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Posts Tagged ‘Outsider’
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Monday, January 24th, 2011Outsider Music – The Residents
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Being an experimental art and media project, researching The Residents is one of the strangest but most interesting experiences you can have online. I don’t think we’ve even touched the the tip of the iceberg on this one. Their whole project appears to be at once a riddle, a hoax and some kind of high concept obscurantism. To quote from liner notes of the album below, “The Residents don’t support racism, Catholicism, fascism, Judaism, cynicism, realism or journalism.”
the brain-numbing catchiness of pop music is fascism in disguise
The Residents are an avant-garde music and visual arts group largely shrouded in mystery and myth. They formed in 1969 but after several decades in music business, and still actively creating and producing to this day, they have never revealed their names or faces. Their best known device for preserving their anonymity has been covering their heads with giant eyeballs tastefully accented with top hats and tuxedos. On trying to find names for the constituent members of the band you are met with a cryptic message of: ‘If the question is “what are the names the parents gave to the people making up The Residents,” then I would say that those names belong to individuals and not the group. The group doesn’t have names within its structure. If the question is the real “who,” meaning the philosophy and outlook, then that is all clearly stated in the work. I would find it difficult to summarize.’ However the same official website does helpfully surmise that the people who started the group are exactly the same as now although the number of people who have been in The Residents is probably over a hundred at this point and still growing. The FAQ of the website (how many bands have a frequently asked questions page?) explains the disguises and refusal to be subjected to interviews thus: ‘Say you have a tank of goldfish. Say you have given each goldfish a name. A stranger wanders into your house and sees your tank of goldfish and wants to know who they are. Considering that he is a stranger, you tell him it is a tank of goldfish.’
Meet The Residents
Intermission
Demons dance alone
I found her crying in the morning
Sitting in a chair
She was wrapping something up
And wrapping it with care
I did not mean to hurt her
When I fell asleep last night
I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
Yes, I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
Outsider Music – Wesley Willis
Monday, April 12th, 2010I love your movies
I love you too
You are the best man that I have ever liked
You are my rich man
You are my big millionaire
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Wheaties, breakfast of champions
Wesley Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rock over London... Rock on Chicago...
Wesley Willis was a Chicago native who achieved cult status during a short but prolific recording career in the 1990′s. In 1989, Wesley began hearing voices and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He described his writing, performing and recording as a way to help subdue the voices in his head. His career began on the street, accompanied by a trusty Technics KN 2000 keyboard. He soon began opening slots for various local bands and later recorded songs in tribute to these performances for example, Mustard Plug, Foo Fighters and The New Bomb Turks. Standing 6’5″ tall and weighing 300 pounds, he enjoyed walking the streets of Chicago, riding buses and peddling his detailed ballpoint drawings of the city. It is also said he enjoyed greeting people with a head-butt.
Heartbreaker, nervewrecker, meansucker
Willis claimed to have “schizophrenia demons” in his head that took him away from his “harmony joy rides” and put him on “torture hell rides”. In 1992, he began writing songs and soon after formed the Wesley Willis Fiasco with guitarist Dale Meiners who took Willis to his studio to record. Willis had begun to build a small cult following with his bizarre three-chord rants about trivial everyday items, music and people he knew. In the early part of the 90′s several independently released tapes of his music appeared along with indie recordings of his albums. To date he has more than 1000 songs in circulation and was so prolific at one point recorded 4 albums in 36 days, having recorded more than 50 in total with each completely finished in 5 hours or less.
The excitement and honesty in mundane cultural phenomena from a city bus ride to McDonald’s as well as Wesley’s refreshing wit and sense of humour define his music as truly unique. His body of work is simultaneously disturbing, hilarious, blunt, and intoxicating. He has rubbed shoulders with everyone from Steve Albini to the Beastie Boys. His number one fan Jello Biafra (of the Dead Kennedys) has compiled two volumes of “Greatest Hits” for his Alternative Tentacles label and Willis has released two albums on American Recordings, one of which you can grab here. It’s hard these days to find honesty and lack of commercial or vainglorious motive in art. Willis took that idea and flipped it on its head – stuffing his art – both songs and drawings with so many advertisements and familiar names (of bands and brands) as to take the idea of “commercial” and turn it completely inside out. His songs may appear juvenile and offensive at first, but you can not help but be charmed by the songs he sung about things he loved and his friends.
Wesley said that he fought his demons every day, with names and personalities they would haunt him by mocking and persuading him to break things. He often mentioned that his demons were named “Heartbreaker”, “Nervewrecker”, and “Meansucker”. He called his psychotic episodes “hell rides”, and alternatively, he declared rock and roll to be “the joy ride music”. Wesley found a way to stay one step ahead of his demons by writing and recording thousands of songs and creating countless original drawings. The brutal honesty of his art, his constant drive to create and perform in order to hush those demons should be an inspiration to us all to dig to the deepest places of pure expression and to express oneself with unadulterated honesty.
You are so lovable to me in the long run
Wesley was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) at the end of 2002, and had to undergo emergency surgery on June 2nd to identify the source of, and to suppress internal bleeding. Wesley Willis passed away on, Thursday, August 21st, 2003. He will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most unique songwriters in history. His love of life, courage and unrelenting drive to succeed helped him overcome a horrifically poor background, child abuse, racism and chronic schizophrenia. He loved little things and big things, bus rides, watching trains. He loved writing songs about how much he loved his friends. He loved bands so much he would write songs to tell them so. He loved traveling to new towns to head-butt new friends. He has left a legacy of songs which will undoubtedly bring a smile to your face. For more information on Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, please visit Leukimia-Lymphoma.org.
So go on and download the Feel The Power album, listen good and check out our other outsider music features! Rock over London… Rock on Chicago…
Outsider Music – Harry Partch
Monday, March 15th, 2010I had been away from the part of the world I generally consider home for six years. In the seventh year I found a studio in the unused Pioneer Hatchery in Petaluma, California. However sentimental or Oriental that many sound, the fact remains: it was the time of falling petals, and this music followed. – Harry Partch
Partched
One of the most individualistic composers of all time, Harry Partch was not only a great composer, but an innovative theorist who broke through the shackles of a tuning system of all Western music which had lasted for many centuries. He created dozens of incredible musical instruments for the specific peformance of his music and was a dramatist who wrote his own texts for dance-theatre extravaganzas based on everything from Greek mythology to his own experience as a hobo. Between 1930 and 1972, he created one of the most amazing bodies of sensually alluring and emotionally powerful music in the 20th century: music dramas, dance theatre, multi-media extravaganzas, vocal music and chamber music – mostly all performed on the instruments he built himself.
Could Chamber Bowls
The picture to the right is of an instrument created by Partch called Cloud Chamber Bowls. The bowls themselves are 12-gallon Pyrex carboys, suspended from a redwood frame on ropes. These difficult to find and impossible to tune glass gongs are played very carefully by a percussionist who risks the anguish of of a shattered disaster. The original bowls were found at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, and had been sued as cloud-chambers to trace the paths of sub-atomic particles.
Considering the earlist known letter written by Harry Partch dates from 1931, when he was already 30 years old, very little is knows about his pre-mature life. As a child, living in various areas of the American southwest, Partch was exposed to a variety of influences from Asian to Native American. He spent his childhood in remote tones in Arizona and New Mexico where he heard and sang songs in Mandarin, Spanish and American Indian languages. After dropping out of the University of Southern California, he began to study on his own and to question the validity of the tuning and philosophical foundations of Western music. He believed the standard system was unsuitable for reflecting the subtle melodic contours of dramatic speech, and as a result, he burned all of his early works. Partch was always clear that this burning of his early music was of tremendous symbolic importance to him, and he speaks of it as an act of purification, a ritualistic purging by fire.
During and after the Great Depression, he was a hobo and itinerant worker, riding trains, all the while keeping a musical notebook of his experiences named Bitter Music which he later set to music.The entries frequently included overheard bits of everyday vernacular speech. Partch always said his reason for developing his microtonal scales was to try to replicate and demonstrate verbal expression.
Corporeal creations
In 1930, Partch broke with Western European tradition and forged a new musicology, based on a primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech with music, using principles of natural acoustic resonance (Just Intonation) and expanded melodic and harmonic possibilities. He began to first adapt guitars and violas to play his music, and then began to build whole new instruments based on his new microtonal tuning system. Over his lifetime he built over 25 instruments as well as numerous small hand instruments and became a brilliant spokesman for his ideas. Largely ignored by the standard musical institutions and industry, he criticised concert traditions, the roles of the performer and composer, the role of music in society, the 12-tone equal-temperament scale and the concept of “pure” or abstract music. To explain his philosophical and intonational ideas, he wrote a treatise, “Genesis of a Music” which has served as a primary source of information and inspiration to many musicians for the last half century, considered the standard text of microtonal music theory and takes the concept of Corporeality, the fusion of all art forms with the body, as its central focus.
The album we’ve uploaded for you to download and listen to here is the most extended all instrumental work by the microtonal guru. The Haiku-like title may sound metaphysical but has a prosaic explanation. In 1962, Partch returned to California after six years in the Midwest. Returning to his roots in the seventh year was like a sabbatical. He was getting tired of frequent moving: “The spectacle of me and two tons of musical instruments wandering around the country is becoming almost comical. He had to find a spacious and cheap studio and living space, and his former landlord in Sausalito, California in September 1962 allowed him to use an empty chick hatchery. When he visited the building the walkway leading to the place was “… strewn with petals – roses, camelias, and many others” and the title of the new work came to him. “It was a time of falling petals and the music followed.” He had to attract a group of committed musicians who could be relied upon to put in the time, learn how to play the unusual instruments, learn how to play the written parts (in special notational systems), develop the ear to play music where there are many “extra” notes besides the familiar 12 they had learned, and finally learn to play their parts.
Partch was notorious for going beyond instrumental and intonational uniqueness. He communicated to the members of his ensemble the “extra-musical” attitudes and actions he felt lead to an experimental performance. He would show how to approach an instrument with the proper physical inclination, not unlike the motivation of an actor for his part. The physical approach would reflect both the nature of the notes and phrases themselves, and the dramatic or musical intent of the passage. He taught respect for the instruments and how to coax the best and worst sounds out of them. In doing so he wanted to see a transformation of his musicians from passive translators of his scores to active, engaged participants. Partch would often speak of not only “caressing the instrument, but raping it too.” The physical relationship between player and instrument is crucial to the corporeal performance. The musician must transcend their role as instrumentalist and become more fully formed performers, ready to move, act and live the part. To create the corporeal performance.
Partch and some loyal supporters recorded most of Petals in 1964 while the premises they were recording in was literally being bulldozed around them, often begging operators to stop for a minute to make a take. Often the duets are played by Partch on both parts, through overdubbing. The recording was resumed in San Diego in 1966, and the tapes were painstakingly overdubbed for a CRI records release. This results in a useful introduction of the sound of Partch’s instruments. But Petals suffers a bit from its form. At one-minute intervals the music comes to a stop, and half the time resumes in the same tempo and with the same harmonic patterns. Performance and tape synchronisation problems involved in the production of this recording were of an extraordinary level of difficulty, calling for more than a hundred hours of editing. Although the rhythms are wonderfully irregular, this predictability offsets the fascination of the wonderful sounds of Partch’s instruments.
Dirty Harry
So download the album here, check out our other favourite Outsider music here. And remember what Harry said…
This is my trinity: sound-magic, visual beauty, experience-ritual.
Outsider Music – The Kids of Widney High
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Windeylicker
Wheely good
The Kids of Widney High weren’t originally intended to be a grassroots pop cultural phenomenon. At first it was a way for special education teacher Michael Monagan to introduce his class of severely handicapped high school students to a sort of art therapy in songwriting. It evolved into something far larger, leaving many to question the intentions of those associated with its wide-scale distribution. In 1989, Monagan and a set of professional session musicians and studio engineers teamed up with his students to record a series of songs. It was designed to showcase the potential of Mongan’s class and perhaps serve as a model for other teachers of the developmentally disabled.
The resulting 1989 release, Special Music for Special Kids is remarkably well-produced, although it does suffer from the ills of the era in it’s somewhat tacky 80′s sound. You can tell from listening that those involved in the project took it seriously, the upshot being a fun and listenable album. It was designed and marketed as a record for young children and you can hear this in it’s presentation, but it later scored considerable success with curiosity seekers among the general public. It attracted everyone from immature teenagers seeking something different from the pop milieu of the late 80′s to experimental musicians who loved the raw, unpretentious feel. Predictably, it also worked wonders for the students themselves, many of whom were reported to have remarkable breakthroughs with self-esteem and confidence. There is however an unfortunate exploitative feel to the album as a whole, the songs are not created purely by the disabled students after all, the hi-tech production clashes with the naive and untrained vocals.
Ten years later, the original songwriters had come and gone, but the kids of Widney High were still making music with teacher Mike Monagan still leading their way. In 1999, they were invited to support Mike Patton’s experimental metal group Mr. Bungle for a few California tour dates. The same year, they released another album, Let’s Get Busy on Patton’s new label, Ipecac. With a post-grunge feel, it mirrors the transition from sugarcoated pop to a rockier character which the American youth experienced through the 90′s. People were suspicious of the label’s motives as Patton is infamous for his nefarious sense of humour. Ipecac would say that eccentricity is what unites the roster of bands including the Melvins, and Patton’s own various left-field side projects. With the label he seems to bring together musicians who fit in nowhere else.
From Patton himself: “The students have written songs that reflect their experiences growing up disabled in the exciting but unforgiving city of Los Angeles. The topics of their songs range from the fear we all have visiting the doctor to a way to vocalize how to stand up for what they think is right, by rewriting the lyrics to “Respect” transforming it into an anthem for those with disabilities. The kids bring an honesty to the songs that is pure and refreshing and real. Being part of the music industry can make one tired and jaded about music and life in general. Bands and labels throw around fake sales figures and chart positions and keep thousands of attorneys in business, battling each other. Radio stations accept payola for pushing putrid pablum on a brain dead public. So called music magazines take money from high priced PR firms for plastering has been heroin addicts all over their pages. The Kids of Widney High is unaffected by any of that crap. These kids make music that is real. These kids make music for the joy of it. It is a tribute to these kids and their teachers! We started Ipecac for this very reason, because we love music.”
Sing while you're wheeling
Their latest release is Act Your Age on Moon Man Records and if you’ve ever wondered what mentally challenged high school students think of the political climate in Cuba then this is the record for you. There is no debating that the Kids of Widney High love making music for the right reasons – the enthusiasm shines through in all their recordings. Despite the obvious changes to their lineup as their members pass through adolescence, out of high school and into adulthood, they continue to tour infrequently in Southern California. We’ve put up that original album for your listening pleasure and you can download it here. But take a look at their online store where they’ve had the initiative to release a graphic novel all about their musical adventures.
YOU BETTER WATCH OUT OR THE INSECTS WILL GET YOU!
Outsider Music – Evelyn Evelyn
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Hearts Felt Music
Evelyn Evelyn are the Neville sisters from a small town outside Seattle, Washington. Conjoined at the side they share 3 legs, 2 arms, 3 lungs, 2 hearts and 1 liver. Master musicians, together they play guitar, piano, accordion, ukulele and drums. Christened Eva and Lynn in later life they decided they preferred to be addressed as one person. Their first foray into show-business came in 1996 when they appeared as part of Dillard and Fullerton’s Traveling Circus. This taste for performance, circus and the slightly macabre remains a feature of their solo work.
Having left the circus at the age of 19 they were discovered by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley. Immediately transfixed by the raw and completely genuine sound of the sisters Palmer and Webley tracked them down and persuaded them to work with them and went on to record a 3 track in 2007 and more recently an album. Their sound is Americana meets the the big top via freak-show carnival. The self titled ep is scheduled for double release next month on 11records and 8ft records to coincide with an American and European tour. The album has been engineered and orchestrated by Webley who has given the whole thing a much larger and more fleshed out sound than that of the sisters’ earlier work. Guests on the record include Weird Al Yankovic, Frances Bean Cobain,Neil Gaiman, showing just how much support the sisters are receiving. Their 2007 release Elephant Elephant, which features a fantastic cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Appart, sold out it’s 1111 copies in no time; the album looks set to do just as well with the 3 London dates of the tour already sold out.
Along side the album and touring, Evelyn Evelyn are also set to feature in the literary world; Cynthia von Buhler is creating a graphic novel based on the life of the twins for Dark Horse Books. With such a strong marketing campaign behind them it wont be long before the sisters will be joined by more fans.
Outsider Music – Moondog
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time; but now that it’s the opposite, it’s twice upon a time. – Moondog
Viking of 6th Avenue
Young Louis Hardin b.1916 (later to call himself Moondog) started playing home-made cardboard drums at the age of five, during his childhood he was exposed to the Native American instruments and rhythms that would shape his music. At one point Hardin’s father took him to a Native American Sun Dance where he sat on the lap of Chief Yellow Calf and played a tomtom drum made form buffalo skin. He also played drums in highschool before losing his sight in a farm accident involving gunpowder, aged 16. Principally self-taught, he learned the skills of ear training and composition. In 1943 he moved from his native mid-west to New York where he met classical luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein and Toscanini aswell as legendary jazz performers like Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, who would influence Hardin’s work.
Howl at the moondog
In 1947 Hardin adopted the name “Moondog” in honour of a dog “who used to howl at the moon more than any other dog I knew of.” He developed and embraced a worldview that embraced Norse mythology and Viking culture as the pinnacle of human civilisation. From the late 40s until 1974 Moondog lived as a street musician and poet, busking in Manhattan. Because of his proximity to the nightclub strip of 52nd street, he was well known to many jazz musicians and fans. In 1949 he traveled to a Native American gathering at the Blackfoot Sun Dance in Idaho, where he performed percussion and flute, returning to the Native American music he first came into contact with as a child. It was this Native music along with contemporary classical and jazz mixed with ambient sounds of his environment (traffic, ocean waves, babies crying) that created the foundation for Moondog’s music. In a search for new sounds, Moondog also invented several musical instruments, including a small triangular-shaped harp known as the “Oo”, another which he named the “Ooo-ya-tsu”, and (perhaps his most well-known) the “Trimba”, a triangular percussion instrument that the composer invented in the late 40s. His many hours on the street were his way of connecting with the sounds, voices and rhythms of the city. Taking inspiration from these street sounds, Moondog’s music tended to be relatively simple but characterised by what he called “snaketime … a slithery rhythm, in times that are not ordinary … I’m not gonna die in 4/4 time.”
Working in braille and often composing under his cloak and Viking costume (which included a horned helmet) he was prolific and eclectic, writing in an impressively wide range of styles: percussion-driven exotica, avant-garde jazz, folkish madrigals, neo-Baroque rounds and canons for both chamber and symphony orchestras. His layered minimalism went on to influence young collaborators Steve Reich and Philip Glass. In 1989 Glass invited Moondog to conduct the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, stimulating a renewed interest in his music. Acceptance as a recognised modern classical composer has always eluded him. The ancient and ancestral streak symbolised by his Viking helmet and garb can be heard in his music which was melodic and tuneful in an age where atonality in classical music often ruled.
In 1974 Moondog was invited to give two concerts in Frankfurt and visited Germany for the first time. He felt comfortable in the land of his music ancestors and despite having little money and knowing no German, he decided to stay until his death in 1999. He was, to the very end of his life, vital, active and creative. It is hard to define musical genius. Is it the quality of their music? Their role in history? Or simply hindsight? In this case it is a combination of Moondog’s unique story, unique mode of composition and unique way of looking at the world. It seems sad that it has taken the world this long to begin appreciating this sensitive musician. His music has recently appeared on Henrik Schwarz DJ-Kicks series and Ame, Dixon and Henrik Schwarz recent Grandfather Paradox album, both of which are highly recommended in their own right. You can download Moondog’s seminal self-titled album here.
Despite his handicap and under difficult circumstances, Moondog stubbornly struggled as a free artist, committed to his own ideas of life and music, regardless and yet as a consequence of the world around him. He was a true artist who wrote a most beautiful and peculiar music that still amazes listeners all over the world to this day. If nothing else who should be exalted for providing a tangible link between the somewhat genteel world of contemporary classical music and those on the margins of society. Moondog, we salute you.
Outsider Music – Daniel Johnston
Friday, December 11th, 2009
I am not stupid I am Daniel Johnston
Daniel Johnston has spent the last 30 years or so exposing his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps and existential torment to an ever-growing international cult audience. A healthy number of discerning musicians including David Bowie, Kurt Cobain and the Butthole Surfers are cited as fans. Johnston has been plagued nearly his entire life with chronic mental illness and despite recurrent bouts of delusional behavior endangering himself and others, he has carved out a respectable, influential career as a singer-songwriter of extraordinary talent. His first crudely recorded cassette was released in 1980.
Until the ’90s, Johnston’s recording were basically homemade affairs, his plain voice accompanied by crude piano and guitar playing. His narrative concerns focused mainly on lost love, the pain of miscommunication, his love for the Beatles, and comic-book superhero Captain America. Johnston’s music is unflinchingly direct, almost embarrassingly and painfully honest. Because of this and his increasingly erratic behavior, he was considered a local hero in his home of Austin, TX (where he moved from rural West Virginia), but too extreme to engender the interest of a record label. His self-released cassette recordings began showing up in hip record stores from Boston to L.A. There was, however, a grim side to this “success,” as if his mental illness was the primary component of his popularity; therefore, there was a feeling that those not close to him were marketing his illness as much as his talent. Sadly, Johnston’s behavior wasn’t helping, and he was institutionalized twice in the late ’80s after his refusal to take medication.
There are regular simpering testimonials swarming from the oddest sources such as Matt Groening, Eddie Vedder and Yo La Tengo – making Johnston sound less like a favourite songwriter and more like a pet cause. His celebrity fans are understandably interested in giving him exposure, but they also boost their own image with outsider chic. Their main accomplishment seems to be forever interlocking Jonhston’s music with his famed manic depression. It’s condescending to a man creating simple and lovely songs, implicitly painting Johnston as helpless and his art in need of patronage.
Cassette Cover
Johnston’s most vital music was recorded alone, on a weight bench, in his brother’s garage, with a chord organ and a boombox microphone. This was before bipolar disorder had truly exploded on him and seized control of his life. The music is hard to separate from the way you hear it – the tape his, vulnerable voice, the excitement of hearing someone else’s strange pretty world, from boombox to boombox. Songs of Pain is the first album, recorded on a simple tape recorder and released on Compact Cassette. They were originally handed out to friends. All songs feature Johnston on vocals and piano. The opening track “Grievances”, introduces themes which recur throughout his career. He sings about unrequited love to “the librarian”. Other themes on the album are premarital sex “Joy Without Pleasure” and “Premarital Sex”, Christianity “A Little Story”, and the dangers of marijuana “Pot Head”. Between some songs you can hear Daniel’s mother screaming at him that he will never make anything of himself. You can download that original recording which set everything in motion, here.
Johnston is also an aspiring cartoonist – his playful, symbol-heavy sketches have graced the covers of many of his releases. The “Hi, How Are You?” drawing was made famous by being worn prolifically by Kurt Cobain. Both songs and drawings are informed to some degree by his struggle with manic depression, which can lend an added poignancy. The finished results of Johnston’s Lo-Fi tomfoolery have been covered by such seminal indie acts as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Yo La Tengo, Butthole Surfers and Half Japanese to name a few. Johnston’s vivacious pop songs are usually laden with chiming guitar, clunky keyboards, distant rhythms, and a sometimes sinister, sometimes child-like perspective on life. Johnston often seems too lost in his own condition to write jaded and cynical songs.
Although he sometimes he does become sad and bitter, cynicism and self-pity aren’t his style, and that makes the little tragedies and epiphanies he writes about all the more compelling. Daniel Johnston’s world may seem small, but it’s much bigger and friendlier than that of our wildest imaginations. “Things have turned out all right,” says Johnston. “I was in an insane asylum, now I’m traveling. I’m spending cash, girls are around, I have a lot of good friends and I have good old time. I’m really happy these days, more so than ever. I’m looking forward to a brighter future, and I hope that everything will be all right for all of the listeners out there.”
Download Daniel Johnston – Songs Of Pain original cassette
Outsider Music – Charles Manson
Monday, November 30th, 2009
Summer of hate
Since his trial and conviction, Charles Manson’s name and image have been integrated into American popular culture as a general symbol of ultimate evil. He is currently serving a lifetime sentence in California’s Corcoran State Prison for planning and ordering several brutal murders, most notably that of actress Sharon Tate, the then pregnant wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski.
Much has been made of Charles Manson and his connections to the music industry of the 1960′s. His friendships and associations with other musicians of the time, such as Dennis Wilson (of the Beach Boys) and Neil Young, are well documented. Stories of legendary gangster Alvin Carpis teaching a young Charles Manson his first guitar chords while they were both incarcerated are well featured in books and documentaries. Much less, though, has been written of the music he produced during his days of freedom. In the 1960′s, California and San Francisco in particular played host to young people seeking a new way and a future free from the repressive Cold War society they had grown up in. Manson was swept up in the positive energy of the time. His music from this period reflects the era, with hopeful and positive songs about freedom – reveling in his liberation from a tortured past filled with prisons and reform schools. He also soon had a loyal band of middle-class drop out followers known collectively as “the family”.
Cheery Charlie
The most famous release from this era, “Lie”, is a decent representation of his music of the time and features percussion, female backing vocals, and other instrumentation in addition to Charlie’s voice and guitar. As time went on, more and more pressings of this started to appear, such as an Argentinian bootleg, a French issue with a different sleeve, and in 1987 a UK label stealing the label name of the original release and putting out the most readily available reissue of the album on both cheap LP & CD. Lesser known, though, is an earlier session which has been released under various names and in various edited and unedited forms. This session can be found in nearly complete form on the double album, “Psychedelic Soul”. These are the original demos that Charles Manson did with Terry Melcher and Dennis Wilson, of The Byrds and Beach Boys respectively. This rare recording has a very low loudness level on all tracks, the quality isn’t great but it’s very interesting to hear indeed. The album is a priceless insight into the mindset of Charles Manson in the late 60′s. He is nervous and shy of recording, he is not completely comfortable with the project but you can tell he enjoys the attention from other people in the room. “You know it’s hard to sing in a microphone, it’s like a giant phallic symbol pointing at you”. He is undoubtedly compelling and arguably, quite talented.
Since Manson’s incarceration numerous recordings have found their way out of his prison cell. They have usually been sent personally by Manson to various people on cassette tape, some being released on vinyl and CD over the years. They are documents that represent the mind of the artist through the passage of time and, just as any other artist, Manson has changed over the years. Limited to the use of acoustic guitar and whatever percussive elements can be found around a prison cell, Manson has continued to experiment with his approach to music. He has often said that he plays his music for God and not for public consumption but that would not explain why he has chosen to document his art for posterity. He is often angry and unintelligible but he is human and not as simple as the news media’s symbol of fear for a frightened public. If anything he is proof that cages begin in the mind.
The songs presented here are meant to serve as an introduction to the music of Charles Manson. We introduce this album to widen greater appreciation and acceptance of Charles Manson, the artist. Essentially it’s a collection of hippy pop-folk songs. Between some of the songs we get to hear Manson talking and responding to the sound engineer and he sounds far from self-confident. He also stops some songs halfway through and generally messes about. We get the idea that the engineer Stephen Despar (employed by Dennis Wilson) isn’t taken in by Manson’s philosophies on life in the way that the rest of Manson’s young and impressionable “family” perhaps were. Despar is quoted as saying, “He brought nothing, except half a dozen girls, and they stayed in the studio with him and smoked dope.” Despar also added, “He had musical talent.”
Download – The Psychedelic Soul Of Charles Manson #1
Download – The Psychedelic Soul Of Charles Manson #2
On 23 May 2007, Manson was denied parole for the eleventh time. He will not be eligible again for parole until 2012. Due to his eccentric and arguably dangerous behavior as well as his notoriety, it is highly unlikely he will ever be released. Manson has never admitted guilt and maintains his innocence.
One motive put forward for the murders of Sharon Tate and the other occupants at 10050 Cielo Drive was revenge for Terry Melcher’s refusal to sign Manson and release an album of his music. Manson allegedly told a friend in the summer of 69, “How are you going to get to the establishment? You can’t sing to them. I tried that, I tried to save them, but they wouldn’t listen. Now we’ve got to destroy them.”
Outsider Music – William Shatner
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
1968 was a very good year
William Shatner’s musical career is one of the spoken word. It began with the 1968 album The Transformed Man in which his odd excitable reactions were exaggerated with psychedelic orchestral backings. His recitations of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and The Beatles “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” became instant camp classics. Many would call this a novelty album, the fact that Shatner does not actually sing may throw you off at first – he knows his style is dramatic reading not singing. On casual listening it could be described as appalling, with Shatner, raving in a maniacal voice, murdering versions of well known songs and speeches. But if you can get past the strangeness of it and the hilarity of Lucy In The Sky or Mr. Tambourine Man, which most won’t, you may find this a very entertaining, enjoyable piece of Avant-garde work.
The first five tracks consist of two songs apiece, this division is apparently reflecting upon the duality of man. The main reason this album is looked upon as comedic is because radio DJs will cue up Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds or Mr. Tambourine Man, missing the first half of these tracks – thus never giving the audience an understanding of what Shatner was trying to do. As Shatner has described in at least one interview, he believed the lyrics of some modern songs were of literary merit. He juxtaposed readings of classic written pieces such as Hamlet and Romeo And Juliet with the evocative lyrics of modern pop songs to bold effect.
The album’s final track, The Transformed Man, in which Shatner rises above the dual nature of human life and, in a moment of spiritual enlightenment, imparts the beauty and power of a philosophical epiphany to his audience. The odds are that you will find only unintentional comedy in this one-of-a-kind recording. Either way, though, you come out a winner: you will either get an unlimited number of laughs from the album or you will actually see something quite amazing, unprecedented, and downright moving in Shatner’s uniquely brilliant, unforgettable blending of literature, modern music, and reflections on the duality of man. No words can sufficiently describe it. It must be heard.
Shatner has had other musical endeavors since The Transformed Man, however they pale in significance when compared to his 1968 opus. He has performed with Ben Folds who went on to produce his well received second album “Has Been” in 2004, featuring the song “Common People” a cover of the song by Pulp. Notably he appears on an album by Lemon Jelly, ’64 – ’95, where he is credited as “the creative genius that is William Shatner”.
Shatner performed a reading of the Elton John song “Rocket Man” during the Science Fiction Film Awards, televised in 1978. Dressed in tuxedo ruffles with a hand-rolled cigarette in hand, he spoke with Kirk-like delivery against a synthesizer-laden backdrop of the song.
