Writer's note: Greetings! My name’s Ned Raggett, occasional music writer for a variety of spots. The Cream approached me to talk a bit about interesting music news, think pieces, longreads and more from the previous week. And some actual music too, strangely enough. You can thank a huge range of friends for suggesting things to their own circles as much as anyone else. Maybe I just like to be my own aggregator. Welcome to the column, and hope you enjoy!
Another full week in music as ever, with the new year’s rush of releases starting to kick in along with general societal "now what?" over a certain inauguration. There were sad moments to note or look back on, as more memories of David Bowie and George Michael surfaced alongside more recent deaths in the music world, but there was also plenty of celebrating to be had too — and I may be a little biased in picking a story about electronic shoegaze to share but I do know what I like.
• We knew we’d become proper pop stars when we got a car like George Michael’s
Tracey Thorn’s latest New Statesman piece was a further celebration of the recently deceased Michael, with plenty of wit and telling details about someone who was, perhaps above all else, a true character.
“We’d always had a soft spot for George, even though we seemed to inhabit opposite ends of the pop spectrum. He’d once been on a TV review show and said nice things about our first album, and I knew he had liked my solo single ‘Plain Sailing’. We’d done a miners’ benefit gig where Wham! had appeared, slightly out of place in their vests, tans and blond bouffants. There had been a bit of sneering because they’d mimed. But I remember thinking, ‘Good on you for even being here.’ Their presence showed that being politically active, or even just caring, wasn’t the sole preserve of righteous indie groups.
“A couple of weeks later, we were driving along again in the Princess, when who should pull up beside us in traffic? George again. He wound down his window, and so did we. He was charming and called across to say that, yes, he had recognised us the other day in Sloane Square. He went on to complain that BBC Radio 1 wouldn’t play his new single ‘because it was too crude’. ‘What’s it called?’ asked Ben. ‘‘I Want Your Sex’!” he shouted, and roared away again, leaving us laughing.’ ”
Alyson Zetta’s interview accompanying the Rookie video premiere of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls alumni’s latest is also a classic example of mid-teenager reactions at work: quick off the mark and not too overawed by anything. Well maybe a couple of things:
“What has been the craziest show you have played, or your biggest audience?
“Craziest show was [New York’s] Irving Plaza, opening up for the Julie Ruin. We did a cover of a song by Kathleen Hanna‘s band Le Tigre when we were 12 years old, so it was insane opening for her. (The cover song was [Le Tigre’s] ‘Deceptacon.’) Biggest audience was when we sang at Madison Square Garden before the New York Liberty home opener in 2014, but that was also kind of weird.”
• Cindy Wilson on creating the world you want to be in
T. Cole Rachel’s Creative Independent interview with the B-52’s veteran touches thoughtfully on her new solo album as well as any number of facets from her past, especially her long-passed brother and bandmate, Ricky.
“He was my big brother, you know? I was always like, ‘Oh, my big brother.’ It made me feel safe. I feel like the band are my family too, but it’s not the same thing. To me, it lost a lot of pleasure after Ricky died. But like I said, I was also so grateful for the success and we did great, which is what Ricky would have wanted for us. Still, I knew at a certain point that I needed to stop. My clock was ticking—loudly!—and I was living in New York City. I just felt like it was time to head back to Georgia and get to know my family again and start having some kids. My husband and I have been together since I was 20 years old and I basically dragged him out of NYC kicking and screaming. Still, we got to have a life back home and, eventually, two kids. We also got to spend time with our families and that was all time well spent. It needed to happen. I think maybe that’s another piece of advice I can offer—know when to take care of yourself. If you feel like you need to stop, then stop.If you don’t take care yourself in your personal life, your real life, you won’t be any good to anyone else.”
%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GpcbeSqyGs" data-embed-element="aside">• From anti-releases to 1-inch records: 13 albums you have to work too hard to hear
A variety of writers pitched in at the AV Club to talk about music that’s not easy (to get to) listening, including releases by Beck, the Flaming Lips and, as discussed here, Spazz.
“There’s some hopeful conjecture on deep-dive message boards that this one-inch novelty record from the prolific (and now long defunct) California power-violence band contains actual music. The consensus, however, is that vocalist-bassist Chris Dodge repurposed a handful of toy records and crafted the labels and sleeves to turn it into a Spazz release for his Slap A Ham imprint. And that if you were somehow able to smoosh it through a spindle hole onto a turntable and get it spinning, you were successfully three-quarters of the way toward ruining your needle. It’s said that only 14 exist in the wild, and though Discogs won’t allow entry through its pearly gates, copies have sold for more than $200 on eBay. Actively trying to complete an obscure Spazz catalog is a certain kind of crazy, but spending hundreds on a one-inch record that is incapable of playing a note of music… that’s special.”
Many writers in the UK and well beyond were crushed at the news over the weekend that Fisher, a highly respected and thoughtful writer who looked at society’s multiple layers and intersections from economic structures to the meaning of mental illness to innumerable music loves, had tragically succumbed to his depression and departed this world. Among the moving reactions was this from writer Simon Reynolds on his personal blog:
“The exciting thing about Mark's writing — CCRU era, K-punk era, in magazines like FACT and The Wire, the books — was the feeling that he was on a journey: the ideas were going somewhere, a gigantic edifice of thought was in the process of construction. That Mark was thinking big, building a system, always aiming for the largest scale. And finally that this work, rigorous and deeply informed as it was, was not academic, in the sense of being done purely for its own sake: its urgency came from his faith that words really could change things. Reading Mark's writing made everything feel more meaningful, supercharged with significance. It was a rush. An addiction.
“The last time I saw Mark in the flesh was at the Incubate music festival in Tilburg, Holland, in 2012. We had a long chat, intermittently soundtracked by a live performance by Raime. He talked about his plans for future books, and passingly mentioned — in a completely unassuming way — that Capitalist Realism had sold ten thousand copies. I’m not sure he fully grasped what an extraordinary achievement this was, for a theoretical book about politics and mental health on a small publisher. This was down to word of mouth, his own charismatic public appearances, the originality and timeliness of his ideas combined with the clarity and passion of the writing.”
At the Quietus, David Stubbs offered up his own thoughtful memorial, while as a welcome bonus, a previously unpublished interview with Fisher by Agata Pyzik was included, providing a striking taste of the effortlessly multidisciplinary way Fisher acted and engaged with culture and the general moment.
“I think we are in a ‘trad’ period really, where you have trad music, trad rock, which only constitutes forms which change very little. No one would have believed in 1993 that things would stay like this and still be the same in 2010, it’s unimaginable that things have stayed so recognisable, ten years into the next millennium, [very similar to] ten years before. I think it’s a final argument, to me — irrefutable, against ‘poptimism’, the idea that things are so vibrant and dynamic — they’re not. The changes that we’re accustomed to now are small, they happen, but it’s not very good anymore. There’s an immense sense of inertia, and really one of the crucial things about capitalist realism is lowering the expectations. And corporate capital, in almost anxious, deliberate ways, had to massively lower what people expected from culture. Because it's easier to standardise and mass re-produce mediocrity. It’s much harder to reliably tell us something actually interesting. What happened is that people don’t expect that anymore. Those low expectations have to be engendered. The depression that people feel causes a dissatisfaction — 'come on, things are really great, it’s not a bad period' — but the depression figures tell a different story about what is happening.”
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• The Sine That Celebrates Itself: On Electronic Shoegaze
Also at the Quietus, Ben Cardew wrote about how first wave shoegaze by rock bands had its own intertwinings with rave culture and electronic experimentalists, with acts like Seefeel and later followers like Ulrich Schnauss among the many who slid between easy definitions of their work and style.
“Pentamerous Metamorphosis is anything but a straight, track-by-track remix album. It contains five, 10-minute-plus tracks, to the 12 songs on Blood Music and all the Pentamerous mixes sport different names to the original tracks. But, rather than an Lemonheads-style whitewash, traces of Chapterhouse’s music can be heard throughout Pentamerous Metamorphosis. ‘Delta Phase’, for example, uses an identifiable guitar lift from Blood Music’s ‘We Are The Beautiful’, while closing track ‘Epsilon Phase’ uses vocal snippets from ‘Love Forever’. This track, in fact, shows the care and attention that Global Communication brought to the task, with the three original vocal lines - 'You Have To Learn To Feel', 'And Reach Into The Light' and 'I'm Changing All The Time' - taken from different parts of the original song and placed together in a brilliant act of juxtaposition.
“‘One day we got a call from Andy Sheriff from Chapterhouse who loved our work, and asked if we wanted to remix their entire album,’ Global Communication’s Tom Middleton explained in the liner notes to the 76:14 album reissue. ‘What an amazing opportunity. Sampling from the multi-track tapes, embellishing the themes and distilling the lyrical content from Blood Music into five new pieces.’ ”
• The Godfather speaks: Wiley on Drake, his “final” album and the next generation of grime
For FACT, Ian McQuaid spoke with the now veteran UK MC on both his latest effort and the state of performance and increasing worldwide recognition that grime in general continues to gain in a peppery and enthusiastic back and forth.
Q. “Right now there are multiple generations of MCs — from original junglist MCs right through to the kids doing drill — and they’re all active at once. I can’t remember a time in my life when there was four generations of MCs on the scene at once.
A. “Neither can I, bro, and the reason why is that each genre has had its time, and the newest one, the kids making Afrobeats and drill, this is the current generation. We gotta remember here that no matter what anyone is doing there’s a lot of influence that’s gonna have come from Jamaica and the West Indies, parts of Africa, America — and England where you watch Top of the Pops or raa-de-daa, that’s another influence. What comes out will always be a fusion.”
• Willie Nelson Talks 'Exciting' Live Movie With Woody Harrelson
Kory Grow’s short feature for Rolling Stone serves as much as anything else as a reminder that Nelson remains one of America’s best living legends, and that appreciating him while he’s still here is the least we can do, especially after last year’s relentless series of losses.
“Although Nelson wasn't present on Harrelson's night in question (‘I'm kind of glad I wasn't there,’ he says with a laugh), he'll be playing himself and the voice of reason for Harrelson. ‘All I know about the story is that he was in some trouble and was in and out of jail and having marital problems,’ Nelson says. ‘I think my job is just to help him out and morally console him and tell him what a prick he is.’ The singer laughs. Asked if he's ever been in such silly trouble himself, he laughs again and says in his typically easygoing manner, ‘Never, never, never.’”
%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQ-Dj7fYGE" data-embed-element="aside">• Donny McCaslin on Collaborating with Bowie on “Blackstar,” and Being Influenced by deadmau5 and Aphex Twin
Dave Sumner’s Bandcamp interview with McCaslin, leader of the jazz band that backed Bowie on his final album, covers not only that time and what went into it but, all the more crucially, where he is taking his music now, and what that entails.
“I knew I would be making a new record, but it wasn’t until three months after Blackstar that I sat down and began to write the original music for Beyond Now. So, it was already something I had been thinking about, and though the new album was really influenced by Blackstar, it was also really influenced by deadmau5 and Aphex Twins and all the stuff that was feeding my unconscious and imagination, feeding my creativity. So, Beyond Now was going to happen regardless of whether we did Blackstar or not, but I do think that going through that experience did change me, and I think ultimately Beyond Now is a stronger album because of that experience. And part of it is the going through that together as a band and part of it is going through that with an artist like David Bowie, this profound visionary artist, and being moved and inspired by him.”
• William Onyeabor Was Truly One of a Kind
The news that the reclusive and in recent years newly-heard Nigerian one-man musical legend Onyeabor died at 70 resulted in many understandable well wishes to his memory. At the Pitch, Marc Hogan provided both a good general musical obituary as well as Eric Welles-Nyström’s own detailed story about how he got to know Onyeabor and arrange for his music’s rerelease:
“Another thing that was significant is his sense of humor. You hear it in ‘Fantastic Man’ and some other tracks. Maybe he picked up on me being nervous, and he would often set up this awkward situation where I would get even more nervous. And then he would totally flip the scenario and say something absurd. Like, he liked to call me his American son. I would be with him and he would be like, ‘Eric, please call your dad. Call your dad in Sweden.’ And I would be like, ‘Why does he want to talk to my dad?’ And then he’d say very warmly, ‘So your African dad can talk to your Swedish dad.’ ”
• Entrance Doesn't Want You To Say Trump's Name
At the Talkhouse, Guy Blakeslee, founder and core member of Entrance, featured a playlist of older inspirational songs, but also spoke about the current moment in turn and his own recent source of inspiration for a song, one voice among many.
“I was sitting in a hotel lobby on a rainy day and writing, and I overheard a conversation in which a group of young people, apparently from many different European countries, were talking about how they were now afraid to come to the USA. Would they be welcome? They were joking but it had an undertone of tragic sadness.
“Nobody mentioned the name of the President-elect or even the election, but it was understood what they were talking about. Then the idea clicked for the chorus of the song: “I’m not gonna say your name.”
“I realized that we were going to have to come together to fight this negative agenda in so many ways, but that a part of the problem has been our continued willingness to give airtime to the things we oppose, to keep repeating the name of this figurehead of dark forces who thrives on attention whether it’s negative or positive. So, the song came together quickly.”
%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_HcWrcRJsQ" data-embed-element="aside">• Bill Laswell Shares the Stories Behind Some of His Most Memorable Releases
Back at Bandcamp, Richard Gehr spoke with the apparently-never-ever-going-to-rest Laswell about some of his many releases and efforts over the years, among them his Method of Defiance collaboration:
“I was approached by a bunch of younger DJs, programmers, and producers who wanted to do live drum and bass. I’ve always been inspired by DJs because they’re so thorough: They do their research and dig in deep. They reminded me of the early Bronx DJs. We started playing live and mixing it into dub by playing the bass in half time, which I adapted to immediately. We started bringing in more experienced people like Dr. Israel from Brooklyn and Bernie Worrell. It became a kind of collective, and I decided to do an imprint based around it. I’ve made compilations where everyone’s like 20—except me!”
• Why Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” Is the Latest Viral Rap Hit to Go to No. 1
Chris Molanphy’s continuing review of the number one songs in the country as they emerge for Slate entered a new year with a new entry, and as always dived into questions beyond the surface level.
“The formula that brought street rap back to the top of the pops is simple: Hip-hop dominates streaming, and streaming now dominates the music business. It’s a handy reminder that often, technological shifts are what change the shape of our art. On the other hand, what all of these recent trap smashes have in common is that they’re striver’s anthems, part of a long tradition in hip-hop. ‘Panda’ was about coveting a fancy ride; ‘Black Beatles’ is about wishing for cross-cultural stardom. As for ‘Bad and Boujee,’ as easy as it is to focus on its opening line, the rest of the song, an ode to dating a higher class of acquisitive yuppie, is about rising to a higher socioeconomic status: ‘We came from nothin' to somethin’, n---a.’ These aspirations to the good life seem to be bearing fruit for Migos: In addition to their chart-topping hit they, like Desiigner, recently signed with G.O.O.D. Music, the label-cum–management company run by Kanye West, a man who places a premium on acquisitive striving.”
• Seattle Remembers Chris Vandebrooke
Finally, while not as noted a death as many that happened last year or even this week alone, the tragic December murder of Seattle drummer Chris Vandebrooke hit many veterans of the '90s scene there hard. Dave Segal’s story for the Stranger captures both his saddening struggles with mental health and homelessness and the good memories many still held for him through to the present — a reminder that music is never simply about the famous.
“Those who knew him spoke fondly of Vandebrooke's musical acumen. ‘He wasn't a traditional drummer,’ remembered [former Engine Kid bandmate/Sunn 0))) member Greg] Anderson. ‘He played more like a percussionist. He would put accents in different places than the other drummers I would play with. His own character seeped through and became apparent on every song that we had.’
“ ‘Chris was present and available and cared,’ [C/Z Records veteran Tim] Cook said. ‘Anyone could benefit from having a friend like this, and Chris was our guy. Being around him at that time was to notice a childlike presence, easily fascinated; he was constantly futzing with stuff, solving puzzles for amusement. This was alternately charming and annoying depending on your mood, but it was always Chris.’ ”
• And with that, hail and farewell:
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