipts and photos he happens upon in used books by his favorite authors. O’Grady’s literary inclinations result in curious overanalyzation—a practically itemized account of everything around him, the ordinary included. At one point he notes that a vending machine in the lobby has no “Q” button on it. Not 26, but 25 letters. Lost in his wonderment after buying the drink, he forgets it on top of the machine…
A.J. and Mark “Lew” Lewman are endless inspirations. Everyone who grew up reading their stories and enjoying their unique contributions to Freestylin’, Homeboy, GO: The Rider’s Manual, DIRT and Grand Royal shares the same feeling: gratitude.
I got more into poetry, fiction and music while I was finishing college at California State University of Northridge from 1993-1998, that’s for sure. Poetry: Kenneth Patchen, Jack Kerouac, Lew Welch, Steve Richmond. Fiction: Ronald Sukenick, Richard Brautigan, Kevin Sampsell, Mark Leyner. Music: Jawbreaker, Giants Chair, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees/Mark Lanegan, Elliott Smith. I know that reading an article you wrote and published in your zine Front Wheel Drive, Roy Christopher, got me to go out and find CDs by Shiner, a Kansas City band I listened to and liked. Thanks for that blue and white Shiner sticker you sent me in 1995. I still haven’t stuck it.
RC:Nice! Tell me more about your spoken performances. I only caught one of them in 2007 when we both lived in Portland. I remember someone making fun of me because I knew all the words.
MD: You knew all the words to “Drum Machines,” I remember that! Thanks, Roy. The words to “Drum Machines” (recited from my second novel, Alarm) are:
I wish there was a radio station that just played drum machines. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Eureka! Eureka. I just thought of something. I seem to have just thought of something. It’s like a comic. A four-panel comic. In the first frame one guy says to another guy, ‘Who’s your drummer?’ In the second frame it’s just a close-up of the other guy and he says, ‘Electricity. He goes by electricity.’ In the third frame the first guy says to the other guy, ‘Where’s he live?’ In the last frame is another close-up of the second guy and he says, ‘In a hole in the wall.’ And he’s looking at the reader. Whoa. I’m not paying attention. I’m swervedriving. I feel like crying. It’s raining. I exit the freeway and pull into a Krispy Kreme. I drive up to the window. I find my lucky two-dollar bill that I got in tips when I got on the mike at open mike and didn’t care if I messed up. And I didn’t mess up. A guy in a red, white and blue tracksuit said I tore shit up. I’m not making this up. I unwedge a nickel from the dash for the difference. ‘Two-oh-five out of two-oh-five. Here’s your three glazed originals and one extra one just for coming to Krispy Kreme! Have a nice night, sir!’ I drive off. I wish there was a radio station that just played drum machines. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Here’s a clip of that very piece [runtime: 6:59]:
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The spoken-word performances resulted from wanting to “talk” my writing without having to read it from a book or printed-out pages. I got my start doing spoken words in the late ‘90s when I worked behind the counter at an all-ages coffee house called Cobalt Café. Rick Lupert still runs an open mike night there. After I moved up to Portland, OR, at the beginning of 2002, I sought out local venues offering open mike and I participated. I ended up meeting individuals who remain some of my closest friends to this day, like Pecos B. Portland author and friend Kevin Sampsell inspired me the most to move here. After I bought his great book How to Lose Your Mind with the Lights On (Future Tense, 1994) at a Tower Records in Northridge, CA, I read the short story/poems collection cover to cover in one sitting. Since the early ‘90s, Kevin had been publishing chapbooks of his work and writing by others. Chapbooks are cheaply printed publications that are often self-produced by the author or poet. These “cheap penny books” originated in Great Britain in the 19th Century and were geared more toward the lower end of the market (the masses). In almost all cases, chapbooks were read for recreation and then discarded. I documented my deep appreciation for Kevin Sampsell’s work in Alarm, the novel and double CD that I put out myself in 2007.
RC:So what brought you back to BMX so fervently?
MD: I’ve always owned at least one 20” bike. I haven’t always ridden the bikes, but I’ve never been without one. In 2009, I decided that I wanted to rebuild the ’85 CW California Freestyle set-up that I had ridden in 1987, when I was most into flatland. My inclination to complete The Build was the best thing I could have done for myself. It was a tremendous feeling cruising that ride down the street after Shad Johnson at Goods BMX dialed everything in for me. With friend and fellow zineguy (Jargon of Delinquents) Luke Strahota, I went to an old school BMX get-together that year to check out the vintage show bikes. By chance at the gathering, I met Lisa Grossman, who raced BMX for factory JMC in the early ‘80s. I’d forgotten that Lisa and I had been pen pals when we were both 13 years old (she lived in OR, I lived in PA). The following year, Luke and I attended some jams and began meeting new friends from our scene and others. “Full circle” may be a cliché, but it’s an apt description for the fervency. Luke, by the way, is a talented drummer (currently bandleader for The Satin Chaps). A handful of times I’ve had the opportunity to perform my fiction to his live beats.
RC:Tell me more about Moon Babes of Bicycle City. We riffed a bit in 2010 on all the different types of bicycles being ridden these days, but I know nothing of the book’s premise.
MD: The first sentence of Moon Babes of Bicycle City is:
South of Roswell, north of Hope, east of an Apache reservation, west of Dexter and Lake Arthur lies Bicycle City, New Mexico.
Since I started working on the novel in 2010, I’ve filled numerous sketchbooks with research and riffs in anticipation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Mead composition notebook, a perfect-bound blank book from Michael’s or a ‘70s-era Wonder Woman personal journal survivor with a 3D cover…my approach is to let myself get a little sketchy with the work—have fun with it–so “sketchbooks” is how I refer to them. Glue sticks and collages are involved, and so is acrylic paint. I prefer writing with pencils and using typewriters. After publishing Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! “The Hip-Hop Issue” Number 13 zine in August 2012, I received a generous gift of files via U.S. mail from a fellow rider and enthusiast on the east coast. The shared digital library grants me full access to all the BMX and freestyle magazines I’d read so many times in my youth, I had memorized parts of them—including many issues I’d missed. I’ve been hesitant to insert the discs and see what’s on them. I can say this: I’m looking forward to it.
I had to shelve work on the novel in 2011 because I needed to get the Aggro Rag book done first. I couldn’t have completed Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection if it wasn’t for Bizarro novelist and friend Cameron Pierce, who initially had helped lay out most of the original 12 zines for the collection, and my friend Chip Riggs, whose contributions in graphic design and website development were extensive, to say the least. Cameron Pierce is my Tour Guide for Moon Babes—he’s my Editor and eventual publisher on his small press, Lazy Fascist. Read any one of his mad, inventive novels for insight to why Cameron has my utmost respect. Can I recommend one? Abortion Arcade. It’s a collection of three novellas published by Eraserhead Press (my favorite of the three is titled “The Roadkill Quarterback of Heavy Metal High”).
Moon Babes of Bicycle City is a book about the demented Moon family—Rodderick, Chatauqua and daughters named Suzue, Araya and Ukai—living in a bike clubs-ravaged New Mexico town where cars have been outlawed and the terrain is a world like no other. The family members struggle in a run-down environment to survive deceit and loss, is more along the lines of what happens in the book.
One thing I learned from my own struggles is this: Problems are funny.
Conflicts, hardships, disappointments: They arise.
They’re funny in that regard.
RC:True. Anything else you want to mention here?
MD: I worked hard on Aggro Rag Freestyle Mag! Plywood Hoods Zines ’84-’89: The Complete Collection for over two-and-a-half years. I have a daughter and I work 40+ hours a week. It was my after-hours goal to get this collection done and get it done right so I can move on this year to finish my new book. Thanks Tons to everyone choosing to pre-order a signed book direct from me with the package deals offered on aggrorag.com until Wednesday, March 13th, at 11:59pm PST. I’m expecting to ship all preorders worldwide from Oregon before the book’s official date of publication, 4.3.13.
Thank you, Roy Christopher, for the opportunity to give A’s to Q’s I hadn’t yet been asked. There’s sound reasoning behind why I chose to become one of your students by studying your work both in print and online. I knew there was some reason I hung out with you.
——-
Thanks to Mike Daily, Jared Souney, Mark Lewman, Ronnie Bonner, and Chip Riggs for helping me get this piece together.
Eight years after his death, Mitch Hedberg’s unique style of standup continues to haunt open-mic stages and playlists of millions, as well as our daily conversation. I commemorated his humor and haunting over on Splitsider.com today, thanks to Samantha Pitchel and Adam Frucci.
Here’s an excerpt:
I was at a bar in Seattle called Lynda’s with [Hedberg’s road manager, Greg] Chaille and several other comedians on the two-year anniversary of Mitch’s passing, and we all went around the table telling our favorite Mitch jokes.
“Last week I helped a friend stay put,” started one comedian. “It’s a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load shit into a truck.”
“I had my hair highlighted because I thought some strands were more important than others,” offered someone else.
“An escalator can never be broken, it can only become stairs,” added another. “Escalator temporarily stairs! Sorry for the convenience!” everyone finished in unison.
“I think Pringles’ original intention was to make tennis balls,” I chimed in, “but on the day the rubber was supposed to show up a truckload of potatoes came. Pringles is a laid back company, so they just said ‘fuck it, cut ‘em up!’”
During the blackout in the desert, Chaille built a bonfire in the campground across the road from the Panamint Springs resort. We all soon reconvened there, clumsily finding our way through the dark desert where Mitch’s spirit still lingered. Shortly after his death, comedians from all over the country gathered in Los Angeles to honor Mitch’s memory. “If I didn’t get a chance to say hello,” friend and fellow comedian Doug Stanhope wrote on his website after the show, “it’s because it was hard to talk.”
Thanks to Bill Minutaglio and David Patterson who were early readers and commenters on this material, and many thanks to Lynn Shawcroft, Greg Chaille, Doug Stanhope, Brendon Walsh, Emery Emery, Brett Erickson, Kerry Mitchell, and especially Mitch Hedberg. Rest in peace. You are missed.
As many of you know, my domain slipped from my hands a few months ago. Well, several of my most ardent supporters contributed to my getting it back by donating and spreading the word, and their rewards are packed and ready to ship.
Many, many thanks (and packages of loot) go out to the following: Jeff Newelt, Michele Foreman, Doug Armato, Brian Peterson, Chris Bentley, Val Renegar, Steve McCann, Alex Burns, Matt Bailie, Elizabeth Usery, Sean Cashbaugh, Katie Newcomb, Mark Wieman, Sidney Brinson, Eric Larson, Ryan Lane, Matt Youngmark, Kath O’Donnell, Matt Schulte, Adam Menz, Alaina Nims, Ed Lawrence, Austin Tolin, and Nate Sanders. Your names will be permanently appended to this site’s About page, and watch your mailboxes. Your rewards will finally be hitting them soon.
Thanks again for all of your continued support. I appreciate it more than I can say here.
I wrote a tiny, little bit about My Bloody Valentine’s recently released mbv for Reality Sandwich. Many thanks to Ken Jordan, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Faye Sakellaridis for the opportunity to blab about one of my current favorite records by one of my all-time favorite bands.
Here’s an excerpt:
With nine songs total, mbv is a trilogy of trilogies. It hangs together as a whole, but one can easily discern three movements. Three floes in the waves. The first set of three songs pulls you in with perhaps the poppiest sounds on the record. Theirs is a sweet stupor recalling the most sugary spots of Loveless. The second set is hypnotic in its lack of dynamics. This is the bed of shards upon which you will sleep. Set three, starting with “In Another Way,” my favorite track so far, brings all the characteristic My Bloody Valentine traits into play. The walls and waves of guitar and the buried but beautifully breathy vocals, as well as the hooks and beats. The whole record builds to “Wonder 2,” which will finish you off nicely.
The figureheads of an entire subgenre of modern rock music, My Bloody Valentine is the only band in history to make a career out of not releasing a record.
Following the likes of Glenn Branca, Band of Susans, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Phil Specter, and Alan Moulder, as well as the core sound associated with Alan McGee’s Creation Records, My Bloody Valentine became a genre unto themselves with their second full-length record. Released on November 4th, 1991, Loveless was Kevin Shields’ self-proclaimed masterpiece and few have disagreed with that designation. Its sultry vocals buried in layers of guitars launched a thousand imitators as it became one of the most influential records of the 1990s.
After Loveless came out, The Stone Roses waited five years to release a great follow-up record and everyone hated it. The Britpop of the era hadn’t been much for following-up on its initial brilliance. As of last night, My Bloody Valentine has finally tried. They’ve delayed this record so many times that most of us doubted it would ever happen, yet according to the server load on their website last night, they found what the world was waiting for.
It’s difficult to say what any of us expected from a follow-up, but wearing out the Reload button on our web browsers probably wasn’t one of them. Regardless, mbv is apt. It’s noisy and beautiful in the way that all of their records are, and in that way that only they can seem to do.
It’s also still sinking in. Upon a day or so of listening, I can definitely say that I like it. I’m glad it’s here. It seems choppier and less seductive than Loveless, perhaps less love than Loveless. It’s thornier, worn down, weary, and gives less of a fuck. One thing’s still for damn sure: No one does this sound better than My Bloody Valentine.
For example, here’s “In Another Way” from mbv, which I could listen to all day [runtime: 5:32]:
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In the meantime, Loveless has been lauded, applauded, imitated, reissued, copied, covered, and worshipped. In 2007, Athens, Georgia’s Japancakes did an all-instrumental cover album of the whole thing. Here’s their version of “Only Shallow” [runtime: 8:57]:
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As if anticipating the stars’ alignment, a couple of other MBV-related projects have emerged more recently. A little over a week ago, Japan’s High Fader Records released a Loveless tribute album called Yellow Loveless, which is much, much better than similar send-ups usually are. Tokyo Shoegazer’s two covers sound damn well indistinguishable from the originals, Lemon’s Chair stay true to their two entries as well, Shonen Knife evoke the girl-group roots of shoegazing pop on their version of “When You Sleep,” and the mighty Boris do a slowly crushing but primarily faithful rendition of “Sometimes.” Goatbed stray the furthest from the original “Loomer,” making it almost all their own. But the real gem here is Sinobu Narita’s “Blown a Wish,” which takes the original to dreamy new heights. Here’s Yellow Loveless in full [runtime: 1:01:25]:
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In a slightly more experimental vein, Bullet for My Bloody Valentine is an hour-long drone-fest released late last year that makes its source material sound downright poppy. As described on the project’s Bandcamp page, the record is made up of “tracks taken from My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Bullet For My Valentine’s The Poison slowed down, the best bits cut out and layered on top of each other to create some sort of droney noise album.” It sounds nothing like either record, and it’s actually quite nice.
So, MBV fever is at an all-time high, but it’s hard to say if mbv will be judged well considering its predecessor and the decades in between. I for one aim to ignore the inevitable backlash that’s been germinating for the twenty-one year wait and enjoy the new My Bloody Valentine record. Finally.
————-
P.S. Be on the lookout for an entry in Scott Heim‘s The First Time I Heard… book series on My Bloody Valentine, including an essay about my first time.
In her investigation of silence in fiction, Alix Ohlin (2012) notes, “Silence, created through ellipsis, white space, and repetition, is another form of erasure; it tells the reader of a pain that is too great to bear, yet must be borne” (p. 58). As Susan Sontag (1969) writes, “Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech” (p. 11). The complaint is often hidden until heard. Breaking the silence is the first step to its resolution. Tara Rodgers’ essay in Sterne’s collection, “Toward a Feminist Historiography of Electronic Music,” also equates silence to a unspoken grievance, quoting poet Adrienne Rich: “The impulse to create begins–often terribly and fearfully–in a tunnel of silence… [T]he first question we might ask a poem is, What kind of voice is breaking the silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?” (p. 478). Similarly, in “The Audio-Visual iPod,” Michael Bull equates it with isolation. Silence makes an uneasy companion.
Tackling the presence of no object, Sterne’s other new book, MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke University Press, 2012), investigates the evolution and epistemology of our prevailing sound format. Originally intended as a way to transfer sound over phone lines, the MP3 has become a case study in the digital reorganization of an industry. “Chances are,” Sterne writes, “if a recording takes a ride on the internet, it will travel in the form of an MP3 file” (p. 1). Identifying the internet as its native environment, the “dot-mp3” file extension was born on July 14, 1995. “At some point in the late 90s,” says Karlheinz Brandenburg, whose Ph.D. work in 1982 landed him in the middle of the development of the format, “MP3 was technically the best system out there, and at the same time, it was accessible to everybody.” These two aspects gave the MP3 an early foothold, it was patented in 1989, and now every device that plays digital audio files can play one (Wikström, 2009). With the introduction of the first portable MP3-player in 1998, the record industry’s early-eighties nightmares were coming true (Coleman, 2004), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) started its ongoing legal battle against the digital revolution. Once online file-sharing and the iPod came online around the turn of the millennium, the floodgates were open, and music was liberated not only from the dams of physical formats but also physical spaces. What once took rooms of equipment and stacks of physical media to enjoy is now in everyone’s pocket.
![Mike Daily [photo by Jared Souney]](http://roychristopher.com/wp-content/uploads/mike-daily-freestyle.jpg)
