drums Archives - Trip Gunn

John Lennon’s “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”

I’ve been listening to John Lennon’s debut album “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” from 1970. Lennon left the Beatles in September 1969, after they finished recording “Abbey Road.” Paul McCartney publicly announced the group’s break up seven months later. John Lennon and Yoko Ono began primal therapy, a type of psychotherapy that focuses on reliving and engaging with repressed childhood trauma. Often referred to as “primal scream therapy,” the sessions encourage the patient to allow themselves to scream, cry, or otherwise feel the emotions they suppressed as children. The deeply personal lyrics of this album express thoughts and feelings encountered during those sessions.

Of the tracks on this album, I only really knew “Mother” and “Working Class Hero.” I’ve probably heard many of the other songs before, but I don’t recall. While “Imagine” had a few better songs on it, “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” proved to be a stronger album overall. There’s not a weak song on it, as opposed to “Imagine,” which I remember dragging through the middle. Anyway, definitely glad to spend th time with this album and definitely will continue with it.

Mother

The album opens with the ringing of a funeral bell; the record of which plays at a slow speed giving it a lower pitch and a great sense of distance. Lennon’s mother Julia passed away in 1958, when her son John was sixteen years old. This was twelve years before “Mother” was recorded. The vocals, “Mother, you had me, but I never had you…” start at the same time as the drums, bass guitar, and piano.

The instrumentation is sparse, open, and direct. Fellow-former-Beatle Ringo Starr plays a simple 8-beat rhythm pattern: hi-hat on every 8th note, kick on the first and third beat and snare on the second and fourth. The piano strikes the chord once at the beginning of each chord change in the progression, with an occasional lead-in note. The bass guitar plays the tonic underneath, with a lead-in note on the 8th note before the chord. As the song progresses, the instrumentation build slightly and gradually in intensity, but never get showy.

The verses follow a I-V-I-I-IV-IV-V-V-I-I⁷-IV-IV-I-V-I-I chord progression. At about 68 BPM and moving at no more than one chord per 4 beat bar, this progression moves slowly. Lennon sings a full three verses before moving into the chorus-like coda, repeating: “Momma don’t go, Daddy come home…” This plea happens over a IV-I-V-V-IV-I-I⁷-I⁷ progression.

This is absolutely one of Lennon’s greatest songs as a solo artist. It starts with sadness, but at the end of each verse turns that lingering resentment into a triumph: “I just gotta tell you, goodbye, goodbye.” However, the coda suggests otherwise as Lennon begins singing and eventually grows to screaming, asking for his parents to return. Rather than giving closure to that childhood pain, he faces it and brings it out.

Hold On

The second track “Hold On” had my ear immediately with the opening chords strummed on electric guitar through a tremolo effect. The tremolo effect is a type of amplitude modulation, often built into guitar amps, that automatically turns the volume up and down rapidly creating a trembling effect. I happen to love it, so I liked this song before it even really got started.

The instrumentation on this song, like “Mother,” is also simple and open. It feels like the album cover photo, open, free, relaxed, and maybe a little introspective. Only three musicians were involved: John Lennon on vocals and guitar, Klaus Voormann on bass, and Ringo Starr on drums.

The verses have a I-I-ii⁷-ii⁷-iii⁷-iii⁷-(IV-V) chord progression. The IV-V are more hinted at by the bass than specifically played by the guitar. The chorus repeats a v⁷-vi⁷ pattern, which is a little unusually to have a minor fifth in a song that is otherwise in a major key. This progression creates some tension, making it clear that he teases us with a cadence. Which does get delivered at the end of the chorus, “hold on.” returns us to the tonic.

Isolation

A simple piano line opens “Isolation” with a series of played chords: I-I^add#V-vi⁷-I⁷-IV-IV. Again, Lennon pulls this introspective feeling from a song in a major key. Many musicians would instinctively turn to a minor key, but Lennon finds more power in that contrast. And that particularly may e appropriate here, as this song expresses something that I’ve long felt people misunderstand. I recall often hearing people back home in Ohio disgusted with the affluent complaining about their problems. As if, having money and fame solved all problems. In this song, Lennon recognizes that lost-touch that comes from higher-levels of success as well sharing that it creates a unique set of problems. And even with those, the same basic human suffering remain.

The verses continue the same chord progression used in the intro. The instrumentation remains simple in this song as well: drums, bass, piano, and vocals. Lennon provides a bed of extended chords on the Hammond organ through the verses, resting at the end of each verse. Vocals are delivered gently, the drum patterns basic, resting between sung verses. The bass, again, is not showy, but does its job.

I love the bridge, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole album. The drums is mostly reduced to a 4 beat kick drum, the piano becomes more strongly rhythmic emphasizes the chord progression. Double-tracked vocals, panned hard left and right, chant in unison: “I don’t expect you to understand, after you’ve caused so much pain, but then again, you’re not to blame, you’re just a human, a victim of the insane…” The word “insane” is drawn out as Lennon pulls away from the microphone into the distance. A piano and drums relax as well, as the timid but strong Hammond provides the bed giving rest.

People say we got it made
Don’t they know we’re so afraid?
Isolation

Lucinda Williams’s “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”

This week, I’ve been listening to Lucinda William’s fifth album “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” from 1998. I do not recall hearing any of her recordings before, though I definitely heard Mary Chapin Carpenter’s cover of her song “Passionate Kisses.” In 1998, I had only started listening to Dwight Yoakam, and my awareness of country music was slim. This album wouldn’t have appealed to me when it came out, but I liked it immediately listening to it for the first time now. It’s a good blend of country and folk rock that I believe today may get it classified as alt-country. These solid songs achieve being naturally catchy while maintaining a since of sincerity and substance. I find it a challenge to choose three songs to focus, because it excludes the others.

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

The title track of “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” plays after the opening track “Right on Time.” The backing band consists of drums, electric bass, acoustic and electric guitar, and a mando-guitar. That’s a new one for me. The mando-guitar combines, as you’d expect, elements of mandolin and guitar. Basically, they build it much like a mandolin with same type of strings, but has six strings tuned to a guitar’s standard tuning. In other words, it allows a guitar player to play a mandolin learning a new instrument. The electric guitar is pushed just past the point of the amp breaking up, giving it a gritty distortion. Williams’s started her career in acoustic country-blues, and a preference for this gritty raw guitar sound makes sense. To me it sounds warm and rocking.

The verses drive through a V-ii-V-ii-V-ii-IV-I chord progression for the first two listen, followed by another V-ii-IV-I for the next line, then V-ii-IV-I again for a refrain. The kick drum and bass give emphasis for each IV-I cadence, letting the IV ring out. This gives that cadence a bit of a stomp after the rolling chug of the V-ii pattern during the vocals. Those are played with a rhythm picking eighth note rhythm with an open strum on the up-beat. This supported by the kick-kick-snare beat on the drums. The chorus brings a stronger IV-I-IV-I chord progression, while the vocals repeat the lyrics of the refrain higher.

The lyrics tell an vague story from a young child’s perspective. Something is happening with at least one of the parents that is beyond the child’s understanding, but requires a long drive in the car. The overall feeling is something stressful and sad. I suspect the parents are separating. The speaker of the song mixes the perspective of the mother and the child that suggests they are both the same person viewing the event from different times. Most of the parent’s view is revealed through quotation, until we get to the line “Could tell a lie but my heart would know.” The passing series of images open to interpretation add to the power of the lyrics. These verses follow a ABAB rhyme scheme followed by a refrain.

Can’t find a damn thing in this place
Nothing’s where I left it before
Set of keys and a dusty suitcase
Car wheels on a gravel road

Drunken Angel

Lucinda Williams’s song “Drunken Angel” tells tale of Austin country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. He was friends with Townes Van Zandt and they had great influence on each other. Unlike Van Zandt, however, Foley seemed to have bad luck when it came to getting an album released. Apparently he managed to record three of them, but the master tapes were confiscated by the DEA, stolen, and lost. The third one was found after his passing in 1989. The lyrics of “Drunken Angel” use his death as a lens to both praise and criticize Foley. His friend Concho January was a veteran on welfare. Foley confronted Concho’s son with suspicions that he was stealing his father’s pension and welfare; Foley was subsequently shot by Concho’s son. Williams’s song expresses disappointed and anger over how Foley’s life choices got in the way of his own songwriting genius.

Again, Williams uses a lyrics structure of verses that end with a refrain and choruses that repeat that refrain like an anthem, though this time the choruses do include an additional line. These verses also follow a ABABC rhyme scheme. The verses here follow a I-ii-IV-I-ii-IV-ii-IV-I-I chord progression. The choruses then launch into a (I)-ii-IV-IV-I-ii-IV-IV-I chord progression. The title of “drunken angel” applied to both the song and the subject combine both her praise for him as a songwriter and her condemnation of his lifestyle. The use of the word “angel” also conveys that he has passed on, “you’re on the other side.” She further lays this condemnation upon his enabling followers.

Followers would cling to you
Hang around just to meet you
Some threw roses at your feet
And watch you pass out on the street
Drunken angel

Lake Charles

Williams’s friend and former boyfriend Clyde J. Woodward Jr died of cirrhosis. He died while she was on a plane to see him one last time to say goodbye. She wrote the song “Lake Charles” about him. They both came from Louisiana. Early in her career he had been both her boyfriend and her agent. But, as the song tells, wherever they went he felt that homeward pull from Louisiana. Especially, the city of Lake Charles. His friend Margaret Moser was with holding his hand at the end, and she wrote an article for the Austin Chronicle that goes into detail about the song and Clyde’s end. This bittersweet track warmly remembers a friend that has passed. She expertly mixes the sadness with love and care, focusing on the heart while letting the sadness come through between the lines.

This ballad consists of two verses, each with two sets of three lines followed be a three line refrain. After the second verses, there is a bridge with a slide guitar solo, followed by a repetition first three lines of the first verse, then refrain twice. The verses follow a I-V-I-IV-I-V for the first three lines, which is repeated for the next three lines. Then for the refrain, they play IV-I-IV-I-V-I. The second verse brings in some wonderful accordion for atmosphere to recall Louisiana. I often forget how much I love the sound of accordion as part of accompaniment.

The lyrics focus on geography. During the second verse, you can feel Williams riding on that airplane as she recalls their road trips years ago. As seen in that verse, she frequently mentions Lake Charles, which is where he most associated.

He had a reason to get back to Lake Charles
He used to talk about it, he’d just go on and on
He always said Louisiana was where he felt at home
He was born in Nacogdoches
That’s in East Texas, not far from the border
But he liked to tell everybody that he was from Lake Charles
Did an angel whisper in your ear?
And hold you close, and take away your fear?
In those long, last moments

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

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s “Trout Mask Replica”

This week, I’ve been listening to Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s double-LP “Trout Mask Replica” from 1969. This album challenges the listener’s sensibilities and understanding of musical conventions. From the start of the first track, “Frownland,” the first-time listener will question the judgement of those who consider this to be one of the greatest albums of all time. My first encounter with this album came from a girlfriend when I was in my early twenties. It was awful and offensive. Either I was an idiot or she was putting one over one me. I gave it a couple more tries and gave up. So here I am, two decades later, devoting time to it because it is a great album. Do I love it now? No, but I do appreciate it and even enjoy parts of it in doses.

The verb “experiment” means to try something for the purpose of discovery. This generally implies doing something in some way different from what one normally does. The outcome is unknown. A question beginning with “What would happen if…” prompts an experiment. Then depending on the outcome, you might alter the act for future experiments. As the outcome becomes less unknown, the act becomes less of an experiment and more of a practice. This album is the result of experiments with breaking the conventions of rock music. Living together in California, Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) ruthlessly led his band of musicians like a cult leader. His methods challenged the established rules of rock as well the ethics of management. That’s another topic though.

Dachau Blues

The third track “Dachau Blues” grabbed my interest first. Yes, the song does follow some blues structure, but it’d be a stretch to call it a blues song. Beefheart’s vocals stand out in front, with the band mixed relatively low. The guitars and dry drums create a near chaotic background for the anti-war lyrics. They choose the location of Nazi concentration camp from World War II to tell how frightened children look up to the adults to not repeat the horrors of war.

The song demonstrates little relationship between accompaniment and vocals. Even though the guitars start with a jagged rhythm for the first chorus, they seem to dissolve into apparently improvised melodic riffs. The percussion and guitars fall in and out of rhythm with each other. Then a saxophone screams in competition with the spoken lyrics. There’s a mixture of intention and accident throughout the album. These glimpses into the process remind us of the importance of the process. I’m also reminded of the Beatnik notion that the unedited thought is more pure and loses something through revision. Yet, we know that Captain Beefheart and his magic band practiced and practiced these songs. The loose chaos didn’t come easy.

Pachuco Cadaver

Before the music starts, the Captain shares some nonsensical wisdom: “A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?” There’s some underlying logical to the nonsense written by Captain Beefheart, perhaps. He has a great taste for the vocabulary of unusual, using these words to paint a surreal story world. Elements of this world are returned to throughout the album, feeling more like consistency than repetition. The lyrics of “Pachuco Cadaver” present the vignette of an attractive Latina-American woman, like a bizarre version of The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You.“

“Pachuco Cadaver” stands out on the album as being one of the few songs with a stand-out guitar riff that repeats in different parts of the song. The accompaniment even builds up to it as it evolves out of a primordial groove. At times, it is hinted at, muted, then devolves into arhythmic strumming. Then it appears, nearly rocking, as the Captains says, “her lovin’ makes me so happy…”

When she walks, flowers surround her
Let their nectar come in to the air around her
She loves her love sticks out like stars
Her lovin’ stick out like stars

Led Zeppelin’s “Led Zeppelin (I)”

This week, I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut LP from 1969 that introduced the world to their unique blend of hard blues rock. While I’ve known their fourth album my whole life and a few of their other albums since I was a teenager, I somehow missed most of their first. Most of my punk-rock friends shrugged off Zeppelin as the hippie-rock of their parents. Yet, my parents didn’t listen to them beyond a few songs on Led Zeppelin IV like “Stairway to Heaven.” The punk rejection is kind of funny considering how album’s “Communication Breakdown” influenced much of the Ramones. Still, punk rejected what they saw as excessive moments of showy musicianship that Zeppelin were already demonstrating on this first album.

Jimmy Page formed the band after years of impressive work as a session musician and a short period with the Yardbirds. He pulled together singer Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham, who previously worked together in the short-lived Band of Joy. Fellow session-musician John Paul Jones joined the Page’s Led Zeppelin to play bass and organ. At first named The New Yardbirds, they changed their name to Led Zeppelin after Keith Moon’s joke that they would go over like a lead balloon.

Good Times Bad Times

The album opens with “Good Times Bad Times,” which was also their first single. From the first 15 seconds of full-band double-stabs, it’s clear that Led Zeppelin intends to be big and loud. Then with the first line of vocals, the drums begin pounding, explosive and rolling. John Bonham dances all over the drums keeping a constant rocking texture going throughout. Considering his heroes included star jazz drummers Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, it’s no surprise that Bonham would use so many fills. This is no simple 4/4 drum pattern and, like Keith Moon, he’s not afraid to hit the cymbals. Page continues the double-stab pattern, but fills the space between with grooving blues riffs.

Page and Zeppelin build most of their songs around riffs. So, we hear usually hear a 1 or 2 bar rocking guitar riff that gets repeated throughout a verse, and then a different riff in the same family for the chorus. He frequently livens up these repetitions with variation through adding or switching a note, as well as bending notes. The bass either plays in unison or a separate riff that provides counter-balance rhythmically and tonally. Rarely is anybody in the band playing something simple. There’s lot of movement and action throughout these recordings.

Of course, I love the lead guitar that was played through a Leslie speaker. I love a rotating speaker when used on guitar, organ, or really anything else. It brings a great life to Page’s solo, that honestly it didn’t need, but help bring it forward. This is likely also accomplished through combination of the hi-mid frequency boost of the horn speaker as well as perhaps a boost pedal, which had just come out the same year.

Your Time Is Gonna Come

John Paul Jones begins “Your Time is Gonna Come” with gospel-blues-rock sounding organ. Then, Bonham kicks in the drum with a crash leading into one of his simpler drum patterns. During the coda, he kicks it up with fills every other bar and ultimately leads into pulsing patterns on the kick and toms. Page plays picked arpeggios on an acoustic guitar. Plant sings folk-blues inspired verse, leading into a soulful chorus of “Your time is gonna come.” In this song, it’s not a good time, but rather he’s warning a woman that has broken his heart that she will some day experience the same. There’s not a lot of rhyming here; they don’t shy from it, but they don’t enforce any sort of pattern.

Made up my mind to break you this time
Won’t be so fine, it’s my turn to cry
Do what you want, I won’t take the brunt
It’s fading away, can’t feel you anymore
Don’t care what you say cause I’m going away to stay
Going to make you pay for that great big hole in my heart
People talking all around
Watch out woman, no longer is the joke gonna be on my heart
You been bad to me woman, but it’s coming back home to you

How Many More Times

The longest and most epic complex song of the album, “How Many More Times” closes the second side. Throughout its 8½ minutes, the band takes us through several rounds of twists and turns. There are times it begins to feel like a freeform jam, but they know what they are doing and where they are going. The band brought together several unused song ideas that Page had written from previous years into a coherent whole. The transitions from section to section work perfectly, especially by the occasional reintroduction of the opening blues-rock riff that reminds the listener where we came from.

Page makes frequent use of a wah pedal on much of the lead guitar. Sometimes he uses it in the “half-cocked” position which causes the pedal to act as a high-frequency boost. He also creates otherworldly effects by playing the guitar with a large bow. This song, in addition to musically interesting interplay of bands as well as unison stabs.. provides a fascinating set of examples of early effects on electric guitar.

There’s a lot that I love about this album, even if the focus on blues-inspired hard rock is not necessarily my favorite. I like when they get more into psychedelic territory like Led Zeppelin III or Physical Graffiti. However, what I really love about this album is the sound of it. Rotating speakers, a variety of expert guitar sounds, the big complex drums, the rolling bass, and the occasional use of organ.

Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew”

This week, I’ve been listening to Miles Davis’s double-album “Bitches Brew” from 1970. I spent time with Davis’s album “Kind of Blue” last year, which I enjoyed even if I wasn’t sure how to understand it. He once again challenges me in a different way, with this album. Here the band creates more of an other world through sound and rhythm. When I was in college studying fine art, I would often play this album in the painting studio. “Bitches Brew” providing an interesting, but unobtrusive, atmosphere that encouraged my own focus and creativity.

These are musical pieces without vocals that eschews techniques commonly used in music to make songs immediately digestible. There’s no hooks, clear melodies, or obviously repeated motifs for the listener to grab unto. That’s not to say that there’s no melody or motifs, or even hooks. They don’t come forward at once, but require time and repeated listening to reveal themselves. Just as these long (the title track is just over 26 minutes) pieces evolve within themselves, a feeling for them also evolves within the listener through repeated exposure.

Bitches Brew

This double LP opens with two very long tracks that took up a full side of a vinyl record. The 20 minutes track “Pharoah’s Dance” opens the album, while “Bitches Brew” fills the second side with a lengthy 26 minutes. Engineers like to keep the side of a record to 22 minutes or less, due to physical limitations of a 12 inch record. Above 22 minutes, the grooves have to get tighter, resulting in a gradual loss of sound quality. It’s also a long time to listen to a single piece of music.

Most of my listening to these albums happens in the car while driving, which means that I often did not hear these all in one sitting, but rather broken up into pieces. I do listen to these some at work in headphones, but that is less focused listening. That’s a shame, because this album really opens up in headphones.

On this album, we often hear two drummers and two bassists simultaneously playing. These pairs are panned hard left and hard right; With headphones, we can clearly hear the rhythms interweaving back and forth, supporting each other in creating complex textures. Two keyboardists at electric pianos also interact in the same way across the stereo field. I was overwhelmed at first by how much was going on where there’s typically a much more straight-forward simple foundation being laid out. Here that foundation is constantly evolving, undulating, and folding in on itself.

It allows for the players to come in and out of the basic down-beat and up-beat to perform complex rhythms knowing that their counterpart can support the beat until they come back. At times, the drums feel chaotic and then meld into a complex fabric bed, or an alien landscape, over which travels the electric guitar, trumpet and saxophone.

At the start of this the track “Bitches Brew,” the trumpet plays into a tempo-synced delay echo effect bouncing from right to left.Staccato blasts of trumpet echoed, creating an opening rhythm and atmosphere. Drums, electric piano and bass tumble out of these blasts, rolling and collapsing. This builds into the song that then takes us on a journey into the brew.

Spanish Key

The second LP opens with “Spanish Key,” which is a little more rocking than atmospheric, at least at first. The basses throb at a persistent galloping rhythm from the start. A brushed snare, shakers, and tambourine build up the rhythm, followed by loosed rolls across the toms. Sparse, mellow, short melodic motifs on the trumpet begin to evolve, growing into extended melodies. The electric piano quietly adds harmony. Saxophone grows, like a drone fading in and out. Three minutes into the track, rock-influenced lightly-overdriven electric guitar shuffles, scratches rhythms and scuttles. Occasionally that guitar hints at melody, bending notes and short blasts of solo riffs.

Just as these excursions flirt with flying into outer-space chaos, the instruments join into a simultaneous rhythmic cadence, then pause. A trumpet or bass may then continue on while the other instruments rest. The piece returns to Earth, momentarily. This cadence becomes motif of the song, repeated at the end of these phrases as a reminder where we are.

The tracks on this album make use of this technique often. There’s a motif: rhythmic, melodic, or both, that the band joins in to ground the piece before it loses the listener in chaos. This is followed by the band calming down for a moment, the drums and bass relax, but then the melodies and harmonies get folded, interpreted, transformed used as a basis for apparent improvisation. Then things evolve, rising in intensity, which often involves, pitch, tempo, texture, and rhythm. With multiple instruments doing this, they journey beyond and away from each other, while retaining some sense of interplay.

I don’t know if, or how, any influence from this album might show up in my own music, but I’ve definitely enjoyed getting an introductory experience with it. Miles Davis expands my feelings on what music can do, even when I don’t understand what he’s doing from a critical or technical standpoint.

Television’s “Marquee Moon”

This week, I’ve been discovering Television’s debut LP “Marquee Moon” from 1977. Somehow, this band has managed to escape my notice until now. It’s a shame it took this weekly project for me to learn about them. This album immediately became one of my favorites. Television played post-punk when punk rock was in its infancy.

Proto-punk generally favors shorter straight-forward songs with little-to-know instrumental sections; Television goes off into more complicated song structures that display some influence from The Who. A few moments would vaguely remind me of The Who’s 1973 album “Quadraphenia” which is also one of my favorites.

The album opens with “See No Evil” introducing the sound of the album. We have drums and electric bass guitar in the center. There are three guitar: one purely rhythm guitar in the left channel, a rhythm-lead in the right channel, and the solo lead in the center. The clean rhythm-lead guitar runs through a series of melodic picked riffs. I especially like the arpeggios in the chorus that continue even as the other instruments rhythmically pause. of New York City rock-n-roll lead vocals of Tom Verlaine grab the listeners attention much like those of New York contemporary Patti Smith. Television has a similar sound as Patti’s band on “Horses” and I love that raw dirty-clean guitar sound.

I love all of the songs on this album, which made it difficult to only choose a few to discuss. I’m skipping over the epic title track “Marquee Moon” mostly because it’d be so much to tackle. It’s the song that first made me think of “Quadraphenia” with the end of the song reminding me a lot of “Reign O’er Me.”

“Guiding Light” really caught my attention. It stands out as being one of the slower songs, almost leaning towards a spiritual sound. The song starts with clean guitar arpeggios repeating a I-IV chord pattern. This is joined by bass and a piano beautifully accompanied by the echo of the room. The unusually long prechorus has two parts, the first in V-I chord progression and the second part II-IV. The chorus is a standard I-V progression, with the final I getting extra emphasis as a strong cadence. One thing I love about this song is the use of the natural room ambience and space between the instruments and notes. It’s a very natural sound.

The lyrics feature a nice mixture of poetic and straight-forward rock n roll. For example, I especially like the last two lines of the first verse of “Guiding Light”: “I hear the whispers I hear the shouts And though they never cry for help”. What does it mean? I’m not sure I could say. It’s not even really a complete sentence, but it feels. I saw the lyrics described as “impressionistic” and I’d say that’s correct, though I may be putting my own interpretation on what that person meant. You more feel the meaning of the lyrics than you could possibly getting out of them directly.

I fell in love with every song on this album. This one will get frequent listens from now on. I’m only disappointed it took me so long to actually hear it.