Ray Manzarek explaining how the introduction for “Light My Fire” came to life. The background music is Invention No. 8, BWV 779 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which served as an inspiration for Manzarek.
The song’s distinctive organ intro has been characterized as “one of the most recognizable sounds in the history of rock music”.
Ray Manzarek (1939-2013)
In Ray’s words: “It just came out of, you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice”.
Filed under Sounds, The Masters' Voice
Although cloud watching seems to be reaching ever-higher levels of popularity nowadays, this noble activity has been a favorite pastime of sensitive and artistically inclined individuals long before the advent of modern photographic techniques.
In his nocturnal composition Nuages (“Clouds”), Claude Debussy tried to capture “the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white.”
Debussy’s visual, descriptive language brings to mind impressionistic images of similar themes. Conversely, painters would also use music as a way to better illustrate the effects of their own art. In a letter to his brother Theo in 1888, Vincent Van Gogh wrote: “…in a picture I want to say something comforting, in the way that music is comforting.”
Vincent van Gogh, ‘Wheat Field Under Cloudy Sky’ (Oil on canvas, 1890)
A somewhat darker, and at times even disturbing, vision arises in some of Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic masterpieces, such as Rashomon (1950) and Ran (1985). Here, the depiction of imposing cloud formations serves as a symbol for the futility and the ephemeral status of human affairs, signifying the tragic dimensions of man’s passing from this world.
Stills from Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’ (1985)
In the dedication of Paris Spleen, one of the founding texts of literary modernism, Charles Baudelaire had dreamed “of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme” that could “adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience.”
In the opening piece, L’étranger (“The Stranger”), Baudelaire’s enigmatic figure rejects received truths, certainties and conventions, retaining faith only to one’s self and the beauty of passing clouds…
“Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends? Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country? I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty? I could indeed lover her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold? I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds… the clouds that pass… up there… up there… the wonderful clouds!”
Filed under Books, Film & Music
I have to admit I don’t go to concerts as often as I used to (or would like to, for that matter). But lately I’ve been trying to get back in touch with Amsterdam’s vibrant music scene. I’m not talking big names or venues here, but mostly intimate gigs of lesser-known local bands.
One such case is the blues/garage rock duo The Shady Greys. As both their name and songs suggest, their ‘grey’ sound lies somewhere in between The Black Keys and The White Stripes, marked by fuzzy guitar riffs and the use of the cajón.
I recently had the chance to meet and jam with them during a late night session in one of the city’s blues bars. In that same session I also bumped into a musician friend I hadn’t seen in quite some time. I was glad to hear that he’s busy doing gigs and playing guitar for The Crowns, an Amsterdam-based rock group built on the “foundations of Dutch liberty & freedom.”
More on the psychedelic side of things, The Full Wonka is another local band whose atmospheric, experimental sound produces a hypnotizing effect. Watching them live and listening to their tunes brings to mind bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Velvet Underground.
Only a fragment of Amsterdam’s alternative rock music scene, these bands nevertheless capture most of its essential qualities: energy, enthusiasm, spontaneity and -perhaps most importantly- genuine expression of feeling coupled with lots of fun.
Filed under Various
This is the first recording I’ve made in quite a while. I came up with the main theme (which opens the piece and appears again in the end with a slight variation) several years ago and I started working on it again recently, adding a middle section and arranging the strings.
I always thought of this piece as the background music of some -yet unrealized- film. The title was inspired by Jack Bruce’s Theme for an imaginary western from his wonderful album Songs for a Tailor.
Filed under The Muser's Music, Sounds
The new EP by Joalz Hello Darkness My Friend is exactly what its name suggests: An intriguing invitation to explore dark, otherworldly soundscapes.
Sharing their time between Greece and Germany, Joalz decribe their music as “a weird kind of obscure indietronica.” Recorded in Berlin and Athens between March 2011 – June 2012, Hello Darkness My Friend is influenced by the sound of early Krautrock, psychedelia and progressive rock (think of Amon Düül, Can or Aphrodite’s Child).
Each song has a completely unique atmosphere; the opening track ‘Oh darling Margaret’ is haunted by the sound of the theremin, whereas in ‘Outspoken you are’ Mary Tsoni’s powerful reciting soars against a dazzling sonic background (the song’s B&W video was shot in Manhattan’s Chinatown).
I found particularly interesting the band’s rendition of ‘Alligator Wine’ (originally recorded by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in 1958), where Tsoni’s theatrical performance and the fuzzy guitars blend into a peculiar kind of post-apocalyptic blues with dark overtones.
Next to a remarkable new wave of Greek artists, Joalz with their Hello Darkness My Friend offer yet another example of how creativity and experimentation can spring up amidst such grim times for Greek society.
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Filed under Album reviews
“You’re never really done for, as long as you got a good story and someone to tell it too.”
(Max Tooney in The Legend of 1900)
In his theater monologue Novecento, Italian writer Alessandro Baricco gives a fascinating account of the life and times of Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, a fictional piano wunderkind born on the ocean liner Virginian who was destined never to set foot on land.
“We were playing because the Ocean is vast and scares you, we were playing so that people could forget the passing of time, forget where they were and who they were. We were playing so as to make people dance, because if you dance you feel like God and cannot die. And we were playing ragtime, because that’s the music God dances along when nobody watches.”
“So think now: a piano. Its keys start somewhere. And end somewhere. You know they are eighty-eight, nobody can tell you otherwise. They are not infinite. You are infinite, and so is the music you can make on these keys.”
In the story’s heartbreaking finale, leaving the Virginian and facing the immensity of real life proves too overwhelming for the legendary pianist. Still, his unique music lives on, if only in the memories of all those who were once blessed to be among his audience.
Filed under Books, Film & Music
These last few days, after reading the news about Storm Thorgerson’s passing away (the man responsible for several iconic record sleeves), I have been pondering on the very special relationship between music and cover art.
Aesthetically speaking, I have always regarded the artwork of an album at least as important as the music it contains. Great album covers often attracted my attention and curiosity while I would browse through records in some store, resulting in my acquaintance with many exciting and undiscovered soundscapes.
In fact, the cover’s artwork has often been my very first impression of a music album. It was through their intriguing, mystifying covers that I was first introduced to many classic records such as Houses of the Holy, Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon, all designed by Storm Thorgerson.
Another work by Thorgerson I have always admired is his cover design for Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason. The cover shows 800 hospital beds, arranged in a river-like form on a beachfront location (which is Saunton Sands in Devonshire, UK). The image took about two weeks to create and won the photographer Robert Dowling a gold award at the Association of Photographers Awards.
The association between sound and image can be crucial for an album’s thematic coherence, conceptual effect and aesthetic value. It is hard to imagine someone listening to The Wall, Sticky Fingers or The Velvet Underground & Nico without simultaneously thinking of their accompanying cover art.
Some of the best album covers, as in Thorgerson’s work, have their origins in progressive rock. One of my all-time favorites is the artwork for King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King, which so powerfully captures the atmosphere of impending paroxysm and paranoia described in the album’s opening track 21st Century Schizoid Man (Barry Godber, who painted the album cover, died in 1970 of a heart attack shortly after the album’s release).
King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ (1969)
Another artist I have always admired is Roger Dean, whose designs have been on album covers by bands such as Babe Ruth, Budgie, Uriah Heep and Gentle Giant.
Gentle Giant, ‘Octopus’ (1972)
A truly imaginative and original artist, Dean is most well known for the amazing fantasy landscapes he has produced for the progressive rock bands Asia and Yes.
Yes, ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’ (1974)
Examples like the collaboration between Pink Floyd and Storm Thorgerson or Yes and Roger Dean illustrate how cover art can play an integral part in shaping a band’s identity. Masterful works of art in their own right, albums covers can both complement and enhance a band’s artistic image.
This art form, however, has been traditionally associated with vinyl, where the cover design has the necessary breathing space in order to create the desired aesthetic effect. In the era of digital music and massive downloading, it is doubtful whether cover art for music albums will continue to have the same prominence and importance. I, for one, sincerely hope it will.
Filed under Various
