The Man No Fool Could Stop

Jimi Hendrix could dazzle on stage, and was an important figure in the counterculture movement. Philip Norman captures his life in Wild Child.

(Image Credit: David Redfern/Redferns)

Jimi Hendrix was one of one. During his 27 years on the planet, he became widely known as the greatest guitar player of all time. Hendrix was impossible to categorize as a musician. On stage, Hendrix pulled off stunts like no other. He would frequently play the guitar with his teeth, smash his guitar into bits, or even light the instrument on fire. His life was in some ways the epitome of sex, drugs, rock and roll – he loved all three. And yet to define him as just another Rockstar would be an irresponsible simplification of one of Rock’s great characters.

Music historian Phillip Norman’s Wild Thing: The short spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix, is an impressive feat of historical research and writing. Norman covers Jimi’s entire life, sometimes in painstaking detail. At all turns, Norman does his best to provide maximum context, and present the different recollections of important events. Hendrix had a habit of misleading the press, which Norman notes frequently throughout the book, and for which Norman deserves even more credit for his efforts to decipher and deliver the truth.

And the truth, to put it mildly, was a long story. Born as Johnny Allen Hendrix on 27 November 1942, his name was soon changed to James Marshall by his father, Al. Hendrix had a bizarre early life, which included being adopted away from his family in Seattle to a family in southern California, only to have his father return from the Army and head down the coast to claim his three-year-old biological son. Al was a constant source of insecurity and anxiety throughout Jimi’s life. An alcoholic, Al never approved of Jimi’s (who at that time went by Buster) guitar playing. Even after finding a broken guitar in a scrap heap and learning to produce great sounds from it, Jimi had to convince his dad to buy him a proper guitar. From there, he was completely devoted to the instrument for the rest of his life. Even when his son returned to Seattle to play sold-out shows many years later, Al was unimpressed. Being the best of all time was apparently not good enough for Al, and Jimi tried and failed to make his father proud of him to the day he died.

Norman is at his best with short bursts of brilliant writing that add value to his historical record keeping. In describing Hendrix’s biggest hit, a cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, Norman writes that “a terse ‘hey!’ announces a break which, for me, surpasses any other to have been recorded since guitars had electrical wires threaded through their bodies like keyhole surgery and metal pickups and volume knobs and tremelo levers dentist-drilled into their faces.”

At other points, Norman’s writing lacks pace, and seems unfit to describe someone he defines as “spellbinding.” For example, Jimi’s early years as a musician were covered in complex detail, through his numerous adventures joining and leaving bands. Many of the events could have been summarized, and the book would have benefitted from fifty less pages. Another disappointment in the book were the spelling errors, almost 10 in total, that were unusual for a published work like this one. They were unprofessional and distracting as a reader and while likely not Norman’s fault, they hurt his writing.

For all of his greatness, Jimi’s black skin would often set him apart from other Rockstars. While trying to make it as a young musician, he had to cut his teeth on the “chittlin circuit,” a nationwide series of bars and clubs that featured African American performers. It was there that he met and played with a great number of the premier black performers of the era.

Jimi’s once-in-a-generation talent was not destined to be pigeon-holed. Norman describes in detail how the Beatles and other British groups helped to import “black” music like R&B back into mainstream American society. At the same time, Jimmy was growing bored of the same old music he was playing, and was beginning to pay more attention to new Rock groups. Norman wrote that it was difficult for managers to place Jimi, because “he wasn’t exactly rock nor pop nor soul nor R&B nor blues nor country nor folk nor jazz but a bit of everything. In a world of racialized music, Jimmy could cut through genres at will.

Put another way, music promoter Bill Graham, describes in the book that Hendrix was “the first black man in the history of this country who caused the mass of white females in the audience to disregard his race and want his body.”

 

Jimi’s biggest hits would come as a member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a three person band formed in Britain. Hendrix was known to play covers throughout his career, but other tunes like Purple Haze, Hey Joe, and Voodoo Child became hits as well. More than for his studio work though, Jimi was known for his incredible skill as a performer, emphasized by his frequent habit of playing in bars and clubs despite his fame, all the way until his death.

The 1960’s were an intense and violent time in the history of American race relations, but Hendrix was not initially the radical symbol of counterculture that he may be remembered as. Despite the increasing urges of the Black Panther Party for Hendrix to more directly take up their cause, it took Jimi years to fully embrace their agenda. “He grew adept at deflecting suggestions from hefty brothers in black berets and sunglasses” wrote Norman. One reason for the initial hesitancy was Jimi’s own career in the military. Norman wrote “his sympathies were as much with the young soldiers fighting a clearly unwinnable war, especially the black ones… who were allowed to die for their country yet not granted equality in it.”

Despite his initial stance, Hendrix became the target of COINTELPRO, the counter intelligence program operated by the FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover, who used the program to target the Black Panther Party. In addition to being wildly illegal (and eventually exposed as one of Richard Nixon’s many spying ventures), the program was extremely racist. As a high-profile black person in the country, let alone a scandalous Rockstar, Hendrix was a main target of the program, although Norman describes the “findings of COINTELPRO’s sleuths proved disappointingly thin,”  proof that targeting Jimi had more to do with racism than any evidence of wrong-doing.

Despite the attention of the government, Jimi slowly became more and more engaged with the cause of Black Power, ultimately leading to his most famous performance. Hendrix waited all night to play in a muddy farmer’s field in Woodstock, New York. With an 400-500,000 visitors over the course of the weekend, the festival was the largest ever for a festival, and as Norman points out, “arguably the largest ever convened for a purpose other than fighting battles.” But the line up was so delayed that Hendrix had to wait until Monday morning to play.

In describing Woodstock and the performance on-stage, Norman produces some of his best writing. He writes that Hendrix had played the Star-Spangled Banner before, but never quite like he did that day. The performance included Jimi’s “long dying falls erupting into a feedback cacophony that somehow mimicked the war’s sounds – the whip of helicopter blades, the whistle of falling bombs, the whoomph of Napalm, the screams of its shredded victims.” Perhaps not fully on purpose, Hendrix provided the counterculture movement with its lasting moment on stage. While he hadn’t initially wanted to be a symbol of a political movement, he became one that day. A column in the New York Post would write “You finally heard what that song was about, that you can love your country but hate the government.”

In a poignant summary, Norman writes, “he walked off stage as Mitch Mitchell recalls (Jimi’s bandmate), ‘cold, tired, hungry, and unhappy with his performance.’ He would never know he had just created the defining moment of Woodstock – and, many people believe, the whole decade.”

At times, appealing to all races means appealing to none. After Woodstock, Norman writes that “performing for such a huge, overwhelmingly white crowd inevitably brought cries of ‘Uncle Tom’ from the Black Panthers (just as it brought threats from redneck whites to beat him to a pulp if he ever defiled the National Anthem like that again).”

However not long after his biggest successes and most memorable performances, Hendrix was dead. How he actually died is shrouded in conspiracy theories and changing stories. The official story is that Jimi died on an overdose of sleeping pills, taken from a young woman he was staying with at the time, German and former figure skater Monika Dannemann. Dannemann alleges that Jimi couldn’t sleep and asked for a pill, but when she woke up she found that Jimi had apparently taken nine of the tablets. However, Dannemann’s official recount of the events of that night changed some 14 times, and friends who arrived on the scene the morning Jimi died poked holes in the timing of events. Some allege that hours passed between the time that Dannemann called friends in a panic and the time that she called the ambulance. As Norman notes several times, Dannemann was a new figure in Jimi’s life, and older friends of his described Monika were suspicious. She appeared to show relatively little grief, especially considering how tragic and traumatizing the episode must have been.

Jimi left this earth far too soon. Throughout his short but massively successful career, he rubbed shoulders with many of the best guitarists and musicians to walk this planet. They almost all agreed that Jimi was the best. Eric Clapton for example, was seen to be God on the guitar. One night, Jimi sat in with Clapton’s band Cream, to play a number. ‘Halfway through the song, Eric stopped playing” recalled Chas Chandler, a friend of Jimi’s. Clapton retreated to the dressing room and said ‘you never told me he was that fu**ing good.’” Jimi would have high voltage fans for the rest of his career. A headliner for Hendrix once reported seeing many of Rock’s biggest stars waiting to see Jimi play, saying that he saw “all my biggest heroes… Pete Townshend (The Who)… Keith Richards (Rolling Stones)… Stevie Winwood… Eric Clapton, looking like “Oh my God, I’m not God anymore.”

Trying to explain the legacy of Jimi Hendrix can be tough, even with 350+ pages. Talented, unique, and short are the descriptors that best describe the man and his life. A Billboard magazine edition just after his death provided perhaps the best memorial for a man like no other.

“To a black gypsy cat / who rocked the world / when it needed to be rocked. / Sleep Well.”

Jimi faced challenges at every stage of his life. From an alcoholic, violent father, to the military, to coming up as a black musician in a still overtly racist and violent country. Eventually, greedy management, drug use, and creative burnout hurt him as well. But Hendrix was not only remarkably talented, but resilient as well. As long as he had his guitar, he was happy. And boy, did he rock this world.

Norman’s history is but one of a long line of tribute books, movies, and albums. For longer than he lived, people have been memorializing the best guitar player in history. “I still have my guitar and an amp, and as long as I have that, no fool can stop me living,” he once wrote to his father. Indeed, no fool ever could. And while a series of small pills took him away from this planet, Jimi’s legacy remains untouched as the greatest shredder to ever pick up a guitar.

Kim Gordon In Focus: Inside the Mind of the Art-Rock Enigma

Kim Gordon’s 2015 Girl in a Band  chronicles her artful life in vivid vignettes. 

Coolness, mystery, and artfulness create curiosity; Kim Gordon’s allure and opaque persona unravel as she documents her life. Known for her taciturn nature in Sonic Youth band interviews where her now ex-husband Thurston Moore would domineer the conversation, there is now only one voice across these pages. Her west-coast upbringing and New York evolution are told with precise, visceral recollection. Kim Gordon’s writing is mostly straightforward, so the poetic flourishes she describes performing with are bright and enchanting:

“I wondered if they were like me and craved the feeling of electricity and sound mixed together, swirling around my head and thru my legs. I always fantasized what it would be like to be right under the pinnacle of energy, beneath two guys who have crossed their guitars together, two thunderfoxes in the throes of self-love and combat, that powerful form of intimacy only achieved onstage in front of other people, known as male bonding.”

Throughout her memoir, she mentions the feeling of performance and pure expression, threading the serendipitous moments and frayed relationships into one form. In the first chapter, she documents the last Sonic Youth show. The shared history is over within an hour; Kim disenchants the reader, pulling them closely inwards. This is her life, the strangeness and betrayal of failed marriage, young-girl idealism shattered, a triumphant leap into another phase of life.

Kim launches us deeply into her childhood, writing in a hyper-sensory, poetic way, transporting us to 1960’s Los Angeles: “Eucalyptus bathed in the haze of ambition.” She parses apart the darkness beneath LA’s allure, the specific dichotomy of academic and showbiz families. Along with the ever-changing, turbulent 1960s culture of beatniks and political bedlam, Gordon gives an intimate recounting of her relationship with her brother who eventually was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keller Gordon, described as a “hyper-verbal troublemaker,” created Kim’s icy demeanor that the media is so tantalized by – a woman with quietude is inherently shocking, especially in a musical scene with loud rockstars such as Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna. Now the press can go home, the mystery has been unlocked.

Kim details her teenage escapades and bullheaded desire for a life in art. Her tiny wonders are sprinkled throughout the book, details like jewels. The serendipity of encountering bandmates at small, crowded city clubs where groups would perform and disappear shortly after, similar to her initial bands that formed and dissolved quickly, leaving room for Sonic Youth.

She often brings up her past relationships and attraction to intellectual renegades, the minds with nuance who supported her artwork. Kim credits them with shaping her fearlessness in art. Her affinity for men devoted to art led her to one of the most innovative guitarists  in rock history, Thurston Moore.

Since Girl in a Band was written in 2015, Moore is slyly mentioned most of the time, as she admits that her heart is still broken following their divorce. Some of this commentary comes off as truly snide; digs against cultural figures such as Billy Corgan, Jeff Koons, and Courtney Love almost feel too personal and unnecessary in paragraphs. However, this is Kim’s life, and her unadulterated opinions. Moments of brashness are juxtaposed with her day-to-day self-consciousness.

Sometimes it is difficult to discern whether her judgments are drawn from the media or her own mind. Phrases littered with “maybe that’s why,” “probably because of,” and “I think,” skew the reality of the book. One could suppose that her life is as she sees and experiences it, however, the voice of judgment appears often, never quite clear if it is just her thoughts or something that has been said to her. Her heartache is palpable especially towards the end of the memoir when describing the cataclysmic discovery of texts and emails from the “other woman.” The reader gets vicious insight into a shattering marriage and how Kim’s daughter, Coco Gordon Moore, was hope incarnate. Maternal love and instinct is a natural concoction of determination. Even before her divorce, she undertook the balancing act of rock stardom and motherhood. Kim sweeps the disillusionment that the public has of musicians in her own words. Sonic Youth’s 1988 album Daydream Nation may be in the Library of Congress for its imprint on American culture, yet her stories of divorce and insecurity all ring with the same melancholy of the human experience.

The most bemusing stretch of her autobiography is the tale of her own art history. Her vivid descriptions of New York City in the seventies and eighties elucidate its non-stop energy. A life in pursuit of art is seldom talked about in detail. Usually interviews deal with the content of albums, but Kim walks us through the cheap foods and menial jobs, and most importantly the steadfast desire to stay in New York. These pre-Sonic Youth are redolent of Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids. Pure artists live in squalor in the pursuit of self-expression. Gordon remarks “everyone says they knew at age five that they wanted to be an artist.” New York is the quintessential art city, an eternal buzz of restlessness beckoning for more ideas in the air. She leaves LA knowing that she “had to in order to become who she always wanted to be.”

After becoming a member in Sonic Youth, her story takes off. Chapters rush by like their seven-minute noise-rock jams. Kim captures the flashing punk rock touring scene with old diary entries from a collection called Boys are Smelly. Typical diary entries are prosaic and confessional; this collection teems with rock-and-roll history and gender study. She writes that “For many purposes, being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible, being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and making it strong.” Male bonding is a curious thing for her; touring, performing on stage, and creating music allows her to enter the male dimension, or in her ideal case, the genderless art realm.

The halcyon days of Sonic Youth are laced with her current heartbreak as Kim recalls her past with Thurston. She intersperses the golden past with ultimate betrayal, winding in and out of positive so he never comes off as lovely as he once did. I found that these moments of mentioning the present broke the transported nature of Kim’s writing; her sensory details and city context are lush but turn sour when the present is threaded into the story. She begins with a self-quote from therapy:

“The codependent woman, the narcissistic man…It’s a dynamic I have with men.”

A relationship centered around art is a recurring theme for Kim, as most relationships in her life in this memoir are linked to or are purely art-based. They are also numerous in the beginning, giving insight into her development as an artist through supportive relationships. As she moved around the country from LA to Chicago and ultimately New York, she encounters brilliant minds along the way. It’s a joy to see who she gravitates towards; they’re all unique creators such as Mike Kelley who later designed Sonic Youth album artwork. The budding romance between her and Thurston shines with their old passions to create something new in the music world; this part holds some of Kim’s best passages in the book – when she’s not including the future mess. I found myself smiling when turning the page. Vignettes of holding hands and waltzing into a movie theater or conversations about “reclaming the term ‘noise rock’” warmed my heart. Their initial union with Thurston’s confidence and Kim’s quieter ambitions shine with potential that eventually materializes in the album-by-album rundowns.

Throughout the memoir, Kurt Cobain’s story waltzes through. She describes him as having an otherworldly kindness and sensitivity. Soft details of Cobain are seldom shown in media. Usually one sees his punk rock stage-self and tragic stories. Gordon humanizes him, transports the reader into a moment with him. He wasn’t tall, he was a rather meek, sensitive figure off-stage. She noticed his self-destructive tendencies and even leans into the writing to tell us that making a home with Courtney Love was a quicker path to darkness. Gordon describes the immediate kinship she felt with Cobain, the intuitive sense of meeting another emotional and sensitive person. She never fluffs up the narrative, admitting that they weren’t best friends, but that the connection was strong. Gordon’s stories of the enigmas of the nineties rock world give insight to a place no journalist could ever go.

Distilling the unique feeling of creating and performing music is no easy task. Kim Gordon reminds the reader throughout her memoir why she loved the heart-racing lightning strikes of on-stage moments. She even makes a jovial comment that if she couldn’t express herself through music that she’d probably just be a sociopath. The act of creating art fuels her, never demurring. Her first and only solo record thus far, No Home Record, was released in the fall of 2019. It recalls the noisy, art-rock of Sonic Youth, but melded with new futuristic-sounding percussion and electronic embellishments. She admits in Girl in a Band that she always had a cloud of insecurity even in the more confident moments; No Home Record is the few-years-later coalescence of growth. Kim Gordon never stops creating, whether it is visual art or music or poetry – her mind has always been a tender yet forceful one in the art-rock scene.

Calling all fangirls, the stage is yours.

In her new book Fangirls, VICE editor Hannah Ewens spotlights the real champions of music.

I’ve never considered myself a “fangirl” for any artist or band. Perhaps this is because I never camped outside the Staples Center or changed my Instagram username to patriciastyles123. So, when I came across Fangirls by Hannah Ewens, I was certain this was not a book I will be able to relate to but will nonetheless make an interesting read. I mean, a juicy exposé of crazy obsessions? Don’t mind if I do.

Ewens most likely knew this was the headspace of many readers giving a go at this book. So she dedicates the first three pages of the book to three simple statements:

For every girl who has ever had an obsession.

I guess I can’t deny that I’ve made collages of IM5band’s Cole Pendery to be my phone wallpaper during my middle school days.

Suggestion: replace the word ‘fangirl’ with ‘expert’ and see what happens.

Alright, so maybe my 2011 YouTube history is evidence enough that I was expertly knowledgeable of K-pop group SHINee’s dance regimens… and of Jonghyun’s ambidexterity, of Onew’s inseparability with his Rubik’s cube, of Minho’s blood type, and Taemin’s ideal spot for a date in Seoul – Namsan Tower.

Look what I found! A conceptual space where women can come together and create.

Finally, something consoling to remedy the first two convicting statements. I can now see that, with the help of Ewen’s sneaky diagnosis. But why is it that being labeled as one feels so disgraceful and sounds so derogatory?

Growing up on a remote island and with two parents who weren’t fans of music, Ewens reflects on her incredibly lonely childhood. It wasn’t until she serendipitously met E, who adopted Ewens as a little sister and introduced to her the true fangirl lifestyle. While she took E as a pattern, Ewens asserts that the metamorphosis was instinctive. It burgeoned from within, bestowing in her a sense of self for the first time in her life.

Years later, post-Frank Iero concert in a church, Ewens stopped in her tracks as she approached the altar to say goodbye to the former ex-My Chemical Romance member. Before her stood hundreds of fans with a motley of expressions that she knew too well – ecstasy, misery, and perplexity. It was not too many years ago that Ewens herself was sitting at home with E, pretending to smoke, blacking her eyelids, dyeing her hair, and blowing up over My Chemical Romance, all in proper fangirl fashion.

It was now clear to Ewens that fangirling is timeless, manifesting itself in the same way decade after decade.  It’s simultaneously communal and personal – “to be a fan is to scream alone together.” Ewens’ personal fandom experience established the purpose for her book: to demystify the amorphous fandom and reinstall power in the “fangirl” label through thorough cultural and historical analysis and empowering fan narratives.

In “Fangirls,” 68-year old Susan from Melbourne has more influence than Harry Styles. This is Ewens’ strategy to give fans full control over the microphone. Styles gets a brief, six-word introduction to the first chapter about fangirl history, and Susan from Melbourne gets two full pages to share her story. Serving as moderator is Ewens, who dedicates an entire section to offer relevant background behind the word “hysteria,” a term negatively associated with fans, especially female fans:

Hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus, which according to the Greeks, is the “anatomical source of problems.” Essentially, uterus-carriers – women – are cursed with this illness that brings about anxiety and the desire for sex. Virgins, widows, single, and sterile women are the most hysterical, according to Hippocrates, and they are therefore the largest population of women thrown into asylums for this apparent illness. Their symptoms? “Female disease,” “imaginary female trouble,” and “mental excitement,” all of which are apparent fangirl behavior.

I join the community of infuriated girls when I read this barbaric origin story. This sudden digression from jaw-dropping anecdotes of fans tearing their lungs and camping outside Zayn’s house to a serious analysis of linguistics was shocking but necessary to show readers just how stigmatized and stereotyped the fangirling concept is. The music world is heedlessly stuck in this mentality, and Ewens is simply snapping us out of it.

Turning back to Susan, a lifetime Beatles fan from Melbourne, Australia, I appreciated her piece on her own fangirl behavior growing up. Now 68 years old, Susan urges girls to “let it go, enjoy it. It’s good for you.” Don’t listen to Hippocrates. There’s no such thing as a female disease pent up in the uterus. Susan is exhorting young girls of this age to release all that energy for their favorite music. In fact, it’s the healthiest form of expression. Ewens selected the perfect fan narrative to debunk the Greeks.

This leads to another major reason why I appreciate “Fangirls.” Ewens makes it clear that she is here to empower young, teenage girls to scream for their idols. But at the same time, she acknowledges all women: those fresh out of their teen years, those entering college, and like Susan, those approaching their senior years. Ewens takes this approach to fortify the female fandom.

One of the most memorable chapters, headed by Patti Smith’s quote, “No one expected me. Everything awaited me,” spoke of the rite of passage of any fangirl: waiting in line. Here, Ewens introduces a new age group of fans that have not been mentioned yet – young adults. According to an interview with a security guard at London concert venue O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, these older fans arrive much later relative to the young campers and overtly express their distaste for “the waiting game.”

What is really happening here is the manifestation of insecurity and wistfulness – the older girls, with their college and job commitments, envy the younger girls and the time they have at their disposal to be the superior fan. One excerpt was especially powerful,

The waiting has an earnest optimism that is unsettling because it speaks to a jadedness that has crept in, something that younger fans haven’t yet learnt. It cuts back to a past where they might have had the pre-devotion to act similarly – maybe they didn’t when they had the chance.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I am a member of this sad crowd of older girls. Ewens has shown me that if I imagined myself standing in line seeing duffels strewn over the pee-stained pavement and tripping over empty jars of baby food packed by the parents of the sea of devoted fans’ that lay before me, I would experience the same sensation of “what-if.” Specifically, “what if I had let myself play the waiting game 7 years ago?” Especially now, I’ll most likely be much older by the time concerts are up and running again.

As the book comes to a close, Ewens surprises audiences with, “When I said my dad wasn’t a music fan, that wasn’t strictly true.” Ewens’s dad would always have the staticky radio on when picking her up from school, the station always switched to the same handful of songs, “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” and “Waterloo Sunset.”

As a teenage girl wishing to protect her precious reputation, Ewens would turn the volume dial down and frustratingly complain, “Don’t have it up so loud, for fuck’s sake, Dad.” As a teenage girl at that time, Ewens was so enveloped in her own angst that she didn’t realize her dad was trying to stir up the small bit of fangirl he had left. He didn’t know that bringing a new fangirl into the world would require him to relinquish the one inside him. “I was working six days a week, I would never have had the time to be a fan,” he says. Fandad proved an impossible feat.

Ewens waits till the end to reveal the truth, but looking at the book in its entirety, it’s clear that upbringing actually has little to do with whether the person will turn into a fan or not. Ewens states, “The girls I had studied had left a template – if the new ones wanted it. Now all they would need was an obsession.” We may not all be teenage girls at the moment, but we are all screaming fangirls of all ages and genders.

Miley Cyrus Finds Her Voice Through Covers

After years of reinvention, Cyrus is settling on her most fitting persona yet

Credit: Miley Cyrus (YouTube.com)

Miley Cyrus is solidifying what feels like her most honest persona yet. After beginning her career as a tween Disney Channel star, she seemed to evolve with every single release. Following her pop country era, she encountered multiple controversies related to lyrical content, sexuality, and cultural appropriation. Some criticisms of course were fairer than others, but one thing remained consistent: negative critical attention. No matter what genre she performed in (or appropriated) she was faced with low scores and controversy. Every album signified a new era, and every era came with a different reason for critical panning. 

With such a contentious history between her and critics, it comes as a surprise that the reaction to her latest series of ’80s covers has been one of rapturous praise. Although she’s been performing covers for a while, her performance of “Heart of Glass” from the iHeart festival catapulted her into a level of critical adoration she hasn’t seen before. The online response was enough to lead her to drop the song as a single on streaming the next week. She followed it up with a cover of “Zombie” at a Save Our Stages show, which also quickly landed on streaming services. She’s had articles about her covers written in NME and Rolling Stone Magazine, and piqued excitement for her upcoming album.

The “Heart of Glass” performance began with Cyrus walking out in updated Debbie Harry cosplay. Her black bodysuit, short blonde hair, and sparking bracelets running halfway up her forearms clearly signaled the 80s, even to viewers who may have never seen footage of a Blondie show. The attention to detail in her outfit foreshadowed the care with which she would channel the 80s punk spirit. Walking in front of her mask-wearing band as artificial applause began, Cyrus established her power to her virtual audience. She radiated confidence and swagger, and while it’s understandable to see her and think of the Disney channel star who wrote “Party in the U.S.A.”, any doubts in her ability to channel her punk icon inspiration were crushed once she began belting the opening lyrics. 

Her mastery over her low end and vocal growling grabbed attention instantly, and her delight in the performance kept her as that center, dancing and leaning into the mic stand like a captain steering her ship whenever she wasn’t singing. Swinging across the stage in stilettos, she exuded a relaxed confidence, ready to lean back into her belting at any time. While not necessarily making the song her own, she took over the stage and clearly stole the night, confirming her place as a perfect candidate for a modern rock star. By the time the performance ends it’s clear that this headbanging version of Miley is becoming fully realized.

The “Zombie” performance a couple weeks later came with lofty expectations, which Cyrus had no trouble meeting. Draped in a black coat and low lighting, Miley built up the first verse slowly but passionately, reaching a final crescendo and returning to her now trademark belt over a chorus of power chords and drums. By the time she takes off her coat, she’s kicking, jumping, and smiling through a guitar solo, never once losing an ounce of attention. It’s clear that the space is hers and she’s in the perfect place for her skillset. She finishes the performance on her knees, belting riffs that bring the guitars along with her. Praise for this performance on social media was just as rapturous, even if it lacked the surprise felt by many after the iHeart Festival. She seems poised to set up an era of critical acceptance, finally using her voice in the genre it is perfect for. Even with all the skill she possesses and the praise she’s gained so far, it won’t come close to her peak commercial success. 

Cyrus has sold over a million copies of her 2013 album Bangerz, and had top 5 hits with “The Climb”, “Party in the USA”, “We Can’t Stop”, and “Wrecking Ball”. The streaming numbers of her recent original single “Midnight Sky” vastly eclipse those of her covers. The disconnect between the critical and commercial reactions parallels reactions that have been constant throughout pop history, and especially the 2010s. Artists such as Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen translated their initial virality into niche, critically successful careers through projects that worked within the cutting edge of pop production, or harkened back to the synthetic sounds of the 80s. Miley could be venturing on a similar path, finding her lane in the rock sounds of the 80s and 90s, abandoning a sound that was of the moment, which doesn’t seem to be where critics wanted it to lie. 

This newfound respect for Cyrus is part of a long tradition of critical success for pop artist’s least “pop” endeavors. Most massively successful pop acts of the past decade received lukewarm to negative critical reception on release, even though we think of many of them as hugely influential today. Artists like Justin Beiber, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga dominated the decade with albums critics responded to with a resounding “meh”. Perry’s massively successful album “Teenage Dream” received more articles praising it on its ten year anniversary than it received positive reviews on release. Even an artist like Rihanna who ended up high on many decade-end lists, did it with her least commercially successful album. Artists like Britney Spears, Lorde, and Hayley Williams have spoken about how influential Perry’s work was to their later music, but the influence and success of the album doesn’t change the fact that it was critically panned.

Here is where Cyrus’s issue lies. On the one hand, the praise she has received from critics could be a sign that she has found her genre and is on the road to making the best music of her career, but it could just as well be a response to the fact that a talented artist is singing songs that have been accepted as great for decades. Her performances channeled the original singers without leaving much room for her own identity to break through. They were more reminiscent of a talent show or Voice audition than a career reinvention, an artist proving that she has the talent and just needs the guidance and originality to make it big. The covers were great and fun to watch, and Cyrus is certainly a fantastic performer, but I can’t help but feel like the praise she’s received is a compliment to everything besides her as an artist. People are responding like she’s finally proven herself, as if she didn’t have four top five hits years before any of this. While the performance made me excited to listen to her upcoming album, I hope that her original ideas are approached with optimism by any other new fans she may have garnered from her recent performances. Cyrus also must show that this current era is her authentic voice, and not just another appropriation of artists who have come before her. This shared responsibility between artist and audience of course leans more heavily on Cyrus putting out an impressive album, but her recent performances have proven that she’s capable of making something great.

A Clandestine Concert

Midnight oil burned from a chandelier within Sage Chapel, spreading an iridescence across the stained-glass windows that cut starkly against the somber night. I was shuffling past, making my way through campus, when I caught the faint whimper of a melody. At first, I mistook it for the wind humming, or the crickets whistling, or my own desperate mind imagining the live music that I so desperately craved since the outset of the pandemic. But the whimper grew to a hiss, which built to a hum. I was now certain of what I was hearing. Stoked with curiosity, I crept across the courtyard and pressed my ear to the door. The grandiose voice of the pipe organ filled the empty pews.

Leaning against the door, I listened as the anonymous musician ascended the manuals and pedals. They attacked their instrument in sudden bursts, climbing upon harmonious phrases, shooting notes high into the rafters. On occasion they stopped abruptly, letting the resplendent tones reverberate within the chapel walls. Then, with the same vigor and conviction as before, they assailed the keys once again. Rolling arpeggios and quavering octaves washed over the room, seeping through the walls into the moonlit night where I stood hanging on every note. My secret serenader put on a remarkable performance.

This might have been the most intimate, personal concert that I have ever been to. As the lone audience member, every beat and bar were my own individual indulgences. Conversely, this was also the most distant of performances. The performer, after all, was oblivious to the very fact that they were performing. Nonetheless, the barrier between us was bridged by the resounding howl of the organ, which permeated the wall and burrowed deep into my bones.

Gently, the organist lifted their finger off the final key, relieving the organ of its eternal duty and releasing me from its captive lure. Reentering reality, I became conscious of how ridiculous I looked to the passersby. I had stood for fifteen minutes with my ear glued to a doorframe, wide-eyed and smiling. Soon thereafter, I realized how emphatically more insane I would appear to the organist, who might walk through that door at any moment. I collected myself and slipped softly back into the night from which I came.

I will admit that I felt a bit creepy leant up against that wall, soaking in the live music like a moth to a porchlight. Then again, no concert in the era of COVID has followed a conventional format. We’ve swapped theatres for drive-ins, Lincoln Hall for a tent pitched on the Arts Quad. Seeing this, I’d like to believe that my midnight eavesdropping was not the most eccentric manner in which someone has pursued live music over the past few months. Anyhow, the lengths that we’ve all gone through to chase live music only proves the essentiality of the medium. Like a note perpetually pressed upon an organ, our desire to see a show will never dissipate.

Sun-Bathing in Lockdown

Cornell Daily Sun, front page, April 16, 1918

—Friday, November 13th

During the dark days and nights of the pandemic I occasionally rummage in the archive of the Daily Sun in search of a sense of how Cornell coped with the Spanish Flu a century ago. Such then-and-now comparisons fascinate not least for the exotic look of a vintage broadsheet even when leafed through in digital form:  the front-page cartoon crowning the seven-column layout; the creativity and craft of the advertisements that open windows onto the vibrancy of Ithaca’s urban life with its cafeterias, smoke shops, haberdasheries, and many theaters (both live and movies). At every turn one encounters juxtapositions and synchronicities, international wire stories jostling with campus announcements, as in the issue of April 16, 1919—Eastertide—and the call for Cheerleader try-outs placed just below the headline about peace terms being presented to the Germans at Versailles. The ominous subhead runs: “Paris Believes the Central Powers Will to Balk at Hard Conditions.” To the left of the cartoon making light of the looming introduction of Prohibition, we read of a Bolshevik defeat, corruption in state government Albany, and a strike on the docks of New York. Just below the illustration of a drunken Noah watching his bottles of booze toddle towards the Ark, comes an announcement of University Organist James T. Quarles’s pre-Easter potpourri program that ranges from Chopin’s Marche funèbre to the Good Friday Spell from Wagner’s Parsifal on which the recitalist is joined by his wife Gertrude, a contralto. Gone are the days when an organ concert, even in Easter Week, makes it onto the front page of any newspaper.

On page three another cartoon calls for funds to bring the troops back from Europe by depicting the Doughboys forced to swim home across the Atlantic. Almost comically moored alongside the cartoon is another watery column about changes to the order of the rowers in the Cornell varsity eight. On page five we read that the number of “English” deaths has surpassed births, nearly 100,000 having fallen victim to the flu. Just below this report comes news that the Cornell Mandolin Club has given up plans to re-form because its long-time director is still France. These and other collisions bring home the mortal truth that Spanish Flu was spread and worsened by war.

From University Historian Morris Bishop’s classic History of Cornell published in 1962 one learns that that in October 1918 the university began quartering soldiers on campus. With them came the flu. There were 900 cases at Cornell, some 1,300 in Ithaca. Thirty-seven students died, and about the same number in the town. In 2020 by contrast, the first Covid death in Tompkins County, home to Cornell, was reported a month ago. In the autumn of 1918 many doctors were overseas, so local resident and students were called on to help the stricken.

In World War I, Cornell’s fraternities were converted to dormitories for soldiers, with as many as seventy-five cots in each house. There were no campus clubs, no publications, no athletics. Tompkins County had voted to go dry already in October of 1918, more than a year before the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. The cessation of student activities and the popularity of the movies, as Bishop wryly noted, “operated to keep the students away from beer’s redolence.”

During Covid there has been more than a little beer pong played. Today there’s a cluster of new cases at Cornell caused by party-hopping students.  Rather than facing quarantine in fine style in the Statler as has been the case in the present crisis, one could have been sent off to the trenches instead, not for contracting the disease but for being alive.

Intros For the Ages

Eight of the best song intros ever, to take you into the weekend. 

via GIPHY

While I will most certainly never know, I imagine there to be nothing as cool in this world as playing a show in front of thousands of screaming fans. Like Freddy said in the movie School of Rock, one great Rock show can change the world.

But while hundreds of artists have played sold out shows around the world, very few have come up with tunes that are so recognizable, and so damn awesome, that they will push the crowd into a frenzy with just a few notes. Inspired by this week’s reading on The Who, this is my very unscientific list of the songs with the best first 10 seconds. For the sake of clarity, the best songs ranked by what you hear before the first lyric. You know these tunes, I know these tunes, and thats the point. When you hear one or two notes, you scream. I scream, you scream, we all… ok you get it. Here we go.

Baba O’Reilly – The Who

The Who provided the inspiration for this list, so only fitting they take the first spot. The keyboard solo at the beginning is as widely recognizable as they come, perhaps only matched by the emphatic guitar that breaks in. The Who rock, and their biggest hit proves why.

Thunderstruck – AC/DC

Most of AC/DC’s jams could have made this list, but Thunderstruck is my personal favourite face melter. After finishing high school I attended a prep school in New England for a year. Easily my proudest legacy was getting to the locker room before any of my teammates for hockey and lacrosse games, and blasting Thunderstruck as loud as the speaker would go. There was a cafe and student hang out space above the locker room, that I was told would start shaking slightly when I would start my routine. Eventually people learned what it meant, and that hearing the song simply meant that the weird Canadian was at the rink. If my tombstone reads “Here lies Jon Donville. The Thunderstruck Guy” then I think I will have lived a good life.

Neon – John Mayer

Neon isn’t a rock anthem. I wanted to include it not only to show I have taste (not to brag) other than famous rock songs, but also because my father is a die hard fan(boy) of Mayer. I am quite sure he will never read this, but life is too short to worry about probabilities.  I actually thought of this very video when I was making the list, because Mayer goes on for over a minute strumming some freestyle riffs, but when he switches to Neon, the crowd picks up on it immediately. That is when you know your tune is iconic, when the audience recognizes immediately that they are about to start crying. Its John freakin Mayer.

Mama, Just Killed a Man – Queen

If I could go back to any moment in history, it might be Live Aid. With Queen, U2, The Beatles and more, it would be great value for my imaginary time travel money. Freddy Mercury defies categorization, which is to say he fits squarely in his own category: The Freddy Mercury category (population: 1). Like AC/DC, Queen has a number of contenders for this list. But if you can excite 72,000 folks with a few taps on the ivory, you belong in the music hall of fame on my list of great songs on Ezra’s Ear.

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd

The guitar riff to start this song absolutely shreds. I really don’t know what more I can say. Also I was today years old when I learned that the proper spelling of the bands name was in fact Lynyrd Skynyrd. Here at Ezra’s Ear, we are humble enough to admit our previous spelling shortcomings. We are all learning today!

Jump – Van Halen

The synth keyboard in this song starts it off with a bang. A psychedelic, awesome bang. Eddie Van Halen passed away recently, and the world is worse because of it. RIP to a legend.

Enter Sandman – Metallica

Two of the craziest videos on Youtube, Metallica takes no prisoners. Old School, bad-ass, rock and roll music. Still alive decades later. Enter Sandman belongs on this list.

Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen

This week especially, it seems only proper to end this list with the Boss. There is perhaps no more quintessential American icon, Springsteen is as widely loved as it comes. Born in the USA is probably his best tune, and it starts hotter than most. Drums, keyboards, and patriotism. An awesome combination.

There you have it folks, my list of the best song intros ever. Have a healthy, happy, and stress free (just kidding I know that wont happen) weekend. In the words of AC/DC – For those about to rock, we salute you!”

A Socially-Distanced Octet

Chamber music during COVID: a logistical challenge with spontaneous rewards

6 feet apart please

It began with an email. “Well, the weather is glorious–see you at the tent at 5:30!.” What was supposed to be a normal Friday rehearsal in Lincoln Hall transformed into a concert thrown together last-minute by our octet coach. 8 musicians were not what innocent passersby of the arts quad were planning to see.

The tent? At our first rehearsal three weeks ago, I was sure that one of the following two scenarios would define the fate of our chamber music group: 1. We get through this first meeting and the school shuts down all in-person gatherings the following week, or 2. We don’t get shut down, but we continue rehearsing aimlessly without the traditional semester-end chamber concert to look forward to. So, when news arrived (granted at the latest possible moment) of this rehearsal-concert hybrid, I was euphoric. The weather gods had gifted us 82 ֯F weather that Friday to play a socially-distant outdoor concert.

Much like the case of the pandemic, however, chaos ensued. Nothing about this concert was extravagant in any way. In fact, it was as far as it could be from refined.

I had imagined walking into the tent with my fellow musicians, sitting down, and playing seamlessly through the first movement. But instead, we found ourselves scrambling to secure our sheet music on the wobbling stands with masking tape amidst the aggressive flapping of the canopy tent in the unanticipated wind.

Insert intermission here. Those first twenty brutal minutes of logistical triaging called for a necessary contingency plan.

Like any musical group, we wanted to execute our piece to perfection. So as per our coach’s request, we ran through parts of the development and recapitulation to recalibrate. That process didn’t work too well though. With our socially-distant seating arrangement and lack of walls, we might as well have been playing in individual soundproof rooms. Then came the point of the dreaded synchronous, or so they were supposed to be, sixteenth notes. I do not exaggerate when I say that this segment has always been the ultimate test of our octet’s musical chemistry, so when a passionate gust of wind knocked over one cellist’s stand and jeopardized the already precarious tape holding all the music together, I was bracing for a crash landing. Sure, a couple violins and violas dropped out of the race here and there, but that one persevering communal brain cell we shared that somehow allowed us to reconvene at that last chord was an accomplishment, to say the least.

I do not doubt the fact that Mendelssohn was most likely rolling in his grave hearing the harmonic discord of our performance. But given the fact that Mendelssohn was only 16 when he composed this universally celebrated work, I’d like to believe that he would have appreciated the youthful mayhem of our concert. The piece features extremes in fortes and pianos and the umpteen use of hairpins throughout, mimicking the bipolar weather throwing us, quite literally, around. Mendelssohn meant for the octet to be full of “youthful verve, brilliance, and perfection,” as music critic Conrad Wilson describes. We blundered on the last requirement but definitely exceeded all expectations on the first.

This glorious mess of a concert was not destined to be ordinary, and I wouldn’t have liked it any other way. When would I ever get the chance again to play the Mendelssohn Octet in E-Flat with this same group of musicians in the middle of a pandemic wearing masks seated six feet apart (more or less) under a tent in the Cornell arts quad with dogs playing fetch and four different games of spike ball happening simultaneously?

Warblings

With one ear privy to the melodies playing through the wires from my phone and the other observing my peers’ interactions, I entered a sort of dual consciousness. I pranced around campus, but only Spotify could judge my choice in song. I was listening to Miley Cyrus’s cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.” Did the Arts Quad’s pedestrians know that I was attending to their conversations, too? Their worried election-filled dialogue played ping-pong with lyrics that were silent to the world. I was a part of both worlds, yet an observer to each. “Seemed like the real thing, only to find, Mucho mistrust…” “… in Trump’s campaign. He sucks because…” “Love is so confusing, there’s no peace of mind…” “…that we won’t know who wins for another week, at least!”

__________

As I walked to Sage Chapel to get my weekly COVID test I heard the sound of the renowned chimes, from the high reaches of McGraw Tower resonating across Ho Plaza. A sound so powerful that it can be heard by the daily-goers of College Town Bagels when they are sat outside underneath the shade of an expansive umbrella. I have grown accustomed to the sound that seems to be a staple on Cornell Campus, but there was something different this time. It wasn’t only the timbre that rang with familiarity but also the melodies. I was sure I had heard this famous tune before, and suddenly it dawned on me, they were performing a rendition of “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. Only the Cornell Chimes would be capable of performing a classical piece one day and a hit pop song the next day.

___________

I sat at the top of the slope wondering why I had shown up on time to meet my friend who is known for her habitual lateness. As I waited and watched the sun start to set over the distant hills while various Cornellians ate their dinner on the grass, a faint tune wafted into my ears. Turning my head, I found two students playing violin under a tree on the Arts Quad. The soft, fairy-like melodies meshed together into a harmony that drifted through the air on this shockingly warm, autumn evening. I could see the students on the slope begin to perk up out of curiosity at this sound that contrasted with the usual tunes of the clocktower. The violins dispersed a calm energy despite the anxiety of the week, and I forgot about my responsibilities (and my late friend) as the sun set lower and lower.

Stories Told Through Strings

The multimedia performance shines when the music is left to speak alone.

 

Violinist Ariana Kim. Photo: Erica Lyn

How Many Breaths? – In Memory of George Floyd and Countless Others came together when four Minneapolis artists processing their grief in unique ways realized they shared a similar vision. Writers Lou and Sarah Bellamy connected with composer Steve Heitzeg and Cornell professor and violinist Ariana Kim to create a hybrid work of spoken word, video, and solo violin. With each artist examining the feelings of their community, and the stories of black lives lost, the piece became a coherent whole, but struggled to get away from its inception as several different ideas. At times the violin and spoken word fought for the listeners attention rather than working off of each other, but when the music got opportunities to star, Kim revealed a world of emotion, channeling months of anguish into 15 minutes of instrumental mastery.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the most visible reactions were visceral, angry, and often violent. The earliest song I heard come out as a direct response to the killing took a week to be released. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who were on the streets across the country within days, it’s easy to see how protest art almost always follows physical protests themselves. How Many Breaths? attempts to blend the emotions of the moment with the weight of a lifetime spent being black. The narrators told the story of Floyd, along with those of mothers, widows, and black boys growing up in a country that has told them that they are disposable. The most powerful moments though, were when only the violin spoke. The video would return from protest footage to Kim, and she would deftly perform a solo that dug to the core of the emotions of the story being told and laid bare what it found. Tempo, technique, and volume would vary, as the violin cried for Floyd, but it left enough space for the listener to fill with their own emotions. The solos connected more closely with the audience than any other part of the performance, even through the muffled audio.

Because the performance had to take place virtually, all the visuals and audio went through Zoom, which significantly reduces the quality of both. This didn’t have a significant effect on the visual or spoken word aspects of the piece, but it hindered the violin performance, especially when it played with the spoken word piece. Notes were lost and distorted, which became distracting and eventually led me to miss entire lines that were read. The speakers and instrument began battling, not only to be heard, but to be felt. Whenever the violin would win the former, it would dominate the latter. The solos came through clearly, and established themselves as the most interesting parts of the performance. The playing was raw, but filled with confusion, anger, and beauty, a respite from the stories of hopelessness.

Although there has been a leap in the amount of black art being made in recent years, a disproportionate amount of it has been about black pain. Suffering will obviously be central to most of the art related to Floyd’s death, but in the case of How Many Breaths?, that was all that was offered by the spoken portion. Black families and communities figuring out how to grapple with pain in their communities is a story that has been told repeatedly, especially in the past few months, but the narrators just told other people’s experiences. The violin freed my emotions, putting my stories and experience at the forefront. Painful creaks and whines made up the sonic backdrop for most of the performance, the tension of the strings breaking though to communicate pain more clearly than the words were able to. Pizzicato added dynamism and texture, and the changes in volume signaled the moments that were meant to be the heaviest. While most of the time I was hearing someone else’s stories told to me, when the violin would solo I became a part of the community, experiencing anger and grief in my own way. Nobody was telling me how I should feel, and I could react honestly. The result was a moment of catharsis, before the reality of the current state of America crept back in. At a time like this though, we should be grateful for those moments, wherever we can get them.