Lucky Dog Audio Post

Image by Will Amato

"By the time I found myself delivered to the lobby of Le Parker Meridien, I felt bullied, bruited about by staff and handlers, like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, an incomprehensible film Perkus had weeks before insisted I watch, a treatise on luxuriant self-pity that now felt terrifically relevant" (page 188).

Here's another book-mixtape, this one with songs culled from Jonathan Lethem's incredible new novel Chronic City. Lethem himself has posted a couple of playlists pertaining to the book but none feature Sandy Bull or Captain Beefheart or Crispy Ambulance or Souled America or any of the more obscure songs that made it into these pages. Oh well, that task is for obsessive music geeks. Music geek admission: I spent a couple of days trying to track down a song from Zeroville. Fred Mills ended up helping me out with that search. Thanks Fred!

With these book mixes, I always try to bring another audio theme into the track listing. This book is chock full of cultural references both real and imagined - the Criterion Collection, Gnuppets, Marlon Brando, Morrison Groom, Florian Ib, etc. I made a couple of inside jokes with SFX - I introduce the Richard Hell track with a cell phone ring (Richard Abneg's ringtone is "Blank Generation") and end-tagged the Sandy Bull track with this marvelous modem sample from freesound (Perkus Tooth is on dial up). But primarily I used audio snippets from The Man Who Fell To Earth for my song transitions. Yeah, it's quite a reach. The movie is mentioned just once in passing but it seems like blowing up a reference like that for its audio goodies is just the thing Lethem's artist/critic/stoner character Perkus Tooth would enjoy. So here ya go Perkus. Merry Christmas, wherever you are.

TRACKLIST:

1. ROLLING STONES - Miss You
2. RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS - Blank Generation
3. PETER BLEGVAD - (Something Else Is) Working Harder
4. SANDY BULL - Carmina Burana Fantasy
5. CRISPY AMBULANCE - Chill
6. VAN MORRISON - Who Was That Masked Man
7. SOULED AMERICA - Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends
8. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND - I Love You, Big Dummy
9. WARREN ZEVON - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
10. ROLLING STONES - Shattered

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Lucky Dog Charles Wyrick runs up to NYC with local songwriter James Scott Cook to play with Julian Lennon on the CBS Early Show. I know! Check out Charles' vest-less performance (above) and the interview. Proceeds to benefit Lupus research. We're pleased to present one of Charles' many brushes with fame.

The Pedals of Martin Courtney, IV:

•MXR Phase 90

•Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man

The Pedals of Matthew Mondanile, III:

•Boss DD-7 Digital Delay

•Roland Space Echo

•Small Stone

Yesterday New Jersey's Real Estate stopped by the studio for our second installment of Pedal Talk, our new podcast devoted to guitar effects pedals. Matthew (left channel) and Martin (right channel) are doing some really cool, subtle stuff with delays and phasers. No distortion boxes here. These two are devoted to clean sounds modulated, at times, by wide and slow phaser washes provided by either their MXR Phase 90 or Electro-Harmonix Small Stone. Aside from the occasional Roland Space Echo feedback whoosh AKA "the hurricane sound" (well-documented in this episode), their delay pedal settings feature quick and close echo returns more akin to reverb. Interestingly Matthew uses his Boss DD-7 Digital delay for a volume boost more than for a delay. It's also cool to learn that they used their guitar effects for filtering their vocals on their new cd (buy it here, here, or here). All in all we had a great conversation. Plus they graced us with an in-studio performance of "Fake Blues." Dig it. Here's Vol. 2:

Oh yeah, we've got an iTunes channel now, it's here if you wanna subscribe.

Or you can download the full episode here.

UPDATE

DOWNLOAD "Fake Blues" Live on Pedal Talk*

*link expires in 7 days

At long last we've launched Pedal Talk, our new podcast devoted to talking about magic and mischievous guitar effects pedals. In this installment we focus on a quartet of stomp boxes currently residing in the esteemed pedal-board of Chris Michaels. Check it, in this episode we demo:

• MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay

• Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb

• Fulltone Supa-Trem

• Seymour Duncan Twin Tone Classic

These are some wicked boxes. It was a blast talking to Chris about how he uses them and what he likes/dislikes about each one. Which reminds me, if you wanna hear more from Chris, his new album Morning and Night is now available on iTunes and at the Max Recordings Store. Or you can catch him and his band, The Cranks, at 9pm this Saturday 11/14/09 at the Oyster Bar.

So, enough with the shameless plugs. I could go on and on about what a great guitar player Chris is but it's best to let the audio speak for itself. Without further ado, heeeerrrre's...

PEDAL TALK

TRACKLIST:

1. COLDPLAY - Viva La Vida
2. LUDACRIS - Money Maker
3. RAY LAMONTAGNE - Saved By A Woman
4. iiO - Rapture (Armin Van Buuren Remix)
5. HARRY NILSSON - Zombie Jamboree (Back to Back)
6. RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Dani California
7. ROOT BOY SLIM - Boogie 'Til You Puke
8. SLAID CLEAVES - Sinner's Prayer
9. SINEAD O'CONNOR - She Moved Through The Fair
10. THE DAMNWELLS - I Will Keep The Bad Things From You

So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain... We like to visit the parallel sound-studio universe with all these mixing boards and XLR patch cables going here and there, independent of the other part of our head, which is the conscious part that has spent a long time sweating the books and trying to make sense of objects and ideas and meanings. Trying to be a responsible citizen. Rhyme taught us to talk (111-112).

Though Paul Chowder, the narrator of Nicholson Baker's new novel The Anthologist, spends most of his time thinking about poems and poets, he references a handfull of surprising songs within the pages of this beguiling novel. The music mentioned comes to the forefront of Chowder's mind primarily through rhymes he likes. On page 164 Chowder scans Ludacris lyrics along with poems by A.A. Milne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vachel Lindsay, T. S. Eliot, and Edgar Allen Poe. Elsewhere songs by Coldplay and the Red Hot Chili Peppers appear after ruminations on Sara Teasdale and Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's a postmodern poetry feast with pop culture references served on the side.

From a mixing standpoint, I dropped some samples of poets reading their own work to use for transitions between songs. And since "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop figures so prominently in this book I cracked open MAX/MSP and tried mashing up a recording of Bishop with the iiO song Chowder mentions on page 82. There are some other audio surprises in this mix as well. For instance, who would have thought Edna St. Vincent Millay had such rocking inflections in her voice? Enjoy.

UPDATE:

I've been fascinated by the idea of annotated audio ever since I read about this BBC project back in 2005. It's cool to see that Soundcloud has set up a way to do this via their comments tool. Basically you can tag audio segments with footnotes. It's for other listeners to point out things they like in your mix. Here I have used it to tag the poet samples I've used for my transitions. Check it out:

The Anthologist by redchuck

Via Me-Fi

Cool video from film director/musician Jarbas Agnelli.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.

Here I've posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds).

Music made with Logic. Video made with After Effects.

The newspaper story about my work (O Estado de São Paulo): tinyurl.com/l4qdbg

I was sad to hear that legendary Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson passed away over the weekend. Last year at Riverfest I saw Jim play an amazing set backed by Jason Weinheimer, Greg Spradlin, Chris Michaels, and Dylan Turner in the Arkansas Times tent. It was a balmy night but the music felt cool and effortless. People were dancing in front of the stage and in the aisles. Jim's white cowboy hat glowed under the stage lights. I wish I'd taken better pics to record the moment but here's how it looked from where I was standing:

I compiled another book mixtape this week, this time from John Wray's amazing new novel Lowboy. The majority of the tracks on this mix come directly from the book. Lowboy loves the Dixieland cornetist Bix Beiderbecke so there are four Bix tracks here. But Lowboy also name drops Clarence Williams, Nat King Cole, Fats Waller, and Jelly Roll Morton within the book so I either sought out the exact song mentioned or chose something close. For instance, the Jelly Roll Morton reference comes by way of a rhyme dancing around in Lowboy's head - "Get Up and Get Courtin' by Jelly Roll Morton" (page 167). I thought about dropping "Courthouse Bump" into the mix for this reference but chose "Buddy Bolden's Blues" instead, a cut from the Library of Congress Recordings that features Mr Morton playing the piano and telling a story about a famous New Orleans trumpeter (not a cornetist like Bix but you get the idea). Also I added "Joliet Bound" to this mix as a stand in for "Leavenworth Strut" (page 232) and Bo Carter's "Don't Mash My Digger So Deep" for the mention of "Mashed Tapatoes" by Bootsie White (page 169).

Since much of the action in this novel takes place in the NYC Subway system I used snippets from NYC subway field recordings for all of my song transitions. These samples came from thefreesoundproject. My downloads for this project can be found here.

Also, if it wasn't for Patrick Houston I wouldn't have been able to pull off the book cover remix for this post. Patrick did the vector rendering of Bix Beiderbecke and placed it in the cover for me. Make sure to check out his website (name link) if you have freelancer designer needs.

TRACKLIST:

1. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Toddlin' Blues
2. NAT KING COLE - You Don't Learn That In School
3. CLARENCE WILLIAM'S BLUE FIVE - I'm A Little Blackbird
4. BLUE SKY BOYS - Down On The Banks Of The Ohio
5. JELLY ROLL MORTON - Buddy Bolden's Blues
6. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Fidgety Feet
7. BO CARTER - Don't Mash My Digger So Deep
8. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Goose Pimples
9. BILLIE HOLIDAY - Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me
10. LOUIS ARMSTRONG - You'll Wish You'd Never Been Born
11. ETHEL WATERS - Black And Blue
12. MEMPHIS MINNIE - Joliet Bound
13. BIX BEIDERBECKE - Sunny Disposish

I was super excited this week to be informed by Darren Solomon that my qchord/omnichord youtube video had been added to In Bb 2.0. (That's me in the corner, third row, far right.) As I said before, this is one cool project - a collaborative spoken word/music piece that culls it's contributions from youtube uploads. And what an awesome assortment of instruments - three guitars, bass, glass marimba, Kaoss pad, rhodes, toy sax, trumpet, clarinet, vocals, banjo, Korg DS 10, EMX-1, piano, qchord, and omnichord. I look forward to watching this list grow. There's definitley a slot open in the bottom right, but who knows, maybe Darren will add more columns and rows in the future.

Being an ambient piece, the overall impact of the music here is somber. And I feel like this tone is also heightened by the videos themselves. Viewed individually, these youtube vids emote a feeling of isolation, each being of a musician working alone. But isolation is overcome by the way in which all of these pieces come together. The sum is greater than the individual parts. And the intention here seems to be just that. If you visit the site, make sure you play the spoken word piece (third row, far right). It's a poem written by Australian author Daniel Donahoo. The last line could almost be read as a mission statement, "This is not about what I produce. This is about what others receive." I feel that that says a lot about the spirit of this collaboration. That said, hats off to Darren Solomon for putting this together.

Here's the full text in case you feel like reading along.

Information
By Daniel Donahoo (2009)
she unplugs the device
no bigger than her thumb
from the computer and it smells electric.

“My life’s work,” she says. But, it isn’t her life’s work.

You see, we store information like an Escher painting.
It shouldn’t all fit in there. But, it does.
And every day we manage to fit more and more into smaller and smaller spaces until one day
she says,
we will be able to fit all the information the world has
everything that everyone knows and believes and dreams
into nothing.

All the words and pictures, the voices and videos,
the ideas and the daydreams,
the games
the past and the future.
It will all be there. Stored and filed.
Tagged with relevant keywords.

Our hard drives will be thin air.

They will make nanobots look like elephants.
And elephants will be in there too. Tagged. Accessible with search terms
like ivory and mammoth,
like largest land dwelling mammal

We will process away at nothing and understand everything.
We will think of the word and the information will slip in, not through our ears or eyes –
but straight thorough our skin. Information will breathe in and out of us.

Our knowing will permeate as deep as it does wide.
Our work here is to learn

so much,

to be so full of knowing,
that all there is left to do is unlearn.

Humanity must get to a point where we let go.
Leave the useless ideas and the spent ideologies in the recycle bin.
like an adolescent brain shedding neurons.
like a snake slithering from its old skin.
like an old man who has come to understand so well the point where reality meets the intangible that he is able to decide which breath will be his last. And, he will enjoy that breath more than any other he has taken his entire life.

And, her life’s work is more than four meg flash drive.

My life’s work, she says, is the impact that this has.

This is not about what I produce. This is about what others receive.