1980s Archives - Trip Gunn

Macintosh Plus’s “Floral Shoppe”

This week, I’ve been listening to Vektroid’s 2011 album “Floral Shoppe” released under the alias Macintosh Plus. This album receives wide recognition for its early and continuing influence on the vaporwave micro-genre. Vaporwave originated in 2010, though was mostly developed through 2011-2012 with albums like “Floral Shoppe” and Chuck Person’s “Eccojams Vol. 1.” via interactions through music-based social networks.

From my outsider perpsective, Vaporwave comes as a human reaction to en-masse pre-millenial nostalgia interpreted through the internet’s kaleidoscope. The methods of vaporwave consist of manipulating samples of ephemera from the rise of cable television in the mid-80s to the emergence of the internet in 2001. Typically, though not always, these samples are looped, chopped, and slowed down. There’s generally tendency to find samples for which the limitations of the medium are evident. We hear not just the music from an old Pepsi commercial, but also the layers of cable broadcast artifacts, the aged VHS tape, and finally the artifacts of YouTube audio compression. The content is just as important as the distance between now and then.

リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー

With very rare exceptions, vaporwave artists create their tracks by manipulating samples. They typically choose to sample media that is decidedly dated; musically that early adopters of the internet (late 90s/early 2000s) may find nostalgic. Instrumetation in the original songs tend to feature 80s drum machines and FM synthesis. In this case, Vektroid has sampled Diana Ross’s 1984 cover song “It’s Your Move.”

The samples then get Chopped and Screwed, a hip-hop remix technique developed by DJ Screw in the early 1990s. The “screwed” part refers to slowing down the original sample; This may or may not provide the feeling of drinking sizzurp, or lean (a cocktail made with codeine-based cough syrup). The samples are then chopped by cutting, looping, scratching, skipping, or otherwise interrupting and manipulating the flow of the song. Most vaporwave artists work with computers using DAWs or audio digital audio editors. This gives them further flexibility to alter the sound, often applying echo delay and reverb, and sometimes flange effects.

In “リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー,” Vektroid slows down the original sample and employs loops to repeat phrases of the original song. In this way, tracks on the album frequently make the listener feel stuck in time. By denying phrases their original resolution, new earworms are generated. These songs frequently recall the moments that we get a faint memory of something but can’t remember what. The music sits on the edge of background and foreground. In this track, further tunnels of repetition are created through the use of feedbacked delay, allowing the sample artist to build fills from source material that does not itself have a fill.

花の専門店

Vektroid built the third track on the album, “花の専門店’ mostly from samples from “If I Saw You Again” by late-1970s soft rock band Pages. The opening ascending synth arpeggio of the original provides the intro here, though slowed down. Hearing the Floral Shoppe version makes the original seem comically fast. After repeating the arpeggio four times, fading in. At the point the original song starts, this Vektroid throws in a series of rapid cuts mimicking the effect of a skipping CD player. We make a few passes through phases of the song, rapid short repetitions of about about 175 BPM, that’s 1/8th notes of a slow-rock song.

Vaporwave is often not afraid of tempo or rhythm changes. In other sample-based genres like hip-hop, the samples are almost always cut to apply the rhythm of the source material to the rhythm of the new song. Vaporwave often uses this same approach but does not consider it a hard-rule. Exciting, but jarring, new rhythms and textures are created by cutting and looping the original source material to create new rhythms. Time signatures fold in on themselves, erasing expectations and writing new patterns.

数学

I like the seventh track which feels like 90s cyberpunk television and a vaguely sinister dreamworld made of ephemeral memories. The track features slowed and chopped up samples of Dancing Fantasy’s track “Worldwide” from their album of the same name. The original mixes elements of 90s new-wave music that I hate and more atmospheric 90s industrial music, which I like. The strange rhythmic texture sounds oddly familiar, like I’ve heard it in something else. The rest of the original albums sounds like early 2000s JRPG soundtracks, which I love.

It opens with a short sample, looped at slow 72 bpm. With its atmospheric hum and soft metallic percussion, the effect is of a distant giant machine churning late into the evening. When living near a factory and plant, the citizens are constantly aware of their sound and presence of the industrious machines, but overtime they become part of the landscape, ignored.

Further percussions gets layered in. Most of the percussion is gentle, more rhythmic than percussive; all of it is synthetic. Synth woodwinds exchange brief melodic phrases, always with the constant drone of the machine. These waves of late-80s tv and cinema scenes when it was understood that a saxophone singing gently in the night made everything romantically cool, a beatnik shorthand.

The music of vaporwave often embraces these clichés while acknowledging their artificiality. Like being caught in that very brief moment when learning how a magic trick is performed, but still believing it was was real.

Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation”

This week, I’ve been listening to Sonic Youth’s double-LP “Daydream Nation” from 1988. The band formed in 1981, creating no-wave noise rock. No-wave describes a movement that started in the late-70s. These musicians were inspired by elements of punk-rock but rejected its musically-conservative nature. Punk promised rebellion by creating something new rejecting what they saw as commercial music out of touch with reality. Most punk did so by making a return to the song-writing of early rock of the 1950s. This meant following long established song-structures and chord-progressions. No-wave intentionally avoided these norms like Ornette Coleman did with free-jazz. Sonic Youth developed their sound and style from these no-wave roots. By “Daydream Nation,” they combined the experimental sound with somewhat more traditional song-structures.

I first heard Sonic Youth when a friend lent my their 1990 album “Goo” in 1994. It took me a few listens to get into it and then I loved it.

Teenage Riot

The album opens strong with “Teenage Riot.” This 7 minute track consists of an 79 second long intro of a single clean electric guitar playing a series of two simple chords slowly. Female vocalist Kim Gordon speaks in a blasé manner, recording twice and panned hard left-hard-right. The words give new meaning to teenage poetry: “You’re it; no, you’re it;hey, you’re really it; you’re it;no I mean it, you’re it;say it,don’t spray it.” As with much of Sonic Youth’s vocals, they give us passionate rebellion with a disconnected cool like Andy Warhol in sunglasses. They’re cultivate an impression of being uncultivated. By elevating the mundane emptiness of self-conscious youth culture, they creating art out of the superficial and question the sublime. Its quite clear throughout this album that they appreciate the Velvet Underground and carry on many of those traditions.

Like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth songs frequently evolve into a driving mechanical rhythm. With guitarists strumming continuous hard beats, with the movement happening more on the fretboard. They build up rock rhythms on during the first couple bars, then rise up to higher notes. This repeats, dropping back down. It gives the impression of a rock n roll machine.

Sonic Youth are not afraid of alternate tunings; Or rather, they depend upon them. The main guitar on this song is tuned to what has become known as the “Teenage Riot” tuning (GABDEG). The other guitar uses a bizarre tuning with four of the strings all tuned to a G note and the other two tuned to a D (GGDDGG). Tunings like these can lead to creating new patterns and combinations of notes, as they break a musician from established habits of playing. Guitar strings tuned far from standard tuning vibrate differently and resonate with each other different. This creates new sonic territory for the instrument.

Thurston Moore delivers the vocals throughout the rest of the song. The verses follow an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first and third lines use particularly loose slant rhymes like “location/rockin'” and “weather/temper.” The second and fourth lines, stick to strict rhymes like “true/two”, “you/clue”, “you/do” that all rhyme with each. An interesting technique with the “you/do” is that the “do” is not the end of the line; the line is sung with extending the word “you” to allow it to rhyme while following up with “me for now.” Lyrically, this is a song about adolescent turmoil, meaninglessness and the savior rock n roll.

Looking for a ride to your secret location
Where the kids are setting up a free-speed nation for you
Got a foghorn and a drum and a hammer that’s rockin’
And a cord and a pedal and a lock, that’ll do me for now

The Sprawl

The third track, “The Sprawl” takes the driving rhythm of “teenage riot” and melts it into a rock n roll drone. Bass and guitars harmonically blend into a numbing hum. Gordon speaks, “To the extent that I wear skirts and cheap nylon slips, I’ve gone native. I wanted to know the exact dimensions of hell. Does this sound simple? Fuck you!” She’s dawned the costume of society’s female to learn and expose it as a facade. The lyrics continue into a condemnation of consumerism and societal expectations. The rhyming chorus succinctly provides the message as a catchy slogan, like a marketing jingle. The repetition here makes it memorable, but also suits the message.

Come on down to the store
You can buy some more and more and more and more
Come on down to the store
You can buy some more and more and more and more

Rain King

What I really like about this album is that it provides an atmosphere of rock n roll attitude. Through their evoluation from late 70s no-wave, combined with Warholian laissez-faire, they’ve precipitated 90s slacker subculture. Often mischaracterized as not-caring, the more philosophical side of slacker was concerned with dismantling meaningless constructs of society. They were frequently educated: some college, or college-preparatory high school, or self-taught through literature. They felt pressures from society regarding how they should make decisions about school, career, fashion, friends, music, etc, and they asked “why?” They explored these expectations and found it was a mess of self-perpetuating materialistic consumerist boondoggle.

The heart of Slacker culture was not laziness. It seemed to be a bunch of kids who didn’t care because they had chosen to disregard what the old men cared about. It was a mass existential crisis, a new Beatnik revolution attempting to create something good out of a discovery of inanity.

Blondie’s “Parallel Lines”

This week, I’ve been listening to Blondie’s third album “Parallel Lines” from 1978. I remember this record being among my parents’ collection, though the only songs I heard were “One Way or Another” and “Heart of Glass.” Singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein founded Blondie in 1974, after working together as former members of pre-Punk band The Stilettos. A few years later, they released their debut album and the new-wave single “X-Offender.” Blondie came out of the NYC art-rock scene of the early 1970s to become an important part of the new wave movement of the late 70s/early 80s. In New York City, these were bands descended from the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, and Television. The new wave had many of the same influences as punk rock, but took a different stylistic approach.

Picture This

Blondie released the third track, “Picture This,” as a single in the UK where it hit the top 20 charts. Like much of the album, this great track beautifully combines early 1960s pop musicality with 1970s art-rock sound and a touch of punk attitude. Much of the Blondie sound comes from the use of non-distorted electric guitar with the recently invented chorus pedal, dry punchy drums, and rolling clean bass. Of course, Harry’s cool vocals front the band, truly making it Blondie.

The verses follow a I-IV pattern repeated three times, but then finish differently each time depending on what they are leading into. The first verse completes with an unusual V#-I, pulling into the second verse which ends with a more normal I-V, and then the third just continues a I chord. These are played with picked arpeggios on the chorus guitar in one channel. A clean electric guitar strums each chord once at the beginning of each bar and plays a leading arpeggio during third beat of each measure. The bass walks us up and down each bar from one chord to the next.

The choruses rise up to a IV-V-IV-V progression. This progression along with the intensified vocals and organ, give the chorus excitement through the tension of an unresolved progression begging for cadence. The IV-V-IV-V leads into a extended VI chord, which brings even more tension. The post-chorus then repeats II-VI-II-VI, which threatens to never resolve. Then the next verse starts off with the tonic chord again, returning to the more comfortable I-IV pattern. The song however, does NOT end with the tonic, but just drops the listener off the cliff on that post-chorus pattern.

The lyrics play with the sense of sight, focusing on words and metaphors involving viewing, watching, seeing, and picturing things. Most of the three-line verses follow either an AAA rhyme scheme, or an AAB rhyme with the last line ending with the word “you.” The first and third lines of each verse always begin with the same four words, usually, “All I want is…” except the second verse, which has “I will give you…” The first line makes a statement of either wanting or giving something, the second line gives further meaning to the first, then the third repeats the statement.

All I want is a room with a view
A sight worth seeing, a vision of you
All I want is a room with view
I will give you my finest hour
The one I spent watching you shower
I will give you my finest hour
All I want is a photo in my wallet
A small remembrance of something more solid
All I want is a picture of you

Fade Away and Radiate

On the fourth track, “Fade Away and Radiate,” Blondie delivers and haunting new-wave Television style epic. The slower tempo, beating tom drums that open the song, the soaring guitar effects, the restrained vocals, all lend to the sense of something bigger. There’s not really a chorus, though we do have a bridge and an up-beat coda. This lack of a chorus, in this case, adds to the sense of a warning or story-telling coming in phases.

In the verses, we have a i-IV-I-vi-ii-I-ii-I. Though the song is in a major key, each verse opens with the tonic in minor. It’s an odd choice that contributes to the eerie mood. The bridge stomps down through a ii-Isus2-ii-vi pattern, suggesting some sort of threatening opera. Then with the coda,the tempo gets picked up with reggae-inspired rhythm. This reminds me of how the Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground would sometimes end song with a Latin-inspired rhythm.

Heart of Glass

We certainly cannot ignore Blondie’s massive hit “Heart of Glass.” On this track, the band takes a decidedly disco turn. The band wrote the song in 1975 after hearing the Hues Corporation’s song “Rock the Boat.” Blondie recorded a version under the title “Once I Had a Love,” but were not quite happy with it. They had long referred to it as “The Disco Song” and on the album “Parallel Lines,” they decided to perform it in the disco style.

I don’t know what discussions they had about this, but the decision is a bigger one than might seem today. Blondie were considered part of the NYC punk rock scene, despite their already cleaner sound. To many punks, punk rock music represented a sincere pure-attitude return to rock ‘n’ roll, rejecting what they perceived as soulless nature of disco and corporate rock. For Blondie, a member of the punk family, to record a pop radio friendly disco song struck many as betrayal. Let’s not forget that Harry and Stein were once in a band performing a song called “Anti-Disco.”

So, what makes this song “disco”? Let’s start with the clear four-on-the-floor drum pattern. This means the kick drum hits on every beat, the snare drum hits on every third and fourth beat, the hit-hat strings the beat together hitting on every eight note, opening on the upbeat. The clean bass provides syncopated rhythms, bopping along with octave hops. We have string-like organs lines providing swirling pads. Soften male vocals provide “la la la” backing vocal. Harry delivers ‘ooo-ah’ vocals that soar like Donna Summer. The clean electric guitar shuffles through funk strumming patterns. It’s bright, clean, poppy, it encourages dancing in colorful clubs.

The verses repeat a I-vi chord progression. This breaks from punks conservatively I-IV-V based patterns. The chorus breaks away from I-vi to follow a IV-IV-I-I-IV-II-V-I pattern. Interestingly, the chorus is NOT where we find either titles of the song, those appear in the verses. The chorus has an AABB rhyme scheme. Within the lines, there some use of assonance that ties them together: “between/pleasing/peace/teasing”, “find/fine”, “confusing/losing”, “just/good.” These are well-crafted lyrics for sound.

In between what I find is pleasing and I’m feeling fine
Love is so confusing, there’s no peace of mind
If I fear I’m losing you
It’s just no good, you teasing like you do

Primal Scream’s “Screamadelica”

This week, I’ve been listening to Primal Scream’s third album “Screamadelica” from 1991. At the end of the 80s, critics speculated that grebo-baggy music were going to be the sound of the 90s. These genres found new energy in combining psychedelic alternative rock with dance rhythms of acid house. British bands like EMF, Jesus Jones, and the Escape Club brought these sounds to American MTV. This was right before Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit” grabbed everybody’s attention and changed things. While I liked some of it, grunge didn’t really catch me as hard as it did others. Had I heard “Screamadelica” when it came out, I probably would’ve loved it. I had the same difficulty with it now that I have with the band Muse, several of the songs sound like direct combinations of two or three other songs. More derivative than inspired.

Movin’ On Up

So, that brings us to the opening track “Movin’ On Up.” It’s a good song on its own; However, to me it sounds like The Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil” played like The Who’s “Magic Bus” after listening to George Michael’s “Faith.” The first verse opens with “I was blind, now I can see, you made a believer out of me.” This verse makes an allusion to “Amazing Grace,” where the chorus’s “I’m movin’ on up now, getting out of the darkness; My light shines on.” recalls both The Rolling Stones’ “Shine a Light” and the gospel anthem “This Little Light of Mine.” Screamadelica decidely wrote a rock n roll gospel anthem. I’m not sure what they’re believing in: perhaps it’s rock n roll and perhaps it was ecstasy.

The verses follow a I-I-I-I-V-IV-I-I chord progression, over which lay a gospel-blues melody. A female choir joins for the chorus, with a V-V-IV-IV-ii-IV-I-I progression. This jump up to the fifth for the chorus provides the feel of a key change without actually entering one. In addition to the Who-Stones inspired acoustic guitar riff, piano and choir support the gospel feel of the recording. Then an electric guitar provides an excellent solo that sounds more than a little like the solo in Sympathy for the Devil without the danger and edge.

Primal Scream’s love of The Rolling Stones stands out through much of the album. I definitely cannot blame them; my past few years of listening to the Rolling Stones have had a tremendous influence on my work as well. But sometimes I kept being reminded of specific songs by other artists strongly. The song “Damaged” kept making me want to listen to the much better “Moonlight Mile.” I think most of us as musicians try to avoid that. We might say, “I want to make a song like this one,” but our intentions are to emulate what we like about that song without copying the song itself.

Don’t Fight It, Feel It

After the opening track that blends gospel with 60s rock n roll, band jumps into acid-house track “Slip Inside This House.” This cover of a 13th Floor Elevators song from 1967 provides their sideways step into a seemingly disparate genre. Then they make full plunge into house with the third track “Don’t Fight It, Feel It.” Apparently, their intention was the produce a modern verse of Northern Soul music. Music about dancing, for dancing, with groove and soul.

It’s definitely modern (as of 1991) and makes you dance. It has the house synthetic piano chords that comes and go. It has layered soulful lyrics about getting high and dancing. It has a great bassline and house drums. It has an annoying chirping synth. It goes on and on for seven minutes that I would only find bearable if I was dancing to it in a club, and even then I wouldn’t be sad when it was over.

Loaded

The band update their earlier song “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Had” on the epic middle track “Loaded.” The earlier song, from their 1989 self-titled second album. I prefer the earlier version, of course, with its more guitar-rock sound and “Sympathy For The Devil” inspired bridge.

“Loaded” opens with a sample from the movie “The Wild Angels” with Peter Fonda declaring they “want to be free.. get loaded and have a good time.” This freedom sample is appropriate, considering the song’s strong resemblance to George Michael’s “Freedom 90” from the previous year. Like much of the synth drum patterns of the early 90s, this one dances with the extra hops during the third beat. The synth piano also plays the jazz-inspired chord rhythm patterns heard in a lot of house music of the period. Guitars come and go riffing in a distinctly rock style.

Primal Scream most succeeded in combining house with rock on this track. It proceeds through a journey, with different phases. This keeps the song interesting. While they use house’s tendency towards drawn-out repetition, they’ve found a compromise between what’s appropriate for listening vs. dancing. A dance-club audience thrives on that lengthy repetition, whereas a listener needs variety.

Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures”

This week, I’ve been listening to Joy Division’s debut album “Unknown Pleasures” from 1979. My introduction to this album came in 1996 in the rivertown of Marietta, OH. I fled a broken heart in Athens, OH looking for a new group of friends. The first night, I discovered a local coffeeshop called Penny University. The next night, I found my new group of friends. We were old enough to stay out all night drinking coffee, but not old enough yet to go to the bar.

Where the kids of Athens were primarily into punk music like The Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys and The Clash, my new friends in Athens were more into post-punk and goth like Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, and Joy Division. Certainly, they all like a variety of music, but there was a noticable difference in preferences between the two towns. Even though I had been into goth for a few years already, I had somehow never heard Joy Division. That quickly changed.

“Unknown Pleasures” managed to not be the most listened to, so I was not that familiar with this album ahead of this week. Joy Division only released two albums, and my friends seem to have liked the second “Closer” more than the debut. But even more so, they liked the singles collection “Substance.”

Joy Division obsessed over Kraftwerk’s 1976 album “Trans-Europe Express“. Kraftwerk made that album drawing on inspiration from Iggy Pop of The Stooges. In “Unknown Pleasures,” I hear the raw human attitude and emotion of The Stooges combined with the mechanical robotic patterns of Kraftwerk. However, unlike Kraftwerk, Joy Division’s playing is not precise, but rather loose and just a little sloppy.

Disorder

Joy Division open “Unknown Pleasures” with Stephen Morris’s snare and kick drum pattern of “Disorder.” Peter Hook’s rough punk-sounding bass joins in with a pattern similar to Kraftwerk’s bass-lines, starting on the higher octave, but dropping down to gritty lower notes. Swooshing and wooshing electronic sound effects join in the background. Repetitive distorted lead-guitar lines join in, nearly sitting behind its own stereo echo. This is not chord strumming; Bernard Sumner plays the guitar as melodic monophonic accompaniment.

Lyrically, the song consists of three verses. The band provides a wordless chorus that in most songs would’ve been a single-use bridge. They end the song with a coda that other bands might’ve considered using as a chorus: “Until the spirit new sensation takes hold then you know.” Ian has written verses built of four long lines each following an AABB rhyme scheme. It doesn’t seem they were written for music, but rather as beat poetry. Lost in depression, he questions his ability to feel like a normal person. With the first song, Curtis introduces us to the recurring themes of the album: depression, feeling lost, detachment, and isolation.

I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand
Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?
Lose sensation, spare the insults, leave them for another day
I’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away

New Dawn Fades

“New Dawn Fades” closes out side 1 of the original LP release. The track starts with distant echoed sound effects, then a slow simple drum pattern with methodic heavy bass. Distorted reverby guitar plays moody, almost sinister, lines. The guitar is melodic and atmospheric. The sound and feel reminds me of the Stooges’ “Dirt” from 1970; though Joy Division’s track is even further removed from the blues. The song moves at a very slow pace, the drums beating incessantly onward. After four minutes the song sort of winds down losing energy returning to just the drums fading out.

Throughout the album, there’s a sense of separation between the narrator and everybody else. He’s covered or lost in a difficult mixture of heavy emotion and a confusing inability to feel. Stranded in depression, he observes life as an outsider stepping through a movie setduring a nightly rain.

We’ll share a drink and step outside
An angry voice and one who cried
We’ll give you everything and more
The strain’s too much, can’t take much more
Oh, I’ve walked on water, run through fire
Can’t seem to feel it anymore

The Stone Roses’ “The Stone Roses”

Cover for Stone Rose's Self-Titled Album

This week, I’ve been listening to the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album from 1989. I fell in love with this album the first time I heard it in 1994. My friend Julie in high school played the CD for me, probably the same day she introduced me to The Fall and the Beautiful South. Their sound was nostalgic and dreamy, at times psychedelic, others watery or airy. While it drew on influences of so much music I’d grown up with, I’d never heard anything quite like it. The Stones Roses hold an evolutionary position between the Paisley Underground genre of the 80s and the Britpop genre of the 90s. In a way, what they created was Paisley Underground influenced by the rhythms of Acid-House music. Singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire wrote the songs. Bassist Mani providing much of the rolling grove and drummer Reni lending the songs their dancing beats.

She Bangs the Drums

The Stone Roses started to really catch international attention with their single “She Bangs the Drums.” The song describes being enamored with a girl through description of listening to music. The song that he hears perfectly captures the emotions he feels, partly because she causes him to hear the music. The seven line verses follow a AABBCCC rhyme scheme, and the six line chorus has AABCCB.

The third and sixth lines of the chorus are the same, “to describe the way I feel.” This makes the chorus two sets of three lines. The first set explains how there are no words to describe how he feels, and then the second set tell how she is the only one who can describe how he feels. This works captures the theme of the song cleverly. The feelings she causes within the speaker cause him to hear music; music which perfectly expresses how he feels; And as much as she plays the music, she has conceptually become the music.

I can feel the earth begin to move
I hear my needle hit the groove
And spiral through another day
I hear my song begin to say
Kiss me where the sun don’t shine
The past was yours
But the future’s mine
You’re all out of time

The verse of the song repeat a V-V-V-IV, to simplify it. The bright slightly-overdriven guitars mix rocking chord strumming with arpeggios that create psychedelic swirling textures. The chorus repeats a I-IV-I-IV-I-IV-V progression. The fact that the verses do not include the tonic chord helps the I-IV progression of the chorus feel more anthemic. The feeling is that the chorus musically provides the resolution (on the word “feel”) that the verses have been leading up to.

Waterfall

“Waterfall” opens with a low fade-in feedback met by single-note arpeggios played on electric guitar.. This guitar tone is an incredibly important part of the Stone Roses’ sound. Squire frequently combines the overdrive with chorus. In most cases, he pushes the overdrive only just to the breaking point; The use of chorus is similarly subtle, adding just enough to be present. This gives his guitar a richer tone while still coming across pretty clean. When he wants to go more of a lead tone, he adds some fuzz. And of course, the guitar sits in clouds of reverb, as does everything else.

The lyrics tells of a woman asserting independence by running away and finding her own life. Perhaps she is young and the home she leaves is her parents, or maybe she’s later in life and escaping an unfulfilling life. As the song progresses, the hints also get stronger that this woman may also be a symbol for Britain threatened by American influence. Either way, the narrator assures that “She’ll carry on through it all.” The last line suggests that what threatens her is what empowers her:

See the steeple pine
The hills as old as time
Soon to be put to the test
To be whipped by the winds of the west

Stands on shifting sands
The scales held in her hands
The wind it just whips her away
And fills up her brigantine sails

I love the sound of this song; I also love that the next song on the album “Don’t Stop” is based on Waterfall in reverse.. It’s like a mirror placed between the two tracks, and yet their different. They even wrote and sang lyrics that sound like Waterfall’s reverse vocals. Both songs stand on their own, but are even better back-to-back.

I Am the Resurrection

My favorite track “I Am the Resurrection” closes the album. It opens with an unassuming drum pattern. Just kick and snare and hi-hat. Then the bass joins after a full 8 bars. This same pattern plays through most of the song proper, with a few cymbal crashes and banging fills leading intoa and out of the refrains. That’s 15 seconds with nothing a repeated drum pattern without variation. Ian sings “Down, down, you bring me down.”

There are what we might consider two choruses to the song. . I’m talking about the “I am the resurrection and I am the life, I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like.” Though what I’m calling the main chorus, COULD qualify as the coda. Though when the proper song ends after about 3 and half minutes, the band launches into a 4 and half minute extended outro. It’s brilliant and servers as an outro for both the song and the album as a whole. Being purely instrumental for over 4 minute allows the band to jam out with a drummer banging away at a funky-drummer inspired beat.

Don’t waste your words I don’t need anything from you
I don’t care where you’ve been or what you plan to do

De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising”

This week, I’ve been listening to De La Soul’s debut album “3 Feet High and Rising” from 1989. When I was 12 years old, My sister and I stayed with my mom in a loft apartment above a natural food store. The owner lived nearby and I had a crush on his 15 year old daughter. One day she was sitting on their porch and kept saying “Hi, I’m Mr. Fish. How do you do? As for me, I’m in tip-top shape today.” from De La Soul’s track “Tread Water.” Well, that was enough to get me started listening to them. And I continued to enjoy this throughout middle school and into high school. I don’t even remember the name of the girl that introduced me to it, but I still love this album.

De La Soul worked with Prince Paul creating one of the most innovative and influential hip hop albums of all time. The set aside much of the macho bravado that dominated rap lyrics in exchange for more philosophical musings on love, peace, spirituality, relationships, and identity. They promoted a more positive peaceful way of living an enacting change, in contrast to their contemporaries who spoke more of violence and anger.

Likewise, they mixed surprising sources into their music, using the Casio RZ-1 8-bit sampling drum machine. Samples appear from such artists as Hall & Oates, Steely Dan, Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin. Their use of samples also changed hip hop in another, more legal, way. The Turtles sued for the unauthorized sample of their recording of the Byrd’s “You Showed Me” in “Transmitting Live From Mars.” The out-of-court settlement changed the practices of sample-based music to include clearing samples. The following year, hip hop group Salt N Pepa released their own version of “You Showed Me.” I don’t know if they did so out of response to the De La Soul controversy on or not, but I’d assume they cleared their samples.

Potholes In My Lawn

I found it very difficult to only pick three songs to talk about here, because that means excluding so many other great tracks. I definitely was not going to ignore my favorite, “Potholes in My Lawn.” I like the the way they use effects to alter the vocal. Most of the vocals follow the same relaxed rhythmic while the use of echo-delay and changes in accompaniment provide variety and a sense of movement.

The surrealistic lyrics invite interpretation without much indication. I suspect they’re talking about the threat that negative criticism and self-doubt pose to the creative process. Where the lush green lawn would be an artist’s utopia where the writer’s genius work would just flow from them; the potholes pose as those areas of self-doubt, making it difficult to walk around. The lyrics casually rhyme here and there. It’s more a playful use of rhyme than following a strict pattern.

Everybody’s sayin’
What to do when suckin’ lunatics start diggin’ and chewin’
They don’t know that the Soul don’t go for that
Potholes in my lawn
And that goes for my rhyme sheet
Which I concentrated so hard on, see
I don’t ask for maximum security
But my dwellin’ is swellin’
It nipped my bud when I happened to fall
Into a spot
Where no ink or an ink-blot
Was on a scroll
I just wrote me a new ‘mot’
But now it’s gone
There’s no
Suckers knew that I hate
To recognise that every time I’m writin’
It’s gone

They primarily built the accompaniment around sampling the War song “Magic Mountain.” They’ve sped up the original, giving it a brighter more positive sound. The yodel that servers as a chorus came from the Parliament track “Little Ole Country Boy.” A drum machine pattern emphasizes the beat. Mostly these are the kick and snare, with hi-hat sounds used to “hurry up” the beat, using during the third beat. In the late-80s/early-90s, this was a popular place to play in the beat. The rest of measure would often follow basic patterns, but between the third and fourth beat, something interesting would happen which encouraged many of the dance styles of the time.

Me Myself and I

De La Soul’s biggest hit “Me Myself and I” stands as one of their best. In the song, they reference the Jungle Brothers’ track “Black is Black,” from which they drew the vocal rhythm. They took the dominant sample of the song, including the synth hook from “(Not Just) Knee Deep” by Funkadelic. They’ve layered samples from a few other artists, as well as made use of the drum machine to strengthen and give continuity to the beat.

I love the intro with the snare on the first and third beats, with kick on second and fourth beat; this dramatically turns the beat upside. It’s disorientating, exciting, while maintaining the beat. They also use the fader control on their table to produce a stuttering effect to the backing vocals during the chorus. This funky effect gives life to the track while creatively manipulating their source material.

Eye Know

Their single “Eye Know” gets its refrain and synth hook from Steely Dan’s “Peg.” Originally, the line “I know I love you better” was the last line of Peg’s second verse, but here it has become the chorus. This is noteworthy, because usually when a sample is used for the chorus of a hip-hop song, it was the chorus of the original song as well. The strummed guitar and melodic horn stabs were sampled from the beginning of “Make This Young Lady Mine” by The Mad Lads. This time, they’ve sampled acoustic drums from “Get Out My Life, Woman” by Lee Dorsey.

The speakers offer a life-long relationship to an ambiguous female love interest. Each three members of De La Soul each get a verse, where they share a little of their philosophy of love and relationships. Throughout the song, there’s self-introductions and visions of a beautiful life together. These are peppered with references to other songs on the album, as well as songs by other hip hop artists, including another reference to the Jungle Brothers(“Behind the Bush“). De La Soul does not shy away from throwing references in, making little jokes in their songs, and just generally having fun doing what they are doing. On this album, they strike an impressive balance of being playful while being true to their vision.

We could live in my Plug Two home
And on Mars where we could be all alone
And we make a song for two
Picture perfect things and I sing of how
I know I love you better

Guns N Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction”

Album cover for Appetite for Destruction

This week, I’ve been listening to Guns N Roses’ debut album “Appetite for Destruction” from 1987. This hard rock/glam metal album is one that I’m already extremely familiar with.

About a year after the album was released, rumors and excitement about the band and their music ran through my fifth grade class. The personality of Guns N Roses fit in perfectly with the our local bad boys. Those were the kids that even at 12 years old were drinking, smoking, working on cars, and getting in trouble with the local sheriff (who also ran the school bus garage). Their lives fascinated me as representations of freedom and excitement.

This band spoke dangerous, lived dangerously, and didn’t give a fuck. They expressed anger, love, loss, and desperation, while maintaining a rock n roll pose. To top it off, they played great rebellious hard music. This was also the year that “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and “Kokomo” were all over the radio. Bon Jovi and Poisonwere gaining in popularity, but they were safer than Guns N Roses. Motley Crüe had been scaring grandparents with their Satanic imagery and drugged-filled lifestyle for years, but they hadn’t quite cracked into our consciousness like GNR did.

Guns N Roses appropriately kick off the album with song “Welcome to the Jungle.” The song starts with an overdriven descending guitar riff through heavy delay. Then the bass, drums, and a second guitar join. Singer Axl Rose quietly warns, “Oh my god” then launches into a scream that recalls “Careful with that Axe, Eugene” by Pink Floyd. With “Welcome to the Jungle,” gave warning that they were coming with incredible style and bravado. Axl delivers an angry raspy vocal style that mixes elements of Brian Johnson, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan, and Michael Monroe.

The rhythm guitars drive along combining slightly muted and unmuted picking creating a rhythm that combines the Rock of the Rolling Stones with the funk rhythms of Stevie Wonder. During the bridge, those guitars get used to produce a backwards-falling-into-a-tunnel effect with descending muted picking and scraping string noise. That’s a lot happening rhythmically in just the guitars, panned left and right. Part of what makes Guns N Roses so incredible is Slash’s guitar tone and playing style.

With the opening verse, the lyrics make use of an ABAB rhyme scheme, rhyming “games” with “names” and “need” with “disease”. The third and fourth line both make use of the name “honey” to indicate that the speaker is talking to a woman. In the next verse, he tells her that she is a “very sexy girl.” The speaker offers this young woman help getting established in “the jungle” exchange for sexual favors. The jungle, in this case, is the world of show business, where she can “taste the bright lights” but she “won’t get there for free.”

Welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun and games
We got everything you want, honey we know the names
We are the people that can find, whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey we got your disease

I read a great literary essay online about “Sweet Child O’ Mine” several years ago by a college professor. This poetic ballad gets away from a lot of the rock n roll bad boy posturing served up in most of their songs. They also make good use of a solid rhyme scheme in the first verse, though the second verse does not follow the same pattern. The first verse is made up of two quatrains (four-line stanzas) with an AABC rhyme scheme, and then the last line of both rhymes (“sky” and “cry”) tying the two together and giving a feeling of completeness to the verse.

The second verse (not shown here) deviates completely going with an ABAB for the first quatrain; the second quatrain of the second verse does not have rhyming lines, though the third line rhymes with the second and fourth lines of the previous quatrain, and the final line rhymes with the fourth line of the first verse’s quatrains. That last line ties things together, even if the structure is different.

She’s got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything was as fresh
As the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I’d stare too long
I’d probably break down and cry

Of course, the opening riff played on overdriven electric guitar by Slash remains one of the most immediately recognizable. The motif is essentially based on the pentatonic blues scale and though some of the notes change, the rhythmic pattern of high and low notes stays basically the same. It’s an eighth note pattern, with a note on every eighth. The first note is the lowest; The remaining notes follow an up down pattern with a high note on the 2nd, 5th, and 6th notes. This puts the first peak on the up-beat and the other two on the down beat.

While they keep the feel of this song as a more emotion ballad by incorporating acoustic guitars, a slower tempo, and slow strums, they don’t hold back on the rock n roll. There’s still plenty of distorted guitars and overdriven leads; those leads generally play slow, letting notes sustain with minimal bending. The drums still hit hard, but don’t play a major part in the song until the “Where do we go now” outro.

Where do we go, where do we go, where do we go now?