#nathanhsantos

[nathanhsantos]

The Rush Fish-Eye Lens: Assuming Control

Many works of art enjoying sustained appreciation often contain multiple layers of understanding that may invite/require frequent revisits to reach full comprehension of the creator’s intent.  These works can operate successfully on each level independently and thus serve many purposes. In contrast, other works in service to commerce often are created to have maximum impact in the present, and are resigned to a limited shelf life.  While all music has a purpose, it is also true that creative aims are not monolithic, but instead exist somewhere on a wide spectrum.  This can create conflict if the artist(s) are contractually bound to a larger network supporting the endeavor.  An issue of who is controlling the content emerges and the resulting products can be a reflection of the dynamics of this network.

At the time that the Canadian power trio, Rush, was finishing a lackluster tour promoting the weak commercial performance of their third album, Caress of Steel, there were many major cultural shifts underway setting the stage for a broader cultural war; one, it can be argued, that is still being waged.  1976 was the bicentennial celebration of the American Revolution, and in many respects the original revolutionary tenet of “the individual vs. the machine” was very much on people’s minds two hundred years later.  Ascendant were conversations about feminist and gender equality, environmental concerns, influence of the Evangelical community, stirring of Islamic politics, racial and ethnic identity, and resistance to the heavy-handedness of corporations directing the entertainment industry.  

Artists of this time played the role of vox populi, and groups such as Queen and Kiss penned a number of anthems to stir large arenas into unified chants channeling revolutionary fervor to oppose conventionality.  The English band, Pink Floyd, utilized a vehicle of musical commentary through their string of influential concept albums.  Their Wish You Were Here album from 1975 describes the band's disillusionment with the music industry as a moneymaking machine rather than a forum of artistic expression. The plot features an aspiring musician getting signed by a seedy executive to the music industry, "The Machine".  Dystopian settings were in vogue in all areas of art expressing anxiety of the influence of technology, religion, ideology, and other agents of conformity.

It was at this time that Rush, supported by Mercury Records, arrived at a directional crossroad preparing for their fourth recording project.  Rush manager Ray Danniels received pressure from Mercury to see that Rush’s next project be commercially accessible, or they would be dropped from the company.  Rush’s recalcitrant answer to the label’s ultimatum was to maintain artistic integrity and stay the course.  What resulted from their own act of insubordination was THE bull’s eye strike that earned them the permanent license to control their aesthetic vision. This project given the title, 2112, repurposed Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1937) novella, with additional inspiration from Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 (1966) and Nova (1967).  Rush’s resistance to massification resonated with their audience profoundly, and they would maintain elements of their resistance throughout the remainder of their work together.

The mini-opera that comprises the entire first side of this album tells the cautionary story of a theocratic regime that has gained total control of the inhabitants of Megadon in the year 2112 and has instituted a collectivist state depriving the population of individual identity and artistic expression.  By chance, a guitar is discovered in a cavern behind a waterfall by an anonymous escapee.  Determining that introducing this obsolete, primitive technology might enrich their society, the protagonist presents it to the autocratic Priests, who summarily ridicule him and dismiss the idea as unproductive and dangerous.  Throughout the entire suite, Rush invokes the combative 1812 Overture (1880) by Peter Tchaikovsky, the Gospel of Matthew, and even G.W.F. Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness” and “beautiful soul” from The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) in the masterwork. The second side of the album, although not a part of the “2112” suite, continues the thematic motifs describing the traveling to internal and external places and discovering transformative ideas.

This music IS multi-layered and overtly critical of the collectivist ideology.  Graphic designer Hugh Syme’s depiction of The Starman on the album cover also underscored the battle waged by “the individual” that was so much a part of the Boomer raison d’être.  This material was criticized by leftist journalist, Barry Miles in the March 4, 1978 article in the New Musical Express calling Rush “right-wing propagandists” and even equated them with Nazis (“shades of the 1000-year Reich”). Nonetheless, their following was secured and they would remain in the domain of The Starman, resist pressure to compromise their principles, and steadfastly offer their unique perspective on life.

[nathanhsantos]

The Silents: It’s Our Time!

“The air is humming, and something great is coming” is how composer/playwright Stephen Sondheim and his generation saw the future in 1956.  Their world was rapidly moving forward and they were sensitively adapting to the post-War institutions established by their victorious elders of the Greatest Generation.  The economic and totalitarian crises were steadfastly engaged in their youth for their protection, and the subsequent resolutions facilitated a new age of affluence. This new dynamic witnessed innovations in technology, communication, and interconnectivity, and this new cohort of young people who began to earnestly probe their own potential were the catalysts of the many individual movements that would ultimately widen the seemingly unbridgeable fissures of our current culture by the generations that followed.

The youth of the 1930s-40s were bestowed with the label “teenagers” and were personified in 1950s film, television, radio, magazines, and other new media representing popular culture as a group with leisure time, extra spending money, and a growing restlessness with the accepted rules and expectations established for them. Their collective yearning for their own voice, a sentimental urge to feel, a desire to explore the taboo, an instinct to open previously closed doors characterized this Silent generation’s manner and in turn, their mores became the essential facilitators of Baby Boomer self-exploration.  

High-achieving technicians and specialists in their chosen fields, this pluralistic cohort worked to establish a new language and zeitgeist to help the world deal with the Cold War tensions looming globally and even in space, and the domestic antipathy that was coming to a boil. Naturally, the humanities provided a mirror reflecting a world adjusting to new opportunities, more choices to consider, and perhaps a previously unachieved level of operational convenience resulting from the availability of appliances, air conditioning, mass transit, highway systems, artificial intelligence, and advances in science and medicine.  

Issuing the challenge to perceive the world in new ways were thinkers such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Umberto Eco.  Their radical ideas in questioning language, symbols, context, narrative and process would become known as Postmodernism. Among the most cosmopolitan of all artists reflecting postmodernist ideas was Andy Warhol, whose bohemian lifestyle was channeled through a wide range of projects and ventures.

Music moved from mass-produced, collective sounds of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman to the cool, mesmerizing approach of Miles Davis and his various chamber groups. Mentored in the subversive movement known as Bebop, his voice modified the elite, insular, bombastic hipster language of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie into an accessible, sensual, subtle, muted and mild tones associated with casual pace of the Pacific Coast or the beaches of Brazil. This accessibility likewise was the motivating principal with Barry Gordy as he established Motown Record Company, opening a way for his artists to reach a much larger audience.

Above all, the theological training, charismatic delivery, and willingness to adopt Gandhian non-violent methods of challenging the lingering Jim Crow-era Southern Segregationist culture, Martin Luther King Jr. served as the driving force of plurality.  Culminating with his words, “I Have A Dream,” his approach combined Biblical and Constitutional ideals thus opening the door to a place where many colors combine to form rich harmony, and individual voices explore the potential of unique timbres.

Sondheim’s 1982 piece, Merrily We Roll Along, in postmodern fashion tells the story moving time in reverse: beginning in a dour, present-day moment as the lead characters have witnessed their friendship fragment due to individual circumstances, and ending in 1956, when their youthful friendship fueled their vigor to experience life.  Sondheim, capturing the spirit of 1956 eloquently, ends with these nostalgic words:

“It's our time, breathe it in:

Worlds to change and worlds to win

Our turn, we're what's new

Me and you, pal, me and you!

Feel the flow, hear what's happening:

We're what's happening!”

[nathanhsantos]

Something Cool

Margy Frake is “restless as a willow in a wind storm” as she packs for the Iowa State Fair, believing that it will provide her with a break from the mundane life on the farm in the 1945 film, State Fair, scored by Rogers and Hammerstein. Artists have the innate ability to translate the mood of their time into masterworks resonating within and beyond the moment of artful creation.  Certainly the end of this critical war and crippling Depression thawed the icy mood and dawned to an early morning, cool, spring-like optimism.  Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s keen timing was reinforced by the Academy Award for Best Original Song as “It Might as Well Be Spring” was added to the Great American Songbook.  

Hollywood and the West Coast attracted the attention of the world at war’s end. The energy required to attain victory would be invested in migrating to a more relaxed environment much like the vacation departure following an arduous period of work. Capitol Records was founded in 1942, and the circular tower known as “The House That Nat Built” would be the epicenter of the Cool movement. Nat Cole, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, and Harry James were all contributors to a silky smooth, breezy, crooning, sophisticated, understated, back-phrasing style of delivery. 

It was here also the Stan Kenton’s Orchestra backed the youthful, but very sensual vocalist, June Christy. 

Her rendering of Billy Barnes’ song captures this mood: “Something Cool, I’d like to order something cool…My! It’s simply nice to sit and rest awhile… A cigarette? Well I don’t smoke them as a rule, but I’ll have one, It might be fun with something cool.”

Upon completing service in the war, pianist/composer Gil Evans brought his West Coast experience with the Claude Thornhill Orchestra to New York, making a beeline for the progenitors of Bebop.  His cramped rented basement apartment at 14 West 55thStreet became the meeting ground for musicians hanging around the action on 52ndStreet. It was here that discussions on music by visionaries such as George Russell, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Lee Konitz, John Lewis, and Gerry Mulligan. 

These ongoing gatherings sparked creative energy resulting in the first of several remarkable collaborations between Evans and Davis, as well as the others in this group.  

Their first recording project occurred at Capital Records in 1949 and was given the pitch-perfect title of Birth of the Cool.  

With this milestone project and especially his subsequent collaborations with Evans, Miles Davis established the voice that defined his generation.  His trumpet tone was without vibrato, emotionally restrained, in the moderate range of a human voice, deliberate in phrasing, replete with space to allow for the resonance of his musical gestures, subtlety of dynamics, melodically colorful but accessible, sensitive in his pacing, and always leaving the foreground with the listener wanting more.  

These qualities hold true when considering full album projects.  Evans and Davis would produce subsequent albums ranking among the most successful products in the catalogue of jazz music.  Miles Ahead(1956), Porgy and Bess(1958), and Sketches of Spain(1960) all contain luscious textures that provide exquisite settings for Miles’ understated ideas and still remain the epitome of cool.

[nathanhsantos]

Steve Lukather's complete solo on "A Clue" off of Boz Scaggs' "Down Two Then Left" (1977).  This debut improvisation demonstrates thematic development and a command of target tones to produce an arc to the 8-bar solo. The excerpt begins at 2:40. 

In Steve Lukather's new autobiography, "The Gospel According To Luke", Lukather recalls his first major recording session for Boz Scaggs in 1977 when he was merely 19.  This, his first major recorded solo on "A Clue" already demonstrates a maturity of thought in the way his phrases develop, which also was perfectly suited for the Steely Dan-like sound that Scaggs marketed and would soon become the launching point for Toto.  I was so knocked out by this that I had to transcribe it right away.  I've always adored Lukather's playing and was very surprised to learn about the iconic solos on various other huge hits of that era that were actually his!

 Created by Nathan Santos for the intended purpose of education and  appreciation.  For more information, visit http://www.nathansantos.com

[nathanhsantos]

Miles Ahead of 2019

Bob Dorough may have suggested that “Three Is a Magic Number,” but for educators considering lesson plans for the next school year, the number 9 could be the key to creative and meaningful learning. Although there are many cultural icons worthy of focused classroom study, perhaps we have arrived at the perfect moment to check out Miles Davis, the cosmopolitan trumpet griot of the twentieth century.  

Davis was born into a middle-class family in St. Louis. He was given his first horn at age 13 in 1939. He progressed rapidly and steadfastly resolved to join his heroes, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, in New York as bebop was intoning expressions of the civil rights movement.

In 1949, he collaborated with Gil Evans on the Birth of the Cool nonet sessions. This captured the spirit of the West Coast, made bebop accessible, sophisticated, and erudite, and elevated Davis to the top of the jazz world—a position he occupied until his death.

What is arguably his most important project, Kind of Blue,occurred in the next “9” year, 1959. His harmonically static, modal approach to the blues in the postwar folk revival era provided inertia toward hip-hop and liberated the voice just as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would convey only 4 years later in Washington, DC.

The day after Woodstock ended, August 19, 1969, Davis went into the studio to record Bitches Brew, sparking yet another revolution by channeling Sly & the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix, crossing jazz with impunity into the forbidden zone of rock. Using electric instruments and Rock grooves, Davis’s music and album art reflected the ascendant Black Power movement, and anticipated the establishment of the first Black History Month in 1970.

After a self-imposed respite, Davis reemerged in 1979 to begin discussion of a new studio recording ultimately released in 1981, The Man with the Horn. In this next phase he reinterpreted pop songs by artists like Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, and Scritti Politti. A new sound for jazz developed by bassist/producer Marcus Miller included sampling, drum machines, and other synthetic tools, culminating in his 1989 recording, Amandla, followed by Aura, an album signaling that jazz was now global.

For the educator, Davis’s output is a resource for boundless application, discussion, and appreciation as his unique position was to be in front AND on top of contemporary fashion. He established a familiar and accessible voice characteristic of his Midwestern upbringing. As a young artist in the 1950s, he absorbed postmodern ideals that led him to experiment with new technology, interact interracially, and champion individualism.  Why not use his career for a yearlong study of culture? Even Christmas music includes his collaboration with Schoolhouse Rock’s Bob Dorough—a 1962 recording session called Blue Xmas that first brought Davis together with tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter. In 2019, now’s the time to revisit the milestones of “9” years by this remarkable American pioneer.