Watch the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Experience David Lynch’s Classic Show

in Music, Television | April 29th, 2019

Crit­ics describe David Lynch’s most mem­o­rable imagery as not just deeply trou­bling but deeply Amer­i­can. Despite that — or maybe because of it — his films have found enthu­si­as­tic audi­ences all over the world. But does Lynch com­mand quite as fer­vent a fan base in any coun­try as he does in Japan? Unlike­ly though the cul­tur­al match of cre­ator and view­er may seem, Lynch’s work tends to make big splash­es in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun, and Twin Peaks, the ground­break­ing­ly strange tele­vi­sion dra­ma Lynch co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost, made an espe­cial­ly big one. Stand­ing as evi­dence is the Twin Peaks mate­r­i­al made for the Japan­ese and no one else: the Lynch-direct­ed Twin Peaks Geor­gia Cof­fee com­mer­cials, for instance, or the Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track on Laserdisc.

“What must the thir­ty-five mil­lion peo­ple who tuned in to the pilot episode of Twin Peaks in April 1990 have thought when they first wit­nessed the show’s open­ing cred­its?” writes musi­cian Claire Nina Norel­li in her book on Twin Peaks’ sound­track. “This haunt­ing music, cou­pled with images of rur­al ter­rain and indus­tri­al­iza­tion, must have belied audi­ences’ expec­ta­tions.”

That holds as true for audi­ences out­side Amer­i­ca as inside it: Norel­li, who first saw the show in her “small, iso­lat­ed home­town” of Perth, Aus­tralia, writes that “what real­ly cap­tured my atten­tion dur­ing what would be the first of many for­ays into the world of Twin Peaks was its sound­track, com­posed by Ange­lo Badala­men­ti.”

The Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track, which you can watch on Youtube, takes Badala­men­ti’s sound­track (which Norel­li cred­its with “strength­en­ing the visu­al lan­guage” of the show, no mean feat giv­en the innate strength of Lynch’s visions) and accom­pa­nies it with footage of the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons — or rather, footage of the loca­tions around Wash­ing­ton state that Lynch and com­pa­ny used to craft the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons. Matt Humphrey of the Twin Peaks Pod­cast high­lights the track “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme,” whose video “explores the train grave­yard where they filmed the exte­ri­ors of Lau­ra’s death loca­tion. Now, in the series, the inte­ri­ors of the train were built on sets. In this video you can see the actu­al inte­ri­or of the old trains. It’s pret­ty cool/gross.”

“From what I can tell,” Humphrey writes, “these Visu­al Sound­track videos were tak­en in maybe 1992 by a Japan­ese film crew.” In some shots, he adds, “you can see the towns­folk star­ing.” Oth­er shots bear traces of Twin Peaks’ pop­u­lar­i­ty: “The Dou­ble R din­er is already sport­ing the ‘Twin Peaks Cher­ry Pie’ sign, so I think it’s after the series’ run. How­ev­er the town of North Bend is still in full Twin Peaks pro­mo­tion­al mode as you can see some gift shops in the videos sell­ing all sorts of mem­o­ra­bil­ia.” But Twin Peaks fans will espe­cial­ly enjoy the open­ing of the Visu­al Sound­track, a CGI fly-through of the epony­mous town com­plete with the afore­men­tioned din­er (cof­fee and cher­ry pie not includ­ed in the ren­der­ing), the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, and a log­ging truck. See­ing how it all com­pares to Lynch’s hand-drawn map from when he first pitched the show to ABC will be left as an exer­cise for the true fan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Exper­i­men­tal Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Why Do Sad People Like to Listen to Sad Music? Psychologists Answer the Question in Two Studies

in Music, Psychology | April 26th, 2019

I find it sur­pris­ing that psy­chol­o­gists have only just begun to study the rea­sons that sad peo­ple love sad songs. There’s an entire genre named after sad­ness, and the blues inspired near­ly all mod­ern music in one way or anoth­er. Clas­si­cal music is filled with dirges, ele­gies, laments, requiems, and “count­less tear-jerk­ers.” Lis­ten to the music of any ancient soci­ety and you will like­ly find the same. Humans, it seems, have some innate need to hear sad songs.

Maybe this isn’t too sur­pris­ing. We aren’t the only species to expe­ri­ence grief, but we are the only one to have devised lan­guage, and ways to make it sing to us. We tell sto­ries of loss through music, just as through every oth­er art. This expla­na­tion hard­ly sat­is­fies sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, how­ev­er. Psy­chol­o­gists want to know, specif­i­cal­ly, why we do this. Or—more specifically—why sad peo­ple do this.

Maybe not every­one enjoys the maudlin jan­gle of The Smiths dur­ing a breakup, or wants to lis­ten to Leonard Cohen after a loss. But enough peo­ple do that scenes of sad char­ac­ters lis­ten­ing to sad songs (or being sad while sad songs play) are some of the most mem­o­rable, and mem­o­rably par­o­died, in movie his­to­ry. Researchers Anne­mieke Van den Tol and Jane Edwards at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lim­er­ick want­ed to under­stand the phe­nom­e­non in a 2013 study, so they sought out par­tic­i­pants online.

The researchers opt­ed for a lim­it­ed qual­i­ta­tive approach to get the ball rolling. “This issue has hard­ly been inves­ti­gat­ed before,” writes Chris­t­ian Jar­rett at The British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Society’s Research Digest. Their sam­ple con­sist­ed of a self-select­ing group of adults, age 18 to 66. Thir­ty-five of them were men and 30 women. Most of the respon­dents were Irish, though some were also from the Nether­lands, the U.S., Ger­many, and Spain.

Each of the study par­tic­i­pants was asked to describe a spe­cif­ic time in their lives when “they’d had a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence and then chose to lis­ten to a sad piece of music.” Their descrip­tions were then ana­lyzed for recur­ring themes. Among the most com­mon were nos­tal­gia, a desire for con­nec­tion, and a sense of “com­mon human­i­ty.” The par­tic­i­pants also cit­ed aes­thet­ic appre­ci­a­tion and a “re-expe­ri­enc­ing of their affect” in which the sad song helped them express their feel­ings and find relief.

A more recent study pub­lished in Emo­tion con­cen­trat­ed its focus. Rather than sur­vey­ing peo­ple who had had sad times in their lives—a cat­e­go­ry that includes pret­ty much everyone—researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da sur­veyed peo­ple with major depres­sion. Their sam­ple size is hard­ly any larg­er, and the par­tic­i­pants are more homoge­nous: 76 female under­grad­u­ates, half of whom had a diag­no­sis of major depres­sive dis­or­der and half of whom did not.

The study repli­cat­ed meth­ods used in a 2015 study to find out whether peo­ple with depres­sion tend­ed to choose sad music over “hap­py and neu­tral music,” writes Jar­rett. That turned out to be the case, the researchers found. The rea­son sur­prised them. Against “the provoca­tive idea” argued in oth­er research “that depressed peo­ple are seek­ing to per­pet­u­ate their low mood,” the study instead found that those “who favored sad music said that they did so because it was relax­ing, calm­ing or sooth­ing.”

In some ways, the answers aren’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from those of peo­ple who are not clin­i­cal­ly depressed but still expe­ri­ence peri­ods of deep sad­ness. Sad songs give mean­ing to our pain and let us know we aren’t the only ones feel­ing it. But we know this. Every­one has at least one or two sad songs that soothe them, and some of us have whole playlists of them. The Paste mag­a­zine staff put togeth­er an excel­lent list of songs that helped them “hurt so good.” It’s got some of the finest writ­ers and singers of sad songs on it: Tam­my Wynette, Elliot Smith, Tom Waits, Pat­ty Grif­fin, Prince, by way of Sinead O’Connor. If one of your sad songs isn’t on here, you’ll prob­a­bly find a few new ones to add.

I’d sug­gest for inclu­sion, to start, The Cure’s “The Same Deep Water as You,” Etta James’ “I Rather Go Blind,” Bon­nie ‘Prince’ Billie’s “I See a Dark­ness,” Radiohead’s “How to Dis­ap­pear Com­plete­ly,” and The Smith’s “That Joke Isn’t Fun­ny Any­more.” Tell us, what would you add—and why would you want to do a thing like lis­ten to sad music when you’re already mis­er­able? Tell us your rea­sons, and your songs, below.

via Research Digest

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Songs–His Favorite “Hid­ing Songs”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

Freddie Mercury Reimagined as Comic Book Heroes

in Comics/Cartoons, Music | April 24th, 2019

Pop cul­ture thrives on super­heroes, both fic­tion­al and real. This isn’t unique in human his­to­ry. Read most any col­lec­tion of ancient myth and lit­er­a­ture and you’ll find the same. The demigods and chief­tains beat­ing their chests and talk­ing trash in the Ili­ad, for exam­ple, remind me of macho pro­fes­sion­al wrestlers or char­ac­ters in the Mar­vel and DC uni­vers­es, cul­tur­al arti­facts indebt­ed in their var­i­ous ways to clas­si­cal leg­ends. One thread runs through all of the epic tales of heroes and hero­ines: a seem­ing need to immor­tal­ize peo­ple who embody the qual­i­ties we most desire. Heroes may suf­fer for their trag­ic flaws, but that’s the price they pay for uni­ver­sal acclaim or an iron throne.

The traits ascribed to late modernity’s fic­tion­al heroes haven’t changed over­much from the dis­tant past—power, wit, agili­ty, per­sis­tence, anger issues, spicy, com­pli­cat­ed love lives…. But when it comes to the real peo­ple we admire—the celebri­ties who get the super­hero treatment—creativity, style, and musi­cal tal­ent top the list. Why not?

David Bowie’s larg­er-than-life per­sonas sure­ly deserve to live on, trans­mit­ted not only via his music but by way of his posthu­mous trans­for­ma­tion into a series of pulp and com­ic heroes as imag­ined by screen­writer and design­er Todd Alcott, who has giv­en the same treat­ment to beloved musi­cal char­ac­ters like Prince and Bob Dylan.

Per­form­ing a sim­i­lar ser­vice for Fred­die Mer­cury, Brazil­ian artist Butch­er Bil­ly sat­is­fies the cul­tur­al crav­ing for demigods in his immor­tal­iza­tion of Fred­die Mer­cury as var­i­ous heroes like The Hulk, Super­man, and Shaz­am (or “Flash”); a con­tender for the Iron Throne; and him­self: rid­ing on Darth Vader’s shoul­ders, break­ing free in house­wife drag, and sport­ing Bowie’s Aladdin Sane light­ning bolt. What are the super­pow­ers of these super-Fred­dies? The usu­al smash­ing, punch­ing, and fly­ing, it seems, but also the essen­tials of his real-life power—an impos­si­bly big per­son­al­i­ty, huge stage pres­ence, per­son­al mag­net­ism, and a god­like force of a voice.

Add to these char­ac­ter­is­tics a unique tal­ent for writ­ing  lyrics punchi­er than your favorite Twit­ter feed, and we have the mak­ings of a mod­ern epic giant with abil­i­ties that seemed to sur­pass those of mere mor­tals, with the swag­ger and ego to match. This trib­ute to Mer­cury is unabashed hero wor­ship, turn­ing the singer into an arche­type. In the sim­ple, bold, col­or­ful lines of com­ic cov­er art we might just see that there’s a Fred­die Mer­cury in all of us, want­i­ng to break free, pump a fist in the air, and belt out our biggest feel­ings in cap­i­tal let­ters and giant excla­ma­tion marks.

See more “Plan­et Mer­cury Comics” below and at Butch­er Bil­ly’s Behance site.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Scenes from Bohemi­an Rhap­sody Com­pared to Real Life: A 21-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

in Music | April 23rd, 2019

Pink Floyd is sure­ly the most quotable of psych-rock and pro­gres­sive bands. Every­one, no mat­ter their musi­cal tastes, knows lines like “we don’t need no edu­ca­tion, we don’t need no thought con­trol,” “I have become com­fort­ably numb,” and “we’re just two lost souls swim­ming in a fish bowl, year after year.”

The band’s first album with Syd Bar­rett was full of word­play and whim­sy. Lat­er song­writ­ing cut right to the heart of things, with razor-sharp obser­va­tions, heart­break­ing state­ments, sneer­ing jibes, and stri­dent pro­nounce­ments. In their finest iter­a­tions, they were a band with some­thing to say.

These qual­i­ties make it all the more strik­ing that one of their most mov­ing com­po­si­tions is a song with­out any words, unless we count the vocal sam­ples at the begin­ning from writer Mal­colm Mug­geridge. Smack in the mid­dle of Dark Side of the Moon, “The Great Gig in the Sky” show­cas­es a soul­ful impro­vi­sa­tion by guest vocal­ist Clare Tor­ry (who final­ly, right­ful­ly, received a writ­ing cred­it in 2004). Her voice pro­vides all the dra­mat­ic ten­sion the song needs, com­mu­ni­cat­ing more, in pure­ly emo­tion­al terms, than any lyric the band might have writ­ten.

Does the effect come through when her per­for­mance is replayed on a Theremin? You be the judge. The song made famous by its word­less inten­si­ty meets an instru­ment played with­out any touch—it’s a poet­ic kind of mashup, and a well-exe­cut­ed cov­er. Theremin play­er Char­lie Drap­er doesn’t only play Torry’s vocal, but also David Gilmour’s ped­al steel gui­tar parts, which are prob­a­bly bet­ter suit­ed to the instru­ment. As an added bonus, he plays over one of the ear­li­er instru­men­tal demos of the song with sam­ples from Apol­lo 17 astro­nauts, adding a few more words that serve only as more atmos­phere behind the melody.

The Theremin is often pegged as a nov­el­ty instru­ment, defin­ing the sound of B‑movie sci-fi, but it has a long and dis­tin­guished his­to­ry. First called the Ether­phone by Russ­ian inven­tor Leon Theremin, it became the pas­sion­ate instru­ment of choice for clas­si­cal play­er Clara Rock­more in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. A sort of mini-Theremin revival has brought it back into promi­nence as a seri­ous inter­preter of clas­si­cal and mod­ern music. On his YouTube chan­nel, Drap­er demon­strates his appre­ci­a­tion for the Theremin’s range, play­ing Mozart, Grieg, Gersh­win, and the theme from the film First Man. Just above, Hank Green tells us all about the physics of the Theremin, in a SciShow crash course that could answer many of the ques­tions you might have had while watch­ing Drap­er play Pink Floyd on one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Down­right Great

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How the Vietnam War Shaped Classic Rock–And How Classic Rock Shaped the War

in Music | April 18th, 2019

There are a hand­ful of pop­u­lar songs that have become cliche and short­hand for film­mak­ers wish­ing to take us back to the trau­ma of the Viet­nam War: Jimi Hendrix’s cov­er of Dylan’s “All Along the Watch­tow­er” or Edwin Starr’s “War,” to name two. Yet at the same time, while clas­sic rock lives for­ev­er, mem­o­ries or lessons of Viet­nam have not. Buf­fa­lo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” orig­i­nal­ly was a com­ment on the Sun­set Strip Cur­few (anti-war) riots, but now its mean­ing is open end­ed enough to suit any poten­tial­ly vio­lent protest.

In Polyphonic’s two-part series, clev­er­ly titled “How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock” for the first half and “How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the Viet­nam War” for the sec­ond, Noah Lefevre per­forms a need­ed reeval­u­a­tion on dozens of rock and soul songs, plac­ing them back in their his­tor­i­cal con­text and show­ing how the pow­er and mes­sage of music evolved as the war descend­ed into chaos and defeat.

The Viet­nam War dragged on so long that music and cul­ture were both vast­ly dif­fer­ent by the time Saigon fell and the Amer­i­cans pulled out. Poly­phon­ic begins with the first line of protest, the Amer­i­can folk singers in Green­wich Vil­lage, in par­tic­u­lar Phil Ochs and his appren­tice Bob Dylan. Folk was the tra­di­tion­al way that protest reached the Amer­i­can public–it need­ed a singer and a gui­tar and noth­ing more–but Dylan would pro­vide the bridge that rock music need­ed, as he strad­dled both camps for a while (and Ochs did not).

How­ev­er, as Lefevre astute­ly points out, the troops them­selves weren’t lis­ten­ing to folk. They were like any­body else their age at that time and lis­ten­ing to rock and r’n’b. Their top of their pops, cir­ca 1965, was The Ani­mals’ “We’ve Got­ta Get Out of This Place” (orig­i­nal­ly about small town alien­ation, but per­fect for being stuck thou­sands of miles from home) and Nan­cy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walk­ing.”

Things changed as the war esca­lat­ed in 1966 and the first sol­diers returned home, many of whom would join in the protest move­ment.

And while on one hand psy­che­del­ic drugs pow­ered the Sum­mer of Love, advance­ments in tech pow­ered the images of the war that now got beamed into all our tele­vi­sion sets. The war was dirt­i­er, messier, and more hor­rif­ic than most peo­ple imag­ined, and music respond­ed in two ways. One was to bounce out­side that real­i­ty and pro­claim peace the answer, as John Lennon and Yoko Ono did, squar­ing off against the gov­ern­ment and rad­i­cal­ized youth alike. The oth­er was to cre­ate a music sound that tried to match the mad­ness. Jimi Hen­drix man­aged it sev­er­al times, includ­ing “Machine Gun” and his infa­mous ren­di­tion of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner.” But King Crimson’s “21st Cen­tu­ry Schizoid Man” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” were even dark­er. And then there was Mar­vin Gaye’s mas­ter­piece What’s Going On, which is nei­ther peacenik nor hor­ror­show. Instead it’s a sigh of melan­choly and sad­ness, tak­ing in man’s cycle of vio­lence towards itself and to the earth.

Poly­phon­ic real­ly stepped it up in these two mini docs, gain­ing access to high qual­i­ty archival footage. There’s plen­ty more to learn and hear in them, so click play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Nick Cave Creates a List of His 10 Favorite Songs–His Favorite “Hiding Songs”

in Music | April 12th, 2019

For all of the indis­pens­able pur­pos­es music has served over thou­sands of years of human his­to­ry, at no time before the age of mass pro­duced record­ed music was it ever a col­lectible commodity—something we could own, believ­ing it was made just for us, even when it reached mil­lions of oth­er peo­ple. Music has, of course, con­tin­ued to play a sig­nif­i­cant com­mu­nal role, and in some ways maybe even a stronger one in the age of glob­al mass media.

Yet the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to music has also become, over the course of the past cen­tu­ry, an unprece­dent­ed­ly pri­vate affair. Whether you grew up with LPs, tapes, CDs, or stream­ing dig­i­tal, you know what it’s like to have a col­lec­tion of songs that seem like they were writ­ten just for you, sum­ming up your life in some uncan­ny way: songs that feel like emo­tion­al refuges, wel­com­ing some dis­placed part of your­self.

These are songs Nick Cave calls “hid­ing songs,” and the leader the Bad Seeds and, for­mer­ly, The Birth­day Par­ty and Grin­der­man, has writ­ten his share for many of his fans; many of the same fans who write him with deep per­son­al ques­tions, hop­ing to con­nect. On his blog The Red Hand Files, Cave posts the let­ters that most move him and offers can­did respons­es gen­er­ous­ly thread­ing the con­ver­sa­tion through his song­writ­ing and musi­cal influ­ences.

In a post from Jan­u­ary, when asked to cre­ate a list of his “favourite pieces of music,” Cave revealed ten of his own “hid­ing songs,” but not before explain­ing them with a quote from his poem, “The Sick Bag Song.”

Leonard Cohen will sing, and the boy will sud­den­ly breathe as if for the first time, and fall inside the laugh­ing man’s voice and hide.

He will realise that not only are these songs sacred, they are ‘hid­ing songs’ that deal exclu­sive­ly in dark­ness, obfus­ca­tion, con­ceal­ment and secre­cy. He will realise that for him the pur­pose of these songs was to shut off the sun, to draw a long shad­ow down and pro­tect him from the cor­ro­sive glare of the world.

Cohen, unsur­pris­ing­ly, tops the list. Cave may be an old-fash­ioned songwriter—preserving some of the best impuls­es of his lit­er­ary heroes—but he is also an adept hand at the list, a short­hand form that buries its emo­tions in par­en­thet­i­cal com­men­tary. When it comes to hid­ing songs, songs about “con­ceal­ment and secre­cy,” maybe there isn’t much more to say.

Maybe we’d like juicy per­son­al details. What was going on in Cave’s life when Karen Dalton’s “Katie Cru­el” gave him a place to hide? What about Neil Young’s down­beat “On the Beach” or Nina Simone’s aching “Plain Gold Ring” (hear him cov­er it live at the top) or Big Star’s incred­i­bly depress­ing “Holo­caust”? We may nev­er know, and we may nev­er need to. Sure­ly we each have such a list of songs that speak to us alone, of feel­ings only we can under­stand.

For an artist like Cave, how­ev­er, the pri­vate expe­ri­ence of record­ed music has a very pub­lic dimen­sion. The songs he lists, he writes, “are the essen­tial pil­lars that hold up the struc­ture of my artis­tic world.” The only ques­tion left may be, what songs were all these artists hid­ing in when they wrote the songs below? Hear all of Cave’s “hid­ing songs,” with a bonus eleventh, “Moth­er of Earth,” his favorite Gun Club song, by fan request.

Avalanche, Leonard Cohen

Katie Cru­el, Karen Dal­ton

On the Beach, Neil Young

Tupe­lo, John Lee Hook­er

T.B. Sheets, Van Mor­ri­son

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, Bob Dylan

Plain Gold Ring, Nina Simone

Holo­caust, Big Star

Becalmed, Bri­an Eno

One Fine Morn­ing, Bill Calla­han

Moth­er of Earth, The Gun Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His Top 10 Love Songs

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Devilish History of the 1980s Parental Advisory Sticker: When Heavy Metal & Satanic Lyrics Collided with the Religious Right

in Music | April 11th, 2019

Frank Zap­pa called them the “Moth­ers of Pre­ven­tion,” the group of wives mar­ried to mem­bers of Con­gress who decid­ed in the mid-80s to go to war against rock lyrics and whip up some good ol’ con­ser­v­a­tive hys­te­ria.

We’ve talked about this time before on this site, espe­cial­ly as Zap­pa him­self tes­ti­fied in front of Con­gress and sparred on the Sun­day Belt­way shows like Cross­fire.

Vox’s Ear­worm series, now back for a sec­ond sea­son, tack­les this moment in a time that would have lit­tle ram­i­fi­ca­tion before the design-ugly “Parental Advi­so­ry: Explic­it Con­tent” stick­er.
(Just an aside: I know their head­line is click-baity, but real­ly? Heavy met­al and Satan gave us this stick­er? More like Tip­per Gore and their family’s pres­i­den­tial ambi­tions gave us it. Oy.)

Any­way, Gore’s Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC) gave us a list of the “Filthy Fif­teen,” includ­ing songs like Sheena Easton’s “Sug­ar Walls” and Madonna’s “Dress You Up,” which either con­tained lyrics “pro­mot­ing” vio­lence, sex­u­al ref­er­ences, drug and alco­hol, and Satan’s favorite, the “occult.”

Estelle Caswell explores that last cat­e­go­ry and dives into the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the ‘80s of heavy met­al music, which was often invok­ing Satan in its lyrics, or cre­at­ing occult-like atmos­pheres in its pro­duc­tion.

This campy, hor­ror­show cul­ture ran right into the grow­ing pow­er of con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and evan­gel­i­cal preach­ers who made a *lot* of mon­ey whip­ping up “Satan­ic Pan­ic” among their nation­al flock. They lis­tened to rock records back­wards, believ­ing they heard sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages.

Of course, none of this would have gone much fur­ther than church­es if it wasn’t for the major net­works turn­ing a noth­ing sto­ry into headlines–the Vox video reminds us how com­plic­it Ted Kop­pel, Bar­bara Wal­ters, Ger­al­do Rivera, et al were in pro­mot­ing it. They also looked at the ris­ing teenage sui­cide rate and used heavy met­al as a scape­goat, instead of–as the video explains–family breakups, drug abuse, eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, and increas­ing access to guns.

The warn­ing label itself appeared in 1990, just as rap was tak­ing off and a new lyri­cal boogey­man appeared. Dig­i­tal media and file shar­ing, along with YouTube and oth­er sites, mut­ed this kind of cen­sor­ship. And par­ents, in the end, still need to do the job over what their chil­dren see or don’t.

How­ev­er, cen­sor­ship is back, but there are no Wash­ing­ton Wives act­ing as scolds. Now it is the whims of cap­i­tal, as in the col­lapse of Tum­blr, or it is a faulty algo­rithm that cen­sors old mas­ter paint­ings filled with nudi­ty, just as guilty as porn, that are our new decen­cy guardians. Where are those con­gres­sion­al hear­ings?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Hol­ly­wood Cen­sor­ship and the Rat­ings Sys­tem

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music: When the Music Indus­try Waged War on the Cas­sette Tape in the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

Frank Zap­pa Debates Whether the Gov­ern­ment Should Cen­sor Music in a Heat­ed Episode of Cross­fire: Why Are Peo­ple Afraid of Words? (1986)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Nick Cave Creates a List of His Top 10 Love Songs

in Music | April 10th, 2019

This wall I built around you
Is made out of stone-lies
O lit­tle girl the truth would be
An axe in thee

—Nick Cave, “Say Good­bye to the Lit­tle Girl Tree”

Nick Cave has been many things in his long, fas­ci­nat­ing career—lewd punk-coun­try croon­er for the assaultive Birth­day Par­ty, prophet­ic trou­ba­dour and Bib­li­cal bal­ladeer, founder of the grit­ty, sleazy Grin­der­man, nov­el­ist and poet of the dark­er realms of human expe­ri­ence. He has been many things, but sen­ti­men­tal has rarely been one of them, though he can be quite ten­der and vul­ner­a­ble. These qual­i­ties stand as some of the many rea­sons I trust Cave to make a list of love songs worth a damn. Not only has he writ­ten some of the finest tunes about heart­break, betray­al, regret, and desire but he has done so with an atti­tude of rev­er­ence for influ­ences like Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone, artists with their own com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships with love.

Ear­li­er this year, Cave revealed to read­ers of his blog The Red Hand Files a selec­tion of his “hid­ing songs”—music that “I can pull over myself,” he wrote, “like a child might pull the bed cov­ers over their head, when the blaze of the world becomes too intense.”

The list includes Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and Simone’s heart­break­ing­ly somber “Plain Gold Ring.”  When Cave is hid­ing, it ain’t in a hap­py place, but then sad songs usu­al­ly give us the great­est com­fort. Maybe they also offer the best way we have to under­stand love, “this strange, inscrutable feel­ing that tears away at us, all our lives,” Cave writes in answer to two of his fans from Aus­tralia and Brazil. He leaves them, and us, his list of top ten love songs below.

01. “To Love Some­body” – Bee Gees

02. “My Father” – Nina Simone

03. “I Threw It All Away” – Bob Dylan

04. “Com­fort You” – Van Mor­ri­son

05. “Angel of the Morn­ing” – Mer­rilee Rush & The Turn­abouts

06. “Nights in White Satin” – The Moody Blues

07. “Where’s the Play­ground Susie?” – Glen Camp­bell

08. “Some­thing on Your Mind” – Karen Dal­ton

09. “Always on My Mind” – Elvis Pres­ley

10. “Super­star” – Car­pen­ters

“Maybe some songs are the embod­i­ment of love itself and that’s why they move us so deeply.” No one needs to tell us: love is nev­er easy, and hard­ly ever just a feel­ing of eupho­ria. Like every emo­tion and expe­ri­ence, it has its melan­choly shad­ows, and the best love songs cap­ture this in their lyrics, chord pro­gres­sions, etc. The ten love songs Cave chose—“simple, plain­spo­ken, incen­di­ary devices that bomb the heart to pieces”—are all clas­sics from the six­ties and sev­en­ties, decades he draws from lib­er­al­ly in his “hid­ing songs” playlist.

He favors artists with big per­son­al­i­ties, coun­try and folk lean­ings, and often­times a more com­mer­cial sound than his own. Nonethe­less, those famil­iar with his music will hear the influ­ence of Elvis, Van Mor­ri­son, and maybe even the Bee Gees on his work with the Bad Seeds. He has a new album com­ing, the fol­low-up to 2016’s har­row­ing Skele­ton Tree. While we wait to hear what his wife calls “his Fever Songs,” lis­ten to his top ten love songs here.

via Brook­lyn Veg­an

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Ani­mat­ed Sto­ries Writ­ten by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Oth­er Artists, Read by Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.