Posts tagged near death

Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets

“Here Come The Warm Jets” serves as both the title of Eno’s first solo record post-Roxy Music, and the name of the title track which you can boom through the intertubes by clicking the little button above. Eno initially explain the title as a slang term for pissin’ (Piss-Regeln!), though that’s something he later retracted, stating that he actually meant the term to describe the smooth, polished metal timbres he was able to coax out of guitars on the record. I however suspect he changed his story in the foaming yellow wake of the R. Kelly scandal, or perhaps because he didn’t want to offend his mum.

Eno’s work with Roxy Music was notable for many of reasons - it was pioneering synthesizer work, but Eno was a self-described “non-musician”. Also, have you seen his fucking hair at this time? (See below). It’s amazing he was able to get it together to write music when he was clearly an effete warlock busily practicing the black arts of blush application.

Eno is perhaps best known for his later ambient work, though this album is a standalone piece in its own right. Not long after its release, Eno was struck by an automobile, either while riding his bike or while asking the driver if he “partied” while gesturing to his mouth (citation needed) and spent a long time convalescing. As legend has it, Eno asked to have music played in his room, and one of his visitors was happy to oblige, providing him with a record of some renaissance classical music, with only one problem - she didn’t turn it up loud enough before leaving. Largely immobilized, Eno was forced to listen to the music at a level almost inaudible above the simple sounds of the room and the weather outside, which apparently shook loose from within him the idea for his inimitable brand of ambient music. We’re lucky I suppose that he wasn’t forced to listen to polka at maximum volume, as you and I might be wearing lederhosen today and stuck porkin’ German chicks. Which is fun! Their armpits are like blankets.

Another amazing and notable Eno accomplishment (I won’t get into Oblique Strategies, but you should)  is his composition of the Windows Sound you heard every time you booted up Windows 95, a six second opus designed to be heard thousands of times, because fuck - if you remember Windows 95, you were rebooting that bitch with infuriating frequency. Eno’s soothing startup chime probably saved millions of CRT monitors from being tossed through a goddamn window. Ironic that his music for Windows saved windows - more ironic though is that he composed the piece on a Mac. Burn!

Deborah Harry Brian Eno, circa 1974.

Django Reinhardt - Coucou

I’m out of my league here, but I’m going to do my best - which is a phrase I’ve uttered in much more intimate situations than this, believe me. Django Reinhardt is a musician who deserves a much better tribute than I can muster, but he has one hell of a story none the less. Django was Belgian, which if you’re not familiar, is like being French after being hit in the head with a brick. He’s also a goddamn jazz legend, which is news to me because I don’t listen to jazz, mostly because I have a job and I understand that’s frowned upon in jazz circles - but ask any jazz guitarist friends of yours about Django and you’re likely to see their berets nodding up and down as they slowly exhale. Well, slower than normal. Then ask yourself why you’re friends with these fucks who eat all your cheese and have parlayed their major in music history into a job in help desk and yet somehow have this inexplicable air of superiority that you’d probably try to correct with kind words if they weren’t such assholes they weren’t worth the effort. Sorry, sorry. Serenity. As my pastor MF Doom once said, ‘Not to call the whole crowd out. It’s just a few chumps, and you know who you are like a shoutout.’ It’s not the jazz I hate, it’s their fans.

Meanwhile: Django, gypsy MF that he was, lived with his first wife Bella in a carvan that they had either partially constructed or at least decorated with thin colorful film and paper that she used to make flowers that she sold to try to put some bread on the table because she pulled the short straw and married a deadbeat musician. Surely a gypsy fortuneteller in their midst could have seen this coming a mile away, but if there’s anything more flammable than paper and celluloid, it probably hasn’t been named due to immolating immediately after being looked upon. Needless to say, a perhaps somewhat drunken Django knocks over a candle coming home after a show, nearly burns down the whole mess, and is himself burnt horribly in the fire. He makes a somewhat miraculous recovery but loses most of the use of two fingers of his left hand. Now, I know we’re not all mathletes like me, but that’s 50% of the fingers used in guitar playing, unless you’re Richie Havens, in which case give me back my djembe bro.

Django went on to play some goddamn groundbreaking jazz guitar, performing with the use of only two of his fingers, the other two occasionally coming into play while strumming chords or probably just when he wanted to freak the crowd out. He’s like a jazz special Olympian! That’s unduly harsh and I apologize. Jazz musicians are all special.

Van Dyke Parks - Bing Crosby

The career of Van Dyke Parks is a story of near misses, bad decisions, and a whole lot of toiling in obscurity. He began his career as a child actor, most famously as lovable stereotype ‘Little Tommy Manicotti’ on The Honeymooners, but he harbored both a passion and an aptitude for music, beginning as a clarinet player but ultimately mastering many instruments before finishing college. A year out of college, Parks was under to contract to MGM, followed by Warner, and worked quite successfully with several notable artists - during this period, David Crosby actually asked Parks to join the Byrds - an offer Parks flatly refused, possibly because of Crosby’s mustache.

During his time at Warner, Parks came to meet Beach Boy Brian Wilson, he of the falsetto and mild to moderate insanity. At the time, Wilson had a pretty ambitious follow-up to Pet Sounds planned, tentatively named ‘Dumb Angel’. Parks was brought on initially to write lyrics, but the collaboration blossomed and together Wilson and Parks spent 6 months writing and recording material for the project, which was now named ‘SMiLE’, however the project began to come apart at the seams, as did Wilson. Wilson began to experience a number of paranoid delusions, and became obsessed with the idea that Phil Spector was trying to kill him, which was probably true in retrospect. SMiLE is nowadays often referred to as the most famous record never released, and despite an edition of it making its way into record stores in 2003, the project as it was initially intended never saw the light of day.

Parks walked away from a year of working with not much to show, but went on to release ‘Song Cycle’ (1968) a high-concept record of interlinked songs that charted at #21 in Guterman-O’Donnell’s ‘Worst 100 Rock Albums of All Time’, and then the record from which the song you’ll hear today is pulled, ‘Discover America’ (1971). ‘Discover America’ is, oddly, an album of songs all done in a calypso style and serves as a sort of tribute to Trinidad and Tobago, so really it doesn’t make a whole lot of fucking sense, but is very easy on the ears and its complex arrangements and beautiful production predate but predict a lot of the work artists like Sufjan Stevens would use to make girls in vintage tees squeal. I haven’t said much about Bing Crosby, the subject of this song yet, so here you go: he smoked a pipe.