Like bud­ding ten-year-old pale­on­tol­o­gists with their dinosaur guides, music nerds who came of age in the 80s and 90s might spend whole days read­ing about obscure one-off bands and indie, punk, and alter­na­tive giants from all over the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in Ira Rob­bins’ ency­clo­pe­dic Trouser Press Record Guide ref­er­ence books. Their crit­i­cal entries were notable espe­cial­ly for what they were not: fan trib­utes.

Just the oth­er day, for exam­ple, I was brows­ing through the Trouser Press Guide to ‘90s Rock and was star­tled to read that Depeche Mode’s 101, a live album I lis­tened to repeat­ed­ly in my moody mid­dle school years, offered “per­ma­nent evi­dence of the band’s—a pitch-impaired singer cru­ci­fied on racks of keyboards—concert inad­e­qua­cy.”

This, I protest­ed, is too much.

But, I admit, that album, played at full vol­ume in head­phones, once car­ried me as an ado­les­cent through a grim three-day trek across the coun­try, in a van with my frac­tious fam­i­ly, dri­ving the entire length of Arkansas in sub-zero late Decem­ber and spend­ing New Years’ Eve in a motel room in a des­o­late nowheresville out­side Pine Bluff, AR.

My sense that there might be a roman­ti­cal­ly gloomy, weird­ly seduc­tive world beyond the frost­ed win­dows of our shab­by Ford Club Wag­on is what I will always asso­ciate with the album, its musi­cal mer­its aside. (That and a seri­ous crush on some­one who real­ly loved Depeche Mode.) I can’t remem­ber if I’ve lis­tened to it since.

It’s true Depeche Mode got a lot of mileage out of a lim­it­ed range of skills and musi­cal ideas, but that seems to be no valid crit­i­cism in pop music. The best pop songs are those peo­ple expe­ri­ence as oper­at­ic state­ments of their own emo­tion­al lives. As we see in the open­ing scenes of the Depeche Mode doc­u­men­tary above, Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode, their most fer­vent Eng­lish fans believe that they too might be Depeche Mode.

U.S., Mex­i­can, and Russ­ian fans roman­ti­ciz­ing Basil­don, Depeche Mode’s home­town, as a placid Eng­lish vil­lage say more about their own long­ings than about the band’s sound. Depeche Mode may have looked like a New Wave boy band in the 80s, but that was also the decade in which they were at their nois­i­est and most exper­i­men­tal, “seam­less­ly blend­ing con­crète sounds—factory din, clank­ing chains and so forth—into the music,” writes Trouser Press.

The sound—says one Eng­lish fan of “Depeche” from its beginnings—“came from the bricks” of Basil­don, a grit­ty place with fre­quent fight­ing in the streets. The bulk of the dense­ly crowd­ed town’s con­crete blocks, and fac­to­ries sprang up after WWII, a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed to house the Lon­don pop­u­la­tion dis­placed by the bomb­ings. What set Depeche Mode apart from their syn­th­pop peers and inspi­ra­tions (aside from Siouxsie Sioux and Damned-inspired fetish cos­play) was the indus­tri­al noise that pop­u­lat­ed their sac­cha­rine off-key bal­lads and naughty S&M tracks.

The sound of work­ing-class streets embed­ded in their music drew fans from Moscow—where singer Dave Gahan’s birth­day has become an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day. Their music is “tech­nol­o­gy, the sounds of life, of real­i­ty,” says one Mus­covite fan above. Depeche Mode bootlegs, which spread over the Sovi­et world, get par­tial cred­it for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fans in Tehran risk severe pun­ish­ment from the Islam­ic author­i­ties for lis­ten­ing to illic­it copies of their albums.

They became gloomi­er, more navel-gaz­ing and “dis­mal,” our Trouser Press crit­ic writes, and the quirky sounds of Basil­don seemed to fade away, replaced by the cav­ernous reverb and goth-blues gui­tar riffs of their 90s apoth­e­o­sis. Their appeal to sen­si­tive and trou­bled kids every­where remained as pow­er­ful, if not more so. Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode doc­u­ments the band’s spread around the world in ded­i­cat­ed fan com­mu­ni­ties. Made in 2007, the film mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared and has only just resur­faced recent­ly, as Dan­ger­ous Minds reports. “No one’s quite sure what hap­pened there.”

It will be inter­est­ing to com­pare this redis­cov­ered doc­u­ment with a new Depeche Mode movie, Spir­its in the For­est, get­ting a the­atri­cal release Novem­ber 21st. Shot by Anton Cor­bi­jn, the film, as you can see from trail­er (above), also keeps its focus on the fans, mix­ing six sto­ries, writes Rolling Stone, “shot in each of their home­towns, with footage of the con­cert” in Berlin pro­mot­ing the band’s newest album Spir­it.

They may nev­er have been the great­est live band or most accom­plished of musi­cians, but Depeche Mode has always known how to work a crowd, and how to speak to the pri­vate long­ings of every indi­vid­ual fan. What more can one ask of inter­na­tion­al pop stars? Gahan says in a state­ment about the new con­cert film, a tra­di­tion that reached its apex with the 101 doc­u­men­tary com­pan­ion to the album, “It’s amaz­ing to see the very real ways that music has impact­ed the lives of our fans.” He’s talk­ing about an evi­dent con­nec­tion that spans gen­er­a­tions and cross­es many unlike­ly cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, and nation­al bound­aries.

Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries.

The film by  Jere­my Deller & Nicholas Abra­hams is host­ed on Abra­hams’ Vimeo chan­nel.

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

The Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

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

When talk of clas­sic rock drum­mers turns to Kei­th Moon and John Bon­ham, I smile and nod. What’s the point in argu­ing? They were both, in their dis­tinc­tive ways, incredible—and in their ear­ly deaths, immor­tal leg­ends. Who knows what their careers would have looked like had either lived past 32? But tru­ly, for the all-around breadth of his influ­ence, for the amount of respect he gained in musi­cal cir­cles around the world, no greater clas­sic rock drum­mer ever lived, in my opin­ion, than Gin­ger Bak­er, may he final­ly rest in peace.

The famous­ly rest­less, vio­lent­ly can­tan­ker­ous drum­mer died yes­ter­day at age 80, out­liv­ing most of his peers, despite liv­ing twice as hard for well over twice as long as many of them—a feat of strength we might impute to his ath­let­ic phys­i­cal sta­mi­na and fright­en­ing will.

Like Moon and Bon­ham, he com­bined raw pow­er with seri­ous jazz chops. (Bak­er insist­ed he nev­er played rock drums at all.) After his polyrhyth­mic pum­mel­ing defined the sound of super­groups Cream and Blind Faith, he burned out and moved to Africa to find sobri­ety and new sounds.

Bak­er trav­eled the con­ti­nent with Fela Kuti to learn its rhythms, record­ing live with Kuti’s band in ’71. Afrobeat drum­mer Tony Allen remarked that he under­stood “the African beat more than any oth­er West­ern­er.” (See him jam­ming in Lagos fur­ther down.) Baker’s discog­ra­phy includes clas­sic records with Eric Clap­ton and Jack Bruce, Kuti, Hawk­wind, and oth­er leg­ends. He trav­eled the world play­ing drums for over fifty years. Why, then, did he have such a low pro­file for much of his lat­er life? A 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er, based on a 2009 Rolling Stone arti­cle, offers some answers.

Baker’s seri­ous drug addic­tion and ter­ri­fy­ing per­son­al­i­ty alien­at­ed near­ly every­one around him. The doc­u­men­tary opens with an endorse­ment from anoth­er prick­ly and unlik­able red-haired char­ac­ter, John Lydon (for­mer­ly John­ny Rot­ten), whose Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed is yet anoth­er project Bak­er ele­vat­ed with his play­ing. “He helped me rise,” says Lydon, and Bak­er would no doubt agree. He was not a mod­est man. He was, by most accounts, a right bas­tard, through and through, all of his life.

But he was too con­trar­i­an to be dis­missed as a mere nar­cis­sist. As a musi­cian, for exam­ple, he always thought of him­self as a sup­port­ing play­er. “I nev­er had a style,” he said in 2013. “I play to what I hear, so who­ev­er I’m play­ing with, what they play has a great influ­ence on what I play, because I lis­ten to what peo­ple are play­ing.” His skill at destroy­ing per­son­al rela­tion­ships was matched by his abil­i­ty for form­ing deep, awe-inspir­ing, if short-lived, musi­cal con­nec­tions. It’s a dichoto­my many drum­mers inspired by him have strug­gled to reconcile—taking lessons from Bak­er the drum­mer but not from Bak­er the man.

How do we sep­a­rate the man from his art? Why try? His mad pirate life makes for an epic saga, and Bak­er is a wild­ly excit­ing main char­ac­ter. He had ear­ly ambi­tions of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al cyclist. Though they didn’t pan out, he always retained the char­ac­ter­is­tics: he was both fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive and fierce­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Lat­er he picked up an even more rar­i­fied team sport—polo—keeping a sta­ble of hors­es on his gat­ed South African ranch, where he lived in his old age like a colo­nial ex-baron in a Nadine Gordimer nov­el. (He even­tu­al­ly had to sell the spread and move back to Lon­don.)

Bak­er was nev­er one to make apolo­gies, so his fans need not make any on his behalf. See him in some clas­sic per­for­mances above—at the top, solo­ing after an inter­view, at Cream’s Roy­al Albert Hall farewell con­cert; then play­ing a solo in a Cream reunion in that same venue almost forty years lat­er. After footage of him jam­ming in Lagos in 1971, we see what the inter­net calls the “BEST DRUM SOLO EVER,” fur­ther up. Just above, meet the man him­self, in all his unre­pen­tant glo­ry, and hear from those who knew him best, in the full doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Leg­endary Per­for­mances by John Bon­ham, Kei­th Moon, Neil Peart, Ter­ry Bozzio & More

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

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

Two years ago we post­ed about a music lover’s life’s work–Stephen Mali­nows­ki aka sma­lin on YouTube–and how he has pro­duced ani­mat­ed, side-scrolling scores to clas­si­cal music. Old­er folks will liken them to neon piano rolls. Youngun’s will see a bit of Gui­tar Hero or Rock Band game design in their march of col­or­ful shapes danc­ing to every­thing from Bach to Debussy.

Mali­nows­ki let us know that he just recent­ly com­plet­ed a major work: adapt­ing all of Beethoven’s String Quar­tets into his par­tic­u­lar, always evolv­ing style. And for this he turned to San Francisco’s Alexan­der String Quar­tet for their record­ings. Says the ani­ma­tor:

I made my first graph­i­cal scores in the 1970s, my first ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal score in 1985, and the first of these for a move­ment of a Beethoven string quar­tet in 2010. In 2014 I began col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Alexan­der String Quar­tet on select­ed move­ments of Beethoven string quar­tets, and in the ear­ly months of 2019 we decid­ed to hon­or the 250th anniver­sary of Beethoven’s birth by extend­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion to the full set. [Note: that anniver­sary will offi­cial­ly take place next year.]

One impor­tant point: Mali­nows­ki does not choose col­ors ran­dom­ly or because they are pret­ty. Instead, he uses “Har­mon­ic Col­or­ing”:

I’ve assigned blue to be the “home pitch” (the ton­ic, notataed Roman numer­al “I”) because that seemed the most “set­tled,” and cho­sen the blue-toward-red direc­tion as the I‑toward‑V direc­tion because motion toward the dom­i­nant (“V”) seems more “active” com­pared with motion toward the sub­dom­i­nant (“IV”).

This might not make sense just by read­ing it, but head to this page to see how the col­or wheel looks. There you can see how clas­si­cal music has evolved from the Renais­sance (most­ly stay­ing with the sev­en pitch­es in an octave) to the rad­i­cal changes of Brahms and then through Debussy to Stravin­sky, where it is a riot of col­or.

Beethoven wrote 16 string quar­tets between 1798 and 1826, as well as a Große Fuge includ­ed here that only had one move­ment, and gained a noto­ri­ety in its day as being a chaot­ic, inac­ces­si­ble mess. (They were wrong). The last five, known at the Late Quar­tets, were writ­ten in the last three years of his life. He was com­plete­ly deaf by this time, suf­fer­ing from all sorts of med­ical issues, recov­er­ing from brush­es with death, and yet… the Late Quar­tets are con­sid­ered by many to be his mas­ter­pieces, even more notable giv­en that he had come to the quar­tet form lat­er than oth­er com­posers and wracked with doubt about his tal­ents.

The final move­ment of his final string quar­tet (No. 16) was the last com­plete work Beethoven would ever write. At the top of the score he wrote “Must it be? It must be!” Death was at the door.

For those ready to learn or ready to revis­it these chal­leng­ing works, Mali­nows­ki has made it a treat for the eyes as well as the ears. See the com­plete playlist of ani­mat­ed string quar­tets here. Or stream them all, from start to fin­ish, below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

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.