Today a friend on a message board I read posted a link to an AI project called "Jukebox: A Generative Model for Audio". The site is at jukebox.openai.com.
This is one of those "machine learning" things that people get so worked up about. And I do too, certainly. This is exactly the sort of thing Sedric and I came here to talk about - weird technological artifacts.
What we have here is an academic paper. There's a bunch of math I don't understand and on the first page, a footnote citing Feynman (with his name spelled wrong, but it's not an English paper, is it?), who "famously" said: "What I cannot create, I do not understand". I'd never heard the quote before myself.
What Jukebox is doing... I don't understand, or rather, I sort of have a shadowy half-understanding of it from digging through it and listening and skimming a paper with advanced math. And from seeing these sorts of superficial mind tricks done over and over and over again since the dawn of computers, honestly. There's no aesthetic principle at play here, no question of what makes music _good_. It's an act of mimesis, of teaching a computer to hum like Pink Floyd. I love this. It's a tremendously entertaining and impressive waste of talent and electricity, much more worthwhile than the earlier example provided by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (did they use the Oxford Comma? I don't actually care.)
It's possibly that at some point it might actually get good at what it's doing, rather than finding these perversely similar half-recreations put together by a machine that is interested, fundamentally, in entirely different considerations than the Magic Sound Celebration were when they recorded an entire album that sounds like, but is not, at least for copyright purposes, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".
I like what the approach. I like that they've uploaded 7,000 songs that, you know, I'm not sure they've all listened to, I'm not sure that _anybody_ has listened to. I like that when they decided to re-create Frank Zappa songs, most of what they re-created are recordings of his introducing his band. I like that a good half the length of some of these recordings is taken up by just plain audience noise, that the lyrics they ripped have extraneous information like the names of the singers which the computer, not caring, will duly attempt to make up a melody for. I like that the one thing a computer can't do is figure out how to be as utterly repetitive as literally every piece of music is. I like the fact that while they can make the machine twist the sounds around to sound sort of like the lyrics to the songs, it can't yet get it to talk with a rate or rhythm remotely appropriate to the words, that the singers here sound way more like the Tenth Planet Cybermen than the actual Tenth Planet Cybermen. I like that they did like a dozen different versions of the Fall's "Rebellious Jukebox", all completely different, because, I suspect, it had the word "Jukebox" in the title, which is the name of their program, and not because any of them have any knowledge of or interest in the music of Mark E. Smith. Smith never formally commented on whether a band consisting of Mark E. Smith and a semi-deranged AI is, in fact, the Fall, but based on precedent, and in the absence of a living Mark E. Smith to argue with me, I'm going to go on a limb and say it is.
(On the other hand there's an equally compelling argument to be made that this would actually be Von Südenfed.)
Anyway. If you go there, listen to the James Brown re-creations. They're all fucking brilliant. Oh, and Robert Wyatt is there as well. Somebody should ring him up in Louth and ask him what he thinks of it! I'm genuinely curious.
Thursday, 30 April 2020
Tuesday, 28 April 2020
Random Songs: 2020-04-28
I'm honestly doing more work on this than I'd like. I literally could make it a full time job to just talk about the music I listen to and enjoy. I like listening to music, I like writing about it, but it is work, unquestionably, and at this point I'm not even doing it for the exposure. I mean that's sort of a pipe dream, actually having exposure! No, two or three people value it, two or three people really like what I'm doing, and I'm one of those people, and that's enough reason to keep doing it.
But there are posts that are more work and posts that are less work. I keep starting easy posts and having them turn into hard posts, and maybe I am doing that again. I'm going to put my library on random, and I'm going to write about the songs that come up, and I'm going to do this until I decide I'm done and them I'm going to post this entry. Because there is value in my just talking about ordinary life.
Dudley Simpson - Dover Castle: Had to check to see if I had any filters set, because I have been listening to a lot of BBC Radiophonic stuff recently, was actually thinking about making a post about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and sound effects vs. stings vs. incidental music and the porous barriers between them. Anyway this is more of, I don't know, a brief synthesizer fanfare written by Dudley Simpson for "The Mind of Evil". It is pleasant and cheerful and I like it plenty.
Nic Lyon - Woody: Oh, this will be nice, I've never heard this one before. It's from a comp called "Antipodean Anomalides" that came out in 2018 and which features Olev Muska, which I guess is how I found it. I guess from the title Nic is from New Zealand or Australia. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how to describe this. Maybe a little like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra? Pleasant instrumental, strings, synth patches that sound like splashing water. Googling Nic Lyon doesn't help much - I get a Stanford poly sci grad student. Good luck Stanford Nic Lyon, that seems like a tough field to be in right now. Oh! Here we are. It's from a 1983 New Age album called "Unicorn". We all like unicorns here, right? Discogs has a link to his website which says that "Nicolas' recordings range in the hundreds" - unfortunately this seems to be news to Discogs, which only lists the one. Looks like his website was last updated in 2014.
Nasenbluten - Concrete Compressor: I have no guilty pleasures, but if I did gabber would probably be one of them. Gabber is music that, as far as I can tell, is specifically made to be as obnoxious as possible. I don't know why it took me so long to come around to it. It's fast, violent, filled with unpleasant noises, you can't really dance to it. This track is the least aggressively titled on the entire release. What's not to like?
Wormrot - False Grind Sodomy: From "Earache: The World's Shortest Album". Well, it certainly is short.
Art Blakey & George Kawaguchi - A Night in Tunisia: I'm not familiar with the whole breadth of jazz - there's some bits I hone in on more than others. For instance, I'm fairly fond of the standard "A Night in Tunisia" and I have a number of recordings of it. This '81 recording has percussion to the fore (not surprising given that the leaders are two drummers) and is a fine interpretation, taken at an extremely brisk pace with the arrangement twisted around a bit in the best bebop style. I got ten minutes to soak this one in here. I do tend to skip around tracks a lot, particularly when I'm writing, so for this I'm giving them a shot to play through.
So Kawaguchi, I didn't much know him, but apparently he was known as "the Japanese Art Blakey". So I guess you have two Art Blakeys on drums on this track, the Japanese one and the American one. Google seems to believe that he has some commonalities with a drummer named Raiden Suzawa, who played for an '80s Japanese kabuki metal band named Seikima-II. The Encyclopedia Metallum says this about them:
Lyrical themes:
Satan, Love, Hell, Demons, Religion, Sex
So there you go, then.
Prince - instrumental 4: LOL, take a shot. Here's the issue: I have 583 Prince tracks in my library out of a total of 87275. Now, that means that there's only a .7% chance that any given track on random will be by Prince, but it also means that Prince tracks tend to show up on random with, shall we say, extremely regular frequency, and typically they are some weird inscrutable bootleg.
This track, for instance, is from Disc 1 of a 26 CD bootleg set of unreleased Prince studio recordings. These recordings here are extremely basic worktapes. He's on his keyboard here playing a very horror-movie chord progression for a minute, and that's it.
My Morning Jacket - One in the Same (demo): More home demos! I have lots of these, honestly. This is a Jim James home demo from the deluxe reissue of "It Still Moves". Better quality and more fleshed out than Prince's home demos - probably did them on a 4-track or something, he multitracks his vox. Acoustic guitar, falsetto, gobs and gobs of echo. You know the drill. Honestly it sounds a hell of a lot like "Behind That Locked Door".
Sanford Clark - The Fool '66: One of those things that happens sometimes - Sanford Clark remakes his earlier country hit "The Fool" in line with current standards. In this case that means adding some wicked fuzz. It's awkward and not entirely appropriate but it's good fuzz and a good song.
Eric Dolphy - Inner Flight II: A flute piece clearly inspired by Edgard Varese's "Density 21.5". I think this is from some weird record of experiments of his from the early '60s, including I seem to remember something he did with some opera singer? Anyway, it's a nice record; "third stream" jazz tends to be respected more than it's listened to, but I try to give it at least some of my time!
R.A.P. Ferreira - ABSOLUTES: One of the buzzed, trending releases of 2020. I don't listen to nearly as much hip-hop as I'd like. The stuff I do listen to tends to be oddball backpacker stuff like this. I know sometimes stuff like this gets dismissed for being too "intellectual". I figure there are worse things to be. I figure there's room for all sorts of music in the world, including reflective and thoughtful music like this.
But there are posts that are more work and posts that are less work. I keep starting easy posts and having them turn into hard posts, and maybe I am doing that again. I'm going to put my library on random, and I'm going to write about the songs that come up, and I'm going to do this until I decide I'm done and them I'm going to post this entry. Because there is value in my just talking about ordinary life.
Dudley Simpson - Dover Castle: Had to check to see if I had any filters set, because I have been listening to a lot of BBC Radiophonic stuff recently, was actually thinking about making a post about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and sound effects vs. stings vs. incidental music and the porous barriers between them. Anyway this is more of, I don't know, a brief synthesizer fanfare written by Dudley Simpson for "The Mind of Evil". It is pleasant and cheerful and I like it plenty.
Nic Lyon - Woody: Oh, this will be nice, I've never heard this one before. It's from a comp called "Antipodean Anomalides" that came out in 2018 and which features Olev Muska, which I guess is how I found it. I guess from the title Nic is from New Zealand or Australia. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how to describe this. Maybe a little like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra? Pleasant instrumental, strings, synth patches that sound like splashing water. Googling Nic Lyon doesn't help much - I get a Stanford poly sci grad student. Good luck Stanford Nic Lyon, that seems like a tough field to be in right now. Oh! Here we are. It's from a 1983 New Age album called "Unicorn". We all like unicorns here, right? Discogs has a link to his website which says that "Nicolas' recordings range in the hundreds" - unfortunately this seems to be news to Discogs, which only lists the one. Looks like his website was last updated in 2014.
Nasenbluten - Concrete Compressor: I have no guilty pleasures, but if I did gabber would probably be one of them. Gabber is music that, as far as I can tell, is specifically made to be as obnoxious as possible. I don't know why it took me so long to come around to it. It's fast, violent, filled with unpleasant noises, you can't really dance to it. This track is the least aggressively titled on the entire release. What's not to like?
Wormrot - False Grind Sodomy: From "Earache: The World's Shortest Album". Well, it certainly is short.
Art Blakey & George Kawaguchi - A Night in Tunisia: I'm not familiar with the whole breadth of jazz - there's some bits I hone in on more than others. For instance, I'm fairly fond of the standard "A Night in Tunisia" and I have a number of recordings of it. This '81 recording has percussion to the fore (not surprising given that the leaders are two drummers) and is a fine interpretation, taken at an extremely brisk pace with the arrangement twisted around a bit in the best bebop style. I got ten minutes to soak this one in here. I do tend to skip around tracks a lot, particularly when I'm writing, so for this I'm giving them a shot to play through.
So Kawaguchi, I didn't much know him, but apparently he was known as "the Japanese Art Blakey". So I guess you have two Art Blakeys on drums on this track, the Japanese one and the American one. Google seems to believe that he has some commonalities with a drummer named Raiden Suzawa, who played for an '80s Japanese kabuki metal band named Seikima-II. The Encyclopedia Metallum says this about them:
Lyrical themes:
Satan, Love, Hell, Demons, Religion, Sex
So there you go, then.
Prince - instrumental 4: LOL, take a shot. Here's the issue: I have 583 Prince tracks in my library out of a total of 87275. Now, that means that there's only a .7% chance that any given track on random will be by Prince, but it also means that Prince tracks tend to show up on random with, shall we say, extremely regular frequency, and typically they are some weird inscrutable bootleg.
This track, for instance, is from Disc 1 of a 26 CD bootleg set of unreleased Prince studio recordings. These recordings here are extremely basic worktapes. He's on his keyboard here playing a very horror-movie chord progression for a minute, and that's it.
My Morning Jacket - One in the Same (demo): More home demos! I have lots of these, honestly. This is a Jim James home demo from the deluxe reissue of "It Still Moves". Better quality and more fleshed out than Prince's home demos - probably did them on a 4-track or something, he multitracks his vox. Acoustic guitar, falsetto, gobs and gobs of echo. You know the drill. Honestly it sounds a hell of a lot like "Behind That Locked Door".
Sanford Clark - The Fool '66: One of those things that happens sometimes - Sanford Clark remakes his earlier country hit "The Fool" in line with current standards. In this case that means adding some wicked fuzz. It's awkward and not entirely appropriate but it's good fuzz and a good song.
Eric Dolphy - Inner Flight II: A flute piece clearly inspired by Edgard Varese's "Density 21.5". I think this is from some weird record of experiments of his from the early '60s, including I seem to remember something he did with some opera singer? Anyway, it's a nice record; "third stream" jazz tends to be respected more than it's listened to, but I try to give it at least some of my time!
R.A.P. Ferreira - ABSOLUTES: One of the buzzed, trending releases of 2020. I don't listen to nearly as much hip-hop as I'd like. The stuff I do listen to tends to be oddball backpacker stuff like this. I know sometimes stuff like this gets dismissed for being too "intellectual". I figure there are worse things to be. I figure there's room for all sorts of music in the world, including reflective and thoughtful music like this.
Monday, 27 April 2020
Waitiki
I used to hate doing research. Coming up with cites, making sure I had my facts straight... it was a hassle trying to pin down some half-remembered dream. I didn't make notes! And anyway I know what the hell I'm talking about!
The thing about actually doing the research is that I rapidly found that, more often than I would like to admit, I didn't. But more than that, even when I am right, there's always something I didn't know, or something I forgot, to run across. I like to teach, I like to lecture, not because it gives me a feeling of power or authority, but because it is an opportunity for me to learn. I don't understand people who put down teachers, saying things like "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach". More people should try it, is how I feel. If I know something, or if I love something, I want to pass that knowledge on, to share it. Why wouldn't I?
All of that is a very long preamble to the latest incidental find of mine, the band Waitiki. This is a difficult band to find anything on, because it's a common enough word, because looking them up brings up tiki bars and the better-known exotica act "The Waitiki 7". I found them because a song on their second album, "Rendezvous in Okonkuluku", contains a track titled "Cave of the Tarpon". Well, I don't know from Tarpon; I was just looking to see if I could dig up a bootleg of the soundtrack, which was at some past point featured on Aquarium Drunkard, but the links were dead.
The track titles intrigued me enough for me to give it a listen, and I liked what I heard. "Exotica" has an uneasy legacy, because it is, in large part, music of exploitation. Waitiki's track titles play with the myth of Hawaii, with the myth of "exotic" music. The last track on the record is called "Haole Beach Sunset". Their first album was called "Charred Mammal Flesh: Exotic Music for BBQ".
This, then, is music that foregrounds subversion, and this can be heard in the songs, which are short songs, with the arrangements one expects from "exotica", but takes these fairly regular twists into the truly bizarre. The phrase that came to mind if "free exotica". Or, perhaps, the exotica music of Sun Ra, something like "Watusa".
Well, look at that. Waitiki, who are unknown to me beyond their name... looking them up on Discogs shows them as being credited on the 2019 record by The Barrence Whitfield Soul Savage Orchestra, "Songs From the Sun Ra Cosmos". And they do "I'm Gonna Unmask The Batman". Barrence Whitfield - birth name "Barry White", which he changed for some reason when he took up professionally singing - is another new name to me. He put out two records with Tom Russell in 1993, "Hillbilly Voodoo" and "Cowboy Mambo".
Do your research. I never would have found any of this if I hadn't.
The thing about actually doing the research is that I rapidly found that, more often than I would like to admit, I didn't. But more than that, even when I am right, there's always something I didn't know, or something I forgot, to run across. I like to teach, I like to lecture, not because it gives me a feeling of power or authority, but because it is an opportunity for me to learn. I don't understand people who put down teachers, saying things like "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach". More people should try it, is how I feel. If I know something, or if I love something, I want to pass that knowledge on, to share it. Why wouldn't I?
All of that is a very long preamble to the latest incidental find of mine, the band Waitiki. This is a difficult band to find anything on, because it's a common enough word, because looking them up brings up tiki bars and the better-known exotica act "The Waitiki 7". I found them because a song on their second album, "Rendezvous in Okonkuluku", contains a track titled "Cave of the Tarpon". Well, I don't know from Tarpon; I was just looking to see if I could dig up a bootleg of the soundtrack, which was at some past point featured on Aquarium Drunkard, but the links were dead.
The track titles intrigued me enough for me to give it a listen, and I liked what I heard. "Exotica" has an uneasy legacy, because it is, in large part, music of exploitation. Waitiki's track titles play with the myth of Hawaii, with the myth of "exotic" music. The last track on the record is called "Haole Beach Sunset". Their first album was called "Charred Mammal Flesh: Exotic Music for BBQ".
This, then, is music that foregrounds subversion, and this can be heard in the songs, which are short songs, with the arrangements one expects from "exotica", but takes these fairly regular twists into the truly bizarre. The phrase that came to mind if "free exotica". Or, perhaps, the exotica music of Sun Ra, something like "Watusa".
Well, look at that. Waitiki, who are unknown to me beyond their name... looking them up on Discogs shows them as being credited on the 2019 record by The Barrence Whitfield Soul Savage Orchestra, "Songs From the Sun Ra Cosmos". And they do "I'm Gonna Unmask The Batman". Barrence Whitfield - birth name "Barry White", which he changed for some reason when he took up professionally singing - is another new name to me. He put out two records with Tom Russell in 1993, "Hillbilly Voodoo" and "Cowboy Mambo".
Do your research. I never would have found any of this if I hadn't.
Locusts
(being a further semantic mutation, the way I initially read the title of "Leasts")
Lists are important to me. I have a lot to say about the topic, so much that it makes it difficult to write about. This is one reason I appreciate having Sedric as co-blogger on this. "Leasts" is an anchor, a starting point.
A list is... how should I put this... a framework. For me the important thing about a published list is not that it is fixed, but that it is bounded in some fashion. A list serves to differentiate those things which are on the list from those things that are not on the list, in some fashion.
Some lists are further differentiated within the list itself - ranked lists. Some lists, such as the NWW List, are unranked, simple aggregations. All that matters is what is included and, implicitly, what is excluded.
I much prefer the latter type. Ranked lists emphasize difference rather than similarity, emphasize strict hierarchy. The #1 record is better than the #2 record, which is better than the #3 record, and so on and so forth. This is not only ludicrous but it is necessarily adversarial - music, seen in this way, is the War of All Against All.
In contrast, the artists on the NWW list - and they are _artists_, not works of art, but creative forces with personalities and agendas of their own - are chosen for theoretically having something in common.
In practice I would argue their differences are not so easily smoothed over. A list that contains both the fascist Boyd Rice and any number of eurocommunist musical insurrections is hard to consider as anything more than a granfalloon (although at least one member of this granfalloon, who shall not be named here, objects enough to his presence in it that he has made a number of threats about anybody and everybody so much as mentions his name. Yes of course this says more about him than it says about this list or lists in general.)
But then, all lists are in some sense artificial, no? Perhaps it is that the IDEA of the NWW list transcends any mundane realities of the artists involved.
I don't think lists being fixed in place the moment they're published is a problem. I think this is one of their strengths, their rootedness in a specific context. The NWW List doesn't really tell us _that_ much about experimental music of the 1970s. We know things now that they wouldn't or couldn't have known then; were they to redo this list it would probably look much different. It has limits that become increasingly obvious the more experimental music of the 1970s one hears. What it does tell us, though, is how NWW viewed the music of the 1970s at the time they made the list, and further how this music was seen, thought of, grouped, at a particular point in time.
I think that is a good stopping point for now!
Lists are important to me. I have a lot to say about the topic, so much that it makes it difficult to write about. This is one reason I appreciate having Sedric as co-blogger on this. "Leasts" is an anchor, a starting point.
A list is... how should I put this... a framework. For me the important thing about a published list is not that it is fixed, but that it is bounded in some fashion. A list serves to differentiate those things which are on the list from those things that are not on the list, in some fashion.
Some lists are further differentiated within the list itself - ranked lists. Some lists, such as the NWW List, are unranked, simple aggregations. All that matters is what is included and, implicitly, what is excluded.
I much prefer the latter type. Ranked lists emphasize difference rather than similarity, emphasize strict hierarchy. The #1 record is better than the #2 record, which is better than the #3 record, and so on and so forth. This is not only ludicrous but it is necessarily adversarial - music, seen in this way, is the War of All Against All.
In contrast, the artists on the NWW list - and they are _artists_, not works of art, but creative forces with personalities and agendas of their own - are chosen for theoretically having something in common.
In practice I would argue their differences are not so easily smoothed over. A list that contains both the fascist Boyd Rice and any number of eurocommunist musical insurrections is hard to consider as anything more than a granfalloon (although at least one member of this granfalloon, who shall not be named here, objects enough to his presence in it that he has made a number of threats about anybody and everybody so much as mentions his name. Yes of course this says more about him than it says about this list or lists in general.)
But then, all lists are in some sense artificial, no? Perhaps it is that the IDEA of the NWW list transcends any mundane realities of the artists involved.
I don't think lists being fixed in place the moment they're published is a problem. I think this is one of their strengths, their rootedness in a specific context. The NWW List doesn't really tell us _that_ much about experimental music of the 1970s. We know things now that they wouldn't or couldn't have known then; were they to redo this list it would probably look much different. It has limits that become increasingly obvious the more experimental music of the 1970s one hears. What it does tell us, though, is how NWW viewed the music of the 1970s at the time they made the list, and further how this music was seen, thought of, grouped, at a particular point in time.
I think that is a good stopping point for now!
Sunday, 26 April 2020
Tarpon
Mostly what's held me back is that my mind has been too preoccupied to wander through these realms the last week or so, even with this place sitting here as a reminder to me.
Fortunately chance intervenes. Got some positive response yesterday to my Brautigan post and as a result spent a little more time trawling around looking for more about him. I plan on reading Jubilee Hitchhiker, the biography of him, but I'm not sure I was ready this morning. It starts at the end, you see, and I'm not going to tell you about it today because I'm tired of putting content warnings on every single one of my posts.
Instead I went browsing to see what an Amazon search for "richard brautigan" would turn up. And one of the things it turned up was this obscure 1973 film called Tarpon.
Tarpon is a Jimmy Buffett film. I never in my life thought I would actively be seeking out a goddamn Jimmy Buffett film. That's history I guess, the more you look at it the more it defies your preconceptions. Buffett isn't in the film, not really. He liked the sea, he liked Key West, he made a film of a couple of people who liked fishing out there... fishing.
Two of those people I don't know. One of those people was Richard Brautigan, who liked fishing so much he wrote a book about it once.
Here is a clip from Tarpon from a French TV show that had Jim Harrison, who is in this film, as a guest. I had to look up Jim Harrison. Wikipedia says that Jim Harrison is considered "America's foremost master" of the novella, and has a citation to back up that claim, which I guess is why he appeared on French television in 2006.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385zMGvi-L4
I got a clip or two more of Brautigan. Him in '82 reading from his work somewhere in Europe. Tarpon itself is a deeply obscure film, to the extent that even though I've been a fan of Brautigan's for decades I never ran across before today, by chance. It's not right now commercially available. It looks like it was released on DVD in 2007 and I guess that's part of why I didn't hear about it. I'm interested in a lot of different things and that means I miss a lot. I'll hear about something great five years or so after it happens and will kick myself, why didn't I know about this? But It's a big world and a lot of things happen in it.
Fortunately chance intervenes. Got some positive response yesterday to my Brautigan post and as a result spent a little more time trawling around looking for more about him. I plan on reading Jubilee Hitchhiker, the biography of him, but I'm not sure I was ready this morning. It starts at the end, you see, and I'm not going to tell you about it today because I'm tired of putting content warnings on every single one of my posts.
Instead I went browsing to see what an Amazon search for "richard brautigan" would turn up. And one of the things it turned up was this obscure 1973 film called Tarpon.
Tarpon is a Jimmy Buffett film. I never in my life thought I would actively be seeking out a goddamn Jimmy Buffett film. That's history I guess, the more you look at it the more it defies your preconceptions. Buffett isn't in the film, not really. He liked the sea, he liked Key West, he made a film of a couple of people who liked fishing out there... fishing.
Two of those people I don't know. One of those people was Richard Brautigan, who liked fishing so much he wrote a book about it once.
Here is a clip from Tarpon from a French TV show that had Jim Harrison, who is in this film, as a guest. I had to look up Jim Harrison. Wikipedia says that Jim Harrison is considered "America's foremost master" of the novella, and has a citation to back up that claim, which I guess is why he appeared on French television in 2006.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385zMGvi-L4
I got a clip or two more of Brautigan. Him in '82 reading from his work somewhere in Europe. Tarpon itself is a deeply obscure film, to the extent that even though I've been a fan of Brautigan's for decades I never ran across before today, by chance. It's not right now commercially available. It looks like it was released on DVD in 2007 and I guess that's part of why I didn't hear about it. I'm interested in a lot of different things and that means I miss a lot. I'll hear about something great five years or so after it happens and will kick myself, why didn't I know about this? But It's a big world and a lot of things happen in it.
Saturday, 25 April 2020
Boomer to Doomer: Rewriting 'Dark Side of the Moon'
Roger Waters went to hell in January of 1972.
Pink Floyd had been avatars of the Hippie Dream back in '67. A lot of bad things had happened since then, both to Pink Floyd and to the world around them, but Waters and the rest of the band, who operated as a four-piece musical collective of relative equals, with grace and a sense of peace, the sort of band who could do songs about flying into the center of the sun and make it sound like a quest for inner peace rather than fiery self-immolation. John Peel introduced a live broadcast of theirs in 1970 by saying "The nicest thing about the Pink Floyd's music it that it always makes me, at least, feel very hopeful. It's optimistic music."
That quote has stuck with me, and not just as some sort of in-hindsight-ironic quote of the sort Peel was prone to (see, for instance, the radio show from '69 wherein he bemoaned Creedence Clearwater Revival's obvious lack of commercial potential). Their music was, in fact, genuinely optimistic. What the fuck happened?
Part of what happened, I feel... wasn't in the music itself. Dark Side of the Moon is a dark record, a despairing record, but only in retrospect do we see it as a harbinger. After completing the record, which Waters was justly proud of, his next idea was to do a record wherein instead of playing bass, he played rubber bands. He'd done a collaboration record with the Scots eccentric Ron Geesin and was genuinely taken with his particular band of whimsy, which existed in a world so distant from doomer Floyd that upon the release of Dark Side of the Moon Geesin titled a track "To Roger Waters, Wherever You Are" (he might not have meant it like _that_, to be fair).
Roger Waters went to hell, and in the Spring of 1973 he announced to the world what he had found. And the world responded... rapturously. This was the unease they had felt but hadn't quite had the words for. Here was fear and the worry and the sense of powerlessness in the face of the inevitable, and suddenly Roger Waters was not a big-nosed bass player but the Voice of a Generation, a generation who the moment he said it he was right, knew it instantly and surely as if a spell had been broken. This was Hell.
And then they all, well, stayed there. I guess Waters probably tried to get out, maybe is still trying now, in his own way, following his own path. Probably some of them did leave, did find their own way out, but for Pink Floyd, despair became their brand, is their brand still despite Waters having moved on for browner pastures decades ago. The band couldn't quite follow him, and they couldn't say anything that was more, uh, persuasive than what he had to say, so that's who Pink Floyd are, the doomer band of the boomer generation.
And that's what I grew up with, the voice I took for my own, what I'm trying to leave behind now.
So in that spirit, a reconstruction. A do-over. Dark Side of the Moon in songs by other musicians, other voices, that seem to me to relate to something of the spirit of each of the songs in Waters' little concept album, as determined by five minutes of free association in my head this afternoon.
Joe Raposo - Take A Breath (Breathe)
Dark Side of the Moon isn't exactly a "concept album" in the manner of "Tommy" or "The Wall" - it doesn't tell a coherent story, doesn't have characters or a plot or anything like that. It's more like a student paper, where paragraphs of evidence are tied together to support a central thesis, which is stated at the end of the album. You take all of these separate inputs and put them all together and there, at the end, is your output.
"Breathe" doesn't necessarily fit this pattern. It's to the strength of the album, this flexibility, the strength of having just a few guiding principles which may be broken if the song or the album demands that they be.
The impression I get from Breathe is that of darkening clouds. One of his turns, perhaps, is coming on. In my head there it starts with a song like some of their older bucolic material. I don't know that Waters has spoken about the process. I know he has a song he did with Geesin called "Breathe" about the environment. It's not really the same song at all, but it's not a happy song either. Waters' "optimism" was always deceptive. He would do songs like "Crumbling Land", and...
Look, here are the lyrics to the Waters/Geesin "Breathe":
Breathe in the air
Make for the meadow and savour the grass while it lasts
By and by
Spidery fingers of industry reach for the sky
Brick upon brick, stone upon stone they grow
Choking the atmosphere, oh, so incredibly slowly
Sulphur and carbon and hydrogen sulphide and lime
Fever, corrosion, and cover your cities with grime
Something is killing the land before your eyes
And the sunshine
Is not to blame
Could be the insane, inhumane games we play
That's... not exactly more upbeat than Dark Side of the Moon.
The difference here is context. Not just, you know, that this song is surrounded by fart noises and songs with titles like "Piddle in Perspex", but that from there we go to:
Close your eyes, lie still
You are a mountain stream and I am a hill
Far, far away
There is a field of blossom and bees and new mown hay
Breathe in the air
And that, OK, that is in fact textbook optimism. Waters identifies as a "bleeding heart" - in 1970, a bruised but strong idealist, in 1972, and a fair amount of the time since, broken.
In this light maybe "Breathe" is the darkest song on the album, because it's the one where he's still genuinely trying to be positive and optimistic. Ending it where he does, "Balanced on the biggest wave/you race towards an early grave", that tips it. Even though there's another verse, even though the last verse is far more optimistic and even, you know, spiritual, he cuts it off, he puts it elsewhere, and what we're left with is creeping death.
But this is rumination. This is a wander through dark gardens. He loses, fairly early on, the breath, the core, the center of ourselves, of our being. What else do I think about here with breath? Radiohead's "Exit Music for a Film" with its cry of "Breathe, keep breathing", the breath as a source of strength, words sung by someone who is extremely familiar with panic disorder, what it feels like, how to survive it.
But also this song. From the American children's TV show Sesame Street, a show a grew up with. Raposo, who is maybe best known for "Sing", wrote a lot of songs for the show, most of them not commercially released. And they are songs for children. This is a lighthearted, silly song, sung in a funny voice, but it does also have a compassion at the center, a sincerity and honesty to it, and that approach I think is one that I do believe Roger Waters, at his best, shares.
Melvin Van Peebles - Come On Feet (On the Run):
A song of paranoia. The film for this one, as shown on MTV's Pink Floyd Weekend in the late '80s, was one of those things that did scare me for a long time. That sort of medical paranoia, the Bloodrock "DOA" thing, but I guess that's a later imposition, that's a palimpsest. The original is more about running to escape from... something. The sirens and dissonant keyboard on this song, from the soundtrack to Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song... it tracks extremely well with the mood of "On the Run" and its helicopter noises and synthesizer patterns. This is probably a better song than "On the Run", honestly.
The Alan Parsons Project - Time (Time): I could _almost_ put together a whole hour's worth of separate songs I love called "Time". It's a big idea, a big concept, and this was the one that popped up.
Mostly because, I'll be honest with you, because of Mr. Bungle. There's a beautiful bootleg video of Mr. Bungle in the early '90s, and I'm recounting from memory so I might get some details wrong here... things would get pretty crazy at those shows, and at some point someone in the front of the audience gets hit pretty hard by accident. Their lead singer Mike Patton, because things have gotten really crazy, he gets down and and he just sings this song to the guy. That might sound, I don't know, disturbing, particularly since he's wearing his typical-for-the-time stage attire of a leather gimp mask, and that the environment is pretty crazy, but it doesn't come off that way. It comes off as a moment of unexpected sweetness, unexpected compassion. Which is what we get at the end of the Pink Floyd song, when after Waters plunges deeply into nihilism and despair ("The time is gone, the song is over/Thought I'd something more to say...") he goes back and pulls out that last, consoling verse of "Breathe".
What Parsons - whose engineering on "Dark Side of the Moon", his creation of that pristine and perfect sound world, has a lot to do with why I'm both fascinated by the record and kind of hate it - does on this 1980 song is capture that wistfulness, that melancholy, that underlies Waters' work before it takes that tip into complete despair. It captures so well that sense of loss that's marked my life so strongly, a sense that flows through the work of Waters, even though it's on the surface another one of those boy-girl songs that as a teenage Pink Floyd fan I thought I was too "sophisticated" for.
The Pretty Things - Death (The Great Gig in the Sky): In its original form the song after "Time" in "Dark Side of the Moon" was a cynical piece about religion (hence the last verse of "Breathe" leading into it). "The Great Gig in the Sky" isn't about that really. I've heard people say it's about "death", but that's a pretty big subject. There are many ways to talk about death. I guess for me the thing it specifically strikes is the allure of death, death as a siren song, and that's what Torry's vocals evoke for me - not sex per se like some people hear it. And the song that came to mind was this song from the Pretty Things' concept album "SF Sorrow". I don't know why. It's a memorable song. It has that same kind of woozy allure as the Floyd song does. It's seductive.
Defunkt - For the Love of Money (Money): Money, and criticism of greed, is a bit of a trite subject in music, and arguably "Money" the song is a bit of a trite song. Or perhaps it's just cliched. The O'Jays' "For the Love of Money" is a cliche in its own way. Recorded as a criticism of rampant greed, its "Money money money money money" chorus came, in one of those reinterpretations that songs have to grapple with, to represent that greed. It was most memorably used as the theme song to what was supposed to be a lighthearted "reality show" hosted by a man who, because this is Hell, we are all living in Hell now, is a deranged hateful racist who rules what is nominally the most powerful country in the world.
(Sorry.)
So that's why I didn't go with the O'Jays' version. Defunkt's version has that jittery "New York's OK if you like saxophones" darkness and intensity to it.
I should note that one area where the O'Jays' song excels over Pink Floyd's is in the bassline, the work of a brilliant, fascinating, and undersung musician by the name of Anthony Jackson, a funk bassist whose chief influences were Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane and Olivier Messiaen. In contrast the bassline for "Money" is the work of a somewhat clumsy and inelegant architecture school dropout who had difficulty playing in 7/4.
Black Flag - Police Story (Us and Them): When I was younger, the song on Dark Side of the Moon that hit me the hardest was "Time". Since 2016, it's "Us and Them". It speaks to me hard of that sense of helplessness in the face of violence. Stupid, absurd, apparently unavoidable. They think I want to kill them (I don't, for the record), so the only way can think of to protect themselves is to kill me first. Which in turn means that the only way I can think of to protect myself...
Stupid. Stupid and absurd, like I said. And Black Flag encapsulate that in about 90 seconds (mostly by not including a sax solo, probably) with "Police Story".
They're the same fucking song, though. Maybe Black Flag says it a little better; Waters had deep compassion and occasionally deep insight and could be a bit of a British public school poet at times.
The Rolling Stones - She's a Rainbow (Any Colour You Like): I'll level with you, I don't really think Any Colour You Like is _about_ anything. I think it's a filler song, and I think it's a fun song to listen to and serves an important purpose in the larger flow of the album, but I'm skeptical of the idea that the song has a larger meaning in and of itself.
So I just put in "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones, because "colour", because it's the song that came to mind, because it's a good fucking song.
David Bowie - All the Madmen (Brain Damage): And here we have the famous conclusion. Both Bowie and Waters had close, harrowing experiences with insanity. With Waters, it was Syd, and with Bowie it was his brother. They both navigate this territory with compassion and honesty, in my estimation.
There's an old bootleg tape of an interview some awful, clueless student interviewer in America did with the band. He asks them why Syd isn't in the band, to which Waters, already a little fed up with the young man's utter idiocy, bluntly says that Syd went mad. The interviewer's jaw-dropping follow-up question: "Is anybody else in the band going to go mad?"
For the past few years I've gotten used to trying to find accidental deeper meaning in statements of mind-boggling idiocy. We all have to survive in our own ways. In this case, there's a deeper fear that this stupid asshole sort of glancingly touched on. The fear that madness is contagious. That it could spread. That we could be next.
And at some point the most healthy response is to throw up one's hands and accept the possibility. Worrying about it changes nothing. Fine, you know, if that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be. I'll fucking be crazy. Maybe there's more embrace in Bowie, more horror of the malevolent Other in Waters. Maybe that's why I like Bowie's song more.
Neutral Milk Hotel - Everything Is (Eclipse): I think this is the bit where Mr. Waters and I have to part ways. Having considered it for a very long time, I think what he's saying here is wrong. He overreaches. He engages in literally all-or-nothing thinking and comes up on the side of "nothing". Everything he's said up to this point has been true and honest.
These were the last lyrics he wrote for the record. Initial performances, in January of 1972, didn't have this piece, with "Brain Damage" instead kind of falling apart into chaos and noise at the end. I guess it was less artistically satisfying, I acknowledge that we like a good solid conclusive ending, but the chaos was warranted, and the conclusion isn't. You're going to do a song about "everything"? What comes to mind is the first Neutral Milk Hotel single (which, coincidentally, opens with a street interview of the sort that pepper "Dark Side of the Moon"). You want me to tell you about everything, and this is all I can tell you - nonsense lyrics and this chorus:
"Everything is beautiful here
It's spinning circles round my ears
I'm finally breaking free from fear
And it's fading..."
Fade out.
Pink Floyd had been avatars of the Hippie Dream back in '67. A lot of bad things had happened since then, both to Pink Floyd and to the world around them, but Waters and the rest of the band, who operated as a four-piece musical collective of relative equals, with grace and a sense of peace, the sort of band who could do songs about flying into the center of the sun and make it sound like a quest for inner peace rather than fiery self-immolation. John Peel introduced a live broadcast of theirs in 1970 by saying "The nicest thing about the Pink Floyd's music it that it always makes me, at least, feel very hopeful. It's optimistic music."
That quote has stuck with me, and not just as some sort of in-hindsight-ironic quote of the sort Peel was prone to (see, for instance, the radio show from '69 wherein he bemoaned Creedence Clearwater Revival's obvious lack of commercial potential). Their music was, in fact, genuinely optimistic. What the fuck happened?
Part of what happened, I feel... wasn't in the music itself. Dark Side of the Moon is a dark record, a despairing record, but only in retrospect do we see it as a harbinger. After completing the record, which Waters was justly proud of, his next idea was to do a record wherein instead of playing bass, he played rubber bands. He'd done a collaboration record with the Scots eccentric Ron Geesin and was genuinely taken with his particular band of whimsy, which existed in a world so distant from doomer Floyd that upon the release of Dark Side of the Moon Geesin titled a track "To Roger Waters, Wherever You Are" (he might not have meant it like _that_, to be fair).
Roger Waters went to hell, and in the Spring of 1973 he announced to the world what he had found. And the world responded... rapturously. This was the unease they had felt but hadn't quite had the words for. Here was fear and the worry and the sense of powerlessness in the face of the inevitable, and suddenly Roger Waters was not a big-nosed bass player but the Voice of a Generation, a generation who the moment he said it he was right, knew it instantly and surely as if a spell had been broken. This was Hell.
And then they all, well, stayed there. I guess Waters probably tried to get out, maybe is still trying now, in his own way, following his own path. Probably some of them did leave, did find their own way out, but for Pink Floyd, despair became their brand, is their brand still despite Waters having moved on for browner pastures decades ago. The band couldn't quite follow him, and they couldn't say anything that was more, uh, persuasive than what he had to say, so that's who Pink Floyd are, the doomer band of the boomer generation.
And that's what I grew up with, the voice I took for my own, what I'm trying to leave behind now.
So in that spirit, a reconstruction. A do-over. Dark Side of the Moon in songs by other musicians, other voices, that seem to me to relate to something of the spirit of each of the songs in Waters' little concept album, as determined by five minutes of free association in my head this afternoon.
Joe Raposo - Take A Breath (Breathe)
Dark Side of the Moon isn't exactly a "concept album" in the manner of "Tommy" or "The Wall" - it doesn't tell a coherent story, doesn't have characters or a plot or anything like that. It's more like a student paper, where paragraphs of evidence are tied together to support a central thesis, which is stated at the end of the album. You take all of these separate inputs and put them all together and there, at the end, is your output.
"Breathe" doesn't necessarily fit this pattern. It's to the strength of the album, this flexibility, the strength of having just a few guiding principles which may be broken if the song or the album demands that they be.
The impression I get from Breathe is that of darkening clouds. One of his turns, perhaps, is coming on. In my head there it starts with a song like some of their older bucolic material. I don't know that Waters has spoken about the process. I know he has a song he did with Geesin called "Breathe" about the environment. It's not really the same song at all, but it's not a happy song either. Waters' "optimism" was always deceptive. He would do songs like "Crumbling Land", and...
Look, here are the lyrics to the Waters/Geesin "Breathe":
Breathe in the air
Make for the meadow and savour the grass while it lasts
By and by
Spidery fingers of industry reach for the sky
Brick upon brick, stone upon stone they grow
Choking the atmosphere, oh, so incredibly slowly
Sulphur and carbon and hydrogen sulphide and lime
Fever, corrosion, and cover your cities with grime
Something is killing the land before your eyes
And the sunshine
Is not to blame
Could be the insane, inhumane games we play
That's... not exactly more upbeat than Dark Side of the Moon.
The difference here is context. Not just, you know, that this song is surrounded by fart noises and songs with titles like "Piddle in Perspex", but that from there we go to:
Close your eyes, lie still
You are a mountain stream and I am a hill
Far, far away
There is a field of blossom and bees and new mown hay
Breathe in the air
And that, OK, that is in fact textbook optimism. Waters identifies as a "bleeding heart" - in 1970, a bruised but strong idealist, in 1972, and a fair amount of the time since, broken.
In this light maybe "Breathe" is the darkest song on the album, because it's the one where he's still genuinely trying to be positive and optimistic. Ending it where he does, "Balanced on the biggest wave/you race towards an early grave", that tips it. Even though there's another verse, even though the last verse is far more optimistic and even, you know, spiritual, he cuts it off, he puts it elsewhere, and what we're left with is creeping death.
But this is rumination. This is a wander through dark gardens. He loses, fairly early on, the breath, the core, the center of ourselves, of our being. What else do I think about here with breath? Radiohead's "Exit Music for a Film" with its cry of "Breathe, keep breathing", the breath as a source of strength, words sung by someone who is extremely familiar with panic disorder, what it feels like, how to survive it.
But also this song. From the American children's TV show Sesame Street, a show a grew up with. Raposo, who is maybe best known for "Sing", wrote a lot of songs for the show, most of them not commercially released. And they are songs for children. This is a lighthearted, silly song, sung in a funny voice, but it does also have a compassion at the center, a sincerity and honesty to it, and that approach I think is one that I do believe Roger Waters, at his best, shares.
Melvin Van Peebles - Come On Feet (On the Run):
A song of paranoia. The film for this one, as shown on MTV's Pink Floyd Weekend in the late '80s, was one of those things that did scare me for a long time. That sort of medical paranoia, the Bloodrock "DOA" thing, but I guess that's a later imposition, that's a palimpsest. The original is more about running to escape from... something. The sirens and dissonant keyboard on this song, from the soundtrack to Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song... it tracks extremely well with the mood of "On the Run" and its helicopter noises and synthesizer patterns. This is probably a better song than "On the Run", honestly.
The Alan Parsons Project - Time (Time): I could _almost_ put together a whole hour's worth of separate songs I love called "Time". It's a big idea, a big concept, and this was the one that popped up.
Mostly because, I'll be honest with you, because of Mr. Bungle. There's a beautiful bootleg video of Mr. Bungle in the early '90s, and I'm recounting from memory so I might get some details wrong here... things would get pretty crazy at those shows, and at some point someone in the front of the audience gets hit pretty hard by accident. Their lead singer Mike Patton, because things have gotten really crazy, he gets down and and he just sings this song to the guy. That might sound, I don't know, disturbing, particularly since he's wearing his typical-for-the-time stage attire of a leather gimp mask, and that the environment is pretty crazy, but it doesn't come off that way. It comes off as a moment of unexpected sweetness, unexpected compassion. Which is what we get at the end of the Pink Floyd song, when after Waters plunges deeply into nihilism and despair ("The time is gone, the song is over/Thought I'd something more to say...") he goes back and pulls out that last, consoling verse of "Breathe".
What Parsons - whose engineering on "Dark Side of the Moon", his creation of that pristine and perfect sound world, has a lot to do with why I'm both fascinated by the record and kind of hate it - does on this 1980 song is capture that wistfulness, that melancholy, that underlies Waters' work before it takes that tip into complete despair. It captures so well that sense of loss that's marked my life so strongly, a sense that flows through the work of Waters, even though it's on the surface another one of those boy-girl songs that as a teenage Pink Floyd fan I thought I was too "sophisticated" for.
The Pretty Things - Death (The Great Gig in the Sky): In its original form the song after "Time" in "Dark Side of the Moon" was a cynical piece about religion (hence the last verse of "Breathe" leading into it). "The Great Gig in the Sky" isn't about that really. I've heard people say it's about "death", but that's a pretty big subject. There are many ways to talk about death. I guess for me the thing it specifically strikes is the allure of death, death as a siren song, and that's what Torry's vocals evoke for me - not sex per se like some people hear it. And the song that came to mind was this song from the Pretty Things' concept album "SF Sorrow". I don't know why. It's a memorable song. It has that same kind of woozy allure as the Floyd song does. It's seductive.
Defunkt - For the Love of Money (Money): Money, and criticism of greed, is a bit of a trite subject in music, and arguably "Money" the song is a bit of a trite song. Or perhaps it's just cliched. The O'Jays' "For the Love of Money" is a cliche in its own way. Recorded as a criticism of rampant greed, its "Money money money money money" chorus came, in one of those reinterpretations that songs have to grapple with, to represent that greed. It was most memorably used as the theme song to what was supposed to be a lighthearted "reality show" hosted by a man who, because this is Hell, we are all living in Hell now, is a deranged hateful racist who rules what is nominally the most powerful country in the world.
(Sorry.)
So that's why I didn't go with the O'Jays' version. Defunkt's version has that jittery "New York's OK if you like saxophones" darkness and intensity to it.
I should note that one area where the O'Jays' song excels over Pink Floyd's is in the bassline, the work of a brilliant, fascinating, and undersung musician by the name of Anthony Jackson, a funk bassist whose chief influences were Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane and Olivier Messiaen. In contrast the bassline for "Money" is the work of a somewhat clumsy and inelegant architecture school dropout who had difficulty playing in 7/4.
Black Flag - Police Story (Us and Them): When I was younger, the song on Dark Side of the Moon that hit me the hardest was "Time". Since 2016, it's "Us and Them". It speaks to me hard of that sense of helplessness in the face of violence. Stupid, absurd, apparently unavoidable. They think I want to kill them (I don't, for the record), so the only way can think of to protect themselves is to kill me first. Which in turn means that the only way I can think of to protect myself...
Stupid. Stupid and absurd, like I said. And Black Flag encapsulate that in about 90 seconds (mostly by not including a sax solo, probably) with "Police Story".
They're the same fucking song, though. Maybe Black Flag says it a little better; Waters had deep compassion and occasionally deep insight and could be a bit of a British public school poet at times.
The Rolling Stones - She's a Rainbow (Any Colour You Like): I'll level with you, I don't really think Any Colour You Like is _about_ anything. I think it's a filler song, and I think it's a fun song to listen to and serves an important purpose in the larger flow of the album, but I'm skeptical of the idea that the song has a larger meaning in and of itself.
So I just put in "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones, because "colour", because it's the song that came to mind, because it's a good fucking song.
David Bowie - All the Madmen (Brain Damage): And here we have the famous conclusion. Both Bowie and Waters had close, harrowing experiences with insanity. With Waters, it was Syd, and with Bowie it was his brother. They both navigate this territory with compassion and honesty, in my estimation.
There's an old bootleg tape of an interview some awful, clueless student interviewer in America did with the band. He asks them why Syd isn't in the band, to which Waters, already a little fed up with the young man's utter idiocy, bluntly says that Syd went mad. The interviewer's jaw-dropping follow-up question: "Is anybody else in the band going to go mad?"
For the past few years I've gotten used to trying to find accidental deeper meaning in statements of mind-boggling idiocy. We all have to survive in our own ways. In this case, there's a deeper fear that this stupid asshole sort of glancingly touched on. The fear that madness is contagious. That it could spread. That we could be next.
And at some point the most healthy response is to throw up one's hands and accept the possibility. Worrying about it changes nothing. Fine, you know, if that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be. I'll fucking be crazy. Maybe there's more embrace in Bowie, more horror of the malevolent Other in Waters. Maybe that's why I like Bowie's song more.
Neutral Milk Hotel - Everything Is (Eclipse): I think this is the bit where Mr. Waters and I have to part ways. Having considered it for a very long time, I think what he's saying here is wrong. He overreaches. He engages in literally all-or-nothing thinking and comes up on the side of "nothing". Everything he's said up to this point has been true and honest.
These were the last lyrics he wrote for the record. Initial performances, in January of 1972, didn't have this piece, with "Brain Damage" instead kind of falling apart into chaos and noise at the end. I guess it was less artistically satisfying, I acknowledge that we like a good solid conclusive ending, but the chaos was warranted, and the conclusion isn't. You're going to do a song about "everything"? What comes to mind is the first Neutral Milk Hotel single (which, coincidentally, opens with a street interview of the sort that pepper "Dark Side of the Moon"). You want me to tell you about everything, and this is all I can tell you - nonsense lyrics and this chorus:
"Everything is beautiful here
It's spinning circles round my ears
I'm finally breaking free from fear
And it's fading..."
Fade out.
Sunday, 19 April 2020
Liveblog: Some records from my friend Vic's favorite records of 2020 so far
CW: Suicide
(this is just becoming a running joke at this point, right? Every single post I make I somehow find some way to mention self-harm or suicide. Like, yeah, this isn't just a coincidence, right? If it's damaging to you to read frank talk about self-harm or suicide probably best that you not read this blog at all, sorry. I'll continue putting content warnings on of course.)
So my friend posted a list of his favorite 2020 records thus far and I gave 19 of them trial listens, not complete listens but just brief little evaluations. Here are my live notes on what I heard, lightly edited.
This is what they used to do in like "downbeat" and so on back in the day, I think. They'd have some jazz musician "blind listen" to a bunch of records and they'd just talk about them. Well I'm not a musician but I enjoy a good "blind listen", so yeah, here we go. First:
Here's my shortlist of 2020 records I like, prior to listening to the 19 records from his list:
against all logic - 2017-2019 (house)
algiers - there is no year (???)
black curse - endless wound (black/death metal)
borg - the triumph of spring (dungeon synth)
doctor nerve - LOUD (brutal prog)
downy - 7th album "untitled" (math rock)
ekmeles - a howl, that was also a prayer (classical)
emme physema - chronic bronchitis (bob drake-engineered weirdness)
eris drew & octo octa - forest throwdown (4 hours of trans-affirming house)
fiona apple - catch the bolt cutters (???)
v/a - psychographs EP (house)
game theory - across the barrier of sound: postscript (power pop; archival)
helena hauff - boiler room: streaming from isolation (dark electronic)
internal rot - grieving birth (grindcore)
melkbelly - pith (noise rock)
nicolas jaar - cenizas (electronic)
pugfugly - destructivator 2 soundtrack (chiptune)
r.a.p. ferriera - purple moonlight pages (intellectual jazz rap)
rustin man - clockdust ("rock")
scatter faster - cocaine in the catholic church (bluegrass)
sepehr- shaytoon (electronic)
shopping - all or nothing (post-punk)
slutavverkning - arbets sorgemusik - del ii (punk)
squarepusher - be up a hello (drill and bass)
suzanne kujala - organ music of the 21st century (classical)
swamp dogg - sorry you couldn't make it (soul)
tricot - pitch back (post-rock)
triple ente - demo ii (jimmy punk)
victory over the sun - a tessitura of transfiguration (black metal)
Notes:
Matthew Shaw 'Into The Unknown'
matthew shaw sounds nice. is this guy from the pop group or something?
nice klangwelt
never heard of him
apparently this is a pretty obscure record, limited edition of 50 lol
Caspian 'On Circles'
caspian's page for this music has no hype text at all, that's interesting
i'm so used to over the top breathless praise on bandcamp
instead it's, like, here's the record
i'm just going into it blind
i have no idea what sort of music it is
Wild Nothing 'Laughing Gas'
oh, i can see why wild nothing grabbed you, this is very much a vic ep :slight_smile:
i'm getting more into the '80s
but i still have a limited tolerance for gated syndrums
i mean, they're on the sophistipop rather than the synthwave end
Carla Bley / Steve Swallow / Andy Sheppard 'Life Goes On'
this carla bley is super ecm. which is cool, but i got limited room for ecm in my life
Moses Boyd 'Dark Matter'
oh, moses boyd is part of this shabaka jazz scene, right?
i know shabaka has a new record out this year, i haven't heard it
oh, you need to hear shabaka hutchings
he's the british kamasi washington
he's at the center of the new british jazz scene
Third Mind 'Third Mind (First Edition)'
oh shit we're starting with an alice coltrane cover
oh wait
is this ALL classic covers?
seriously they're doing some paul butterfield blues band here as well as, like, fred neil?
the third mind
who's in these fuckers
this appeals to me as an old
this is like some aquarium drunkard shit
ohhh, camper van beethoven
no fucking wonder
yeah i used to dig monks of doom back in the day
i know all these tunes
like, every single one of them except the original
this is so much better than that bullshit hype australian nazi psychedelic shit
fuck anybody who has time for them
Nicolas Godin 'Concrete And Glass'
ok let's listen to this air side project
if it'll load
my vpn flaking out a little here
i like air ok
i'll be honest i cut the ulrich schnauss and tandream from my list
like, here's my problem with berlin school
there's too fucking much of it
i'm a gearhead but you can make a 40 minute record of it in 20 minutes
and it'll sound fine
this godin is ok but it sounds a slight bit generic
it's nice but i got 86,000 songs in my library
and it'd be way more if i didn't exercise some fairly stringent controls :slight_smile:
Christine & The Queens 'La Vita Nuova'
i got other french-canadian synthpop jams i prefer
but much love to queer women keeping it real
Emil Brandqvist Trio 'Entering The Woods'
ah, emil brandqvist is more ecm
you really getting into the ecm thing in your old age, eh vic? :slight_smile:
it's cool, we old now
this is legit pretty nice
kinda reminds me of uh
guaraldi
you know what
i'll add it
Robert Cray 'That's What I Heard'
ok, robert cray
idk
modern blues i'm hit or miss on
it just sounds like it's made for white people
and like
i'm really fucking white
but when i listen to blues i don't want to be the target audience
i want to feel like, you know, i don't belong there
Ratboys 'Printer's Devil'
this, i don't know, midwestern indie rock, some of it i'm good with, but this stuff... even if she is from louisville i don't connect with this
also i got them confused with ratdog, and the idea that they can be confused with bob weir's band is hilarious to me
which is why i listened
Tycho 'Simulcast'
more wallpaper music
Tags
ambient avant pop post rock instrumental psychedelic San Francisco
ok, i'm not getting "avant pop" at all out of this
tycho has a different understanding of "avant pop" than i do
the rest of it... sure
pleasant. unexceptional.
Kenny Barron / Dave Holland Trio 'Without Deception'
dave holland and kenny barron! featuring johnathan blake, who is one supposes tony levin to their anderson, bruford, wakeman, and howe
yep. these motherfuckers be old. i like this though because it really puts into perspective how much i like the brandqvist. as much as holland and barron are "jazz legends" the brandqvist just sounds better. this is old shoe music.
EOB "Brasil"
ohhhh, eob is ed o'brien
see, that's how corporate i am
i thought it was an edge reference to "explanation of benefits"
nahhh, it's like, his initials, man
i made it 38 seconds
nope!
Circles Around The Sun 'Circles Around The Sun'
wow, an entire band based around the intermission music from the dead's reunion gigs
i mean, that's easy to make fun of
of course
that would be cruel given that the guy who founded the band fucking killed himself
and this is their first record without him
and here they are doing some kind of sci-fi disco jam
pretending like none of it has ever happened
pretending like pig isn't dead, like keith isn't dead, like brent isn't dead
here look at these cute roller-skating girls
i like psychedelic music but there is something terribly, terribly sad about all this
about these old dudes doing cosplay of golan and globus's "the apple"
yeah i can't watch any more of this, it's too sad
Claudio Simonetti's Goblin 'The Devil Is Back'
claudio simonetti's goblin, "the devil is back":
yeah, this sounds like a 'reunion album'
nope, i think i'll just listen to 'roller' again.
Then Comes Silence 'Machine'
yeah i am not into the goth rock, skip
Ultraista 'Sister'
ok, yes, i am down with this
this is one of those "indie supergroups" that hits me in my sweet spot
famed radiohead producer NIGEL GODRICH puts out his own side band and sometimes these little weird side trips are more satisfying to me than the big-name marquee shit
this bettinson lady, i've never heard of her before, she's a fantastic singer, and surprise surprise, this godrich fellow is actually a pretty good producer, and a drummer from the waronker clan... you know, i did always love that dog.
i like danger mouse too
i know i'm not "supposed to"
glad i gave this a listen
Moaning 'Uneasy Laughter'
you know what i am more interested in the video of the stream
which is just a video of somebody in a tracksuit putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the album cover
i love jigsaw puzzles
the music is less interesting
KEEPERS:
Matthew Shaw - Into the Unknown
The Third Mind - s/t
Emil Brandqvist Trio - Entering the Woods
Ultraista - Sister
(this is just becoming a running joke at this point, right? Every single post I make I somehow find some way to mention self-harm or suicide. Like, yeah, this isn't just a coincidence, right? If it's damaging to you to read frank talk about self-harm or suicide probably best that you not read this blog at all, sorry. I'll continue putting content warnings on of course.)
So my friend posted a list of his favorite 2020 records thus far and I gave 19 of them trial listens, not complete listens but just brief little evaluations. Here are my live notes on what I heard, lightly edited.
This is what they used to do in like "downbeat" and so on back in the day, I think. They'd have some jazz musician "blind listen" to a bunch of records and they'd just talk about them. Well I'm not a musician but I enjoy a good "blind listen", so yeah, here we go. First:
Here's my shortlist of 2020 records I like, prior to listening to the 19 records from his list:
against all logic - 2017-2019 (house)
algiers - there is no year (???)
black curse - endless wound (black/death metal)
borg - the triumph of spring (dungeon synth)
doctor nerve - LOUD (brutal prog)
downy - 7th album "untitled" (math rock)
ekmeles - a howl, that was also a prayer (classical)
emme physema - chronic bronchitis (bob drake-engineered weirdness)
eris drew & octo octa - forest throwdown (4 hours of trans-affirming house)
fiona apple - catch the bolt cutters (???)
v/a - psychographs EP (house)
game theory - across the barrier of sound: postscript (power pop; archival)
helena hauff - boiler room: streaming from isolation (dark electronic)
internal rot - grieving birth (grindcore)
melkbelly - pith (noise rock)
nicolas jaar - cenizas (electronic)
pugfugly - destructivator 2 soundtrack (chiptune)
r.a.p. ferriera - purple moonlight pages (intellectual jazz rap)
rustin man - clockdust ("rock")
scatter faster - cocaine in the catholic church (bluegrass)
sepehr- shaytoon (electronic)
shopping - all or nothing (post-punk)
slutavverkning - arbets sorgemusik - del ii (punk)
squarepusher - be up a hello (drill and bass)
suzanne kujala - organ music of the 21st century (classical)
swamp dogg - sorry you couldn't make it (soul)
tricot - pitch back (post-rock)
triple ente - demo ii (jimmy punk)
victory over the sun - a tessitura of transfiguration (black metal)
Notes:
Matthew Shaw 'Into The Unknown'
matthew shaw sounds nice. is this guy from the pop group or something?
nice klangwelt
never heard of him
apparently this is a pretty obscure record, limited edition of 50 lol
Caspian 'On Circles'
caspian's page for this music has no hype text at all, that's interesting
i'm so used to over the top breathless praise on bandcamp
instead it's, like, here's the record
i'm just going into it blind
i have no idea what sort of music it is
Wild Nothing 'Laughing Gas'
oh, i can see why wild nothing grabbed you, this is very much a vic ep :slight_smile:
i'm getting more into the '80s
but i still have a limited tolerance for gated syndrums
i mean, they're on the sophistipop rather than the synthwave end
Carla Bley / Steve Swallow / Andy Sheppard 'Life Goes On'
this carla bley is super ecm. which is cool, but i got limited room for ecm in my life
Moses Boyd 'Dark Matter'
oh, moses boyd is part of this shabaka jazz scene, right?
i know shabaka has a new record out this year, i haven't heard it
oh, you need to hear shabaka hutchings
he's the british kamasi washington
he's at the center of the new british jazz scene
Third Mind 'Third Mind (First Edition)'
oh shit we're starting with an alice coltrane cover
oh wait
is this ALL classic covers?
seriously they're doing some paul butterfield blues band here as well as, like, fred neil?
the third mind
who's in these fuckers
this appeals to me as an old
this is like some aquarium drunkard shit
ohhh, camper van beethoven
no fucking wonder
yeah i used to dig monks of doom back in the day
i know all these tunes
like, every single one of them except the original
this is so much better than that bullshit hype australian nazi psychedelic shit
fuck anybody who has time for them
Nicolas Godin 'Concrete And Glass'
ok let's listen to this air side project
if it'll load
my vpn flaking out a little here
i like air ok
i'll be honest i cut the ulrich schnauss and tandream from my list
like, here's my problem with berlin school
there's too fucking much of it
i'm a gearhead but you can make a 40 minute record of it in 20 minutes
and it'll sound fine
this godin is ok but it sounds a slight bit generic
it's nice but i got 86,000 songs in my library
and it'd be way more if i didn't exercise some fairly stringent controls :slight_smile:
Christine & The Queens 'La Vita Nuova'
i got other french-canadian synthpop jams i prefer
but much love to queer women keeping it real
Emil Brandqvist Trio 'Entering The Woods'
ah, emil brandqvist is more ecm
you really getting into the ecm thing in your old age, eh vic? :slight_smile:
it's cool, we old now
this is legit pretty nice
kinda reminds me of uh
guaraldi
you know what
i'll add it
Robert Cray 'That's What I Heard'
ok, robert cray
idk
modern blues i'm hit or miss on
it just sounds like it's made for white people
and like
i'm really fucking white
but when i listen to blues i don't want to be the target audience
i want to feel like, you know, i don't belong there
Ratboys 'Printer's Devil'
this, i don't know, midwestern indie rock, some of it i'm good with, but this stuff... even if she is from louisville i don't connect with this
also i got them confused with ratdog, and the idea that they can be confused with bob weir's band is hilarious to me
which is why i listened
Tycho 'Simulcast'
more wallpaper music
Tags
ambient avant pop post rock instrumental psychedelic San Francisco
ok, i'm not getting "avant pop" at all out of this
tycho has a different understanding of "avant pop" than i do
the rest of it... sure
pleasant. unexceptional.
Kenny Barron / Dave Holland Trio 'Without Deception'
dave holland and kenny barron! featuring johnathan blake, who is one supposes tony levin to their anderson, bruford, wakeman, and howe
yep. these motherfuckers be old. i like this though because it really puts into perspective how much i like the brandqvist. as much as holland and barron are "jazz legends" the brandqvist just sounds better. this is old shoe music.
EOB "Brasil"
ohhhh, eob is ed o'brien
see, that's how corporate i am
i thought it was an edge reference to "explanation of benefits"
nahhh, it's like, his initials, man
i made it 38 seconds
nope!
Circles Around The Sun 'Circles Around The Sun'
wow, an entire band based around the intermission music from the dead's reunion gigs
i mean, that's easy to make fun of
of course
that would be cruel given that the guy who founded the band fucking killed himself
and this is their first record without him
and here they are doing some kind of sci-fi disco jam
pretending like none of it has ever happened
pretending like pig isn't dead, like keith isn't dead, like brent isn't dead
here look at these cute roller-skating girls
i like psychedelic music but there is something terribly, terribly sad about all this
about these old dudes doing cosplay of golan and globus's "the apple"
yeah i can't watch any more of this, it's too sad
Claudio Simonetti's Goblin 'The Devil Is Back'
claudio simonetti's goblin, "the devil is back":
yeah, this sounds like a 'reunion album'
nope, i think i'll just listen to 'roller' again.
Then Comes Silence 'Machine'
yeah i am not into the goth rock, skip
Ultraista 'Sister'
ok, yes, i am down with this
this is one of those "indie supergroups" that hits me in my sweet spot
famed radiohead producer NIGEL GODRICH puts out his own side band and sometimes these little weird side trips are more satisfying to me than the big-name marquee shit
this bettinson lady, i've never heard of her before, she's a fantastic singer, and surprise surprise, this godrich fellow is actually a pretty good producer, and a drummer from the waronker clan... you know, i did always love that dog.
i like danger mouse too
i know i'm not "supposed to"
glad i gave this a listen
Moaning 'Uneasy Laughter'
you know what i am more interested in the video of the stream
which is just a video of somebody in a tracksuit putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the album cover
i love jigsaw puzzles
the music is less interesting
KEEPERS:
Matthew Shaw - Into the Unknown
The Third Mind - s/t
Emil Brandqvist Trio - Entering the Woods
Ultraista - Sister
Saturday, 18 April 2020
The Phantom Menace: Wrapping Things Up
So a couple brief notes on the third act. This is where everything goes to shit. Pretty early on in it the Jedi kill Elana. Right now I'm thinking an assassination where she's making a speech calling out the Jedi for the child sex abuse and the slaves. The speech is being broadcast. The Jedi take over the feed but the scenes of the ensuing Jedi slaughter of the people who were peacably assembled to watch the speech gets seen by everybody.
Before that there is a last meeting of the leaders of the revolution. Sheev is frustrated because there are more people wanting to be stormtroopers than he can get armor for. Vader's response is to only take the tall ones. They're not there to fight, after all, so there's no problem making decisions based on superficial shit like that.
We do get back to Senator Long (remember him?). He's not a major character in the film and hasn't been seen since the first act but he's making a propaganda speech that goes pretty sour. Basically this goes down like Ceaucescu's last speech. It's not stated or shown what happens to him, but it is, in fact, the same thing that happened to Ceaucescu.
The anti-Jedi/anti-Republic riots have an ugly side. We see people spray-painting the Empire symbol (oh, the Empire needs a new symbol, the one that already exists is a bit crap; it's definitely a failing of the Star Wars universe that the Rebellion has a more recognizable symbol than the oppressors) everywhere, smashing windows, burning down Jedi temples. Big parades of Stormtroopers marching down the streets.
Through all this Sheev is aging rapidly. Fucking with the occult has given him the power to shoot lightning out of his fingertips, but it is taking a huge toll on his body.
The fighting escalates. Jedi are being beset by mobs. All their flashy skill with lightsabers doesn't actually help them when they're being cornered ... oh, you know what? Why don't we put a tribute to Fritz Lang's "M" in there, the sequence where the mob goes after Peter Lorre's child murderer, as well? That's got sort of the mood we're going for. I know these are all old-ass films, but one of the things I'm going with is an appeal to tradition. Lucas' films are deeply nostalgic movies; all I'm doing is changing the source material from shitty Flash Gordon serials to the more acclaimed cinema of the era.
The ending sequence plays out roughly in this order - Vader's lightsaber battle with Kenobi. This doesn't actually conclude, what happens is Sheev butts in to get involved and starts shooting Force lightning everywhere. He can't actually control the force lightning very well. Since they're fighting in a forest (I've just arbitrarily decided), everything catches on fire and they all have to get the fuck out of there without resolving their fight.
Well it turns out that on the same planet Han Solo is fighting to liberate the Wookiee slaves (it's not actually Kashyyyk, there's a huge diaspora of Wookiee slaves). This, I'm gonna say, is where he saves Chewbacca's life - we've had enough battles, I kind of want to show the wider effects of all the unrest, all the people who are suffering because of this conflict. Honestly, he's not fighting at all, he's just hanging out in a highly populated urban area with all sorts of people in it. Maybe he has to choose between saving a human and saving a Wookiee and he saves the Wookiee. To appeal to the audience, who we can assume will be pretty racist and whose natural sympathies will be with the human, we'll make the human a racist bastard, so the audience will cheer when he dies. Am I being too cynical here?
Anyway, having had the necessary big battle between Kenobi and Vader and having wrapped up Han Solo's arc, we can now move to the finale. I do note that Yoda and Lando don't have anything left to do in the third act - we can throw in some brief shots of them while we're showing the broader effects of the rebellion - Yoda goes to Dagobah, Lando goes to Cloud City. Cloud City is still under construction; there's a big sign outside that says something like "Coming Soon! Cloud City Luxury Casino!" Because fuck subtlety. Oh, and we see Kenobi settling down on Tattooine as well. Basically writing all of these characters out of the picture until they come back in the earlier films.
And then we culminate in Darth Vader and his stormtroopers' triumphant victory over the remaining Jedi, which, as I've said, plays out as a tribute to the last reel of "Napoleon". Roll credits.
I think I'm actually done with this one for now. Sure, I could come back to flesh things out, write things out in detail, but it's not like this is going to ever actually get made. I feel like I've finished working this crap out of my system. People start talking about some Star Wars bullshit to me in the future and I can bring up the plot outline I've worked out for a prequel film and eventually I think they will get the message: Do not talk to me about Star Wars.
Hopefully tomorrow I can leave this silliness behind me and we can get back to more typical fare for this blog.
PS - Oh, forgot one thing. Since I'm leaving out the droids, I need to put in a merch character. So Vader owns a cute alien cat. There's a photo of him holding the cat hanging on the wall in his cruddy apartment. It looks like he had it taken at Sears in 1982. Also! During the last third meeting, while shit is hitting the fan, Sheev shows off the weapons he's added to his biosphere (which, reminder, is the Death Star). He calls it the "Strategic Defence Initiative".
Before that there is a last meeting of the leaders of the revolution. Sheev is frustrated because there are more people wanting to be stormtroopers than he can get armor for. Vader's response is to only take the tall ones. They're not there to fight, after all, so there's no problem making decisions based on superficial shit like that.
We do get back to Senator Long (remember him?). He's not a major character in the film and hasn't been seen since the first act but he's making a propaganda speech that goes pretty sour. Basically this goes down like Ceaucescu's last speech. It's not stated or shown what happens to him, but it is, in fact, the same thing that happened to Ceaucescu.
The anti-Jedi/anti-Republic riots have an ugly side. We see people spray-painting the Empire symbol (oh, the Empire needs a new symbol, the one that already exists is a bit crap; it's definitely a failing of the Star Wars universe that the Rebellion has a more recognizable symbol than the oppressors) everywhere, smashing windows, burning down Jedi temples. Big parades of Stormtroopers marching down the streets.
Through all this Sheev is aging rapidly. Fucking with the occult has given him the power to shoot lightning out of his fingertips, but it is taking a huge toll on his body.
The fighting escalates. Jedi are being beset by mobs. All their flashy skill with lightsabers doesn't actually help them when they're being cornered ... oh, you know what? Why don't we put a tribute to Fritz Lang's "M" in there, the sequence where the mob goes after Peter Lorre's child murderer, as well? That's got sort of the mood we're going for. I know these are all old-ass films, but one of the things I'm going with is an appeal to tradition. Lucas' films are deeply nostalgic movies; all I'm doing is changing the source material from shitty Flash Gordon serials to the more acclaimed cinema of the era.
The ending sequence plays out roughly in this order - Vader's lightsaber battle with Kenobi. This doesn't actually conclude, what happens is Sheev butts in to get involved and starts shooting Force lightning everywhere. He can't actually control the force lightning very well. Since they're fighting in a forest (I've just arbitrarily decided), everything catches on fire and they all have to get the fuck out of there without resolving their fight.
Well it turns out that on the same planet Han Solo is fighting to liberate the Wookiee slaves (it's not actually Kashyyyk, there's a huge diaspora of Wookiee slaves). This, I'm gonna say, is where he saves Chewbacca's life - we've had enough battles, I kind of want to show the wider effects of all the unrest, all the people who are suffering because of this conflict. Honestly, he's not fighting at all, he's just hanging out in a highly populated urban area with all sorts of people in it. Maybe he has to choose between saving a human and saving a Wookiee and he saves the Wookiee. To appeal to the audience, who we can assume will be pretty racist and whose natural sympathies will be with the human, we'll make the human a racist bastard, so the audience will cheer when he dies. Am I being too cynical here?
Anyway, having had the necessary big battle between Kenobi and Vader and having wrapped up Han Solo's arc, we can now move to the finale. I do note that Yoda and Lando don't have anything left to do in the third act - we can throw in some brief shots of them while we're showing the broader effects of the rebellion - Yoda goes to Dagobah, Lando goes to Cloud City. Cloud City is still under construction; there's a big sign outside that says something like "Coming Soon! Cloud City Luxury Casino!" Because fuck subtlety. Oh, and we see Kenobi settling down on Tattooine as well. Basically writing all of these characters out of the picture until they come back in the earlier films.
And then we culminate in Darth Vader and his stormtroopers' triumphant victory over the remaining Jedi, which, as I've said, plays out as a tribute to the last reel of "Napoleon". Roll credits.
I think I'm actually done with this one for now. Sure, I could come back to flesh things out, write things out in detail, but it's not like this is going to ever actually get made. I feel like I've finished working this crap out of my system. People start talking about some Star Wars bullshit to me in the future and I can bring up the plot outline I've worked out for a prequel film and eventually I think they will get the message: Do not talk to me about Star Wars.
Hopefully tomorrow I can leave this silliness behind me and we can get back to more typical fare for this blog.
PS - Oh, forgot one thing. Since I'm leaving out the droids, I need to put in a merch character. So Vader owns a cute alien cat. There's a photo of him holding the cat hanging on the wall in his cruddy apartment. It looks like he had it taken at Sears in 1982. Also! During the last third meeting, while shit is hitting the fan, Sheev shows off the weapons he's added to his biosphere (which, reminder, is the Death Star). He calls it the "Strategic Defence Initiative".
Friday, 17 April 2020
The Phantom Menace: Brainstorming
OK, let's see what I can get done here. It was twelve hours ago I was thinking about this silliness and I'm rapidly losing any memory of where I was going with things.
I believe I'd decided it was about time to get back to Han Solo. He's dramatically an important character in this because he's one of our "ordinary person" POV characters. I don't really remember the plot of "The Hidden Fortress" so I don't know how slavishly "Star Wars" copies it, but I really do think the pacing of the first Star Wars film is pretty good - a mix of the cosmic and the personal. There's a lot of American Graffiti in the portrayal of Luke, a farm boy out in the boonies, and the later films don't really have that view from the ground.
My thought here is to wrap up the first act of the film by having Han meet up with Lando. I really haven't seen Solo so I don't know what the hell happens in it but it seems like a good story to tell at least. There's some dialogue that establishes some stuff about the world and the characters - Han isn't impressed by his first look at the Falcon, which Lando is defensive about, and claims that the Falcon is really maneuverable for a cargo ship and can hold its own in a firefight with customs agents. Viewers who have seen the first couple films will know this is true, but crucially I'm _not_ assuming that viewers know everything that happens in the first trilogy, because that's not how you make a quality film. In response to Han's questions he says that the unorthodox design isn't super aerodynamic, but helps it evade scanners. Han asks why Lando needs a human navigator instead of a droid. Lando - "And alert every customs agent between here and Tattooine? Every one of those things has a back door directly to Coruscant." It's not a major plot point and I don't have any idea how to reconcile this notion with the ubiquity of droids in Lucas' trilogy, but I do want to introduce the idea that droids are viewed by some as surveillance devices under the control of a corrupt and untrustworthy government.
Lando's assertion that the Falcon can handle herself in a firefight is tested in the next scene, when they're spotted by a couple customs agents. Han is assigned to gunnery duties while Lando is in charge of evasion. Han being young and new has a hard time hitting the agents, particularly while Lando is conducting advanced flight maneuvers, but does eventually destroy both ships and they jump to warp before reinforcements arrive.
The problem here is that this maybe mirrors a little bit too closely the Falcon's escape from Tattooine in episode IV. I don't think it would be enough to just do the same thing again with souped up special effects - there needs to be some twist to differentiate this from this, particularly since it occurs at the same place in the movie - this is the end of the first act. I'll have to revisit this scene later.
We start out with in the second act with a couple of intercut montages, montages of battles between the Orthodox and Reform Jedi in pursuit of "Sith Lords" and montages of smuggling operations conducted by Lando and Han on the Falcon. This does a couple of things. It allows time to pass and it allows Han and Lando to get to know each other and become friends. It also allows the relationship between Vader and Elana to develop.
Elana is going to be a challenging character to write for. The issue here is that she's the token woman in the film and therefore has a big weight to carry. There are also a lot of crappy storytelling techniques that are used with the token woman, particularly since the audience expectation is going to be that she's played by a young, attractive white woman. Unfortunately there's only so much subversion I can do within the confines of this universe, because the Star Wars universe treats women like shit. If I did a film that passed the Bechdel Test I don't really feel like I'd be telling an authentic Star Wars story here. I'm also particularly constrained by knowing that certain characters _have_ to survive the films. We know what happens to all of the characters who reappear, the interest is just in figuring out _how_ it happens. So I know, for instance, that Elana dies towards the end of the film in a vicious and messy attack by the Jedi that kills tens of thousands of innocent civilians. What I don't want to do is say "Oh Darth Vader turned evil because his girlfriend got killed", that's a bullshit story.
Elana isn't a good or virtuous character. If she lived she'd possibly be worse than Darth Vader. She's got this tremendous and terrifying capacity for cruelty and brutality. Hell, there might even be an argument that the Jedi are doing the right thing by killing her when and where they do, despite all of the innocents dead. So I have to be careful about how I portray the development of her relationship with Vader. They're not going to go on any dates to fancy restaurants or any shit like that. Nobody wants to see Darth Vader suck face with some chick. Also, he literally is more than 30 years older than her, and that's fucking creepy. She needs to be tough and cruel and, really, dominant, because that's what's called for in this setting. None of this peril monkey shit. She's in a misogynist galaxy surrounded by people who hate her and look on her as lesser, but under no circumstances is there ever to be a threat of rape, implicit or explicit, against her. That's not the kind of character she is.
So anyway, this montage sequence is going to show a bunch of battles that take place in nominally fantastic and exciting settings, but we don't care about the outcomes, we're not invested in any of them. These are boring, routine, meaningless battles. We don't see how any of them start, how any of them end. The purpose is to show how the relationship between Vader and Elana develops, and it'll mostly be by implication. They're still fighting each other, but it's for show. In one of the battles a Reform Jedi, hell, let's make it the one who was giving Elana shit earlier, is in a position to kill Vader, and Elana frags him. "Whoops," she says, in a monotone.
The growing relationship isn't, incidentally, doing anything to stop Vader from fucking everything that moves. Just like his relationship with Elana, this is implied - shots of people leaving or entering his apartment between battles. In fact, let's make part of the montage an endless succession of women leaving his apartment. As the montage goes on, Elana appears more and more in the rotation. At the end, she's about to leave, and then she turns around and goes back in. Yeah, I like that.
All of this is, again, intercut with Lando and Han flying the Falcon, getting into space battles. All that comes out of this is that the next time we see them they are good friends; nothing else really important on this end of things, other than, again, gradually showing the "glamorous" smuggler's life as dull and boring. Maybe there's some shots of them being bored, playing that goofy chess game with each other, sleeping, gradually becoming more predominant over exciting space battles.
The second act proper kicks off with Vader and Elana leaving the Jedi order... I said a little about this in an earlier post. Obi-Wan has begun noticing ligatures and whip marks on Anakin (let's just say that he alone still refers to Vader as "Anakin"). These are not typical Jedi battle scars. The nature of his relationship with Elana is, again, mostly alluded to, circumlocuted.
This isn't to say they immediately become "Sith Lords". Today I'm thinking that the Sith's relationship to the Jedi is sort of the relationship of Satanism to Christianity, shot through with this sort of Blavatskyan bunkum. Sheev is really into all this Sith shit (as Elana thinks of it), and all the Jedi, despite their differences, are pretty unanimous in believing that Vader and Elana have embraced the "dark side", but Elana doesn't remotely think of it that way. Vader is iffy on the whole "dark side" thing, torn between Elana and Sheev's views on it. Mostly they're pissed off about all the Jedi bullshit.
Elana is a violent revolutionary, a Charlotte Corday type. She's the one who really kicks things into high gear towards the end of the second act when she assassinates Senator Miramar in a sequence that, yeah, let's just make it an overt tribute to David's "Death of Marat" because we're pretentious like that. She didn't like Miramar before, but she finds out something terrible he's done - I don't know, take your pick, he's done shitloads of detestable things. Maybe she's just really naive and doesn't know about _any_ of them and Vader just happens to mention it. Anyway, at this point they are definitely plotting the violent overthrow of the Jedi, but not quite yet. Ichi has started training his troops.
He's gotten quite a few of them from Han Solo. I've decided that he does, in fact, find out that he's been smuggling Wookiee slaves at least some of the time, at the behest of high-ranking Jedi like Senator Miramar. Let's say there's a technical fault with the Falcon and he has to go into the cargo area to help Lando, who knows full well what their cargo is but hasn't been fully forthcoming, repair it.
Solo is not at all down with this and demands they liberate their cargo. Lando, unsurprisingly, is not enthusiastic about this. He agrees to a coin toss, though. If Solo wins, he gets the Falcon with its cargo to do with as he pleases; if Lando wins, the same. If this seems like an unusually generous wager, perhaps Lando isn't actually that happy about being a slaver either and is looking for an excuse to get out of the business without immediately becoming the target of every bounty hunter in the galaxy.
Han wins, of course. He attempts to deliver the Wookiee through some underground railroad connections he has, which is how they get to Ichi. However, the Wookiee select one of their number to serve Han in acknowledgement of the life debt they owe him. Han is not really enthusiastic about this - he didn't put his neck on the line liberating slaves so he could become a slave owner himself - but this is a cultural expectation of the Wookiee. He'd be insulting them if he didn't. Well, fine, but he insists on treating Chewbacca as an equal and not a servant.
Maybe this last bit we put off to the third act, though. This kind of wraps up Han's arc and he doesn't have a whole lot to do in the third act. So say he just liberates the Wookiee and then the Falcon is peripherally involved in the wider rebellion against the Jedi after they slaughter tens of thousands of innocents in order to kill Elana. Maybe Han doesn't know shit about Elana or Vader or any of that and he's just outraged and caught up in the wider battles, maybe it's one of these battles where he saves Chewbacca's life and that's where the "life debt" thing comes from. That way he doesn't just disappear in the second act. Maybe upon delivering the Wookiee to Ichi he devotes himself full-time to ending Wookiee slavery and that's what he does in the third act and the way it turns out is, we can infer, what causes him to be cynical, disillusioned, and apolitical in "A New Hope". I definitely don't want him to pop out of the narrative and make a "surprise" reappearance because again that would be way too much like "A New Hope". He stays in the picture all the way through.
I believe I'd decided it was about time to get back to Han Solo. He's dramatically an important character in this because he's one of our "ordinary person" POV characters. I don't really remember the plot of "The Hidden Fortress" so I don't know how slavishly "Star Wars" copies it, but I really do think the pacing of the first Star Wars film is pretty good - a mix of the cosmic and the personal. There's a lot of American Graffiti in the portrayal of Luke, a farm boy out in the boonies, and the later films don't really have that view from the ground.
My thought here is to wrap up the first act of the film by having Han meet up with Lando. I really haven't seen Solo so I don't know what the hell happens in it but it seems like a good story to tell at least. There's some dialogue that establishes some stuff about the world and the characters - Han isn't impressed by his first look at the Falcon, which Lando is defensive about, and claims that the Falcon is really maneuverable for a cargo ship and can hold its own in a firefight with customs agents. Viewers who have seen the first couple films will know this is true, but crucially I'm _not_ assuming that viewers know everything that happens in the first trilogy, because that's not how you make a quality film. In response to Han's questions he says that the unorthodox design isn't super aerodynamic, but helps it evade scanners. Han asks why Lando needs a human navigator instead of a droid. Lando - "And alert every customs agent between here and Tattooine? Every one of those things has a back door directly to Coruscant." It's not a major plot point and I don't have any idea how to reconcile this notion with the ubiquity of droids in Lucas' trilogy, but I do want to introduce the idea that droids are viewed by some as surveillance devices under the control of a corrupt and untrustworthy government.
Lando's assertion that the Falcon can handle herself in a firefight is tested in the next scene, when they're spotted by a couple customs agents. Han is assigned to gunnery duties while Lando is in charge of evasion. Han being young and new has a hard time hitting the agents, particularly while Lando is conducting advanced flight maneuvers, but does eventually destroy both ships and they jump to warp before reinforcements arrive.
The problem here is that this maybe mirrors a little bit too closely the Falcon's escape from Tattooine in episode IV. I don't think it would be enough to just do the same thing again with souped up special effects - there needs to be some twist to differentiate this from this, particularly since it occurs at the same place in the movie - this is the end of the first act. I'll have to revisit this scene later.
We start out with in the second act with a couple of intercut montages, montages of battles between the Orthodox and Reform Jedi in pursuit of "Sith Lords" and montages of smuggling operations conducted by Lando and Han on the Falcon. This does a couple of things. It allows time to pass and it allows Han and Lando to get to know each other and become friends. It also allows the relationship between Vader and Elana to develop.
Elana is going to be a challenging character to write for. The issue here is that she's the token woman in the film and therefore has a big weight to carry. There are also a lot of crappy storytelling techniques that are used with the token woman, particularly since the audience expectation is going to be that she's played by a young, attractive white woman. Unfortunately there's only so much subversion I can do within the confines of this universe, because the Star Wars universe treats women like shit. If I did a film that passed the Bechdel Test I don't really feel like I'd be telling an authentic Star Wars story here. I'm also particularly constrained by knowing that certain characters _have_ to survive the films. We know what happens to all of the characters who reappear, the interest is just in figuring out _how_ it happens. So I know, for instance, that Elana dies towards the end of the film in a vicious and messy attack by the Jedi that kills tens of thousands of innocent civilians. What I don't want to do is say "Oh Darth Vader turned evil because his girlfriend got killed", that's a bullshit story.
Elana isn't a good or virtuous character. If she lived she'd possibly be worse than Darth Vader. She's got this tremendous and terrifying capacity for cruelty and brutality. Hell, there might even be an argument that the Jedi are doing the right thing by killing her when and where they do, despite all of the innocents dead. So I have to be careful about how I portray the development of her relationship with Vader. They're not going to go on any dates to fancy restaurants or any shit like that. Nobody wants to see Darth Vader suck face with some chick. Also, he literally is more than 30 years older than her, and that's fucking creepy. She needs to be tough and cruel and, really, dominant, because that's what's called for in this setting. None of this peril monkey shit. She's in a misogynist galaxy surrounded by people who hate her and look on her as lesser, but under no circumstances is there ever to be a threat of rape, implicit or explicit, against her. That's not the kind of character she is.
So anyway, this montage sequence is going to show a bunch of battles that take place in nominally fantastic and exciting settings, but we don't care about the outcomes, we're not invested in any of them. These are boring, routine, meaningless battles. We don't see how any of them start, how any of them end. The purpose is to show how the relationship between Vader and Elana develops, and it'll mostly be by implication. They're still fighting each other, but it's for show. In one of the battles a Reform Jedi, hell, let's make it the one who was giving Elana shit earlier, is in a position to kill Vader, and Elana frags him. "Whoops," she says, in a monotone.
The growing relationship isn't, incidentally, doing anything to stop Vader from fucking everything that moves. Just like his relationship with Elana, this is implied - shots of people leaving or entering his apartment between battles. In fact, let's make part of the montage an endless succession of women leaving his apartment. As the montage goes on, Elana appears more and more in the rotation. At the end, she's about to leave, and then she turns around and goes back in. Yeah, I like that.
All of this is, again, intercut with Lando and Han flying the Falcon, getting into space battles. All that comes out of this is that the next time we see them they are good friends; nothing else really important on this end of things, other than, again, gradually showing the "glamorous" smuggler's life as dull and boring. Maybe there's some shots of them being bored, playing that goofy chess game with each other, sleeping, gradually becoming more predominant over exciting space battles.
The second act proper kicks off with Vader and Elana leaving the Jedi order... I said a little about this in an earlier post. Obi-Wan has begun noticing ligatures and whip marks on Anakin (let's just say that he alone still refers to Vader as "Anakin"). These are not typical Jedi battle scars. The nature of his relationship with Elana is, again, mostly alluded to, circumlocuted.
This isn't to say they immediately become "Sith Lords". Today I'm thinking that the Sith's relationship to the Jedi is sort of the relationship of Satanism to Christianity, shot through with this sort of Blavatskyan bunkum. Sheev is really into all this Sith shit (as Elana thinks of it), and all the Jedi, despite their differences, are pretty unanimous in believing that Vader and Elana have embraced the "dark side", but Elana doesn't remotely think of it that way. Vader is iffy on the whole "dark side" thing, torn between Elana and Sheev's views on it. Mostly they're pissed off about all the Jedi bullshit.
Elana is a violent revolutionary, a Charlotte Corday type. She's the one who really kicks things into high gear towards the end of the second act when she assassinates Senator Miramar in a sequence that, yeah, let's just make it an overt tribute to David's "Death of Marat" because we're pretentious like that. She didn't like Miramar before, but she finds out something terrible he's done - I don't know, take your pick, he's done shitloads of detestable things. Maybe she's just really naive and doesn't know about _any_ of them and Vader just happens to mention it. Anyway, at this point they are definitely plotting the violent overthrow of the Jedi, but not quite yet. Ichi has started training his troops.
He's gotten quite a few of them from Han Solo. I've decided that he does, in fact, find out that he's been smuggling Wookiee slaves at least some of the time, at the behest of high-ranking Jedi like Senator Miramar. Let's say there's a technical fault with the Falcon and he has to go into the cargo area to help Lando, who knows full well what their cargo is but hasn't been fully forthcoming, repair it.
Solo is not at all down with this and demands they liberate their cargo. Lando, unsurprisingly, is not enthusiastic about this. He agrees to a coin toss, though. If Solo wins, he gets the Falcon with its cargo to do with as he pleases; if Lando wins, the same. If this seems like an unusually generous wager, perhaps Lando isn't actually that happy about being a slaver either and is looking for an excuse to get out of the business without immediately becoming the target of every bounty hunter in the galaxy.
Han wins, of course. He attempts to deliver the Wookiee through some underground railroad connections he has, which is how they get to Ichi. However, the Wookiee select one of their number to serve Han in acknowledgement of the life debt they owe him. Han is not really enthusiastic about this - he didn't put his neck on the line liberating slaves so he could become a slave owner himself - but this is a cultural expectation of the Wookiee. He'd be insulting them if he didn't. Well, fine, but he insists on treating Chewbacca as an equal and not a servant.
Maybe this last bit we put off to the third act, though. This kind of wraps up Han's arc and he doesn't have a whole lot to do in the third act. So say he just liberates the Wookiee and then the Falcon is peripherally involved in the wider rebellion against the Jedi after they slaughter tens of thousands of innocents in order to kill Elana. Maybe Han doesn't know shit about Elana or Vader or any of that and he's just outraged and caught up in the wider battles, maybe it's one of these battles where he saves Chewbacca's life and that's where the "life debt" thing comes from. That way he doesn't just disappear in the second act. Maybe upon delivering the Wookiee to Ichi he devotes himself full-time to ending Wookiee slavery and that's what he does in the third act and the way it turns out is, we can infer, what causes him to be cynical, disillusioned, and apolitical in "A New Hope". I definitely don't want him to pop out of the narrative and make a "surprise" reappearance because again that would be way too much like "A New Hope". He stays in the picture all the way through.
on richard brautigan
cw: suicide
i've loved richard brautigan as a writer for a long, long time. i think i first heard about him from a subgenius lady named annna who was a big fan. there are a few people from those old days i genuinely miss, and she's one of them.
he's not well-reputed as an author, never has been. he gets dismissed as this superficial, hippy-dippy flake. my feeling is that much of his reputation was based on his association with the hippies, and particularly on those first three novels. i can see why someone might not take a poem like "all watched over by machines of loving grace" particularly seriously in these times. or all the poems about the pretty girls and how much he wants to fuck them.
the first book of brautigan's i read was not one of those first three novels - trout fishing in america, a confederate general from big sur, in watermelon sugar - but his fourth, a novel called "the abortion".
this was more of a transitional work. part argument in favor of legalizing abortion (rare, as far as i know, from a male writer in 1970), part meditation on failure, it also features a female protagonist who suffers from what, thinking about it now, i can now clearly recognize as dysphoria. this fascinated me, the character of a beautiful girl who hates the way she looks, hates the way men look at her, thinks of her body as _wrong_.
and brautigan i guess casts the male lead as the "hero", the person who is able to see her for who she really is, oh yes he doesn't care that she happens to be drop-dead fucking gorgeous
i don't believe you richard, i've read your poems about the pretty girls, but it's fiction, and you're dead, and we'll give it a pass
and anyway the story is about an abortion. she gets pregnant and they go to mexico and get an abortion and that's the plot. i get the feeling that brautigan had done this in real life. i have a biography of brautigan somewhere that i should read and haven't gotten around to that might mention it.
mind you, i didn't come to it because i had a burning desire to know more about abortion pre-roe-v-wade. that was a fringe benefit. the book starts out by talking about a library, and it's sort of a borgesian library, and sort of a zine library, and sort of a kook library, and i love libraries, spent a long time shelving books at a bunch of them while i was trying and failing to graduate college. richard brautigan makes a cameo and drops by some of the books he didn't write. he is very sad.
i mean, brautigan was a novelist, he drank too much, he was depressed, he shot himself and nobody found his body for weeks. there's a long-running urban legend about his suicide note that isn't true, so i won't repeat it. i'm not sure he actually left a note. a lot of suicides don't. most of my favorite writers did wind up killing themselves. it's one of the things that dissuaded me from a writer. it was a stupid calculation, of course - not writing didn't spare me from depression - but that's how i thought, and anyway i have a better career that i like more.
even by the standards of 20th century white male writers, though, brautigan was uncommonly miserable. this isn't as evident in the early books, but the later ones, christ, they're some of the most depressing books i have ever read. "dreaming of babylon" in particular. but not just that one, "willard and his bowling trophies", about a dysfunctional bdsm relationship, "so the wind won't blow it all away", which could just as easily be a novel-length suicide note... yeah, i could relate.
it's not just that he was miserable, though, it was that he was innovative. he wasn't particularly "clever", i don't think, didn't try to be "clever". he had some nice poetic words of phrase. wrote novels like a poet. lots of space. came at ideas from strange angles. his mid-career novels he had this thing where he was doing a lot of genre mashups, novels that combined aspects of two not-particularly-literary genres. so "willard and his bowling trophies", for instance, was labelled "a perverse mystery" and combined smut and the mystery novel.
this was what did wind up attracting me about his earlier novels, his interest in form and structure and the absurd. one of my favorite chapters from "a confederate general from big sur" is called "the rivets in ecclesiastes". i don't know if it was on his record, but i can hear him in his gentle, halting voice reading it when i think about it. in this chapter, he writes about reading ecclesiastes (of course it would be Ecclesiastes, the most fatalistic and depressing book of the Bible), but not for the words. instead he reads it over and over again and just counts the punctuation. it's hard for me to really state what that means to me. give me a couple more years and i might be able to try. it's the same sort of thing that draws me to weird fancruft like ARST ARWS, but done with such genuine humanity and compassion!
i will get back to that hatefic, i promise. i'm just apparently uncommonly distracted today and evidently in a discursive mood.
i've loved richard brautigan as a writer for a long, long time. i think i first heard about him from a subgenius lady named annna who was a big fan. there are a few people from those old days i genuinely miss, and she's one of them.
he's not well-reputed as an author, never has been. he gets dismissed as this superficial, hippy-dippy flake. my feeling is that much of his reputation was based on his association with the hippies, and particularly on those first three novels. i can see why someone might not take a poem like "all watched over by machines of loving grace" particularly seriously in these times. or all the poems about the pretty girls and how much he wants to fuck them.
the first book of brautigan's i read was not one of those first three novels - trout fishing in america, a confederate general from big sur, in watermelon sugar - but his fourth, a novel called "the abortion".
this was more of a transitional work. part argument in favor of legalizing abortion (rare, as far as i know, from a male writer in 1970), part meditation on failure, it also features a female protagonist who suffers from what, thinking about it now, i can now clearly recognize as dysphoria. this fascinated me, the character of a beautiful girl who hates the way she looks, hates the way men look at her, thinks of her body as _wrong_.
and brautigan i guess casts the male lead as the "hero", the person who is able to see her for who she really is, oh yes he doesn't care that she happens to be drop-dead fucking gorgeous
i don't believe you richard, i've read your poems about the pretty girls, but it's fiction, and you're dead, and we'll give it a pass
and anyway the story is about an abortion. she gets pregnant and they go to mexico and get an abortion and that's the plot. i get the feeling that brautigan had done this in real life. i have a biography of brautigan somewhere that i should read and haven't gotten around to that might mention it.
mind you, i didn't come to it because i had a burning desire to know more about abortion pre-roe-v-wade. that was a fringe benefit. the book starts out by talking about a library, and it's sort of a borgesian library, and sort of a zine library, and sort of a kook library, and i love libraries, spent a long time shelving books at a bunch of them while i was trying and failing to graduate college. richard brautigan makes a cameo and drops by some of the books he didn't write. he is very sad.
i mean, brautigan was a novelist, he drank too much, he was depressed, he shot himself and nobody found his body for weeks. there's a long-running urban legend about his suicide note that isn't true, so i won't repeat it. i'm not sure he actually left a note. a lot of suicides don't. most of my favorite writers did wind up killing themselves. it's one of the things that dissuaded me from a writer. it was a stupid calculation, of course - not writing didn't spare me from depression - but that's how i thought, and anyway i have a better career that i like more.
even by the standards of 20th century white male writers, though, brautigan was uncommonly miserable. this isn't as evident in the early books, but the later ones, christ, they're some of the most depressing books i have ever read. "dreaming of babylon" in particular. but not just that one, "willard and his bowling trophies", about a dysfunctional bdsm relationship, "so the wind won't blow it all away", which could just as easily be a novel-length suicide note... yeah, i could relate.
it's not just that he was miserable, though, it was that he was innovative. he wasn't particularly "clever", i don't think, didn't try to be "clever". he had some nice poetic words of phrase. wrote novels like a poet. lots of space. came at ideas from strange angles. his mid-career novels he had this thing where he was doing a lot of genre mashups, novels that combined aspects of two not-particularly-literary genres. so "willard and his bowling trophies", for instance, was labelled "a perverse mystery" and combined smut and the mystery novel.
this was what did wind up attracting me about his earlier novels, his interest in form and structure and the absurd. one of my favorite chapters from "a confederate general from big sur" is called "the rivets in ecclesiastes". i don't know if it was on his record, but i can hear him in his gentle, halting voice reading it when i think about it. in this chapter, he writes about reading ecclesiastes (of course it would be Ecclesiastes, the most fatalistic and depressing book of the Bible), but not for the words. instead he reads it over and over again and just counts the punctuation. it's hard for me to really state what that means to me. give me a couple more years and i might be able to try. it's the same sort of thing that draws me to weird fancruft like ARST ARWS, but done with such genuine humanity and compassion!
i will get back to that hatefic, i promise. i'm just apparently uncommonly distracted today and evidently in a discursive mood.
Space Funeral
Woke up at 2 AM again and spent a couple hours lying in bed thinking about how to develop the scenario. If this seems like a problem, it is, but the problem isn't Star Wars. Before I started distracting myself with this nonsense I'd wake up at 2 AM and spend two hours panicking about geopolitics, so trust me, all this is actually a good thing.
Before I start recapping this a brief digression about music. I've been trying to use music to help me write and work, which isn't something that's always easy. Yesterday I found a pretty interesting comp called "Space Funeral" while looking for a copy of an early '70s Paddy Kingsland cut. I assume it's some kind of a bootleg mixtape, maybe from the Blog Era (she says, on her blog). It's kind of an interesting work as a mixtape, because half of it is Ruth White stuff from "Fleurs du Mal" and "Pinions". Then there's a couple of early '70s Radiophonic tracks, a couple obscure haunted organ tracks by V. Mescherin and Vernon Geyer... and then there's Love's "7 and 7 Is", Mink DeVille's "Spanish Stroll, and a Les Rallizes Denudes track. It's those last three offbeat picks that really make this a worthwhile boot mix for me. Anybody can make a weirdo mix of Ruth White and Radiophonic Workshop tracks. To take that and throw in Mink DeVille and Love's greatest garage single... that takes talent!
Looking on Discogs to see if there was an original release of this anywhere I found a couple more records. There's an electronic thing by Expo '70 called Psychic Funeral - Umberto is on it, if that gives you any indication. (Still haven't found that obscure record by the unrelated earlier Brazilian band Expo '80, other than the couple really nice tracks on a comp somewhere.)
I also found a split by Nexus 6 and Funeral Diner. Apparently Funeral Diner are really well-regarded in the screamo scene, but this, their first release, is _not_ terribly well-regarded. Personally I like it a lot more than their later work, which tends towards a certain strain of post-rock that I, rightly or wrongly, dismiss as "boring".
It continues to surprise me how much I like screamo - I grew up in a scene that viewed "emo" as a pejorative, that the only way to go was to be constantly loud, political, and uncompromising. Nowadays I see being "political" in that sense as tiresome. Jello Biafra going off on his constant tedious Noam Chomsky conspiracy rants, and if I point out his tediousness I'm just not GETTING IT, MAN, I'm allying myself with THEM, and then he's off telling you again how this person or that person is a fucking sell-out traitor. Maybe he comes up with a "clever" pejorative nickname for them.
That's just not how I do politics. For me, the personal is political, unavoidably so, and thus all politics is rooted in my direct personal experience. And I can't just nope out of it whenever things start getting "unpleasant" the way a lot of my cishet white male friends tend to, because the unpleasantness has a tendency to being specifically targeted at people like me. Ignoring "politics" can be dangerous to my personal safety.
So I do like screamo, especially once I realize that a lot of the stuff that was claimed to be "screamo" is a later appropriation of the name for a different, less interesting style of music, sort of the thing Skrillex and his ilk did with dubstep. Not all of it, but some of it is really quite good. Today I'm digging the Brave Little Abacus. I definitely need to explore the genre more.
Well, that wasn't a brief digression at all! I guess I'll start a new post to talk about the silly Star Wars crap.
Before I start recapping this a brief digression about music. I've been trying to use music to help me write and work, which isn't something that's always easy. Yesterday I found a pretty interesting comp called "Space Funeral" while looking for a copy of an early '70s Paddy Kingsland cut. I assume it's some kind of a bootleg mixtape, maybe from the Blog Era (she says, on her blog). It's kind of an interesting work as a mixtape, because half of it is Ruth White stuff from "Fleurs du Mal" and "Pinions". Then there's a couple of early '70s Radiophonic tracks, a couple obscure haunted organ tracks by V. Mescherin and Vernon Geyer... and then there's Love's "7 and 7 Is", Mink DeVille's "Spanish Stroll, and a Les Rallizes Denudes track. It's those last three offbeat picks that really make this a worthwhile boot mix for me. Anybody can make a weirdo mix of Ruth White and Radiophonic Workshop tracks. To take that and throw in Mink DeVille and Love's greatest garage single... that takes talent!
Looking on Discogs to see if there was an original release of this anywhere I found a couple more records. There's an electronic thing by Expo '70 called Psychic Funeral - Umberto is on it, if that gives you any indication. (Still haven't found that obscure record by the unrelated earlier Brazilian band Expo '80, other than the couple really nice tracks on a comp somewhere.)
I also found a split by Nexus 6 and Funeral Diner. Apparently Funeral Diner are really well-regarded in the screamo scene, but this, their first release, is _not_ terribly well-regarded. Personally I like it a lot more than their later work, which tends towards a certain strain of post-rock that I, rightly or wrongly, dismiss as "boring".
It continues to surprise me how much I like screamo - I grew up in a scene that viewed "emo" as a pejorative, that the only way to go was to be constantly loud, political, and uncompromising. Nowadays I see being "political" in that sense as tiresome. Jello Biafra going off on his constant tedious Noam Chomsky conspiracy rants, and if I point out his tediousness I'm just not GETTING IT, MAN, I'm allying myself with THEM, and then he's off telling you again how this person or that person is a fucking sell-out traitor. Maybe he comes up with a "clever" pejorative nickname for them.
That's just not how I do politics. For me, the personal is political, unavoidably so, and thus all politics is rooted in my direct personal experience. And I can't just nope out of it whenever things start getting "unpleasant" the way a lot of my cishet white male friends tend to, because the unpleasantness has a tendency to being specifically targeted at people like me. Ignoring "politics" can be dangerous to my personal safety.
So I do like screamo, especially once I realize that a lot of the stuff that was claimed to be "screamo" is a later appropriation of the name for a different, less interesting style of music, sort of the thing Skrillex and his ilk did with dubstep. Not all of it, but some of it is really quite good. Today I'm digging the Brave Little Abacus. I definitely need to explore the genre more.
Well, that wasn't a brief digression at all! I guess I'll start a new post to talk about the silly Star Wars crap.
Thursday, 16 April 2020
Without the Beatles
Y'all, I'm so happy to finally have this finished to share with you. I've been trying for, well, a very long time to compile covers of all of the Beatles original songs released between 1962 and 1970, as heard on the 1987 CD releases, including Past Masters vol. 1 and 2. I've finally finished this to my satisfaction.
The rules are this: One song per artist. I have to like the cover version. I also have to like it as much about as much as, or more than, the original. Admittedly these are super arbitrary standards, but they're not lax. I made very few compromises on this, and I'm willing to stand by the results as, if not ideal or perfect, _good enough_.
I don't have complete write-ups ready, but I have kept a running text file of my playlist. For your delectation, here are my complete results as of 2020-04-16.
Singles and EPs:
Maggie Wong & the Jungle Lynx - From Me To You
Los Solitarios - Gracias Muchacha (Thank You Girl)
The Dickheads - He Loves You
Conjunto Misterio - Sem Ti Não Sei Viver (I'll Get You)
Anand Milind - Tumse Hai Dil Ko (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) / Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand
The Swinging Blue Jeans - This Boy
The Boys - I Call Your Name
Los Reno - Mucho Dinero (I Feel Fine)
The Churchills - She's A Woman
Robert Quine & Jody Harris - Yes It Is
Adrian Belew - I'm Down
Bad Brains - Day Tripper
Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out
Tempest - Paperback Writer
Wang Chung - Rain
Elvis Presley - Lady Madonna
Soulful Strings - The Inner Light
Assagai - Hey Jude
The Head Shop - Revolution
Marcia Griffiths - Don't Let Me Down
Mike Melvoin - Ballad of John and Yoko
The Laughing Dogs - Old Brown Shoe
Bossacucanova - You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Please Please Me:
Daniel Johnston - I Saw Her Standing There
Halloween, Alaska - Misery
The Smithereens - Ask Me Why
The Limit - Please Please Me
Sandie Shaw - Love Me Do
The Mints - P.S. I Love You
Fingerprintz - Do You Want To Know A Secret
The Kestrels - There's A Place
With the Beatles:
The Quick - It Won't Be Long
Moon Martin - All I've Got To Do
Prince Buster - All My Loving
Gregory Phillips - Don't Bother Me
Jackie Lynton - Little Child
The Treasures - Hold Me Tight
The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man
Robert Palmer - Not A Second Time
Wouldn't have imagined this would be the first album I'd wrap up, but life works in mysterious ways. This one is heavily indebted to Douglas's list from 2005 - he definitely has a lot more knowledge about the early Beatles songs than I do.
In this volume, we have Sparks-inspired glam, the obligatory power pop, classic ska, Joe Meek-style pop, Phil Spector-produced doo wop, the Stones (the one obligatory pick from this record) and Robert Palmer in his Gary Numan phase (recorded in 1980, chronologically the latest recording here - a fine illustration of my biases). God, it really does sound fucking great. Short - once one strips the cover versions from the first couple Beatles records, they're all short - but so fucking great.
A Hard Day's Night:
Indexi - Ucini jednom bar (A Hard Day's Night) / John Mayall - A Hard Day's Night
Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better
Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell
Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
Rita Lee - And I Love Her
The Bats - Tell Me Why
Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love
Blue Ash - Anytime At All
Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead
The Flow - Things We Said Today
The Back Alley - When I Get Home
Joanne Victoria / The Standells - You Can't Do That
The Now Generation - You'll Never Know (I'll Be Back)
Making progress. The thing about Beatles covers is that good ones show up when you don't expect them.
Indexi - Ucini Jednom Bar: A lighter touch than the Beatles' version, lots of piano and (particularly to my taste) marimba from this Czech-language cover. (Those of you who are sick of my fondness for foreign-language covers will be pleased to know that this is the only foreign-language rendition for this album.)
Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better: one of the oldest covers on the project, just a fun off-the-cuff '64 performance by Phil Ochs and Eric Andersen.
Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell: If the title "Myrmidons of Melodrama" wasn't already taken Reparata and the Delrons could lay claim to it. From their first era - Beatles covers were really popular LP padding in these days, but "padding" doesn't necessarily equal "bad", as I think Reparata and the Delrons prove.
Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You: The Better Better Beatles.
Rita Lee - And I Love Her: Rita Lee has tons of Beatles covers, but this is probably the best, from her "Build Up" LP, with some nice arrangement and beat variations and some good wah wah guitar. This is another great melody that is often covered.
The Bats - Tell Me Why: Power pop that I waffled on for a while - it's good and energetic, but it does sound a lot like the "Duck Tales" theme song.
Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love: Found on the same cassette as Joanne Victoria (see later), and it's not necessarily as punchy as the surrounding songs (though a lot of this is just a question of mastering), but the Stooges-style sax is great, enough to push it over the top, which is a relief because there are so many weak and bad versions of this song (and the Beatles' own version is so good) that I despaired of ever finding an adequate version.
Blue Ash - Anytime at All: I left the project dormant for a little while and revived it when I happened to chance across this Ohio power pop take on "Anytime at All". "A Hard Day's Night" is the Beatles' greatest power pop LP, and so it's a little trickier to find power pop versions that do it justice, but this does.
Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead: "I'm working on a project of the best covers of all the Beatles' originals."
"Joe Cocker's on there, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
The Flow - Things We Said Today: The song reinvented as a doom metal song. The relentless bolero drumming doesn't help, but it works well enough.
The Back Alley - When I Get Home: And followed up by a Vanilla Fudge-style "heavy psych" remake of "When I Get Home". Loses something from the original, obviously, but also gains, I would argue.
Joanne Victoria - You Can't Do That: I know nothing about this piano/voice rendition from an '80s cassette Beatles tribute but I'm glad to have it, even if I'm not sure enough about it to make it the only version here.
The Standells - You Can't Do That: Their first live album mostly gets deprecated in comprison to their later work, but this is a pretty stonking Beatles cover by any standard.
The Now Generation - You'll Never Know: Another of the first songs to make it onto the embryonic version of the playlist, a splendid reggae take.
The Beatles For Sale:
The Clevers - Sem Reposta (No Reply)
Marianne Faithfull - I'm A Loser
Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Baby's In Black
Glyn Johns - I'll Follow The Sun
Kristine Sparkle / Zhang Xiaofeng - Eight Days A Week
Barbara Dickson - Every Little Thing
Rosanne Cash / The Savoys - I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
The Fantastic Dee Jays - What You're Doing
The last Beatles album I came up with _any_ covers for, yet one of the first ones I've managed to finish off. Really, I took so long because this is pretty much my least favorite Beatles album; it just comes off sounding uninspired, and none of their songs from it have really gone down as "classics". Possible exception: Eight Days a Week, which was the last song I found a cover for... took me FOREVER, because there are SO MANY AWFUL COVERS of "Eight Days a Week". Fortunately there's a pretty comprehensive blog and I eventually ran across one that was on a junk shop glam comp... a comp I had, but I had the original version, which doesn't have this cover... Anyway, the pretty dumb shuffle of the song translates well to a glam stomp.
The one obvious pick for the album was Yes' cover of "Every Little Thing", but I fucking hate that cover, exemplifies everything that was wrong about Yes, and finding somebody else doing "Every Little Thing" was tricky... but I do have this album of covers by Barbara Dickson, who has a voice that's sad like Robert Wyatt's. One of the only "happy" songs in a set of pretty big downer tracks and it's done in a totally morose manner. Speaking of "morose" we have an early Marianne Faithfull recording here.
It took me a while to actually listen to Glyn Johns' "I'll Follow the Sun" because I wasn't sure how seriously I should take a cover by Glyn Johns. Once I heard it it became an obvious pick. Johns isn't a great singer but the song is very well engineered.
We have _two_ country covers on this CD. The Beatles weren't a country band, their Buck Owens tribute notwithstanding, but particularly the songs on this record, being downer songs, translate pretty well to that idiom. "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" is the only Lennon/McCartney song to hit #1 on the country charts, fact fans, though I had to round things off with a more energetic contemporary take by the Savoys. Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle's "Baby's in Black" is of more recent vintage, but just as good... I do have a soft spot for this song.
Besides power pop, the secret weapon for early Beatles songs is Latin American pop groups. They loved doing Beatles songs, often in Spanish or Portuguese, and in general got the vibe of these songs really well. On top of this we have an actual garage band, the Fantastic Dee Jays. Garage bands tended more towards songs by the Yardbirds or Pretty Things than the Beatles, and this Beatles cover may hint to why. The Beatles, despite their reputation, were not always note-perfect in the studio, but this version of one of the Beatles' more basic songs is a shambles. But it's such a FUN shambles, every bit as appealing as the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie".
Help!:
The Carpenters - Help!
The Retreads - The Night Before
The Glands of External Secretion - You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
Los Hermanos Carrion - No Vivo Sin Ti (I Need You)
Andrew Lubman - Another Girl
The Oohs - You're Going To Lose That Girl
Brian Bennett / Sly & Robbie - Ticket to Ride
Bryan Ferry - It's Only Love
Les Faux Freres - Une Fille Pour Deux Garcons (You Like Me Too Much)
Teenage Fanclub - Tell Me What You See
The Dillards - I've Just Seen A Face
PP Arnold - Yesterday
Rubber Soul:
Cristina - Drive My Car
Peter Walker - Norwegian Wood
The Godz - You Won't See Me
Low - Nowhere Man
Morgan Visconti - Think For Yourself
13th Floor Elevators - The Word
The Free Design - Michelle
Charles River Valley Boys - What Goes On
Oxbow - Girl
Martin Simpson - I'm Looking Through You
Johnny Cash - In My Life
The 'E' Types - Wait
Bit-A-Sweet - If I Needed Someone
The Pair Extraordinare - Run For Your Life
Davey Graham covered "I'm Looking Through You". Martin Simpson's version is better.
Revolver:
Fred Lonberg-Holm - Taxman
Jeddah / BB Seaton / Sugarcane Harris / Esperanto / Mal Waldron / Uranium - Eleanor Rigby
R Stevie Moore - I'm Only Sleeping
Bongwater - Love You To
Ewa Bem - Here, There, and Everywhere
Silverchair - Yellow Submarine
The Shop Assistants - She Said She Said
Roy Redmond - Good Day Sunshine
The Flamin' Groovies - And Your Bird Can Sing
Caetano Veloso & Gilberto Gil - For No One/Superbacana
Plume - Doctor Robert
Jimmy & the Rackets - I Want To Tell You
Earth, Wind, & Fire - Got To Get You Into My Life
Morgana King - Tomorrow Never Knows
Sgt. Pepper:
Jimi Hendrix - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Christmas On Earth Continued)
The Beach Boys - With A Little Help From My Friends
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - The Putrid Refrain (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)
Ultrasound - Getting Better
Duffy Power - Fixing a Hole
L'Infonie - She's Leaving Home
Elekrticni Orgazam - Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Sonic Youth - Within You, Without You
Aki Takahashi - When I'm Sixty-Four
Fats Domino - Lovely Rita
Kellogg's - Good Morning Good Morning
The Waterboys - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
The Fall - A Day In The Life
The Tall Dwarfs - Runout Groove
I prioritized it because I wanted to hear the whole thing. It's Sgt. Pepper's, so things are going to get weird. No, really. It's going to get VERY STRANGE ahead. PLUG YOUR EARS! WATCH OUT FOR YOUR EARS!
I wasn't impressed by the versions of Sgt. Pepper, famously arranged for live performance by Jimi within two days of the album's release, I'd heard before, but I somehow had missed the "Christmas on Earth Revisited" performance... Now this is just fucking classic Jimi right here.
And it goes into the band Jimi dismissed as "psychedelic barbershop". It's BRUCE of all people on lead vocals, but this "Wild Honey" sessions outtake sounds just so completely charming it's hard to criticize.
I could try and POSSIBLY succeed in finding a "proper" version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". (The soft "no novelty versions" rule excludes Shatner, and the soft "one song per artist" rule excludes Rita Lee.) But why bother when you have a segue this great into the last song on the last Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album? Sgt. Pepper isn't about being "proper".
(Update 2020-04-16: This fucking Noel Harrison Jacques Brel/Anthony Newley-style take on Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds... you know what, let's add this one in.)
If you think I'm going to pass on the chance to pimp for Ultrasound, you, sir or madam, are wrong.
I did regret cutting Duffy Power's fantastic version of "I Saw Her Standing There" in favor of Daniel Johnston's, so I'm making up for it with his much less-known take on "Fixing a Hole" from '73.
L'Infonie... got me back into this project. Sedric mentioned them offhand on his Facebook page, and I'd never heard of them, so I went to check them out and realized they'd done a version of "She's Leaving Home" I rather liked. A few days later and y'all get this abomination.
A Serbian post-punk band doing "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"? Well that's an obvious "yes". Such an obvious "yes" that I had to check out the rest of the album too... and the rest of the album pretty much sucks. Their cover of "Metal Guru" contributes nothing to anything. They even do a version of "When the Music's Over"... man fuck you the one true post-punk version of "When the Music's Over" is the Gaznevada version. Whatever, this song rules.
Not one, but _two_ songs from the 1987 "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" tribute record here. (Guess the other one.) Man I'm not a Sonic Youth fan as such but they kill "Within You Without You".
When I'm Sixty-Four is another one of those jaunty songs that have hundreds of cover versions, all of them bad. Claudine Longet does it. I guess I shouldn't think less of her for being a murderer. Jon Pertwee... JON PERTWEE? Fucking hell, was "Who is the Doctor" not punishment enough? Fortunately I can't find a copy on the Internet. THANK YOU INTERNET! (Update 2020-04-16: Found it. CURSE YOU INTERNET!) The Cowsills live on the Mike Douglas show... this one is actually VERY GOOD. I like the Cowsills, Susan Cowsill is a great singer, and they don't keep the stupid trad jazz arrangement like nearly every other version does. The sound quality is pretty poor, though, and Susan unfortunately blows the lyrics. I still do strongly recommend this version, however, and wish they'd recorded it properly. A version by the "12-Tones Barbershop Chorus", but this is unfortunately _not_ a 12-tone arrangement. AHA! AHA! Almost as good. Alvin Curran did an arrangement!
Fats Domino did "Lovely Rita"? That can't be any goo... what? God damn. Fats, I think I just found my thrill.
I couldn't find a version I liked of "Good Morning Good Morning". I couldn't! Hundreds of songs, including songs I absolutely hate, by the Beatles, and the one I couldn't find a version I liked of was fucking "Good Morning Good Morning. I was down to Marillion (no thanks) and Micky Dolenz (actually... Nah.) ("A Thousand Strokes And A Rolling Suck" by the Sea Nymphs almost counts. ALMOST.) So I went with the Kellogg's Cornflakes ad that inspired John Lennon to write the song. FUCKING TAKE THAT. And sorry Micky. I do love you.
The Waterboys track is from their "Fisherman's Blues" album, which on the basis of this I should probably listen to? They turn a throwaway filler "reprise" track into something wonderful and majestic. Which is great because the "reprise" track was always going to be a difficult one. I don't know how to handle different versions of the same song. If a band can cover the same song in a different language with a radically different arrangement, how am I to handle versions with different arrangements and different words?
Come on, of course this was going to be the other song from "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father". All respect to Chocolate Snow. Though their version sounds better with a monologue about inflation over the top of it.
This is the Beatles: I have MULTIPLE COVER VERSIONS OF THE RUN-OUT GROOVE TO CHOOSE FROM. I like the Tall Dwarfs version better than the Swell Maps version. Sorry, Swell Maps.
Magical Mystery Tour (American):
Das Damen - Song for Michael Jackson to $ell (Magical Mystery Tour)
Bjork - The Fool on the Hill
Yonin-Bayashi - Flying
Daniel Mantey - Blue Jay Way
Kenny Ball - Your Mother Should Know
Yogurt - I'm The Walrus
Milton Nascimento - Hello Goodbye
Rotary Connection - Black Noise
Donal Hinely - Strawberry Fields Forever
Sting feat. Robert Downey Jr. - Penny Lane
Canarios - Baby You're A Rich Man
The Freedom Sounds - All You Need Is Love
The White Album:
The Dead Kennedys - Back in the USSR
The Five Stairsteps - Dear Prudence
Lucky Sperms - Tomorrow Never Knows/Glass Onion
The Heptones - Ob La Di, Ob La Da
The Pixies - Wild Honey Pie
Han(s)olo - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Prince - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Los Loud Jets - La felicidad es un arma caliente (Happiness is a Warm Gun)
Groove Collective - Martha My Dear
Johnny Flame - I'm So Tired
Roslyn Sweat & the Paragons - Blackbird Singing
Bubblyfish - Piggies
Charlie Parr - Rocky Raccoon
Skupina F. R. Cecha - Namale Mam (Don't Pass Me By)
Lydia Lunch - Why Don't We Do It In The Road
Alison Krauss - I Will
Uakti - Julia
Pato Fu - Birthday
Elliott Smith - Yer Blues
Harry Nilsson - Mother Nature's Son
The Feelies - Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)
Rubin - Sexy Sadie
Husker Du - Helter Skelter
Yim Yames - Long, Long, Long
Nina Simone - Revolution 1
Goran Sollscher - Honey Pie
They Might Be Giants - Savoy Truffle
Bardo Pond - Cry Baby Cry
The Shazam - Revolution 9
Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays John Cassavetes 2 (Good Night)
Yellow Submarine:
Johann Heyss - Only a Northern Song
Joy Unlimited - All Together Now
The Roots - Thought @ Work (Hey Bulldog)
Steve Hillage - It's All Too Much
Second completed record - only four songs so not much of a surprise. This one winds up much stranger than "With the Beatles" and probably not as much fun a listen (if nearly as long - no sub-two-minute power pop blasts to be heard here), but then these are weird cast-off songs anyway, even if some of them are among my favorites. Tight songcraft gives way to stylistic diversity and some slight evidence that the Beatles' influence on music didn't end in 1980. We get off-kilter electronics replacing the off-kilter orchestrations of George's first song, a German soul band with a particular fondness for Beatles songs funking up a throwaway nursery rhyme, the original unreleased mix of a Roots song (Beatles samples are... not the easiest to clear), and Steve Hillage doing the Beatles' most psychedelic song as... a psychedelic song, by virtue of that alone probably the most normal thing here.
Abbey Road:
The Butthole Surfers - Come Together
James Brown - Something
New World Electronic Chamber Ensemble - Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Bela Fleck - Oh! Darling
Mike Westbrook Brass Band - Octopus's Garden
Eddie Hazel - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Drop Nineteens / Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun
DEVO - Because
Pedro Aznar - You Never Give Me Your Money
The Shapeshifters - Grim Tales (Sun King)
Haley Bonar - Mean Mr. Mustard
Volcano Suns - Polythene Pam
Wizz Jones - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
Dissipated Eight - Golden Slumbers
Dobby Dobson - Carry That Weight
The Everly Brothers - The End
Charlie Byrd - Her Majesty
Let It Be:
Loggins & Messina - Two Of Us
St. Vincent - Dig A Pony
Clammbon - Across the Universe
Hiroyuki feat Nomiya Maki - I Me Mine
Michael Jackson - Dig It
Kommunizm - Let It Be
Pearl Jam - I've Got A Feeling
Willie Nelson - One After 909
Ray Charles - The Long And Winding Road
Dhani Harrison - For You Blue
Tina Turner - Get Back
The Beatles' American record. I don't know, it just sounds that way. So most of the covers are by Americans. Artists here that I wouldn't even consider listening to otherwise, like Loggins and Messina and Pearl Jam. For some reason it works with this album.
The rules are this: One song per artist. I have to like the cover version. I also have to like it as much about as much as, or more than, the original. Admittedly these are super arbitrary standards, but they're not lax. I made very few compromises on this, and I'm willing to stand by the results as, if not ideal or perfect, _good enough_.
I don't have complete write-ups ready, but I have kept a running text file of my playlist. For your delectation, here are my complete results as of 2020-04-16.
Singles and EPs:
Maggie Wong & the Jungle Lynx - From Me To You
Los Solitarios - Gracias Muchacha (Thank You Girl)
The Dickheads - He Loves You
Conjunto Misterio - Sem Ti Não Sei Viver (I'll Get You)
Anand Milind - Tumse Hai Dil Ko (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) / Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand
The Swinging Blue Jeans - This Boy
The Boys - I Call Your Name
Los Reno - Mucho Dinero (I Feel Fine)
The Churchills - She's A Woman
Robert Quine & Jody Harris - Yes It Is
Adrian Belew - I'm Down
Bad Brains - Day Tripper
Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out
Tempest - Paperback Writer
Wang Chung - Rain
Elvis Presley - Lady Madonna
Soulful Strings - The Inner Light
Assagai - Hey Jude
The Head Shop - Revolution
Marcia Griffiths - Don't Let Me Down
Mike Melvoin - Ballad of John and Yoko
The Laughing Dogs - Old Brown Shoe
Bossacucanova - You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Please Please Me:
Daniel Johnston - I Saw Her Standing There
Halloween, Alaska - Misery
The Smithereens - Ask Me Why
The Limit - Please Please Me
Sandie Shaw - Love Me Do
The Mints - P.S. I Love You
Fingerprintz - Do You Want To Know A Secret
The Kestrels - There's A Place
With the Beatles:
The Quick - It Won't Be Long
Moon Martin - All I've Got To Do
Prince Buster - All My Loving
Gregory Phillips - Don't Bother Me
Jackie Lynton - Little Child
The Treasures - Hold Me Tight
The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man
Robert Palmer - Not A Second Time
Wouldn't have imagined this would be the first album I'd wrap up, but life works in mysterious ways. This one is heavily indebted to Douglas's list from 2005 - he definitely has a lot more knowledge about the early Beatles songs than I do.
In this volume, we have Sparks-inspired glam, the obligatory power pop, classic ska, Joe Meek-style pop, Phil Spector-produced doo wop, the Stones (the one obligatory pick from this record) and Robert Palmer in his Gary Numan phase (recorded in 1980, chronologically the latest recording here - a fine illustration of my biases). God, it really does sound fucking great. Short - once one strips the cover versions from the first couple Beatles records, they're all short - but so fucking great.
A Hard Day's Night:
Indexi - Ucini jednom bar (A Hard Day's Night) / John Mayall - A Hard Day's Night
Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better
Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell
Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
Rita Lee - And I Love Her
The Bats - Tell Me Why
Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love
Blue Ash - Anytime At All
Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead
The Flow - Things We Said Today
The Back Alley - When I Get Home
Joanne Victoria / The Standells - You Can't Do That
The Now Generation - You'll Never Know (I'll Be Back)
Making progress. The thing about Beatles covers is that good ones show up when you don't expect them.
Indexi - Ucini Jednom Bar: A lighter touch than the Beatles' version, lots of piano and (particularly to my taste) marimba from this Czech-language cover. (Those of you who are sick of my fondness for foreign-language covers will be pleased to know that this is the only foreign-language rendition for this album.)
Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better: one of the oldest covers on the project, just a fun off-the-cuff '64 performance by Phil Ochs and Eric Andersen.
Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell: If the title "Myrmidons of Melodrama" wasn't already taken Reparata and the Delrons could lay claim to it. From their first era - Beatles covers were really popular LP padding in these days, but "padding" doesn't necessarily equal "bad", as I think Reparata and the Delrons prove.
Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You: The Better Better Beatles.
Rita Lee - And I Love Her: Rita Lee has tons of Beatles covers, but this is probably the best, from her "Build Up" LP, with some nice arrangement and beat variations and some good wah wah guitar. This is another great melody that is often covered.
The Bats - Tell Me Why: Power pop that I waffled on for a while - it's good and energetic, but it does sound a lot like the "Duck Tales" theme song.
Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love: Found on the same cassette as Joanne Victoria (see later), and it's not necessarily as punchy as the surrounding songs (though a lot of this is just a question of mastering), but the Stooges-style sax is great, enough to push it over the top, which is a relief because there are so many weak and bad versions of this song (and the Beatles' own version is so good) that I despaired of ever finding an adequate version.
Blue Ash - Anytime at All: I left the project dormant for a little while and revived it when I happened to chance across this Ohio power pop take on "Anytime at All". "A Hard Day's Night" is the Beatles' greatest power pop LP, and so it's a little trickier to find power pop versions that do it justice, but this does.
Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead: "I'm working on a project of the best covers of all the Beatles' originals."
"Joe Cocker's on there, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
The Flow - Things We Said Today: The song reinvented as a doom metal song. The relentless bolero drumming doesn't help, but it works well enough.
The Back Alley - When I Get Home: And followed up by a Vanilla Fudge-style "heavy psych" remake of "When I Get Home". Loses something from the original, obviously, but also gains, I would argue.
Joanne Victoria - You Can't Do That: I know nothing about this piano/voice rendition from an '80s cassette Beatles tribute but I'm glad to have it, even if I'm not sure enough about it to make it the only version here.
The Standells - You Can't Do That: Their first live album mostly gets deprecated in comprison to their later work, but this is a pretty stonking Beatles cover by any standard.
The Now Generation - You'll Never Know: Another of the first songs to make it onto the embryonic version of the playlist, a splendid reggae take.
The Beatles For Sale:
The Clevers - Sem Reposta (No Reply)
Marianne Faithfull - I'm A Loser
Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Baby's In Black
Glyn Johns - I'll Follow The Sun
Kristine Sparkle / Zhang Xiaofeng - Eight Days A Week
Barbara Dickson - Every Little Thing
Rosanne Cash / The Savoys - I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
The Fantastic Dee Jays - What You're Doing
The last Beatles album I came up with _any_ covers for, yet one of the first ones I've managed to finish off. Really, I took so long because this is pretty much my least favorite Beatles album; it just comes off sounding uninspired, and none of their songs from it have really gone down as "classics". Possible exception: Eight Days a Week, which was the last song I found a cover for... took me FOREVER, because there are SO MANY AWFUL COVERS of "Eight Days a Week". Fortunately there's a pretty comprehensive blog and I eventually ran across one that was on a junk shop glam comp... a comp I had, but I had the original version, which doesn't have this cover... Anyway, the pretty dumb shuffle of the song translates well to a glam stomp.
The one obvious pick for the album was Yes' cover of "Every Little Thing", but I fucking hate that cover, exemplifies everything that was wrong about Yes, and finding somebody else doing "Every Little Thing" was tricky... but I do have this album of covers by Barbara Dickson, who has a voice that's sad like Robert Wyatt's. One of the only "happy" songs in a set of pretty big downer tracks and it's done in a totally morose manner. Speaking of "morose" we have an early Marianne Faithfull recording here.
It took me a while to actually listen to Glyn Johns' "I'll Follow the Sun" because I wasn't sure how seriously I should take a cover by Glyn Johns. Once I heard it it became an obvious pick. Johns isn't a great singer but the song is very well engineered.
We have _two_ country covers on this CD. The Beatles weren't a country band, their Buck Owens tribute notwithstanding, but particularly the songs on this record, being downer songs, translate pretty well to that idiom. "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" is the only Lennon/McCartney song to hit #1 on the country charts, fact fans, though I had to round things off with a more energetic contemporary take by the Savoys. Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle's "Baby's in Black" is of more recent vintage, but just as good... I do have a soft spot for this song.
Besides power pop, the secret weapon for early Beatles songs is Latin American pop groups. They loved doing Beatles songs, often in Spanish or Portuguese, and in general got the vibe of these songs really well. On top of this we have an actual garage band, the Fantastic Dee Jays. Garage bands tended more towards songs by the Yardbirds or Pretty Things than the Beatles, and this Beatles cover may hint to why. The Beatles, despite their reputation, were not always note-perfect in the studio, but this version of one of the Beatles' more basic songs is a shambles. But it's such a FUN shambles, every bit as appealing as the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie".
Help!:
The Carpenters - Help!
The Retreads - The Night Before
The Glands of External Secretion - You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
Los Hermanos Carrion - No Vivo Sin Ti (I Need You)
Andrew Lubman - Another Girl
The Oohs - You're Going To Lose That Girl
Brian Bennett / Sly & Robbie - Ticket to Ride
Bryan Ferry - It's Only Love
Les Faux Freres - Une Fille Pour Deux Garcons (You Like Me Too Much)
Teenage Fanclub - Tell Me What You See
The Dillards - I've Just Seen A Face
PP Arnold - Yesterday
Rubber Soul:
Cristina - Drive My Car
Peter Walker - Norwegian Wood
The Godz - You Won't See Me
Low - Nowhere Man
Morgan Visconti - Think For Yourself
13th Floor Elevators - The Word
The Free Design - Michelle
Charles River Valley Boys - What Goes On
Oxbow - Girl
Martin Simpson - I'm Looking Through You
Johnny Cash - In My Life
The 'E' Types - Wait
Bit-A-Sweet - If I Needed Someone
The Pair Extraordinare - Run For Your Life
Davey Graham covered "I'm Looking Through You". Martin Simpson's version is better.
Revolver:
Fred Lonberg-Holm - Taxman
Jeddah / BB Seaton / Sugarcane Harris / Esperanto / Mal Waldron / Uranium - Eleanor Rigby
R Stevie Moore - I'm Only Sleeping
Bongwater - Love You To
Ewa Bem - Here, There, and Everywhere
Silverchair - Yellow Submarine
The Shop Assistants - She Said She Said
Roy Redmond - Good Day Sunshine
The Flamin' Groovies - And Your Bird Can Sing
Caetano Veloso & Gilberto Gil - For No One/Superbacana
Plume - Doctor Robert
Jimmy & the Rackets - I Want To Tell You
Earth, Wind, & Fire - Got To Get You Into My Life
Morgana King - Tomorrow Never Knows
Sgt. Pepper:
Jimi Hendrix - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Christmas On Earth Continued)
The Beach Boys - With A Little Help From My Friends
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - The Putrid Refrain (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)
Ultrasound - Getting Better
Duffy Power - Fixing a Hole
L'Infonie - She's Leaving Home
Elekrticni Orgazam - Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Sonic Youth - Within You, Without You
Aki Takahashi - When I'm Sixty-Four
Fats Domino - Lovely Rita
Kellogg's - Good Morning Good Morning
The Waterboys - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
The Fall - A Day In The Life
The Tall Dwarfs - Runout Groove
I prioritized it because I wanted to hear the whole thing. It's Sgt. Pepper's, so things are going to get weird. No, really. It's going to get VERY STRANGE ahead. PLUG YOUR EARS! WATCH OUT FOR YOUR EARS!
I wasn't impressed by the versions of Sgt. Pepper, famously arranged for live performance by Jimi within two days of the album's release, I'd heard before, but I somehow had missed the "Christmas on Earth Revisited" performance... Now this is just fucking classic Jimi right here.
And it goes into the band Jimi dismissed as "psychedelic barbershop". It's BRUCE of all people on lead vocals, but this "Wild Honey" sessions outtake sounds just so completely charming it's hard to criticize.
I could try and POSSIBLY succeed in finding a "proper" version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". (The soft "no novelty versions" rule excludes Shatner, and the soft "one song per artist" rule excludes Rita Lee.) But why bother when you have a segue this great into the last song on the last Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album? Sgt. Pepper isn't about being "proper".
(Update 2020-04-16: This fucking Noel Harrison Jacques Brel/Anthony Newley-style take on Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds... you know what, let's add this one in.)
If you think I'm going to pass on the chance to pimp for Ultrasound, you, sir or madam, are wrong.
I did regret cutting Duffy Power's fantastic version of "I Saw Her Standing There" in favor of Daniel Johnston's, so I'm making up for it with his much less-known take on "Fixing a Hole" from '73.
L'Infonie... got me back into this project. Sedric mentioned them offhand on his Facebook page, and I'd never heard of them, so I went to check them out and realized they'd done a version of "She's Leaving Home" I rather liked. A few days later and y'all get this abomination.
A Serbian post-punk band doing "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"? Well that's an obvious "yes". Such an obvious "yes" that I had to check out the rest of the album too... and the rest of the album pretty much sucks. Their cover of "Metal Guru" contributes nothing to anything. They even do a version of "When the Music's Over"... man fuck you the one true post-punk version of "When the Music's Over" is the Gaznevada version. Whatever, this song rules.
Not one, but _two_ songs from the 1987 "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" tribute record here. (Guess the other one.) Man I'm not a Sonic Youth fan as such but they kill "Within You Without You".
When I'm Sixty-Four is another one of those jaunty songs that have hundreds of cover versions, all of them bad. Claudine Longet does it. I guess I shouldn't think less of her for being a murderer. Jon Pertwee... JON PERTWEE? Fucking hell, was "Who is the Doctor" not punishment enough? Fortunately I can't find a copy on the Internet. THANK YOU INTERNET! (Update 2020-04-16: Found it. CURSE YOU INTERNET!) The Cowsills live on the Mike Douglas show... this one is actually VERY GOOD. I like the Cowsills, Susan Cowsill is a great singer, and they don't keep the stupid trad jazz arrangement like nearly every other version does. The sound quality is pretty poor, though, and Susan unfortunately blows the lyrics. I still do strongly recommend this version, however, and wish they'd recorded it properly. A version by the "12-Tones Barbershop Chorus", but this is unfortunately _not_ a 12-tone arrangement. AHA! AHA! Almost as good. Alvin Curran did an arrangement!
Fats Domino did "Lovely Rita"? That can't be any goo... what? God damn. Fats, I think I just found my thrill.
I couldn't find a version I liked of "Good Morning Good Morning". I couldn't! Hundreds of songs, including songs I absolutely hate, by the Beatles, and the one I couldn't find a version I liked of was fucking "Good Morning Good Morning. I was down to Marillion (no thanks) and Micky Dolenz (actually... Nah.) ("A Thousand Strokes And A Rolling Suck" by the Sea Nymphs almost counts. ALMOST.) So I went with the Kellogg's Cornflakes ad that inspired John Lennon to write the song. FUCKING TAKE THAT. And sorry Micky. I do love you.
The Waterboys track is from their "Fisherman's Blues" album, which on the basis of this I should probably listen to? They turn a throwaway filler "reprise" track into something wonderful and majestic. Which is great because the "reprise" track was always going to be a difficult one. I don't know how to handle different versions of the same song. If a band can cover the same song in a different language with a radically different arrangement, how am I to handle versions with different arrangements and different words?
Come on, of course this was going to be the other song from "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father". All respect to Chocolate Snow. Though their version sounds better with a monologue about inflation over the top of it.
This is the Beatles: I have MULTIPLE COVER VERSIONS OF THE RUN-OUT GROOVE TO CHOOSE FROM. I like the Tall Dwarfs version better than the Swell Maps version. Sorry, Swell Maps.
Magical Mystery Tour (American):
Das Damen - Song for Michael Jackson to $ell (Magical Mystery Tour)
Bjork - The Fool on the Hill
Yonin-Bayashi - Flying
Daniel Mantey - Blue Jay Way
Kenny Ball - Your Mother Should Know
Yogurt - I'm The Walrus
Milton Nascimento - Hello Goodbye
Rotary Connection - Black Noise
Donal Hinely - Strawberry Fields Forever
Sting feat. Robert Downey Jr. - Penny Lane
Canarios - Baby You're A Rich Man
The Freedom Sounds - All You Need Is Love
The White Album:
The Dead Kennedys - Back in the USSR
The Five Stairsteps - Dear Prudence
Lucky Sperms - Tomorrow Never Knows/Glass Onion
The Heptones - Ob La Di, Ob La Da
The Pixies - Wild Honey Pie
Han(s)olo - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Prince - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Los Loud Jets - La felicidad es un arma caliente (Happiness is a Warm Gun)
Groove Collective - Martha My Dear
Johnny Flame - I'm So Tired
Roslyn Sweat & the Paragons - Blackbird Singing
Bubblyfish - Piggies
Charlie Parr - Rocky Raccoon
Skupina F. R. Cecha - Namale Mam (Don't Pass Me By)
Lydia Lunch - Why Don't We Do It In The Road
Alison Krauss - I Will
Uakti - Julia
Pato Fu - Birthday
Elliott Smith - Yer Blues
Harry Nilsson - Mother Nature's Son
The Feelies - Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)
Rubin - Sexy Sadie
Husker Du - Helter Skelter
Yim Yames - Long, Long, Long
Nina Simone - Revolution 1
Goran Sollscher - Honey Pie
They Might Be Giants - Savoy Truffle
Bardo Pond - Cry Baby Cry
The Shazam - Revolution 9
Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays John Cassavetes 2 (Good Night)
Yellow Submarine:
Johann Heyss - Only a Northern Song
Joy Unlimited - All Together Now
The Roots - Thought @ Work (Hey Bulldog)
Steve Hillage - It's All Too Much
Second completed record - only four songs so not much of a surprise. This one winds up much stranger than "With the Beatles" and probably not as much fun a listen (if nearly as long - no sub-two-minute power pop blasts to be heard here), but then these are weird cast-off songs anyway, even if some of them are among my favorites. Tight songcraft gives way to stylistic diversity and some slight evidence that the Beatles' influence on music didn't end in 1980. We get off-kilter electronics replacing the off-kilter orchestrations of George's first song, a German soul band with a particular fondness for Beatles songs funking up a throwaway nursery rhyme, the original unreleased mix of a Roots song (Beatles samples are... not the easiest to clear), and Steve Hillage doing the Beatles' most psychedelic song as... a psychedelic song, by virtue of that alone probably the most normal thing here.
Abbey Road:
The Butthole Surfers - Come Together
James Brown - Something
New World Electronic Chamber Ensemble - Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Bela Fleck - Oh! Darling
Mike Westbrook Brass Band - Octopus's Garden
Eddie Hazel - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Drop Nineteens / Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun
DEVO - Because
Pedro Aznar - You Never Give Me Your Money
The Shapeshifters - Grim Tales (Sun King)
Haley Bonar - Mean Mr. Mustard
Volcano Suns - Polythene Pam
Wizz Jones - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
Dissipated Eight - Golden Slumbers
Dobby Dobson - Carry That Weight
The Everly Brothers - The End
Charlie Byrd - Her Majesty
Let It Be:
Loggins & Messina - Two Of Us
St. Vincent - Dig A Pony
Clammbon - Across the Universe
Hiroyuki feat Nomiya Maki - I Me Mine
Michael Jackson - Dig It
Kommunizm - Let It Be
Pearl Jam - I've Got A Feeling
Willie Nelson - One After 909
Ray Charles - The Long And Winding Road
Dhani Harrison - For You Blue
Tina Turner - Get Back
The Beatles' American record. I don't know, it just sounds that way. So most of the covers are by Americans. Artists here that I wouldn't even consider listening to otherwise, like Loggins and Messina and Pearl Jam. For some reason it works with this album.
The Phantom Menace: fragmentary sketches of some later scenes
I'm at the point on my script where I have to not get carried away with it. The ideas are coming fast than I have time to write them. I do enjoy writing, letting ideas work themselves out through the writing process. I'm interested to find out what Han Solo's story arc in this treatment turns out to be. Today I woke up with some ideas for Vader and Elana's break with the Jedi and their planning for revolution. It's all very on-the-nose stuff. At once point Obi-Wan point blank tells Vader "The Force doesn't care about your feelings", at which point Vader force chokes him and tells him to never say that to him again. Then he releases the force hold, says "I am no longer your padawan", and walks out of the room. Have some ideas for the revolt strategy meeting too. Sheev is a bit of a wehraboo. He's mocked up a version of that parody of the Uncle Sam poster with Darth Vader on it. Elena is horrified - the people she knows detest Vader - but Vader understands it will be effective in gaining troops, knows the number of people who look up to him as a hero. This is crucial if their revolt is to succeed where past revolts (and there have been many past revolts) have failed.
What they don't have access to is _useful_ troops. Sheev can 3D print armor but it's totally ineffective. He's come up with an impressive design for what he calls "stormtrooper" armor. He's started playing around with the Force, making ball lightning in his spare time. He is fascinated by lightning, wants the revolt to be what he calls a "lightning war". If this all seems a little heavy-handed, I didn't make the Empire's troops fucking "stormtroopers". Anyway, Vader is impressed by the design and sees the propaganda power of it, but suggests the primary colors be changed from black to white, mainly for propaganda reasons but a little bit out of vanity as well - he wants to stand out from his troops, particularly when those troops are cosplayers with no military skill who can't aim a blaster to save their life and are destined to be mowed down by the hundreds in any real fight. They're not there to defeat the Jedi; there are just huge numbers of people displaced by the Droid Revolution (to be clear, this is a technological revolution and not a violent conflict). Vader and Elana know that it's no use overthrowing the Jedi if they can't maintain order among the common people, and this is the role of the Stormtroopers.
Overthrowing the Jedi is to be the task of the Wookiee. The Jedi use the Wookiee as porters and coolies - not _technically_ slaves but effectively slave labor. The Jedi do not allow them weapons out of fear of revolt, but they have grown complacent and sloppy in their enforcement. Ichi is an exceptionally charismatic and respected Wookiee, and he will be in charge of uniting the Wookiee and overseeing their training in blaster weapons. When the time is right, the Wookiee will rise up and murder their Jedi masters in their beds. Turns out that Obi-Wan and Yoda being the only survivors of the revolt is not a coincidence, but occurs by virtue of their being the only high-ranking Jedi who actually treat the Wookiee with a modicum of respect and dignity.
What they don't have access to is _useful_ troops. Sheev can 3D print armor but it's totally ineffective. He's come up with an impressive design for what he calls "stormtrooper" armor. He's started playing around with the Force, making ball lightning in his spare time. He is fascinated by lightning, wants the revolt to be what he calls a "lightning war". If this all seems a little heavy-handed, I didn't make the Empire's troops fucking "stormtroopers". Anyway, Vader is impressed by the design and sees the propaganda power of it, but suggests the primary colors be changed from black to white, mainly for propaganda reasons but a little bit out of vanity as well - he wants to stand out from his troops, particularly when those troops are cosplayers with no military skill who can't aim a blaster to save their life and are destined to be mowed down by the hundreds in any real fight. They're not there to defeat the Jedi; there are just huge numbers of people displaced by the Droid Revolution (to be clear, this is a technological revolution and not a violent conflict). Vader and Elana know that it's no use overthrowing the Jedi if they can't maintain order among the common people, and this is the role of the Stormtroopers.
Overthrowing the Jedi is to be the task of the Wookiee. The Jedi use the Wookiee as porters and coolies - not _technically_ slaves but effectively slave labor. The Jedi do not allow them weapons out of fear of revolt, but they have grown complacent and sloppy in their enforcement. Ichi is an exceptionally charismatic and respected Wookiee, and he will be in charge of uniting the Wookiee and overseeing their training in blaster weapons. When the time is right, the Wookiee will rise up and murder their Jedi masters in their beds. Turns out that Obi-Wan and Yoda being the only survivors of the revolt is not a coincidence, but occurs by virtue of their being the only high-ranking Jedi who actually treat the Wookiee with a modicum of respect and dignity.
The Phantom Menace (part 3)
Need to do a little more basic scenario establishment before I go on. I'm feeling like round about here I want to introduce the character of Han Solo. He's gonna be tricky to incorporate into this, though. The idea behind his character is that he's not into all this Jedi shit, that he doesn't know who Obi-Wan Kenobi is. Since I'm mostly interested in the interactions between characters writing a treatment in which Solo doesn't so much as know who Obi-Wan is... that's a bit challenging. I definitely don't want to go the hacky route Lucas went with his prequels where C3PO is a major character who happens to get a convenient mind-wipe at the end of the trilogy.
My thought here is that the Jedi and the Republic are so disconnected from the ordinary people that gutter punks like Solo don't even know or care who they are. Even on Coruscant most everyday folks don't know or care about the machinations of the Republic. People know what Anakin Skywalker looks like, because they're always seeing him around in the popular media, but this doesn't necessariy extend as far as knowing his name. Hell, maybe he doesn't use the name in public; maybe he just goes by "Vader" as a Jedi. He's Vader Skywalker, in the same way that Ben Kenobi goes by Obi-Wan. Obviously this isn't super fleshed out, but it's a thought. I might run with it.
One of the things Lucas does that I like is that he leaves the timeline deliberately nebulous. My thought is that Han Solo is maybe about 16 years old, which is 10 or 15 years before the events of "A New Hope". Kenobi is portrayed as an "old man" in that film, so I don't want to make him _too_ young... maybe he's in his 30s, a little older than McGregor plays him. This still allows him to be a "young turk" in contrast to the aged Jedi hierarchy.
The implication of the story is that Vader has lots of kids. Presumably two of them are Luke and Leia. We don't see them because this isn't fucking Star Wars Babies. Nobody in their right minds gives a shit about seeing Luke and Leia as toddlers. Seeing Han Solo as a young, tough smuggler is something different.
Solo has all the bravado we know from Ford's portrayal, but beneath it there's a sense that it is a front, that he is not just young and cocky but also vulnerable and unsure of himself. He overcompensates by acting tough, particularly around important people like Senator Miraman. This is who he's meeting with in his introduction scene. I'm not really sure where this meeting takes place right now. The gist of it is that he wants off the planet. He's done something to gain the attention of a bounty hunter and needs to get out on a ship, a fast one.
Why Senator Miraman is interested in helping this good-looking young kid, why Solo is on a first-name basis with "Jeff", is not stated. There could be a number of reasons. Miraman, as a corrupt senator, could be expected to have ties with the criminal underworld. Or their past relationship could be more... personal.
Miraman asks which bounty hunter is after him. IG-88, Solo says. (One thing I've learned from fandom is to never introduce a new character when you can just namecheck an old one, particularly as none of these characters have fucking personalities of their own anyway.) Miraman can't do anything to get IG-88 off his back. If it was Boba Fett, he'd be able to help, but he doesn't have any pull with droids.
Miraman offers Solo passage on a ship. He has a friend who needs some help. Solo starts backing away - oh, no no no no no no no - to which Miraman clarifies it's just some basic smuggling. What's the cargo? None of Solo's business. (It is, in fact, slaves, but this is never explicitly stated.) The ship is the Millenium Falcon. She has just unexpectedly lost her co-pilot. Solo hasn't heard of her. Is she fast? Fast enough for him. She's done the Kessel Run in (slightly more parsecs than Solo states in "A New Hope"). "Is that good?" Solo asks. It's a fair question because there is no fucking "Kessel Run", and "parsecs" is a measure of distance, not time. Maybe I can have Lando make fun of Solo for this when they meet.
OK, at this point I think it's time for a good old-fashioned TRAINING MONTAGE. Why? Because training montages are awesome, because if I'm going to write a hatefic I'm going to write one that I'm going to enjoy. Which is also why the soundtrack to this one is "One Of These Days, I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces" by Pink Floyd. If this seems like a violation of the unwritten norms of the Star Wars universe, fuck you, this is hatefic, and anyway it's either this or "Iron Eagle (Never Say Die)" by King Kobra. This is one of those inter-cut training sequences wherein we see both Elana and Vader ("Anakin" has too many fucking syllables, and I'm _not_ going to start calling him "Annie") doing cool shit. I'm not going to get into too much detail because the cool shit they do has no bearing whatsoever on the plot.
So for the fight. Look you're probably going to want to get some sort of choreographer or stunt coordinator or something to lay out this scene, because I don't really know a damn thing about how to write fight scenes that look cool on screen. I'll give you some basic setup, though. Vader is wearing Jedi robes instead of his riot gear getup. The basic progression of the fight is that they start out with lightsabers. Very quickly, though, the fighting becomes extremely close-quarters and intimate. Lightsabers aren't actually practical here. Oh, you know what? Hell with it, we're gonna introduce something new into the mythos - lightdaggers. These don't _actually_ look like dongs, but they're close enough that people with dirty minds will be able to pick up the clear sexual undertones of this battle. Anyway, since we're introducing something new into the mythos, at some point one of the lightdaggers actually breaks, causing an impressive-looking but harmless explosion. Maybe it causes the whole arena where they're fighting to be bathed in a weird neon glow. IDK how practical this is though because my other idea is that this whole sequence is gonna be shot as a tribute to Adrian Maben's work on "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii". Shots of the four of them (Elana and Vader with, of course, Yoda and Kenobi as their seconds) walking over hardened lava flow to the ruined amphitheater. Hell, you know what? Maybe make the area still actively volcanic. Volcanos erupting in the background and pyroclastic flow everywhere and shit. I've seen the prequel trilogies, Lucas loves him the hell out of some fuckin' lava. This also can help us out with the weird and uncanny lighting. Oh, you know what? Let's throw in a lava monster. A dragon, like the sea serpent Floyd had at the Crystal Palace Garden Party. I'm thinking it should look a little like a lava version of the huge dragons in Breath of the Wild - not there to pose a threat, just there to look enormous and majestic. IDK if we can reconcile all this with Maben's swooping crane shots and his whole pre-DePalma wide camera circles, but we can give it a shot. What I'm kind of thinking is that we start with epic panoramic CGI porn shots and as the fight goes on the shots gradually start getting tighter and tighter (though not in a linear progression) until at the end we're literally just looking at reaction shots of Vader and Elana's faces. Oh, also, more Floyd shit? To start the fight an extra (Roger Waters, in a cameo appearance) strikes an immense gong in the empty amphitheatre, which brilliantly bursts into flames. If all this seems a little over the top for a "friendly practice", that's kind of the point.
So anyway while they're fighting with lightdaggers Vader has the upper hand, like he did before, but once his lightdagger blows up and they switch to fighting directly via the force Elana is clearly getting the better of him. I'm thinking of some weird implicitly erotic twist on wrestling except the two of them aren't actually touching each other, a combination of emotional intimacy and physical distance. Again you want a choreographer to convey this. Where it ends up is that Elana does a remote force choke on Vader (who has not, up to this point in the film, attempted a force choke). She is trash talking him, feeling angry, feeling _powerful_, wants to know how it feels to be at her mercy. Vader is choking so he can't answer but it very clearly feels good. He's into breathplay, into being at her mercy, as much as Elena is into being in control. We haven't seen Kenobi or Yoda in a while, the focus has been entirely on the two of them. Yoda interrupts - we hear him, and we see Elana's face, the look of shame. She immediately releases the force choke and drops to her knees to beg forgiveness of her master.
Look the whole thing doesn't go that hard on the BDSM but it's part of the story. Also yes I'm a little uncomfortable about having the two "evil" characters in a BDSM relationship but one, they're not "evil" but morally ambiguous, two, the BDSM isn't what _makes_ them evil. If that squicks you out, I'm sorry. BDSM is implicit in the story Lucas told (ahem, Slave Leia) and I'm not interested in making that go away. If it helps I'm doing my best to get rid of all the goddamn incest.
My thought here is that the Jedi and the Republic are so disconnected from the ordinary people that gutter punks like Solo don't even know or care who they are. Even on Coruscant most everyday folks don't know or care about the machinations of the Republic. People know what Anakin Skywalker looks like, because they're always seeing him around in the popular media, but this doesn't necessariy extend as far as knowing his name. Hell, maybe he doesn't use the name in public; maybe he just goes by "Vader" as a Jedi. He's Vader Skywalker, in the same way that Ben Kenobi goes by Obi-Wan. Obviously this isn't super fleshed out, but it's a thought. I might run with it.
One of the things Lucas does that I like is that he leaves the timeline deliberately nebulous. My thought is that Han Solo is maybe about 16 years old, which is 10 or 15 years before the events of "A New Hope". Kenobi is portrayed as an "old man" in that film, so I don't want to make him _too_ young... maybe he's in his 30s, a little older than McGregor plays him. This still allows him to be a "young turk" in contrast to the aged Jedi hierarchy.
The implication of the story is that Vader has lots of kids. Presumably two of them are Luke and Leia. We don't see them because this isn't fucking Star Wars Babies. Nobody in their right minds gives a shit about seeing Luke and Leia as toddlers. Seeing Han Solo as a young, tough smuggler is something different.
Solo has all the bravado we know from Ford's portrayal, but beneath it there's a sense that it is a front, that he is not just young and cocky but also vulnerable and unsure of himself. He overcompensates by acting tough, particularly around important people like Senator Miraman. This is who he's meeting with in his introduction scene. I'm not really sure where this meeting takes place right now. The gist of it is that he wants off the planet. He's done something to gain the attention of a bounty hunter and needs to get out on a ship, a fast one.
Why Senator Miraman is interested in helping this good-looking young kid, why Solo is on a first-name basis with "Jeff", is not stated. There could be a number of reasons. Miraman, as a corrupt senator, could be expected to have ties with the criminal underworld. Or their past relationship could be more... personal.
Miraman asks which bounty hunter is after him. IG-88, Solo says. (One thing I've learned from fandom is to never introduce a new character when you can just namecheck an old one, particularly as none of these characters have fucking personalities of their own anyway.) Miraman can't do anything to get IG-88 off his back. If it was Boba Fett, he'd be able to help, but he doesn't have any pull with droids.
Miraman offers Solo passage on a ship. He has a friend who needs some help. Solo starts backing away - oh, no no no no no no no - to which Miraman clarifies it's just some basic smuggling. What's the cargo? None of Solo's business. (It is, in fact, slaves, but this is never explicitly stated.) The ship is the Millenium Falcon. She has just unexpectedly lost her co-pilot. Solo hasn't heard of her. Is she fast? Fast enough for him. She's done the Kessel Run in (slightly more parsecs than Solo states in "A New Hope"). "Is that good?" Solo asks. It's a fair question because there is no fucking "Kessel Run", and "parsecs" is a measure of distance, not time. Maybe I can have Lando make fun of Solo for this when they meet.
OK, at this point I think it's time for a good old-fashioned TRAINING MONTAGE. Why? Because training montages are awesome, because if I'm going to write a hatefic I'm going to write one that I'm going to enjoy. Which is also why the soundtrack to this one is "One Of These Days, I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces" by Pink Floyd. If this seems like a violation of the unwritten norms of the Star Wars universe, fuck you, this is hatefic, and anyway it's either this or "Iron Eagle (Never Say Die)" by King Kobra. This is one of those inter-cut training sequences wherein we see both Elana and Vader ("Anakin" has too many fucking syllables, and I'm _not_ going to start calling him "Annie") doing cool shit. I'm not going to get into too much detail because the cool shit they do has no bearing whatsoever on the plot.
So for the fight. Look you're probably going to want to get some sort of choreographer or stunt coordinator or something to lay out this scene, because I don't really know a damn thing about how to write fight scenes that look cool on screen. I'll give you some basic setup, though. Vader is wearing Jedi robes instead of his riot gear getup. The basic progression of the fight is that they start out with lightsabers. Very quickly, though, the fighting becomes extremely close-quarters and intimate. Lightsabers aren't actually practical here. Oh, you know what? Hell with it, we're gonna introduce something new into the mythos - lightdaggers. These don't _actually_ look like dongs, but they're close enough that people with dirty minds will be able to pick up the clear sexual undertones of this battle. Anyway, since we're introducing something new into the mythos, at some point one of the lightdaggers actually breaks, causing an impressive-looking but harmless explosion. Maybe it causes the whole arena where they're fighting to be bathed in a weird neon glow. IDK how practical this is though because my other idea is that this whole sequence is gonna be shot as a tribute to Adrian Maben's work on "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii". Shots of the four of them (Elana and Vader with, of course, Yoda and Kenobi as their seconds) walking over hardened lava flow to the ruined amphitheater. Hell, you know what? Maybe make the area still actively volcanic. Volcanos erupting in the background and pyroclastic flow everywhere and shit. I've seen the prequel trilogies, Lucas loves him the hell out of some fuckin' lava. This also can help us out with the weird and uncanny lighting. Oh, you know what? Let's throw in a lava monster. A dragon, like the sea serpent Floyd had at the Crystal Palace Garden Party. I'm thinking it should look a little like a lava version of the huge dragons in Breath of the Wild - not there to pose a threat, just there to look enormous and majestic. IDK if we can reconcile all this with Maben's swooping crane shots and his whole pre-DePalma wide camera circles, but we can give it a shot. What I'm kind of thinking is that we start with epic panoramic CGI porn shots and as the fight goes on the shots gradually start getting tighter and tighter (though not in a linear progression) until at the end we're literally just looking at reaction shots of Vader and Elana's faces. Oh, also, more Floyd shit? To start the fight an extra (Roger Waters, in a cameo appearance) strikes an immense gong in the empty amphitheatre, which brilliantly bursts into flames. If all this seems a little over the top for a "friendly practice", that's kind of the point.
So anyway while they're fighting with lightdaggers Vader has the upper hand, like he did before, but once his lightdagger blows up and they switch to fighting directly via the force Elana is clearly getting the better of him. I'm thinking of some weird implicitly erotic twist on wrestling except the two of them aren't actually touching each other, a combination of emotional intimacy and physical distance. Again you want a choreographer to convey this. Where it ends up is that Elana does a remote force choke on Vader (who has not, up to this point in the film, attempted a force choke). She is trash talking him, feeling angry, feeling _powerful_, wants to know how it feels to be at her mercy. Vader is choking so he can't answer but it very clearly feels good. He's into breathplay, into being at her mercy, as much as Elena is into being in control. We haven't seen Kenobi or Yoda in a while, the focus has been entirely on the two of them. Yoda interrupts - we hear him, and we see Elana's face, the look of shame. She immediately releases the force choke and drops to her knees to beg forgiveness of her master.
Look the whole thing doesn't go that hard on the BDSM but it's part of the story. Also yes I'm a little uncomfortable about having the two "evil" characters in a BDSM relationship but one, they're not "evil" but morally ambiguous, two, the BDSM isn't what _makes_ them evil. If that squicks you out, I'm sorry. BDSM is implicit in the story Lucas told (ahem, Slave Leia) and I'm not interested in making that go away. If it helps I'm doing my best to get rid of all the goddamn incest.
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