Friday, July 3, 2015

THINK TOO MUCH (2015): A Remake of Paul Simon's 1983 "Hearts and Bones"

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I learned a lot about music from the Simon and Garfunkel albums: in junior high and high school, I wore out my parent’s copy of Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, learning to sing through matching my voice to those on the recording. As a choir and acapella geek in college in the late 1990s, Paul Simon was our ever-standby party music: we wore diamonds on the soles of our shoes every weekend and on most weeknights too.

Getting beyond the bouncy greatest hits of Paul Simon’s solo career, I first heard the album Hearts and Bones in its entirety during the year following graduation. I was sharing a house with friends (not far from “living in London with the girl from the summer before”), and learning piano chords. I wanted to understand how Simon considered songs like “Cars Are Cars” and “Allergies” (true clunkers, in terms of musical composition and structure) as worthy of being place aside some of his most endearing ballads. The album still doesn’t make sense to me, except when taken as a conglomeration of songs detailing or alluding to personal and professional stress: as a creative duo, he and Garfunkel split during the initial  Hearts and Bones eaHeHeartrecording sessions, following a poorly-received world tour; the encroaching digital age was changing the music business, and was about to affect everyday life; the idealism and hope Simon witnessed during the social and cultural revolution of the 1960s had apparently disintegrated, under the weight of disco, Reaganomics, and the death of John Lennon. Hearts and Bones remains an obscure and unique statement about a historic period: it was the first time in the history of civilization that cars had become cars ubiquitous (“all over the world”), that numbers had become “serious,” and that even the world’s greatest brain trust cannot “unscramble” or understand love.

Songwriting and production for the Hearts and Bones album followed Paul Simon’s modestly-successful movie and accompanying album, One-Trick Pony. After the wildly successful appearance and release of a live performance recording of Simon and Garfunkel’s “reunion” concert in Central Park in 1981, the duo attempted to collaborate once again in the studio. Not soon after beginning the project, Garfunkel quit, in a dispute over creative control. Allegedly, Simon demanded all traces of Garfunkel’s contributions be erased from the master tapes. Hearts and Bones—in all its postmodern glory—was Simon’s alone. The set of eleven recordings would come to include nine keyboardists, five guitarists besides Simon himself, three bassists, a small string ensemble, as well as flutes, saxophones, marimbas, and digital drum programming. Unlike One-Trick Pony, Hearts and Bones afforded Simon an opportunity to experiment with a vast array of musical equipment, as well as to collaborate (or, more likely conduct) other musicians. Hearts and Bones was produced during the advent of electronic music and digital recording, a time when even professionals like Simon were challenged to utilize all of the studio trickery available, without creating an unwieldy final product. (Footnote: in a spectacular half-hour television special produced for Cinemax and aired in January 1984, Simon and his band lip-synch their way through almost the entire album, excitedly pretending to play along—including the string quartet that ends “The Late Great Johnny Ace”).

Simon wanted to call the album “Think Too Much,” but then-Warner Brothers president Mo Ostin convinced the songwriter of a more accessible title. The original album contains two separate compositions bearing the original title—representing the act of thinking too much on two separate occasions on the original album. There was (and still is) much to think about: privacy and identity security, technology, formulaic pop songs, immigration, Wall Street hegemony, transportation. In many ways, we are living in a more fully realized version of 1983, in terms of the emergence of technology, and the effect of virtual communication networks on society and politics. The “economic downturns” of the twenty-first century have brought about financial hardship and stress for many, and Simon’s lyrics forecast a financial system that values ownership over all else: as two famous painters are brought to tears by the sight of mannequins in a store window, elsewhere Simon laments, “I once had a car/that was more like a home/I lived in it/loved in it/polished its chrome.” Following the twentieth century’s postmodern threads, Simon’s Hearts and Bones represents the culmination of a social clarity: the existence and tastes of the white, middle-class, suburban American was not fixed, but fluid. Love for material possessions and wealth complicates visions of romance—right in the opening song (and right before the album’s title track), Simon brutally announces his inability to act on his love  “I’m allergic to the women I love/and it’s changing the shape of my face.” Simon’s lyrics revel in surrealism, bordering on absurdity: The Penguins, The Moonglows, the Orioles, cars, a photograph from Texas, all collated into a heap of accompanied, broken images, set to the progression of many minor chords.

Like Simon’s other compositions, the songs on Hearts and Bones are deceptively complex: melodies dawdle above and around chord changes, rotating their way through bridge, chorus, and verse. Some musical structures (the opening chords of “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” for example) defy rationale: E major and Bb offer terrifying contrast upon which to impose a melody, yet the progression persists throughout much of the verse section of the song. “Allergies” also offers bizarre and sparse construction, as if intended to feature the disjointed narrative (delivered in part through a vocoder), set against strange and immense electronic beats.

My interpretations of these songs have been hard-fought, a side project while my complicated life tumbled forward during three difficult years. These tracks were produced during dark periods of professional and personal uncertainty. I began some tracks in the fall of 2013, and in the spring of 2014 I began producing individual sessions for each track in earnest. Sharing a home with my then-partner, I had amassed an unparalleled collection of keyboards and organs, storing them in the backyard shed. The studio became complete when I purchased a second-hand PC, installing Windows XP and a four-channel audio interface produced by the now-defunct Aardvark Company. I had been calling our shared home “Clarksville Road Studios,” but with the addition of a dedicated multi-track recording workstation in the ‘shed,’ the Tunbridge World’s Unfair was born. For months, the layering of keyboard tracks, bass, guitars, banjos, drums, and vocals kept me working deep into the night. To keep in some heat and keep out some moisture, I lined the walls and ceiling of the space with black plastic sheeting, creating a virtual trash bag inside the shed, and a timelessly dark, studious environment. Once the leaves fell and the nights turned downright cold, I’d still amble out to the backyard structure, decked out in coat and scarf, seeking escape from stress through overdubs. By December 2014 I was rushing to complete the project, hoping to distribute CDs to friends and family during the holidays. I did complete a version, but in haste used a series of digital audio plug-ins recommended for mastering without paying enough attention to each track’s frequency response: the end result was obscene and thunderous, as the compressed bass drowned out all else. I returned to the studio in February and  began remixing. Soon, I was adding bass, additional banjo and acoustic guitar, and, for many tracks, piano. My tracks feature two pianos: a 1927 Wing and Sons upright grand, and an 1885 Steinway. The Wing was my first piano, the one on which I had learned my first chords (purchased by the woman who would become my son’s mother, a few years later). Ornately decorated, I learned to play chords on that piano, despite the fact that the soundboard had already been repaired once, with bracing on either side of the most dramatic cracks. The buzzing persisted as my playing got better; the anomaly was much worse once the piano was delivered to my former partner’s house in Tunbridge. Realizing a tuning wouldn’t be sensible for such a damaged instrument, I made a snap decision to purchase a restored Steinway from a local technician in the spring of 2015, and was easily some of the best money I’ve ever spent. The way the percussive chords slipped into the mix was astounding; this recording represents my initial attempts at capturing the sound of a quality antique piano. Other endeavors that feature this instrument will pay more attention to capturing its tone, and not just its hammers’ attack. Every project, it seems, bears with it a learning curve, in terms of the best use of the available technology. The relationship between the performer-- and their head space-- and their instrument is fickle and ever-changing. 

For me, a non-professional musician, instruments themselves gather sentimentality, laden with memories and histories (perhaps this is not the case for the dozens of professionals who played on Simon’s original album; their relationships with their instruments may be more utilitarian). Midway through this project, I traded my red electric bass for a sixteen-channel mixer: the bass was a buzzy and heavy axe, sold to me by my then-girlfriend, during my senior year of undergrad. On a trip south, I found a Hofner copy, and—even with its faulty vintage strings—I wanted to use it, over the “red bass.”  I said goodbye to it, as well as my first piano. Many of the rhythms are derived from interplay between drum machines, linked via MIDI to trigger each other (the Yamaha RM1X and Yamaha PSS-6300 are especially great in this respect): as “software synths” and other digital devices enable new creative heights in the recording studio, I remain interested in the intentional misuse or repurposing of recorded sound, through unconventional or outmoded means of production. Electronic and experimental music have sought to explore new technology, at times risking the exploitation of audiences’ attention: what if popular music was not rife with electronic beeps and blips, but only—and carefully—infused?

Studio technology can influence creative decisions. I decided to include a reprise-of-sorts of “Allergies” (the middle chord progression only), after hitting upon a punchy and vibrant string section by chance. I included a “remix” of “When Numbers Get Serious,” hoping to accentuate the song’s focus on digital privacy and the then-encroaching Information Age. This ‘bonus’ track went through many manifestations: a piano solo, bass solo, electronic whirlwind, etc., until becoming the hybrid it is. These tracks are over-produced; many feature more than two dozen unique instruments, with some mixed so softly as to probably be inconsequential to a listener’s experience. The intention, however, was there: like a gamer addicted to the pursuit of the next level or boss battle, my additive recording process has led to compulsion, obsession, and has served as an ultimate and creative distraction. Some vocals comprise a dozen takes or more, singing in too-close harmony, wrapped together in reverb. Some basslines are thunderous, others too weak. My work on the drum kit may be the farthest-from-professional efforts in these recordings. None of these transgressions, however, are unforgivable, upon recognizing that I don't do this (or any of this) for a living. What digital hobbies will our children and their children engage with? I find joy in the completion of a digital work (especially as publication of original material on YouTube provides a sense of finality), and hope to help instill such rewarding experiences inside of new and emerging technologies: because end-user content consumption-- be it music, video, or in other forms-- is (to me) less interesting and less important than those who choose to interact with the vast and unknown populations out there on the Internet.  

Sound recordings already offer an interesting and well-documented rhetorical conundrum: may one represent another, through the repurposing of an original artifact? As visual art contended with collage, sound recordings-- including the use of sampling others' words or music-- are still figuring out how best to attribute original creative thoughts in sound. These tracks include samples, procured not digitally, but through the use of a schoolroom record player and manual manipulation of a vinyl record: the then-President of the popular tourist attraction Strasburg Railroad (of Strasburg, Pennsylvania) explains the legacy of his engine; “Think Too Much (b)” contains samples from Rick James’ “Below the Funk (Pass the J)” and a Jamaican reggae album; “The Late Great Johnny Ace” contains samples from a sound effects album produced by Realistic and sold by Radio Shack in the 1970s. Edward Snowden’s voiceover is taken from his TED Talk in 2014. Like Beck and other artists, I am interested in how popular music may bear a ‘soundcollage’ characteristic, in addition to carrying a singable tune.

Were I not dismantling and relocating my studio, I may still be pouring over mixes and overdubs (perhaps needlessly). The total project was ‘mastered’ in early June of 2015: a finalization process combining digital and analog technology. In all its flaws and faults, I am proud to offer these twelve completed tracks for your enjoyment: easy time will determine if these consolations will be their reward. 




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