Deep Purple organist Jon Lord died yesterday. He was one of the greatest rock organists, but, like many rock organists, his instrument was often overshadowed by the guitar. And not because his keys weren't loud - they were - but because, chances are, many listeners never knew that the infamous "Smoke on the Water" riff is played not by two guitars, but by a doubled guitar and organ.
The classically-trained Jon Lord, prior to joining Deep Purple, was as a session player in a London studio. He made his first appearance in the classic rock canon when he contributed the pounding piano to the Kinks' "You Really Got Me." He also had an impressive solo career as a classical composer (one that is taken more seriously than, say, Paul McCartney's). But the world's ears will always know him best for the sound of his Hammond organ played through a Marshall guitar amp on "Smoke on the Water."
But he was also capable of making a rough, fuzz-toned organ sound funky, as on "Hush," Deep Purple's first hit single...
...his formidable composing and arranging skills showed on the bands more low-key tracks...
...and he could even give a smooth, jazzy organ part a hint of danger and majesty, as on Deep Purple's cover of Donovan's "Lalena."
Rock organ-playing is, more-or-less, a lost art. Electronic organs, which are powered by transistors or by rotating wheels tuned to notes, are heavy, require a lot of maintenance, and don't last long if you take them on tour (one of Jon Lord's organs broke down on the road and he couldn't fix it soon enough so he had to buy another one from Christine McVie). They were wild animals, and it makes a lot of sense that they've been replaced by today's digital keyboards, which are essentially computers that activate recordings of instruments in response to how hard you hit them.
You could argue that they sound the same, but I don't think it's a coincidence that you hear a lot less organ in rock music these days. The pristine new organs just don't inspire rocking like the old ones did.
The organs of today are the smartphones of music, but the organs of the '70s were something else. They were temperamental beasts, and Jon Lord was one of their last great tamers.
Moonrise Kingdom's soundtrack is nothing like previous Wes Anderson soundtracks. In fact, compared to the quirky jukeboxes that his previous soundtracks were, it sounds surprisingly ordinary. But that's a good thing.
Around the time that Wes Anderson's breakout movie Rushmore came out, you could illegally download music, but hard drives were smaller and the iPod hadn't been invented yet. The radio was the primary way to get introduced to music without buying it. In 1998, my 14-year-old self was probably alone in my room listening to Classic Rock 102.3, WXCR, trying to imagine a world free of Backstreet Boys or Starr Reports. I was reaching up to turn the dial on the stereo that was on a high shelf above my homework desk, anticipating an overplayed but still-cool song but hoping to hear a lost one-hit wonder or an obscure album track that I hadn't heard before.
When Rushmore came out, I liked it for one reason above all others: the whole soundtrack was obscure album tracks and lost one-hit wonders that I hadn't heard before. The original soundtrack's AllMusic review calls it "the zany, hip radio station you've always longed for and will never get." That was exactly how I felt about it.
My world was set to a mix of good music, bad music, overplayed and underplayed music, but Rushmore's world was set to 100% good and underplayed music. For that reason, I wanted to be Jason Schwartzman's character, even if it meant I'd have a destructive crush on Olivia Williams.
I've been a fan of Wes Anderson's movies ever since. Even the disappointing ones have moments that are funny in retrospect. But what really keeps me watching them is the Wes Anderson Universe, where, for two hours, the songs that only you and one friend listen to are big enough to fill a movie theater.
All of Wes Anderson's soundtracks take place in that universe, except for his latest and most popular movie, Moonrise Kingdom. Its use of music is different in two big ways:
1) All of the songs are songs that characters are listening to (aka diegetic sound).
The movie begins with a group of children listening to an onscreen record of Benjamin Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," and this trend continues for the entire movie. There's incidental music (by Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat), but that's the only music that ever plays from offscreen. When we hear Hank Williams, it's because Bruce Willis' character hears him on the radio. And when we hear a vinyl "45 by Francoise Hardy- a "quirky" musician who's right at home in the Anderson Universe - it's because Kara Hayward's character is playing the record for Jared Gilman's character.
When we hear the song, it's not Wes sharing his record collection for the audience, it's a character sharing her record collection with another character.
2) There are considerably less songs on the soundtrack.
Ever since Bottle Rocket came out nearly 20 years ago, a major part of the Anderson Universe has been its radio-station feel. The universe doesn't just contain good songs- it contains a lot of them. When one song ends, you know another one will start soon. Scenes are like songs and the movie combines both the fun of a playlist and the fun of a movie.
In Moonrise Kingdom, there's no such thing. There are only four songs, and they come at odd intervals. The movie lacks that feeling of "I bet there's gonna be another song soon!" that you get in Anderson's previous movies.
***
In his previous movies, Wes Anderson packed his universe with snippets of great music. The music is a large part of why I have good memories of all of those movies, but the power of the soundtracks faded with repeated viewings. Good as The Royal Tenenbaums is (and it probably is still the best of his jukebox soundtracks), the moment that Van Morrison's "Everyone" kicks in at the end was much more powerful when I didn't expect to hear that distinctive harpsichord intro.
Before I watched Moonrise Kingdom, I'd been wondering if maybe the Wes Anderson Universe rested too heavily on the novelty of its music. But after seeing it, I realized that Wes actually doesn't need quirky soundtracks to keep his cinematic worlds afloat.Moonrise Kingdom is a universe where colors are soft and warm and lightning doesn't kill humans. But it's not a universe world where quirky, foreign, and obscure music accompanies montages and slow-motion walks. In the Moonrise Kingdom universe, Francoise Hardy is just music that one lonely American plays for another lonely American. And judging by the movie's popularity with both Wes Anderson fans and the general moviegoing public, people like it that way. To my surprise, I like it that way, too.
This blog began as a Middle Eastern travel blog. A Jewish philanthropic group sent me overseas on an adventure. But last week, it that overseas adventure came back to follow me. It came to me when I saw the Malian Tuareg (now Azawadian as a result of the recent Tuareg victory in the country's civil war) band Tinariwen.
But I'm not going to talk about the bloody conflict in Mali. Tinariwen's back story is actually so interesting that it threatens to overshadow the music, and I get the feeling that they'd rather reach us through music than give us a history lesson.
I saw them first at Warsaw, a great ballroom located in a Polish community center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Then someone at the Warsaw show invited me to a taping of a special for MTV Iggy a few days later. The venue for the special was pretty rough. There were people and cameras on cranes everywhere and it started late. But when they came on, it was worth it. That doesn't happen with most acts.
I was introduced to Tinariwen via an article that I only read out of anger. It was Spin's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All-time." The list got a lot of people's attention by naming Skrillex as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, which makes about as much sense as calling Steve Jobs one of the greatest DJs of all time. Why I bothered to check out the list I can't say, but it's probably the same reason that some liberals watch Fox News.
But, in any case, I'm glad I did check it out, because, right near Skrillex (Spin's 100th favorite guitarist) was a bit about former Tinariwen member Ibrahim Ag Alhabib (Spin's 94th favorite guitarist).
I read Spin's blurb and thought, "I love foreign rock." When I think of foreign rock, I think of the type who sound like quirky translations of Anglo-American rock.
The Dap-Kings were the first reference point I thought of, but Tinariwen don't even sound like them. Tinariwen aren't neo-classic rock. They don't play Western-sounding songs or even Western chords and scales, and their drummer uses only his hands.
They've probably listened to classic American and British rock, and every note from their guitar sounds mesmerizing in a way that recalls Hendrix, Gallagher, and Dave Davies of the Kinks. But the resemblance to classic rock-guitar music feels coincidental. What they share with Western guitar heroes is more ethereal sort of spirit, not a musicoogical heritage.
Tinariwen have released 4 studio albums, which are all good. But what the albums made me feel, on top of "This music sounds awesome," was "I have to see them live."
I did. And so should anyone who likes music, I think.
When we Westerners hear recordings of Western artists, our connection with them that comes from having a vague idea of what they might be like. And this vague idea doesn't just come from seeing pictures or videos of them- it comes from sharing a general cultural background.
When we see, for example, the Rolling Stones, we're amazed and surprised, but, in a way, we knew what to expect. The recording draws dots and the live show connects them.
Tinariwen didn't connect the dots, though. They drew new shapes entirely.
I grew up in Albany, NY, which has a large population of refugees and immigrants from around the world. I grew up surrounded by world music. In fact, I was forced, against my will, to not only listen to it but participate in it. Every year, there was a "Festival of Nations" where Greeks twirled to cassettes playing bouzouki music, Africans chanted and simulated traditional rituals, and I begrudgingly performed Israeli dances for the synagogue elders.
At the end of the festival would always be some more professional musicians and dancers, who, in retrospect, might have been annoyed that they were lumped in with American ten-year-olds. I was always a bit uncomfortable around them, and I think I know why: they were expected to represent their nationalities in a comforting, simplified package. I didn't like it, so I figured they didn't, either.
In retrospect, the full-grown Ethiopians playing drums got paid to do it, or at the very least weren't just doing it because their Hebrew teacher thought it would be a good advertisement for Sunday school.
Anyway, the thing about Tinariwen is that they seem to be free of all of that. They bear traditions, but they're unorthodox. They dress in exotic robes and sing in an exotic language, but when they dance and banter with the audience (usually in French- they don't speak much English), they're not asking you to admire them as an anthropological artifact. They're asking you to like them and follow them wherever they're going even if you have no idea what they're singing about.
They ask you to make a big leap of faith that they're up to something cool even if you have no way to process it, and that leap of faith pays off.
They take you on a journey to North Africa, but it's not a touristic journey to a land uncorrupted by modern civilization. It's a journey through the modern North Africa, where "third world" peoples use "first world" gadgets, but use them in ways we never thought of ourselves.
It's a reminder that the rest of the world isn't a world of lutes made of goat skin. The rest of the world has access to our fancy guitars, and they're playing them in ways we never thought of.
![[The Warsaw stage, image courtesy of Warsaw, who must have taken it down.]](http://www.warsawconcerts.com/sites/warsawconcerts.drupalgardens.com/files/styles/media_gallery_large/public/026.jpg "The Warsaw stage, photo from Warsaw's official site")
![[Tinariwen at Warsaw, courtesy of the L Magazine, who must have taken the photo down]](http://www.thelmagazine.com/imager/tinariwen/b/slideshow/2240007/1d89/eNorthside061512Tinariwen20.jpg "Tinariwen on stage at Warsaw, photo from the L Magazine")