Peter Gabriel - San Jacinto

This is about Peter Gabriel, and specifically about San Jacinto, but I have a brief story that might show what I mean more than just telling you would. When I was just barely 20 years old I saw the Jerry Garcia Band do a show at Stony Brook University. It was the winter of 1980, two weeks after my birthday. It was so long ago that I don’t really remember all that many details, but I totally remember the show. Things I don’t remember? Well, how I got to the show is one them. I suppose I took the Long Island Railroad out to the University. No recollection. Cold northeastern middle-of-February winter, with blowing icy winds? Probably, but not at all sure. I remember being cozy and warm inside the gym, but how did I manage to get those fourth row seats? No idea. I remember being there with my friend Larry from high school, who I haven’t seen in decades now. 

It was over 30 years ago, but I remember it as if it happened last Monday. We were up close, center section, on the aisle, right in front of where Jerry would play. But right across the aisle there was this exceedingly nervous guy. I love the Grateful Dead, but the guy across from me was practically in ecstasy. At the seats, at the atmosphere, at the anticipation of seeing Garcia play. But, almost like a mantra, all he could say to us, the people he came with, anyone who would listen, was that he hoped Jerry would play Sugaree. We had gotten there early, and he must have said a hundred times that he hoped Jerry would play Sugaree. Over and over, again and again, Sugaree. Must’ve been an hour, easy. By that time we *all* hoped he would play Sugaree. Because that was what the guy across the aisle came for, lived for, and probably even heard in his head all the time. It seemed like that one song drove him through his life, and I don’t at all mean that in any kind of bad way. For whatever reason, that song gave him meaning, filled him up, made him happy. And then the lights dimmed, and the crowd roared, and the band came out. And there was Jerry Garcia, right there in front of us, checking the tuning on his guitar one final time. And when he started to play the first few notes of that first song of the night, the guy across the aisle just closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and looked heavenward with a blissful smile on his face. And my friend and I looked at each other, and pronounced it good with a high five. Sugaree. First song.

And that’s me, going to see Peter Gabriel. I’m always waiting for San Jacinto. Goose bumps, every single time. I can’t even explain it. For whatever reason, that song just fills me up, gives me peace. Every time. 

So today Gabriel posted a newly restored version of San Jacinto, from the Us tour in 1993. Almost 20 years ago, but I can still see him crossing the river on his raft, breathing in front of the giant shadow screen, singing with arms raised high. Goose bumps. 

So yeah, this post isn’t quite about synthesizers the way most of them usually are. But the driving, pulsing Fairlight sequencers that start things off always get me. And it’s not about textured soundscapes that might shape a song, although Tony Levin’s haunting Chapmann Stick does indeed shake the arena (as it should). And it’s not about ethereal guitar tones complementing both the bass and the sequences as they lumber along, although watching David Rhodes stand motionless in the shadows while Gabriel sings his heart out seems to fit the song perfectly. 

It’s all of these things, all of them together. For me, San Jacinto is my Sugaree. Goose bumps every time. 

I’m seeing him at Jones Beach in September. 

I hope he plays my song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IxE6z1tjo

Timorianne

Listened to Timorianne for the first time today, the new album from Takla Makan (who in “real life” is Tony Allgood of Oakley Sound Systems, purveyors of fine analog synth modules). Totally loved it. And in some ways I can’t really say why. I mean, it’s not like music I end up making, and you could also say it’s been done before, and that there’s nothing really groundbreaking or new about it. And yes, that’s all sort of true. 

But.

I guess the best way to say it is that there’s something about it, something that fires me up, catches my thoughts, and I guess that it just hits all the right spots. It’s simply good, and exactly what I like hearing. 

One could say it’s just like Tangerine Dream from days gone by. And yes, that’s somewhat fair. On the other hand, you could instead say it’s modern modular music, the sequencer music of today. So the tools are similar, but it’s just so good that it’s almost not even worth making the comparison. It’s as if Tangerine Dream abandoned this sort of thing long ago, and the Takla Makan records picked it up years later and continued the thought. And all I can really say about it is that it makes me very happy. 

Burbling sequencers, rich textures, shimmering pads, pounding drum machines, synth bass lines, even a 303ish phrase here and there, not to mention the occasional heavenly choir. It’s an exquisite blend of all those elements, done just right, totally replayable any number of times. Perfect for that long drive into the mountains late at night. Or for giving your morning subway ride into the office just the right amount of floating surrealism if you have a good set of headphones. 

Highly recommended. Synthesizer music at its finest.

http://takla-makan.bandcamp.com/

Richard Lainhart, 1953 - 2011

Richard Lainhart died a week or so ago.

I didn’t really know him personally, but we did correspond a number of times. I wish I could have called him a friend, but it was more of a modern age electronic acquaintance rather than a true friendship. He used a photo I took at one of his shows (above) as a publicity shot, which made me pretty happy. 

In some ways I just have no idea what to write. I met him, I saw him play, his music is amazing (although nothing at all like I would play). He had a long a varied career, doing all sort of things that were surprising to me once I read about them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that although I didn’t really know him, he somehow touched my life, and that I’ll miss him now that he’s gone. Not just his wild musical journeys with “non-traditional” synths played using “non-traditional” interfaces that he somehow managed to combine together into coherent and compelling musical pieces, but also things like his his famous bird cam, for instance.

When I saw him play live he had an incredible psychedelic background projected on the wall behind him. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, amazing. At the time I was very much interested in video projection, and searched for weeks for the clip he used. It was frustrating to not be able to find it, so finally I asked him where he got it. His answer? A very casual, “oh, I programmed that myself in After Effects.” 

Zing! Blew me away again.

That was Richard. I wish I’d gotten the chance to know him better.

I Dream of Wires interview

Richard's web site

And his YouTube page

Solaris First Impressions

Smooth as butter. 

I feel like I could end post this right there, but I suppose I ought to explain myself just a little bit more. Today I really sat down with my Solaris for the first time, for maybe an hour or so. I made just one patch, and not having read the manual at all didn’t go all that deep into it. But man, that one patch was it. Nothing fancy, just a Minimoog/Memorymoog hollow, echoey, phasing, two-pulse-wave sort of sound. And yeah, it wasn’t fancy, but it was completely awesome. And there were things I wanted to do with it that I just don’t yet know how to accomplish, things like deep modulation routings, but it doesn’t matter. Just an hour with the Solaris was enough to show me that this is one monster synthesizer.

This is not a review that will cover every feature. You can get a feature list on the Solaris web site. No, this is about how it feels. And how it feels is smooth as butter.

The knobs feel like they’re oil-filled, in a sense. They resist turning in an oh-so-gentle way. Easy to turn, easy to control. Just right. 

Six displays. All your basic information is right there in front of you, easy to take in at a glance. But if you need to go deeper it’s easy to get there. It’s like the synth offers no resistance. It’s easy, effortless. Every place I looked there was a control I’ve always wished my other synths had. 

Piles of oscillators, each one with many different kinds of waves. I could have Oscillator 1 be a Minimoog pulse wave and dial in Oscillator 2 to be a wavetable. Phenomenal power for just one knob. And it’s not just that the Solaris is powerful, it’s that it’s easy too. I could fiddle with the oscillator display all I liked, but the filter display was still on and telling me what it was doing. 

My Waldorf Q has many different oscillator and filter models, but it feels totally different because it has just the one display. It’s a great synth, but it’s always reminding you that it’s a virtual analog, mostly because at one moment the display is an oscillator and the next it’s a filter. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But the Solaris feels like a “luxury synth” in comparison. It doesn’t feel virtual at all. There’s no switching functions in and out all the time because it has just one shared display. I have an Oberheim Xpander too, and while the Xpander also has the multiple screens the Solaris goes and takes it to the extreme. I can honestly see selling the Xpander now. It’s real analog, but it just doesn’t compare. It doesn’t have the horsepower, the flexibility. 

I must have said “it’s easy” about six times. But that’s my first impression of the Solaris. There’s no resistance, it’s not in my way, I don’t have to scratch my head while I’m trying to find something. It’s like a software synthesizer brought to life, except it’s way better than dealing with a mouse and a computer screen. You’ve got knobs and screens and joysticks and ribbons and wheels, all things you just don’t have with a computer synth. But you’ve also got the power of the computer right there under your hands as well. It’s the best of both worlds. 

When I first read about the Solaris it sounded like exactly what I’d always been looking for in a synthesizer. And after an hour or two, I can say that’s totally true. 

This is the real deal.

In War Times

In Which a Science Fiction Author Writing About Jazz Completely and Unexpectedly Illuminates Why I Play Synthesizers

If I was 10 years older I’d probably be a sax player instead of a synthesist.

But I didn’t know that until I started reading Kathleen Ann Goonan’s book In War Times. Goonan writes amazing novels. They’re thick, heavy, and deep. In the best of ways, of course. And they’re filled with music, with jazz. Now I like jazz, but would not call myself an aficionado. Keith Jarrett, Branford Marsalis, Etta James, even, all favorites of mine along with many others. I’m much more of a rocker, though. But if I’d been born in 1940 or ’50 instead of 1960 maybe I would have turned out much like her characters. 

The beauty of Goonan’s writing is how I feel almost immediately immersed, even though I’ve never been to those 52nd Street jazz clubs, or to the ones in Harlem. And when I was the impressionable age her characters were when they were listening to their first jazz platters, for me there was Switched on Bach, Yes, ELP, Genesis, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Larry Fast, and later, in high school, Tangerine Dream. It was all over after that. I am to this day haunted by the textures of the movie version of A Clockwork Orange. So compelling, so beautiful, and making the movie all that much more intense.

As a preteen, though, my world was filled with the textures of the then new synthesizer. Just like the people in Goonan’s novel discovering the magic of jazz, in my slightly different time I was awakened to the birth of the synthesizer. I remember the disgust and outrage about these new “so-called instruments.” They were unnatural, synthetic, offensive, which was a common complaint. They would cost orchestras their jobs was another. But to me, it was eye-opening. The world of my father humming Greensleeves while conducting invisible musicians on the radio was what I was brought up with, followed by the ’60s with the “hippy” music, thanks to my sister and her DJ boyfriend. But then the synthesizer happened, and that was it for me. And like Goonan’s characters, I was taken in, swept up, and swirled away into a new world. That magical box of textures, sounds previously undreamt of, the joining of music and technology, just as in her book, that happened to me, too. 

If I was just a little older, I might have picked up a saxophone. But it was the Moog that got me instead. But Goonan’s book got me as well, grabbing me in its headlong rush into jazz and physics and world conflict. From the first page it had me, and who knows where it’s going to take me as I’m only 21% in (thanks, Kindle, for stealing page numbers out from under us!). And I admit that sometimes at the end of her books I’m left wondering what I just witnessed, but in some ways that’s half the fun. I’m always left with a “wow,” regardless. 

This is not a review of In War Times, nor is it even that much about the book at all. What this is about is the sense of discovery, the exhilaration, the newness of something that had never been heard before. For Goonan, maybe, jazz. For me, the synthesizer. No, what this is about is her unbelievably accurate description of me, as a kid, hearing the synthesizer for the very first time, with its magical textures that uprooted my world. Even though I’m not actually in her novel of course, yeah, she was writing about me. 

So I’m writing this to say, “thanks” to Ms. Goonan. She somehow managed to finally put into words exactly how I felt, and why I chose the synthesizer to fill my life. Why I had to. Even though the novel was jazz and the ’40s, it was also about me in the ’60s.

Yup. She nailed it.

In War Times  By Kathleen Ann Goonan