Are The Flaming Lips “Indie”? (and Other Cosmological Conundrums)

“…and why does it matter?”

-The Flaming Lips, “In the Morning of the Magicians,” from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Since hair-splitting debates about people’s favourite indie bands (or faux-indie bands—we shall see) tend to result in a lot of broken black-rimmed glasses, I’ll start this diatribe by declaring my adoration for The Flaming Lips. They put on one of the greatest live shows I’ve ever seen, and their 2009 release, Embryonic, is among the best double albums I’ve ever heard—my pick for album of the twenty-first century thus far. To put it another way: I wouldn’t trade Embryonic for Radiohead’s In Rainbows and King of Limbs. Whereas Thom Yorke wrote himself into a corner long ago with his unrelenting melancholy (no need to call the karma police, I’ve been a Radiohead fan since Pablo Honey), Wayne Coyne demonstrates an ability for profound songwriting without being persistently negative or cynical about human existence. Coyne can also be just as elliptical as Yorke, and Steven Drodz as musically experimental as Johnny Greenwood. It’s also safe to say the Lips have more innovations under their belt than Radiohead, who have stood at the top of Mount Acclaim since Ok Computer. Radiohead never wrote a track that runs for 24 hours, or released an album that has to be synchronized between four stereos, or set the Guinness World Record for most concerts in a single day.

But here is where I disagree with so many others about these indie darlings: The Flaming Lips are not indie… at least not in America.

This rant is part of a personal crusade. Like “punk” before it, the label “indie” is often abused. Labels and listeners alike are guilty of ascribing independent status to whatever doesn’t sound like the Biebs, causing anything from an eye-roll to a full-out wretch from yours truly.

Here’s Indie88 calling The Flaming Lips an indie band. The band features on Apple Music Indie. Entertainment Weekly poses them against Arcade Fire in an “indie rock bitchslap.” They show up on websites for Indie Guitar Tabs, and NME listed “Do You Realize?” in its Top 20 Indie Wedding Songs (dig if you will the insufferable couple who Googled “indie songs for our first dance” and laugh at NME calling The Beatles, the Stones and David Bowie “indie”).

A slight problem with all of these assessments: since 1992—that’s nearly a quarter century of the band’s 33-year history—The Flaming Lips have been signed to Warner Bros. Records. Warner Bros. One of the biggest multimedia conglomerates in the world, a brand so omnipresent most children can recognize it (I remember knowing what Warner Bros. was by the time I was six years old). So why can’t writers for major music publications (re: corporate-controlled entities, like NME), fucking figure this out? The Soft Bulletin (1999), the band’s most well received album, placed the WB logo at the top and center of its cover, on purpose, so it looked like a WB movie poster.

Seriously, it’s easy to spot, NME

I want to argue that music writers call The Flaming Lips indie because they’re lazy, or they attach some non-mainstream, anti-institutional, counterhegemonic, or other values to the term “indie.” I’ll be more generous: maybe they see in the Lips an “indie spirit.” I’ve written elsewhere that Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973)—a canonical indie film that is also a Warner Bros. release—is in fact a thematic meditation on independence made by a visionary auteur on an independent film’s budget, so in a way it recuperates “indie” as an aesthetic (as opposed to industrial-economic) concept. Many indie bands do not possess The Flaming Lips’ unique vision or blasé attitude toward writing songs for the radio, so the set that privileges “indie” as being more valuable than “corporate” adopts them. But The Flaming Lips are corporate rockers (when they’re “rockers” at all, since “rock” diminishes their creativity). They just happen to be corporate without sounding like Maroon 5.

Yesterday’s unsigned artists are today’s indie label bands and tomorrow’s Green Days. Likewise, yesterday’s hole-in-the-wall record stores are today’s burgeoning krautrock labels and tomorrow’s commercial spaceship manufacturers. In the capitalist system, big fish eat the little ones, and indie artists, labels, and studios often move towards the center as their circle of influence expands. Walt Disney started off animating in his garage before the label that bears his name became the biggest media conglomerate on the planet—there was a time when Disney was as independent as it gets, and now “Disney” is the summit of global media corporatization. The aforementioned Virgin started as an indie record store and diversified into space flight.

Not exactly a megastore, but I bet it had charm

The Flaming Lips aren’t indie: not now, not then. They were indie, before most above-ground music press and bloggers were paying any attention. It reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness when media outlets that aren’t truly independent celebrate bands as “indie” to appeal to more naïve readers ready to believe “indie” is whatever Apple or a publication owned by Time Inc. defines that way.

The Lips’ creativity is boundless, and corporate backing has given them room to stretch out. Their hypersensory live act burns cash along with your retinas. They released a limited edition EP that came on a USB key embedded in a skull made out of gummy—a stunt so bizarre only a stable band with little to lose financially could pull it off. Meanwhile, they compromise with mainstream commercial culture: they earned wider attention appearing on Beverly Hills, 90210, they stay relevant with the youth market collaborating with Miley Cyrus, and, for maximal exposure and paycheques, they license their songs for commercials that air during the Superbowl.

“But wait,” the affluent middle class desperately clinging to the indie label says, “what about their indie film?” Christmas on Mars (2008) is at best a pseudo-indie film: it has a smaller budget than any film you will see released by the now defunct Warner Independent label (also an oxymoron), but Warner Bros distributed the film on DVD.

“Hey, aren’t The Flaming Lips on Bella Union now?” Yes, in Europe, The Flaming Lips signed with a successful independent label in 2012. Oh my stars and garters.

“Indie” emerged as a mass market label toward the end of the 1990s, when the “alternative” section suddenly became larger than the pop/rock aisle and the word lost its validity. Does it make The Flaming Lips any better or worse if they’re “indie”? I’ll take the experimental corporate rock they’ve released for WB over lacklustre formula bands representing themselves as indie for credibility or to capitalize on a trend.

Demo Doubleshot: Blondie’s “Disco Song”

“Seemed like the real thing…”

-Blondie, “Heart of Glass,” from the album Parallel Lines

Welcome to the first edition of a new feature at Demo Versions examining demos past and present. Today our subject is a band who had written the biggest hit of their career before they’d released their debut album: Blondie.

Back in 2001 when CDs had yet to become mere coasters,* Chrysalis Records rereleased Blondie’s back catalog, complete with new liner notes and bonus tracks on each disc. These tracks include live covers of T.Rex, David Bowie, and Johnny Cash, 12” dance mixes of the band’s hits (you have not heard “Rapture” until you’ve heard the nine-plus minute version), and demoes for big hits and songs that went unreleased.

Among the demoes on Plastic Letters—originally released in February, 1978—is a track called “Once I Had a Love (aka The Disco Song) (1975 Version).” It’s obvious what this song became: anyone who’s ever seen a mirror ball is familiar with the international chart-topper “Heart of Glass.” More surprising is the year: 1975! Blondie were experimenting with disco when the genre was first taking off, before they’d released their 1976 debut. Their self-titled first album was more in keeping with punk and 60’s sounds like surf and girl groups, with a quarter-ounce of reggae sprinkled in the sequence (the irresistible “Man Overboard”). In fact, the 1975 demo sounds closer to laid-back reggae than disco, as it’s missing elements associated with the latter genre (octaves in the bass line, off-beat hi-hat rhythms, John Travolta).

Debbie Harry…er…”experimenting” in the studio

“Heart of Glass” eventually appeared on Blondie’s follow-up to Plastic Letters from September of that same year, Parallel Lines. A second demo for “Heart of Glass” appears on the Parallel Lines rerelease. “Once I Had a Love (aka The Disco Song) (1978 Version)” is unsurprisingly much closer to the smash hit: uptempo, with a propulsive rhythm, including disco bass and hi-hats. At this point the major differences are Harry’s vocal (which is nonetheless stronger than the 1975 version) and the absence of Jimmy Destri’s drum machine and CR-78 synthesizer “trigger pulse,” which lent the track an electronic nuance borrowed from Giorgio Moroder’s production on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” (Clem Burke cited Kraftwerk as an influence on his drum patterns). This demo is also about half a minute shorter than the album version, coming to an abrupt halt where the single has a fadeout reminiscent of a night that never ends. The shots on the demo were more punk, but the fade was perfect more DJs.

Whereas the 1975 version needed to gestate, and the 1978 demo could have made Parallel Lines as filler, the final version as produced by Mike Chapman is a disco and new wave classic that topped the charts in seven countries and propelled Blondie to superstardom. “Heart of Glass” and its demoes exemplify how songs often take refining, and gems might not always be recognized: the band were reluctant to play the song for Chapman when he asked what material they had for him. It’s a good reason to record everything you write: even if you haven’t cut a record yet, you too may have your biggest hit on your hands and not know it.

*Give it ten years and the hipsters will revive compact discs; I recently attended an underground show at Montreal venue Drones where a girl group’s lead singer desperately bleated, “buy our tapes” from the stage. You can thank Grimes for releasing her first album on cassette… I hope you have a #2 pencil handy.

Lo-fi Record Review: Aerosmith, Live! Bootleg

“Gotta get back to the real nitty-gritty…”

-Aerosmith, “Last Child,” from the album Rocks

I was a teenage Aerosmith fan. That’ll be the title for my own personal B-grade horror movie.

As I learned through many a high school argument where I played defense, it’s pretty easy to slag off Aerosmith, whether it be for their corporate sell-out status, their retrograde gender politics, or their lead singer who looks like your cougar aunt. Yet I strive to be a positivist critic and give credit where credit is due.

Corporate comeback-era Aerosmith had a few gems, but by the 1990s it was très gauche to compromise with a major label. But sleazy, drugged-out, ‘70s Aerosmith is a pile of unrefined rocks, and it’s hard to argue with authenticity or bitchin’ riffage.

That was the attitude behind Live! Bootleg, which NME left off its list of the 50 greatest live albums (as with all lists, it’s debatably ordered, and the goofballs kept Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out! from the top ten even though it’s status as the greatest live (rock) record of all time is evident to anyone with ears for hearing and an arse for shaking).

By 1978, the boys from Boston had released five LPs for Columbia Records, including the 1976 platinum seller Rocks. Aerosmith also scored a handful of Top 40 hits, including two Top 10’s. This success was hard-won: Columbia invested $100 on Bruce Springsteen for every dollar they spent on Aerosmith, the two acts releasing their first albums at the same time. Aerosmith overcame the critics’ condescending “Stones-clones” barbs by taking to the road across the US, playing more dates than their competition. As with any major touring act, fans were disseminating bootlegs, and Aerosmith decided to cash in.

“Y’all ready to dance tonight?”

When the time came for a live album that would finance the band’s escalating drug habit and cover for their decreased songwriting output, Aerosmith decided against a retouched, overdubbed release. Live! Bootleg is not a bootleg per se, but a compilation of soundboard quality warts-and-all jams. And I mean jams: the derriere on “Lord of the Thighs” exemplifies how tight Aerosmith could bump-and-grind.

What makes this album is the noise, not in a feedback sense, but in the theatrical sense, which makes each performance unique and dependent on audience engagement and the performers’ inevitable variations. Several tracks were recorded during an Independence Day concert, where the audience threw firecrackers at the stage. Meanwhile, Steven Tyler’s stage banter brims with the unpretentious charm that made Jagger’s irreverence on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! so amusing. “Happy Birthday, Motherfucker!” he declares after set opener “Back in the Saddle,” as the microphones pick up firecracker pops. Another well-timed “motherfucker” saves “Dream On” from tedium, while Tyler switches up the lyrics to “Sweet Emotion” and the band delivers it with enough force to remind listeners why it’s a dad rock radio staple. Elsewhere, Joe Perry reinvents “Walk This Way” with a talk box guitar part. They groove on “Sight for Sore Eyes” and swagger on the album’s should-have-been-a-hit single, “Chip Away the Stone.”

With fan favourite deep cuts like “Mama Kin,” “S.O.S.,” and “Toys in the Attic,” this double-album set is a more comprehensive portrait of the band’s early career than their truncated first Greatest Hits but more concise than the triple-disc Pandora’s Box. In keeping with the poorly-labeled bootleg aesthetic, there’s even a hidden track and it’s a doozy. The set chugs along until “Train Kept a Rollin’,” a Yardbirds song that Aerosmith made their own.

For Aerosmith fans (hang in there, bruh), Live! Bootleg is a must have, but I’d also suggest it to fans of jam bands, classic rock, live albums, and sleaze in general. Five out of five we’re-not-worthies.

Party on, dude.

Fail Fast: On Embracing Amateurism

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”

-Frank Zappa

Legend has it there is a motto among the employees at Facebook’s headquarters: fail fast.

Similarly, business-oriented blogs are sometimes rich with good advice for writers and musicians, and Aaron Baldassare at Falconer offers this gem to aspiring bloggers: don’t wait for inspiration. For those of you struggling to release your music, there is no “perfect” approach.

I have a doctorate in the arts, so you could say I’m a “culturally literate” person with “refined taste.” That also means I suffer from anxiety of influence and hypercritical faculties. It’s a blessing and a curse.

Once, after lecturing on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange*, a student confessed I had quashed his desire to be a filmmaker because he felt he could never compete with the master auteur known for being meticulous to the point of extreme eccentricity. I told the kid, “look, a lot of great directors aren’t Stanley Kubrick.” Martin Scorsese remarked that watching a Kubrick film was like “staring at the summit of a mountain and wondering how anyone ever climbed so high.”

There is a place for perfectionism in the arts, and it is the domain of established artists, the kind of wealthy success stories who live in castles and can wait twelve years between film releases. When you examine Kubrick’s career up close, you’ll see he disowned his first film, Fear and Desire, and considered Spartacus a failure. He also cut his teeth on still photography and short films before turning out his first feature.

Alex goes record shopping while threaded out like Ludwig Van in A Clockwork Orange

Likewise, musicians have roots. George Martin recalls that when The Beatles first came his way, the best they could accomplish was “Love Me Do.” Can we all agree on something? “Love Me Do” kind of sucks. Kind of. It’s catchy, it’s memorable, and if you’re feeling juvenile and desperate for love, it does the trick. On the other hand, any monkey could have written those lyrics (yes, even Kid Rock). “Gob-ble-dee-goop / Deep-gob-ble-dee-goop…” Had The Beatles been a one-hit wonder, “Love Me Do” would be disposable, but disposable songs get airplay. The single hardly launched The Fab Four to international superstardom on its own, as they followed it up with a slew of better songs (“She Loves You” has chord changes that give me frisson). They had also been developing a cult following as a cover band. The Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Mothers of Invention all started out with covers as well. Sometimes what is exceptional about these artists is how far they evolved, and Abbey Road sounds that much better next to Please Please Me (I do dig the latter).

For better and worse, web culture has altered the playing field for aspiring artists. Frankly, most professional careers require that you also put in overtime establishing online “visibility” or “clout” or [insert Six Sigma jargon]. So much for mystique when you’re expected to tweet inanities and post photos of what the band’s eating every day (at least until you’re famous enough to pay a publicist). But then, mystique is also the domain of successful artists who aren’t fighting for exposure. Contemporary artists vying to stay relevant likely sacrifice some time refining their craft to keep up, so perfectionism has to get jettisoned or you’ll end up with a hard-drive full of work-in-progress, or a big heap of nothing-at-all because you were afraid you’d never be Kubrick.

I saw an interesting Youtube video about making an album from a recording engineer that I unfortunately lost. He noted that many musicians want to start off making an album, but suggested instead that artists build a following by releasing a song every day or every other day until they have 100 songs, and when they have ten songs worth taking into the studio, that’s the time to make an album. Take his advice with a grain of salt—I can’t produce that fast (yet), and I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to have 100 songs before you take yourself seriously. The aim is staying productive and attracting an audience for your art; otherwise, you’re singing in the shower.

All that said: embrace your amateurism. So you suck right now. You suck you suck you suck. Kind of (don’t worry about it, I suck even worse than Kid Rock). You’re getting better, but sometimes you’re producing something even more lacklustre than your usual suckage. Keep posting and performing to your audience of two, and value those two people until they’re 200,000. It worked for Nirvana. It would take a much longer post to list all the people – some superstars, others that I know personally – who sucked their way into the public eye (both figuratively and literally cough Ke$ha cough “Right Round” seems pretty telling cough).

You can always foreground your amateurism for yucks and beat your critics to the punch. Frank “undeniable musical genius” Zappa credits himself with “low grade vocals” on Uncle Meat. Some artists turn around and release their early demos as product after establishing themselves. Ween’s The Pod and CAN’s Delay demonstrate how this idea produces varied results. Take a look at any masterpiece, and there are sketches. And centuries later, a maestro’s sketches (or Prince’s Vault) are invaluable.

*Check out the monumental soundtrack by Wendy Carlos, it’s revolutionary in its synthesizer work and nothing short of dazzling. Pro-tip: track down the version released under her name for her versions of The Thieving Magpie, etc.

Let It Bleed: On Mixing in the Red

“LOUD! I wanna hear it LOUD, right between the eyes!!!”

-Kiss, “I Love It Loud”

Trust me: you don’t want my recording advice.

I’m an amateur producer/mixer/sound engineer. My approach to the studio is that of a self-taught autodidact, rather than a certified professional with years of training. My music is lo-fi, my rig consisting of a Macbook Pro, a Zoom H4N condenser mic, and tangles of patch cords.

My brother, on the other hand, was a hotshot radio producer before his promotion, and he taught me a tip about recording and mixing that most producers should know as a guideline…

Green means go. Conversely, red means stop.

Amateur producers sometimes make the mistake of waging their own personal loudness war with the individual tracks in their mix. When the vocals aren’t coming through over the instruments, there is a temptation to crank them up. But then where did the guitars go? Better crank those, mate. How high? All the way to 11, obviously. Wait, what happened to the drums? Slide that fader to the right. Hell, slide all the faders to the right.

Back in my pimple-popping early adolescent years, my friends and I used to brew a concoction called swampwater at the local Taco Bell. Here’s a DIY recipe for swampwater if you’re curious: take one paper cup, press it against any soda fountain nozzle of your choosing, squeeze out a sip or two of syrupy chemical goodness, repeat with every other flavor, and enjoy. If you’re a male you might be afraid of the Mountain Dew for its sperm-killing properties, but it’s essential to the cauldron.

Swampwater is disgusting. Anyone above the age of 14 who tries this at home deserves whatever health defects they get as a result. And anyone who mixes tracks louder and louder deserves a swampy, muddy mix where everything bleeds together.

But sometimes, that’s how you want it. Read on, baby.

An educated technician with a refined ear mixes thusly: as a general principle, when mixing, you want to isolate the element you would like to be the loudest so it will stand out. In popular music, that is often the bass drum, the snare drum, the vocals, or some combination of the three. Then you use that element as a guidepost and mix all the other components around it. This means turning some elements up, but most of the time this means turning them down to give, say, the lead vocal room to breathe.

Of course, mixing music is something you can learn by doing, like a kid mixing soda flavors. As with art in general, the rules are not set in stone (though particular forms, such as haiku or reggaeton, have essential elements), and you can train your ear to get the results you want.

Here is a step-by-step approach for training your ear to mix music that assumes you have already recorded your tracks (setting recording levels is a how-to for another time, but again, green means go, red means stop):

Pick the element you most want to stand out in the mix. It might help to isolate this track. If your track is a dance track, try working with the bass drum. If it’s anything else, try the vocals. If you’re recording ambient avant-garde noisecore inspired by Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, you’re on your own.
Turn that element WAY up (you slide the volume fader to the right, but you knew that already, didn’t you?). Your tortured ears will let you know when it’s too loud. If you really want to get specific, make a note of how many decibels the track is at when it’s too loud.
Now turn it down to an acceptable volume, just before it’s too loud. Make a note of that volume, as well.
Just for kicks, turn the track down to where it’s too quiet.
Now turn the track back up. You’re looking for a happy medium between too loud and not loud enough. Note that setting, and leave the track there.
If you have isolated the track, bring all your other tracks back into the mix, either one at a time or all together.
Adjust the other tracks to appropriate volume levels. You can repeat the process above for each track or just use your ear until you reach the desired results.

The goal is a well-balanced mix where your ears can distinguish each element.

All that said, there are reasons for recording in the red. Sometimes, you want to take your listener to the sonic swamp. Led Zeppelin II is a notoriously muddy album, perhaps unintentionally so, but it gave the world the group’s biggest hit, “Whole Lotta Love,” and kids have been sucking back swampwater and headbanging to this mother for half a century. Both Prince, whose Paisley Park facility was a top of the line studio, and Keith Richards, who believed a good studio consisted of a room and a well-positioned microphone, preferred to bury the needle. Take a listen to The Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue and tell me it’s not among the best album mixes you’ve ever heard. If you’re recording onto a digital recording platform, a little bleed makes your tunes less robotic. More often than not, my music dances on those crimson peaks.

But be warned: mixing in the red means your recording program has to work extra hard compressing your file to export as an MP3, so it probably still won’t turn out as loud as you’re hearing it in GarageBand. You want to flirt with the scarlet arts, but you don’t want to overload the system too much: that will cause distortion (and not the cool kind, but the evil stuff that rips up your track). A DJ will tell you that your speakers should be turned up higher than your output source, as an overloaded stereo will sound tinny and maybe come out as a whisper. So much for tearing the roof off the sucker.

Here’s another little secret for the amateur producers reading this: a lot of people can’t distinguish between a decent amateur recording and a pro recording. Now most rubes are exposed to enough music that they can tell a pro-recording from early Zefangus, but they probably can’t tell the difference between Prince’s Dirty Mind—an album of demoes—from Purple Rain. I’ve had musicians tell me my recordings sound like the real deal; even if they were humoring me, I’ll take it as encouragement.

Anyway, by now you’ve hit record and fiddled with the volume controls: that’s more than most people can do, and you’re on your way to being the next Glyn Johns. You always wanted to be Glyn Johns, didn’t you?

What in Hades is Behind BabyMetal?

“Modern music is people who can’t think signing artists who can’t write songs for people who can’t hear.”

-Frank Zappa

This blog focuses on independent, amateur, and DIY music making, but “independent” is always a relational term, so we can define these concepts against what they are not. And sometimes (every fifteen minutes or so), an act or idea comes along that is so precision-crafted for mass-market appeal—requiring an unfathomably gigantic conglomerate of producers, songwriters, studio musicians, costumers, choreographers, hair and makeup people, set designers, lighting directors, pyro technicians, etc., all orbiting around three teenage girls some sleazy salespeople determined attractive enough to be groomed for dancing around in sexualized outfits—that it stands as a litmus test for corporate manufacturing in the global music industry.

My dear readers, this is BabyMetal.

I hear Rob Zombie’s down with BabyMetal, and since the Internet’s reactionary contingent is prone to label any criticism of any woman anywhere “misogynist,” I’m not calling BabyMetal “lame,” as others have. My three favourite acts are Prince, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones, who all benefited from corporate backing.

Still, BabyMetal is a case study in how the musicians who gain maximum media exposure are “high-concept” acts that salespeople determine and promote as a cash grab. Even the portmanteau “BabyMetal” serves as a band name, a genre, and a marketing idea.

But hey, that’s the beauty of capitalism: the market makes room for everyone, giving paycheques to the ten songwriters who wrote BabyMetal’s album, making superstars out of these girls, and bringing BabyMetal to the masses who want to hear BabyMetal. I wonder if it comforts Rob Zombie to know that the people who stand to profit most off BabyMetal are the vaguely pedophilic salespeople behind BabyMetal, who would associate the 18 year-old SuMetal with the word “baby,” and all the sponsors who can orient commercials around this spectacle so they can hock products to teens.

Is there an indie version of BabyMetal out there—three chubby, acne-ridden girls who wear their own clothes and write their own songs? I wonder if we’ll see them performing onstage for giant crowds while flanked by pillars of flame anytime soon.

DIY Icon: 7 Prince ElectroBeats

“U’ve been gone 17 days, 17 long nights…”

-Prince, “17 Days”

I’ve already written about His Royal Badness on this blog because Prince is a DIY champion (and pretty much my musical idol). Whereas he brought in at least a few collaborators on every album I can think of subsequent to his one-man-band debut, only a handful of others (Todd Rundgren, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder come to mind) took such a solitary, comprehensive approach to pop music production.

This article isn’t about Prince the shredder or the bass slapper, the jazz pianist or the unparalleled master of the vocal freakout. Nope, it’s about the key DIY element to his output: his drum programming.

The LinnDrum Roger Linn developed for Linn Electronics is a drum machine that, unlike previous beatmakers, sampled live drums for a rich, punchy sound. The Linn LM-1, its most famous incarnation, launched in 1982, the year of my birth. This model allowed for quantising and accenting; if I’m not mistaken, some of the percussion sounds were even tunable. In other words, the LM-1 was a revolutionary instrument, far surpassing earlier machines (Sly and the Family Stone’s groundbreaking 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On is the first instance I know of where a drum machine—sounding a lot like an organ preset—was put to use on record, though some speculate the Sly-produced act Little Sister did it first; another notable use before the LinnDrum came along is Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” a #1 hit in 8 countries which opens with programmed drums). During the 1980s, the LinnDrum was second only to the Roland 808 in popularity, but not for lack of quality: on the contrary, the LM-1 came with a $5,500 price tag, and 808s were cheaper (I always thought hip-hoppers like Big Boi and Chuck D were rapping about an area code when they referenced the 808; now I know better).*

Prince busting up Club Muzique in Montreal with his beat sampler after 3AM, one month to the day before he died; the set ended on a reprised “Forever in My Life”

Prince was the Hendrix of electronic drums, a creative high water mark that left most of his predecessors sounding dated and unimaginative. The LM-1 was his weapon of choice (Prince used others, as well): he detuned it, flanged it, ran it backwards, syncopated with it, paired it with real drums—even if he weren’t a multi-hyphenate musical prodigy, his drum sound alone would qualify as a personal stamp on music history. Electro and EDM musicians owe Prince a huge debt of gratitude—his “Minneapolis Sound” contributed more to electronic music than most other musicians can claim (Kraftwerk and Moroder being earlier but less prolific artists, and that might be the only time you’ll read “Moroder” and “less prolific” in the same sentence). It’s possible the LM-1 had an enabling effect on his massive output: to paraphrase his 1980s engineer Susan Rogers, most albums take 700-800 hours, whereas they once cut an album in a week.

Here are a few Prince beats worth studying (I’ll only link to one, to avoid a lawsuit when Prince’s people get Paisley Park back in order)…

1999: If Giorgio Moroder’s production on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” is ground zero for EDM, Prince’s synth-heavy and beat-driven double album 1999 is the genre’s rosetta stone. The title track’s instantly recognizable beat is simple: kicks on the one and the three opening a wide pocket for a multilayered groove, propulsive eighth-notes on the hi-hat, and, eventually, snare on the two and four, plus a fizzy crash cymbal effect leading nicely into “Little Red Corvette,” the best one-two punch in his catalog. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” Prince tells the listener in a pitch-adjusted baritone at the beginning of the track, but once the tom assault gets going, you doubt he was telling the truth. Thump… thump… thump… thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump-a thump… thump… thump…

Irresistible Bitch: On the 1983 B-side to “1999,” Prince demonstrates that electronic beats should not be thought of as a poor man’s substitute to live drums, but as a unique new sound (in fact, The Revolution’s drummer, Bobby Z., feared the drum machine would replace him in concert, but instead Prince introduced him to drum pads). He accomplishes this not by replacing the live drums, but by juxtaposing programmed beats and fills with analog percussion for a syncopated dance floor freakout. This B-side became a nightclub favourite.

Erotic City: Two words—backwards snare. As if that weren’t creative enough, Prince pairs the snare with a ringing clap so the backwards echo passes itself off to a forward-moving echo. Later, the LM-1’s tom fills run through a flanger pedal. Prince adds a bottom layer with the bass and kick playing in sync for a monster groove, over which he provides pitch-adjusted vocals and some of his raciest lyrics in this marvelous B-side production. Recorded in 1984, it’s little wonder drum machines exploded in the black music scene the following year. A serious contender for my favourite Prince track, even George Clinton, who inspired “Erotic City” after Prince took in a P-Funk concert, couldn’t quite do it justice.

Raspberry Beret: This beat is so simple it’s almost boring, but for one tiny tweak that makes all the difference. Kick on the one and three, snare on the two and four, another two bar Prince beat… except on the second beat of the first bar, Prince adds a flange effect that immediately distinguishes this song from everything else on the radio as a Prince jam. Why? Because Prince had already used a flanged beat in his biggest hit, “When Doves Cry.” This is a lesson in giving your music authorial style: find a few production tricks and use them often enough to give your tunes a trademark sound. As Alfred Hitchcock quipped, “style is self-plagiarism.”

Sign o’ the Times – tonal, almost melodic, the foundation of the mostly drum & bass opener that kicked off his most acclaimed album.

Bob George: Similar to “Housequake” in its kick drum intensity, Prince doubles up on the bottom end by mimicking the kick’s rhythm with synth bass. This banger from The Black Album has a wicked heavy beat a few years ahead of gangsta rap.

777-9311: One of Prince’s most notorious beats came from the second album he produced for The Time. Drum aficionados (at least those willing to venture beyond John Bonham and Keith Moon) have described “777-9311” as one of the most difficult beats out there. John Blackwell—the most impressive drummer I’ve ever seen live—recalled how the intricate beat saved his ass during an audition for the Purple One. After a cursory jam that Prince cut short, Blackwell started into the “777-9311” rhythm while Prince was exiting the room, recalling that Prince’s eyes bugged out and he came back to play some more. Blackwell landed the gig, stating that a lot of drummers can’t play the hi-hat part, and his being left-handed was the only thing that allowed him to nail it. While the kick’s rhythm is nuanced, the accelerating hi-hat pattern, today found in everything from dubstep to new country, is a quarter century ahead of its time. “777-9311” also features what Prince considered a signature bass line and one of his best early-era guitar solos—it’s probably safe to say Prince liked this track more than “Kiss.” The Time’s Jesse Johnson claims the beat was an LM-1 preset programmed by Tower of Power’s drummer, but since he wasn’t in the studio when Prince laid the track, the jury is still out.

Honourable mentions: “Dance On.” This metalfunk rocker from the 1988 album Lovesexy uses live drums (I’m guessing Sheila E. was on the stool), but the syncopation is so incredible it’s worth mentioning here. Ditto for Michael B.’s opening flourishes on “Shhh,” from 1994’s The Gold Experience.

Prince once sang, “I’d rather believe that there’s hope for a kid, and if he imitates the best, I guess that’s what I’ll try to be.” Kids just might be imitating u 4ever, Prince.

*DIY hack: you can download a Linn-inspired iPad app for $2.99.

Simple Subtraction: Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies, and Musical Creativity

The EMS Synthi AKS Synthesizer used by Bowie and Eno on Low

“Having no silence in music is like having no black or white in a painting.” – Brian Eno

To paraphrase David Bowie, if you want a crash course in The Brian Eno School of Music Production, unpack your synthesizer and throw away the manual.

Eno’s years as the synth player on Roxy Music’s early 1970s albums seem like a career footnote: since then, he’s become a solo artist and a producer known for collaborations with Robert Fripp, David Byrne and the Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, U2, Coldplay, and Paul Simon, among others. His contributions to ambient music—both in theory and practice—cannot be overstated, and he is also responsible for “The Microsoft Sound,” having been contracted to provide the Windows 95 operating system with its trademark beeps and boops.

By now, Bowie’s collaboration with Eno on the Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes, and Lodger) is regarded as a turning point in popular music, where art rock, krautrock, and the genre that is Bowie unto himself converged with New Wave. On the first of these albums, Low, Bowie demonstrated an aesthetic minimalism that departed from the theatrics and anthemic bombast he often deployed.

Eno has always been an impresario rather than a virtuoso, a luminary who draws creative invention from those with whom he works. He’s not known for fiery chops, but for studio experimentation and face-melting tones. Bowie particularly enjoyed Eno’s “oblique strategies” cards, which could be consulted at random for advice on advancing the creative process and overcoming blocks.* So if you were stuck in the studio, you could pick up a card reading “change instrument roles,” “what would your best friend do?” “be dirty,” or, more vaguely, “into the impossible.”

Among my favourite of Eno’s oblique strategies is “simple subtraction.” You can hear this principle in the minimalism at work in much of Eno’s music. For example, “Baby’s On Fire” is a two-chord mini-epic with no chorus and enough room for a screaming three-minute guitar solo by Fripp:

“Simple subtraction” has many practical applications that advance the creative process. Is your mix too muddy? Reduce some of the reverb or cut instruments in the arrangement that merely reinforce certain frequencies (or sonic “colours”). Do your sections all sound the same? Introduce a breakdown by stripping the instruments and leaving the beat going. Ending lacks impact? Try ending in mid-phrase. Too much filler to the detriment of your album’s continuity? Critics seldom complain about albums being too short, but overlong albums get boring. Trim the fat.

Don’t know where to go next? Simple subtraction. It’s often the solution to whatever isn’t working. Cut and paste the idea that won’t fit into a new recording for later development. Honestly, I had more to say on the subject, but my train of thought was interrupted and I’m just going to stop.

*DIY Hack: You can purchase a deck of oblique strategies cards or make your own by copying the ones found on The Oblique Strategies Website onto cue cards: http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/Ed1.html

Lo-fi Record Review: Prince, Dirty Mind

Katrina Muir’s portrait of the Purple One’s nastiest organ

“Where I come from, we don’t give a damn, we do whatever we please” –Prince, “Uptown,” Dirty Mind

Of all the handles people use to try and comprehend Prince, indie is seldom among them, although there were times in his career where he was defiantly independent. And who would dare call the multitalented virtuoso an amateur?

By 1980, Prince had released two albums and topped the R&B chart, plus written a single that would later win a Grammy and be a number one US dance and R&B hit by another artist. That year, he turned 22.

In Prince’s pre-superstar years, his management and Warner Bros. invested money and faith in him as an artist, giving His Royal Badness carte blanche to produce his own albums. For his third LP, Dirty Mind, Prince installed a studio in his house to record demos. Then he released the demos.

On Dirty Mind, Prince combines popular genres into a new aesthetic that would be dubbed the Minneapolis Sound (or MPLSound if you speak Prince) – the same vernacular permeating Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk.” Hair-splitters credit the album with whipping up the stripped-down punk-funk movement – its pop sensibility is as strong as its sexual sentimentality. A rundown of the tracks:

Dirty Mind: “In my Daddy’s car… it’s you I really wanna drive.” Danceable and written in one night. Pro tip – if you meet a woman who will duet with you on this, hold onto her. When You Were Mine: A new wave fan favourite, and a compellingly original story song about polyamorous love gone wrong. Do It All Night: Slick disco, minimally arranged. Gotta Broken Heart Again: A soul ballad that mixes things up, if not exactly hit material. Uptown: Hit material. Radios are probably afraid because the production and the lyrics are too radical. But get a load of…Head: Matt Fink, with the mesmerizing synth solo. Lisa with the co-leads. Those lyrics. Creme de la creme. Sister: Michael Jackson never wrote a song with a lyric like “incest is everything it’s said to be.” Party Up: Oh, right… and the songs flow together for a house party vibe so the groove never stops.

Since Prince’s people tend to sue if you post anything unsanctioned, I’m linking to his officially released 1982 concert at the Capitol Theatre, where his band slays on the album’s highlights and Prince gets really rather intimate with his guitar:

Prince went on to make stronger albums, but if he burned out soon after this one, the album would be regarded as a minor classic. Eventually renouncing his most explicit lyrics, Dirty Mind is a stark portrait of Prince at an early point in his artistic career, with several essential songs.

If you’re a fan of synthpop, new wave, or funk and you haven’t heard Dirty Mind, get to school.

Amateur Recording with GarageBand

Tom Waits playing the guitar you threw away in concert

“I know it’s only rock ‘n roll but I like it” – Mick Jagger, “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll,” It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll

A six-string aficionado friend and I were discussing a coffee table book that provides images and specs of famous guitars played by well-regarded shredders. “Of course,” he told me, “a lot of these guys played on pieces of junk they’d worked in over the years.” I thought of Prince, buying a knock-off (if well-built) telecaster in the late 1970s and wailing out the “Let’s Go Crazy” riff on it for 35 years.

This is one reason I’m content recording with GarageBand for now. When people ask what instruments and the kind of music I play, “GarageBand” becomes my shorthand answer. I took piano lessons as an adolescent and played bass in high school bands, but discovering GarageBand reignited my interests in music composition and recording. Whereas I was frustrated as a teenager because four-tracks were unaffordable on McDonald’s wages, now I record and mix beats on a portable multitrack studio at my favourite café. The interface is accessible and the program’s capabilities offer the amateur musician/producer a challenging learning curve.

Moreover, the platform influences the style of music I create. GarageBand’s collection of software instruments and effects plug-ins inflects my tracks with a robotic digital sound, allowing for unique interpretations of traditional genres (examples coming soon). The ease with which it creates loops is ideal for danceable grooves and has given me an appreciation for EDM.

Someday I may be greedy for plug-ins, and in the meantime, audiophiles may scoff, but there will always be better equipment with which to keep up. If some of the recording artists from Motown’s 1960s line-up stepped through a time warp and started releasing singles cut in a basement on a four-track today, would any of those classic hits chart? Probably not, with corporations dominating the music industry like they do* and pumping hits out of state of the art studios and grooves pinched from Marvin Gaye’s back catalogue. Even Motown retired the Snakepit.

Ditto for why my Korg R3 synthesizer will be a floppy-keyed friend for life.

*Feel free to quibble that the Internet has shaken corporate control of the music industry and opened new avenues for independent music distribution. My counterargument is Taylor Swift.