My Year In Sound: From Rejection to Success

Musical Attempt # 1: DJing

I thought that I would end the year with a little article on my own musical adventure over the past year. I started by DJing at a local club, Crash Course. This club is an indie, punk, electro, brit pop, and pretty much whatever the DJ feels like kinda place. I got the gig by telling the guy who was running the night, James, that I thought that the club had gone down hill since the last club DJ left.. Which was kind of rude, but I was just being honest. I offered to help out and although I had only ever DJed once before, he let me try. After a few attempts at spinning, I managed to convince him that I knew how to DJ. I also managed to convince myself, and I began to DJ at another club at the same venue, The Box. This is a very gothic club, with a fixed crowd and two dance floors. I managed to hold my own there for a while, but like all good things it had to end. I was booted from the booth for playing too much indie, or emo, or not wearing enough black, either way, this experience was the dark underside to my first attempt at DJing.

Musical Attempt # 2: Joining A Band

I began my exploration in Whysp, a band who sounded like a cross between an old Irish pub band, The Incredible String Band, and Sid Barret. They were a hometown favorite of mine, and when my friend Jeff Manson moved to Mexico, the orchestrator of the group, Josh Alper (of The Lowdown) agreed to let me play with them. I felt a little awkward in the group, because it seemed like some type of Tolken-esque adventure team of hardy lads and I was well, a girl. The songs were great, if you like psychedelic pub ballads. My favorite was Seedling which speaks of happily laughing plants and animals and floating people. I love the endearingly out of key "la, la, la" part and the harpsichord that flows throughout the track (both of which I got to perform, when I was in the band). Another epic ballad, Travels of Youth, has some of the "best" lyrics like "a promise of love to a maiden as fair as a dove" and "and the sun will rise a fair maiden," both of which I felt kind of funny singing for their obviously hokey (vaguely sexist) content. But the ridiculously long adventure ballad about getting trolls high and drinking mead in taverns won me over, and I found room in my heart for the song. My life in Whysp was cut short however, due to the longing the boys had for their former keyboard/melodica player and so I was cast out! I was set to travel the winding road alone, adventuring and searching for a new band of ruddy bards (with only 15 hit points left, and a small concealed dagger! )

Musical Attempt # 3: Starting A Band

When I thought all was over and I was never going to find any musical partners of like mind, I stumbled upon a little CD by The Magistrates. They turned out to have some pretty neat electro pop tracks. One of the motivating forces behind the band, Gabriel Gilder, and I began a musical affair, in no time we started talking about doing our own breed of music. Unlike my previous engagement, this collaboration makes room for theatrics, mistakes, bizarre costumes, and perfectionism masked by amateurism. I have no pretense of psychedelic mysticism which seems so popular these days with artists like Devendra Banhart, 6 Organs of Admittance, and Little WIngs to name a few. But I do feel like music is magical and magic is funny. Our collaborative work is called Cosmic Star and our first musical venture is a track inspired by the song poems I wrote of earlier. We actually wrote and recorded the song in one day, with the help of Robert Syrett. It is sort of strange, disjunct, and comical, just the way it ought to be. So, now I leave you with the virgin recording of Honest and Hard I wish everyone a magic filled new year. More to come!

Music To . . . BLOW YOUR LIFE!

This is my first venture into the magical realm of J-Pop music ( I guess most of you know, that means Japanese pop). My exploration was fostered by a recent trip to Japan town in San Francisco, where i managed to stumble upon a book and cd blowout sale. My coconspirator and music consultant, Gabriel Gilder and I picked up four cds, between two and four dollars. These CDs were chosen according to a variety of factors, cover art, misuse of the english language, and price. There were two stand out albums in the bundle. High Blow Your Life by an artist that Google translates from Japanese as Electricity Bee Maquis. It is an amazing album, chock full of bizarre English phrasing and lyrics. Moreover, it had a genius packaging, including little paper inserts for each song on the album. The image above is from the song Ride on Five which is my favorite song on the album. The chorus lyrics are "Free Ride, Ride on Five," and given the image on the paper insert, I am not sure I want to know what they are singing about. The insane keyboard action, psychotic synthesizers and a strange solo at the end with some type of horn instrument make it hard to pin down the genre of this band. It is some combination of Space Jazz, Techno, and Disco; not your average Dance Dance Revolution song. In fact, I can't imagine this being played in a club anywhere, ever.

The second Japan Town find is an album by hiro:n called Mangosutana. Hiro:n seems to be a very cute female Japanese pop star. I am only guessing she is a star, because Warner Music produced her album. It is definately far more moderate and mainstream than High Blow Your Life. It sounds like Japanese lounge on some songs and Japanese Jackson Five on others. The greatest song on the album,Tokyo City, is sort of a disco ballad. The secret key to this song is the surprise Japan-rap toward the end of the track, which ends in the lyrics "monkey on the door." Listen for yourself, let me know what you think.

Money to the Max

I just added a new feature to the page. This feature enables me to spend the time it takes to find and purchase the music you need to hear. So if you like the site and its contents, support the Power of the Music for Unicorns. If you send a CD sized donation, provide your address, and I will make you an extra special limited edition Magical Mix CD!
*niki

Song Poems: Money + Music = Weird

The life of a song poem is generally short. While major pop songs enter chart listings and affect the consciousness of the culture, sometimes for decades, a song poem is more like a brief firefly of a song existing only for the time it takes the songwriter to pay the composer. Then the song poem is shipped off to the songwriter and fades into relative obscurity.

Song Poems begin as an add in the back of a magazine, this add is placed by a composer and recording studio, who is looking to lure in a "poet" who might be willing to pay between $200-$400 to have their song produced. The add above is one of many which have sunk into the back of magazines and comics since the mid 1960s. The main target for such an advertisement is a person who fancies them-self to be a song writer, but may not have the access, money, or (lets face it) talent to achieve a career as a songwriter. The American Song-Poem Music Archive has a number of great articles about the history of the song poems, although their archive of the poems seems to be somewhat unreliable (ie: broken links). Another valuable resource is the recent documentary funded by PBS, Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story However, I am going to provide you with a little taste of a few of my favorite song poems.

One of the earliest and most successful recording artists for song poems was Rodd Keith, a very prolific artist, who made his living and his legacy off the lyrics of nameless Americans. One of the early and great Keith recordings is The Hump Dance It has some very risque intonations for a 1960s non pop ballad. I wonder what exactly the songwriter meant by hump? Was this song a very early precursor to the Humpty Hump?

Maybe all the song poems are simple directions of our nation's consciousness, working like little CV radios which pick up the broadcasts from larger stations. A later song I am particularly fond of is Jimmy Carter Says Yes recorded by Gene Marshal. This song has a patriotic country feel, but it is decidedly left wing and outdated. I love it for all those reasons. I am particularly fond of the first-person speech uttered by Gene Marshall speaking as Jimmy Carter. He promises to run the government "without sin or any corruption" and "stand tall like old glory, faithful to the Republic." I listened to this song on election day, dreaming of the year before my birth, 1979, the last year of Jimmy's rein in office.

Finally, I am moving into the present moment of song poems. I have to admit, that the songs being written by Caglar Juan Singletary are my favorite hands down. Calgar is a featured writer on the PBS documentary, who listed his song influences as: Jesus, Martial Arts, Ladies, and Science Fiction. His song, Non-Violent Taekwondo Troopers may seem a bit incomprehensible at first, but after about five listenings you may discern a very intricate science fiction plot involving Pricilla Presley, Kung-Fu, Jesus Christ, and a animatronic bicicle named Angelaria. I can not fully describe what is happening in this masterful piece of music, but please listen with care, it might blow your mind.