Sometimes you have to 'go the extra mile' to get something good, don't you? Yesterday we didn't do the extra mileage intentionally, just got lost cycling to St John's Wood in 30c temperature, puffing up hills, cursing but finally arriving at the high street where I checked out the Oxfam bookshop and found Electronic Music: A Listener's Guide by Elliott Schwartz - so, yes, it was worth the effort, especially since it only cost £2.49 and I thank the gods of charity shop staff misjudgment who, as you probably know, rarely intervene in order to give us an actual bargain these days. Plus, it includes the original publicity slip!
The joy of such books today is that we can access most of the music mentioned at the tap of a button or, in my case, click of a mouse. Fifty years ago, when it was published, you'd have had to hope a record store stocked some of the albums. The great thing about a vintage book on electronic music is that it will stop, chronologically, in good time, by which I mean before the advent of Techno and what followed. Not that I hate Techno; I actually love some, but the trouble with more recent books on the history of electronic music is that they can end up covering The Chemical Brothers and nobody wants that, do they? (OK, you might, but for me those are wasted pages).
Then there's the design, of course; those wavy lines, that great colour palette and the photo (collage?) that's partly negative, evoking as it does those crazy days when 'heads' wearing headphones conjured up cosmic sounds in an effort, perhaps, to translate a 'trip' they had into sound. Before buying the book LJ and me discussed the joys of headphones in the 70s. She would sneak into her older brother's room to play Dark Side of the Moon etc, whilst I listen to Alan 'Fluff' Freeman's Saturday afternoon Radio One show whilst wearing headphones because the hi-fi was in the living-room where Dad was watching the horse racing. Oh happy days! Were they? Maybe not, but at least music provided sanctuary and thrilling sounds - in stereo!
Alan Freeman never played anything avant-garde, as I recall - no, no - it was all Rock and I loved it. Naturally, what composers and freeks were doing with tape and electronics was beyond my bounds of discovery. Even if such music was stocked in the nearest record shop I would have ignored it in favour of a Mott The Hoople or Led Zeppelin album. The only Rock featured in Schwartz's discography at the back is Sgt Pepper (yeah, you know why) and Jazz-wise, he picks Joe Zawinul's debut, a rather odd choice to my mind, although it does feature some imaginative keyboard effects. If electric keyboards as part of advanced music are the criteria, why no Miles Davis? I quibble. It's a fine book!
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| RTomens, 2023 |
I play my own 'keyboard', of course, in the form of the Olympia typewriter. Yesterday someone posted a funny comment under a photo I took of the machine. He basically asked if I didn't find it 'tedious' to use - ha-ha. Perhaps he only uses the computer to make art, or visual poetry. OK, good luck to him, but I'm doggedly old school, despite having used digital means in the past (and will in the future) to create visual poetry. I can see how the thought of having to keep tapping keys in order to make a piece would be off-putting but as all typewriter users know, it's that very physicality which is part of the pleasure. That and the fact that works created on typewriters are still by far my favourite examples of the artform; the most inspirational. They are mostly historical, partly because the ease of use offered by the computer appeals to more people today. I know of very few who use a typewriter now. As I've said before, they're prone to be cranky, like vintage cars, but also like them, they offer something that contemporary technology cannot match.
That's all for now. Keep your powder dry!
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