Let’s ease back into things here with a butt-ripping electroshock track from Mr. Hancock. This post is a test to make sure that everything is working hunky dory on this monstrosity of a laptop. So, if you encounter any flukes, nukes or watery pukes upon listening, please turn off your amplifier and notify Dr. T. Ranny immediately.
Furthermore, check out the music vid if you haven’t seen it before; it will creep the beat out your shit.
Finally, I’d like to point out that Herbie Hancock used the Fairlight CMI synthesizer to bake this tasty cake. If you’re a follower of this site you might remember that the Fairlight is the same $25,000 synth that L. Ron Hubbard butchered on his soundtrack to the book Battlefield Earth. However, Hancock is proof that the electronic Excalibur can do terribly delicious things if put in the right hands.
Bonus! I’ve included a second video to display Herbie’s ridiculous Fairlight crackskills. Also, I’d like to point out that he’s using JBL 4311b speakers in his studio, which is what I use in my hillbilly soundcubicle.
Note the most awkward album signing of the 21st century.
I went to see Themselves at the Southgate House in the winter of 2003 with my brother. At the time I had this little Canon digital camera that took its sweet old time capturing precious moments. So, it could take anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds from the time photographer pressed the clicker to when the shutter snapped.
Anyway, I went up to the merch booth after the show with my brother and struck up a conversation with Dose One. We discussed the show and how I worked with a guy that used to tour with him back in the day. While I was trying to help him remember how he used to rap with a guy I washed Porsches with, a guy named Zebediah, I got the brilliant idea that I should get my freshly purchased albums signed.
I asked Dose if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, to which he replied “hell naw” while whipping out black and silver markers. He signed The No Music original LP with a little black Sharpie drawing on the front. It was really quite adorable. For The Remixes he pulled out the sparkle silver job. I thought, “Yo Boy, you better get this histowic moment on record or your crew will NOT believe it. Word is bond!”
I handed Junior the janky little digi, struck the thumbs-up pose and copped a triumphant smile. Dose did his best to look excited and we froze the pose. And then everything hit slow mo. We both could see the little infrared autofocus light on the front blinking, so we just sat there waiting for the flash. And waited. And waited. I had totally forgotten about the totally unreliable snap. It was the longest 10 seconds of my life.
Suddently, Dose One grabbed my erect thumb and shook it. He grabbed that little dude and went down to Funky Town. What you see in the picture is the immediate aftermath of that member molestation. This wiggle ushered in a total loss of cool…and the moment I decided I’d never get an autograph ever again.
Keeping up with the trend of strange albums I present Hairway to Steven. This album sat in the unplayed pile for more than 5 years until today. Its memory just evoked visions of teeth gnashing with hacked up smoker’s phlegm smooshed into long, oily hair. I just couldn’t handle the flashbacks of 1 West.
However, the listen today made me once again realize that tastes can change for the better because this album is fantastic. It’s best used to neutralize the awful yelping of your neighbor’s dog. Once this bad boy began spinning amidst the open windows and supple Kentucky spring breeze the mutt dog (cute but far too boisterous) adjacent to my house stopped his usual abused dog soapbox spiel and took listen to the horribly brilliant sounds of the Butthole. I can only imagine what strange ultrasonic transmissions he received.
The following album notes were handwritten on the album sleeve when I got it. They’re from some long-lost disc jockey affiliated with either WYCC (Google brings up a Chicago PBS station…I highly doubt this disc spent a tenure at the dignified digs of Public Broadcasting) or WMSR in Oxford, OH. I thought his or her insight into the disc were the real icing on the butt cake. If anyone knows what the abbreviations mean before each track description please enlighten the audience.
Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), no song titles have been supplied. Instead there are kinda rude drawings for each tune. We’ll just think of them as song #1, #2, etc.
SIDE ONE:
Song #1: MT/MAJOR SHIFT, SOUNDS LIKE A NEW SONG/VERY QUICK FADE
Kinda typical surfers, lots of drums & wigged-out guitars w/ occasional mutated voice. Barnyard noises are included in the second, more sedate half of the song.
Song #2: MUT/COLD
considerably more “normal” dark psychedelia
Song #3: MT/Fade
“I saw an x-ray of a girl passing gas.”
and why not?
Side 2
Song #4 (live): MT/FADE on clapping
about smoking, love & hate
Song #5: MUT/FLN
Song #6: MUT/FLN
rockabilly about Julio Iglesia (I think)
Song #7: MT/FLN
like song #1
Song #8: MUT/COLD
like song #1 and #7 only shorter and faster
The Butthole surfers are from Texas and are very weird. See them live if you can.
There are a lot of tasty fun facts about Walter Carlos. First off, he was the she that composed the Clockwork Orange soundtrack. The second is that Walter, later Wendy, is the only Father and Mother of Electronic Music. However, the most mysterious tid bit that stuck out in the hard-hitting Wikipedia article about Carlos was two curious words: Faraday Cage.
Scientific pursuits for the benefit of mankind.
A Faraday Cage is a special room that’s typically used to protect electronic devices such as industrial computer equipment from outside sources of electronic interence like lightning strikes or power surges. The Faraday Cage comes in handy for NASA when maintaining Tom Hanks’ neuronet processor during his bi-annual checkup. And, as the previous photo illustrates, it’s critical for protecting fedora-donning dumb dumbs from homemade tesla coils.
As any audiophile will tell you, the foundation of solid sound is clean electricity. Improper grounding and interference from appliances sucking your Jiggawatts can really throw a monkeybone into gears of the best-planned stereo system.
One of my apartments in Clifton during my college days had ungrounded outlets. This really played havoc on my home theater’s subwoofer by causing the most terrible buzzthumping. The only remedy was continually lassoing the connective cable around my apartment until it meshed with the friendly electromagnetic frequency of the day. Or something like that.
Getty Images just spit in your mom's hair. Pictured is Walter pre-op.
On her website Carlos’ explains how her NYC neighbor’s mood lighting would mess with her home studio recordings:
Oh, yes, those are the remote controls for the various tape machines that you see on the far left, and just above, on the meter housing for the console, is a pair of Phase Linear Autocorrelators. These were a pretty decent single ended noise reduction devices that we had to use during the late 70′s due to power buzzes that came from the light dimmers in the brownstone next door (not amusing). I’d nearly forgotten about that nightmare, since (as I just mentioned) the console is now immune to such things, and the new studio, in being a genuine Faraday Cage (conductive walls, ceiling and floor, tied to common ground) is truly free from essentially all external signal contaminants.
Carlos' Frankensteinian Sound Cruncher
Just imagine Wendy flipping her shit as she went through countless wires trying to figure out which one was the harbinger of the dreaded analog buzz. However, she couldn’t freak out too hard because violent convulsions might, ahem, rip out the stiches that kept her womanhood roaring.
So basically Carlos was and is a mad scientist. She still toils her hours away by torturing electronic equipment into screaming the desired tone in her gigantic, eletronically-inert box. But we shouldn’t fear her for, as you will see after listening to By Request, the ends justify the end. And that’s always what’s most important…right?
Ok, so this is the most important piece music of the 20th century. Yes, you read that correctly. In 1982 L. Ron Hubbard introduced Space Jazz, the first ever soundtrack to a book (not just any book…Battlefield Earth!!!) and forever altered the creative path of human history. Many historians credit this album with slaying the incredible high-hat breathing Disco Dragon. Others blame it for laying the Yoshi egg that hatched Lady Gaga. However, there’s much more to this story than hilarious musings…
Exhibit A!
(from the album gatefold)
SPACE JAZZ is a completely new musical sound destined to be hailed as the music of the future. The many and varied forms of music are an integral part of the cultural heritage of Earth.
Now, the sound of the future has been established by L. RON HUBBARD, author of the blockbuster science fiction novel Battlefield Earth.
The concept of a soundtrack is something one normally associates with motion pictures. Now for the first time ever–a soundtrack for a book–Battlefield Earth–”Space Jazz.” Think of the “Star Wars” Sagas, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” mix in the triumph of “Rocky I,” “Rocky II” and Rocky III” and you have captured the exuberance, style and glory of “Battlefield Earth”–The Evening Sun, Baltimore MD.
Consider the magnitude of the challenge Hubbard set himself. Conventional musical instruments and even huge symphony orchestras have their limitations. He turned to the technology of the future–computers.
Recent breakthroughs in computer musical instruments offered the needed versatility to match his new musical concepts.
Today, a computer is able to reproduce any natural sound. It can record a single note of a musical instrument and from that reproduce the rest of the instrument.
But better yet, it can take any sound and turn this into a rhythm. A coyote can sing the blues. A horse can tap dance. Liquid can splash out a Strauss waltz. Laser beams can hum a lullaby. You name it and you can get it
Yes, L. Ron Hubbard took the most technologically advanced musical instrument of the time, the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, and used it to recreate the sonic feast of a horse tapdancing! Thank your stars L. Ron Hubbard was one of the first people to get his hands on the $25,000 Fairlight CMI and thus create this epic masterpiece. What follows is just a small sampling of L. Ron Hubbards musical pioneering.
Exhibit B!
Be sure to carefully absorb the rich tonal haunches in this track. The playful neighs of the heroic horse Windsplitter, created through the Fairlight CMI’s digital processor, stir feelings of hope within the listener that, yes, man, beast and machine can coexist peacefully in a world free of Psychlos.
Exhibit C!
L. Ron Hubbard used his Hubbard Electrometer to test if tomatoes felt emotional pain. Seriously, check out this UK Telegraph article.
Ok, so I took a long time to trying to figure out exactly what this album was all about. I looked for hidden answers about Scientology in the ridiculous anti-stereo narration. I then looked for some sort of psychic pattern in the horribly repetitive and shrill synthesized filler “music”. Finally, I sought solace in the suspiciously mundane track titles:
1. Golden Era of Sci Fi
2. Funeral For A Planet
3. March of The Psychlos
4. Teri, The Security Director
5. Jonnie
6. Windsplitter
7. The Mining Song
8. The Drone
9. Mankind Unites
10. Alien Visitors Attack
11. The Banker
12. Declaration of Peace
13. Earth, My Beautiful Home
But I didn’t experience even a single mysterious revelation from on high.
So I listened again. And again. And again. And upon my umpteenth listen, just as Space Jazz began evoke memories of my endless hours spent playing Oregon Trail 2, the answer blasted itself all over my face: L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest practical joker of all time.
His absurdly bogus biography, his hackneyed bibliography, his intensely whacko yet ridiculously profitable Scientology cult had all been part of the greatest monkeyshine ever unleashed on mankind. The man was a hybrid of Andy Kaufman’s unflinching, rabble-rousing comedy with Joseph Smith’s pied-piper espièglerie–now that’s saying something.
The aural assault Space Jazz makes complete sense when you view L. Ron’s life in that light. You could even say this composition was the punchline to a lifetime of pocket-emptying tomfoolery.
So, Xenu bless you, L. Ron Hubbard…you hilarious fucking bastard.
