25 YEARS OF HOME COMPUTING

Front view of the PowerPC 7600 w/ CD-ROM & floppy drive slots.

Rear view with audio & video ports, including S-VHS and composite video ins.  Very handy for the times.  Of course there's the massive SCSI slot and free slots for additional cards for audio & video upgrades.

It was the beginning of March 1997, 25 years ago this month, that I got my first proper home computer. After spending a decade watching the technology advance and occasionally managing to get my hands on it for brief forays into amusement, I was finally financially able to invest in a decent setup so that I could “beam myself into the future”.

 

Up to this point, I’d only ever dabbled with computers my friends had. My first was an Amiga system I got to play with for a while back in 1988. My friend got it to do video and animation and we played around with its graphics apps and speech synthesizer, which we made say some very awful, rude things. After starting my job in 1994 at a call center for the local phone dating service, my work hours gave me a chance to tinker with their office computers while I was occupying my downtime between customer service calls. My curiosity with the office computers occasionally resulted in some panicked moments when I put in the wrong command and sent the network into a tailspin, but I was fortunate in that it was never anything that a good reboot couldn’t solve. I learned enough about them that I was able to diagram their phone messaging system to a degree that I ended up getting transitioned to working with their software developer, diagramming his code, which helped me learn a lot more about computing. A friend had also given me an old Macintosh to play with in 1996, but it was so outdated that I couldn’t do much with it and barely used it. I think I only managed to write a computer based I Ching program as my sole accomplishment on that machine. So at this point, I had a rudimentary understanding of DOS and Windows based operating systems. It was a good foundation to start with.

 

When it came time to pick a machine for myself, my decision was completely driven by my desire to use it as a creative tool. I wanted to use it for music, video, graphic design and creative writing. With that as my principal criteria, after talking to a few arts based people working with computers, it quickly became apparent that a Mac was gonna be my best bet. Now, any of you PC zealots out there, I’m gonna stop you right now because I don’t wanna hear any PC vs Mac arguments. This is not about that. This is just history and how I made my choices.

 

At the time, Apple were on the ropes as a company. They were toying with allowing clones on the market and had not done anything significant in the computing world for a few years. The iMacs hadn’t come out yet and there certainly were no iPhones or iPads or iPods, which were years away. Buying into them was a big risk as they were seriously on the verge of folding as a company. Even Steve Jobs was on the outs at that time, but my gut told me to take the chance anyway as I had a line on a dealer I knew personally who’d get me a good price and I also had friends promising me they could hook me up with oodles of top end cracked software. Macs were also kinda left alone insofar as virus threats, so this all added up.  I ended up going with a pseudo-clone, the PowerPC 7600. It came loaded with cool hardware interfaces build right in like S-Video, composite video and slots to add audio cards for music production. I got the computer, monitor, keyboard and, pretty soon afterward, a scanner for graphics & disc burner so I could author CD-Rs.  Once I got it all home, the big job was to set it up and start learning how to put it to use. At that point, Mac’s OS was at version 7.6 and was about to jump to 8 before the end of the year, I think. On the one hand, the basic architecture of the OS was pretty simple to understand, but that didn’t mean I didn’t spend many hours pulling my hair out trying to tweak things to sort out issues and conflicts.

 

This was the age of “Extensions”, components of functionality which were introduced to facilitate certain features specific to individual applications being used. Pretty much every app you installed had an Extension or two or more that was needed to make it work. The problem was that Extensions didn’t always like each other and having too many loading up during the boot-up process could risk things going snaky very easily. And it wasn’t always easy to figure out where the conflict was because some Extensions might get along fine until you introduce something new and then, suddenly, they’re causing the computer to crash during startup. It could make watching the boot-up process a real nail-biter as you’d see each Extension load, one after another until something would go sideways and you’d end up with your head in your hands again, broken and hopeless.

 

Those first few months, I’m sure I wiped my HDD about a dozen times just to start with a clean slate and try to figure out where I might have gone wrong. There were times when I would literally be in tears from the frustration of not being able to figure out what the problem was. My GOD, I cursed that box some days. I cursed it straight to HELL! But I also learned... A LOT, and I was able to troubleshoot just about any problem without having to rely on service techs to look at what was going on. Again, that was the nice thing about the architecture. If you had half a brain, you could figure this shit out on your own without having to call in the pros. Eventually, I got a feel for it and, as newer OS versions came along, the issues started to lessen as they introduced safeguards and troubleshooting tools to help with the problems. That meant that I could actually start using the computer to do some fun things.

 

Of course getting it online and connected to the internet was a huge step forward for me, but that didn’t come without its issues either. My first provider was a joke and I ended up dumping them for another one after going crazy trying to get the damn thing connected via that stupid phone based modem. Dial-up was a complete hassle and slow as molasses in those days, so time spent online was limited and you had to be patient as even loading a damn JPG could take several minutes. It was a huge relief when the TV cable company introduced high speed internet that freed up your phone line again. That was a game changer for sure.

 

Creatively, the first things I did with that computer were graphic design experiments. The earliest documents I can find in my backups are some image files from March 10th & 11th, 1997. I’ve included them here so you can have a look. I was trying to come up with some designs for a couple of Mysterons albums and these were initial experiments. This machine never did become too useful for anything beyond photo manipulation and internet use. I did a few things with music & video on it, but they were pretty primitive. The software that would run on this machine wasn’t too sophisticated, so I could only really do a bit of editing of stereo files and maybe a bit of layering and run a virtual synthesizer or sound generator.

 

I was starting to come up with ideas for a new cover design for The Mysterons Hotdog, Pop 'n' Clown CD, which was going to be repackaged for distribution by a local label.  This is dated March 10th, 1997.

 

This was the first cover concept for The Mysterons Wiki Wiki album, which was just at the conceptual stage at that time.  I got the title from watching Hawaii Five-O as it was something Kono always said when he wanted something done quickly.  This is dated March 11th, 1997.

The earliest song I composed on it was an ambient piece called Tuktoyaktuk, which was created by taking some elements from a Mysterons song and mutating them with an audio editor and then adding in a voice recording I snagged off of a radio show that Barry was listening to. I can't recall how I got it recorded. Maybe he'd recorded it on cassette, I think, but I just recall hearing this woman going on about visiting Tuktoyaktuk and immediately realizing I had to sample her. It wasn’t until I got a Mac G4 tower in 2000 that I had a machine capable of running the Logic Pro DAW, which allowed me to get into true professional digital multi-track recording and production.

 

For a first computer, my old 7600 was good start for the times, but I was glad to get a better one when I did as that completely changed the game for me as a creative tool. That old PPC was a good warmup act though and got the bug firmly in me to want to do more. It’s just hard to imagine that a quarter century ago, all this computer stuff was so new and strange and we had no real idea what it would become, both good and bad.

THE FUN BOY THREE - FB3 @ 40

 

Released in March of 1982, the eponymous debut LP by Fun Boy Three is celebrating 40 years on the shelves this month.

After splitting from The Specials, Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding decided to step out of the ska framework and move into a more Afro-centric vibe with a heavy emphasis on percussion on their debut as Fun Boy Three. With the trio working predominantly on their own with only guest background vocalists on some songs and Dick Cuthell doing some horn work, the album took on a singularly esoteric sound that combined electronic drum machines with acoustic percussion, guitars, piano and ambitious vocal arrangements. Production on the album was somewhat rushed, however, which drove the group to work spontaneously, writing songs and working out arrangements in a manner that created a distinctive looseness. It’s a situation which Terry Hall bemoaned in later years, dismissing the album as being underdeveloped, but this free-form, by-the-seat-of-their-pants methodology resulted in an album that feels fresh and innovative. In fact, I find it’s held up incredibly well over the years and, in some respects, remains a peerless pop record. There was nothing that sounded quite like it back then and nothing has sounded like it since.

Aside from the vibrancy of the atmosphere created by the album, it manages to hit hard in terms of social consciousness, particularly with its lead single, The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum. Its a song which has continually increased in relevance as we’ve seen the world spiral down a rabbit hole of social insanity and political corruption. It really should be considered THE anthem of the 21st century. On a lighter note, the album also introduced the world Bananarama, the all girl vocal trio who’d go on to massive success on their own following their appearance on the joint FB3 follow up single from the LP, T'Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It).

The album enjoyed considerable commercial success and the group would go on to expand their lineup for their second album, allowing them to become a full live performing act rather than only a studio creation. Their second album and a few other singles continued the group’s popularity, though with a more conventional pop song structure, but they’d disband after that and Hall would move on to other projects like The Colour Field before moving on to a full solo career. For me, their debut remains one of my all-time favorite records from its era and still finds itself getting into my music rotation on a regular basis. I’d neglected it for a while in the 1990s and early 2000s, but since rediscovering it, I never leave it for too long without a listen.

THE RESIDENTS - TUNES OF TWO CITIES @ 40

 

Marking it’s 40th anniversary this month is The Residents’ Tunes of Two Cities, which was issued in March of 1982. Though it was officially labeled “part two” of the infamous and unfinished Mole Trilogy, it does not technically constitute a continuation of the story begun by Mark of the Mole the previous year. The Residents considered it more of a prequel to Mark of the Mole and, rather than advancing the narrative, it seeks to illuminate the differences between the two cultures described in the story by presenting alternating examples of their popular music. In the case of the hedonistic, aquatic Chubs, the music is typified by a kind of mutant “jazz”. The industrious underground dwelling Mole music is, by contrast, expressed by more mechanically influenced hymns.

Technically, the album is notable for introducing the E-mu Emulator digital sampler into The Residents' production arsenal, one of the earliest commercially available keyboard samplers of its kind. This opened up a new vista of sounds for the band, though the primitive nature of the sampling technology of the time has tended to date recordings like this somewhat ungracefully. For many fans of the band, this album has become a demarcation point between their “golden era” and what has become known as their “digital decline”.

Personally, I have to agree that I much prefer the analogue classics that came before this. I largely gave up following their work after this release, though I have, in recent years, done some backtracking into some of their post “Mole” ‘80s releases and also enjoyed some of their more recent releases prior to the passing of Hardy Fox. This renewed interest was largely inspired by seeing them live on three separate occasions since 2011, experiences which renewed my appreciation for their craft.

BRIAN ENO - AMBIENT 4: ON LAND @ 40

 

Released in March of 1982, Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month. It is a continuation of his development of the concept of ambient music, though it brings in a decidedly dark, brooding quality to the music, which gives it a subtle dissonance and sense of impending menace. Not exactly the kind of thing one might associate with this genre as it was previously defined by Eno, but it certainly ties into the direction ambient would take throughout the remainder of the decade with artists such as Lustmord and Zoviet France further pursuing that aura of darkness.

The process for creating this album involved a continual layering technique which Eno referred to as “composting”. In this approach, the synthesizer was found to be of increasingly limited use as Eno incorporated elements like field recordings and sounds of natural objects like sticks, lengths of chain and stones. "Unheard" audio elements were mixed and edited into compositions, repeatedly building up sounds only to strip them back down again in later processes. The eventual results became nearly incomprehensible in terms of identifying individual instruments and sound sources, though on occasion, something might pop up like Jon Hassell’s effect laden trumpet in the track, Shadow. Eno also had fairly specific intentions in mind insofar as how to listen to the album, even designing a three speaker configuration which he suggested would be accommodating to any recording which featured broad stereo imaging.

The album was recorded in NYC, gradually over the course of several years beginning in September of 1978 until it was completed in January of 1982. In addition to Eno and the above mentioned Hassell, other musicians of note who contributed to the album include bassist Bill Laswell and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn of Material.

MICHAEL NESMITH - FROM A RADIO ENGINE TO THE PHOTON WING @45

 

Released in March of 1977, Michael Nesmith’s eighth post Monkees solo album, From A Radio Engine To The Photon Wing, is celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. While his trademark country-rock fusion is still present here, this album finds Nesmith pushing the “country” side into more of a background augmentation. Being that the era was the height of the disco craze, there’s even a bit of a beat on a couple of tracks, though he never allows it to become a distraction to the song’s integrity. Despite the emphasis on being more aligned with the contemporary pop motifs of the day, lyrically, it retains the whimsical esoteric philosophizing which was at the core of its predecessor, the conceptual multimedia box set, The Prison. The songs offer meditations on life, love and loss in a way that always retains a steadfast grip on optimism, regardless of the underlying emotional strain. It’s a characteristic that underlies all of Nesmith’s work as it did his attitude towards life in general.

The most notable track on the album is the opener, Rio, which, in its edited single incarnation, became the little acorn that sprouted the oak tree of the music video industry of the 1980s and helped birth MTV. Looking to promote the single, Mike had been asked to prepare a video of the song which could be distributed to various TV markets. Nesmith misinterpreted this as a request for him to make a short story out of the song, so he set about crafting a video narrative to illustrate its lyrics. While there were other music videos on the market before it, they had all only featured the performer lip-syncing to their song, usually on a blank stage. Even Queen’s famous Bohemian Rhapsody video adhered to this basic format, albeit in its most elaborate incarnation. What Nesmith brought was nothing less than a mini-movie, complete with plot, characters, sets and settings. This was virtually unheard of in the industry at the time. Its existence eventually lead to the creation of a TV series, Pop Clips, featuring other similar productions and, ultimately, the inauguration of an entire TV network to feature this content.

This album was the second to be released on Nesmith’s own Pacific Arts label imprint, but it was his penultimate album to be released in the 1970s before he would effectively abandon the music industry for over a decade to focus on film & TV production. He would only release Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma in 1979 before packing up his guitar until 1992’s Tropical Campfires, an album which was stylistically predicted 15 years early by …Radio Engine….

KRAFTWERK - TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS @ 45

 

45 years ago this month, Kraftwerk put their sixth LP on the tracks as the iconic Trans-Europe Express hit the shops in March of 1977. It would solidify their conceptual identity while becoming one of their most influential albums.

If there had been any trace of the band’s early free-form experimentalism typical of their first three LPs remaining on Autobahn & Radio Activity, it was thoroughly excised with the release of TEE. Everything on this album adhered to the strict, controlled compositional aesthetic which had been taking over as their trademark. Part of the reason for this was the introduction of the Synthanorma Sequenzer, a customized 32-step 16-channel analog sequencer made for the band by Matten & Wiechers. This piece of gear allowed them to finally realize the precise machine-like rhythms they’d been dreaming of while freeing them from the drudgery of having to perform these repetitive maneuvers manually. The effect on their sound was immediate and profound.

This impact was even manifest in the way the group presented themselves on the LP’s stylized cover. They were dehumanizing themselves by creating a visage that more resembled mannequins, something which would be literally implemented by the next album and further enhanced in later years with the introduction of actual robotic replicas and, finally, CGI avatars. This attitude extended beyond mere visual representation of the group. They also adopted a strict set of guidelines in terms of their public behavior and demeanor, enacting rules such as restricting themselves from indulging in intoxicants while socializing or performing.

Conceptually, the group were keen to distance themselves from any perception of being associated with Nazis. This was something which had been a bit of an issue with the Autobahn album and its controversial celebration the German Third Reich’s enduring infrastructural achievement. To accomplish this, they adopted an idea suggested by their friend, Paul Alessandrini, who encouraged them to write about the new Trans-Europe Express rail system. This was something that would emphasize the European identity, an idea which was further reinforced by the song, Europe Endless. This aligned them with the values of the emerging European union, moving them away from anything that smacked of Germanic nationalism. Parallel to their emphasis on European culture, the group also focused on the concept of personal identity and self-reflection as embodied by songs like The Hall of Mirrors and Showroom Dummies, the latter of which was key in terms of the construction of their new image.

In terms of the impact of the album, while it did respectably in terms of sales, the cultural impact it would manifest over the years and even generations is immeasurable. Most profoundly, its title track managed to find its way into the hands of emerging hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, who sampled it for his 1982 classic Planet Rock single. It would then go on to influence the Detroit techno community, along with the groups followup LPs, Man Machine and Computer World. The ripple effect within the world of electronic dance music was only matched by the synergistic works from Giorgio Moroder, who’s epic disco hits like I Feel Love and The Chase, dovetailed elegantly with Kraftwerk’s similar emphasis on powerful electronic sequenced rhythms. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Innumerable artists within the general world of pop and rock music were turning to Kraftwerk for inspiration at this time, including artists like Davie Bowie, who was embarking on his “Berlin” phase at the time TEE was being recorded and who, along with Iggy Pop, found themselves immortalized within the very lyrics of Kraftwerk’s titular song.

Nearly a half century after its release, the album remains a touchstone for anyone who picks up a synthesizer or plunks away on a drum machine. You simply can’t have techno without Trans-Europe Express laying the tracks for it to travel into the future. Only The Beatles can lay claim to having a bigger impact on modern popular music and there are many who could justly debate who had the larger influence.

ULTRAVOX! @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the eponymous debut of Ultravox!, which was released on February 25th, 1977. Produced by Brian Eno, the album may have failed to make an impression in terms of sales, but it nonetheless struck a chord within the underground music scene in a way that would inspire the likes of Gary Numan, Japan and Visage and set a signpost that would ultimately point to the future of electronic music.

By the time this album was recorded, the band had been around in one form or another since early 1974. Initially known as Tiger Lily, by 1976 they’d developed enough of a reputation with their live shows that they started to find themselves garnering some attention and getting swept up in the rising tide of the “punk” phenomenon that was starting to garner headlines in the British press. This ultimately landed them a record deal with Island Records, even though they were still waffling on a band name. They were in the late stages of completing this debut album in October when they finally came up with the name “Ultravox!”. Though they may have adopted some of the superficial trappings of the punk scene, albeit more “glam” inspired, musically they were far beyond mere three chord thrashing, owing more of a debt to precursors like Roxy Music & Hawkwind and the German experimental scene as indicated by their name being augmented by an exclamation mark in homage to Krautrock pioneers, NEU!.

Thematically, the band’s then front-man, John Foxx, drew a lot of inspiration from writers like J.G. Ballard, which, again, put them beyond the simple nihilism of punk. It brought in a kind of dystopian futurism that would become an essential component within the post-punk and electronica scenes which would build on their groundwork. Foxx even proclaimed his intention to live “without emotion”, a sentiment he put to music in I Want to Be a Machine. With its 7+ minute runtime, it certainly didn’t align with the 3 minute trash of what was happening with the punks.

Ultravox! would last in more-or-less this incarnation until 1979 when Foxx departed and went on to a successful solo career. The band would undergo a rebuild with the arrival of Midge Ure and finally find its commercial feet, but early albums like their debut would end up being revered by those who were inspired by them.