Leap | Mixtape | Mixtape XXI, Je veux te baiser: fifteen useful French phrases, starring Serge Gainsbourg

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Twenty years ago this week, Serge Gainsbourg departed from this life a calvados-, cognac- and Gauloise-smoke-soaked husk of a genius. There are conventional tributes laced with titillating anecdotes all over the place at the moment, so Silkworms thought we’d try doing something a little different, albeit equally celebratory: a Gainsbourg mixtape, along with a mini English-to-French dictionary that adopts the same approach to learning Serge’s language as he brought to learning ours. Namely, the selective mastering of useful phrases. Useful phrases like ‘I want to fuck you,’ as he gurgled at Whitney Houston on live television in 1986. Each useful phrase coming from a song on the mixtape. This, friends, is Music As Reading at its most educational.

Track one, 69 Année Erotique
For when you have an erotic experience on the Portsmouth/Caen night ferry and, for whatever reason, wish to discuss it subsequently in the third person present…

‘From their bed through the porthole / They look at the coast / They love each other and the crossing’

De leur lit par le hublot / Ils regardent la côte / Ils s'aiment et la traverse

Track two, Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’En Vais
For when you decide to end things with your pretentious, bookish lover…

‘Like Verlaine says so well, “On an ill wind” / I came to tell you I’m leaving’

Comme dit si bien Verlaine, ‘Au vent mauvais’ / Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais

Track three, L’anamour
For when you wish to refer to a set of photographs your friend took on holiday in India…

‘You know those photos of Asia’

Tu sais ces photos de de l'Asie

Track four, L’eau Á La Bouche
For when attempting to allay your lover’s fears about your somewhat pugilistic sexual technique…

‘I'll take you sweetly and without violence’

Je te prendrais doucement et sans contrainte

Track five, Les Sucettes
For when you’re engaged in a multi-lingual ‘battle’ with Fiddy Cent about who can use the most ill-concealed confectionary-based double entendres…

‘The barley sugar / Perfumed with anis / Sinks in Annie's throat / She's in paradise’

Le sucre d'orge / Parfumé à l'anis / Coule dans la gorge d'Annie / Elle est au paradis

Track six, Le Poinconneur Des Lilas
For when you want to be like Jean Gabin in the pre-war poetic realist masterpiece Le Quai des Brumes in order to impress your new pretentious, bookish lover…

‘And in the mist at the end of the quay / I see a boat that has come to get me’

Et dans la brume au bout du quai / J'vois un bateau qui vient m'chercher

Track seven, Intoxicated Man
For when you’ve just told Whitney Houston that you want to fuck her on live television, and want to convince everybody that it only happened because you’re really goddam drunk…

‘I drink too strong a dose / I see pink elephants / spiders on the shirt of my tuxedo’

Je bois a trop forte dose / Je vois des éléphants roses / Des araignées sur le plastron d'mon smoking

Track eight, L’hôtel Particulier
Erm, this one could be useful in a whole bunch of situations, really…

‘Among these naked slaves carved from ebony / Who will be the silent witnesses to this scene’

Entre ces esclaves nus taillés dans l'ébène / Qui seront les témoins muets de cette scène

Track nine, Cargo Culte
For when doing conspiracy theoristy impressions of Dick Cheney talking about the USA’s increasingly problematic oil shortages in late August, 2001…

‘And I hold onto that hope of an air disaster’

Et je garde cette espérance d'un désastre aérien

Track ten, L’homme A Tête De Chou
For when you wish to convey to your pretentious, bookish, vegan lover that you’re sick of her shitty cooking…

‘I am the man with the cabbage head / Half vegetable half dude’

Je suis l'homme à tête de chou / Moitié légume moitié mec

Track eleven, Le Chanson De Prévert
For when (misguidedly) arguing with your friend, the Kraftwerk fan…

‘But their song is monotonous’

Mais leur chanson est monotone

Track twelve, Marilou Sous La Neige
For when you decide it’d be best to let your passed-out hallmate Marilou go to sleep in the residue of your fresher-year, late-night fire extinguisher lols, rather than face the hassle of waking her up…

‘Let Marilou go to sleep under the carbon snow of the fire extinguisher’

Que Marilou s'endort sous la neige carbonique de l'extincteur d'incendie

Track thirteen, Sensuelle Et Sans Suite
For when your little cousin is a bit freaked out by the fact that his new pet guinea pigs’ hearts beat real fast when he picks them up…

‘Their little hearts palpitate / While they get excited’

Leurs p'tits cœurs palpitent / Tandis qu'elles s'excitent

Track fourteen, Bonnie & Clyde
For when you have to explain to people why moving to Libya didn’t turn out too good…

‘Now, every time we try to settle down to set up a quiet home / Within three days there's the ack ack ack of the machine guns coming to attack’

Maint'nant, chaqu' fois qu'on essaie d'se ranger de s'installer tranquilles dans un meublé / Dans les trois jours, voilà le tac tac tac des mitraillett's qui revienn'nt à l'attaqu'

Track fifteen, Ballade De Melody Nelson
For when giving up conveying to your bewildered friend why it is you dig Serge Gainsbourg above pretty much all other musicians, even though he wrote a song called Lemon Incest, the video for which featured him lying topless on a black bed drenched in dry ice with his 12-year-old daughter dressed in a man’s shirt and underwear and looking into his eyes, the pair duetting about ‘the purest, the headiest’ love they’ll ‘never make together’…

‘That surprises you, but that's how it is’

Ça vous étonne mais c'est comme ça

* This exercise wouldn’t have been possible without eggparm.com, remarkably the only decent resource dedicated to translating SG’s work into English on the entire internets. A. Chabot’s elegant, thoughtful translations are a joy to read in conjunction with the songs if your French is as limited as mine, and I’m hugely grateful for his/her efforts. http://www.eggparm.com/gainsbourg/ *

Sam Kinchin-Smith
Music Editor

Machine | Mixtape | Mixtape XIX, The Britney-Machine

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We are playing the machines, the machines play us, it is really the exchange and the friendship we have with the musical machines which make us build a new music.

Ralf Hütter, Kraftwerk

In his excellent biography of the bewilderingly under-appreciated British avant-garde joker, B.S. Johnson, Jonathan Coe makes the following assertion:

…Having thoroughly mastered, at Cambridge, the art of the sweeping, uninformed dismissal, I was more than ready to concur with B.S. Johnson’s theories about the modern novel. Of course there was no point in writing anything that didn’t follow straight on from Ulysses and The Unnameable…More recently, needless to say, this conviction has slipped out of my grasp, along with most of the other certainties of youth. If I think about it at all, I see the high modernism of Joyce and Beckett as a straightjacket the novel had to break out of – just as late twentieth century composers, if classical music was ever going to move forward again, had to make a decisive break with the twelve-tone system…In the three decades since Johnson’s death, the British novel has reinvigorated itself in other ways, ways which he did not foresee: not by ‘making it new’ with ever more radical attempts at formal innovation, but by recognising the multi-ethnicity of modern Britain and opening itself to influences from other cultures; by tapping into the energies of popular music, film and television; by turning its back on modernist elitism and rediscovering the pleasures of humour, storytelling, demotic and so on… Like A Fiery Elephant

Indeed. I like this quotation, I’ve used it a lot – every time somebody like, I don’t know, Tom McCarthy starts banging on about the terrible price contemporary readers and writers pay for turning our backs on radical formal innovation, I find its simple truisms useful and optimistic. Having said that, the way Coe draws upon the example of post-Schoenberg classical composition here belies the complexity of the parallels (and lack thereof) between music and literature when it comes to post-modernism (literally in the after-modernism sense, rather than anything too conceptual) and contemporary forms. One strand of which is sort of my focus with this mixtape.

So a major example of the kind of composer Coe is pointing towards is Karlheinz Stockhausen, who embraced everything from pointist to formula composition in his efforts to move away from the twelve-tone system. Most of the results are pretty fucken formally weird, which is in itself a bit of a spanner in the workings of Coe’s analogy – insofar as it proves that a bunch of post-twelve tone classical composition represents precisely ‘ever more radical attempts at formal innovation.’ But placing that sort of pedanticism to one side for a moment, I mention Stockhausen because of the influence his work had on Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the founding members of Kraftwerk. And Kraftwerk are the starting-point of an important example of why Coe’s kinda laid-back theory doesn’t work when it comes to pop music.

It could, potentially, be argued that Hütter and Schneider reframed Stockhausen in neo-modernistic terms. This is a moot point, but I mention it purely to steal the following exemplary paragraph from Chris Power’s Drowned in Sound review of the 2009 remastering of The Man-Machine:

On its release the artwork for The Man-Machine, depicting the band standing on a staircase wearing paramilitary-style red shirts and black ties, caused controversy. Inspired by the Russian constructivist El Lissitzky, it is arguably the most complex image in their carefully considered visual ouevre. It suggests a reaching out, as is true elsewhere in the band’s work, for the utopian dream of a modernist German aesthetic; one that hadn’t been made problematic, if not irrevocably perverted, by the Nazis. Yet at the same time it employs National Socialist colours, which in the late-Seventies were in the process of being ironically appropriated by German artists. Meanwhile the red shirts, the borrowings from constructivist art and the position of the band’s faces, gazing to the east, suggests an acknowledgement, if not exactly an engagement, with communism. Further, it is also an acknowledgement of the dark side of the marriage of man and machine implied by and ultimately surpassed by the title track, which rejects the Nietzschean conception of the Übermensch, hijacked by fascism, and instead celebrates the positive results of combining human warmth with machine precision in, as Hütter’s quote above has it, a spirit of 'exchange and...friendship'.

Actually, it’s not an entirely moot point because a part of what I want to prove, via this week’s Spotify tracklisting, is that the best of contemporary pop music nicks not just the basic tropes of Man-Machine-era Krafwerk, but also the same philosophical approach – has done, in fact, along a pop-culture chain that extends from Gary Numan and the Human League through to Jay-Z (who sampled The Man Machine). And if we can accept that there is something of the modernist about Kraftwerk’s oeuvre, which we surely can, then I guess that means that there is something of the modernist about contemporary pop music also. Which is to say that Coe’s assertion ignores the fact that contemporary music doesn’t necessarily have the same relationship with 'high modernism' as contemporary literature. Far from it.

Indeed whilst, say, the extraordinary commercial success of a grime artist like Tinie Tempah suggests that pop music has made itself new by recognising the multi-ethnicity of modern Britain, and whilst the actually rather good musical-cinematic efforts of Kanye and Gaga suggest the same, but in terms of the ‘energies’ of film, I would argue that a more defining feature of modern pop music is its inheritance from Kraftwerk. Namely, its friendship with musical machines. And that nowhere is this more apparent than on Britney Spears’ blistering Blackout.

Blackout gets a lot of mentions in the increasingly prevalent stream of music journalism that argues a lot of ‘pop’ is far more formally and, perhaps more crucially, electronically interesting than what a lot of the artists working within its ‘alternative’ cousin-genres manage to come up with. See also Girls Aloud, Robyn, Rihanna and so on. This, from the Guardian’s Tom Ewing:

On Blackout – released with minimum promotion in the middle of her shaven-headed, zombie-eyed, walking-tabloid period – Britney gave us the tightest, most inventive dance-pop record of the last 10 years. Everything that's happened in mainstream pop since – such as the routine electronic treatment of vocals, or the turn to European club beats and synths – happened on this album, only in a darker, braver and catchier fashion. From its title in, Blackout didn't try to gloss over the state its star was in – it embraced it. In particular, the vocal twisting, distorted, blurred and robotised Britney, giving the eerie impression of a record that had swallowed up its own singer.

It is a record that makes a mockery of the concept that autotune represents some sort of a corruption of ‘proper’ music, of the idea that artists using autotune or miming, even, when performing live, is somehow wrong – providing, of course, that the results are compelling in more interesting ways than Mariah-style, lookee lookee, she can sing seven octaves, oooooooooh. With Blackout, they certainly are that. Ewing’s description of the record eating Britney’s only-ever-disappointing-when-left-alone vocal is spot on – Freakshow particularly turns it into something frighteningly mannish, a la Laurie Anderson. Even more compelling though is Britney’s very own Kling Klang studio, her ‘mutterschaft’ – Hütter’s words for Kraftwerk’s musical laboratory, which became integrated into their live performance during the Computer World tour – namely, the producers whose efforts make her own look somewhat pathetic by comparison. The Clutch, the Neptunes and, most dramatically, Bloodshy and Avant (also responsible for Toxic) who turn the magnificent Piece of Me into a shifting, bleeping, threatening tapestry of electronica into which Britney is assimilated via a sequence of extraordinary vocodered gymnastics.

The machines play Britney, just as the machines played Kraftwerk. And the results are far, far more compelling, far more friendly towards Britney than a song like I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman will ever be. As, indeed, Spotify itself puts it, ‘how responsible is Britney for her music, anyway?’ Viewed in this light, her ‘disastrous’ performance at the VMAs in 2007 suddenly begins to look like a work of performance art genius, on a level with Kraftwerk’s The Robots manikins, drawing elegant attention to the futility of human effort in the face of the perfection of machines. Compare the below:

A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST, THEN:

1. The Robots – Kraftwerk

2. Gimme More – Britney Spears

3. Spacelab – Kraftwerk

4. Break The Ice – Britney Spears

5. Metropolis – Kraftwerk

6. Get Naked (I Got A Plan) – Britney Spears

7. The Model – Kraftwerk

8. Piece Of Me – Britney Spears

9. Neon Lights – Kraftwerk

10. Heaven On Earth – Britney Spears

11. The Man Machine – Kraftwerk

12. Radar – Britney Spears

Of course, the ultimate point of these tapes is to shed new light on an aspect of literature that wouldn’t necessarily have light shed on it otherwise. As I’ve gone on so extensively about musical side of this tape, though, I’ll simply mention a couple things that spring to mind when music is thought about in this way.

The first, literature and machines

Last week, Phil talked about Ross Sutherland’s experiments with poetry and internet translation machines, a man-machine collaboration that is surely in keeping with the quote of Hütter’s with which I began this piece. Here’s how Sutherland describes his approach:

I began to feed famous poems into the translator, bouncing them back and forth between the different languages, then back into English. With every translation, the program was forced to collapse the ambiguity of the original.

The fact that this relationship exists must mean other machine-literature relationships also exist, and I intend to find them.

The second, literature and editors

How useful is a comparison between musical producers and literary editors? It’s a question that requires an essay in its own right, I think, because of authors like Roald Dahl who make the writer-editor relationship look much more complicated than literary idealists might initially envision. As a review of Jeremy Treglown’s biography of Dahl on RoaldDahlFans.com puts it, Dahl

didn't by any means have perfect pitch: Dahl counted increasingly on his editors' help not simply with stylistic fine points but also with larger matters of structure and character. Stephen Roxburgh offered the most extensive help, tinkering with The BFG, reworking The Witches, proposing that Dahl try a memoir and then helping with research for both Boy and Going Solo. Though some earlier changes had arguably had a domesticating effect (removing a graphic passage about nose–blowing from The Twits, making the hero of Fantastic Mr. Fox a noble avenger rather than a shoplifter, and so on), the later revisions were not done to satisfy the ‘pseudo–liberal librarian mentality,’ as Mr. Roxburgh put it. They were to improve plots, rearrange and reconceive characters, tighten up the writing. Dahl was never coerced: this valuable writer was only expertly cajoled, and for the most part that was all it took. He responded to suggestions with mature flexibility, gratefully acknowledging problems and rewriting with flair.

I’m not saying Dahl is like Britney Spears. But I am saying that the Neptunes get a hell of a lot more credit for their work than people like Stephen Roxburgh do, and I’m interested in why that is.

Sam Kinchin-Smith

Music Editor

FINKPOINT | MIXTAPE | Mixtape XVI, iLiKELiTERATURE (iNLEEDS), by I LIKE TRAINS

Music As Reading: Mixtape XVI, iLiKELiTERATURE (iNLEEDS), by I LIKE TRAINS (FINKPOINT)

A Mixcloud (back with Spotify next weekz, kidz) collaboration between Silkworms Ink and Drowned in Sound – as orchestrated by Finkpoint. For I come bearing internet contacts the popinjays who usually run this calls-itself-a-website could only dream of, y’all. 

This mixtape represents the coming together of Silkworms Ink’s Music As Reading project, The Best Music Website In The UK Drowned in Sound’s current Blackberry-plugging mixtape competition, and (Dave from) I LIKE TRAINS, a band what do much more interesting things with literary tropes than most – having previously turned songs into vessels for condensed accounts of depressingly English (Englishly depressing?) moments of historical failure, and having now decided to turn their musical attention to issues and depictions of climate change, both ancient and new. In the end, Dave decided to make his tape a Leeds affair, cos he’s all into Leeds an’ stuff, and here’s the result. (In case you’re wondering why the mixtape title’s like that, it’s cos that’s how I LIKE TRAINS used to write their bandname, silly boys. In case you’re wondering why the mixtape is, in essence, a week late, LET ME TELL YOU, GETTING SOMETHING THIS HIGH-PROFILE TOGETHER IN A WEEK IS PRETTY GODDAM IMPRESSIVE. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT SILKWORMS HAD PLANNED FOR THE WEEKEND I DECIDED TO SHOW UP. SIX WORDS: PAM AYRES. OCEAN COLOUR SCENE. COLLABORATION.)

Ilikeliterature (Inleeds) by Tupelo on Mixcloud

If that tracklisting’s turned your pretty, pretty head, you can read mine and Dave’s DiS INTRODUCTIONS TO THE MIXTAPE HERE, along with the highlights of the miniature literature-focussed interviews Dave conducted with each of the contributing bands, and a RECOMMENDED READING LIST I threw together out of their answers HERE. (In case you’re wondering why both pieces appear under the name Sam Kinchin-Smith, I nicked his DiS identity because he’s the handsomest of all the Silkworms editors. By a country mile.)


Here, though, for the dedicated followers of Silkworms Ink, are those interviews in full. Because you’re worth it. THIS HAS BEEN A FINKPOINT PRODUCTION, MTHRFCKRS.

Napoleon IIIrd (James Mabbett)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?

I finally got round to finishing Hell’s Angeles by Hunter S. Thompson, I’ve been trying to read it for ages but just kept forgetting about it. I have always loved the way the he wrote.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I don’t really find that it is one particular thing that inspires me to write a song, it could be anything that sparks an idea off – be that a book, an overheard conversation or a wet journey home on a train.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People by Irving D. Tressler.


s k e t c h e s (Matt)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I just (just!) finished George Orwell’s Books vs Cigarettes. It’s a collection of essays on the impact of literature with regards to art, politics and society. Well worth a read if analytical literature is your thing – as is his essay ‘Why I Write’ which is an insight into just that.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I find that it’s usually the process of reading that inspires me to write, rather than the books themselves. I’m fascinated by the sound of certain words and that is usually a starting-point. I enjoy distorting regular syllabic inflections, putting emphasis on a syllable that wouldn’t normally be emphasised.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
I would like to say a hugely successful novel by a wonderful author, Jules Verne or somebody, but in reality we would probably be The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen. If you haven’t read that you should definitely give it a whirl.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
My initial thoughts are the poetry of Leonard Cohen and Murakami. Murakami’s writing is heavily influenced by The Beatles (and pop culture in general). Norwegian Wood (as the title shows) is a prime example of this. Very easy reading but still thought-provoking.


The Wedding Present (Dave Gedge)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’ve not read an actual book for years, I’m kind of ashamed to say! I never seem to find the time these days. Do graphic novels count? The best one of those that I’ve read recently is Marvels – written by Kurt Busiek and painted by Alex Ross, Marvel Comics published it in the 1990s. It’s a delightfully illustrated and innovative re-telling of the classic Marvel tales done in a contemporary way.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I do refer to popular culture quite frequently, but most of my references tend to be filmic or inspired by television. But the main source for my lyrical ideas tends to be hearing people speaking to each other. I’m kind of obsessed by what people say, why they say it, how they say it…


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, because it’s romantic, sexy and messy. And like Holly Golightly, I think you never know what you have until you’ve thrown it away.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Being a long-time fan of the work of Mark E. Smith I enjoyed The Fall – the biography by Mick Middles. It’s probably a bit too fawning in parts, but I think the fact the author is obviously an old acquaintance of Mark’s does mean he manages to get close to his subject – which is probably not an easy task! I loved the story about how Mark got a round of drinks in for all his band members… except one. That was his unique way of telling that particular band member that he was sacked!


I Concur (Tim Hann)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m currently reading Berlin by Antony Beevor which seemed logical as I recently finished reading Stalingrad by the same author.  I also read a novel by Willy Vlautin called Lean on Pete which I really enjoyed.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Radio 4 tends to be my main source of inspiration. Ideas usually come from programmes that report on stories you don’t usually read about in the press.  ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ is probably the best programme for this.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
We’re more likely to be a hurriedly put-together manual for a dishwasher or blender.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Willy Vlautin’s novels are rather like extensions of the songs he writes for Richmond Fontaine. Obviously you can write much more to describe characters and situations in novels, so reading his books is like reading lyrics to a very long song of his! Books of his I’d recommend: Motel Life, Northline and Lean on Pete.


The Rosie Taylor Project (Jonny Davies)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
The Bathroom or Le Salles de Bains by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint. Man, in somewhat of a rut, takes solace in his bathtub and ponders whether it is worth the risk getting out. Short, too: all the best books are short, perfect for dipping into you might say.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Most start with a book, principally novels – poems are already set up, but taking the essence of a sentence and succinctly working it into a melody is where a lot of songs begin. In a less direct way the song ‘London Pleasures’ is to me very visual, like a montage of literary Londons from Defoe’s (Moll Flanders) to Orwell’s (Keep the Aspidistra Flying).


iLT:  If your band were a book, which would it be?
Probably a city A to Z, in the sense that it is well worth investing time and exploring every corner to get the most out of it.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Not really, not off the top of my head, though I’m told Iris Murdoch was very suspicious of music, and couldn’t understand others’ fascination with it.


Lone Wolf (Paul Marshall)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
The last book I read that genuinely blew my mind was Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. It’s set in post-nuclear Britain (we’re not sure just how far post-) where the people have no knowledge of things like Jesus Christ, or any of the religions we follow. They have their own language (‘Riddley speak’) which is a kind of step backwards in English, and they are mapping out the world and giving everything new names. Any relic they find from a pre-nuclear existence is considered extremely sacred, and this is where their source of religion comes in. It’s an extremely wonderful, yet bleak insight into how things could actually end up. A masterpiece.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book.  Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I don’t read as often as I’d like to, and so I can’t say I can 100% relate to your method, however I used to be a movie director and I do know that much of my inspiration comes from reading between the lines whilst watching some of my favourite movies and analysing quotations.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.  I love the imagination that the kid has in that book despite how dark it is.  He lets his mind wander to places you can’t imagine.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Another of my favourite books is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. A wonderfully written story about, well, everything!  Life, death, love, hate, friendship, sanity, insanity the list goes on, and it’s all spurred by a memory of hearing ‘Norwegian Wood’ by The Beatles.


Sam Airey


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m really getting into reading the classics at the moment. There’s so much amazing literature I feel I need to catch up on I sometimes think why bother with anything new. Though I guess you could also take that attitude with music if you wanted to. I’ve just finished Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. I’ve not read much realist stuff before, but his perfectionism and constant search for the right word is an approach I should really try to adopt whilst writing lyrics.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book.  Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I’d say that on the whole I tend to find more inspiration in people and places, but occasionally this happens. Usually when it does it’ll just be a particular line or idea that grabs me – at other times it can be the book’s central theme, but it helps if it’s something I can relate to personally. I read a fair bit of Romantic poetry which has definitely had a big influence – though Wordsworth encapsulated the beauty of the natural world a lot more eloquently than I ever could.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Either Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I grew up near the coast, and though I no longer live there, there’s still some sanctuary to be found in reading or writing about it. My fascination with the sea is almost on a par with Ishmael’s, and though I harbour no pressing desires to set sail, there’s something very romantic about the idea of it. Plus, there’s a running joke that all of my songs are about either death or the seaside. Let’s just say that it isn’t completely unfounded.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Perhaps an obvious choice, but High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is certainly one I can relate to. I spent much of my childhood and teens trying to perfect the fine art of mixtapes, and I was almost as meticulous as Rob in my preparation of these. Also, Hornby’s depiction of the average independent record store and its staff is, though perhaps somewhat of a generalisation, actually pretty bang on.


Duels (Jon Foulger)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m currently reading Albion by Peter Ackroyd, which is a history of the English imagination. And Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt, a polemic about the current political and economic climate.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Definitely, books have consistently been the most important source of inspiration for my songs. If I’m having trouble writing I make sure I read a few more books, it always works.


iLT: If your band were a book, what would it be?
Something with a slightly troubled and ropey few chapters that finds its feet later and becomes a lot more readable.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
You can’t really beat Patrick Bateman’s eulogies about Phil Collins and Huey Lewis in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. In terms of memoirs, I’m reading John Cale’s What’s Welsh For Zen? which is fascinating and inspirational.


¡Forward Russia! (Tom Woodhead)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy in the summer, which was bleak but great. There’s a tremendous combination of extremely showy, literary prose and very stark, matter-of-fact writing that brings you back to earth at irregular intervals. I’m reading Lord of the Rings at the moment (I’m currently two thirds of the way through The Two Towers) which is good but not as good as I imagine it would have been had I not seen the films.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I am certainly moved to be creative after reading a good book but I’m not sure I’m always inspired to write songs as such. Whenever I try to write something that is directly inspired by another work of art, it usually ends up being pretty insipid and gets scrapped. The stuff that inspires my lyrics tends to be more personal or based on things that I have seen or experienced, with ideas from other art sprinkled in for flavour.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Maybe The Castle by Kafka: the protagonist is crippled by unflinching bureaucracy and infuriating secrecy and the book was published unfinished after Kafka’s death. Read into that what you will!


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
The Mixerman Diaries is a great read – it’s the diary of a recording engineer who has just started the session from hell. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny but also at turns perceptive, cringe-inducing and depressing, it’s by far the most enjoyable book about music told as a story that I’ve ever read.


Vessels


iLT: Have you read any good books lately? 
Lee: Yes. Just finished the first book in the Earth Chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin. He’s the guy that translated a bunch of Sumerian cylinder seals and came to the conclusion that earth was visited by people from a planet called Nibiru thousands of years ago. This planet is on a 3600 year elliptical orbit around the sun travelling in the wrong direction. Apparently it’s due back around pretty soon and will cause havoc with our planet because of it’s gravitational influence. Next week I’m reading Advanced Potting Techniques by Charlie Dimmock.


iLT:  I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create? 
Lee: I think what I read in books hopefully sinks in enough to influence what I write to some degree, but I wouldn’t say it was the bulk of the motivation. It just gets logged away somewhere and maybe shows its face again at a later date – and even then I probably wouldn’t recognise it to be specifically connected to a particular book or event or whatever. The way I write music is mostly influenced by the pure childish exploration of sound and energy. It feels more like a game or a puzzle. The process is generally fun, which I hope translates into the actual performance of it.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Lee: My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle.
Tim: Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, because being in this band is a bit like the Battle of Stalingrad – the odds are stacked against us but we are hanging on out of sheer tenacity. Actually, that is an absurd analogy, I just wanted to plug one of my favourite novels which doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.  I think that Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is more appropriate.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Tim: Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge. This is an excellent book by a great author, a fictional account of an amphetamine-fuelled road trip – inspired by a search for the crash site of the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, who were killed when their plane went down.


Glissando (Elanor Irving)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately? 
A few come to mind as having inspired me: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie and The Rainbow by D.H Lawrence.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I can definitely relate to that, I often find myself marking pages and highlighting passages in books that inspire me to think about something more deeply – or that have explained or expressed something beautifully.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
That’s a difficult question... maybe The Rainbow I guess: it takes a long journey through the passage of time and is very swirling and almost too intense at times. I often feel that Glissando is like that, that we are on a constant journey moving and swirling.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Everyone should read Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett from Eels, it’s a journey through his life right through to recent times, and it’s very inspiring for musicians and, well, anyone. He’s had a lot of tough times but he talks about how it’s made him realise how important life is, as well as playing music you love and feel passionately about.

Swamp | Mixtape | Vol XV, Narrative for Orchestra

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XV, Narrative for Orchestra

For a background to this mixtape, a rather hysterical and dreadfully organised set of paragraphs are available here. To summarise, it is intended to be a reflection on the way that we can’t help but read certain songs forever tied up with the television show/ film/ whatever narratives that we’ve seen them accompany/ introduce/ symbolise/ whatever enough times that this connection has become the point of the song, whether we like it or not. Such tracks, indeed, represent an act of Music As Reading that we’ve all engaged in, subconsciously or not, at one point or another, and deserve to be recognised as such. Lyrics and even mood are discarded and the connotation is king! Half of the mixtape will illustrate the various points made in those aforementioned paragraphs, the other will introduce a few other particularly compelling examples – for the potential scale of this mixtape is enormous, but citing examples such as the Star Wars theme and Singing in the Rain would be a waste of everybody’s time.

We’ll begin then, to pay lip-service to this week’s theme, with Jace Everett’s ‘Bad Things’ along with another of his recent tracks, ‘More to Life (C’Mon C’Mon)’ to demonstrate that ‘Bad Things’ probably isn’t as good as we think it is. Then we’ll draw out the strand of teenage association via Remy Zero’s ‘Save Me’, Mates of State’s decent attempt to make ‘California’ listenable and Simple Mind’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ to demonstrate that this has been going on for some time in a teen-sense – since 1985’s Breakfast Club, certainly. We’ll then explore four of the five versions of The Wire’s ‘Way Down in the Hole,’ two versions of Twin Peaks’ ‘Falling’ (the Wedding Present cover proving that even when a band with a significant, important, connotative identity take on one of these songs, the narrative prevails) and finish off with Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ in order to state, in less explicit terms, I hope it was the fucking label what sold it to Hollyoaks. ‘Red Right Hand’ also offers a useful segue into Cave’s cinematic soundtrack work, an unsurprising example of music acting, beyond its original context, as a vessel for narrative – considering that Cave wrote a soundtrack for the audio version of his most recent novel and just generally has form here, as regular readers will have noticed. Then, by way of conclusion, three other examples of this phenomenon manifesting in film: Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does it Better’ from The Spy Who Loved Me, mainly because of Alan Partridge. Bernard Herrman’s Psycho work for straightforwardly evocative reasons as well as the fact that when he combined all the cinematic fragments into a single composition he called it ‘a Narrative for Orchestra’. And the Door’s ‘The End’ because, despite the fact it was the final song played at the band’s last ever gig i.e. represents a fabulously important musical-biographical punctuation mark (and a staggeringly appropriate one at that), one can’t hear that without first thinking of Kurtz/Brando. A fitting final testament to the power of the imposed filmic narrative. And one that comes full circle, in terms of its relation to this week’s theme. For Apocalypse Now = Martin Sheen, in blackface, in primeval swamp, as much as it = anything, right?

TRACKLIST, Y’SAY?

Bad Things – Jace Everett (True Blood)
More to Life (C’mon C’mon) – Jace Everett
Save Me – Remy Zero (Smallville)
California – Mates of State (The OC)
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club)
Way Down in the Hole – The Blind Boys of Alabama (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – The Neville Brothers (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Domaje (The Wire)
Falling – Julee Cruise (Twin Peaks)
Falling – The Wedding Present
Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (NOT Hollyoaks)
The Proposition #1 – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Proposition)
Song for Jesse – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James...)
The Road – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Road)
Nobody does it Better – Carly Simon (The Spy Who Loved Me)
Psycho: Narrative for Orchestra – Bernard Herrman (Psycho)
The End – The Doors (Apocalypse Now)

Type | Music | Celia, by Nicky Davidson

Something a bit different this week. One of the things we’re real interested in getting going over the next few weeks is some sort of platform for filmmaking, hitherto untouched by the hairy Silkworms hand. And as an early indication of the sort of thing we’ll be interested in receiving and advocating, welcome to Celia, a film by Nicky Davidson, a writer/filmmaker who various Silkworms editors and contributors alike have worked with in the past. It’s only been posted on Vimeo for five days like, and we have no doubt you’ll agree it deserves to reach as wide a virtual audience as possible…


Celia, by Nicky Davidson via Vimeo.

…And here, in order to at least vaguely tie proceedings in with this week’s theme (although I suspect that, whatever follows, my piece from a couple weeks ago about the letter ‘X’ represents a better fit) are fifteen wee reflections on Celia drawing together the twin headings, Type and Music. And listed, like any self-respecting list, in order of appearance:

1.    1:21 – have you ever seen typography constructed out of hair before?
2.    Celia’s soundtrack is made up of three original compositions by a chap called Cotty, who used to be in a super-rad band called the Walk Off. The Walk Off’s singer, Blake, is now one half of BITCHES, who are putting together a Music As Reading mixtape for us as we speak. I daresay Cotty will be doing one soon enough as well.
3.    2.05 – This film comes with TITLE CARDS. This is important, both because they have to be read against a background of Cotty noise (Music As Reading) and because of the way the handsome typography contrasts with the scrawled ear-holes that frame it. This could very well be read as a visual reflection on the theme of clear language emerging out of noise, like little crystals of truth sprung in amongst all the delinquent fug. I daresay the ear-hole image will be explored in more detail later on, anyway.
4.    2.32 – The typography, or perhaps symbology (you know, the study of symbols, like Tom Hanks does in Dan Brown books) of facial hair is a book waiting to be written. Rafferty’s reminds me of the Beano’s various patriarchs – Dennis’ Dad, the Bash Street Kids’ Teacher… Clearly the typography of hair is one of Celia’s overarching themes: here, it forms the visual accompaniment to unheard words, becomes itself a hairy title card.
5.    3.10/3.39 – Here, a title card uses something like the formalised, archaic language of silent film in order to situate its ‘text’. The fact the film is ‘silent’ no longer jars: it proves itself coherent, rather than affected.
6.    3.45/4.07 – And then, just like that, all that's inverted: in short, we know that Celia will be a film reflecting on its own modes of construction.
7.    4.26 – See what I mean: the text is suddenly liberated from its title card and changes colour. That didn’t happen in Albert Capellani movies. (Also, ‘blue eye’ is a lovely turn of phrase.)
8.    The typewriter: probably the most important junction where ‘type’ meets ‘music’, with its evocative percussion. Cotty isn’t the first soundtrack-maker to take advantage of this phenomenon – it’s also utilised in the stunning first half of the 2007 Atonement adaptation (wasn’t the second half dreadful though?).
9.    5.10 – I’m delighted Nicky resisted using a hideous typewriter font for the title cards – in a gesture towards an unnecessary consistency. That would have been horrid.
10.    7.12 – What did I tell you: here (hear) comes an ear!
11.    This technique of suddenly situating a film’s soundtrack as representing what the protagonist is hearing, and not merely an adornment for the audience, is memorably utilised in Mary Harron’s American Psycho – Patrick Bateman takes off his headphones and Huey Lewis and the News’ Hip To Be Square suddenly fades into a tinny layer and we suddenly realise that everything, the whole film IS ALL IN HIS HEAD, WHAT A TWISTY TWIST!! – and confirms my suspicion that Cotty’s noise = the fuzz of Celia’s delinquency.
12.    7.39 – I’m sure Rafferty’s saying FOR FUCK’S SAKE here – but apparently not. Unless the title cards aren’t telling the truth, like modern fiction’s all-important UNRELIABLE NARRATOR. That would be a treat.
13.    8.12/8.30 – Font-size is suddenly defined as an indicator of emphasis. But whether this emphasis is a matter of mere exclamation or of something a little stranger is a question worth asking.
14.    9.06 – Pencil-line animations begin to dominate the screen. Word and image are finally reconciled.
15.    Look, 1/- 2/- 3/- 4/-: the film wanted me to make this list.

Compelling stuff. Perhaps we’ll do this to all the films we feature. Gotta work them into the weekly theme somehow, and talking about the symbology of facial hair seems like as good a way as any to do so.

Sam Kinchin-Smith,
Music Editor

Live Performance | Mixtape | Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Music As Reading: Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.

*Cypress Grove is the man responsible for this year’s most interesting collection of songs that aren’t his own – a king among mixtape-makers, then.

*That it also represented a heartfelt paean to a king among music-makers is not particularly surprising – the role of the mixtape-maker is to draw as much attention as possible to others’ talents, not one’s own.
Basically, you could say his imagination has made him on of the best-connected men in music.

*And he’s already started putting together a new Jeffrey Lee Pierce tribute record which, I gather, is going to feature contributions from an even more compelling array of musicians than appeared on the first. Can’t tell you who though. Sorry.

*So we very much wanted to get his take on the Music As Reading project before he got too knee-deep in superstars. Being the resolutely cool guy that he is, he even made sure his choices would fit on one side of a C60.

(Cypress’ tracklist is, due to the same Spotify shortcomings as were brought to our attention last week (no BPB – and no Dylan either, turns out) our second YouTube Mixtape. Click on the individual track-title for audio/video. So as to provide some Spotify content though, here’s a link to a playlist containing both We Are Only Riders, Cypress’ remarkable take on the compilation record (also purchasable, obvs – on Glitterhouse Records) and the man who inspired that record, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s most important achievement, the Gun Club’s first album, Fire Of Love. For a brief introduction to what We Are Only Riders actually was/is, along with some of Cypress’ thoughts regarding compilations/mixtapes/etc. I’d recommend going here.)

The Ghost Of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen
From the album of the same name. We had to read The Grapes Of Wrath at school. It was the first piece of American literature I had read, which in turn made me seek out the music of Woody Guthrie, and traditional American music in general. I owe that book a great debt. Brilliantly evocative and “dustbowly”, it is similar in tone to Nebraska, an album that Springsteen had recorded a few years earlier, which is probably his masterwork.

Desolation Row – Bob Dylan
Name checks for Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot – and Ophelia also gets a look in. Probably a stream of consciousness affair, but the imagery is dazzling. An unparalleled moment of truth from Bobby.

Ulalume – Jeff Buckley
Hal Wilner (who produced this) is of course known for his unlikely collaborations, and they don’t come much more unlikely than Edgar Allan Poe and Jeff Buckley. With bereavement at its core, it was a central theme for them both.

Tied And Twist – Lydia Lunch
As well as being a musician, Lydia is, of course, a writer. We met up for a drink recently and she brought me a copy of her book Amnesia. As the evening wore on, I started ranting about something entirely inconsequential. She listened patiently, then picked up the book and wrote in it ‘learn to forget.’ Best advice I have ever been given. An excellent human being.

More News From Nowhere – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Another musician who is also a writer. He excels at both. He is the polymath’s polymath. The title is apparently a reference to the Utopian novel News From Nowhere by William Morris. Plus Will Self appears in the video, but more importantly Beth Orton appears as a waitress.

Killing An Arab – The Cure
Another song inspired by a novel – L’Etranger by Albert Camus. Robert Smith takes on the role of the title character (Meursault) during the book’s central episode – the apparently motiveless murder of an Arab man in Algiers.

Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
One of the few Pogues-composed songs that MacGowan had no hand in writing. This was written entirely by guitarist Phil Chevron. ‘In Brendan Behan’s footsteps, I danced up and down the street.’ The album artwork also features a picture of James Joyce.

The Man Comes Around – Johnny Cash
As opening gambits go, reciting from the book of Revelation is a surefire attention-grabber. One of many apocalyptic biblical references scattered throughout the song. An end-of-time ballad if ever there was one.

Brother and Sister – The Gun Club
Well, it does have D.H. Lawrence Jr. (AKA Debbie Harry) on backing vocals!

Wider Reading | Cypress Grove, the Gun Club and mixtape foreplay

Cypress Grove, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and two acoustic guitars

This week’s mixtape, which will go up either tomorrow or Friday, is a pretty special one – it’s been put together by a chap called Cypress Grove, personally responsible for one of the most interesting takes on the ol’ mixtape/compilation/coversrecord/etc. blueprint I’ve ever come across. Silkworms obviously had a responsibility to therefore get the man to give us his interpretation of the Music As Reading mixtape project. And get it we did.

By way of an introduction to Grove’s comp pedigree – while you’re, y’know, waiting for the actual tracks – here’s a wee article/interview I did for the New Statesman a few months back (bastards never printed it) profiling both him and We Are Only Riders, his to my mind groundbreaking album. I’ve pasted it in whole, as it was, don’t currently have time to check it for any now-broken links or now-outdated comments so apologies if there are any of those, such is life.

Sam

***

26/02/10

As is so often the case, a compelling candidate for the (yes, pointless) title of best record of 2010 was released in the first few weeks of the year. We Are Only Riders: the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project came out mid-January. You may well not have noticed: it was generally rewarded with unhelpful 150-odd word reviews in the forgotten corners of the broadsheets (such as this one) and an eager but rather quiet online response from blogs, zines and musicians (i.e. the people what actually know their shit) – see the comprehensive list of comments slash quotations on the record’s myspace page.

A great shame for at least three reasons: firstly, it is a magnificent piece of work. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was the principal creative force behind, arguably, the coolest band of all time, The Gun Club, the altcountry-inventing punk pioneers adored by the likes of Deborah Harry and Jack White (“why are these songs not taught in schools?” the latter once asked an interviewer) – a tragic figure whose alcohol-induced demise, a year or so shy of his fortieth birthday, occurred in the wake of his bassist-lover’s decision to elope with his drummer. An elegant tribute to JLP’s cut-short life and work appeared, in fact, in the New Statesman way back in 1999 – “Pierce and his various line-ups played like men looking to spit in death’s eye,” observed Richard Cook.

We Are Only Riders is, ostensibly, a tribute record – to Pierce, breathing new and eclectic life into a scattering of hitherto unreleased tracks discovered, in his attic, by one Cypress Grove, a friend and collaborator, on a scratchy, barely-audible tape the two men recorded together in the early 1990s. Over a three year period, Grove invited an intimidating assortment of friends and admirers of Pierce to re-arrange and re-record these songs and others. The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project ended up utilising the talents of Nick Cave, Harry, Mark Lanegan, Barry Adamson and the Raveonettes to name but a few. A humdinger of a tribute record then. All the more so for the riskier contributions it features, from lesser known (in these here parts, anyway) artists – hickabilly hero Johnny Dowd, say, or the criminally underrated Lydia Lunch – which in various cases overshadow the big names’ efforts.

Second, it represents an extraordinary labour of love. The album took Grove a full three years to put together. Speaking to him, I got some idea of why that is, via an anecdote detailing his attempts to get Jack White involved:

‘I diligently pursued Jack White right from the beginning. I first tried through his management. That was going nowhere. Then I got a couple of leads – people who knew someone who knew him at one time. Again, nothing came of it. I was convinced that if he got to hear about the project that he would want to do it, and the only way that was ever going to happen was to speak to him personally. So when he was in London with The Dead Weather in June, I thought this is the best chance I will ever get – I will know where he is at specific times. I knew he was playing a live BBC session at Maida Vale, so I went and hung out there for hours. I eventually asked the doorman what time the band were coming out (pretending to be their driver!) and he said they left ages ago through the back door!

‘A few days later he was playing The Forum in Kentish Town, so I handwrote a letter (being aware of his distaste for anything digital) and headed off. I strolled round the back and as luck would have it the support band were just unloading their gear. So through a mixture of timing, luck and guile I managed to walk past the bouncers on the stage door and into the venue. There were about 20 other people in there I guess, and I was aware of being found out at any moment, so I watched the soundcheck as nonchalantly as possible. I rushed to the front and pitched him on the project in about 30 seconds. He looked initially dubious till I told him Kid Congo Powers was involved – then I had his attention. He was really into the whole concept of the project and seemed keen to do it. But Kid went to see him a few weeks later at his Washington DC show, and he said he would have to pass as his other commitments were too great and he simply didn’t have the time.’

It took, apparently, nine months to find a free day to get Nick Cave into the studio. Debbie Harry, the best part of a year.

Thirdly, and most importantly, though, the record also hinges on an intriguing innovation – with implications, I think, for the future of the cover version, the mythical ‘lost song’, the compilation record and musical ‘conservation’ as a whole. Recognising that recreating the songs as Pierce intended them would be an impossible, and apocryphal, task, Grove decided to organise recordings of three utterly different versions (by three utterly different artists) of each of the tracks on his original tape, so as to recreate something of JLP’s widescreen creative vision that would have, certainly, been lost on a single track – and make these the spine of the record. In short, nine of the sixteen tracks that make up We Are Only Riders are, in fact, only three tracks. Here’s how Grove himself explained it to me:

‘I am told that the multiple versions idea is quite a bold concept, and that a lot of people didn’t think it was going to work. I am pretty sure that it has never been done before, but I am willing to be corrected. For me it is the central concept, the core of the album, and the only intelligent way to deal with the material that I had at my disposal, in order to be satisfied that Jeffrey would be proud of what we were doing.

‘We were trying to achieve an approximation of how Jeffrey might have finally realised the songs himself, had he lived to do so. I have a friend who restores paintings, and he was given a portrait of someone’s great great grandfather in a military uniform to restore. It was in really bad condition and parts of the painting were missing. So in order to restore the painting to how it once was, he had to research military uniforms of the time, and use contextual cues from the rest of the painting. The end result may not have been entirely as the painter had originally intended, but it was a sympathetic restoration, and he brought his best mind to the work. I approached the Jeffrey tapes that I found in much the same way. We have only vague notions of how Jeffrey might have finally completed these songs, so here are three artists’ opinions on that. They all knew or admired Jeffrey, and the answer is probably close to an amalgam of all three versions.’

We Are Only Riders is an audacious, respectful, imaginative record that has the potential to change, for good, people’s ideas about what they are entitled to do with music which doesn’t actually belong to them. It deserves as big an audience of serious listeners as possible.

Butterflies | Mixtape | Mixtape IX, 'Nu Metal: A Critical Re-reading' by Greg Dwan

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Music As Reading: Mixtape IX, Nu Metal: A Critical Re-reading (by Greg Dwan)

*Many, many thanks to Greg Dwan for this, the first in a series of superb guest mixtapes.*

Between Angels and Insects – Papa Roach [Infest, 2000]
Essentially Jacoby Dakota Shaddix, or ‘Coby Dick’ as he was known at the time, shouting quotes from Fight Club over the opening riff of Prowler by Iron Maiden: “Working jobs that you hate for shit you don’t need” and “the things you own, own you”. Fred Durst may have “seen Fight Club about 38 times”, but perhaps he’d have a better reputation as a lyricist if Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water opened with his wondering what kind of dining set defines him as a person.

Down With the Sickness – Disturbed [The Sickness, 2000]
Featuring the greatest mid-song rhythmic dramatic monologue ever set to wax.

Daydreams – (hed) PE [Only In Amerika, 2005]
“Hey man, here’s a little love song for all you little bitches” – while the irony that soaks through all of (hed) PE’s career, intentionally or not, is present in this song in bucket loads from start to finish, the chorus is lifted directly from W.B.Yeats’ ‘He wishes for the cloths of Heaven’: “I would give you anything / But I don't have anything / Just these crazy daydreams / and they are not worth anything”. In an album that also features the repeated backing vocals: “If I suck your dick will you put it inside me?” Jared Gomes is asking you to tread softly because you tread on his dreams.

This Is Not – Static-X [Machine, 2001]
The sound of a man with huge spiky hair having a violent existentialist breakdown.

Youth of the Nation – P.O.D [Satellite, 2001]
P.O.D managed to get this out before both Bowling for Columbine and Kelly Rowland’s solo effort “Stole” based on the same message, proving not only that they were quicker on the uptake with the artistic cashing in on Columbine fever, but that they were also much more literate lyricists. “Instead of taking the test I took two to the chest” may not go down as the greatest school-shooting based line in history, but it’s leagues above Rowland’s effort: “His life was stole (Stole, Oh)” [sic].

Mutter – Rammstein [Mutter, 2001]
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has mummy issues. You’ll probably need a translation.

New Disease – Spineshank [The Height of Callousness, 2000]
A potent rephrasing of Albany’s couplet in King Lear, Act 1, Scene IV: “How far your eyes may pierce I can not tell: /Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.”

Nothing Gets Nothing – American Head Charge [The War of Art, 2001]
More Lear.

Across the Nation – The Union Underground [WWF Forceable Entry, 2002]
Nu Metal party beat poetry.

Holy Man – One Minute Silence [Buy Now...Saved Later, 2000]
Yap from OMS started a career as a slam poet and public speaker after the demise of the band. I assume his clichéd political ravings and catchy slogans sound just awful without funk metal blasting them forward.

Mudvayne – Death Blooms [LD:50, 2000]
DEEP SHIT.

My Oedipus Complex – Kid Rock [The History of Rock, 2000]
Kid Rock thinks he can get away with writing a song about how he never got on with his old man, give it this title, and completely avoid any reference to banging his own mum.

*NB: Alas, due to Spotify’s shortcomings, we had to go with a cover of Rammstein’s Mutter (by the gloriously name Völkerball) and a different One Minute Silence track. We went with Stuck Between a Rock and a White Face because, well, because it’s called Stuck Between a Rock and a White Face. Sorry Greg.*

Youth | Mixtape | Mixtape VI, Italy

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Mixtape VI, Music As Reading Goes To Italy

Mai quest’onda mai mi affonderà, gli squali non mi avranno mai. Mai quest’onda mai mi affonderà …Sha la la la la Sha la la la la la, un’altra volta un’altra onda. Sha la la la la Sha la la la la la, quanto resisterai?

As you may have noticed on Wednesday, Music As Reading has gone to Italy!

Hence, this week’s mixtape comes to you from Italy! What follows is five Italian manifestations of something with a fair bit in common with the Music As Reading project. Part one, Opera, speaks for itself: opera is a musical reading of a historical or fictional narrative, a scattering of empty, useless words made sense of only by music, arguably the very concept of music as reading’s most sublime form. These two arias performed best of all the Italian arias in Radio 3’s slightly jingoistic Nation’s Favourite Arias. Part two contains two tracks by that rare thing, music- and culture-literate Italian bands. It is this kind of artist that has filled up a majority of the preceding mixtapes’ content, that’s why they’re here. Part three is two themes from Fellini movie soundtracks – these significant to the project because of the general question of soundtracking and the way they attempt, opera-like, to read a narrative with music. That they are evidence of a fruitful relationship between a filmmaking genius and a compositional genius is also important. Part four is a cheat, two songs written into a couple of Shakespeare’s Italian plays – ignore the fact that the Willow Song is a traditional English folk piece, not important, what is, is that Shakespeare used it, music, to define Desdemona’s final moments. Oh, and finally, two Italian fragments of that most explicit (in every sense of the word) and unavoidable form of lyricism in action, the hippity-hop. One good, one very, very bad.

Part one, Opera

E Lucevan Le Stelle (from Tosca) – Giacomo Puccini
Casta Diva (from Norma) – Vincenzo Bellini

Part two, Literate bands

A New Start for Shoegazing Kids – Giardini di Mirò
It Was Bliss! – Settlefish

Part three, Film music

Toby Dammit Theme (from Fellini’s third of Tre Passi Nel Delirio) – Nino Rota
Aria Di Roma (from Fellini’s Roma) – Nina Rota

Part four, Shakespeare in Italy

Willow Song (from Othello) – arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Light o’ Love (from Two Gentlemen of Verona) – arranged by Tom Kines

Part five, Italian hip-hop

La Grande Onda – Piotta
Tranqi Funky – Articolo 31

Youth | Music | Postcards from Italy

Music As Reading has gone Italy! I lie: in fact, at the time of writing, Music As Reading is sitting on his bedroom floor half-writing, half-packing in preparation for his Tuscan holiday – it’s Friday 2nd July, soon to become Saturday 3rd July. Music As Reading is coming at you…from the past!

Anyway, long and short of it is Italy and t’internet are, despite sharing two letters (three if you count the T twice) not as happy friends as England and t’internet (by England, I mean all of England except Cumbria). Which means that for two weeks only, Music As Reading (mixtapes not included within that umbrella-sort-of-term incidentally – I prepared those earlier) will be relying upon more analogue methods of communication. Inspiration courtesy of the wonderful Beirut, whose ‘Postcards from Italy’ can be enjoyed in its Spotified entirety if you’re willing to click on the hyperlinked title above…

Whose ‘Postcards from Italy’ also has some maybe-profound things to say about this week’s theme, yoof, actually:

The times we had
Oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow
Were not all bad
We put our feet just where they had, had to go
Never to go…

The shattered soul
Following close but nearly twice as slow
In my good times
There were always golden rocks to throw
At those who admit defeat too late
Those were our times, those were our times…

And I will love to see that day
That day is mine
When she will marry me outside with the willow trees
And play the songs we made
They made me so
And I would love to see that day
Her day was mine…

Hmmm. A link at best tenuous, at worst entirely non-existent. I’ll move on. Basically, throughout my Tuscan retreat (lol) I’ll be sending postcards from Italy to one of my fellow editors in lieu of contributing to the blog (for, let’s be honest, this is hardly a proper contribution) in the hope that, A, they don’t get lost or take a million years to get to England, it being not quite yet high season, and B, one of said editors can be arsed to scan them into the blog so Silkworms gets to see them. Both sides please chaps, scan both sides! Not yet being in Italy, I obviously have no idea what I’m going to write, but I will promise now that it will be vaguely linked to the weekly themes and SHORT. Such is the advantage of postcards. An advantage blogging lacks, as I daresay you’ve noticed.

They shall be our very own Postcards from Italy – without a ukulele in sight or sound. Actually, I lie, Mother’s bringing her ukulele with her, so goodness knows what kind of synthesis might happen. Useful fact: BA are cool with passengers bringing a musical instrument (guitar or smaller) in addition to their hand luggage onto their flights. A boon Mother intends to take full advantage of. I recommend you do the same. And there you were thinking BA were strike-breaking bastardbitches and nothing more. Shame on you. Shame on us all.

(To access a [very, very short] Spotify essay-soundtrack-playlist to accompany the above, click here)

Sam Kinchin-Smith
Music Editor

Hollywood | Mixtape | Mixtape V, Hollywooding: A Musical McGonagall

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Music As Reading: Mixtape V, Hollywooding: A Musical McGonagall

I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Musical accompaniment to literature – the soundtracking of poetry and prose – is going to be something that Music As Reading returns to again and again: in it lies, I think, a synthesis that I can already see turning into proper ideas, rather than silly reflections. Poems with Read with… subtitles making musical suggestions, novels coming complete with a tracklisting to – I don’t know, History Boys- or Donnie Darko-style, with their respective 80s pumpers – evoke unambiguous era or mood or context. It’s an attractive thought.

However, rather than launching into the deep-end of serious literary soundtracking, this mixtape takes a rather more gentle hop-skip-anda-jump into a frothy, comic manifestation of the same idea: can a good soundtrack save bad writing, Hollywooding it into something glossy and evocative (for an explanation of the act of Hollywooding, lookee here). Does music change words, or at the very least our ability to judge whether they’re any good or not? Is soundtracking literature therefore a responsible activity? Does the synthesis of literature and music make words less important – as is the case with lyrics, for example? Does this matter? If McGonagall’s writing can be turned, via a concerto, into something seemingly high-brow and ironically profound, then is he really the Bad Poet we all think he is? Perhaps he’s merely a badly read poet…

The Tay Bridge Disaster: McGonagall as Hitchcockian suspense…

String Quartet No.8 in C Minor, Largo - Il Allegro molto – Dmitri Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C, Andante - Allegro – Sergei Prokofiev

The Christmas Goose: McGonagall as arthouse enigma…

Violin Concerto No. 2, Allegro molto – Béla Bartók
Ode to Napoleon – Arnold Schoenberg

An Autumn Reverie: McGonagall as lush panorama

Serenade for Strings in B Minor, Moderato - Tempo di valse – Antonín Leopold Dvo_ák
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Nithsdale Widow and her Son: McGonagall as human saga

Cello Concerto in E Minor, Allegro - Moderato - Allegro, ma non troppo - Pocco piu lento - Adagio – Edward Elgar
Pictures at an Exhibition: The Old Castle – Modest Mussorgsky

A Tale of the Sea: McGonagall as they-don’t-make-them-like-that-anymore adventure…

Piano Concerto in D Major, ‘For the left hand’ – Maurice Ravel
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Allegro non troppo – Dmitri Shostakovich

The Battle of Bannockburn: McGonagall as final chapter of a three-part epic…

Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Andante maestoso - Allegro Vivace – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Allegro con fuoco – Antonín Leopold Dvo_ák

Destruction | Mixtape | Mixtape IV, Thorn In His Side

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Music As Reading: Mixtape IV, The Poet With A Thorn In His Side (he only ever wanted to be a music-maker)

Armitage: “I really like your stuff.”
Mark E. Smith: “Got a light, cock?”

The poet who, really, would have liked to be in a band more than he enjoys being a really-quite-successful poet – an evocative, pathos-drenched, rather depressing image. And one of crucial import to the Music As Reader. For out of it buzz a swarm of questions at the heart of what the Music As Reading project is, really, all about: what is the relationship between the poet and the music he or she listens to – and what can one discover about both forms from that relationship? Does the poet who loves to music-listen read or write with, alongside music because of the benefits to be had out of this relationship? And is poetry (slash, the poet) not just ultimately, compared to goodmusic (slash, the musician) intolerably sad, po-faced, poontang-repelling, and does it (slash he slash she) therefore require an injection of rockandgoddamroll if it (slash he slash she) is to regain the reputation, readership and romanticism that once defined it (slash he slash she) as a mode? Because let’s face it, most people start writing poetry because they want to be Lord fucken Byron, not Sir Andrew Motion – ladies and gentlemen, we’re being cool-shortchanged… Why?

Armitage is so specifically important, though, because he did the unthinkable and actually started a bloody band – way late (perhaps middle would be the more appropriate word, actually) in life. Then wrote a book about it, Gig (published by Penguin) which contains the above two-line anecdote – and a full history of not-being-in-a-band-but-being-a-really-quite-successful-poet Northern miserabalia. In it, and generally, he is admirably open and generous about who he digs, who he adores, the kinds of artists he would have loved to be a part of. Unfortunately, his actual band, the Scaremongers (www.simonarmitage.co.uk for videos etc.) sound like nothing so much as Registered Trademark The Worst Band Of All Time, the Beautiful South. Only a bit less shit. Surely, Simon, there might have been another way? Surely, Simon, is not Music As Reading it?

Part one, Bands Armitage would like/have liked to be a part of.

Searching for Mr Right – Young Marble Giants
She’s Lost Control – Joy Division
Independence Day – Comsat Angels
Spoilt Victorian Child – The Fall
Wildcat Fights – Eyeless in Gaza
The Boy With A Thorn In His Side – The Smiths
Nocturnal Me – Echo and the Bunnymen
Diamonds are Forever – Arctic Monkeys
Ever Fallen in Love (with someone you shouldn’t’ve)? – The Buzzcocks
Blue Boy – Orange Juice

Part two, Bands Armitage’s writing/songwriting reveal would have, in actuality, been a slightly better fit (note, half the size of part one).

Lucky You – Lightning Seeds
Irish Blood, English Heart – Morrissey
Our Mutual Friend – The Divine Comedy
Perfect 10 – The Beautiful South
Put A Donk On It (original mix) – Blackout Crew*

* I suspect this one needs a wee explanatory note. Blackout Crew are, basically, the Beatles of the Donk scene, a relatively new species of drainpipe-techno defined by a quintessential northern-only-ness to compare with, say, Armitage’s rendering of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Simon would surely approve – somebody should put them in touch with one another, get the poet to ‘drop’ on the next record (if there is a next record…) See the VBS donk-umentary (http://www.vbs.tv/watch/music-world/donk) for more information.