Hello, friends! I hope you're doing okay out there in the great unknown. Listen to this song that Jon Hassell unveiled a week ago. If the world right now has a sound, it might be that. You'd probably expect a song with more screaming and white noise, but I'm thinking about an uneasy mystery. It's the sound of trying with all of one's might to remain optimistic but still expecting one more awful thing lurking around the corner. Who thought intrigue could be so tiresome. This calls for another reminder that "may you live in interesting times" was initially meant as a curse.
I'm content and locked-down here in Central Florida, navigating the humidity and blocking out whatever else I can. I've started putting turmeric in my coffee — thanks to the discovery of golden milk — and that's been a life improvement in this 'I'll take what I can get' environment. I recommend the golden milk-coffee concoction if you're into that sort of taste. That improvement is nearly canceled out by the frequency of mosquitos successfully sneaking into the house. It probably has something to do with the humidity. My juice must be extra-juicy as I'm a mosquito magnet. Maybe it's the turmeric. Anyway, that's super-annoying. I can't make it through an episode of The Bureau without getting bitten all over. The dragonflies are working overtime outside, and I'm thinking of bringing a swarm of them in here.
There were a couple of time travel opportunities this week, too. I had an amusing dream about my old record store. This is notable as I never remember my dreams in detail. I sometimes have impressions of a dream ("I remember it was sad and there was a beach."), but mostly I live under the impression that I don't dream which we know isn't true. I vividly remember a dream maybe once a year, and when I do, it's a doozy, which makes me wonder if I’m missing out. There was a lyric I sang on my first (cassette) album I recorded as a teenager: "My life would be better it seems / if I could only remember what goes on in my dreams." So this has always been a concern.
I also compiled the audio for all of my Q-BAM songs to send to a rights management partner. Of course, I ended up listening to a few random tracks, mostly from the last century. It's tough going, hearing the old stuff. I can figure out what I was trying to do, but, in many cases, I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to do it. Hindsight is a brutal critic. I'm also struck by how much sampling I did and how the labels that released my music let me get away with it.
I guess you can tell I'm getting reflective as The Strange Times linger. Setting all that previous chatter aside, I'd like to present this week's not-so-reflective theme song. It's called "Alexandrapop" and it's born from a vintage drum machine sample, a wild EMS VCS 3 synth noise, and a few shakers. Those were randomly selected, along with the tempo and the title. Everything else came out of the collision/collusion of those first elements after an hour or two of messing around. My conclusion: this one's got promise. Enjoy.
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Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is a good view of the creative process during lockdown. Released in 2017, much of the documentary shows Sakamoto working at home or collecting sounds in the wild (literally — at one point he’s recording on a glacier). We don't see his family members or partners in his home — Sakamoto's request for privacy or a filmmaker's aesthetic choice might explain the projected loneliness. But viewed through the lens of a pandemic, one imagines Sakamoto working in quarantine. In reality, his occasional solemnity is mostly due to a cancer diagnosis (now in remission), as Sakamoto grapples with uncertainty. If you didn't know the details and assumed this was recently filmed, you may think Sakamoto is just dealing with the same uncertainty we're all confronting daily. All the same, he's getting through it by making music.
My favorite moment of the film is seen in this teaser for the Criterion Channel's Scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto showcase. At :25, Sakamoto works on a song that eventually ends up on his incredible album Async. He's hit upon something good — his face and body language reflect an ecstatic, child-like satisfaction. I got chills when I saw this scene. I think most artists and creative people would get those chills, too. What Sakamoto is feeling (so wonderfully caught on camera) is what we're all chasing. It's the moment artists are living for — our driving force.
Contrast this with the look on Ushio Shinohara's face in the trailer for the documentary Cutie and the Boxer. At 1:06, Shinohara's wife just told him that she doesn't think his new painting is 'good.' The artist's expression continues at 1:32. It's the look of self-doubt, of believing for a minute — maybe longer — that one's best work is a tiny dot in the rearview mirror. The chills we felt before replaced with heartbreak.
Documentaries on the creative process often give a peek into the artist's workspace. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is no different. Sakamoto's home studio is unassuming and jumbled, an attempt at ergonomics presiding over any sense of style. Without glamor, Sakamoto sits on an exercise ball as he clicks around his DAW. He pulls cymbals from corners and rakes upturned coffee mugs over them. It's an intimate place. I'm reminded of David Byrne's workspace in this video, though Sakamoto is a near-minimalist compared to Byrne's clutter. I'd like to think most of the artists I admire are a mess, seeking the muse instead of wielding a dustrag. But I would have guessed that Sakamoto is more meticulous in aesthetic arrangement. After all, this is the man who so disliked the music in his favorite restaurant that he ended up programming its in-house playlist.
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The screenshot above is from a scene where Sakamoto tells a story about working with film director Bernardo Bertolucci. During the soundtrack sessions for The Last Emperor, Bertolucci has a change of heart and tells Sakamoto to rewrite the intro to a theme. A 40-piece orchestra is in the studio waiting to perform the piece. Sakamoto protests, saying this is not acceptable — he can't sit and rewrite the score while an orchestra waits. Bertolucci goads him by saying, yes, "Ennio Morricone would do it." It works — Sakamoto rewrites the intro on the spot, and it's a big success.
As you probably heard, Ennio Morricone died last week at the age of 91. As he said in a posthumously released statement, "I, Ennio Morricone, am dead."
Undeniably a giant in music, Morricone scored over 500 films, and his influence on today's music — cinematic and otherwise — can't be overstated. His Discogs page has 49 tabs to hold its 1,226 titles. Do you want to listen to a few of these titles? The Guardian's Alexis Petridis selects the 'greatest,' both well-known and not-so-much. The newsletter Flow State highlighted four overlooked Morricone scores. And I recently discovered one of my new favorites, the trippy theme to Lizard in a Woman's Skin.
Here's an appreciation of Morricone's avant-garde leanings and his trumpet-playing membership in the band Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. The group lasted about a decade and then finally broke up in 1980: "A pianist suddenly began to play traditional concert music. Morricone yelled, 'Stop!' The pianist wouldn't, so the Group did."
In the last newsletter, I wrote about artists who defy genres. Morricone fits the bill, undaunted by stylistic jumps and unfamiliar instruments or sounds. From the NY Times obituary:
Directors marveled at his range — tarantellas, psychedelic screeches, swelling love themes, tense passages of high drama, stately evocations of the 18th century or eerie dissonances of the 20th — and at the ingenuity of his silences: He was wary of too much music, of overloading an audience with emotions.
Fellow genre-jumper John Zorn (appearing twice in a row in this newsletter) wrote a lovely memorial on Morricone where he stated:
His mastery of a wide range of genres and instruments made him a musician ahead of his time. He could explore extended techniques on a trumpet mouthpiece in a free-improvisational context in the morning; write a seductive big-band arrangement for a pop singer in the afternoon; and score a searing orchestral film soundtrack at night. This kind of openness remains the way of the future — and was a formative model for me.
Here's a BBC documentary on Ennio Morricone. I haven't watched it yet — saving it for later today — but I bet it's good:
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Inspired by this profile in Louder ('The Home of High Voltage Rock'N'Roll') I'm digging into the discography of Can. The band always fascinated me, ever since hearing "Yoo Do Right" not long after I sang that lyric about not remembering dreams. But Can always strike me as a haphazard affair, on the brink of falling apart but somehow pulling it together at the last moment with dizzying results. I think that impression has to do with the strong personalities in the band, determined to do their own things. Can was that rare unit: a successful team without team players.
Can are one of the originators of ‘krautrock.’ You always hear about how the ground-breaking German bands under the umbrella hate this term. Of course, Faust mocked the name by using it as the title for the epic opening song on their fourth album. In a twist on The Streisand Effect, that mockery resulted in the more widespread use of the word.
In the Louder profile on Can, bassist Holger Czukay is quoted about 'krautrock' and how he came to appreciate the term:
"What happened was," Czukay explained to writer Jason Gross, "we made many tours through England and suddenly it came up that the British press was aware of several of the other German bands and called us 'krautrock.' I asked an Englishman: 'How can I understand this? What does 'kraut' mean? Is it something positive or negative?' Maybe 'krauts' come from the Second World War."
However, Czukay soon latched on to the English sense of humour and decided 'krautrock' was a term of affection, not ridicule or indeed xenophobia. "We were more or less naturalised into England," Czukay said. "How this happened was a miracle. We were Germans… but the English audience felt that this was something new."
There's a great interview with Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt in the latest Tone Glow newsletter. It's an engaging discussion, especially the parts about his childhood. And, while on the subject of 'krautrock,' I can't bypass this Q&A snippet from Luke Turner's new interview with Werner Herzog in The Quietus:
LT: I've always felt as if the musicians who were your contemporaries, such as Harmonia, Cluster, Can, Neu!, were doing a similar thing with music as you did with films, and sometimes embracing a real vision of a German landscape there too. Do you feel a kinship with those artists in some way?
WH: They are unknown to me. I've never heard any of those names.
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As a fan of early-70s sci-fi and Saul Bass, I don't know why it took me so long to watch Phase IV. The film recently appeared as an Amazon Prime offering, so I dove in. The plot in a nutshell: an Arizonian ant colony becomes super-intelligent due to cosmic radiation and threatens a pair of scientists. It's a ridiculous movie, but the Moog-heavy prog-jazzy score is real cool, daddy-o. And the visual look of Phase IV is probably a lot more influential than any of us realize. Saul Bass, best known for his memorable movie title sequences, used his artist's eye to achieve imaginative scenes of colored light and overlaid images. If you're wanting that utopian hippie look in your music video or graphic materials, look no further than Phase IV as a guide. It's a spoiler — so don't click if you haven't seen the movie and hate spoilery things — but check out the last couple minutes of Phase IV here to know what I'm talking about.
There was this odd time between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars when most science fiction movies had an affected intellectual deepness, dragged a bit in the first half (often because of that first thing), and ended with a visually trippy montage that made little sense. I love that shit. So did the editors at The Dissolve (RIP) and its founder Keith Phipps who wrote this excellent series on that period of sci-fi (extending into the mid-80s). Phipps calls it the Laser Age, and all of those pieces are worth your time, especially if you long for the seventies' twisted vision of the future.
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EDGING →
• One thing I've learned after months of lockdown: the best music to make the world seem bright and big again is vocal dub reggae, preferably of a vintage variety. Seriously — but make sure it's not too dubby (which is weird for me to say) with the vocals mostly intact rather than the echoey snippets you find on a lot of dub records. After a few songs, you'll start to feel the size of our planet and all the good people that inhabit it. I know that sounds strange, but give it a try. Need a starter? This new Studio One compilation called Disco Rebel will do the trick 1000%. [LINK]
• How about some more music recommendations? Here's what I listened to this week, courtesy of Buy Music Club. I'm a few weeks late to that SAULT album but OMG. [LINK]
• This profile on Pylon made my day. They were my favorite live band ever, hands down — I saw Pylon repeatedly in the early-90s after they reformed for their third album. They played Orlando a lot. One time I went with a girlfriend who wanted us to leave early because she didn't like them. That was the beginning of the end of that relationship. This profile also made me think about artsy musicians who started as painters. Of course, Brian Eno studied painting before singing in Maxwell Demon (TIL Eno's first band was named Maxwell Demon). Then, as I think about this, I hear Chris Frantz mention his pre-Talking Heads painting ambitions in this interview with Bob Lefsetz. [LINK]
• Wishlist: I would love a Fjærlett. This instrument was apparently made just for me. I'm shaking in my boots, thinking about the potential multi-hour Fjærlett - Ebow duets. (In other news, lockdown is finally starting to do my head in.) [LINK]
• You may recall a past newsletter where I recommended the movie Tarnation. It was more of a tease than a recommendation, though. The only way you could watch the movie was by finding a used DVD somewhere. Well, I'm happy to reveal that The Criterion Channel recently added Tarnation to its streaming service. I'm excited for you to see Tarnation and learn why it's one of my favorite movies. It's not ridiculous like Phase IV (not in the least), but its influence is also wide and unappreciated. [LINK]
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That's a wrap on this week's episode of Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. This newsletter is as jumbled as David Byrne's loft studio, don't you think? In the creative practice, we call that "its charm." I hope you enjoyed this episode's charm. As always, reach out if you have any questions, comments, or have some patent-pending device to eliminate mosquitos. In the meantime, enjoy your week, hang tight, and stay safe and sound (it's crazy out there). I'll see you next Sunday!
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btw — I'm Michael Donaldson and you can read more about who I am and what I do here.
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