Wax on Wax #6: Genre Soup
Today we're exploring four records who owe as much to the genres they throw out the window as the ones they threw into the mix. We'll explore how the internet produced its first masterpiece, how cowboys and hippies found a place out west to settle down together, and how David Bowie went to Philly to start his journey as the plastic-soul god we know him as today. These are four albums where the artists stood at a crossroads, between two worlds, and charted a new path forward on their own. As always, sound off in the comments below and don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with others who might be interested in this blog.
The internet users who shape the culture of the internet as we know it (memes, twitter, Instagram, etc.) were born post 9/11. They've grown up in a post-Napster world where every single piece of music you could ever want to listen to is sitting on a device that you carry around in your pocket 24/7. I feel like I'm burying the lede with that statement; people today can access any piece of information from all of recorded history in an instant thanks to smartphones. The average person has more knowledge contained in their pockets than entire civilizations of the past. Floral Shoppe, the vanguard of vaporwave from 2011, is the first piece of music that was created that is almost post-genre. The music is a mix of hypnagogic, 80s nostalgia, slowed down to a crawl, with dreamy delays and reverb mixed into perfection. It's an album that may or may not ever see widespread physical release because of it's wild sample usage, and its album cover is nearly as iconic as the music contained within. It's the first album released that saw its success derived primarily via memes. Floral Shoppe is an album that could only exist in a time when genre has stopped being critical. Like how cultures in the far off future may all be bred together into one homogenous race, so too will various musical styles become obsolete and indistinguishable from each other. Floral Shoppe is humans' last best attempt at making the kind of genius music that artificial intelligence will someday churn out regularly and with great artistic flourish. If you can't beat em, join em. Right?
Macintosh Plus, the Portland, Oregon artist also known as Vektroid released Floral Shoppe early on in their career and from all indications have spent considerable effort trying to distance themselves from this Frankenstein Monster they've created. Vaporwave, like any genre, is cool for everyone involved until the labels start getting slapped on, and analysis (like this) begins. It's easy to develop music without expectation or scrutiny, but as soon as those eyes become fixed on you, the thrill can quickly become burdensome. Vaporwave exploded in 2011 with the release of Floral Shoppe, and now the genre has become the unofficial background tapestry of the internet. Cheesy 90s fonts, and late 80s computers, dotted with palm trees and neon produce the kind of early 90s hive mind sense memory that's become subconsciously agreed upon as nostalgia. When I listen to vaporwave, especially the YouTube playlist edits combined with old 80s/90s commercials, it gives me the kind of warm fuzzy feeling that I get when I'm homesick. Everyone longs for the time of their youth because not only did it feel simpler, it was simpler. Everything was taken care of for you, the worst thing you had to worry about was how many times you could see your friends that week or what music you could get your hands on. It's no surprise that artists are using pallets made of colors from that era in our lives to draw us in and access parts of our brain that have memories and associations tucked away. It's a brilliant melding of music and psychology that most genres can't begin to approach with this much intention. In the future, we'll see much more music that uses associations and sense memory like another instrument in the toolbox.
The muzak contained on this album is reminiscent of "The K-Mart Tapes," which is a collection of cassette tapes recently uncovered of official music played at K-Mart stores in the late 80s and early 90s. The tapes, containing some of the blandest pieces of music composed by some of the top session players of their day, is the kind of easy listening right at home in the cereal aisle at 1 am on a Wednesday, interspersed with chipper self-promoting corporate commercials. It's these two things that define vaporwave: muzak and commercialization. Somehow greed and self-obsession are perfectly encapsulated by this Stepford Wives-Esque lounge trash. Its music right at home in the final era before thinking about politics and global catastrophe became a minute by minute task of every day. It's oddly depressing in a way that is so listenable, and it's quaint to think back on an era when society was so naive. Floral Shoppe takes the tones and timbres of this era and presents them in a way that accentuates how ridiculous we all were to think this would never all come crumbling down on our heads. The dial-up tone was the harbinger of doom, and once it got its hooks in us, we never had a chance.
Vektroid is hard at work on the next iteration of Macintosh Plus and a proper follow up to Floral Shoppe, but I wouldn't expect anything resembling this album on its way. From the initial single "Sick & Panic" released last year, it is clear that Macintosh Plus is heading into wild new territory. The best way I could describe the single is if a computer virus tried to play free jazz, while it was on fire. It's one of the most remarkable pieces of music I've ever heard for the very reason that it's asking us what a "song" even is at this point. How many more verse/chorus/verses do we need, isn't it time to branch out and achieve the cyberpunk future we've promised ourselves? Floral Shoppe initially set people's brains on fire because it dared to slow down a song by 70%, glitch it out and create something so obviously timeless. Vektroid is working on something just as revolutionary with this follow-up that has the potential to turn the music world on its head just like Floral Shoppe did when it was released. Like it or not, this is what the kids ten years ago were into, so get with the times old-timer. It doesn't make a ton of sense, and it's not asking for your permission to be hard to understand. Floral Shoppe can be a confusing and confounding listen, but once you give in to its charms, it is hard to pull yourself out of its draw. Vaporwave is the punk rock of its time. It is non-binary, been forced underground due it's liberal and unsanctioned sample usage, and it's taking hallmarks of conformity and rebranding them as rebellious cornerstones of this new wild west we call the internet. If you think Floral Shoppe is strange, go listen to "Sick & Panic" so you can hear what is coming next. I promise that much like Floral Shoppe - you've never heard anything like it.
Today as I edit this piece I wrote a week ago, Elon Musk has announced that his revolutionary brain to computer interface project Neurolink has a new motto: If you can't beat em, join em. Indeed Elon. It's just starting to get interesting.
2020 is the year I get into Michael Nesmith. The last album of his that I explored was And The Hits Keep On Coming earlier this year which featured only him and his fantastic pedal steel player Red Rhodes. It's a sparse collection of beautiful country songs that serves as a bit of an epilogue to his work with The First National Band. For those of you who are giving that a double-take, yes Micheal Nesmith of mega pop band The Monkees. After the insane success of The Monkees, Nesmith hooked up with The Flying Burrito Brothers and others in the burgeoning country-rock scene of the late 60s. Most of those in the scene reacted much the same as you probably are if you're prior knowledge of Nesmith is from his Monkees fame alone. But Nesmith, armed with killer country tunes, a devastating yodel, and a set of murderously cool Nudie suits, fit into the scene like a glove. He played around LA clubs in the late 60s and successfully allowed him to revamp his image into a country-western artist. The great thing about Magnetic South is that it's a band that is playing country music with a rock sensibility. It's the perfect blend of the two styles and is yet another lost classic from this genre that slots right into your record collection right in between Burrito Deluxe and Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
The country-rock coming out of LA in the 1960s was the pinnacle of the genre. There is a sense of excitement and danger to those records; listening to them feels like you're about to head to a party in Topanga or Joshua Tree with the top down in a red Cadillac. It's no surprise to me that as soon as you give these country guys some weed and they loosen up a bit, the records they make become classics. The musicians that played country music in the 60s were absolute virtuosos, but they were conforming to relatively rigid studio work on albums that were more or less bland at times. Not only does rock's reclamation of country feel more loose and fun, but it feels more authentic too. There are barn stomping songs on Magnetic South with absolutely wild and electric playing. But there are also more traditional songs like "The One Rose (That's Left in My Heart) that feel more akin to Gene Autry or Marty Stuart and country's more western roots. That song, in particular, feels like a much more fleshed out, polished version of the song "Wallflower," a fantastic Dylan outtake from around this same time.
At the risk of getting a bit inside baseball, and potentially trodding on some unspoken rules of the music industry, I'm going to shed a bit of light on one experience I had involving Michael Nesmith. Around the summer of 2018, I was a runner at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, and my duties were relegated mainly to getting food for artists, setting up microphones, doing grunt work, and generally being available for anything that anyone may need in the studio. Capitol is one of the last remaining AAA recording studios on Earth, with it's only remaining rivals being Electric Lady in New York City, Abbey Road in England, and a few others. Very few recording studios left offer the kind of experience you can find at Capitol, and because of that, Capitol attracts some of the most famous artists in the world to come work there. Dwight Yoakum was a regular at the studio and had finished several albums there before and during my time. He was extremely passionate in the studio, demanded a lot from us, and his team, and as a result, achieved great things in the studio. The guy is a legend like few others in the industry, and his country accolades are hard to match. One day, there was a live session booked to broadcast out live to satellite radio for Dwight, and I'd heard that Michael Nesmith was coming in. I was a bit flustered at the thought because literally, the only things I knew about him were that he was in The Monkees and that he had helped produce one of my favorite movies of all time, the 80s punk rock masterpiece Repo Man by Alex Cox. At the time, I thought maybe Yoakum was branching out into other kinds of music or who knows what, until I heard them play together. Nesmith and Yoakum sounded incredible together and ran through a list of songs in both of their repertoires, including several country-fried Monkees covers. It was a unique, fun group to be witness to, and Nesmith became quite the enigma to me.
Despite such a unique experience, I hadn't gotten around to these post-Monkees Nesmith albums until this year. I imagine soon I'll feature a few more of the First National Band albums, as my friends who help me compile these records insist that the later ones are equally incredible. The original late 60s country-rock greats are few and far between these days, and it's hard to believe more of them didn't flame out in a blaze of glory as Grahm Parsons did. What you learn listening to Magnetic South and others like it is that there was this period in history when two wildly divergent styles were forced together at the end of the continent for all our benefit. The same things that attracted the hippies to California were what attracted the cowboys. Wide, open spaces, and the promise of freedom to explore music and everything in between in beautiful country. There is something incredible about California, in that, you can stand on the beach and know that you're at the edge of the world. You can put your back against the ocean, grab a guitar, and live fulfilled in the knowledge that you've made it somewhere so few have reached in this life. This album may be called Magnetic South, but listening to it makes me feel magnetic west. God, I miss California.
When I was in high school, I was in various bands and groups that would rehearse out of my garage. At the time, I was ardently against any kind of drug use but was convinced that the only way to create interesting music was to get myself into a trance-like, zen state while playing. The band room quickly became equipped with black lights, strobes, laser lights, and I let anyone who wanted to come and paint on the walls of the garage (bless my parent's hearts). Playing music in this dark room, with lights flashing on and off, made communicating visually with the other band members difficult. But we found that what we lost in sightlines, we gained tenfold in pure synchronized musicianship. We felt we could be ourselves in the dark, we could explore things musically without each others' judging gaze. The only language needed was sound, and when one sound was proffered, another was offered up in response. It obviously led to magnificently fun jam sessions, and our band became known amongst our high school as a band who aren't necessarily "must-see" live but were experienced best during these weird rehearsals. We let loose, let cover songs become something new, and let our own music become something unrecognizable entirely at times. When I read that Spirit of Eden, the 1988 masterpiece by post-rock pioneers Talk Talk, was recorded in much the same way - I knew this record was going to be on to something great.
The recording of Spirit of Eden took place over six or so months after the band had been given a blank check and creative carte-blanche by their label EMI. This kind of thing is unheard of in the music industry, and strings are almost built into every facet of life for working bands. As part of this extraordinary agreement with EMI, Talk Talk barred any label A&R, executives, or any other liaisons from entering the recording studio. The band blacked out the lights in the recording studio and seemingly improvised the contents of the entire album. Various session musicians were brought in to record parts entirely in the dark, with maybe a strobe light as their only source of illumination. What results is the closest thing I have heard to brush strokes on canvas, or the aural representation of flying through the air. There is absolute weightlessness to these songs, aided in large part by the spacious quality of the recordings and from how every song seems to flow right into the next. At no point in Spirit of Eden would you be able to tell when one song ends, and another begins without looking at Spotify or the needle on your turntable. It's an incredibly ethereal sound, reminiscent of later period Radiohead but with much less pretense.
It's a bizarre change of pace for a band who only a few years before was seen as a kind of throwaway Duran Duran clone, playing new wave synth-pop like everyone else in the early 80s. Talk Talk removed every ounce of their former selves for Spirit of Eden and emerged as something entirely different, and wholly progressive musically. It's what you'd hope for from a band who were allowed to do whatever they wanted in the studio; just make art and be as creative as possible. Record labels are understandably hung up on marketing and how to sell music, as their jobs depend on it, and I wouldn't have wanted to be the EMI exec who gave Talk Talk the go-ahead to record this album. At no point is there a song that could even be edited into a single. Every song just flows from one musical tone poem to the next, from beginning to end. This album, which should come as a surprise to no one, led to legal disputes between the band and EMI. No doubt, the label had some interest in recouping their costs from an album that would prove to be impossible to sell. Ironically they helped produce an absolutely timeless sounding recording that will outlive almost all of the commercial drivel from the time they'd hoped this would have been. Short term profits versus long term success are the bane of every creative's existence, and team short term profits lost this round soundly.
Spirit of Eden is emotional, ambient, and extremely musical. It's an album of absolutely inspired musicianship on an almost subconscious level. It is miles and miles apart from their early synth-pop beginnings which it should be noted are so different that it almost feels unfair to compare them to each other. If you played Talk Talk's first album and then followed it up with Spirit of Eden, I'd guess every band on Earth before I arrived back at Talk Talk. It's a testament to the growth that can happen when artists are untethered from whichever direction the winds are blowing that particular day, and instead just make music. Being able to freely create is almost looked at as a luxury in musician circles, which is so ironic because it's precisely what fans of music are trying to pay us to do in the first place. Everything is so focused on the hustle, and which hat as musicians we're responsible for wearing that particular day. Do I have to promote my music? Should I book a gig? Wait we can't go outside, how do I make a Zoom video with my band? How many t-shirts have we made? How much does it cost to get our album pressed to vinyl? What do I do with these 500 CDs we haven't sold? Where are we rehearsing tonight? All of these questions used to be answered by either labels or managers. Now musicians themselves, who are not famous for their organization or business acumen, are required to take care of all of these issues on top of trying to be creative. Almost always last on the list of questions for the modern musician in 2020 is, "should I create music today?" It's an unfair, but necessary way of life for all working musicians, and the quicker you learn to juggle, the better off you'll be. All the more reason to celebrate documents like Spirit of Eden for the minor miracles that they are. As hard as it is as a working musician these days, it's now all the more important to create art first and foremost and commerce second. So turn the lights off, hide your phone, and just play.
I defy anyone who can put on Young Americans and not immediately start grooving to that title track. Young Americans was the first Bowie album I was exposed to when I was in high school by my girlfriend at the time. I remember seeing him on the cover looking back, and he had an undeniably infectious gaze, and his lightning red hair glowing behind him was just too good to be true. I remember thinking at the time that the only reason my girlfriend cared about Bowie was that she was probably in love with him, another celebrity teen crush to add to the pile of those I'd have to live up to. But then she pressed play, and my whole world changed. I've been an absolute diehard Bowie fan ever since, and I would still say that to this day Young Americans is the album of his I revisit the most often. It's just dripping with Philly soul and has some of Bowie's most passionate vocal performances. It's an album that features Bowie at one of his most defining musical crossroads: the end of glam and the beginning of blue-eyed soul. Somehow anytime Bowie hit one of these junctures in his career, he always chose the right path for the time. He anticipated - more likely established - musical trends, and his genius at this is no better showcased than on Young Americans.
Bowie took time off of touring in 1974 during his wild and over the top stage show for Diamond Dogs to go to Philidelphia and completely revamp his image and sound. He'd already killed off Ziggy, his status as an absolute god-like rockstar was set in stone, and his next move was highly anticipated. No one expected him to morph mid-tour, but after Philidelphia Bowie remerged with a sound that would develop for years to come. There are inklings of soul creeping in on Diamond Dogs like the blaxploitation-Esque funk of "1984," but he never again got as down in the funky dirt as he did on Young Americans. Luther Vandross famously came in during record production to help arrange vocal parts, and according to producer Tony Visconti, the album was 90% performed live in the studio. There is indisputable energy to these songs, and I think you can attribute that to the decision to record so much of the album as if Bowie were on stage at a local disco. It's lost on a lot of music fans how incredibly powerful Bowie's voice was in it's prime, and that much is showcased all over this album.Young Americans was Bowie, being Bowie, lost in the groove. No need to name any characters or present this with any concept like his albums before and after. The line he straddled between rock and soul was never more pronounced than this one, and his next album Station to Station was a complete melding of the two to the absolute fullest extent.
The Spiders From Mars may be Bowie's most famous band, but the group he puts together here would more or less stay with him and become his core group of sidemen into the 1980s. Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick add so much to Bowie's sound from this point forward and are invaluable on Young Americans. Producer Tony Visconti would be apart of nearly every Bowie triumph, and he should be recognized as the man behind the man in every sense. There was another very high profile guest appearance on Bowie's cover of "Across The Universe:" the writer of that particular song, and drunken madman, John Lennon. For my money, this version of the song is absolutely superior in every way, and Lennon's contribution to backing vocals is a complete emotional exorcism. You can hear the two of them letting loose and leaving everything on the table to showcase Lennon's song in the way it probably should have been all along. Lennon also contributes the famous and integral response vocal on "Fame," another monster of a funk track. Another crucial element to the album is the fantastic backing vocals led by Robin Clark, who had known Luther Vandross for years and was married to Carlos Alomar. At times her backing vocals are like a soft bed for Bowie's voice to rest its head-on, and other times she just erupts into powerhouse gospel-like performances. There is nothing like hearing Bowie's high falsetto and smooth vibrato over this incredible assembly of sounds.
There aren't enough good things to say about this album, not to mention all the things Bowie had to say himself. No song better encapsulates Bowie's thoughts on the trappings that would nearly do him in than in "Fame." Life through the lens of a limousine, late nights, drugs, sex, and everything in between. "Fame" is like a taste of what's to come with Station to Station, an album Bowie recorded under such heavy cocaine usage that he swears he doesn't remember a single moment of recording it. Young Americans began the period of his diet consisting entirely of milk, jalapeno peppers, and cocaine. It's a miracle that this wasn't his final album, and thank the rock gods it wasn't. Without Young Americans you don't get Station to Station, The Berlin Trilogy, certainly Lets Dance and probably not even Blackstar. This is the album where Bowie accepted black dance music as the primary driver of his sound. Everything he created was singular and unique, but everything he did after this album had the soul throughline up until the very end. His songs were too fun to dance to, and his voice was too pretty to keep him off Soul Train forever. Everything we love about the later period of his career began right here with Young Americans, much in the same way my love for his music did too.
Check in next week, we’ll be covering The Music Behind The Mustache.
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