November 12 - Interstellar Overdrive

Last weekend I went to the movies. Doctor Strange is the newest Marvel superhero to take the silver screen, and I was blown away by it. It was a movie like Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool in that it took a smaller character (no pun intended with respect to Ant Man here) that not too many outside of diehard Marvel fans are aware of and created a movie that simply blew me away. Of course, the secret to be blown away is often low expectations (which absolutely was the case for Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy), but my expectations to Doctor Strange were quite high - yet they were still exceeded so much that I caught it not once, but twice last weekend (the second time I saw it in IMAX 3D... Awesome). Benedict Cumberbatch is one of two actors I could imagine in the lead for the movie - the other one being Hugh Laurie...

Anyway, there is a car scene early in the movie that is accompanied by a crushing guitar riff that I knew I knew, I just couldn't place it. Not all that different from yesterday's song - movies and tv are great places to pick up new songs - or see old songs in a new light. After some help by Google, I realized it was the opening riff to Interstellar Overdrive by Pink Floyd from their Piper At The Gates Of Dawn album, released in 1967. And while this might get too meandering for some of you, I am still thinking it is worth listening to.

June 24 - Echoes

Today's song, Echoes by Pink Floyd, is a masterpiece. It bridges the gap between Pink Floyd as a psychedelic band led by Syd Barrett into a more progressive band led by Roger Waters. The third transition was into a boring version led by Dave Gilmour, but we'll leave that version alone. For me, the Pink Floyd I know and love is the more progressive version led by an idealistic Roger Waters who wanted his lyrics to mean something. I see this version of Pink Floyd in a very yin/yang way, where Waters' very biting and edgy style is tempered with the softer, prettier, and more romantic style of Dave Gilmour - although in all honesty, all four members were integral parts to the whole that created a lot of amazing music.

While it is easy to refer to Meddle as a transformational album, it is really the last in a series of transformational albums released after Syd Barrett left. A Saucerful of Secrets, Ummagumma, and Atom Heart Mother preceded it, in the transformational period, and while you could hear their direction on those albums as well, it is really taking form on the song Echoes, which takes up all of side B and lasts about 23 minutes. To me, this song was also the blueprint for much of what Motorpsycho did around 1993, with songs like Demon Box and Mountain (and seeing them play Mountain live, they even quoted Echoes in there) - and when I fully realized this, I wanted to share it with as many as possible.

In 1995, I had my own radio show, Undertoner, where I looked at people behind the scenes - and threads that were harder to find. I had this brilliant idea that I would show where much of what Motorpsycho's inspiration clearly came from (and this was a side that I hadn't seen explored much before), and so I could devote the entire half hour to Echoes. I still think it was a brilliant idea - there are segments that could be faded down and left in the background while I talked - but my bosses at the radio station disagreed with me. The argument was that people tuning in would get bored and tune out again. I could not understand why anyone would do that - because the song is so great - so I did it anyway. Like I said, I still like the idea, but I am not sure my execution lived up to that. People weren't happy with me for that decision, but I stood by it. In the end it was decent, but not great - and so I have to admit that based on the execution, they were right. But I still believe that the idea really is good. Plus - who wouldn't want to dedicate 23+ minutes of their life to this song? I know I have done it more than once - and I am listening to it again as I write. That's how much I love this song.

Of course, their next album sold a heck of a lot more and is a lot more familiar to most people - The Dark Side of the Moon is considered a masterpiece, and rightfully so. But I can hear how that way of thinking started on Echoes (actually, it started before, but they were getting there with Echoes). It is also very interesting listening to their evolution in concert. The expanded versions of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here has a concert from Wembley, I believe, that includes Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, and early versions of songs that ended up on Animals. Getting insight in their creative process this way has been invaluable to me. However, today it's all about Echoes. Richard Wright constructed the starting point of the melody, bassist Roger Waters wrote the lyrics, and the vocals belong to Dave Gilmour and Rick Wright, who also plays guitar and keyboards respectively. That leaves Nick Mason on drums. Today I bring you the studio version, but the live version from Pompeii is also very worth watching!

April 4 - Brain Damage/Eclipse

In one of the finest closings of any album of any time, Pink Floyd closed their album The Dark Side of the Moon from 1973 with the duo of Brain Damage and Eclipse. While this album really flows from one song to the next, there are several singular moments that are standouts, but to me, this end has always been spectacular. The Dark Side of the Moon was the moment when the transformation from a psychedelic band to the symphonically progressive Pink Floyd most people know was complete. It did not happen overnight - just listen to the live portion of Ummagumma or the album Meddle, whose Echoes takes up a whole side - but at this point in their career, they developed the music live, then took their time using the studio - Abbey Road Studio, to be precise - as an added instrument. The use of tape loops is very audible in these two songs, and that was a technique that was used over and over again on the album to great effect.

This iteration of Pink Floyd was led by Roger Waters, but my personal belief is that what made them so great at this point in their career was the tension between the very edgy Waters and the more melodically sensitive David Gilmour. If you listen to their albums from The Dark Side of the Moon through The Wall, you can hear this play out throughout - then The Final Cut could be as much a Roger Waters solo album as A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell could be David Gilmour solo albums. Now, I am not trying to downplay the importance of Nick Mason on drums and Rick Wright on keyboards here - they really are integral part of the sound of Pink Floyd - but the Waters/Gilmour relationship was in my opinion as important as the push and pull between Lennon and McCartney in The Beatles.

I was introduced to Pink Floyd at weekend seminars with the teetotaling organizations I was a member of - and it was strengthened during an 8th grade work experience I spent with Jørund Hølaas, who was working for both Radio Ung and NGU at the time. He was a huge Pink Floyd fan, with several live recordings as well as a complete collection of their music - and it didn't take me long to get hooked. Of course, their moody and sometimes brooding music also lent itself well as a soundtrack to both regular teenage angst and periods where my depression took over. I have spent many an hour in my dark room with The Dark Side of the Moon blasting at full force. Listening to it today is a little different than it was, but the catharsis reached at the finale still gets me the same way, and I hope to share that with you today. Please take a moment to listen to Brain Damage and Eclipse from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.

February 9 - Jacob's Ladder

I will be cheating a little today, because I instantly liked this song even though I still have a hard time counting it when I feel the rhythm (yes, I count to find meters). However, this is to me a very accessible song that illustrates a lot of what I listen for in music.

Speaking of what I listen for - I still remember being back in middle and high school learning about literary analysis, thinking it was stupid and a waste of time. First and foremost I was convinced that nobody thought of all of the literary elements when writing, because all writers did was tell a story. I was also convinced that with so many different possibilities for interpretation, it was really just left to chance - because, again, writers only tell stories, right? And finally, I was convinced that looking for all of these literary devices took away from the experience of reading. Here's the thing: at that stage it probably did take away from my reading experience - and I was never any good at it.

When it comes to music, I can see the same argument unfold. Analyzing it you listen for meters, chord progressions, melody line, lyrics, timbre and more. In the beginning, it is probably a big struggle - but for me, this process was driven out of interest and not as an academic exercise, and that made it a lot more organic than when I learned literary analysis. And, lo and behold, for me, listening to all these elements enhances the experience rather than take away from it - even when it gets difficult to unwrap the many layers of a song.

So today's song only has one difficult element to listen for, and that is the meter - or the time signature. Well... Actually, there are a couple of things, which we'll get to in a minute. However, the beginning of the song has an odd meter to it - or rather two of them. It alternates between 5/4 and 6/4. Explaining odd meters (or time signatures) is a little tricky, but I'm still going to try. A lot of traditional pop music uses 4/4 as a time signature, which means that there are four beats to a bar. A lot of pop/rock music use accents on the 1 beat to develop a pulse where you can count ONE two three four ONE two three four. It can (and will) be subdivided further (add an and in between every word to see how it works), but the basic pulse goes to 4, then repeats. Think about the Beatles song She Loves You for an example of a song in 4/4 (especially the verse).

The other time signature of my elementary school days was the good old waltz tempo, which is in 3/4. ONE two three ONE two three. And then... In band, we'd sometimes encounter 6/8, which is kind of a hybrid meter in that you really are counting ONE two ONE two - but the notes are subdivided in threes, so it becomes ONE and-a two and-a ONE and-a two and-a. The differences between 3/4 and 6/8 are used to great effect in the song America from West Side Story ([6/8:] I like to live in A[3/4:]me-ri-ca) - which counted in 8ths becomes something like ONE two three Two two three ONE two Two two Three two. I know - it's somewhat complicated to write it out - but listen to America again (I know you know it) and you will hear the difference.

Then I started encountering Rush - but before I did, I listened to Pink Floyd. The song Money from the fantastic Dark Side of the Moon is in 7/4, and you can detect that when you start counting the riff that goes over the cash register sounds - it repeats itself after 7 beats. It is artfully done - and what's even more skillfully done there is the switch over to 4/4 for the guitar solo before it goes back to 7/4 again.

In Jacob's Ladder you will encounter two odd meters: 5/4 and 6/4. Just count the beats contained within the guitar arpeggios in the beginning (arpeggios is really a fancy word for the picking Alex Lifeson does - it goes either ONE and two and three four five or ONE and two and three four five six with the three being the highest note he reaches before descending again in either pattern). Now I wish that I could stop here, but that would take away one other very effective element of the song - something I will revisit later this week as well - and that is the polyrhythm. When Geddy Lee sings, he sings in 4/4 on top of Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart continuing their 5/4 and 6/4 pattern, which creates an eerie effect.

Now I want to stress that you can listen to the song without worrying about all this meter stuff and still be perfectly fine. That was how I started listening to it as well. However, there is something else that pops up when you start finding the meters, and that is what I hope you do. We will get into other meters later this week - at least I have a feeling we will...

Radio Days: Resurrection

My last stint in radio was another spectacularly great one - at least for me. In 1995, I finally packed my bags and record collection and left Hustad Leir (see earlier blogposts here and here for more about that time) for Bergen, where I joined Studentradioen i Bergen. I started as an engineer mainly for the shows Skumma Kultur hosted by Svein Tore Bergestuen, Høydepunktum, and Plog. Three very different shows with very different demands: Skumma Kultur was a cultural program in a magazine format, but with Svein Tore, they covered quite a bit of breaking news, and he had high technical standards, which in turn made me a better engineer. Høydepunktum was probably my favorite show to work on - a highlight show of the week that was. As an engineer, I was challenged in reediting a lot of the pieces so they were shorter and fit a new flow. This was also in the days of reel-to-reel tape editing, so I had to physically manipulate the tapes. I loved every minute of it. And I had the fortune of working with great young women (they would probably say girls at that time): Line Hegna, Tonje Aursland, Kathrine Synnes, and, I believe, Vibecke Spjeld. Some of them have gone on to careers in NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. The last show, Plog, was the music magazine dedicated to "roots" music, artists like The Louvin Brothers, Tom Waits, and Richard Thompson were among Thomas Ekrene's favorites, and he was the host of the show. Johan Ludvig Brattås was also involved, and he brought his eclectic taste for international traditional music to the show as well. I was introduced to Mongolian throat singing and Finnish traditional music - and I actually started liking it.

While Mongolian throat singing surely is interesting, I have to confess that Hedningarna is higher on my list of favorites. I got a chance to see them live in 1999, not too long before I moved to the US. They are a Finnish/Swedish band, and their last studio album, Karelia Visa, explores traditional music from Karelia, a historical Finnish region that largely now is part of Russia following the Winter War of 1940. The liner notes are extremely interesting - describing their experiences researching this music in a region that appears not to have changed much at all. The following song, Mitä Minä, is from Karelia Visa (Karelian Songs).

However, I started getting restless being in the control room at all times, so I asked if there was any chance that I could start a show of my own. I had a name and a concept for it that I really liked. The name was Undertoner (undertones), and it was about all the unsung heroes of music - the producers and session musicians. The people in charge liked the concept and I got my half-hour time slot. I remember shows about Rick Rubin, Daniel Lanois, Tessa Niles, and Tony Levin. However, I also remember being chastised for having one half-hour show featuring one song only, with my voice in the intro and in the middle, hovering over the effects. The song was Echoes by Pink Floyd. It was and remains my favorite Pink Floyd composition, and it showcases so many of the elements I like in music. It is droning, it is dissonant at times, yet it has dreamy, ethereal beauty in the vocal harmonies, it is slow building, and it uses dynamics effectively. "And I am you and what I see is me." However, playing one song for close to 30 minutes is not the most radio friendly thing to do...

I worked in Studentradioen until I left Bergen in 1996, then again from fall of 1997 until I left Bergen in the fall of 1998; however, I had one final ambitious project: I wanted to create a series about the history of rock music. Coda was the name of the series, and I had close to 30 parts, each at about 30 minutes (I have to check the number of episodes, but it was scheduled for the full year). When I left Bergen, I was around week 10 or so of the series, so the final 20 episodes or so were made at a high pace, trying to get it all wrapped up so they could keep broadcasting the show. It was a great project for me, and while I wish that I could have spent more time on the last episodes, I am incredibly proud that I did create it. I tried making copies of the show for myself when I recorded all of them onto DATs (they had been recorded on a computer workstation at this point - we finally had one), but I messed up a few of them - but I believe I have them on MiniDisc still.

When I left Bergen for the second time, I also left my radio days behind. However, I met a lot of great people that way, both in Radio Ung and in Studentradioen. I learned a lot about sound and music, and my musical tastes were significantly expanded. The final song this time is one that I believe I played during the Undertoner show about Tony Levin, a spectacular bass player, here with King Crimson. This six-piece version of King Crimson was spectacular - and the use of Midi with Adrian Belew's guitar is interesting. But listen to Tony Levin's deep bass singing (he is the bald bass player with a mustache) and pay attention to his bass. Robert Fripp's tritonus is creating a spectacular dissonance throughout the song, and having two drummers in Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto and then Trey Gunn on the Chapman stick (which also really is Tony Levin's instrument)... The double trio created very interesting music!