The Tears of Things: A Little Chin Music About Music

December 10, 2007

A Little Chin Music About Music

The Song has ended.
But as the Songwriter wrote,
"The melody lingers on. . . "
--Ira Gerswhin, Songwriter:
"They Can't That Away From Me"

You don't need a DJ to know which way the spin goes.
--Catherine King

by Jerome du Bois with Catherine King

Round about the turn of the Millennium I was in my third stint working at Borders Books & Music; and this time, for the first time, I was working in Music. I had just emerged from a self-imposed hibernation, and I was eager to engage the world again. I opened my heart and let it all in. The slow spin of my life sped up. Though I wasn't a musical naif, I wasn't a fanatic either. I discovered many beautiful and strange sounds behind the front rows of top-one-hundred pop, and a few in the front row, too, such as Moby's "Play" and Radiohead's "OK Computer." I'm pretty sure I introduced a lot of people in the middle of town to Pink Martini: almost every time I slipped "Sympathique" into the store's player, we sold out. It was a great job for awhile, until management once again screwed it up for me, but the best thing about it was that I met Catherine there, my beautiful future wife. (They messed it up for her, too, worse than me. Never trust Borders managers; they're cowards; they won't back you up, even when you're physically assaulted. And neither will the home office help you. We know. We found out. Nobody, from the floor people to the manager to the corporate office, lifted a voice or a hand in her defense. Cowards and sycophants.)

Not long after we got together we started imagining store and window displays, and art installations, just for fun, because we knew the store policy had changed from the old days, when management encouraged staff creativity. I know, because I had created several elaborate in-store displays for the Business section in an earlier gig for Borders --neckties in rows in midair, two dozen double-sided plexiglas hanging graphics-- all on my own dime. (But in those latter days, from the mid-90s on, they'd just fly in a couple people from corporate to tell the managers to paint the walls a certain shade of blue, such as a soothing cerulean . . .)

So Catherine and I, happy and in love, would talk for hours about things we could do in the store to make it more interesting, less corporate. These talks reawakened in both of us the itch and desire to make art again, which had gone somewhat dormant, because of life's other necessities. We surprised and delighted ourselves when we realized we could collaborate. We got so excited that we decided maybe we could change the store policy, just a little, a little at a time. What could it hurt? So we designed and created the two pieces above, as a preliminary probe, a small, double-sided plexiglas hanging for right above the boxed sets endcase. (Up in the air, out of everybody's way. I'd done it before.) Our big project, though, was called Words Across Music, and would consist of hundreds of sentences printed on six-foot-long strips of paper hanging horizontally from the ceiling all the way across the Music section, in serried ranks from end to end --up in the air, out of the way-- like a school of long thin white undulating ghosts, layered, overlapping, double-sided, but every one easily readable; and each printed with a bit of wisdom or wit, most of them from songs, some old, some as right-now as right-then, like this line from The Guano Apes:

Beat the machine that works in your head.

None of it happened, of course. The assistant manager was a bully and a coward and a real prick, and he not only made sure none of it happened, he was the next-to-last straw, insulting, gloating, twisting the knife. We showed him, and the store's manager, the two pieces above, and they jeered. Literally. We bridled, and bided our time, but after the customer physically assaulted Catherine we booked, and took our imaginations with us. Before that last lacerating sour note, though, there was so much richness to recall, and I remember . . .

. . . oh, not exactly when it came to me, but that day I was in the Music section of the store as usual, checking on my department --Rock & Pop-- and listening to a CD I had just put into the department's CD player. Afro-Celt Sound System, my new favorite discovery, weaving their long looping wonders in the air. As I said before, I was no musical naif; even before I got to Borders I was familiar with, and listened to, groups and people like Spiritualized, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Super Furry Animals, Sigur Ros and Beck ("Odelay" and "Midnite Vultures"). But that job really opened up my ears. By this time in my job I had listened to a wider range of music than ever before in my life, and I was just brimming with it, and I was in love, and I was glad I had ears to hear. Who knew that pipes, which you breathe through, could be as throbbing and relentless as drums? The song --"Lovers of Light"-- created a dancer. I paused while riffling through my stock. I could see him in a flash from Coleridge --something about "flashing eyes, floating hair"-- that I looked up later. From "Kubla Khan":

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

But I didn't recall all those other lines at the time. All I remember is suddenly thinking, Music Is Manna. Yes, that's it! That would be one of the captions for the double-sided piece Catherine and I were working on. I didn't even have to write it down. It's unforgettable. And true.

So how to embody it? I had a small book at home, no more than three inches on a side, full of close-ups of the mostly-floral designs of William Morris. We thought: manna as wafer, the perfect calm circle surrounding the writhing variations of life. So we cut out the circles; I glued a lot of them on, but it was only when Catherine took over, with the smaller circles, that the thing started to float, and take off, and fly, like inspiration and serendipity and accident.

I already had the design of the other side laid out: the lawful, structured side of music, variations and permutations within a regulated grid. The Nietzsche quotation --you know, I really don't remember where I came across it, but its overstatement is like music itself, lifted above life but helpless without it. (Put it another way: Without Stevie Wonder, for example, music would be a mistake.)

The first collaboration of King & du Bois.

Music is manna, spiritual food, emotional nourishment, honey-dew and the milk of Paradise. At its best it shows us at our best: exuberant and generous, mysterious and mourning, edgy and precarious (with flashing eyes, with floating hair); sounding the chords, ringing the changes, tapping the sources, eager for The Uplifting, The Unfolding, The Ongoing . . .

Or it can be that way. Naturally I had my limits. But my ears had always been open, I hope. In my childhood past --more later-- I was blessed with a brother who could play a tune on the ukelele or guitar after hearing it once. We and our friends, sitting around beachside nighttime campfires, sang our way into midteenagehood. In my adult past I was lucky enough to have a couple of friends who were into very strange music. (Catherine as well, though on her own. Read on.) So long ago, after I'd absorbed Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Beach Boys for ten or more years, I met John Cage ("Indeterminacy") and Morton Subotnik and Harry Partch (who invented his own instruments) and Frank Zappa ("Hot Rats") and Captain Beefheart (from "Trout Mask Replica" to "Clear Spot.") Also Ilhan Mimaroglu, the memory of whose 1969 spliced-clarinet piece, "Wings of the Delirious Demon," stills chills my spine. And I learned how pop at its best could rise above itself when I heard Emerson, Lake, and Palmer play Blake's "Jerusalem" (which was banned in England in 1973) and a piece by a living Italian composer called "Toccata and Fugue In D Minor." (They certainly blew Queen out the door, among others.)

I had plenty to learn, though, twenty years later, with a lot of holes in my musical appreciation, years that I didn't or couldn't pay attention to popular culture. But welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends, we're so glad you could attend; come inside! come inside!

As I settled into work and learned some co-workers' own tastes, I sorted out a lot. For example, I despised pretentious groups like Sonic Youth and Mocket and Belle & Sebastian; and I couldn't abide rap. But moms sometimes have no choice what they listen to at home, and so Catherine was able to introduce me to Bone, Thugs, and Harmony, who created some amazingly vivid atmospheric stories with unusual instruments. (Kazoos and calliopes?) True crime and allegories, but no shine in the bling, no glory for the perps. Fatalistic, thus soulful and true to life. ("I'll meet you at The Crossroads.") She also introduced me to Mike Patton's earlier incarnation in Faith No More. (I knew him as Mr. Bungle.) Also Bob Marley. Robert Johnson. Marvin Gaye. She brought George Jones ("Cold Hard Truth"), Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton, and Hank Williams into our home. And an all-blues album by Jimi Hendrix. Blessings all.

We learned together, too. I remember bringing home a CD by Tabla Beat Science. They were like stripped-down Afro-Celt. Ethno-techno. Almost pure rhythm, but with some electronic elasticity. I thought it was a bit astringent, but Catherine convinced me of their richness.

So as I worked on this thing we of course talked about it, as we always do, and she filled me in on some of her past exposure to music--times we had never talked about before-- and I realized we hear from many more sources than we usually acknowledge. Often we seek out a certain group or sound, but sometimes we have no choice about the music that surrounds us, as with Catherine and the rap mentioned above. Sometimes it's all osmosis.

She told me about the church music: the oldest was the most compelling-- "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," words and music by Martin Luther, 1529 (tune adapted from a drinking song); "All Creatures of Our God and King," words by St. Francis, 1225, music in 1623; "We Gather Together," 1626; "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," 1739. Don't forget Handel's "Messiah," 1741, for Christmas and also Easter, as originally intended. She sang these and many more, enthusiastically if badly, from the time she was little enough to be in the Cherub Choir. [Catherine points out that "a lot of Hank Williams could be sung a capella, and would sound a lot like church music."]

It was Twentieth Century heartland hymns on the record player, though, as the family was getting ready for church. Burl Ives was like a favorite old uncle. ("Watch the doughnut, not the hole.") On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the incomparable music teacher, Mrs. Grace Ryan, enriched Catherine's life and scores of her schoolmates by making sure they knew their Rogers & Hammerstein, and "Music Man," "South Pacific," "The King and I," and "How the West Was Won." ("West Side Story" was a bad influence.) Graduation from grade school just wasn't going to happen until one could perform "Climb Every Mountain" and "No Man is an Island."

Mitch Miller and His Gang, along with their TV show, sort of early karaoke with the bouncing white ball, and their albums with lyric sheets, introduced Gilbert & Sullivan, John Philip Sousa and songs of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley and the Great White Way. This was family entertainment back then. However, only three or four subversive years later, The Village Fugs somehow insinuated themselves into Catherine's life. The Underground had been found. Music one couldn't listen to in the parents' home --The Velvet Underground with Nico, and the ever sleazy Lou Reed. A couple of years later Frank Zappa and those Bad Moms of Invention twisted the flower child's impressionable psyche. Kids could, and did, take psychedlic trips just listening to the music in those days, you know.

As for me, I was born and raised in Hawai'i. I grew up hearing the keening of the pedal steel guitar, which I would follow much later into some surprising places. My brother could pick up a song in a lick, and we would sit on the beach at night with our friends and sing the latest tunes from Alfred Apaka, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Donovan, and God --Bob Dylan.

And I had a next-door neighbor who was a professional waterskier and speedboat driver --his own with a Corvette engine-- a guy who would ski barefoot starting from the waterline, and his favorite singer? Johnny Mathis. "The Twelfth of Never." "Chances Are." A real tough guy. After that? Elvis --the ballads, of course. "Wise men say . . ." Go figure.

Catherine and I were present at the creation of Doo-wop, The Wall of Sound, Motown, R & B, Folk, Folk-Rock, Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and the rest, which is about when we peeled away and stayed away from most new music.

But back in the Sixties, because of geography perhaps, we separately shared an enthusiasm for the Bay Area Sound. Steve Miller, Jesse Colin Young, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, Jefferson Airplane, and of course the newer gods, The Grateful Dead. (Also New Riders of the Purple Sage.) And there was also a floating group of session musicians --brass and woodwinds and strings-- who morphed over various times into formal groups: starting with Shades of Joy, who composed the soundtrack to Jodorowsky's "El Topo," and growing into Tower of Power and Cold Blood and probably others, but I don't expect to remember everything about the Sixties. But who can forget the soaring soulfulness in the last verse of Jesse Colin Young's "Ridgetop"--

But the very best parts of each trip
Are the Golden Gate Bridge
And the road like a snake that will lead me
Back home to my Ridge--

followed by a glorious golden serpent of a saxophone solo, bringing that Road of Fulfilled Promise to life. Those of a certain age will know what I'm talking about.

Life is long. There was a stretch during which I was born-again, and I learned some of the same church tunes Catherine had sung as a kid, to which I would add "How Great Thou Art" and the great Christmas anthem "O Holy Night." Plus, the churches I joined had pastors who played trumpets, and people dancing in the aisles singing in tongues, so that was a whole new slant on Christianity for me --the best one, still, even now, so many years later . . . the joy of the Lord.

During that time I listened to some edgy Christian rock, such as Daniel Amos ("Vox Humana") and Steve Taylor ("I Want To Be A Clone," "We Don't Need No Color Code"). And I allowed myself to listen to quasi-Christian groups like Big Country, U2, and especially Mike Scott and The Waterboys, among my all-time favorite groups. (from "A Pagan Place" to "Fisherman's Blues.") And I enjoyed The Alarm's altar call with attitude:

Come on down and meet your maker.
Come on down and take the stand.

Awright, so this is a little more than a little chin music about music. But it's not an exhaustive autobiography. Let's skip ahead.

This was the week of the Grammy Nominations, which I was completely ignorant of, but it seems a fitting serendipity, and a shorthand I can use to see if we've missed much in the last few years. Here I go to take a look at the nominations . . .

Sheesh.

We haven't missed much in the last seven years, that's for sure. These people are stunted, twisted, derivative, or fossilized. (Bruce Springsteen? The guy was faux blue-collar from the beginning and he's just become more faded and chemically-treated stonewashed as the the years go by. Yeah, let's see your calluses, Bruce.)

By way of contrast, an extended coda of what music aficionados get around to eventually: a list of tunes, including just some really damned strange stuff.

Latest: right now, yes right now, Thursday night, Catherine and I are listening to radical Czech violinist Pavel Sporcl play Nicolo Paganini. (Recorded in 2004.) How did that come about? Since you ask . . . Catherine had just got hold of a wonderful volume of ghost stories (published by Borders! one closed circle there), and she read an excellent one called "The Ensouled Violin" by Madame Helena Blavatsky (yes, that one). In it, Blavatsky mentions Paganini's "Witches' Dance." It's one of those pieces of music which legend infuses with brimstone, this time apparently encouraged by Paganini himself. So we got hold of it. Fantastic. "Le Streghe" is not what one expects; it is not grinning frantic craziness or impossible bowing, as if Goya's Caprichos had been set to music. No; this dance approaches sinuously, then dances away, fades, then approaches again in a different guise, then fades away again, reappearing in a new permutation, like the ages of woman, or a mirror revolving in flickering darkness. . . .

Not long ago we picked up Sigur Ros's new double CD, Hvarf-Heim, or "Haven-Home." Heim is acoustic new stuff, and beautiful, but Hvarf is better: a compilation of never-released stuff going back ten years. It's more like the surging, keening, pulsing, soaring and roaring soul metal that I remember from their first couple of albums.

And that reminds me of another album we need to get: The soundtrack to the best and most overlooked movie of 2006: The Fountain.

What next? We can separate the shuffled categories of the list by instrument. I mentioned steel guitar, but how about, as Catherine mentioned in conversation, cowbells? "Time Has Come Today" by the Chambers Brothers, and "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult, to mention two. But we could add Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Band. For starters.

Or harmonica. Just four short examples, omitting the underrated Bob Dylan. Start with "Fingertips," by (Little) Stevie Wonder. Immortal. Skip to anything by Magic Dick of the J.Geils Band, especially his work on the live "Full House" album. "First I Look At The Purse." Yikes! Then an album which didn't deserve obscurity: 1987, "Goodbye Blue Sky" by Godley & Creme (of 10cc fame, also the innovative video "Cry.") They explained at the time that all the rhythm tracks were laid down by harmonica; the results are amazing, especially "10,000 Angels" and "Crime & Punishment." And just today, Sunday, December 9, 2007, I heard something newly jaw-dropping, from "The Art of Field Recording, Vol.1," of which more below: a one-armed black bluesman and harpist named Neil Patman tearing out a number called "Mama Whoopin' The Blues," recorded in 1977. Look out and jump!

It never ends. Pedal steel guitar? Asleep At The Wheel, Commander Cody, Hot Tuna, New Riders, Grateful Dead. But also, years later in my last job at Borders, I took advantage of the inventory and went back in time to pick up some Bob Wills, Tex Williams, and especially Speedy West. In 1998 Razor & Tie put out a CD which said it all: Stratosphere Boogie: The Flaming Guitars of Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant. This was impossible pickin' from 1951 to 1956, spastic drastic plastic. Could it be repeated? Wayull, fast forward spin around and lookie here at Robert Randolph and the Family Band, ca. 2003. Here's a group with a pedal-steel player front and center. "I Need More Love" is like a little tornado of fast-spinning steel where you could even see Jesus kicking up his heels.

It never ends. Category: idiosyncratic, or downright strange. People like Cornelius (the Japanese techno guy) or Goldfrapp (the song "Deer Stop" from the CD "Felt Mountain), or the exceptionally talented but unfortunately perverse Tiger Lillies (if only they'd stick to genius tracks like "Gypsy Lament"), or especially Jim White. Let me linger on this guy for a minute, since here we'll explicity recognize that we lean toward and seek out authenticity above all --much more important than slickness. I think and hope that that thin true electric wire runs through every example we endorse above. Even Steve Miller, on "The Joker," implicity acknowledged that his hooks were a hell of a lot stronger than his irony, and that his talent was real, not just abracadabra.

Same thing with Jim White ("Wrong-Eyed Jesus, "No Such Place," "Substrate"), a post-born-again road-singer and overcomer:

I'm handcuffed to a fence in Mississippi;
Things are looking better all the time.

Or:

Me, I've got ten miles to go on a nine-mile road
And it's a rocky rough road
But I don't care:
Life is nothing if not a blind rambling prayer.
You keep your head held high, walking and talking
'Til the Power of Love deliver you there.

And he's not afraid to make a song like "Wordmule," which is almost postverbal. His rendition of Roger Miller's "King of the Road," full of static and ghosts, puts the haunt back in hobo.

Authenticity. I happened to run across Ben Ratliff's short review of Art Rosenbaum's Art of Field Recording, Vol.1, from Dust-to-Digital Records. Here's part of it:

Obviously it isn't definitive; it's just one man's work. But it's a gold mine, an ark. There are string bands, acoustic blues, ring shouts, "hambone" chants, Sacred Harp and Georgia Sea Island singing, the "lined-out" hymnody of Southern churches, unaccompanied fiddlers and banjoists and jew's-harpists. A great deal of it is spooky and blindingly beautiful, and the set owes its power to Mr. Rosenbaum's judicious ear. Almost all of these performers, often recorded in their homes or churches — including members of the W. B. Thomas Gospel Chorus, above — transcend the clichés of their style.

We picked up the set, mostly because of this craving for authenticity I've mentioned --certainly a response to the superfaux days we live in-- but also partly as new material to put into the mix of our long-term multimedia project, American Gothic. We've only listened to eleven songs so far from the Survey disc --from "Satan, Your Kingdom Will Come Down," through "The Drowsy Sleeper" to "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad." We're already ready to second Mr. Ratliff's opinion.

And it never ends. Catherine brought up a kind of music I'd never heard of, from a memory of hers that was so long ago and yet so strong that she recalled it immediately:

Downtown Phoenix, years ago, near Heritage Square, she's on her way to a family festival, when she hears this swinging, lively, jump-and-shout music, with pedal steel guitar (!), accordion, and saxophone along with guitars and drums; it's like polka, but more than polka; and when she drifts closer, she see that the musicians are all Native Americans. It's absolutely toe-tapping and irresistible. She's hearing what she later learns is called "chicken-scratch music," or waila.

When I looked up where it comes from, I almost wanted to weep in gratitude at the unstoppable musical curiosity of those lucky ones of us (not me) who are musical, who will not let boundaries get in the way of better ways to express the nearly inexpressible: what we can be when we stay true to what we are. So I can hardly wait to get hold of some chicken-scratch music, which I'm sure will turn out to be, as we used to say in Hawai'i, chicken-skin music, the kind that gives you goosebumps.

Well. I guess it was a lot of chin music about music. Hope you enjoyed it, those of you who stayed for the last song, knowing, of course, that there is no such thing.

Glory be!

Posted by Jerome at December 10, 2007 03:00 PM | TrackBack