International Sad Hits

Title sequence for Where the Green Ants Dream, Werner Herzog (1984). Music by Fauré (Requiem); Wandjuk Marika (didgeridoo); and Klause Wiese.

“As I moved along I knew it was me, and that I was singing…” - L. Cohen

The month-long gap in this blog was the result of tour/travel - to Japan, and (for my first time) to Australia. To help sort out the experience, I’ve turned to the work of two allies in pursuit of “ecstatic truth,” Bruce Chatwin and Werner Herzog. Chatwin and Herzog met while each were in Australia working on projects relating to the Aboriginal Land Rights movement - Chatwin’s The Songlines, and Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream. They recognized one other immediately as fellow travelers, literally. Herzog later filmed Chatwin’s novel The Viceroy of Ouidah as Cobra Verde. And on his deathbed, Chatwin asked Herzog to carry his leather rucksack for him, now that he was too weak to lift it. (Herzog has said he carries it still.)

In the title sequence to his Australian film, Herzog makes his own songline, I think. It begins with a prayer for rest, in memory of his mother; moves with surprisingly little disruption to the industrial sounds of bauxite mining; the didgeridoo of land rights activist and artist Wandjuk Marika (cast in the film); and finally the psychedelic drones of Klaus Wiese, a sometime member of Popul Vuh. The links between would seem to be via rhymes of landscape, as well as sound. Or maybe, like Chatwin’s interpretation of songlines, there is a bond here between landscape and sound that makes any given path - however obscure - sensible.

Recorded live in London, 1970.

“I thought it was them who were singing it, I thought it was they who were singing it, I thought it was the other who was singing it, I thought it was someone else. But as I moved along I knew it was me, and that I was singing it to myself…

“I promise you friends, that you’re going to be singing this song: it may not be tonight, it may not be tomorrow, but one day you’ll be on your knees and I want you to know the words when the time comes. Because you’re going to have to sing it to yourself, or to another, or to your brother. You’re going to have to learn to sing this song.”

Bola Sete, “Guitar Lamento,” recorded 1972, released 1975.

John Fahey on Bola Sete, Guitar Player, 1976: 

In order to write anything about Bola Sete I must descend from this altitude, this thin air of obscurity, of indirectness, deceit, and hiddenness. I must free myself from what I once considered a great virture - the demonic stance of Inwardness (vide early Kierkegaard). My reactions to Bola Sete and his music are so intense and so subjective that I cannot talk about him and be honest without talking a lot about myself. Please forgive me, Bola. Few living people have had such an enormous influence on my life, my music, my soul, my religion - you name it - as has Bola Sete.

I first saw him playing - solo - in early 1972 at David Allen’s Boarding House in San Francisco. That night, I was high on drugs as I had been for several years, and - as also had been the case for years - I felt that I was one isolated example of an experimental species that God had forgotten about (I was wrong there). I felt I had been - and was still - walking and talking among shadows: “People” who had no depth, who were not related to themselves, did not know anything about themselves - endless, phony, shadow-people. And I was one of them. Only when I played the guitar did I, to some extent, make contact with the real John Fahey and with other people (as yet, I was unable to make contact verbally or emotively).

Bola played for about 45 minutes and grimaced and grunted through the whole set. Something was wrong. He couldn’t “get it out.” I knew how he felt, and I understood. Something was wrong. I was intrigued by his obvious frustration having felt that way myself almost all my life. The performance had been mediocre so far. However, the audience gave him a long ovation, and he reluctantly got up and started to play an encore, still looking frustrated, impotent, mad, seething. I knew that feeling well. But then suddenly he got hot. He got so cooking, he played song after song for another 45 minutes, forgetting (or not caring) that he was doing an encore, playing many of the same songs he had just played. But there was life in this set. I couldn’t sit still. I’d never heard anything like it since Charley Patton, and this was better. This was the turning point in my life, though I didn’t know it until much later. I was transformed, purged - I was not the same. (This was only an aesthetic experience, I think, but it was almost as if it had religious overtones.) I was so “in touch” with life and reality that I was terrified of Bola, myself, of the whole creation. I could hardly speak. What could I say?

Oh, reader, please forgive me, if much of this sounds testimonial. I hate testimonials myself. I have only been a groupie or sycophant once or twice in my whole life, and I got over it very quickly. Sycophancy is a terrible crime - a symbiotic crime implying guilt of more than one person - a crime on the part of the groupie because he makes someone into an idol (commits idolatry), i.e. makes the one he worships into something other than what he, in his existence, really is. It is an act of bad faith and self-deception. But it even gets me sometimes.

I tell you, I’ve heard so much music and so many musicians, I am quite thoroughly jaded. It is extremely difficult to blow my mind in any medium. And yet here I was idolizing someone and his music while knowing that I myself hate idolization - especially of me by others. I am embarrassed when I even “like” someone, much less when I find that I love someone. But I am really embarrased when I idealize someone - and I should be, for that is simply a very, very wrong thing to do to anyone - if you do it for more than a short period. Fortunately, sycophancy is usually a disease of only short duration and will give way to love and friendship (or even hatred, which is better than staying a groupie). If it is only temporary, and one is fully aware of it, it’s okay. It will go away. We are all human beings; but that, I grant you is sometimes hard to remember. Nevertheless, I got over my groupie feelings, and now Bola and I are friends and love each other very much. Thank God.

My first impression that night, as I told a friend at the time, was this: Here is a man who has lived through hell and somehow miraculously got out of it. I went back to the Boarding House several times that week. I found that Bola’s sets have an interesting “plot.” They all begin and end with songs whose emotional contour is pretty, happy, light, peaceful, or ecstatic. But after the first two or three songs, the terrain gets rougher and darker, heavier and weirder. By the middle of his set, Bola is giving you pictures of hell, memories of perdition, demonic music. But then Bola gradually lightens up the spectrum of feeling and leads you out of the cave and into the sunlight, and life is paradise. Only now, one is so changed that one is temporarily aware that life really is paradise after all, the world is an ocean, etc. It is like a breath from the 19th Century or before; a breeze from times when people had passion and significance and were not mere shadows. It is as though something has finally changed.

I talked to Bola’s wife (I was too shaken to speak to him at the time). “How does he keep from going crazy,” I asked her, “when he has so much energy and tension? You can hear it in his music - a lot of passion and tension. How did he get out of hell?” (“How can I get out of hell?” That’s what I really wanted to know.) She told me he “meditates” a lot and does a lot of yoga.

So the next day, I went out and started taking lessons from various meditation teachers and groups and swamis, and later (remembering what my dear friend, Rev. Charles Mitchell had told me about meditating) I began meditating on the name of the deity or person or thing I loved and respected the most. (I went through three or four deities in the next few years until quite mysteriously I finally knew which “deity” had chosen me, and also knew that I had always known it but would not face this fact.) As soon as I started meditating, I forgot to want my previously perpetual supply of drugs.

Shortly thereafter, I listened to a record I had cut while on various drugs and was astounded to find that, although I had thought while cutting this album that I was playing fast songs fast, I had in fact been playing them very, very slowly and boringly. (That album had received reviews which all referred to my special “inner sense of space and peace” - it was nothing but drugs.) This record now sounded to me as though it were moving through thick glue. I wanted to play fast songs fast like Bola did. So I asked my friend Jolly to back me at the Boarding House for a week. I wanted to see if I could play straight, and I did it, I played so well I amazed myself, and - judging from their applause - the audience, too. I was so proud of myself that I told the opening night crowd: “That was the first time I ever played straight in public in my life.” They applauded again. I believe they actually found some joy in my achievement (even though it was not me that did the achieving). I started imitating Bola’s rhythms and letting myself play enharmonic chords and tunes on stage that I had never played anywhere except in my living room when I was alone. I thought, “If Bola can be that free, maybe I can get away with it, too.” If they understood Bola, they might understand me. And they did. Suddenly, I noticed I was gradually becoming free.

Later that summer, with a brand new girl friend (Marilyn), a brand new cat, and an almost brand new car, I chased swamis and yoga instructors all over the U.S. and Canada trying to learn about them and about what techniques were best for musicians and for me. I was playing the “ashram circuit.” With that girl, I owned the world that summer, conquered it - and not through mere aesthetics. It was conquered through the power of love, and although this ecstasy (this feeling that life is paradise if one will only walk into the garden, this ability to love, to get along with Marilyn to the extent that I did) was given to me, I still associate it all - in a way I don’t understand - with Bola Sete and his music.

I still didn’t (and don’t) know very much about Bola Sete except that he is in touch with himself, and in touch with his roots, which are not in this effeminate age, this passionless, unspirited generation. Life is paradise despite this, or maybe because things are getting worse and worse. I don’t understand these things with my head. But I do understand that the entire creation will be resurrected; not just people: Animals, rocks, trees, mountains, germs, clams, snails, turtles, rattlesnakes, hippos, spiders. I hear that in Bola’s music - something most people have forgotten how to even want.

Bola Sete? He’s kind of crazy, like me. He made a lot of jazz records with other people. But, he tells me (now that I have gotten over being a sycophant and gotten to know him a little - he’s a very complex character) nobody would ever let him be himself and play what he wanted to play, i.e. his own songs, solo. He says he saw me a couple of times playing in the San Francisco Bay Area and that I did exactly what he wanted to do. “Nobody else is as crazy as I am except you and your company,” he said. “They [the other companies] won’t let me do my own thing, man. But you understand, because you are as crazy as me. Ha, ha, ha. You have to be yourself. You can’t do anything else. May God have mercy on you. I record for you. You call my lawyer. I love you. Ha, ha, ha. You are crazy!”

Although it doesn’t sound like it at first, Bola, it turns out, speaks English. He looks like a demon and makes a lot of conversational flubs, but his feelings are so overt that the mistakes don’t matter - there is so much life in him. He says he gets up at 4:00 AM to meditate. He listens only to Indian (Asian) music (he’s another orientophile), which he plays while he does his yoga asanas. He chews ginseng. He tells stories about himself which have an Iberian, picaresque flavor (funny as hell).

The majority of Bola’s songs are in E major, standard tuning, a few in A (major and minor). Sometimes he plays in the key of D, with the low E string dropped down to a D. He plays in the ionian, dorian, mixolydian, and phrygian modes (especially E phrygian), and also in the harmonic minor and whole tone scales a la Debussy and Ravel. He loves dissonance, but always lets it resolve itself just in time - a breathtaking, daredevil stunt. He is somewhat reclusive (like me), but likes the beach (like me). He usually refuses to play where booze is served, though he sometimes does play such joints. He gets bored (like me) if asked technical or objective, biographical questions. He wears funny, Haight Ashbury-vintage clothing which his wife makes for him. His music is so good it’s eerie - eerie because it comes from a different time, a different place, when men felt different things that we can no longer love or experience except as an echo or phantom in the best of art works. Sete, a complex character whose roots are in a bygone era that now seems bizarre, though actually the reverse is true. Things, now, are bizarre, and getting more and more crazy every day. Bola’s music comes from a time long gone, when people were closer to themselves, God, and each other.

It is an honor for me to have my favorite guitar player on my label. Most of the songs on Ocean [Takoma, C-1049] were outtakes which we bought from another company that couldn’t figure out what to do with them, and therefore wasn’t going to issue them. We were most fortunate to rescue them.

Most of Bola’s music is eclectic and nongeneric. Take a song like “Black Mommy.” Now, if you didn’t know anything about Bola (and we still don’t know much; as with Anton Bruckner, we probably will never get the whole story), what musical tradition, period, or era would you guess this song came from? Tasmania? Easter Island? Next door? It comes from everywhere and nowhere. The subconscious really is universal. Bola Sete’s music is the best reminder of this that I have ever heard. He is a man of great spirit and great depth.

Objectivity again: Bola plays percussively, vertically, with a very heavy and insistent thumb. His playing is very masculine (the word is an anachronism). He plays erratically and restlessly like Boll Weavil Jackson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, or Bill Monroe. But he also has inner peace and breadth (things I was once accused of having precisely when I did not). Rhythm and dynamics are constantly changing. Just before he has completed the elaboration of the first musical statement in a song, he is off into another tune fragment which is only suggested. Though not actually played, you hear it later in your head all the same.

Bola’s playing gives the impression (and like my playing it is a false impression) of being very improvisatory. His songs, on the other hand, tend to be very short and terse (unlike mine), without undue repetition. But like me, he tries to recreate each song each time he plays it, which is in effect to destroy it, as I have described elsewhere [see GP, Feb. ‘75]. The only elements of a song which change from one performance to the next are the number of repetitions of each idea. The order of the ideas stays pretty much the same. But the speed and intensity at which they are played may vary; if Bola doesn’t like the room he is playing in, or the people he is playing for, he tends to play lousy. I do the same. We both play the way we feel, but within a rigid structure. We play that way because we have to - we can’t do anything else. God help us.

“Bloom cannot take part in the world in an inner way. He only ever goes into it in exception to himself. That’s why he has such a singular disposition towards distraction, towards deja-vus, towards clichés, and above all why he has such an atrophy of memory that confines him in an eternal present; it’s also why he’s so exclusively sensitive to music, which alone can offer him abstract sensations…” Bloom Theory, Tiqqun (translation from the Anarchist Library)

“Revolver, Parlophone, PMC 7009, 08.05.1966, mono. Very Rare First pressing with mispressing! Side 2 matrix no.: XEX 606-1 has ‘Remix 11’ of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. When Revolver was initially mixed a different master for ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was sent off to be pressed. This mix is known as ‘Remix 11’. Although subtle, it is different to the standard ‘Remix 8’ which was ultimately to replace it. The story goes that each group member was given the first copies from the production line and John went to listen to it. But, it turned out that he was unhappy with the mix or that the wrong one had been used and he informed George Martin. Production was then stopped as the new masters were cut and the pressing plates were replaced. First presses have a side 2 matrix number of XEX 606-1 whereas the standard presses have XEX 606-2 and beyond. Garrod & Lofthouse Ltd. or Ernest J.Day & Co. front laminated flipback cover. Black & Yellow label with ‘The Gramophone Co. Ltd.’ perimeter print and ‘Sold in U.K. subject…’ text. Plain white or sepia ‘LP advertising’ inner sleeves. Tax code ‘KT’ by spin-hole. Matrix numbers: Side 1: XEX 605-2; Side 2: XEX 606-1.”

“Here Today,” from Pet Sounds, 1966. This track is notorious for the audible chatter in the background of the instrumental break (1:48ff) - proof to me not only of how closely people listen to this record, but of the depth and detail in Brian Wilson’s mono production.

Less well known is the complete catalog of noises on Beach Boys recordings. Thank you obsessive fans:

http://www.surfermoon.com/essays/noises.html

If I read Jonathan Sterne’s argument correctly, the mp3 is about data compression - the elimination of information unnecessary to message.

An analog event contains unintended information; its compressed digital form has only the intended info. Hence the lack of mystery in mp3s.

What if we surrender ownership claims over intended meanings? Aren’t those shared in any case – aren’t they messages for others?

And what if we reassign intellectual property to what is unintended – the information that cannot be compressed – that cannot be translated…

In other words, we own our poetry – we do not own our ideas.

“River Deep - Mountain High,” 1966. Phil Spector paid Ike Turner to stay out of the studio while he produced what he believed was his greatest record. When it failed to chart, he retired. (It would take the Beatles to really get him back into the studio.) This version is even more concise than the 7”, dropping the second verse and cutting straight to the middle 8 and the frenzied conclusion. Was it a jukebox edit…? I haven’t been able to trace it, but maybe a record collector out there can help me out.

“By every audiophiliac measure of performance, save one, mono recordings surprise us: frequency response extension; authority of bass; lack of treble clatter; size and depth of stage; correctness of timbres; and presence (where a good mono is often better than stereo): the palpable illusion of a musician playing right there before you. The harmonic structure from a mono LP is likely to be more coherently presented, resulting in a timbral purity and convincing focus and power that stereo rarely achieves without painstaking setup (which of course you should have anyhow). Vocals have the opportunity to bloom without strain or electronic resonance. In part, as in early stereo, this is because everything in the recording chain from microphone to tape recorder to disc cutter is tube amplified: the overload and distortion characteristics are more consistent with the dynamic expansiveness of live music. The sense of weight together with micro-dynamic resolution catches your average audiophile completely off guard; it’s so unexpected.

“The one area where stereo can be counted to improve on mono is instrumental placement, for obvious reasons. Locational cues, however, are not the only means to sort out what’s going on; neither are they the best means to understand the musical argument on its own terms. My audiophile visitors puzzle about how it can be easier to follow the inner voices in mono than in the corresponding stereo version. I believe this is related to the mono LPs superior harmonic and melodic integrity. It’s not that the principle of stereo is the problem. Far from it. It’s that recording engineers have too much of a good time experimenting with the delights of re-producing an event than in recreating it.”

- from “The Case for Collecting Monophonic LPs,” by Leonard Norwitz, enjoythemusic.com

Headspace

“There are large errors in sound position perception associated with headphones, especially for the most important visual direction, out in front…it is very difficult to externalize sounds and avoid the inside-the-head sensation.” (Kyriakakis, C., 1998, Fundamental and technological limitations of immersive audio systems, Proceedings of the IEEE)

“The position of the image is located to the left or right as expected…but the image seems to be within the listener’s head – it is not perceived to be in the real external world.” (Hartmann, W.M., 1999, How we localize sound, Physics Today)

[Both quotes found in a paper by Andria Poiarkoff, Changes in spatial perception through headphones, Sonic Arts Research Centre 2008]