Meet the Linda Lindas, the Tween Punk Band Who Called Out Racism & Misogyny and Scored a Record Deal

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” we chant­ed as kids, but “words will nev­er hurt me.” The say­ing seems to both invite phys­i­cal vio­lence and deny the real effects of ver­bal abuse. Maybe this was once effec­tive as a stock play­ground retort, but it’s nev­er been true, as any­one who’s been picked on as a child can attest. When the taunts are racist, the dam­age is expo­nen­tial­ly mul­ti­plied. Not only are kids being sin­gled out and mocked for immutable char­ac­ter­is­tics, but their fam­i­ly and entire cul­ture of ori­gin are being tar­get­ed.

What to do? Lash out? Fight back? Ignore it and pre­tend it isn’t hap­pen­ing? To quote anoth­er cliche, “the best revenge is suc­cess.” More appro­pri­ate­ly for the case at hand, take an orig­i­nal line from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: “Be con­struc­tive with your blues.”

The Lin­da Lin­das, a four-piece punk band rang­ing in age from 10 to 16 would agree. When one of the girls was harassed by a class­mate, they got bummed about it, then ral­lied, wrote a song, went viral, and scored a record deal. Deal­ing with bul­lies will rarely lead to such joy­ful results, but it’s worth pay­ing atten­tion when it does.

The song, “Racist, Sex­ist Boy” has “become some­thing of a 2021 anthem,” writes NPR, with its glee­ful call-outs (“Pos­er! Block­head! Riffraff! Jerk face!”) and crunchy pow­er chords. “In what has become a very famil­iar cycle to music-indus­try watch­ers, the band land­ed a record deal almost as soon as its video went viral,” sign­ing with L.A.’s Epi­taph Records. “By Fri­day, the band’s per­for­mance of ‘Racist, Sex­ist Boy’ had been post­ed on Epi­taph’s YouTube chan­nel.” The video comes from a per­for­mance at the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library, which you can watch in full above, with an intro­duc­tion and inter­view with the band. (See a setlist on YouTube and don’t miss their cov­er of Biki­ni Kil­l’s “Rebel Girl” at 35:56.)

So, who are the Lin­da Lin­das? On their Band­camp page, they describe them­selves as “Half Asian / half Lat­inx. Two sis­ters, a cousin, and their close friend. The Lin­da Lin­das chan­nel the spir­it of orig­i­nal punk, pow­er pop, and new wave through today’s ears, eyes and minds.” You can meet the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed tweens and teens in the video above, made in 2019 by a fifth grade teacher to inspire his stu­dents. The girls are hard­ly new to the music busi­ness. Clips in the video show them per­form­ing with Mon­ey Mark and open­ing for Biki­ni Kill. They got their start in 2018 at Girlschool LA, “a cel­e­bra­tion of females chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo,” and they’ve been men­tored by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Lin­da Lin­das also cap­tured the atten­tion of Amy Pohler, who fea­tured the band in her Net­flix doc­u­men­tary Mox­ie. See a clip above. Not every kid who fights bul­ly­ing with music — or art, sci­ence, sports, or what­ev­er their tal­ent — can expect celebri­ty, and we shouldn’t set kids up to think they can all win the inter­net lot­tery. But the Lin­da Lin­das have become heroes for mil­lions of young girls who look like them, and who dream not of fame and for­tune but of a unit­ed front of friend­ship and fun against racism, misog­y­ny, and the pains of grow­ing up.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Record­ed Song (1976)

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

Watch 1,000 Musicians Play the Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

In the 1980s, avant-garde com­pos­er, gui­tarist Glenn Bran­ca began writ­ing sym­phonies for elec­tric gui­tars — dozens of them, all play­ing at once, cre­at­ing unprece­dent­ed psy­choa­coustic effects — some­times beau­ti­ful har­mo­ny, some­times unset­tling dis­so­nance — that reduced Bran­ca him­self to tears. “I remem­ber one rehearsal where I actu­al­ly had to stop and cry,” he once said. “I could not believe that I was get­ting this sound.” Bran­ca brought togeth­er hun­dreds of elec­tric gui­tarists and per­cus­sion­ists, but he nev­er real­ized his ambi­tion of bring­ing togeth­er 2,000 gui­tarists at once in Paris for cel­e­bra­tions of the year 2000, set­tling for 100.

These num­bers pale next to the largest gui­tar ensem­ble on record, 6,346 peo­ple in Poland in 2009. In 2018, the year of Branca’s death, anoth­er record attempt saw 457 gui­tarists come togeth­er in Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia to play AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell.” Not exact­ly Branca’s cup of tea, but he prob­a­bly had some hand in the inspi­ra­tion, if only indi­rect­ly. Stand­ing amidst those hun­dreds of ring­ing gui­tars while they banged out the song’s famed open­ing chords sure­ly made many an Angus Young devo­tee cry that day.

What, then, would it feel like to stand amidst the cacoph­o­ny of 1000 musi­cians — drum­mers, gui­tarists, bassists, and singers — bash­ing out a cov­er of Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly”? Assem­bled in 2015 in Italy, the Rockin’1000 was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a one-off project to accom­plish “four mir­a­cles,” notes the project’s site: “find one thou­sand musi­cians, get them to play simul­ta­ne­ous­ly of the biggest Rock show ever, col­lect enough mon­ey to make it real, con­vince the Foo Fight­ers to play a gig in Cese­na.” (You can see their impas­sioned plea to Dave Grohl at the video’s end.)

After accom­plish­ing their goals “with a bang” (the Foo Fight­ers lat­er played a 3‑hour con­cert ded­i­cat­ed to the project), the core team decid­ed to get “the biggest Rock Band on Earth” back togeth­er for an entire con­cert the fol­low­ing year: “17 songs played all togeth­er at Manuzzi Sta­di­um.” The full show has been released on CD and vinyl, but I’d haz­ard that music writ­ten for four peo­ple and played by 1000 doesn’t sound quite as inter­est­ing on record as in per­son, where the sheer mas­sive­ness might make lis­ten­ers weep. As the band­lead­ers them­selves admit, “with­out an audi­ence, who’s been a part of the whole process, Rockin’1000 wouldn’t make sense.”

They’ve per­formed for audi­ences, in var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions, every year since their found­ing until 2020. See them here play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” and David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.” If you sing or play a rock instru­ment, you can sign up to be a part of Rockin’1000’s next gig, in Paris, in May 2022, here.

With a band com­posed of 1000 peo­ple, the musi­cians are also the audi­ence, and the musi­cians can be any­one. What sep­a­rates Rockin’1000 from some oth­er cel­e­bra­tions of pop­u­lar music is that it does posi­tion itself as a road to fame and for­tune or a way to meet celebri­ties. “No rank­ings, no prizes, no win­ners, no losers,” they write: “every­one can be part of this, either an audi­ence or a mem­ber of ‘the biggest Rock Band on Earth.’ No bar­ri­ers here, all emo­tions are equal, same inten­si­ty.” But what emo­tions do we expe­ri­ence as a vir­tu­al audi­ence of the Biggest Band on Earth?

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch a Tow­er­ing Orches­tral Trib­ute to Kate Bush: A 40th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of Her First Sin­gle, “Wuther­ing Heights”

Foo Fight­ers Per­form “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Bri­an John­son: When Live Music Returns

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

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

Revisiting Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resistance: Revisited 50 Years Later

I just want to be heard and that’s all that mat­ters. — Mar­vin Gaye

R&B super­star Mar­vin Gaye was more than will­ing to risk his career on a record.

His pol­ished pub­lic per­sona was a false front behind which lurked some seri­ous demons — depres­sion and addic­tion, exac­er­bat­ed by the ill­ness and death of his close friend and duet mate, Tam­mi Ter­rell.

His down­ward spi­ral was also fueled by his dis­tress over events of the late 60s.

How else to respond to the Viet­nam War, the mur­der of civ­il rights lead­ers, police bru­tal­i­ty, the Watts Riots, a dire envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion, and the dis­en­fran­chise­ment and aban­don­ment of low­er income Black com­mu­ni­ties?

Per­haps by refus­ing to adhere to pro­duc­er Bar­ry Gordy’s man­date that all Motown artists were to steer clear of overt polit­i­cal stances….

He con­trolled their careers, but art is a pow­er­ful out­let.

Obie Ben­son also came under Gordy’s thumb as a mem­ber of the R&B quar­tet, the Four Tops. The shock­ing vio­lence he wit­nessed in Berkeley’s Peo­ple’s Park on Bloody Thurs­day while on tour with his band pro­vid­ed the lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion for “What’s Goin’ On.”

When the oth­er mem­bers of the group refused to touch it, not want­i­ng to rock the boat with a protest song, he took it to Gaye, who had lost all enthu­si­asm for the “bull­shit” love songs that had made him a star

Ben­son recalled that Gaye added some “things that were more ghet­to, more nat­ur­al, which made it seem more like a sto­ry than a song… we mea­sured him for the suit and he tai­lored the hell out of it.”

Gordy was not pleased with the song’s mes­sage, nor his loosey goosey approach to lay­ing down the track. Eli Fontaine’s famous sax­o­phone intro was impro­vised and “Motown’s secret weapon,” bassist James Jamer­son was so plas­tered on Metaxa, he was record­ed sprawl­ing on the floor.

Jamer­son told his wife they’d been work­ing on a “mas­ter­piece,” but Gordy dubbed “What’s Going On” “the worst thing I ever heard in my life,” pooh-poohing the “Dizzy Gille­spie stuff in the mid­dle, that scat­ting.” He refused to release it.

Gaye stonewalled by going on strike, refus­ing to record any music what­so­ev­er.

Eight months in, Motown’s A&R Head Har­ry Balk, des­per­ate for anoth­er release from one of the label’s most pop­u­lar acts, direct­ed sales vice pres­i­dent Bar­ney Ales to drop the new sin­gle behind Gordy’s back.

It imme­di­ate­ly shot to the top of the charts, sell­ing 70,000 copies in its first week.

Gordy, warm­ing to the idea of more sales, abrupt­ly reversed course, direct­ing Gaye to come up with an entire album of protest songs. It ush­ered in a new era in which Black record­ing artists were not only free, but encour­aged to use their voic­es to bring about social change.

The album, What’s Going On, recent­ly claimed top hon­ors when Rolling Stone updat­ed its  500 Great­est Albums list. Now, it is cel­e­brat­ing its 50th anniver­sary, and as Poly­phon­ic, pro­duc­ers of the mini-doc above note, its sen­ti­ments couldn’t be more time­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Young Janis Joplin Plays a Passionate Set at One of Her First Gigs in San Francisco (1963)

From her ear­ly, unhap­py teen years in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin seemed to know she want­ed to be a blues singer. She once said she decid­ed to become a singer when a friend “loaned her his Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly records,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Ellis Amburn. “Ten years lat­er, Janis was hailed as the pre­mier blues singer of her time. She paid trib­ute to Bessie by buy­ing her a head­stone for her unmarked grave.” She was devot­ed to the blues, from her ear­li­est encoun­ters with the music in her youth to her last record­ed song, the lone­ly, a capel­la blues, “Mer­cedes Benz.”

But when Joplin first appeared on the San Fran­cis­co scene in 1963, she did so as a Dylan-influ­enced folkie fresh from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin. The year before, she had been described by a pro­file in The Dai­ly Tex­an as an artist who “goes bare­foot­ed when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they’re more com­fort­able, and car­ries her auto­harp with her every­where she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy.” The arti­cle was titled “She Dares to Be Dif­fer­ent.”

Joplin’s folk per­sona was hard­ly unique in either San Fran­cis­co or Austin in the ear­ly 60s. “In fact, her love of Dylan and folk sim­ply marked her out as a rid­er of the zeit­geist,” writes music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz. “When, for exam­ple, a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas alum­nus called Chet Helms passed through [Austin] he was aston­ished at the wealth of folk music.” Helms, who had already moved west, promised Joplin gigs in San Fran­cis­co. The pair hitch­hiked to the city “mid­way through Jan­u­ary 1963, with con­sid­er­able trep­i­da­tion… a trek in which they spent 50 hours on the road.”

Once in North Beach, a neigh­bor­hood defined by City Lights book­store and the Beats, Helms found Joplin gigs at Cof­fee and Con­fu­sion, then the Cof­fee Gallery, where she “was just one of many future rock­ers to play the Cof­fee Gallery as a folkie,” writes Alice Echols. In South Bay cof­fee­hous­es, she met Jer­ry Gar­cia and future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. Every­one made the cof­fee­house rounds, acoustic gui­tar in hand. It was the way to make a name in the scene, which Janis did quick­ly, appear­ing the same year she arrived in San Fran­cis­co on the side stage at the Mon­terey Folk Fes­ti­val.

But Janis brought some­thing dif­fer­ent than oth­er stu­dents of Dylan — big­ger and bold­er and loud­er and deeply root­ed in a South­ern blues tra­di­tion Joplin spread to aston­ished beat­niks like a “Blues His­to­ri­an,” one com­menter notes, “turn­ing a small audi­ence on to some obscure and for­got­ten per­form­ers, whose music would serve as the foun­da­tion for an entire genre yet to come.” You can hear her do just that in the gig above at the Cof­fee Gallery in 1963: “no drums, no crowds. Just Janis and a small group of peo­ple gath­ered to hear some sam­ples of rur­al blues, done by an enthu­si­ast from Texas.”

See the full setlist below. Oth­er per­form­ers on the record­ing, accord­ing to the YouTube uploader, are Lar­ry Han­ks on acoustic gui­tar and vocals, and Bil­ly Roberts (or pos­si­bly Roger Perkins) on acoustic gui­tar, as well as ban­jo, vocals, and har­mon­i­ca.

Leav­ing’ This Morn­ing (K.C. Blues)
Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Dad­dy
Care­less Love
Bour­geois Blues
Black Moun­tain Blues
Gospel Ship
Stealin’

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

Hear a Rare First Record­ing of Janis Joplin’s Hit “Me and Bob­by McGee,” Writ­ten by Kris Kristof­fer­son

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

One Man’s Quest to Build the Best Stereo System in the World

To make Fitz­car­ral­do, a movie about a rub­ber baron who drags a steamship over a hill in the Peru­vian jun­gle, Wern­er Her­zog famous­ly arranged the actu­al drag­ging of an actu­al steamship over an actu­al hill in the actu­al Peru­vian jun­gle. This endeav­or ran into all the com­pli­ca­tions you’d expect and then some. But the rea­son­able ques­tion of whether it would­n’t be wis­er to cut his loss­es and head back to civ­i­liza­tion prompt­ed Her­zog to make an artis­ti­cal­ly defin­ing state­ment: “If I aban­don this project, I would be a man with­out dreams and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life, with this project.”

Ken Fritz is a man with dreams, and the doc­u­men­tary above con­cerns one he pur­sued for near­ly 30 years: that of build­ing “the best stereo sys­tem in the world.” He set about real­iz­ing this dream in suc­cess­ful mid­dle age, the time of life when the thoughts of no few men, he acknowl­edges, turn to audio­phil­ia. But in Fritz’s case, the dri­ve that made him a busi­ness suc­cess in the first place fixed his sights per­ma­nent­ly on some­thing more than a hi-fi fit for a man cave. Indeed, it entailed build­ing some­thing down­right cav­ernous, a ver­i­ta­ble con­cert hall of an addi­tion to his house scaled to accom­mo­date cus­tom-made speak­er tow­ers and designed for the opti­mal dis­per­sion of sound with a min­i­mum of inter­fer­ence.

Much of Fritz’s sys­tem is cus­tom-made, most elab­o­rate­ly notably its three-armed, 1,500-pound “Franken­stein turntable.” How much did it cost asks his son Scott? “I’ve seen turnta­bles that sell for $100,00, $120,000, and they’re nowhere near as com­pli­cat­ed and as involved as this,” he says. (Fritz now esti­mates that he has spent north of $1 mil­lion on his rig.) But to the true audio­phile, every invest­ment is worth it, whether of mon­ey, time, or effort. For “once it’s built, if you don’t like it, if does­n’t work, you’re stuck with it. You just lie to your­self: ‘It sounds good.’ ” Fritz’s music room stands as a tes­ta­ment to his deter­mi­na­tion not to lie to him­self — as well as to his love of music and will to give that love a con­crete form.

“I just can­not go day after day with­out accom­plish­ing some­thing,” Fritz says. “They say that when you’re retired, you should­n’t have to do any­thing. I don’t buy that at all. For­tu­nate­ly, all my goals have been ful­filled. I’ve built every­thing I’ve want­ed to build.” This includes all his music room’s shelves and cab­i­nets, each per­fect­ly pro­por­tioned to the com­po­nent it con­tains. And though a diag­no­sis of amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis has brought Fritz’s wood­work­ing days to an end, it has­n’t put him off the notion that “if the mind does­n’t keep the body going, and the body does­n’t ful­fill the thoughts that a man has, he becomes sense­less. He might as well just pack it up.” Few of us will ever know the kind of sat­is­fac­tion he must feel lis­ten­ing to Swan Lake, his favorite work of clas­si­cal music, on the sound sys­tem that could fair­ly be called his life’s work. But many of us will won­der: how must “Dea­con Blues” sound on it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satir­i­cal Film About the Inven­tion of the Audio­phile (1959)

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio Sys­tem & Record Col­lec­tion Gets Recre­at­ed in His Lon­don Flat

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” – a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound Sys­tem – Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s Headbanging Cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Smells Like Teen Spir­it is an unusu­al anthem because it refus­es the role of the anthem. It’s per­fect for the gen­er­a­tion it rep­re­sent­ed because this was a cohort that was so ambiva­lent about any tra­di­tion­al val­ues [or] con­ven­tion­al suc­cess. — music crit­ic Ann Pow­ers 

The scream­ing exis­ten­tial angst of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” ensured that Nir­vana would define, tran­scend, and out­last the 90s grunge scene.

The song was an instant hit. Here’s a descrip­tion from some­one who was present at the small Seat­tle club O.K Hotel for its first live per­for­mance:

They start­ed play­ing the new song and peo­ple erupt­ed. We were being slimed on by shirt­less guys, just mosh­ing. My friend Susan start­ed hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing, she thought it was so good: ‘I can’t, gasp, believe what they just played!’ It was just instan­ta­neous; it was crazy.

“Smells Like Teen Spir­it” was unre­con­sti­tut­ed rock bliss to us…

…and per­haps not the most nat­ur­al fit for a ukulele cov­er?

On the oth­er hand, what bet­ter instru­ment for those “ambiva­lent about con­ven­tion­al suc­cess” than the ukulele?

The Ukelele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s cov­er is as inten­tion­al­ly sil­ly as the band itself, but also man­ages to con­vey some of the original’s DGAF atti­tude.

That’s quite an accom­plish­ment for a seat­ed row of for­mal­ly dressed, mid­dle aged musi­cians, strum­ming in uni­son on an instru­ment any­one can play… but few can play well.

The ukulele has become cool in cer­tain cir­cles, but remains inex­tri­ca­bly linked to Tiny Tim tip­toe­ing through the tulips, and a mil­lion fum­bling sum­mer camp recre­ations of Jake Shimabukuro’s gen­tle Hawai­ian “Some­where Over the Rain­bow.”

Orches­tra founder Peter Brooke Turn­er’s trib­ute to lead vocal­ist Kurt Cobain helps nudge the nee­dle  past pure nov­el­ty into the realm of cred­i­bil­i­ty, or at least a sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of all the ways in which the orig­i­nal works.

Plus, his “yeah” at 1:52 tran­scends the era of flan­nels, harken­ing to a time when the uncon­flict­ed preen­ing rock god reigned supreme. (We should note that he serves plen­ty of ham along­side that sausage.)

Best of all is David Suich’s enthu­si­as­tic head­bang­ing. Clear­ly a fel­low who enjoys putting his long hair in ser­vice of his art! (We refer you to the Ukulele Orchestra’s inter­pre­ta­tion of AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell.” below…)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

1,000 Musi­cians Play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Live, at the Same Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Composes a Soundtrack to Arthur C. Clarke’s Documentary Fractals: The Colors of Infinity

An observ­er once called the Man­del­brot Set “The Thumbprint of God,” the sim­ple equa­tion that led to the dis­cov­ery of frac­tal geog­ra­phy, chaos the­o­ry, and why games like No Man’s Sky even exist. In 1994, Arthur C. Clarke, writer of both sci­ence fic­tion and sci­ence fact, nar­rat­ed a one-hour doc­u­men­tary on the new math­e­mat­ics, called Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty. If that sounds famil­iar, dear read­er, it’s because we’ve told you about it long ago. But it’s worth revis­it­ing, and it’s worth men­tion­ing that the sound­track was cre­at­ed by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

To be hon­est, at first I wasn’t real­ly hear­ing that Floyd vibe, just some pleas­ant synth-strings you could find on any num­ber of doc­u­men­taries. But then Clarke explains the impli­ca­tion of the Man­del­brot equa­tion, end­ing it with “This real­ly is infin­i­ty.” And then Boom, the acid hit.

Or rather, the rain­bow com­put­er graph­ics of the end­less zoom hit, and it was unmis­tak­ably Gilmour—cue up 5:19 and be care­ful with that frac­tal, Eugene. This hap­pens again at 14:30, 25:12, 31:07, 35:46, 38:22, 43:22, 44:51, and 50:06 for those with an itchy scrub­bing fin­ger. But stick around for the whole doc, as the his­to­ry of how we got to the equa­tion, its prece­dents in nature and art, and the impli­ca­tions only hint­ed at in the pro­gram, all make for inter­est­ing view­ing.

The music will remind you in places of “Shine On Your Crazy Dia­mond”, “Obscured by Clouds,” and “On the Run.” When a DVD was released years lat­er, a spe­cial fea­ture iso­lat­ed just Gilmour’s music and the frac­tal ani­ma­tion.

Gilmour has con­tributed sound­track work to oth­er pro­grams. He has an uncred­it­ed per­for­mance on Guy Pratt’s sound­track from 1995’s Hack­ers; inci­den­tal music for 1992’s Ruby Takes a Trip with Ruby Wax; and a 1993 doc­u­men­tary on the arts and drug use called The Art of Trip­ping.

There are no offi­cial releas­es of this sound­track work, but one user has put up 16 min­utes of the Colours of Infin­i­ty music over at Sound­Cloud.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Gilmour, David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash Per­form the Pink Floyd Clas­sic, “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” (2006)

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Bar­rett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

David Lynch Directs a New Music Video for Donovan

I often feel Scot­tish singer-song­writer Dono­van has been mis­un­der­stood. When he shows up these days, it’s in songs like his creepy “Hur­dy Gur­dy Man” and “Sea­son of the Witch,” in films and TV series about ser­i­al killers. This may leave younger view­ers with the impres­sion that the psy­che­del­ic folk hero went down some scary musi­cal paths. But those who remem­ber Dono­van in his hey­day remem­ber him as the singer of “Sun­shine Super­man,” his biggest hit, and “Mel­low Yel­low,” which hit Num­ber 2 in the U.S. in 1966. The fol­low­ing year, he urged his lis­ten­ers to wear their love like heav­en, in vers­es that rivaled Syd Barrett’s for their love of col­or: “Col­or in sky, Pruss­ian blue / Scar­let fleece changes hue.”

Maybe it’s hard to enter­tain the sen­ti­ments of flower pow­er in 2021. But maybe, also, Donovan’s sun­ni­est songs have always had dark­er threads woven through them. Take “Sun­shine Super­man”: kind of a creepy tune, with its Lou Reed-like obser­va­tion about “hus­tlin’ just to have a lit­tle scene,” and its hip­pie lothar­i­o’s con­fes­sion that he’ll use “any trick in the book” on the object of his desire. Maybe it was ear­ly fans who got him wrong. Dono­van has always been a weirdo’s weirdo, if you will. And so, it stands to rea­son that he would pick David Lynch to pro­duce his track, “I Am the Shaman,” and to direct a video for the song for his 75th birth­day this past Mon­day.

The song itself is not new, but was pro­duced by Lynch in 2010 for the album, Rit­u­al Groove, a col­lec­tion of record­ings, “some dat­ing as far back as 1976,” writes one review­er, held togeth­er by the “premise… that the plan­et is stuffed, the God­dess won’t care if we drift off into obliv­ion but wait, a sav­iour appears in the form of the pre­vi­ous­ly hum­ble min­strel Dono­van, now a true poet.” (If fans of the cult psy­che­del­ic hor­ror film Mandy are remind­ed of Jere­mi­ah Sand, then we are in grim ter­ri­to­ry, indeed.) The col­lab­o­ra­tion gets even more inter­est­ing when we learn that “I Am the Shaman” was large­ly impro­vised, as Dono­van him­self wrote on Face­book:

He had asked me to only bring in a song just emerg­ing, not any­where near fin­ished. We would see what hap­pens. It hap­pened! I com­posed extem­pore… the vers­es came nat­u­ral­ly. New chord pat­terns effort­less­ly appeared.

This way of work­ing suit­ed him per­fect­ly, as did the back­wards-talk­ing pro­duc­tion Lynch applied to the track. “David and I are ‘com­padres’ on a cre­ative path rarely trav­eled,” he not­ed. It is a path that leads straight through the wilds of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, for which the video is intend­ed to raise mon­ey and aware­ness. Despite its lack of col­or, anoth­er affin­i­ty shared by Dono­van Leitch and David Lynch, “I Am the Shaman” shows both artists vibrat­ing at the same fre­quen­cy, which may either con­firm or unset­tle what you thought you knew about the mys­ti­cal poet/singer/shaman Dono­van.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Posts His Night­mar­ish Sit­com Rab­bits Online–the Show That Psy­chol­o­gists Use to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

Meet the Hur­dy Gur­dy, the Hand-Cranked Medieval Instru­ment with 80 Mov­ing Parts

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

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