The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.
This week, Justin talks about one of his greatest influences, the Canadian producer/guitarist/songwriter Daniel Lanois.
Daniel Lanois‘ records have always been a source of inspiration for me. The Joshua Tree was one of the first CDs I ever purchased (with saved up allowance) and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the many things that made me pick up a guitar in the first place. He’s not only recorded and produced some of U2′s best work, but also Dylan, Peter Gabriel, and Willie Nelson to mention a few, as well as his own wonderful albums and collaborations with Brian Eno. I just read his book Soul Mining. If you’re interested at all in inspiration and where it comes from, the art of recording music, or fascinating stories from a life spent working with great artists and searching for the soul in everything, pick it up.
He also released a film recently called Here Is What Is. Trailer below…
The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.
This week, J. Tom Hnatow’s thoughts on authenticity in music…
It seems somehow appropriate that folklorist Alan Lomax’s birthday and the release of the record by endlessly buzzed-about singer Lana Del Rey occurred on exactly the same day this week. These seemingly disparate occurrences warrant a discussion on “authenticity” in the continuum of music.
It is only with the invention of recorded media that the distinction between “performer” and “performance” becomes relevant. A performer might play a character or persona onstage – but pre-phonograph, the performer is tied to that performance. Once they stop performing…the performance ceases to exist.
With the invention of recording technology, things get a bit fuzzier. A performer was able to be separated from a recording, both in space and time. Most of us have never even met or seen a performance of the artists whose music we love. We can have favorite artists who were long dead before we were even born.
As a result, our perceptions of who the artist was – or should be – get strangely warped. For example, as Hilary Moore writes in “Inside British Jazz” – The “trad” British Jazz bands of the 50s, as a result of only knowing their beloved 1920s and 30s New Orleans Jazz through poorly recorded 78 records, would faithfully imitate the ‘distorted instrumental balance and faulty intonation’ of the music in their own performances.
In America, the Folk Revival of the 1950s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_folk_music_revival) learned much of their music from Alan Lomax’s field recordings of the 30s and 40s. As a result, their view of what Folk music was “authentic” generally included only acoustic instruments, since it was mostly recorded pre-electric guitars. Big Bill Broonzy, one of the many blues artists recorded by Lomax, was an accomplished composer, had recorded electric guitar as early as 1942, and had a small jazz/blues combo of his own. But when he realized that the (very profitable) Folk Revival wanted a solo acoustic bluesman…he became one. According to music historian Robert Palmer, Broonzy “…played the role of the folk bluesman fresh from the cotton fields to the hilt.”
Is there ultimately much of a difference between Broozy re-branding himself as an acoustic guitar slinging bluesman and Elizabeth Grant, a.k.a. Lana Del Rey rebranding herself as a major label artist? Why is pop music a medium where “authenticity” seems to matter so much to the consumer? As Sasha Frere-Jones points out, “no movie review begins, “Meryl Streep, despite not being a Prime Minister, is reasonably convincing in ‘The Iron Lady.’”
Big Bill Broonzy “Key to the Hightway”
Lana Del Rey “Video Games”
As nostalgia theorist Fred Davis observes, it is only the passage of time that transformed ‘the tinny, Victrola-squelched jazz band sounds of the 20s’ from signifying ‘the tawdry and dissolute’ to evoking a bygone spirit of sprightly merriment, as in Woody Allen’s movies. (Simon Reynolds, Retromania)
In 50 years, once all the arguments are forgotten and all that remains is the music…who can say what will be said of current artists like Lana Del Rey? When asked about his “authenticity”, Broonzy’s standard reply was: “I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ‘em.” Ironically, the quote is also attributed to Louis Armstrong and Woody Guthrie.
The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.
This week, Jesse’s picks….
Dismantling Detroit
This is a visually stunning portrait of urban decay in the middle of America. Is it just cause I grew up in these kinds of midwestern rust belt towns and cities that this doesn’t actually strike me as purely depressing? There’s grim humor, industriousness, a re-using of the physical and psychological environments. I dunno – maybe I just love Detroit and all the amazing people and music a place like this creates.
Adam Acuragi, Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It…
Adam Arcuragi’s one of the best songwriters out there. Singer, too. Pure and raw, tupelo honey. He did this album with Duane Lundy at Shangri-La in Lexington, where we just finished our next album, too. He’s out touring around right now – look him up – their live show takes it to a whole next level.
The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.
This week, J. Tom Hnatow on childhood and nostalgia…
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine
During Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific, it was written that the sailors, months at sea, “were now pretty far gone with the longing for home which the physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia.”
With our interconnected, internet lives, the concept of “home” has become even more vague. Few of us live in the towns we are “from”. We rent, rather than own. Our friends live half a world away. We form our own little communities and tribes – and so, sometimes, we have a need for our own Nostalgia. A longing for a place and a time that never existed.
This record, created as a “soundtrack to a romanticized version of a life” could be the sound of this modern Nostalgia. Almost painfully beautiful, it feels like an imaginary childhood scrapbook – images of memories half-remembered, glimpsed through windows and screen doors, faded with time.
The Peanuts Theme is something so identifiable with childhood. The really beautiful slowed down music, barely moving, sort of slows down time and makes you listen over the entire (long) 23 minutes. It reminds me of the Silvia Plath quote below.
So it all moves in the pageant toward the ending, it’s own ending. Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And there will be other summers, other band concerts, but never this one, never again, never as now. Next year I will not be the self of this year now. And that is why I laugh at the transient, the ephemeral; laugh, while clutching, holding, tenderly, like a fool his toy, cracked glass, water through fingers. - Sylvia Plath
It seems somehow appropriate that folklorist Alan Lomax’s birthday and the release of the record by endlessly buzzed-about singer Lana Del Rey occurred on exactly the same day this week. These seemingly disparate occurrences warrant a discussion on “authenticity” in the continuum of music.
