2024-05-16
THROBBING GRISTLE - RE:TG | TG NOW @ 20
2024-05-09
GEORGE HARRISON - ELECTRONIC SOUND @ 55
Released
on May 9th, 1969, George Harrison's second solo album, Electronic
Sound, is turning 55 years old today. It was the first LP of entirely
electronic music released by a rock musician, breaking new creative
ground, though perhaps lacking in sophistication or any true
understanding of how to use the instrument.
In
the late 1960s, the MOOG modular system was a novelty, for the most
part. Micky Dolenz of The Monkees had purchased one and it was used on
the group's fourth LP, released in 1967, one of the first pop music
appearances of the instrument. George Harrison became fascinated by the
MOOG soon after and purchased his own the following year. While in
California making the purchase, he recorded a demonstration session by
Bernie Krause (of Beaver & Krause) which ended up becoming No Time
For Space on Harrison's album. This recording was done without Krause's
permission or knowledge and its release undermined Krause's plan for
his upcoming collaboration with Paul Beaver because he'd utilized a
number of themes they were planning on incorporating into their project
during his demo for Harrison. Harrison initially had Krause's name on
the LP cover, but it was painted over at the insistence of Krause, who
was offended by the use of his demo without permission as well as
subsequent interactions with Harrison which he found disrespectful and
insulting.
The second piece
recorded for the album was done by Harrison in England after receiving
delivery of the synth. Under the Mersey Wall displays Harrison's lack
of understanding of the device, a situation aggravated by the lack of a
user manual included with the unit, something about which Harrison
complained to Krause, further aggravating their already strained
relationship. The recording amounts to little more than childlike
noodling with the synthesizer, with little in the way of nuance or clear
intention.
The album was
released in tandem with John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Unfinished Music No.
2: Life with the Lions, the second album in their trilogy of
experimental recording releases. Both were issued on the same day by
Zapple Records, a short lived subsidiary of Apple Records that was set
up for the purpose of issuing budget priced spoken word and experimental
sound recordings. The sub-label, however, was quickly folded after
these releases, with a third title being shelved before being released.
The cover for Electronic Sound featured a childlike painting created by
Harrison himself, which quite nicely suited the amateurish innocence of
the music on the record.
At
the time of its release, it was mostly dismissed or ridiculed by serious
music critics, though some found it oddly amusing or confounding, yet
fascinating. However, despite its crudeness and the issues with the
questionable provenance of one of its recordings, it has managed to
become something of a cult favourite in some quarters. As with the
Lennon/Ono releases, and Harrison's previous debut solo release, these
flew in the face of expectations for The Beatles, as a collective, and
were nonetheless expanding the boundaries of pop music. In the case of
Electronic Sound, it cracked open territory that would later be properly
explored by the likes of artist like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and
Cluster. The concept of abstract electronic ambience was just getting
started, and Electronic Sound was the first foot in the door of that
genre in many respects. As crude as it was, it still managed to carve
out a place as a cornerstone album.
JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO UNFINISHED MUSIC NO. 2: LIFE WITH THE LIONS @ 55
Marking
its 55th anniversary today is the second in John Lennon & Yoko
Ono's trilogy of experimental albums, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with
the Lions, which was released on May 9th, 1969. It was released in
tandem with George Harrison's second solo outing, Electronic Sound, with
both titles released on the short lived Apple Records subsidiary,
Zapple, which was intended to function as a budget priced outlet for
spoken word and sound experiments. The label was quickly shut down
after this pair of inaugural releases, however.
Life
with the Lions continued John & Yoko's attempts to push the
boundaries of what pop musicians could get away with. With Ono coming
from a background in Fluxus performance art, she was setting the example
for John to follow. The album kicks off with a side long live
improvised performance recorded on March 2nd, 1969, at Cambridge
University. Cambridge 1969 features Yoko wailing away in her trademark
high pitched vibrato while John, who performed the entire show with his
back to the audience, accompanied with electric guitar feedback. It was
his first live performance without the Beatles. Near the end of the
piece, some other musicians chime in to finish it off. The second side
includes recordings of John & Yoko reading press clippings in the
hospital where Yoko stayed during her miscarriage, and the unborn baby's
heartbeat before it was miscarried, which is followed by 2 minutes of
silence. The record closes off with a recording of John scrolling
through random radio signals. The cover photograph shows the couple in
the hospital during Yoko's miscarriage. As with the nude photo of the
couple on the cover of Two Virgins, the image and the record's contents
clearly show how open the pair were to sharing their most intimate
moments with the public.
The
trilogy would be closed out with the release of The Wedding Album later
that year. Public reception for these releases was certainly not
enthusiastic, though they have acquired cult audiences since their
release. While many consider them something of a grand joke by Lennon,
he is quoted as saying their intent was to activate people into becoming
contributing participants in the listening experience, finishing off
what he and Yoko had started expressing, thus the series title of
"Unfinished Music". These works may lack a certain sophistication in
some senses, but they do set a precedent that creators are NOT bound by
anyone's expectations and that expression can occur in many forms and
address even the most traumatic subjects.
2024-05-02
MICHAEL NESMITH - INFINITE RIDER ON THE BIG DOGMA @ 45
Released
45 years ago this month, in May of 1979, is Michael Nesmith's capstone
LP for his 1970s musical career, Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma. After
spending the decade attempting to establish himself as a solo musical
artist in the shadow of his 1960s fame with The Monkees, Nesmith's focus
was rapidly shifting into another medium, with his Pacific Arts media
production and distribution company quickly moving into the realm of
home video, with ambitions towards feature film production.
While
Nesmith's releases during the first half of the decade had gone for a
laid-back, country tinged coolness, his two albums in the latter half of
the decade began to skew back into the more energetic realms of rock
'n' roll and upbeat pop music. With his previous album, From A Radio
Engine to a Photon Wing (1976), its single, Rio, had inadvertently
invented a new format for the presentation of music in video form,
becoming the first music video to include a coherent narrative,
effectively functioning as what Nesmith termed a "mini-movie". Rather
than simply performing the song in front of the cameras, Nesmith had
conceived of the idea that you could tell a story with the music,
complete with character development and a narrative arc. This approach
would become the blueprint for the explosion of music videos that was
looming on the horizon for the coming decade, something he also had a
hand in by helping to create MTV.
Building
on the foundations laid by Rio, Nesmith's original plan for this album
was that it would be a full video album, with videos produced for all
the songs. That plan never quite managed to come to fruition for these
songs, however the concept did end up leading to the production of the
Grammy winning video release Elephant Parts (1981), an hour long
assemblage of comedy sketches, fake commercials and musical interludes.
Several of the songs used for that production were taken from Infinite
Rider.
Ultimately, the draw of
the video distribution market and film making would distract Nesmith
from music making throughout the 1980s as Pacific arts focused on
building a massive library of VHS titles it would market and sell, as
well as producing a few feature films such as Timerider, Repo Man and
Tapeheads. As a result, Nesmith didn't release any albums of new music
throughout the decade, with his next collection of new music not coming
along until 1992 with his acclaimed Tropical Campfires album. As such,
Infinite Rider stands as a capstone to Nesmith's musical output for the
1970s, book-ending a decade that had begun with The First National Band,
leaving an under appreciated legacy of music that continues to find new
fans as the years roll on, with this album being a prime example of
Nesmith's skill at crafting a catchy pop song.