Year: 2019

Serious pop from the other Dave Stewart

In 1985 I was attending college in New York, and in the great tradition of young people wasting the best years of their lives “experimenting,” I developed an addiction—to synthesizers. I bought what was to be the first of many keyboards and spent countless hours tweaking sounds when ordinary people my age were busy getting drunk and forming bad social habits. I wasn’t much interested in writing songs; what fascinated me most was the process of creating interesting timbres.

I subscribed to Keyboard Magazine, which encouraged my habit in two different ways. First, each issue convinced me that I absolutely needed the latest electronic musical gadgets, thus ensuring a state of perpetual credit card debt. But the magazine also taught me a number of practical skills for making music. One of the magazine’s features at that time was called a Soundpage—a tear-out “Flexidisc” plastic phonograph record. Each month, some well-known keyboard player would put together a special recording, along with an article describing the music and the techniques used to create it.

These Are the Daves I Know

Dave Stewart was the featured artist in the December 1985 issue. The Soundpage article began: “Dave Stewart insists that the other Dave Stewart, co-founding member of the Eurythmics, is not related to him, even though they’re both British, play keyboards, accompany female vocalists, and wear glasses.” (This Dave Stewart had been in the bands Egg, Hatfield & the North, and Bruford; vocalist Barbara Gaskin was once in Spirogyra.) I listened to the recording of “Henry and James” and was instantly hooked. Though the style could be called “synth-pop,” I had never heard music like this. The instrumentation was entirely electronic, but the sounds had been crafted with such skill and care that you could easily forget that fact. In contrast to the prevailing custom, synthesizers were used to maximum musical effect, not to call attention to the fact that the artist was using the latest gear. Meanwhile, Barbara Gaskin’s vocals were hauntingly beautiful, utterly obscuring the song’s rather odd subject matter: two dronelike office workers. I played the single until it was nearly worn out.

Naturally, I had to have more. But their first album, Up From the Dark, was available only on CD. I didn’t have a CD player at the time or even know anyone who did, but I decided I’d buy the CD anyway and figure out how to play it later. I looked in record stores for the next five years and simply couldn’t find it anywhere. Once a store said they’d special-order the CD for me, but it never arrived. I wondered if I would ever hear more of Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.

Then, in 1990, I casually mentioned Up From the Dark to a friend of mine in Texas. “Oh yeah, I have that,” he said. “It has the ‘Siamese Cat Song’ on it; I bought it for my kids.” I was flabbergasted: my quest had ended. After listening to a cassette copy for a few months, I finally tracked down the CD in a used record store. Shortly thereafter, Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin released another album, The Big Idea, followed by Spin in 1991.

Extended Coverage

The music on those three albums is quite diverse. Many of the songs are extremely inventive covers—including such strange bedfellows as “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (Bob Dylan), “Amelia” (Joni Mitchell), and “Leipzig” (Thomas Dolby). It was also on Stewart & Gaskin CDs that I first heard “8 Miles High,” “Walking the Dog,” and “It’s My Party,” their version of which became a #1 hit in the U.K. But Stewart’s original compositions, like “Henry and James,” “The Cloths of Heaven” (based on a poem by Yeats), and “Golden Rain,” are my favorites. Although the styles of music vary, the masterful orchestrations, clever interpretations, and luscious vocals give it all a distinctive coherence.

Stewart & Gaskin refer to their work as “pop music for grown-ups.” That’s a terrifically apt description. The songs’ subject matter is sometimes serious and sometimes silly, but it never degenerates into the meaninglessness of most commercial pop music. The duo’s unique mixture of intelligent lyrics and interesting music results in a distinctive style. I think of it as the musical equivalent of gourmet macaroni and cheese: familiar and comforting, yet rich and sophisticated—skillfully made with quality ingredients and adorned with subtle garnishes. The songs tend to have the overall structure, rhythm, and length of pop songs, but an entirely different texture, if you will—one that especially appeals to people who appreciate technical excellence in musical composition, performance, and yes, synthesizer programming.

What Goes Around

After the major labels dismissed Stewart & Gaskin’s music as “too uncommercial,” they started their own label, Broken Records. The lack of commercial pressure allows them an unusual level of artistic integrity and creative freedom. But apart from the occasional odd remix, re-release of a CD single, or compilation album the duo produced no new music for many years after 1991. Every now and then I’d check in on their website, which perpetually promised that a new album was in the works, but after 18 years, I’d pretty much given up hope.

And then, in 2009, much to my surprise and delight, that long-promised album, Green and Blue, finally appeared. In fact, because Stewart & Gaskin had accumulated more new music than would fit on a single CD, they simultaneously released a five-track EP called Hour Moon with the remaining songs (including the Soundpage version of “Henry and James” I’d fallen in love with back in 1985), followed several months later by the 14-track The TLG Collection, featuring rare and unreleased tracks. The following year, they released two new Special Edition CDs: Broken Records: The Singles and As Far As Dreams Can Go, both of which include reworked and extended versions of earlier tracks. The following year, two more Special Edition CDs appeared—updated versions of The Big Idea and Spin.

Apparently Stewart & Gaskin felt that collection of music should be enough to last fans for quite a while, because more than seven additional years would pass before their next offering. In January 2019, the duo released another full-length studio album, Star Clocks. The sound is just what I’ve come to expect from Stewart & Gaskin, including occasional lyrical and musical callbacks to their earlier hits. But as an example of how thoroughly they’ve rejected commercial pop expectations, the average song length on this 11-track album is a full seven minutes.

My one fond wish, which will probably never come true, would be to see a live performance by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin. The duo rarely tours—I’ve found records of a handful of concerts over the years in the U.K. and in Japan, as well as one in Los Angeles back in 1991. But that’s about it. Furthermore, Stewart & Gaskin apparently have a philosophical objection to releasing video recordings of their concerts, so I may not even get a second-hand impression of what their live performances are like. On the other hand, Stewart says that they have no plans to retire and expect to keep making new music for years to come. I sure hope so.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 19, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on March 18, 2005.

The Slack group messaging system has become an integral part of work life (and even social life) for millions of people. It’s a feature of the modern business landscape (and even, increasingly, a less-creepy alternative to Facebook). But how can you make the best use of this powerful, 21st-century tool to both get your job done and have fun? In Take Control of Slack, my colleague Glenn Fleishman addresses every major type of Slack user—new, experienced, and even reluctant—with concrete advice on how Slack can make your work and personal life better. It shows you things you’ll never learn by reading the online documentation or simply poking around, based on Glenn’s years of experience in multiple Slack teams.

This book, like all Take Control titles, comes as an ebook, and you can download any combination of formats—PDF, EPUB, and/or Kindle’s Mobipocket format—so you can read it on pretty much any computer, smartphone, tablet, or ebook reader. The cover price is $14.99, but as an Interesting Thing of the Day reader, you can buy it this week for 30% off, or just $10.49.

San Francisco’s Theatre of Sound

In the years when I lived in San Francisco, one of my favorite destinations for a night out was a little-known local institution called Audium. It is the world’s only venue devoted exclusively to the performance of pure sound. Although I haven’t been there in years, Audium is still very much in business and, as far as I can tell, little changed since my last visit, delivering the same sorts of performances it has for roughly the last five decades.

Audium is a unique and highly specialized theater. The room where the performance takes place is actually a building-within-a-building, completely isolated from outside sounds. About four dozen chairs are arranged in three concentric circles, with 169 speakers of all shapes and sizes located around the room. Some speakers are suspended from the ceiling, or hidden behind the walls, under chairs, or beneath the floating floor. You’re completely surrounded by speakers, so all seats are equally good. It’s almost like being in a planetarium, except there’s nothing to see—the performances take place in complete darkness. You come to Audium to experience a total immersion in sound.

Sounding Out an Idea

The idea for Audium was conceived in the late 1950s, when electronic music was beginning to appear. A pair of classically trained, professional musicians became interested in exploring the role space played in composition and performance. Not content with two channels of sound, they wanted to know what it would be like for sound to move all the way around, above, and below the audience—using space itself as an instrument. Composer Stan Shaff and his partner, equipment designer Doug McEachern, began a long collaboration. Shaff conceptualized the sounds and effects he wanted to achieve, and McEachern figured out how technology could bring those ideas to life.

In the early 1960s the first Audium concerts were held at universities and museums in San Francisco. In 1965, the first Audium theater was created, and after a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972, construction began on the current building. Since it opened in 1975, the current Audium at 1616 Bush St. has given weekly performances. Shaff still sits behind the console, and McEachern updated the equipment numerous times over the years.

Echo of the Past

Everything about Audium is analog—there’s not a CD player, computer, or digital effects processor in sight. Considering the vintage of the technology, the sound quality is startlingly pure. On a good night, with the controls handled expertly, there simply isn’t any hiss or buzz. Every sound is bright and vibrant. Shaff said he gave a special concert in the early 2000s for a group of engineers from Dolby, who were impressed by Audium’s use of technology. It makes Surround Sound seem downright pedestrian. Still, the engineers said, composers and soundtrack designers would have to learn entirely new skills to be able to create sounds for an audio environment as rich as Audium.

Visiting Audium is like stepping back in time. The building’s architecture, décor, and the performance itself are pure 1970s. When you arrive, you buy your ticket at the box office (cash only, of course) and proceed into the foyer. The first thing you notice, appropriately enough, is sound. There’s a faint but steady drone that sounds like a discordant organ. As you adjust to the sound, you also adjust to dim lighting and begin to study the abstract sculptures and prints lining the walls. Meanwhile, hidden speakers on every surface play seemingly random sound effects—voices, waves, ticking clocks. On one wall, a ghostly green projection of a clock face shows the current time. The total effect is one of intriguing eeriness. But it’s eerie in a very particular way: you begin to notice, almost subliminally, that the entire experience reflects the sensibilities of a bygone era. Everything around you must have seemed extremely modern when it was built, but there’s a complete absence of any artifacts, sounds, or scents of the post-computer age—right down to the powdered soap in the lavatories. But the unselfconsciously anachronistic setting is quite endearing.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

Let me tell you about my most recent visit to Audium. At precisely 8:30 P.M., Stan Shaff pulled aside a black curtain and introduced himself to the 20 or so members of the evening’s audience. After a few words of explanation about the performance, he led the group through a dark, twisty hall called a sound labyrinth and into the performance space. As the lights went down, Shaff seated himself behind a customized console of knobs and levers in a small control booth. He then began what he refers to as sculpting sound. While taped recordings of all sorts of sounds played, Shaff manipulated their positions, speed, and volume in real time. So although the content was fixed, the performance itself was dynamic, changing significantly from night to night.

The sounds we heard were dreamlike, evoking unexpected memories and emotions. There might be children playing, an airplane taking off, a flushing toilet, or a marching band. Interspersed with the natural sounds were the textures of old analog synthesizers—not melodic for the most part, but aleatory—sometimes playfully so, other times harshly serious. The show was not a musical work in the conventional sense, but rather a sound performance in the best tradition of experimental twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schönberg and John Cage.

Fermata

The show lasted about an hour and a quarter, including a brief intermission. As the sound faded away and the lights returned, the audience simply sat there, silently, for several minutes. For some, perhaps it was simply a matter of waiting for a cue that the show was really over and it was time to leave. But I think most of the audience was still savoring the experience, pondering the strange sensations and impressions of this unique performance. I left pleasantly disoriented, having to readjust to the sounds of the city with their conventional directionality.

Audium performances are held every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night promptly at 8:30. Audium does virtually no advertising, so Shaff never knows what to expect. On some nights, he said, the show sells out; on others, it’s just him and his wife. But he’s quick to point out that it’s not a commercial venture so success isn’t measured in numbers. What is important is his unique art and the impressions it leaves on the audience—including, he hopes, future generations of composers who will take up the torch of omnidimensional sound sculpture.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 14, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on October 10, 2004.

Taking back the dinner table

I enjoy my rare opportunities to shop at upscale supermarkets like Whole Foods Market, or here in our neighborhood of San Diego, Stehly Farms Market. In contrast to our everyday grocery stores, the produce is usually fresher and healthier-looking, more foods are available in bulk, and everything has the appearance of quality and wholesomeness. I get excited about loading up my shopping cart, preparing to stock our pantry with food we could actually feel good about eating.

Then, of course, I see how much all this is going to cost—a small fortune. For people on as tight a budget as we are, that really hurts. Leaving aside the political correctness of buying free-range, genetically unmodified, grass-fed, hormone-free, pesticide-free, organic whatever, many consumers find that the price of those attributes overshadows the quality and other virtues by a significant amount. When I see a gallon of organic milk sitting right next to a gallon of regular milk that costs half as much, I know that I’d be paying for a concept much more than what I would taste on my cereal.

I say all that to put today’s topic into context. The Slow Food movement is, as you might guess, an attempt to promote the opposite of fast food—to emphasize quality, nutrition, flavor, variety, sustainability, and many other worthwhile things. As someone who loves good food and who despairs at the depths of blandness and laziness to which our society has sunk, this is a concept I truly wish I could get behind. But let me give away the punch line: I think it’s missing a few crucial ingredients.

The Fast-Growing Slow Movement

An Italian journalist named Carlo Petrini started the Slow Food movement in 1986, when he saw the first McDonald’s being built in Rome. Petrini worried that smaller food producers would be pushed out of business by giant international corporations, that local specialty foods would be replaced by dull burgers that taste the same everywhere in the world, and that attention to flavor and quality would disappear as cultural values. At the same time, he felt that fast food threatened family and community by erasing time spent together eating, talking, and building relationships. The Slow Food movement aims to reverse all that.

Now boasting more than 100,000 members in over 150 countries, the Slow Food movement is organized into local chapters called convivia. Each convivium holds seminars, tastings, visits to local food producers, and other events. Slow Food practices include using fresh, whole ingredients rather than processed foods; purchasing ingredients from small local or regional suppliers, and where possible, directly from the source; supporting ecologically responsible, sustainable food production, and promoting gastronomic culture—including social interaction around a dinner table. “Slow” food is not necessarily food that takes a long time to prepare or eat, though using fewer processed ingredients and paying more attention to how food is cooked and eaten will typically result in longer meals. But the point of the movement is less about time than it is about quality.

Let Them Eat Slowly

I believe deeply in long, leisurely meals made with fresh, local ingredients and enjoyed in the relaxing company of friends. Every time I’ve experienced such a meal, I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. And if every single meal could be that way, I’d be thrilled. It’s just that…I don’t have an extra hour, or two, or three every day to cook and eat; my schedule is full already. And I can’t afford to buy fresh, organic, locally produced food all the time. The problem is not that I need to be convinced of how worthy this cause is; the problem is that my lifestyle and income make it impossible for me to participate fully. If I had a job that paid exceptionally well and also gave me loads of spare time, I’d be all over slow food, but however much I might desire such a thing, it’s just not that simple. And that’s speaking as someone squarely in the middle class; to low-income individuals with even less time and less money than I have, slow food would probably make about as much sense as a gold-plated toilet.

That this should be the case is a sad, sad commentary on what modern western culture considers acceptable. And OK, it’s not the fault of the Slow Food movement. Their goals are nothing if not admirable. But in this day and age, especially in North America, there are prerequisites to slow food—namely, leisure time and disposable income. The Slow Food movement can’t tell you how to achieve these things, but until you do, you’re outside their target audience.

In all fairness, Slow Food is not an all-or-nothing affair. No one is insisting that every meal and every grocery purchase has to live up to these standards, or that one must never consume fast food. Surely the mere awareness of the issues and the options facing us all as consumers can lead to small but meaningful changes. And for those who are constantly busy out of habit rather than necessity, the virtues of Slow Food may be an enticement to adopt a healthier lifestyle. All the same, I’d feel a lot more enthusiastic about joining a movement dedicated to shorter work weeks, higher pay, and less stress for everyone, even if it came with fries and a Coke.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on March 2, 2005.

Image credit: Jan-Tore Egge [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons