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EPISODE 80: The Music of Cults, Part 2
EPISODE 80: The Music of Cults, Part 2
Today’s episode is a continuing examination of the strange bedfellows of cults and music. Last time, we discussed some of the more academic reasons why leaders and their minions utilize music to recruit, indoctrinate, isolate, and elevate their group, so today we are going to dive right into the fringiest of the fringe groups. The absurd ashrams. The Kookiest communes. The flakiest faiths. The goofiest gurus. The screwiest sects. And the zaniest zealots. So go ahead and plaster your best “Up with People” smile on that face, schedule tomorrow’s deprogramming session, and hunker in your bunker as we prepare to astrally project the second installment of the fascinating world of cult music.
Listen Here:
The Four Records Featured on this Episode:
Sun Ra - Abstract I
All Saved Freak Band - All Across the Nation
Lightstorm - Missionary is Impossible
Gunman and the Holy Ghost - Oh Lord Let Me Die In Pain
One of the main resources we used for this episode was WFMU's Music of Mind Control with Micah
Article about Cult Usage of Music
VICE article about Church Universal and Triumphant
EPISODE 79: Music of Cults, Part 1
EPISODE 79: Music of Cults, Part 1
In this episode, we delve into the bizarre world of music made from within cults. Tunes that were left behind as relics of evidence of exploitation and excessive, destructive devotion. Results that are so strange because they were almost certainly weaponized by a brainwashed minion. Music that is created in a vacuum of narcissism, removed from free thought and outside influence. Hymns to self-appointed prophets, saviors, divine conduits, Christ reincarnates, gurus, faith healers, alien leaders, and Sting (probably). We will look at music from some of the world’s most infamous cults as well as the songs that are so insular, they make no sense outside of their context, even when that context makes no sense either. So, cleanse off your chakra, open your mind, pull on your robes, lace up your Nikes. Today, the music of the cults. Join us, won’t you? Forever?
Listen Here:
The Four Records Featured on this Episode:
Dave Bixby - Drug Song
Murari Band - Devotee of the Lord
Master Wilburn Burchette - Witch's Will
YoHaWha 13 - Children's Song
EPISODE 78: Laughing Stock
EPISODE 78: Laughing Stock
Desert Island Recordings VII
Desert Island Recordings VII
Like it or not, we are all chained to our past. What we have done slowly becomes who we are. This holds especially true for musicians as they constantly struggle against what they have already created for the world to behold. The pieces of art that fans, labels, journalists, and maybe themselves become forever tethered to their identity. The crusty joke about “I like their old stuff better” is often truly a death knell for a band’s growth. An artist is frozen in time by their own past success. Why try anything new if it won’t matter to most of the people who care about your product anyway? And, frankly, for a lot of bands, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Changing styles might spark the sell-out or jumped the shark chants with angry mobs carrying pitchforks and reading Pitchfork. If you don’t, though, you risk growing stale and fading away.
Some bands lean into a stylistic steadfastness and can compel allegiance through sheer resolute commitment. The Ramones, Motorhead, and the Cramps built a brand on a singular style, albeit their own very unique style. Most artists with some longevity, ebb and flow, grow and retreat, but hang around their general vicinity of comfort. There are tons of examples of this. Artists like Wilco, REM, Willie Nelson, Rolling Stones, etc. It goes on and on. Some artists reinvent themselves constantly throughout their careers but never to a completely unrecognizable degree. This would include David Bowie, Prince, Madonna, and Bob Dylan. Some simply pinball from one horrific sound to the next. Sting, for example, and his tantrically mediocre existence. Some artists might occasionally take an oddball flier on a totally random genre record that exists squarely outside of their cannon, maybe for fun, or by accident, or out of contract obligations...think Serge Gainsbourg’s Reggae album, Ween’s country album, Neil Young’s Trans, Metal Machine Music, Pat Boone’s unfortunately satisfying metal album, and of course, the oft cited here, Chris Gaines taking off the goatee mask to become Garth Brooks. These often sound more on the wrong side of the “novelty to homage” scale. However, there are a few rare cases when an artist completely reinvents themselves, elevating the limits of ambition and shattering preconceived notions of their music. Scott Walker left behind his teeny bopper career to become a pork-pounding master of the avant-garde. Tom Waits evolved from a barroom balladeer to a carnival barking madman. Brian Eno disrobed from his leopard print glam tendencies to essentially single-handedly herald in ambient music. And finally, Talk Talk who started as a group of synth-toting Duran Duran doppelganger doppelgangers to being at the forefront of the post-rock movement.
As we continue to delve into different forms of isolation shaped and sculpted into musical artifacts, Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock is intentionally distancing from the sentiment and bias of the past. A band that desperately works to create space and blatant disregard from what they are supposed to be. And in the end, it turns out to be too destructive of a force for the group to continue.
Listen Here:
The Two Records Featured on this Episode:
The Ideals - The Gorilla
The Cadets - Drifter's Cotillion (Pre-Cry)
EPISODE 77: LAUGHING RECORDS
EPISODE 77: LAUGHING RECORDS
For being studied from philosophical, sociological, psychological, and biological perspectives for centuries, there is no one unified theory on the meaning of laughter. A common condition of all cultures, every person is susceptible to these involuntary responses. As Aristotle put it, “Humans are laughing animals”. One factor that most Gelotological philosophers and scientists agree upon is that laughter is an essential social tool. Laughter creates connection, expresses emotion, adds conversational context, signals acceptance, creates positive feedback loops, acts as a defense mechanism, and helps to ferret out the weak and embarrass them. In short, laughter is how we bond. It’s how we tell others and ourselves that things are going to be okay. Social, emotional, and cognitive regulation. A primitive means to deal with our unpredictable, inconsistent, and intense existence. 1900s French Philosopher Henri Bergson wrote that laughter was a collective apparatus that causes a separation from logic and emotion which allows society to intellectually adapt to situations, balance moral quandaries, and correct eccentric behavior. Of course, not too many people are worried about where laughter comes from or what it does, we just know that videos of men sustaining testicular injuries is never not funny.
All this begs the question...what do you get when you cross a joke and a rhetorical question? In the 1920s, an answer to that might have been the laughing record fad. 78s featuring uncontrollable cackling took hold of the culture causing a sort of mass hysteria in the sitting rooms around the world. It was a regular pole-sitter laughageddon. Inexplicably, millions of people could not get enough of songs that were interrupted with the wild pre-recorded howls and snorts flatulating from their Victrola phonograph machines. The bizarre novelty record phenomenon had a long lasting impact in both humanizing the nascent technology and laying the groundwork for embedded laugh tracks to assist audiences with remembering the hilarity they were witnessing. On this episode, we chuckle, chortle, snicker, titter, giggle, and guffaw our way through the bust-your-gut history of laughing records.
Listen Here:
The Four Records Featured on this Episode:
Wendy Rene - After Laughter Comes Tears
Gilda Radner - Lets Talk Dirty to the Animals
Burl Ives - Times They Are A'Changing
Huey Piano Smith - Don't You Just Know It
EPISODE 76: Iron Curtain Innocence
EPISODE 76: Iron Curtain Innocence
DESERT ISLAND RECORDINGS VI
DESERT ISLAND RECORDINGS VI
In a sense, private press records are the ultimate form of isolation music. They are albums that are created completely on an island. Often, recorded by a single person. Usually, created without any support or belief. Always, made without the assistance of a label to provide funding, resources, marketing, or expertise. Putting out a private press record is an act of faith. Bobb Trimble might be the king of the private press.
Listen Here:
The Two Records Featured On This Episode:
The Sixth Station - Before the Snowfall
Ernest Rogers - Mythological Blues
Harvest of Dreams Cover featuring Goat Unicorn!
Bobb Trimble Website
EPISODE 75: The Paisley Underground
EPISODE 75: The Paisley Underground
The Paisley Underground might be the first mix-tape scene. Not really a genre at all, but a collective of people who had similar interests and influences who all happened to be in bands. The music was defined more by what it wasn’t...not punk, not singer-songwriter, not hard rock, not New Romantic. It was entirely synthesized by openly combining parts of beloved sounds of the past into a fresh and forward-thinking way. The bands were composed of musicians who wore their hearts on their technicolor dreamcoat sleeves with regards to their love and devotion of 60s music. However, the sounds of the individual bands varied greatly, so it makes little sense to call it a true genre. More a scene that captured shared ideals and fashion sense. As Dream Syndicate main man Steve Wynn aptly put it: “We had enough in common with each other and almost nothing in common with anybody else.”
It involved a wave of kids who became tired of the punk scene which had become what it initially railed against: stagnant music that was too concerned with maintaining status quo uniformity as the kids were getting too violent. Scores of kids who had initially fallen in love with the thrill and DIY mindset of punk, who'd grown bored and felt disenfranchised and left behind. Many of the Paisley Undergroundlings described themselves as bad punks, making music just for the sake of belonging rather than for the sake of the songs. It was the spirit of punk but with a more expansive sound. They started looking inward and backward to the more gentle and pretty sounds of the 1960s. But this wasn’t a neo-hippy movement with romanticized political ideals and stereotypical retro wear. In fact, all the bands gleaned what they liked most about the 60s without any concern for being true to their heroes or dedicated to the sound and fashion.
Listen Here:
The Four Records Featured on this Episode:
Rainy Day - I'll Keep It With Mine
True West - Lucifer Sam
Game Theory - Bad Year at UCLA
The Cat Heads - Golden Gate Park
EPISODE 74: The Coroner's Gambit
EPISODE 74: The Coroner's Gambit
Desert Island Recordings V
Desert Island Recordings V
The Mountain Goats released Coroner’s Gambit in 2000, three years after their previous album, Full Force Galesburg. This might not sound like an incredibly long break between records, but some perspective might help explain why this time was important.
In 1991, the Mountain Goats released their first album, a cassette-only release titled Taboo VI: The Homecoming. From that album through 1997, they had 21 releases of various types, cassette-only, CD only, 7” singles, split singles, 12” EPs, and full-length albums. In those 21 releases were 188 songs.
In 1998, there were only 4 songs on one 12”.
In 1999, zero.
What caused this period of seeming inactivity?
Listen Here:
The Two Records Featured on the Episode:
The Extra Glenns - Going to Lubbock
The Mountain Goats - Narakaloka
Research we used in this episode came from the below and we hope we didn't leave anyone out:
PopMatters Interview with John Darnielle
RozzNet: The Official Rozz Williams Website
Turned Out Punk Podcast, Episode 209
EPISODE 73: Michael Dixon Vinyl Artist
EPISODE 73: Michael Dixon Vinyl Artist
If you collect vinyl, you understand the power of tangible, physical media. You know the thrill of finding a new record, staring at the cover art, pouring through the liner notes, and, of course, the disc itself. Holding sound. Looking at the grooves, the labels, the wax. The record is truly a piece of art far beyond the music contained within.
There is perhaps no one who practices this craft with more skill and dedication than Michael Dixon. Based out of Tucson, Arizona, Mike expands the boundaries of vinyl art through creativity, collaboration, and innovation. He views a vinyl record as a blank canvas which will hold unique one-of-a-kind artifacts that are both beautiful and will play music for perpetuity. Drawing from lifelong loves of education, records, outsider art, and re-purposing junk, Mike uses 1940s record cutting lathe machines to handcraft sonic objects. He has made records out of up-cycled plexiglass, laser discs, picnic plates, cd-rs (playable on both turntable and standard CD player), mirrors, place mats, x-rays, and even 90% cacao chocolate. He has made records that use multiple sides, holes, groove patterns, locked grooves, and overlapping or concentric circles. He has made records that are absurdly entertaining and visually stunning.
On top of this, he runs a record label called People In a Position to Know that focuses on putting out records by artists that he believes in and records that are as individual as the bands. He has made ultra-limited releases for a huge range of big name indie artists like The Flaming Lips, Dr Dog, Ariel Pink, Mike Watt, the Microphones, and Grandaddy as well as making essential music available to fans from bands that you should know like The Graves, Sugar Candy Mountain, and Golden Boots. He has also put out music by several of this podcast’s favorite artists including Wooden Wand, Simon Joyner, and Luna.
Oh and when he’s not doing that, he does short run lathe cuts for bands, fixes lathe machines, is a DJ specializing in private press and bizarro honky tonk, and, coolest of all, educates kids at schools and libraries about the science behind sound and the evolution of sound recording.
We were fortunate enough to spend some time with Mike talking about his passion and his art as well as some mutual interests. We strongly encourage you to check out his process and his products by visiting his websites, michaeldixonvinylart.com and piaptk.com. We guarantee you will find incredible unique music and records that you cannot find anywhere else.
Now, it is another chapter in our continuing series of interviewing people who are truly vital to the vinyl record industry and the fans of vinyl records all over the world. Here’s our conversation with lathe master, label owner, and vinyl artist Michael Dixon.
People in a Position to Know Vinyl Recordings (PIAPTK)
Listen Here:
Episode 72: The Trinity Session
Episode 72: The Trinity Session
Desert Island Recordings IV
Desert Island Recordings IV
Faced with the prospect of an untimely death, 25-year-old Mary Lambert Swale drew up an unusually specific last will and testament. The daughter of the wealthy English family, Swale anonymously bequeathed to the Anglican Church of Toronto 5000 sterling, an astronomical sum in 1845, to erect a new church. This gift came with stipulations, however. The building must be constructed in the Gothic Style in a cruciform structure. The congregation must be named Church of the Holy Trinity. And, most importantly, that all people be welcome in the church and that its pews be “free and unappropriated forever.” This was a radical request as a common practice among Anglican churches of the time was charging pew reservations as a way to allow the more affluent to worship undisturbed by the pathetic prayer riff-raff. The Church of the Holy Trinity was dedicated in October 1847 and its doors have ever more been open to all.
It is fitting that this deference to the past, insistence on beauty, and the requirement for openness would be built into a church that 140 years later would play host to a recording session that would make the environment a critical aspect of its music. The Cowboy Junkies would hole up in the Trinity Church and quietly play their haunting Shoegaze Americana into a single microphone nestled in the midst of the five-story Cathedral. The hushed beauty that was committed to tape in that sacred place on the “The Trinity Session” is a commentary against the increasingly digital and frantic world surrounding them.
Listen Here:
The Two Records Featured on this Episode:
Luna - Sweet Child o' Mine
Link Wray - Girl From the North Country
EPISODE 71: Reverse Supergroups
EPISODE 71: Reverse Supergroups
Supergroups are kind of lazy. It’s a lazy term for bands that consist of musicians who have already found success elsewhere. It’s a lazy move for musicians who too often want to become relevant again or make some easy money. It’s a lazy means of promotion for record labels who can just plaster the faces of the band members on the cover. It’s a lazy expectation for fans who are happy enough with artists resting on their collective laurels. However, in this laziness, intentions and expectations are in a strange dichotomy of being very low and being very high, a lot of weird and fun stuff can happen. Raging egos, combined with expensive chemicals can generate a lot of damage.
The rise of many of the most well-known supergroups has been documented to a narcoleptic degree; your Creams, Audioslaves, CSNYs, Blind Faiths, Traveling Wilburys, and Bad Englishes, for example. We are not going to bore you with those stories that you probably know already and we don’t have any interest in in the first place. We are going to take a different highway like the podcasting highwaymen we are.
In this episode, we look at the other end of the spectrum, covering the importance of groups that were supergroups except that no one knew it yet. Groups with multiple members who would go on to greatness, but in the nascent stage were still unknowns. Bands that are sometimes called “Reverse Supergroups”. Totally opposite of the serendipitous accidents or the blatant money grabs of the typical supergroups; proto-supergroups are full of drive, creativity, and unchecked enthusiasm. The powers that the members yield may not be known, but it is a lot of fun to see collaborations between up and comers. Making the case that sometimes the music is more important and more lasting when it was created before anyone was paying attention rather than when it was made after people quit caring.
Listen Here:
The Four Records Featured on this Episode:
Tim Rose - Long Time Man
Calvin Johnson, Sandman, Timezone Lafontaine, Andras Jones - Highwayman
Nick Cave & Friends - Death is Not the End
David Thomas - What Happened to Me
Great places to visit that we mention in the episode:
Chris Sand AKA Sandman the Rappin' Cowboy
Google Sites
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