Record Club Introduction
I felt pressure to find the perfect song for record club. I thought I settled for this Jungle song but I realize that I really did pick the perfect song. To revise, I attacked it with the attitude that this is the perfect song that deserves a damn good analysis. Although there is a lot to discover and discuss, I think I touched on the most quintessential Jungle aspects.
“Cherry”
For record club I chose the song “Cherry” by Jungle. I find Jungle to be a fascinating band. They started as a minimal band of just two men working mostly with electronic recordings but they chose to expand to a seven-piece band when performing live. They said it was important for them to “be a collective energy” on stage and bring that to the audience when performing. Because of this they are regarded as an incredible live band — I can vouch for that. There are at least 4 vocalists that sing on every track which creates these incredible, full harmonies. The two front men primarily sing in falsetto voices which contrasts in a very apparent way to the deep bass and warm music. It’s a feature that defines almost all of the music by Jungle.
Jungle begins by easing you into the tempo of this song; they start with a fast bass line that settles into a slower tempo and sustains the rest of the song. I found that a really interesting and attention grabbing way to begin a song. This song has seismic qualities; the low bass makes you feel just as much, if not more, than you actually hear. The duo has said that they wish to “create a world” with their music to make it an experience. When I listen to this song with headphones I personally feel like I am immersed in the world of Jungle.
When I was looking for the exact genre of the band it was difficult to settle on just one or two. There are so many different genres they fall into that one reporter went as far as to say they are “undefinable.” I feel that the genres funk, neo-soul, and electronic are best able to describe their unique musical style and sound. I love the use of electronic non-instrumental sounds that they incorporate into their music. They combine those, a deep bass, and repetitive lyrics to create something hypnotic. One of my favorite parts is during the bridge there’s a synthesized effect on the lead singer’s voice. I felt that the sparing use of voice synthesizing in this song made that moment in the bridge that much more alluring.
The lyrics, although repetitive, are powerful. “You’re never gonna change me, I was already changing” is a powerful sentiment about growing on your own and finding yourself. “Flowers in the garden that won’t grow. Flowers on the train, it’s not the same. Life won’t grow if we never change.” My interpretation of these lines is that as we grow as people our ideals and desires change and we have to be aware of this and accept it. There is this cliche idea that we should all grow up and have a nice house with a garden, picket fence, etc. but that’s not true for everyone. Some people can’t grow a garden, they settle for buying a house plant for their apartment and although it’s not the same it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. If we don’t adjust our opinions and expectations then we start to tread water, but opening yourself to something new even if it’s not what you expected will allow you to grow and push you closer to a happy life.
Terms:
Electronic: Music primarily created using electronic musical instruments or electronic music technology.
Falsetto: Male voice above usual bass or tenor range, an effect accomplished by using only half of the vocal cords.
Funk: Genre focused on strong rhythmic grooves of basslines. Typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves.
Harmony: When two or more individual notes are played simultaneously to form a cohesive whole.
Hypnotic: Anything mesmerizing or spellbinding. Readily holding the attention.
Neo-Soul: Style of music that emerged from soul & contemporary R&B. Distinguished by a less conventional sound than contemporary R&B with incorporated elements from funk, jazz fusion, hip hop, etc.
Seismic: Very low bass that you feel rather than hear.
Sound Synthesis: Shaping and modulating sounds using components like filters, envelopes, effects, etc.
Tempo: Time, the overall speed of a piece of music.
Warm: Good bass, adequate low frequencies
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Performance Review Introduction
I was initially overwhelmed with the enormous amount of options for the performance review. I went through lots of NPR Tiny Desk Concerts and this one stood out. Aside from how strange it was to see a band in bubbles, my brother and his bandmate (my basically other adopted brother) were obsessed with The Flaming Lips. They tried to make their shows as crazy with confetti and huge balloons but there’s no comparison, obviously. It was the first time I really listened to their music. I’d heard it plenty before but I never really listened. Revising this piece mostly involved trying to describe the music in ways that did them more justice. It is passionate and full of feeling and I wanted to let the reader know that.
The Flaming Lips Reimagined
In their NPR Tiny Desk Concert, The Flaming Lips perform in separate plastic bubbles that they’ve used at their concerts for decades. Through the dirty scuffed up plastic we can see them only from a distance — blurry and warped. For a band that typically thrives with audience participation and props such as hundreds of 6 foot balloons bouncing around in the audience, light shows, mounds of confetti, and the occasional life size unicorn riding through the crowd, they managed to adjust to a minimalist performance very well.
The Flaming Lips curated a set list of solemn songs which speak to most of us as we continue to struggle through the current pandemic. Beginning with a song off their new album American Head, “Will You Return/When You Come Down,” they encompass the elusive feeling of dread. Beginning with an eerie xylophone melody, it eases up for lead singer, Wayne Coyne, to sing “all your friends are dead / and their ghosts / floating around your bed.” Although this ballad is about drug abuse, it’s painful sentiments are just as applicable to our current everyday lives. Throughout their performance they curate a haunting feel with their rich gospel-esque harmonies.
Going back to their 2013 album The Terror, they perform “Be Free, A Way,” but not before Coyne vulnerably explains how he feels this song is appropriate considering he wrote it when he was suffering through the only major depression he has experienced. The honesty and hurt is arresting as he sings in his raspy voice “how can we be free / when all our days are empty.” Steven Drozd, the keyboardist and second vocalist acts as the response to Coyne’s call, building a ghostly trailing echo of vocals. The synthesizing of Drozd’s voice adds an element of dreaminess to the music, producing a surreal effect that The Flaming Lips often evoke. Singing about the inability to be truly free, the band members in their bubbles cannot take more than a step or two in any direction. As an audience we can sympathize with the suffocation and constriction that they are physically experiencing. Really, we are living in our own bubbles of isolation. The band is just acting as the reflection of our own currently restricted lives.
Playing an older song of theirs, “It’s Summertime,” The Flaming Lips end their performance by trying to propagate some hope. Full of catharsis, this more uplifting song offers that, “though it’s hard to see it’s true possibilities” it is summertime — metaphorically that is.
Overall, this performance is radically different from the extravagance we’ve come to expect from the band. They altered their exorbitant show into an appropriate intimate performance which makes the viewer feel like they’re speaking right to you; patting you on the back saying times are tough and we all feel uneasy, but that’s ok because soon enough it will be summertime again.
As the darkness begins to turn to light with the pandemic, The Flaming Lips are putting on “space bubble” concerts where concert goers are confined to their own individual bubbles holding up to 3 people. It certainly is strange and could only have happened due to extreme circumstances; but then again who knows what The Flaming Lips would have concocted in the future?
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Memoir Mixtape Introduction
To be honest, when I began this project I was in a bad funk and when you’re in a depression it’s easy to remember all of the other depressions. The first draft of my memoir mixtape was very sad. After my recent funk lifted, I re-read it and was somewhat horrified at how dismal I made this time in my life out to be. It was an incredibly challenging and sometimes even debilitatingly depressing time but it also fostered some of the best moments of my life. I needed to go back and rewrite this to show that side too. It’s unfair to ignore all of the glorious moments I had because the deceitful voice of depression was louder for a moment — if we let that voice overshadow the good, that is how depression wins. The revised mixtape is profoundly different. I feel it gives a truer picture of my younger self.
Mania, Depression, Production, and Music
After graduating high school I took a year off to pursue a career in film production, a career that I had already been working at since I was 14. As a spirited 18-year-old, I was working 14 hour days on set with a 90 minute commute back home to Long Island. When the commute was too much or the trains stopped running for the night, I would stay at friends or crew members apartments. I would loiter in Union Square on Thursday and Friday nights where large groups of young people, who were all older than me at the time, would congregate to celebrate being young and free; playing music, hacky sack, skateboarding, and stealing trendy beers from Whole Foods. It was a fun, chaotic, experimental, slightly irresponsible, sometimes simply stupid period in my life to say the least.
But the undiagnosed bipolar disorder raging in my brain was driving my regularly occurring erratic behavior. I was manic. I thrived on set and in the editing room. Then I would crash. Hard. I would come home and cut myself — bandages were dismissed as the cost of working a physically laborious job.
Music was constantly blasting in my headphones to drown out my own self-destructive thoughts. But music was also a trigger. I felt music so deeply and personally; a single song could alter my mood like turning on or off a light switch. A bass line could make my heart race, a verse could talk me off the ledge and a great bridge could push me off. This is a mixtape from a very specific time in my life. A time that I can only half remember because depression tends to black out memories. But certain songs held onto those memories for me.
OKGo – “There’s a Fire”
I went to every OKGo concert in New York City between 2013 and 2016. The only reason I stopped is because they stopped touring. They were and still are one of my favorite bands.
“On the count of three we’re all gonna stomp. One, two, three…” Front man Damian recorded the audience stomping, clapping, hissing, and clicking on a looper connected to an iphone. Then the drummer tapped at the screen using the audience’s sounds to create the beat of their song “There’s a Fire.” It’s slightly off beat syncopation is uncomfortable — something is a little wrong. Aptly, this song is about a boy who cried wolf. “I mean it, there’s a problem here / this time it is for real / how can I make myself more clear?” “There’s a fire / there’s a fire” and there really was. This song epitomized the back and forth in my mind about if I was actually in crisis, and how do I tell someone when I’ve pretended to be ok for so long?
Outasight – “Change The World”
This was the first music video I worked on as a second assistant camera person. I was friends with the director of photography, John. He got me most of my work in the camera department; I truly owe that part of my career to him. I was 18 then. It was a really small shoot, I don’t even think I was paid, I was just happy to be working. The song is super upbeat; it’s about taking on the world. It was strangely appropriate for my first shoot — it energized me. This shoot made me realize that for any music video I would ever work on, I would eternally know all the words to that song. For better or worse.
Paolo Nutini – “Cherry Blossom”
It was the most beautiful day — summer in the city and I was on an upswing after a bad depression. I was a production assistant on a mission to pick up a fog machine from a prop house in Brooklyn and deliver it to Long Island City. I listened to “Cherry Blossom” on loop almost the entire hour and a half trip. It’s airy, much like the day itself was. Paolo Nutini’s transparent vocals sail parallel with a steely electric guitar. Blue-eyed soul widened my own hazel eyes. On the cab ride back we drove under a canopy of cherry blossoms. It was a moment of bliss bathed in blush flowers.
Hozier – “Someone New”
New York City is for romantics. I’ve fallen in love over 1,000 times — 995 of those times lasted less than two days. Hundreds lasted the amount of time the A C E takes to get from Penn Station to West 4th Street.
Regina Spektor – “Eet”
“Someone’s deciding whether or not to steal / he opens a window just to feel the chill / He hears that outside a small boy just started to cry” I was both the boy and the ‘someone deciding.’ No matter how depressed, disconnected, or numb I was, a sharp chill could ground me — at least for a moment.
Tame Impala – “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
I was the 2nd assistant director on a feature film called “From Nowhere.” I was working under a famous Australian actor who was trying to branch out into directing. He only drank lemonade vitamin water zero which is harder than you’d think to find in the Bronx. I was only 19 at the time. Is that a shameless humble brag? Yes. But it also indicates how fucking surreal my life was. I had a crush on this sound guy that was working on the film. I smoked pot for the first time with him and he showed me this Tame Impala song. Psychedelic pop is ideal for your first high. The song made me feel like I was falling backwards infinitely through a hypnotic spiral.
Sia – “Chandelier”
My cousin Katie showed me this song when it came out. We tried to see if either of us could hit the high note in the chorus. We couldn’t. Listening to the song later I realized how tragic and relatable it felt to me. My mood swings were so fast and fierce I was “just holding on for dear life / won’t look down, won’t open my eyes.” I was afraid to see how far the fall could be if I let go.
Cold War Kids – “God, Make Up Your Mind”
Cold war kids have a chaotic sound and energy that can somehow express both depression and mania. As an 18-year-old undiagnosed manic-depressive, couch surfing around New York and running on coffee, cliff bars, and anxiety, Robbers & Cowards was my soundtrack. The ominous build and slow crawling vocals of “God, Make Up Your Mind,” spoke to this apathetic darkness in me. I distinctly remember walking from the editing office I was working at to the subway. I was walking along 27th street in Astoria and stopped at a crosswalk. I remember closing my eyes and feeling the hostile wind gusts of cars rushing by. I was strangely tranquil. “Your stomach feels the emptiness of death” moaned into my ear. I thought about suicide; how easy it would be to step into traffic… but the light turned green.
Krishane ft. Shaggy – “Money Can’t Buy No Love”
I worked on the music video for this song. The entire music video ended up on the cutting room floor like a surprising amount of projects I’ve worked on — I guess that’s just show biz. I always hung out with the grips, those are the guys who do pretty much all the heavy lifting. There is a stereotype that grips just sit in the grip truck smoking weed and come out sometimes to move some C-stands around. I loved their energy of not giving a fuck and I wanted to be like that since I was suffering from a serious case of giving too much of a fuck. It was a super hot and humid July day in Brooklyn. I was literally running 2 blocks away from the set to grab a lens to run right back. There was a cooler near the grip truck and it strangely had orange fantas so I took one. I was then warned by a group of people that those are “Smitty’s fantas.” Smitty was apparently a veteran grip who was so good at what he did that people catered to him, hence the specially purchased orange fantas. Later, I was approached by the infamous Smitty who gave me a hard time but it was all in good fun, we became friends. There was another grip that drove me and some equipment over to set later in the day. He asked my name and I had just watched this old Jack Nicholson movie where someone asks his name and he said it’s “badass.” Thinking I was cool I said “sometimes I go by badass.” He laughed pretty hard and then said, “I like that, ok badass.” Next thing you know the grips are all calling me badass. Looking back now that was such a dumb 19-year-old thing to say. At least I made an impression.
This is Krishane and myself standing in for a shot.
This is the small group of people on this Earth who call me “badass.” That’s Smitty on the left.
Rooney – “When Did Your Heart Go Missing?”
Rooney has a real Cali livin’ kind of vibe. They put a California filter over my sometimes gloomy New York lens. I knew how to play all their catchy riffs on guitar. Nailing one was like some auto dopamine dispensing button. One of the most unreal things that happened in my film career was when a friend flew me out to L.A. to be the assistant camera person on his senior thesis film. I made a playlist for the trip and 80% of it was Rooney. I always daydreamed about moving to L.A. to be a director and listening to Rooney as I cruise down the pacific coast highway.
The senior thesis shoot in L.A.
CL – “Lifted”
This is another song that I worked on the video for. This song reminds me of hot Brooklyn summer days. I was walking some equipment past the grip truck when some yelled “OH SHIT IT’S BADASS! YO SMITTY BADASS IS BACK!” I almost fell to the concrete laughing and we had a nice handshake/hug moment. It’s one of my favorite memories from my production days.
This song is about getting simultaneously drunk and stoned aka ‘lifted.’ We had at least 20 extras for a shot where they’re all drinking 40s on a basketball court and somehow they ended up with real 40s. So there we were with a bunch of drunk extras that we now had to deal with. A man with an ices cart decided to take advantage and parked next to the court. Production ended up paying off the cart guy so we can all have ices.
Anna Shoemaker – “Too High”
This was one of the last videos I worked on before my still ongoing hiatus. I was just about at my breaking point with my bipolar. I remember crying in the bathroom, I don’t even know why. I really liked the song and I think it triggered something in me. The varying dynamics between the vocals and instruments made me feel surrounded and it overwhelmed me. Fluttering echoes reverberated in my chest. It was a tipping point. I felt so much and I just didn’t want to anymore. I had to step away from it all.
Talking Heads – “This Must Be The Place”
If I could show teenage Salia any song it would be “This Must Be The Place.” There is so much happening in this song but it comes together as one cohesive piece. It reminds me of the complexity of being human. Synthesized keyboards create an abundance of sounds like delicate flutes, marimba, xylophone, strings — every time I listen I hear another sound I didn’t hear before. Ultimately the complexity is what makes it beautiful. I first heard “This Must Be The Place” about two years ago when my boyfriend showed it to me. It makes me feel warm and loved. I would say this song marks a positive transitional period for me. I found a place where I’m okay, where I can better outlast the depressions and tame the manias. This must be the place they’re talking about.
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Acknowledgements:
- Thank you Professor Tougaw – Aside from teaching me how to write about music, you introduced me to many other writers who teach me as well. I was hugely influenced by the writing of Hanif Abdurraqib.
- To my mom who got me involved in production and my dad who supported me.
- To the co-workers/friends from my production days: John, David, Katie, Matt, Kevin, and Smitty to name a few. Shoutout to Shaggy who held the door open for me while I was carrying $60,000+ worth of lenses.
- To the bands OKGo, Cold War Kids, The Flaming Lips, and Jungle amongst others.
- To Huse who supports me in my recovery and shows me tons of new music even when I don’t want to hear it.
