So Embryonic It's All Right
“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”― Franz Kafka
Transmissions from the Satellite Heart at 30 Pt. 2
There is nothing like listening to music with someone else. Throwing on a record for a late night session with a friend, with some scotch…maybe pulling out all of the Sonic Youth LPs or digging into some John Coltrane/Albert Ayler/Ornette Coleman. You have never heard this Billie Holiday track? Should we follow it up with Geeshie Wiley’s The Last Kind Words? Or maybe switch gears and jam some Ramones? And of course…how about The Velvet Underground? Convening around the stereo system with the right people and the right music is a downright upright way of creating an atmosphere of camaraderie, discovery, salutations and reaffirmations.
For a music fan, it didn’t really get better than spending the day listening to music with other music fans who were all working together at the most art and artist friendly label, Mo Ostin’s Warner Bros. Records. I would often make the rounds in the Ski Lodge, hitting the offices of friends to hear what they were listening to: Geoffrey Weiss in product management, Bill Bentley in publicity, Jo Lenardi in the alternative marketing department. Come into my office, close the door so I can turn the volume way up: let’s listen to a new single has just come in from a band we both love…a new mix of a single…or maybe the band’s new record that might just be the most anticipated record of the year. Mind if I play this new recording I just got from the studio on your stereo so I can hear it on a different system? Do you think it might be a contender to for the lead single from the record? How great is this band?!?! Often these moments would occur in and around the A&R department. I would stroll into Rob Cavallo’s or Barry Squire’s or Kevin Laffey’s or Michael Ostin’s office with a cassette in my hands: I saw this band last night….what do you think of this song? Owen Sloan/Brian Rohan/name-another-music-attorney sent me this demo and was hoping you could listen to it with me. Is it really as good as the hype surrounding it?
My favorite person to listen to music with was my boss, Roberta Petersen. She was tough…hated most everything that was played in front of her, but had such a huge sense of humor and loved to colorfully and relentlessly dig into why she hated what she hated. When she liked something I brought her, it was like I had hit the Billboard charts with a heat-seeking bullet—she would first be deer-in-a-headlight stunned at what she had just gandered and then throw out a huge grin, maybe throw a fist with a “YES!” and give a detailed analysis of the aspects of greatness within the three-and-a-half minutes of the song.
But Roberta was out of town on that fateful day in February of 1993 when the package arrived from the Flaming Lips. The band was cloistered in Oklahoma City’s Studio 7, working with engineer Keith Cleversely on what would become Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. They had sent me a DAT tape featuring two new songs, whose titles were scrawled in Wayne Coyne’s unmistakable handwriting: Turn It On, and Vaseline (which would become known as She Don’t Use Jelly). There is nothing like the rush of getting new music from a band you are working with…especially if that band had been one of your favorites since being a teenager. With Roberta gone, I sped into my office, closed the door, threw the DAT in the player, turned the volume up and stared outside my basement office window onto the ivy-covered hill that reached up to the Warner Blvd. sidewalk. Turn it On introduced itself with gloriously driving, shimmering acoustic guitars as Wayne sung the introduction to the verse which ultimately exploded into a crunchy riff driven chorus:
Turn it on, turn it on and all the way up
Turn it on in your houses when you wake up
Turn it on when you ain't got no relation
To all those other stations, turn it on
Thirty seconds in and my mind was blown: mouth open, hands trying to keep the hair on my head from flying off while the rest of the song gained traction and magnificence…crazy guitar slinging and John Bonham drums everywhere, turning a corner to a full-on jam at the end. Within seconds of the fade out, the guitars bended right back into a swinging riff that was the beginning of song two, She Don’t Use Jelly (Vaseline)--a wave of fuzz that teasingly disintegrated into a quiet verse featuring Wayne Coyne’s playful Edward Lear-ish poetry
I know a girl who thinks of ghosts,
She'll make you breakfast, she'll make you toast.
But she don't use butter.
And she don't use cheese.
She don't use jelly, or any of these.
She uses Vaseline
That word Vaseline was the trigger to a come-back of the song’s beginning guitar riff…Wayne offering a tattooing sing-along featuring the repetition of that last word of the verse. The DAT ended. I sat in my office…stunned…for a moment not really knowing what to do. But the answer was clear—play it for someone else! I grabbed the tape from the deck and ran out of my office, down the hallway, up two flights of stairs, through an outside hallway back inside to Lenny Waronker’s office, the legendary President of Warner Bros Records. He had to hear this music. AND HE WAS IN…and HE WAS FREE.
Lenny was sitting behind his desk, in his customary button-down shirt over a classic tee, throwing me his kind but mysterious quizzical look asking me why I was seeming so excited…what was up. Catching my breath, I answered by going closer to his desk and handing him the DAT. He swiveled his chair away from me, threw the DAT in his system, and put his head into his hands, ready to concentrate on the music to come. There are times when you play music for a friend…or this time for one of the greatest record men of all time…and it sounds different…not as good as it did when you were grooving alone…and that is always a back-of-the-mind worry when turning someone on to music you are passionate about. But this time, Turn It On, coming out of his monstrous speakers and killer MacIntosh receiver, sounding even better than in my office, and there was no denying the greatness of the cut. He remained still throughout the time the music played, only raising up his head after the song’s fade, pressing STOP on the DAT player and looking at me with eyes wide open. “That sounds like a hit,” he said. I know, I said…I know…doesn’t it?…and you have to hear the next one too!
I ran out of Lenny’s office with a sea-storm gust in my sails, wanting to play the songs for all of my trusted colleagues. The listening sessions continued. Weiss, Lenardi, Bentley, Joe Jancek…if they didn’t have a DAT player we would run down to my office. By the end of the day, I had instigated a slew of mini-listening sessions featuring those two tracks and everyone involved agreed: The Flaming Lips were creating an incredible new record.
Roberta had heard from Lenny about “these two Flaming Lips songs” while she was on her trip. She announced her return to the office by grand rushing mine to find that DAT from Wayne that she needed to hear. The two of us went into her office, closed the door, and dug a trench around her desk for our listening session. When Roberta would listen to music, she would lean back in her chair with her eyes closed…closed hard enough to furl her forehead, a pained looking concentration. She listened to both tracks straight through, ever so slightly nodding her body to the music. And when the noise abruptly stopped at the end of She Don’t Use Jelly, a big smile crept back onto her face with an awed stare: “Wow. They really did it. Now, that is just perfect. Man, Wayne sounds terrific (and she probably made mention of his “weird teeth” that she so often did). Sport (that is what she called me), we need to get our asses out to Oklahoma to hear the rest of the record. Immediately.”
Within a week, we were in Oklahoma, meeting manager Scott Booker and being escorted to some burnt out part of the city where stood studio Studio 7. The Lips were almost done with the record…they had recently recorded the drums to Slow Nerve Action, which for anyone who knows has heard it...the final song on the record…features a drum sound that is as large as an active volcano, recorded under an open tent, each hit like the footsteps of a giant beast. The band took a break when we arrived joyfully greeting the visitors from beyond the universe of the studio, huddling around the sound board in the darkly lit, smokey control room, asking about our travels, about their recording. And finally, Wayne asked us the obvious question: did we want to hear the record?
David Hyman will tell you that when buying a record, you should always get a first pressing released in the country where the record was made. The best sound comes from the sound taken as close to the original tape the music was recorded onto. And he is absolutely right. But hearing the music through the board it was recorded on…that is a whole other experience. Listening to recordings done by a band in their studio as the record is coming together sounds like listening to the band performing it live right in front of you, with each instrument properly EQed and hanging in space right before your ears. Listening over and over to a song as the band and engineer whisper about slight changes as they slide busses and move nobs on the sound board. It is the ultimate listening session; it is the closest experience a non-musician like me can have to touching the source of it all.
The band played all of the songs that were finished enough to be heard—which was most of the songs that would make up the record, showcasing some truly inspired lyrics and melodies from Wayne and a crazy, colorful elevated sound introducing new band members, Ronald Jones and Steven Drozd. Goddamn could Jones play that guitar…and make it sing so outer-worldly like on the epic thick fuzz he slides into Slow Nerve Action, the Pink Floyd delayed riff on Oh My Pregnant Head, the mosquito voice of the Moth In The Incubator. And Drozd: it was that night that I was educated on his talent: he could play anything…write arrangements for anything…the added brilliance to help realize the acid visions.
And a few weeks later when the mixes of the whole record arrived at Warner Bros., and the listening sessions added up into the dozens. It was time to make a plan for the release of the record…get everyone at the label who would be working on it aboard.
What happened after the record came out is an Odyssey told for another day, but the headline would eventually read (a long eventually), after many stops and starts, a band that worked and toured constantly, and a push at the end from Lenny Waronker (who knew a hit when he heard one)…She Don’t Use Jelly became the biggest alternative music smash of the year, with a video on constant rotation on MTV (when it mattered) and the record itself selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart came out 30 years ago this past month. It is mind blowing to think it has been that long, especially as the record sounds as fresh now as it did then. I cannot believe I was lucky enough to be hanging around when they were creating such a fantastic work. When my kids were young, I introduced them to the record during one of our listening sessions (which often happen in the car)…they fell in love with Be My Head and learned how to play it together, on guitar and uke, singing the song as it went along, always anticipating and trying to replicate the monster voice near the end of the song.
Happy 30th to Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, and Happy Monday!
‘Franz’: new Kafka biopic from Agnieszka Holland to shoot in Prague later this year
Today Franz Kafka’s 140th birthday. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Kafka died having published very little and having got even less fanfare. He gave all of his unreleased works…including The Trial and The Castle…to a friend saying that he needed to destroy them. Instead he published them and Kafka’s fame grew becoming one of the most famous and taught authors of all time. My parents read The Metamorphosis on a camping trip when I was young…it was life changing for me.
See Inside a New Show Exploring the Afterlife Through the Lens of Tibetan Buddhist and Christian Art
Barb and I went to this exhibit when we were in NYC. The Ruben Museum is always a great experience, but this exhibit was probably one of the best I have seen there…or anywhere else for that matter. The drawings…the paintings….the horn made out of a human leg bone….for anyone into the macabre, there is so much there to take in. A must see for a big apple visit…
It’s Time to Nominate to the National Film Registry!
What is the National Film registry of the Library of Congress: “The National Film Registry selects 25 films each year showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation.” We all know that every Friday the 13th should be in it (joke). But The Haunting (above) definitely should….and its not. Help celebrate your favorite films.
The unloved grave of Jesse Belvin, L.A. R&B’s tragic what-if
Jesse Belvin’s death is the subject of a new book Earth Angels (which also looks into the early deaths of Johnny Ace and Guitar Slim). This LA Times article….printed a while back put what I just stumbled onto, is a great dive into Belvin’s demise. Well written by Gustavo Arellano.
Poem to Be Written by Magnet in Oil for an Exhibit at the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro
A poem for an exhibit that never happened does not go to waste.1
By: Jane Hirshfeld
Today, I think I’ll join an exiled Italian poet,
perhaps Ovid or Horace,
training a handful of grapevines on a steep-sided farm.
You don’t need a not-yet-invented machine to do that.
Words make time’s saddle.
The horse’s back rises and falls, going away.
Or I’ll join the vines. I’ll drink the sun straight,
as the vines do.
Vines, unlike poets, don’t talk much,
or struggle with what they’re turning the sunlight into.
They turn their leaves toward it and grapes just arrive.
A human heart, sent into exile from all its wanting,
might ripen like that,
into some small-clustered kindness or a rescuing joke.
The way a magnet becomes itself wherever there’s iron.
Plunged into water, set into oil, it still pulls.
A magnet doesn’t have to go into exile to be a magnet.
Put a magnet down anywhere on this earth,
that magnet is home.
About the poem from Jane Hirshfeld: As a general rule, my muse resists requests. Yet when Graham Plumb, a sculptor working at the intersection of art, science, and technology, emailed for permission to use an earlier poem in the project described in this one’s title, he added, “And if you’d like to write something new also, especially for this…” Months later, I found myself writing to that implausible invitation. The exhibit, meanwhile, seems to have fallen—as did so much and so many—to the pandemic. Plumb assures me the pieces will still at some point go on public display, and I couldn’t see stripping the poem of its title and raison d’être just because that, too, had stepped into the saddle of transience and gone away.
***3 of the photos in the Flaming Lips section were taken from the book Waking Up With A Placebo Headwound and were shot by J. Michelle Martin. Sorry for the lines through 2 of the pictures!!!!!