Boards of Canada//1969

Friends, Time Travel Week is coming to an end and my grand plan is to strand us somewhere in the summer of 1969, maybe in some kind of commune, probably on some hallucinogenic drugs. Maybe Altamont? Maybe Woodstock?

Speaking of Altamont, yesterday A. and I went to the Brooklyn Museum to catch Who Shot Rock and Roll? before it closed. There is an awesome picture of The Rolling Stones playing to adoring, if distressed, looking fans, while a Hell's Angel Security Guard pushes crowds back in the background.

Soundscapes presented by BoC are strange, deeply analogue and pretty. This song is from Geogaddi, which was released in 2002. One member of the band, Sandison, described the album as "a record for some sort of trial-by-fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again." From Wikipedia: "Geogaddi's development allegedly involved the creation of 400 song fragments and 64 complete songs, of which 22 were selected."



1969.mp3

1969, in the sunshine.

The Year in Music, 1969: In addition to Woodstock and Altamont, 1969 saw the formation of Black Sabbath, Mott the Hopple and ZZ Top. The Beatles released Abbey Road. The two highest charting singles were "Get Back" by the Beatles and "Honkey Tonk Woman" by The Rolling Stones.

Gorillaz//19-2000

Now let's go forward 17-18 years, to roughly 2000, which is what I think is implied by the title of this song.

Gorillaz was a kind of strange animated "virtual" supergroup featuring, among others, Blur's Damon Albarn, CIbo Matto's Miho Hatori, rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien (who is amazing, and sadly absent from this track). Instead of the musicians, the band was portrayed as weird cartoon gorillas animated by Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl). It was weird, but it worked.

This is one of the rare songs that was actually written/released in/around the year after which it was named. What can we surmise from the lyrics about 2000?

-Things are starting to feel like they are moving too quickly.
-Nike shoes are popular.
-Monkeys easily get confused.
-Get the cool shoeshine.

Ok, so at least half of this song is nonsense, but I was alive in the year 2000 and I'm sure at least half of that year was nonsense too. Dig it?



19-2000.mp3

And if time's elimination,
Then we got nothing to lose.
Please repeat the message,
It's the music that we choose.

Time Travel Definition: Per wikipedia, a Time Loop "is a common plot device in science fiction (especially in universes where time travel is commonplace) in which time runs normally for a set period (usually a day or a few hours) but then skips back like a broken record. When the time loop "resets", the memories of most characters are reset (i.e. they forget all that happened). This situation resembles the mythological punishment of Sisyphus, condemned to repeatedly push a stone uphill only to have it roll back down once he reached the top, and Prometheus, condemned to have his liver torn out and eaten by an eagle each morning," aka Groundhog Day.

Mirah//1982

Now, let's travel just a few years into the future, to 1982, where future K Records all star Mirah (who has been mentioned before) is playing Atari in her living room, probably in Bala Cynwyd*, PA, just outside of Philly.
*Sidenote: I really love when people not familiar with the Philadelphia metro area attempt to pronounce "Bala Cynwyd." It's "Ba La Kin Wood," for the record, homies.

A year later, in 1983, THE HUMBLE NARRATOR OF THIS BLOG will be born in Hackensack, NJ. A few years after that, my family would frequently travel to see family friends who had, awesomely, an Atari (ready for home use in, really?, 1977) AND a pinball machine in their basement. Some particularly bright childhood memories for me were the mornings spent in their old Pennsylvania farmhouse in PJs with the family's oldest son and still dear friend Matt, playing Pac Man, Donkey Kong and some military-ish shooting game that I can't remember the name of. Matt?

Old school video games are awesome. Did you know that you can now download emulators for computers and play all your favorite games from childhood. I recently did this at the urging of some friends/bandmates and my life hasn't been the same, not necessarily in a good way. Mostly, I've been glued to a chair listening to the audio version of Game Change (which is completely cheap and salacious) while frantically trying to defeat pixelated viruses with pixelated pills in Dr. Mario.
Also, if you live in NY, you can go play all the arcade versions of these old games in person, while drinking overpriced microbrews, at Barcade in Williamsburg. I have a friend coming to town from LA this weekend and I am thinking about putting this on our list of places to hit up.

Anyway, video game digression aside, the point of this is that if you were a child of the 80s, like I was, life was pretty rad. We had the fun of video games (and, as Mirah points out, the fun drama of destroying our friends and siblings at them), Saturday morning cartoons and the Sunday funnies, but not the electronic time-suck of the internet and cell phones. We played outside a lot and would later be excited by things like snap bracelets. Public Enemy and Faith No More were just forming, while ABBA and The Eagles were breaking up. Life was good.



1982.mp3

Frogger, I'm a frog.
Breakout, you're a dog.
You're a dog for trying to run me over.
1982, I'm playing Atari
In my living room.

Time Travel Prep: Now that we're in 1982, you should probably know some key facts so you can blend in, BTTF style. In the US, we're having a recession and Toyota just came out with a new kind of car. It's called the Camry. Cal Ripken JR. is going to break records, the St. Louis Cardinals are going to win the World Series and Time Magazine's Man of the Year is going to be, for the first time, non-human: the computer. Very interesting, considering that Apple's about to introduce it's much-hyped Tablet-of-the-Future today. 1982, how far we've come.

The Smashing Pumpkins//1979

Now, my time-travelling friends, let’s go back to 1979, or at least to 1995 when this song was released on mammoth chart-topping double album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins.

I have to say, I was never really a Pumpkins fan. As a kid, I found Corgan’s voice whiney and grating. In spite of that, I always liked this song and the video that went with it. Also, strangely, I think I like the band’s sound now, as an adult, more than I ever did when they were popular. In fact, just writing this makes me want to revisit their entire body of work.

Regardless of how I feel about the band, this album was an incredible success, with five singles, four of which went Top 40. "Bullet with Butterfly Wings," anybody?

Between the lyrics and the video, Corgan and co. paint 1979 as at once brightly youthful and boringly suburban. Populated by “poured cement,” mild drug use, “the vacant and the bored,” lonely afternoons and a general feeling of aimlessness, the teenage angst in the song is kind of beautiful. In a way, it sucks and the narrator feels isolated from/confused by society as a whole. On the other hand, the ties formed between the narrator and other isolated kids in the scene are perfect, intense and interesting.

Of course, in the greater world, outside of the universe of the song, lots of things were happening in 1979. In Iran, the Islamic Revolution swept through the country. China invaded Northern Vietnam. In Montenegro and Albania, a completely destructive 7.0 earthquake struck. In the UK, the IRA was bombing things left and right--Margaret Thatcher also became prime minister. In America, there were riots in San Fransisco over the verdict for Dan White, who shot Harvey Milk. Beyond that, in the states, we got the Susan B. Anthony dollar, Skylab and the death of famed sitcom horse Mr. Ed. I guess we can understand what Corgan was writing about, after all.

As for 1995, when the song was released, the year was a turning point for music and technology. Corgan stated that “1979” was the most personally important song on his band’s new record, indicating that it would be a forbearer for a new sound, “something that combines technology, and a rock sensibility, and pop, and whatever, and hopefully clicks.”

In 1996, just a year later, a girl would be killed in a wild mosh pit at a Pumpkin’s show in Ireland and SP keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin would OD on heroin and die, marking the beginning of the end for the band.

But, for now, let’s not think about that. Instead, let’s think about our friends rolling us through artificially green fields of subdivisions in giant old tires:

1979.mp3

We don't even care, as restless as we are.
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below.

Time Travel Definition:Acording to Wikipedia: "A time slip (also called a timeslip) is an alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of people, travel through time through supernatural (rather than technological) means. ...Many time slip witnesses report that, at the start of their experience of the phenomena, their immediate surroundings take on an oddly flat, underlit and lifeless appearance, and normal sounds seem muffled. This is sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression and unease." Learn more.

Yeasayer//2080

Before we kick off the week: OSS finally jumped on the social networking bandwagon (about 1-4 years late, but oh well). You can now follow the jams on Twitter and Facebook.

Speaking of technology, I would like to officially welcome you to Time Travel Week here on OSS. Prepare to be jostled around as we move between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space!

Last week, I had dinner with a friend and we got into a long, intense conversation about what would happen if we lost the grid. This is one of my favorite conversations and usually leads me to fantasize about the hell that would occur when post-digital information age, we realize that no one in our society actually knows how to do anything anymore and we are hurdled into another dark age. I have a few friends who are carpenters and farmers. I am looking at you guys. If this ever happens, I will be showing up at your doors.

With that in mind, let’s travel to the future. Brooklyn buzz band Yeasayer just released a new album that sounds, from what I’ve heard of it so far, great. On their previous release, All Hour Cymbals, they wrote about 2080.

The version of the future (and the resistance to thinking about it too much) described in the song feels pretty bleak. The narrator suggests that we “grab at the chance to be handsome farmers,” implying that our current situation likely won’t hold long. The way the song sounds, I can’t help but imagine post-apocalyptic urban hells taking over our once-thriving cities and small farming communities dotting our countrysides, with people returning to old ways as lack of resources leads civilization to revert to simpler times. The narrator also acknowledges that he’ll “surely be dead” by the time any of this comes to pass.

Until tomorrow, enjoy your stay in 2080. If you get bored, you can always get back in the DeLorean for some more.



2080.mp3

I can't sleep when I think about the times we're living in.
I can't sleep when I think about the future I was born into.

Time Travel Fact: It’s unclear where the idea of time travel first emerge, although some point to an early example around 700 BC. From Wikipedia: Ancient folk tales and myths sometimes involved something akin to travelling forward in time; for example, in Hindu mythology, the Mahabharatha mentions the story of the King Revaita, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth.

Neutral Milk Hotel//Holland, 1945

In 2001, I took an overnight Greyhound bus trip from Detroit to New York listening only to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. And I was happy. That’s how good this album is.

In the Aeroplane is easily one of the most perfect albums ever created (and probably the only indie rock ever created that’s mostly about Anne Frank). The songs are simple, but that quality only enhances the appeal (and the drunken sing-along ability). The lyrics are so strong, with depth that comes off sounding pleasantly skewed, and the soundscapes are rich and innovative. Many of the songs on the album blend into each other, making the it more of a symphony with distinct movements, rather than just a random collection of songs.

Unfortunately, this sophomore effort from Neutral Milk Hotel was the short-lived band’s last, as the central songwriter and force behind the group, Jeff Magnum, strangely dropped off the face of the earth. His seclusion was so dramatic and complete that Slate has touted him as the Salinger of indie rock, which I don’t think is too terribly far off.



Holland, 1945.mp3

Now she's a little boy in Spain, playing pianos filled with flames.

Pedro the Lion//June 18, 1976

It’s grey and I don’t feel so hot in more ways that one. Looks like sad bastard day today.

Here’s an uplifting track from Pedro the Lion about unwanted pregnancy and suicide.



June 18, 1976.mp3

I promise I’ll get happier as the week progresses.