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(01/08/19 2:55am)
Feature Photo by Matt Jaskulski
One orange balloon skips across the floor. Jazzy music stems from the front of the unfinished basement while holiday lights snake around the entire room. Empty beer bottles sit on top of the water heater.
“Hey thanks for sticking around,” said the lead singer Nick Newman opening up with his band after a standard set from local act Flower Mouth — whose winding jams led the crowd to bang their heads as if they were watching Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5 kicking out the jams in a basement full of teenagers.
At 12:22 a.m., the crowd in the room is smaller than the last set, but the band has to make do with what have. The room is lit with a red light in the center of a dingy downstairs lined with graffiti on the walls. There are strobe lights spanning the stage — decorated in an amber series of bright bulbs matching the blood-red moon in the center of the basement.
The set was certainly a tough act to follow, but Newman dressed in a suit and jeans is confident but nervous along with his Smashing Pumpkins-inspired band, Time With Jameson. “We’re about to blast off like a rocket ship,” said Newman.
Photo by Chava Tova Arymowicz
Upstairs, at Franklin Hall in a quaint room above the main lobby, there were three large chairs as three college students entered the room. It was a professional setting for a college-rock band to share their insights on the local music scene in Bloomington — where the prestigious Jacobs School of Music resides, where dozens of independent record labels are headquartered and wherein, there exists a thriving underground movement of DIY musicians who play gigs in basements throughout the city every weekend.
Here’s a band sustaining within that circuit trying to make their way through the messy reeds of the music business. For now, it’s just house shows and even a performance at the Bluebird for Battle of the Bands, but in the studio, the band is progressing. They churned out a single, “Omni” which was released on Apple Music and Spotify among other streaming services. Their record is due to come out soon.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6wX4W8SpRifZLSn7YSHwp4?si=PpFqvcx-QiyOvBz2_rwawQ
“Just being a part of that house show scene and the music scene in Bloomington, just really inspires you to get a project together. Just a group of friends and seeing what sticks out and what you can make of it. You know, music’s a beautiful thing,” said drummer Blake McKean.
After the grunge subculture surged its way to the mainstream, the music industry turned to college towns like Bloomington, Indiana, where the art-rock scene was thriving and blossoming.
The rise of the grunge revolution was partly due to the artificiality of popular culture at the time. A group of musicians demanded a punk-rock artistic integrity from the perceived plastic society of the late 80s. This paved the way for independent labels to form, which played a key role in the circulation of 90s alternative music. Labels like Secretly Canadian were formed in Bloomington by IU alum and quickly grew into international companies.
Here, is the culture Time With Jameson finds themselves in. Twenty-five years later, the grunge movement came and went. The underground music scene remained.
Photo by Chava Tova Arymowicz
If possible, Time With Jameson hope to get signed to a label. Where will that dream take them?
Sometimes bands with a good live sound garner a distinct reputation, in a separate light than the highbrow production of records perfected in the studio. The Doors led by frontman Jim Morrison, for instance, captured a vastly different experience in live settings — particularly a nightclub in Los Angeles called the Whisky A Go Go. Similarly, the Velvet Underground sounded far different than their studio albums playing together in underground clubs scattered throughout New York City.
Where is Time With Jameson’s Whiskey A Go-Go? Bloomington certainly isn’t Los Angeles, and the small movement occurring now in the backwoods of Indiana, nestled in the heart of Bloomington, isn’t the same scene as the Swinging Sixties. However, there is a presence of these underground house shows today in Bloomington, Indiana — and Time With Jameson are performing at most of them. In addition to their house show performances, they play gigs at local clubs. They even played a benefit concert for Dreamers of the immigration policy DACA.
That’s the kind of movement we’re seeing in Bloomington. It’s a movement that reflects the heart of this town: free, innocent, rebellious. The band may have ambitions to make a record and subsequently get signed to a label and pursue the full potential of their dreams. But they never lose sight of what’s at the foundation of the band — playing live in someone’s basement using relatively cheap equipment and gritty, raw-sounding amplifiers. When you spend time with Time With Jameson, their ambitions are on the back-burner. In the heat of the moment, they want to please the crowds at these house show venues dotted along the outskirts of the college town. It’s not a conquer-the-world mentality by any stretch of the imagination, but the band, as well as their fans, prefer it that way. In the end, their project is about the music. As of October, they lost their bass player who couldn’t find the time to play with the band anymore. Although they added a new bassist, Julian Povinelli, it simply shows these bandmates are caught between chasing a dream and conforming to society’s standards.
Povinelli is 22 and is a digital artist happy to work any 9-5 so long as he can make enough money to be financially independent and invest in his passion projects.
“I’m open to whatever opportunities and paths the universe has in store for me,” said Povinelli.
Newman has another idea of the future. For him, he says there is no backup plan.
“Sure, I’ll do whatever jobs to pay bills and eat, but I’m playing in bands and making music until the end,” said Newman.
The other members of the band seem to share the same sentiment. They will do what they need to get by, but as of right now, the band full of juniors and seniors, have their eyes set on being creative.
“Additionally, when it comes to alternative careers and us as individuals musicians, we tend to follow what inspires us in our hearts, so if someday we feel compelled by something else or something additionally, we will definitely chase it as well,” he said.
Everyone on this band has an immense passion for making music that spreads over a wide spectrum of genres, so they always look forward to where that passion will pull them.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrWo0JmAkWD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
In a sense for many of the house show goers, the scene is just a phase. The audience is chasing different futures after they receive their degrees — which vary widely at the house shows. When you talk to these partygoers, some of them are business majors, some are music majors, some are biology majors. Really, it’s all over the map. They come from all different backgrounds, yet they are alike in that interests fluctuate across the board.
Rather than conventional logic, these partygoers choose to revel in this shared experience of dissimilarity.
For these students, the present and the future are each distinct in their own right. In their mind, the present can be putting your foot in a campfire outside a house show (the bassist of Flower Mouth actually did this). The future can be getting a job wearing a suit-and-tie as an A & R agent at a record label.
To them, the past and the future are two discrete hemispheres but can still fly through the sky like two separate and distinct paper airplanes.
***
“With new guitars comes new meaning,” says Newman. “If you were on shrooms, you would know exactly what I was saying.”
The self-described introduction titled, “Is This Progress?” was almost three minutes long. Then after the preparatory jam, they decided to play their single. The single titled “Omni”, the band recorded in the Musical Arts Center. It was produced in the studio by Sam Ramirez and is now available on streaming services like Spotify and Bandcamp.
“These are all new songs — brand new music for you,” said Newman, “Let me give a shoutout to our bassist Julian.” Julian Povinelli, the new bassist, was wearing a scarf which the lead singer admitted he couldn’t pull it off himself.
Then, some power chords were strutted on the lead guitar that sent haunting screams through the amplifier. The drums came pounding in from Blake McKean shortly thereafter. The band was prepared to play its first performance. Will the masses be satisfied?
***
McKean and Newman went to see The Smashing Pumpkins reunion show in Indianapolis last summer.
Musically, they put on a good show, the band concluded. They loved the fact that The Smashing Pumpkins stayed true to themselves and subsequently to a niche audience—which came out of the 90s when songs like “Cherub Rock” by the Smashing Pumpkins, alluded to a theme of togetherness when Billy Corgan writes, “Freak out, and give in, doesn't matter what you believe in. Hipsters unite, come align for the big fight.”
Is there some form of this in the Bloomington house show scene today? Is the so-called revolution of ’94 dead? Nick Newman acknowledges there might be some sort of revolutionary spirit in house show circles, but he doesn’t consider this the main reason he’s a part of the culture. “It’s just really fun to be a part of this scene, I don’t care if it’s a revolution or whatever,” said Nick. He speculates there might be another tipping point in culture, where people demand authenticity from what he perceives as a plastic society. He cited Nirvana as a response to the cheesiness of mainstream hairband rock of the late 1980s. Bloomington has a history of do-it-yourself musicians who have made it.
The band Hoops eventually signed to Fat Possum Records—a rather successful independent record label based out of Oxford, Mississippi. Hoops is a testament to the house show culture and where bands like Time With Jameson could end up. Although, the band has broken up since due to different directions in their solo careers. However, Hoops are still heroes to house show bands, and in some ways Hoops were the level they aspire to be as a musical act.
***
A wooden picture frame. A black canvas. Stenciled on top of the canvas is a drawing of a woman in a white dress. Six batches of roses circle this woman. In her left hand, she holds a lengthy brown book. She holds her other hand behind her back. Her face has been punched out leaving a hole in the canvas. You can still see the back of the picture frame which matches the color of the frame’s borders. There are scratches all over the black canvas. The photographer’s hand is seen holding the picture in their left hand.
This is the cover of the single Time With Jameson just released this past October. It’s titled “Omni” — an alternative, dream-pop number except unlike many songs of its nature, the band uses layered guitars and more haunting lyrics.
Singer Nick Newman channels his inner storyteller as he sings about longing for the place where he grew up. For Newman, nothing will change all the way down to Hell. His bandmates support him in the journey Newman creates with his words, but the overall sound isn’t exactly what you’d expect from the Edgar Allen Poe lyrics. In fact, the bass sounds funky and the drumbeat feels like a pop song which drives party goers to actually dance to a rock song in 2018.
Somehow, partygoers choose the raw, live and free environment of the house shows as opposed to local clubs or frat parties where contemporary pop music is played on loud stereos and mass agglomerations of people are dancing at once. Although the ladder may seem like it has more to offer, somehow each week the house shows manage to stay full, or at least two-thirds full by the end of the night.
In the same vein of the grunge movement of the Early Nineties and similar punk-rock movements in the past, the house show scene in Bloomington is a demand for authenticity in terms of both lyrical content and overall sound. Partygoers prefer inward-reflecting, emotional, romanticist verses dealing with deeper concepts that seek to better reflect the state of the human condition, which for better or worse, modern pop tends to avoid.
In some circles in Bloomington, students like to hear the stripped-down sound as in the WIUX Live Sessions or Tiny Dorm concerts which are taken place on campus in a relatively quiet and acoustic setting. The Tiny Dorm series is modeled after the popular NPR Tiny Desk concerts, where musicians show another side of themselves while performing live in a small book room. However, not all IU students are interested in this unplugged sound.
In some circles, people seem to care about watching shoeless bandmates in their early Twenties cover Nirvana’s “Serve the Servants” with six pedal boards scattered across the floor hooked up to medium-sized amplifiers, rather than what is usual — Jacobs concerts, frat parties, unaffiliated non-Greek house parties, Tiny Dorm Concerts and the bar-rock scene occurring in Bloomington.
Time With Jameson is a testament to this music culture in Bloomington. How far will they break the mold and into the mainstream? In the grand scale of pursuing your dreams and those dreams panning out, time can be unforgiving. But Time With Jameson chooses to do what they were created to do. In the words of Kurt Cobain in his song ‘Serve the Servants,’ “Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I'm bored and old. Self-appointed judges judge. More than they have sold.”
***
Upstairs at Franklin Hall, the band admitted the difference between their studio version of the song and their live version. The studio version is clean and moderately slow in tempo. In their live set, they simply want to make people dance. “It’s a lot heavier, and we play faster. Nick has some really cool feedback parts in it,” said the bassist Julian. The drummer—Blake McKean—agrees. He mentions the metamorphosis of the song, especially in a live setting versus the comfortability of the studio. “It’s definitely an evolved version of the single,” said he said, “that’s kind of how songs are supposed to work. They’re supposed to grow.”
***
After a show, at 1 a.m. Julian approached his future bandmate Blake who was playing drums for Flower Mouth.
“Hey man you killed it on the set,” said Julian Povinelli to Blake McKean.
Blake thanked him.
“Are you a musician? Do you play?” Blake asked.
“Yeah, I play bass,” said Julian.
“Go get it,” responded Blake.
Retelling the story, the band laughs out loud in unison.
“He picked up guitar, I picked up sticks, he picked up a bass, and we just played,” said percussionist Blake McKean.
It's really exciting to see what a group of dudes can come together and make, concluded McKean.
A few months down the line, they all sat down one day, and they had a musical experience of a jam together. Jam after jam, they just kept cranking out these sounds that made them say, “whoa.”
They find the jam aspect to be the most endearing part of Time With Jameson. Coming from a more singer-songwriter background, lead singer and rhythm guitarist Nick Newman, said the best rock songs in the band have come more natural from the melodies they develop in the heart of the jam.
He takes to take that harder sound in the jam into the studio, and then the vocal melodies are perfected afterward in the singer-songwriter factory using overdubs.
“It’s much better if you start with the jam, and then refine,” said Newman. “Take a raw, emotional product and sculpt that.”
The bassist Julian Povinelli said his favorite part of the group is the collaborative effort they all put into Time With Jameson.
He will run a few bass lines, or the guitarists will run a few guitar riffs but they always rely on each other to put together a record.
“It just opens up a whole new world,” said Julian.
***
Time With Jameson—at the house show decorated in holiday lights, where the orange balloon skips, and the red light burns a glow into a hazy basement—faces a room full of their peers. Those peers want to hear a good show and see a decent performance which may or may not make them free their bodies enough to dance on the cement floors of an unfinished basement.
The crowd was still. Newman’s microphone screeched through the amplifiers. The stillness in the air—a ferocious white static—had to be broken.
All the sudden, to pierce the silence, the band nervously plunged into its single, “Omni.” The music took on a spoken-word quality, and it seemed expressive but reserved.
“When everyone you know is technically a ghost, living or dead, still inside my head,” starts Newman.
He pauses.
“When I fall asleep, they haunt my dreams.”
***
It was October 2017. The band was living in their old house. As Nick Newman explains, it was a “pretty shitty” house, but they have fond memories of it because of all the hours spent playing music together. Newman has a strong visual connection to the house and how it helped shape the template of their band name.
The house was nicknamed the Rat House, and lots of musicians across town would come over and play music at the house. There weren’t any rats in the house, as far as anyone knew about. Nonetheless, it really was a crummy place, said Newman. Still, it seemed to embody the essence of house show culture in Bloomington.
All the while, between elaborate jam sessions with coming-and-going musicians across town, the three musicians—Nick and Blake along with their original bassist—mentioned the idea of officially forming a group and subsequently coming up with a band name.
Nick Newman had just come back from Ireland, and one day he was home jamming with the future members of the band at the Rat House. The lack of a band name was looming over their heads, as they flipped through various poems Newman had written while in Ireland. The drummer—Blake McKean—noticed a line in a poem where the words “time with jameson” stood out to the percussionist.
“It was a line about riding a bike in the rain,” said Newman, after pointing out there were many people in Ireland with the last name Jameson.
He wrote it at work, where he definitely wasn’t supposed to be writing poems.
***
Two T-Shirts hang on a coat rack—one purple and one pink. There’s a drawing on the front by Nick Newman featuring a clock and the words ‘Time With Jameson’ in a wavy handwritten font.
The coat rack hangs on the left side of the room where kaleidoscopic lights dance along the wall. Out from the coat rack, all the partygoers stand huddled together waiting for the band to play.
Time With Jameson faces them—garnering more confidence in themselves. They pause at the end of the verse awaiting the chorus.
Then, the chorus explodes as the crowd sways its feet, “Nothing will change, nothing will change for me. All the way down, all the way down to hell,” sings Newman.
All the sudden, the band breaks into a bridge in the vein of Nineties grunge bands like Soundgarden or Stone Temple Pilots.
The young people bang their heads. They dance, they laugh, and they take photos and video footage of the group as Newman yells out a “whoo” and the drums kick in again, and the room suddenly becomes a mosh pit.
The song comes to a close and the trifling crowd roars with applause and screams.
***
Upstairs, the three gentlemen sit in large, red chairs in a white conference room inside the Media School. Newspaper headlines in the IDS rest inside shiny glass picture frames dotted all along the wall. The door is closed as the three bandmates share their insights on the songwriting craft of the tune that garnered lighter waves at the house show titled, “Made to Remember.”
“That’s the first tune I ever really started writing,” said bassist Julian. “All I had at first was a verse and a really shitty chorus that no one seemed to like.”
The three members of the band laughed.
“That song stands out to me, too,” said singer Nick Newman. It’s the first song they wrote together as a formal collaborative effort—the bassist and vocalist sharing songwriting credits.
“Julian retains his funky attitude that is the essence of Julian, while at the same time I’m keeping my own essence of like the alternative rock, more gain, and edgier sound,” he said.
“It keeps it more groovy while retaining that 90s rock feel, which is really exciting,” said Newman.
Bassist Julian says he likes making music people can move to. The drummer, Blake McKean, agrees, and claims music is made for dancing. The singer Nick Newman takes a kind of singer-songwriting approach as he wants to relate to the crowd in a more emotionally evocative and personal way.
For a group of alternative rockers, their ethos is surprisingly not punk rock in its traditional sense: People have to feel it, instead of you shouting at them, says the bassist Julian Povinelli.
***
A funky bass line and the band joins the bassist into a deconstructed power pop jam session. The jam quickly draws to a close. The crowd shuffles its feet.
The members of the group exchange looks with one another. Newman then faces the sea of faces whose wild dancing has just been interrupted.
Newman opens the group up with their next song “Bleeding Rock.” In it, a certain innocence about the music which errs on emotionalism within the confines of indie-rock. They garner a garage band appeal as they play in a dark and dusty basement filled with blameless adults on a quest for a good time.
The band began their last, melancholy song titled, "Made To Remember," which made you feel like you were drifting in the cold and rainy autumn night outside on the streets of downtown Bloomington, Indiana. Indeed, the group ushered an alternative love ballad for the small crowd of weekly house show goers. Partygoers held up lighters and waved them across the air.
“That’s it guys, we’re done thanks for coming out to the house shows getting lit,” said Newman.
***
Wavy spurs of light shine all around an image of Nick and Julian. Nick holds a cream guitar with a red pickguard. His shaggy head’s drenched with sweat. Both guitarists are right-handed. Julian’s holding a brown bass and looking off into the distance.
The band is playing a show at the Brickhouse, which they determined on their Instagram page to be a wonderful night of music. This is a week after their set at Battle of the Bands at the Bluebird. Since its inception, the band has grown into even more of a cohesive group.
“It was a privilege to play Bluebird, and to see everyone in the house show scene come out and sing our songs and were super pumped to play again in the next round in January,” said Julian.
The bond between the band seems stronger than ever as they pose dazed-and-confused, arm in arm on a bench at the Bluebird – each staring off into different directions.
Blake stares directly at the camera. To his left, Nick wears a leather jacket and holds a drink in his left hand. To Blake’s right, the new lead guitarist Noah Kankala stares at the guitar in his lap. To Noah’s left is Julian—who fumbles with the knobs on Noah’s semi-hollow body guitar.
Noah Kankala — who has already released an album on his own titled Slip Away — is the latest addition to the band and solidifies their sound adding intricate solos and skilled guitar-playing to the band’s repertoire. It creates a more complete, rock sound that seemed to guide the hands to rotate properly around the clock to complete the hour that is Time With Jameson.
***
“One more song, one more song!” chanted members of the crowd.
“So you guys wanna jam? We'll try to pull something out of our asses,” said the lead singer.
They finished with a winding instrumental piece which layered time signatures but poppy enough to make the crowd dance since it was the last band to perform. It was 12:43 am — and for a lot of party goers, the night was still young.
Underneath the red light, people could feel the music stemming from the huge amplifiers and shiny black drum set — the energy flowed from the crowd to the music, and the relatively small group of partygoers roared in applause as the set wrapped up. Outside, it was cold, harsh, and unforgiving. Inside, the room felt free.
Photo by Matt Jaskulski
(06/21/18 9:00pm)
Hipster fans bop their heads up and down in a small, dimly-lit room at a house party off Walnut Street and watch local band Flower Mouth perform at the band’s signature venue.
Flower Mouth has released two singles on the free music-sharing app SoundCloud, and they are set to release an 8-song EP. They hope to get picked up by a record company, but for now, they aren’t hoping to sign with a major label.
“Ideally, an indie label would be the best fit for us,” said Gus Gonzalez, the lead singer of Flower Mouth, “we like Secretly Canadian and Fat Possum.”
An independent record label is simply any label who does not receive funding from what is referred to as the Big Six — Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music, BMG, Universal Music Group and PolyGram.
In Bloomington, there are almost a dozen of these independently-funded labels. Jacob’s School of Music and Kelley School of Business feed labels like 1212 Records, Secretly Canadian and Flannelgraph Records.
The survival of independent labels in the college town depends on the popularity of people streaming music on the internet. Today, a subscriber can stream entire catalogs of artists on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon or YouTube for under $5. As a result, the infrastructure revolution in streaming culture has paved the way for an all-time ease of access to independent music.
Ian Rogers, former Beats and Apple Music executive, said streaming culture plays a big role with the survival of independent labels in 2018.
He referenced two brothers, both graduates of IU, who embody this story of chasing their dreams while remaining in Bloomington — the story of Ben and Chris Swanson. Along with a few of their friends from school, they started the independent label Secretly Canadian.
Since its inception, indie record label Secretly Canadian has grown substantially. Formed on the Bloomington art-rock scene in the '90s, the label achieved modest success selling the music put out by its local roster. Since the rise of streaming culture, the label now has two gold records and offices in London and Paris.
“Why has Ben Swanson been able to do what he has been able to do with Secretly Canadian, Dead Oceans and Jagjaguwar?” said Rogers, “He didn’t say, ‘You’re gonna pry the old model from my cold, dead hands.’ He said I’m gonna figure out how this works.”
The label employs big-name acts like the War On Drugs, Tig Notaro and Yoko Ono — and they’re selling them across the world. While printing vinyl contributes to their success, Secretly Canadian makes sure its artists’ music is available on Spotify and Apple Music.
At WIUX’s annual music festival, Culture Shock, posters of abstract art are for sale underneath a tent full of organizations promoting their eccentric businesses. A bearded man wearing a smile sits behind one of these tables. He hands out free stickers and promotional merchandise featuring the words, Flannelgraph Records, printed on them.
Flannelgraph Records started a decade ago in Bloomington in the back of Jared Cheek’s house. He released some of the music from bands who were plugged into the Bloomington house-show circuit. Then, the label expanded and signed bands from outside of the hipster college town.
“We use Instagram and Twitter, but not as much Facebook—since you have to pay to promote your stuff,” he said.
His philosophy is unconventional, but Jared Cheek likes it that way—with a quirky and humorous appeal.
“The most recent thing we have coming out is a spoken-word album interview with this 73-year-old pro-wrestler I like named Terry Funk,” he said.
As far as business, Jared Cheek says he simply tries to lose as little money as possible. He keeps a day job to provide for the label.
In terms of exposure, Ian Rogers — an IU alum — seems to think streaming culture is great, but whether or not it makes indie labels more money, is a different question.
The way indie royalties get paid isn’t exactly 1 to 1. Rogers said there’s a big pool of money received from subscriptions, advertisers, and investors.
Then, the money gets divided up among listens — the more plays a song gets, the more everyone makes. The problem is, the $5 you pay for a monthly subscription fee doesn’t exactly go towards the artists you’re frequently listening to. Your money helps provide pay for other artists and record labels who are getting lots of plays, not just your favorite band.
“I was always worried it might make for a big problem for the indies,” said Rogers.
He said there are a lot of people, including himself, who care about this issue at Beats Music and at Apple. He said small pockets of independent record companies and the artists signed to its label have made a handsome sum in the online and streaming markets.
“When I ask an independent artist—like A-Trak—they say ‘yes, our revenues are going up,’” he said, “I’m seeing Ben Swanson for dinner tonight, and I hope to hear the same thing."
So what exactly makes a record sell? This inquiry has plagued the music business since the dawn of recorded music.
Ben Swanson of the Secretly Group said he thinks the record needs to have some emotional resonance to it. People need to feel attached to it on an emotional level.
“Now—with streaming culture—people are more sophisticated in their listening—at the sheer accessibility to their listening,” he said.
The co-founder of Secretly Canadian said it has to do with stars aligning in the sense that an artist is at the peak of their game, recording an album that rings emotionally true to them, then being successfully transferred to tape. On top of that, the album needs to come out at the right time for people to hear it and packaged in a way people are excited about.
“People are able to hear bullshit more than they used to,” said Swanson, “but if there’s something emotionally true to them, they will connect to it still.”
(05/29/18 4:29pm)
Stand-up comic Tig Notaro’s latest book sits on a bookshelf in an office in downtown Bloomington, Indiana. The walls in the office are lined with gold records on the wall and young workers sit at their desks making phone calls and typing away on computers.
On the bookshelf next to Tig Notaro’s book sits a collection of drawings and instructions by Yoko Ono titled, Grapefruit, with an introduction by John Lennon.
Then, fresh out of a meeting comes Ben Swanson. Ben and his brother, Chris Swanson, along with two other friends started an independent music record label called Secretly Canadian based in Bloomington, Indiana. The brothers and friends started the label back in the late nineties at the tail end of the grunge scene. Twenty years later, Secretly Canadian has Yoko Ono, Tig Notaro, and The War On Drugs signed to its label.
“I graduated from IU in 2000 and started the label full-time the next day,” said Mr. Swanson, “and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
He grew up in Fargo, Minnesota, and came to Bloomington where his brother and friends already at IU were doing album reviews at WIUS and the Indiana Daily Student. The students tuned in to the Bloomington music scene and discovered tons of underground art-rock bands influenced by grunge groups from the West Coast.
“My brother Chris and a couple friends were just devouring all this music and would send back all these mixtapes to me,” he said.
Seattle, Washington, is the city where Nirvana, Pearl Jam and other grunge artists got their start. It seemed to be the epicenter of a new movement in popular music.
At the time, a surge of independent record labels sprung up all across the country as the music business was scrounging, trying to find the next Seattle.
The next Seattle was never found, said Swanson, but there were about 18 cities on the radar for music executives. Bloomington was one of those cities.
“We were failed musicians,” said Swanson, “and we thought it would be fun to get into the music business.”
Ben and Chris Swanson scraped money together they had from working the previous summer and decided to start a record label along with a few friends, co-founders Eric Weddle and Jonathan Cargill. One of the co-founders even used his savings from being a lifeguard at a neighborhood swimming pool for start-up money.
“In label-culture, we were obsessed with the idea of developing a roster of artists, and a catalog and the arc of an artist’s career,” he said.
Then, Darius Van Arman, owner of another record label in Bloomington called Jagjaguwar, joined the Swanson brothers at Secretly Canadian. After the two labels joined forces, the company continued to grow. Today, the label has two certified gold records.
Swanson talked about his experience with singer, artist, and activist Yoko Ono and her son, Sean Lennon.
“She’s a legend,” said Swanson, “we’ve been fans of hers forever.”
He met Sean Lennon in Berlin at Yoko Ono’s 80th birthday party. With Lennon, he discussed the reissues of some of Yoko Ono’s early records.
Lennon said he wanted to get his hands on some of the tapes in order to remaster them for the reissues. Many of Ono’s original tapes sat for decades locked up and kept in crates for storage purposes. Since the tapes have remained idle for so long, a difficult-to-conceive and arduous process must take place before the remastering.
The process involves an oven and is called "baking the tapes." Technically, studio engineers and producers call this process sticky-shed syndrome. In order to ensure the tapes were in playable condition, NPR even ran a story a few years ago called, “A Sticky Situation: Baking the Tapes,” in which the reporter told of the organization’s own difficulties in preserving important audio for digital purposes.
Needless to say, the procedure needs to be extremely precise and there is a chance the tapes may be damaged while baking them. It took a long time for Sean Lennon to get access to the tapes, said Swanson. Then, Swanson asked him who he needed to get permission from.
“From my mom,” said Sean Lennon.
Swanson laughed. He said he forgot, for a moment, who his parents really were, especially since he considers Sean Lennon such a down-to-earth guy.
In 2016, Secretly Canadian partnered with Chimera Music and re-released eleven Yoko Ono studio albums on digital and vinyl platforms. Then, again in June last year, they released their second wave of her reissues. Among the most popular remastered records include Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins from 1968, Plastic Ono Band from 1970 and Feeling the Space from 1973.
Secretly Canadian has some new material coming out, including albums from Stella Donnelly, Makeness, and Suuns.
Ben Swanson, now running a national record label with big-name acts attached to it, said he used to judge the music business with disapproving eyes. He thought the industry had high barriers to entry but he wanted to leave young people interested in the music business with a positive outlook.
“When I was younger, my perception was the music industry was impenetrable. That’s not the case. It’s incredibly open, giving and easy to get into if you’re willing to work.”
(05/09/18 8:00pm)
Pictured: Flower Mouth at their WIUX Live Sessions.
Last week at Franklin Hall, I had the chance to interview Gus Gonzalez, the lead singer of Flower Mouth — a local band who frequently performs setlists at underground house shows throughout Bloomington.
Recently, WIUX hosted an event at the band’s personal live venue, The Rat House. In addition, they have performed at a number of events organized by the WIUX Venue Series.
I personally saw them play at the Rat House and they performed some of their material off their latest two-song demo released on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Flower Mouth has become so well-known in underground circles that fans at the house show were even singing along to the lyrics of their songs, “Shayla” and “Mascara,” which were released last August.
Flower Mouth’s lineup includes guitarist and vocalist Gus Gonzalez, JJ Van Hecke on the keys, piano, and synth, bassist Chris Koj and percussionist Blake McKean.
Transcribed for you, the reader, is my conversation with Gonzalez presented in a Q & A format. It wasn’t so much a conventional question-and-answer interview than a natural conversation. The bolded stars (*) represent interjections on my behalf to provide a little more clarity for the readers.
Sweet local music enthusiasts, do enjoy the interview.
I know genres are stupid, but if you had to classify your music in a genre, what would you call yourselves?
Gus Gonzalez: “I think I would just call it rock, but most people would label us as indie-rock. We see it as a new-age form of rock-n-roll. The only problem I have with indie-rock is as soon as you say that term, everybody immediately thinks, ‘oh they’re Vampire Weekend.’ Dad rock is at the very core of our inspiration. Psychedelia is, of course, present. Individually, we’re inspired by a bunch of different artists: Weather Report, Kool & the Gang, Slayer and even indie dance-pop. Our goal is that every song does not sound the same."
Do you ever want to be signed to a label?* If so, what kind of label would be most admirable to you? Capitol Records, Warner Brothers, you know, the major six labels? Or something like Secretly Canadian or other independent record labels?
Gus: “We want someone to give us something we can’t get on our own. We have done a phenomenal job, I think, of really getting out there and building our network. We have 2,000 followers on pretty much all of our social media. So building a network of people wasn’t too hard for us, but expanding that into other cities and other regions is where we need help the most, especially setting up shows in other cities. If we can find a label to help us with that, it would be awesome. Ideally, an indie label would be the best fit for us. We like Secretly Canadian and Fat Possum.”**
What role do the music and journalism schools play in the vast, underground network of the Bloomington house show scene?
Gus: “From what I’ve seen, as far as the house show scene, it really is more than just bands meeting up in basements and partying. WIUX serves as an official organization that can kind of help run the scene. It’s because they have all the connections.”
Gus explained how Flower Mouth has music on automation at WIUX, which means their songs can be heard on the radio overnight when 99.1 FM runs through a playlist on their automation system nicknamed Big John—given its expansive array of alternative tunes.
Gus: “We’re obviously not the only ones on automation — I’ve heard tracks from Secret Mezzanine and other local bands, as well.”
Flower Mouth often crosses paths with Secret Mezzanine. They almost jammed together at a WIUX event, but Gonzalez couldn’t make it. He has heard them play at parties, even once at his hosted venue, The Rat House, but he wasn’t in the same room to hear the band play. He’s only overheard them through the walls of headbanging punk parties.
Once, Secret Mezzanine covered “In The Jungle” from The Lion King and they made it a sing-a-long number where the whole crowd chimed in. It was a fun and effective way to cover a song in a live setting.
Gus: “I like when bands take very untraditional things and cover them, but I’ve seen two bands now cover the Drake and Josh theme song. It’s a perfect generation clash because everyone our age knows the words.”
What role does social media play in promoting your music?
Gus: “We would be fucking nothing without social media. It’s the medium now. Everyone checks social media especially our generation and especially college kids going out to see a band on Friday night. It’s all interconnected — let’s say someone comes across Flower Mouth on Facebook, they go to our profile and they see our music, they see pictures, they see our live videos – and they’re a fan. They start to follow us and they continue to follow us. It’s the method we take. If we didn’t use social media, I honestly couldn’t tell you how we would expose our music to anybody else—other than just word-of-mouth."
That’s the second biggest mode of how information spreads in underground Bloomington circles. Word of mouth has always been a form of communication for human interaction, at least since the development of spoken language.
Gus: It’s totally a combination of the two — if someone sees us on Friday night, they might go back to their dorms and tell their roommates and all their friends, ‘Yo I saw this sick band, Flower Mouth, last night. Why don’t you look them up?”
Gonzalez takes pride as a musician in the medium of Twitter or Facebook to promote his band’s music. He posts every day, whether it be releasing new music or simply interacting with fans.
Gus: "It serves as a way of letting your followers know you’re people just like them. You’re not some product. You get to talk to your fans and hear what they have to say. Before the internet, before social media you would just print off thousands of flyers, but unless you have a distinct voice throughout all those flyers, it’s very much perceived as a product.”
Social media, in his words, allows musicians to have a face-to-face conversations with their followers.
Gus: “Instead of all those flyers, you get a personal invite and a reason to go.”
*Flower Mouth is not currently signed to a record label.
**Fat Possum Records is a label based in Mississippi with signed bands including Hoops and The Black Keys.
You can follow the WIUX Facebook page for more Live Sessions from Flower Mouth and updates on events like the Venue Series.
Last but not least, Flower Mouth is on Instagram and Facebook, and their latest demo is available on multiple platforms including Soundcloud and Bandcamp.
(01/16/18 5:56pm)
People in the town of Bloomington, Indiana took to the streets Monday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as sporadic events took place all across the city, set-up by a variety of organizations.
One of these activist groups by the name of CommUNITY Educators whose sole purpose includes social justice, diversity, and inclusion arranged an event relating two unsuspecting cultural icons of color — the civil rights leader of the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and hip-hop cultivator, Kanye West.
Event organizers intended to start a dialogue and bring together a room full of people who were in some shape or form, inspired by Kanye West. Clips were shown of West’s music videos, poetry readings, and the infamous video of West with Mike Meyers, discussing the subject of hurricane relief on NBC, when Kanye said that George Bush does not care about black people. The Willkie Auditorium, filled with about 100 people, lit-up with laughs.
Conversations buzzed throughout the room — varying from lighthearted to serious tones in conversations about social justice, tying the two black leaders with their messages to society.
“Kanye uses the human voice as an instrument,” said Kaleb Edwards, a sophomore biology student from Indianapolis. “Like Martin Luther King, he just wanted to get a message out there.”
When the doors opened for the event and attendees walked in the auditorium, about a dozen tables were arranged, each labeled with a subject of conversation. For example, one table was labeled with a folded black sheet of paper, lined with the white-bolded words ‘Generational Wealth / New Money.’
Each chair at the round tables had small cut-outs of song titles and a verse from the song accompanying it. One seat available for a certain guest had a paper cut-out with the song title, “Good Life” and featured the verse, “The good life, let’s go on a living spree. Shit, they say the best things in life are free.”
Crayola markers sat on the round table, scattered. Directions were given to write, draw and express one’s thoughts based on the messages written on the butcher paper.
One student wrote, “When it comes to the idea of being happy and living life, we have the notion that you need a great amount of money to do so, but this line shows that even Kanye sees that the best parts of life are free.”
Kanye West, famed for his raw, Chicago sound he produced by sampling 70s Midwest soul records and speeding them up — earned his signature sound the nickname, ‘chipmunk soul.’
West pioneered a movement within the genre of hip-hop, similar to the “hip-hop love” movement of the late 80s led by artists like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Queen Latifah.
What distinguished Mr. West from other independent movements before him within the realm of hip-hop, is his ability to capture the hearts and minds of the mainstream, rather than simply in indie circles. As a matter of fact, he is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.
Like Dr. King who preached a peaceful solution to the demands of the Civil Rights Movement, Kanye West fought for civil rights using art and cultural credibility as his platform, or at least, sources say, he used to.
“My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is probably one of the best albums ever recorded,” said freshman Dash Yarnold. However, Yarnold said he didn’t like his latest album, The Life of Pablo. By all means, Yarnold said he misses the old Kanye.
(11/29/17 6:02am)
[gallery size="medium" ids="13527,13524,13526,13555,13554,13535,13547,13549,13558,13551,13541,13552"]
Most photographs taken by Autumn Van Overberghe, a sophomore biology student at IU.
GRIFFY LAKE – By the rocks on a sunny, autumn afternoon, the sight of Griffy Lake fades in the distance. Tall, Indiana hills lined with trees—black and red oaks, sugar maples and hickories—surround the mouth of the lake. It sheds an overcasting shadow, where cool breezes and bushels of bluegill find their nesting.
The view of the lake—from its long and winding entrance to the sounds of geese yelling at a man floating aimlessly in a blue canoe—feels in one word, warm.
Along the outskirts of the water sits stones for a beach. Poking out from the rocky shore, a thin branch stands from an outstretched tree. One lone leaf stranded by itself hangs two-feet above the water.
A breeze sweeps in from the North creating endless ripples in the water. The ripples multiply and carry step-by-step, trotting the shores where the leaf sits—drifting in the wind.
An art student at IU stands along the beach of rocks holding a palette knife, while she crafts a painting at the lake. Meanwhile, she listens to folk music on her iPhone for inspiration.
“The colors are really vivid this time of year,” she said. “There’s a million different colors to choose from.”
An assignment for her landscaping class included the topic of natural reflections. She saw Griffy Lake as a perfect destination to capture the theme.
“The blue sky’s reflection on the water this time of year mixes with the color changes of the season,” she said. In her opinion, it helped express the intended mirroring concept in the painting.
All of the sudden, a pickup-truck full of teenagers whirls by. The kids are ready for a scenic trip through their day—where they may wander through miles of hiking trails or simply kick back, studying the view.
NIGHT RIDGE SPACE OBSERVATORY – For avid fans of horror movies, you should hop in the car for a short road-trip to a church off Lampkin’s Ridge Road.
An abandoned lookout finds itself wedged in the woods—alone and rotting. It's called the Night Ridge Space Observatory.
The entrance to the empty building looks something straight out of a Stephen King novel—surrounded by barbed wire and a sea of barren trees. About a 50-yard walk into the forest, the vacant structure proves as a perfect Halloween-season adventure.
Walking up to the observatory through the sound of crackling leaves—each step growing more and more sentient in the tips of your toes—you see the rusty dome and faded red-brick lined with a colorful array of graffiti.
Almost instantly, the building commands a presence and leads the mind down its natural inclination to the ideas of mystery and wonder.
Scattered leaves, cigarette butts and even more vivid graffiti crave your fleeting attention.
Following the steps leading to the observatory, you discover the structure is caved in—either due to a lightning strike or regular iron rusting. Thus, the structure opens its mouth to the forest.
The floorboards are sunken in below—revealing a ten-foot-deep glimpse into the concrete beneath you.
You turn to face the trees towering over the structure.
A ray of sun peaks out above the trees and shines brightly into the open-observatory.
Directly in the sunlight, the words of a graffiti artist appear plainly visible. It reads, “Praise the SUN.”
LOWER CASCADE PARK – Off the Old Highway 37, a little man-made waterfall sits tucked away in a surprisingly secluded area. Although the highway traffic is loud enough for the ear to pick up, you can’t beat the short drive. Located only about a half-mile from Memorial Stadium, it’s an easy hike or quick Uber-ride for most students.
At sundown, the cascades are tranquil and consistent—the water begins to fall from a construction site, travels down a stream for about a half-mile and then dead ends.
The sun’s rays poke through the trees and reflect off the water entering through the eyes of a visitor. Waves of amber sink through the visitor’s memory as they wind down from the woes of the workday.
You can only hear the sounds of automobiles passing in the distance and the soothing noise of the flowing water up close.
After a hike through the rest of the scenic park filled with a larger-than-life playground, swing sets and volleyball nets, it’s time to return home.
Then you continue the adventure that is your life.
(11/15/17 6:44pm)
[gallery columns="2" ids="13561,13563"]
5/7
Whether you choose to believe it or not, people generally judge albums by their covers. It’s an understood scientific fact.
After swinging by the record-shop Landlocked Music in downtown Bloomington, Indiana, I stumbled upon Chain & the Gang’s new record hanging out by the new releases. The red album-cover featured a dude with mop-top hair who wears candy-striped bell-bottoms and stands with a microphone in hand. Over the top of the singer, a graphic artist sketched the images of a light bulb, a microphone and coils of wires connecting these inventions together—a bit of foreshadowing for the listener.
Prior to this day of record shopping, I heard loosely of the Detroit-rock group formed by Ian Svenonius and his musical friends, but I didn’t own any of their stuff on vinyl. Once I caught a glimpse of the cover, the record company hooked me.
After getting home, I flipped on the record. The soundwaves ran through the layers of my psyche. The music travelled through my brain’s systems of judgement—for sonics not for the art on the cover.
For what it’s worth, Chain & the Gang delivers a rock-n-roll album for the ages, obviously influenced by what came long before them—R&B and garage-rock of the 1960s. With the clear use of poetic and musical irony, Svenonius writes ten pop-songs on an album called Experimental Music.
First in the music-news headlines was, “Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day,” released as a single in the month of August. A punky psychedelic anthem discusses the falling of a great civilization. Is this a reflection of these here political times? By the looks of it, it certainly seems that way. In the end, the listener may make their own interpretation.
The song to kick off the album, “Experimental Music” makes one dream of surfing in the warm California sun with the Beach Boys on the stereo at a beach-side taco stand. In all seriousness, it does set the tone for the general flow on the rest of the record.
Another track stands worthy of college-radio airtime. The Doorsy tune, “If I Was an Animal” shows the group’s ability to catch an ear—at least an ear that belongs to a trained rock-n-roll junkie.
Like Jim Morrison, the lead singer writes a poem-of-mystics in lieu with an orchestra of madness. Easily, Svenonius embodies the image of rockers previous such as Iggy Pop, who is essentially mod-culture stitched into a person.
[embed]https://open.spotify.com/album/6vbvoKrVkunv8mNpxYWIQ1[/embed]
(10/17/17 5:02am)
Bernie Sanders ran a socialist campaign during this past election cycle, emphasizing issues like wealth and income inequality, especially concerning folks in the American middle class. Believe it or not, he is not the first ever presidential candidate to run on a socialist platform. You wouldn’t really know about it, though, if you were brought up in the American education system.
The story of Eugene V. Debs, a five-time candidate for the executive office, seemed to have skipped the history books for some reason or another. Was it because Debs was jailed by the U.S. government for sedition because he opposed World War I? Or was it due to his radical stance as a third-party candidate, that his oddball, left-wing views vanished in the haze of history?
Since you probably weren’t taught much about Eugene V. Debs in grade school, imagine his early political days not too far from here, in Terre Haute, Indiana, where a young Debs humbly finds his roots. In 1879, Debs was elected as the City Clerk as a Democrat, his first dabble in local politics in a fairly rural and down-to-earth Midwest city, where working class votes are absolutely essential. Considering this was before the Meat Inspection Act of 1907, largely inspired by Upton Sinclair’s socialist novel The Jungle, simple ideas such as worker’s rights and industrial regulatory measures were not in place. The start of his career in a local capacity would influence him as he continued to fight for working people.
Picture this Eugene Debs, a high-school dropout, but very polished individual who is outspokenly a student of Karl Marx. His future in politics is ahead of him, as he held high-ranking positions at a local union and even served as editor of its magazine. Very soon, he would form the American Railway Union in 1892, which became the largest organized union in the United States not long after its inception.
Then in the spring of 1894, a railroad workers union strike took place in a Chicago neighborhood named Pullman, after the industrialist George Pullman. The strike was led by the American Railway Union against President Grover Cleveland and the Pullman company, which was George Pullman’s railroad manufacturing business in the late 1800s.
It would be one of the most defining fights of Eugene Debs during his tenure as a labor organizer. The story goes that the Pullman Company fired 5,000 employees when workers did not accept the conditions of a wage cut. Using the power of his union and his ability to spread information, Debs ordered members of the American Railway Union to stop operating trains that held Pullman’s cars.
The strike would grow in numbers, and soon it became the largest worker’s strike in the history of the United States.
In July of 1894, Debs along with other leaders in the American Railroad Union were jailed for their connection to the Pullman strike. Debs was ordered to finish his sentence in Chicago, where his presence was welcomed by thousands of Chicagoans.
A few years into the future, Eugene Debs runs for president in 1900, and receives 96,000 votes in the general election as a Socialist. Then again, he declares his candidacy in 1904 and receives slightly more votes but still loses.
He would run in 1908, 1912 and 1920 for a total of five efforts for the highest executive office in the land.
His last candidacy for president should be made aware in American textbooks across the country. Debs was put into prison in April of 1919 for an infamous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. He was seen as a traitor by the U.S. government and was charged for espionage. He represented himself as defense attorney in the case.
In the speech, Eugene Debs proclaims,
In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant—the greatest in history—will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind."
While in prison, Debs ran for president in the 1920 election cycle. He won almost one-million votes conducting the campaign behind bars. In 1926, Eugene Debs died of heart failure in Elmhurt, IL. He was 70 years old, battered and torn from the harsh living conditions of prison.
Years have passed since the life of Eugene Victor Debs, including the election of another president with socialist appeal named Franklin Roosevelt. A decade in the future, Roosevelt pushed his set of policies to bring the United States out of the Great Depression nicknamed the New Deal which stemmed from the socialist ideas of Debs and his constituents.
Today, the story of Eugene Debs inspires politicians wanting to initiate democratic-socialist movements in the United States like Bernie Sanders who remarked in his 2016 book, Our Revolution,
The life of Eugene V. Debs, his vision of a world of peace, justice, democracy, and brotherhood, has always been an inspiration to me. I have a plaque of Debs on a wall in my Washington Senate office."
Resistance movements to the Trump administration should model the integrity and courage of the great American revolutionary and maybe the life of Eugene Debs would find a more impactful place in the American history books.
(10/15/17 9:57pm)
7/7
In the land of the sordid hipsters of America, a new sound was produced in a small bar in East Village, Manhattan.
Television was a group started in New York City, a central pillar in early punk scene hosted by Hilly Kristal in his bar, CBGB.
Originally intended for country, bluegrass and blues, the artists jamming at the music club deviated from the original vision of Kristal.
Edgy, artistic bands like Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads started playing what would later be coined as punk-rock. Punk-rock was defined by speed and minimalism within the music, fused with nihilistic themes and unconventional melodies.
One album in particular seems to capture a moment of history and brings the sounds and energy of the CBGB scene into a well-produced record.
In 1976, Television sought to record its first album. Note that a general understanding of punk-rock had already been established at the time. Patti Smith’s Horses was released in 1975, formulating the aggression of hard-rock with the spirit of Bob Dylan’s poetic songwriting. Then, the Ramones had put out its second album with their 2-minute headbangers. Introspective and thoughtful, Blondie had finished its debut album prior to Television's debut album. The culture of punk-rock had been fully formed, dominated by power chords, eccentric lyrics and melodramatic delivery.
Slightly diverging from the brief punk tradition before them, the band Television borrowed a page from the avant-garde, art-rock strains of the Velvet Underground.
When combining the two ideals, Marquee Moon resulted in 1977, ushering in a new era of punks and indie rockers. The album is both artistically and culturally innovative. British music critic Tony Fletcher calls the album, “a new dawn in rock music.” Undoubtedly, Marquee Moon is a glimpse into the times, of punk subculture, waiting to be found by adolescent record-shop goers, suffering from teen-angst, years after its ’77 release.
As if it were a vinyl, imagine a needle is sprung into the grooves of Marquee Moon by Television and slowly unraveled in the room before you.
Side One:
1. "See No Evil"
The album opens with this track, which features multiple innovations for the introduction.
In a general sense, the concept of modern art is meant to exhibit experimentation. It holds notions like tradition at a distance and intends to challenge old ways of thinking. Television does exactly that in the vocals of, “See No Evil.”
With his songwriting, Tom Verlaine unveils an interesting strategy only a handful of vocalists could pull off during the 70s-punk scene.
For one, Verlaine’s vocal track delivers an explosion of whiny angst like paint spattered on a canvas. Truly, he makes a modern-art painting with his word.
For two, Verlaine briefly reads French poetry, an act reminiscent of singer David Byrne of the Talking Heads.
Among the musical elements include winding, repetitive guitar licks and a catchy guitar solo in the middle of the track.
2. “Venus”
Full of emotion, the second track is called “Venus.”
The outward guitars give the song lyrical depth. Smack-dab in the middle of the song an experimental, very indie-rock guitar solo ensues.
Several guitars on top of each other create a single melody which creates an unconventional aesthetic in “Venus.”
3. “Friction”
Perhaps the punkiest track on the album, “Friction,” written by Thomas Miller provides blatant aggression underneath a layer of submissive passivity.
There is a double-guitar dynamic at play, leading the mind down two different avenues at the same time. Guitar solos weave in-and-out throughout the duration of the track, giving the song some substance.
In the lyrics, the songwriter again appeals to sentiments of not being understood. Teenagers across the world can relate to Verlaine when he utters verses like,
“Well, I don't wanna grow up,
There's too much contradiction.”
Verlaine goes on and contradicts himself, cleverly playing into the song’s idea of friction. In addition, this sense of embracing feelings of angst comes into mind. The approach allows the singer to be the voice of punk subculture when he continues the verse,
“And too much friction (Friction!)
But I dig friction (Friction!)
You know I'm crazy 'bout fiction (Friction!)”
4. Marquee Moon
The 10-minute composition “Marquee Moon” is deservingly the signature song of the album, granted in its title.
In this masterpiece, Verlaine writes a poem where he speaks about an event that doubled the darkness in his life. He creates these poetic images with his metaphors like the lightning striking itself and the sound of the rain bringing back the memory of the event.
“I remember
Ooh, how the darkness doubled
I recall
Lightning struck itself
I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else”
Verlaine creates images of the loneliness of urban life. He once told a reporter from Rolling Stone that this song is “ten minutes of urban paranoia.”
Musically, the band uses the instrumental “Marquee Moon” by the Kronos Quartet as a general reference, meanwhile improvising several guitar solos.
Sonically, this track sums up the album in one improvised take. Deep, insightful poetry fused with well-produced guitars and drums. It tells a tale with each and every note, keeping in line with the record’s mantra.
Side two:
1.“Elevation"
This song was recorded at A&R Recording in New York City as is most of the album. It was written by Tom Verlaine and features guitar-playing by Richard Lloyd.
The punky drum track was recorded by the group’s drummer Billy Ficca.
Verlaine writes in the chorus, “elevation don’t go to my head.” It’s a quirky use of innuendo delivered with a defiant attitude. Again, two lead guitars on top of each other keep the audience interested in what Verlaine has to say.
2.“Guiding Light”
A love song, “Guiding Light” gives a human aspect to the album revealing the group’s reputation as true romantics, rather than de-evolved robots.
“Darling, darling,
Do we part like the seas?
The roaring shells,
The drifting of the leaves.”
The raw, sensory imagery gives this song poetic appeal, following what groups like the Patti Smith Group were doing in the CBGB scene.
3.“Prove It”
Slightly more upbeat, this tune sounds influenced from Jamaica, a little island of innovation, where tons of reggae records were being produced at the time. Many punks, especially in the U.K., were inspired by reggae songs partially because of their spiritual and political appeal. Since punk is so heavy, reggae served as the counterweight to the aggression of punk music.
Within the framework of future influences, Tom Verlaine’s performance on vocals very ostensibly would influence indie-rock bands later to come in the 1980s like the Pixies.
4.“Torn Curtain”
A bit more frantic, this track leaves the listener feeling quite melancholy, as the writer’s image of tears hails throughout the chorus.
It is about 7 minutes long, and a guitar-solo wails toward the denouement of the album, as the power ballad comes to a close.
The song fades out as the listeners step away from the turntable, ready to return to their mundane lives after satisfying teenage feelings of anguish after about 47 minutes of Television’s punkadelic, artistic masterpiece.
This article was written by the host of the Punkadelic Radio Hour which airs at 11 p.m. on Sundays. Tune in to hear the punk and psychedelia of today and yesterday.
(04/05/17 12:46am)
It’s 8:20am. You’ve overslept, and class starts in five minutes. You stumble out of bed and throw on a dirty pair of jeans and a wrinkly t-shirt. All the sudden, an idea hits you. You reach into your pocket for your phone.
Never fear. Uber is here.
Within minutes, your Uber driver arrives, and starts to take you to your desired location. During the ride, you have a pleasant conversation with the driver. Finally, as the conversation ends all-too-abruptly, you arrive to the IMU, or the Sample Gates or wherever the driver might take you. By the click of a button, you're not-so-late today. Convenient enough.
After class, you might have walked down Kirkwood or strolled through campus, and maybe you picked up a copy of the New York Times. In it, you see headlines about self-driving cars. Then, you think back to the Uber ride earlier this morning. One can only wonder about these things.
Uber was founded eight years ago, and since then it has grown into an international company that employs more people than most fast food chains. Attempting to compete with Waymo, which formed from a Google self-driving car project, the transportation services company began to develop a similar program. After spending almost $700 million, Uber cars started taking routes without a driver.
Then, a car crashed in Tempe, Arizona. As a result, the company suspended its self-driving car program for three days. Now, autonomous vehicles are back on the road after a tidal wave of backlash.
“The vehicle might be a little silly,” said Chris, a full-time Uber driver in Bloomington. He sat comfortably behind the wheel of an SUV, wearing a big smile on his face.
Although easy-spoken, the idea of a self-driving car didn’t sit too well with this particular driver. He told a story about Milton Hershey, and how he was presented with technology that would replace eighteen workers. In the driver’s story, Hershey said to get rid of the machine. He would rather have eighteen people working for him.
This is a route the driver wishes Uber would take. People need to have employment, said Chris.
“I don’t want a self-driving car driving around Bloomington. Then, I wouldn’t get any riders,” he said.
This innovative capability might raise some alarms on behalf of Uber drivers in cities everywhere, because the company is not-so-keen on worker’s rights. When drivers tried to unionize in Seattle, the company took legal action against the city.
Although he doesn’t care for it, Chris said he understands the business model on Uber’s end. If it’s something that saves money, he understands why, theoretically, the company would employ it.
“I think one of the inherent problems in the program, is that the car might work fine. But then, there’s got to be a wreck before you can go, ‘O.K. what happened’?”
Other technical difficulties have been in the news lately. In Phoenix, an autopilot car made by Tesla crashed into a police motorcycle on March 21. The Tesla Model X didn’t injure anyone, but even a simple fender-bender raised some eyebrows for this giant leap in driving technology.
Autonomous automobiles are certainly a work-in-progress. In the accident that caused the short-lived suspension, no one was injured. At the same time, just one incident like this, just one technical miscalculation, could prove fatal.
(03/26/17 12:22am)
Left-leaning artists have declared war on the Trump administration—through their music. Punk rock, in particular, has become more politically expressive in the months following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
Pop-punk bands in the 90s generally focused on themes of emotion and inner-expression. Today, we see a slight shift in tone. It’s a shift that finds its roots in late 70s punk. Bands like the Clash and Dead Kennedys wrote overtly political songs, often preaching left-wing ideals with a sense of fervor and defiance. These politically-charged anthems gave punks leverage as respectable commenters on society.
A portion of today’s youth are fed up with, what they believe, exclusive and xenophobic policies of Trump and his constituents. Through their soulful rage, however, modern punks have found a softer side to their political dynamic compared to some of their predecessors.
An article in NME mentioned Diet Cig as one of these hip, politically-driven punks. Music journalist Thea de Gallier, said the duo employs empathy in sharing their outlook on the word.
In the interview posted on NME’s website, Alex Luciano said, “It’s OK to be empathetic and show your feelings and listen to other people’s feelings,” said Luciano. “It doesn’t make you any less punk or less strong. I think it actually makes you more punk.”
At the same time, there are some that say Donald Trump’s presidency will benefit the punk scene. These advocates argue, essentially, that whacky society equals more meaningful punk songs. In their eyes, the resistance will make the art more interesting.
“Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again. We’re all going to crawl down staircases into basements and speakeasies and make amazing satirically political art,” said Amanda Palmer, lead singer and lyricist of the Dresden Dolls in a Guardian interview.
While this view is certainly prevalent in the punk realm, others in the scene simply don’t feel the same way. Luciano said only privileged people would make that statement.
“A lot of people are scared for their lives right now, who aren’t thinking, ‘oh good a catastrophe’s happening but we’re going to have good punk music,'” said Luciano.
Political expression has always been a staple of punk 's creative edge, and today's punks are making the most of it. Its effect on society, however, is to be determined.
This article was written by the host of the Punkadelic Radio Hour on WIUX-LP Bloomington. The show airs on Saturday nights at 11 p.m.
Sources: The Guardian, NME, Stanford Daily.
(03/13/17 8:04pm)
Michael Brown Sr., whose unarmed son died in a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, spoke at “The Social Justice Seminar: Confronting Racism and Healing Our Communities,” on Wednesday night at the Indiana Memorial Union. In the audience, a cross-legged Hispanic girl sat to hear a story that was all too familiar.
Bella Chavez, an IU senior from the South Side of Chicago, listened intently. She wore Aztec print anklets, which she had bought from the Hispanic neighborhood Little Village in Chicago. She thought of her uncle, Miguel Angeles Chavez, who was shot and killed by a police officer last June.
“I went through a very similar experience that Michael Brown Sr., went through, so I’m here to hear his story and how he dealt with it,” said Chavez.
Chavez, a daughter of Mexican immigrants, shared her first-hand experience with racism. Her family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where she encountered bigotry after only two months of living there.
“Somebody spray-painted our van with the words ‘spic’ and ‘go back to Mexico'” said Chavez.
She said the incident solidified her mistrust in police.
“They (the police) didn’t take the threat very seriously,” she said. “What I had already seen about police growing up in the South Side of Chicago, I was still seeing here in Elkhart, Indiana.”
After her uncle died, Chavez said the police officers were not polite when they dealt with her family. This is a sentiment Michael Brown Sr., shared in his speech.
“Police really disrespected my family,” said Brown. “They really did.”
While the grieving father and niece shared similar experiences, they did not share the same beliefs about police power in America.
Chavez is outspokenly anti-police. She believes the whole system needs to be abolished, and has its roots in racial prejudice.
“Slave owners needed to take care of their runaway slaves, and that’s how the institution of policing started in America,” said Chavez.
Brown had a different view of police. While he remains skeptical of policing in the United States, he said that he wasn’t against police officers themselves.
“Call them when you need them,” said Brown.
Brown did suggest some measures that can be taken to avoid police brutality. He proposed that citizens should ride with police officers to make sure they are doing their job.
During the Q & A session of the seminar, Chavez approached the microphone to ask keynote speaker Michael Brown Sr., a question. She asked what we should do to stop innocent people from being killed by police.
“We need to get the right people to police the people in our own communities,” said Brown.
Featured Photo Credit: Alvernia University
(02/24/17 12:17pm)
Situated in a lecture room at Hodge Hall, home of the Kelley School of Business, a woman addressed a small crowd of budding businesspeople, arrayed in short-sleeve tops and skirts. The name of the speaker was Tiffany Olson, president of Nuclear Pharmacy Services at Cardinal Health.
Olson served as the keynote speaker at "React to Passion", an annual conference sponsored by the student organization Women in Business. The event, made up of about 100 future businesswomen, took place on February 18th. The main part of the affair, a speech delivered by Olson about finding one’s niche in the professional world, began at 1 p.m.
Olson works as an executive in the business of healthcare. She manages pharmacies and manufacturing facilities that serve to treat and diagnose patients. She has worked as an executive in the medical field for NaviMed and Roche Diagnostics.
Olson replaced the intended keynote speaker for the event, Ann Murtlow, who could not attend due to an illness.
At the conference, Olson said it’s important to be a willow tree instead of an oak tree in pursuit of one’s passion.
“It’s about being flexible and just really making sure that you’re not so rigid in your journey,” she said.
Olson invited participation from the audience by having them stand on one foot. She pointed out how everyone struggled to maintain their equilibrium.
“One of the things that I have always found difficult to do, is finding the balance,” she said.
Prior to her speech, a discussion panel took place at 12:15 p.m., comprised of six leaders in a variety of business fields. Balance seemed to be a similar theme, as recounts panelist Daniel Preston, a professor at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
“Balance is key,” said Preston. “I think of balance more than just work and family, but also exercise, peace of mind, and spending time where I can just think.”
Another panelist differed with Preston's prescription on how to find fulfillment when considering the direction of a career path.
“You got to find something that you’re seriously interested in and passionate about,” said panelist Carolyn Goerner, a professor at the Kelley School of Business. “I really think that’s the secret."
A student that attended the event said the most constructive part of the event was how the speakers shared their own life experiences.
“The speakers were very real with us,” said Elizabeth Horita, a freshman studying finance and chemistry. “They gave very realistic answers, talking about how to actually get balance in your life.”
Grace Liu, a freshman studying marketing and international business, said the most helpful segment was the discussion panel.
“Everyone was very authentic in their answers and was willing to share what they really love and are passionate about,” said Liu.
Upcoming events include Kelley Women’s Day on Wednesday, March 8 and the Kelley Women’s Career Expo on Friday, March 24.
(02/22/17 9:52pm)
In Flint, Mich., levels of lead in the water supply have fallen but remain above the federal limit. Residents of the city are outraged and demand justice.
More than 1500 Flint residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against the EPA, citing an act of negligence. They demand over $700 million for the federal agency’s alleged mishandling of a lead-contaminated water supply. According to the lawsuit, the plethora of claimants believe “timely and protective action” did not take place on their behalf.
Flint’s water supply has been corroded with lead, ever since the city began to use the Flint River as a water source. This change in water supply was implemented to cut costs.
The Indiana Daily Student ran a piece last March about why the water crisis in Flint occurred. IDS reporter Emily Beck quoted Dr. Todd Royer, who was a panelist at a conference about toxic water issues.
After learning of the suit against the EPA, Dr. Royer had this to say regarding the suit.
“It is clear that many of the residents suffered damages, including health impacts, psychological stress, and unanticipated costs associated with obtaining safe water,” said Dr. Royer, an associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environment Affairs.
In addition to teaching at SPEA, Dr. Royer has established a career as an ecologist who specializes in water quality. He has served as a technical advisor for the Indiana Department of Environmental Quality.
“At various levels within the government, the people with oversight responsibility failed to identify the problem, or were told of the potential problem but opted not to act. In essence, political concerns were prioritized over public health,” he said.
As for the future of toxic water cases like Flint, some sources claim that many similar cases will presumably happen in the near future. Dr. Royer, however, remains skeptical.
“I would not say that Flint is the tip of the iceberg. That suggests we should expect a lot more Flint-like crises in the future, and I do not think that is going to be the case,” said Royer.
“Flint showed us what the worst-case scenario looks like when water treatment and good governance fails to protect the public.”