ALICE NOT JOHN Episode 8: A Fictional Radio Transmission Guest: Liz Durette
ALICE NOT JOHN
Episode 8: A Fictional Radio Transmission
Guest: Liz Durette
Host: Joeri Bruyninckx
A conversation I overheard in a record store:
Customer: “Do you have Coltrane?”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
Customer: “I mean Alice, not John.”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
ALICE NOT JOHN is the name of a fictional radio show. The idea is this: for every episode, I ask a musician the same 12 questions. The answers I receive are the “playlist” of my fictional radio show. The questions are these:
1) Which song always brings you back to your childhood?
Liz Durette: Two songs by The Drifters that created one imaginary city in my age 3–4 mind: ‘Up On the Roof’ and ‘Down By the Boardwalk.’ It’s 1989. Pee-Wee Herman lives in this city. So do Inspector Gadget, Carmen SanDiego, and every animal and vehicle from Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I basically still see the world this way.
2) Which is your favorite shower sing-along song?
‘Something Stupid’ by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. I don’t sing in the shower, but I do sing in my car. The song is so dry.
3) What was your favorite song as a teenager?
Ravel’s Violin and Cello Duet, 1st movement. My parents didn’t subscribe to MTV, so I was in my own world. Back then I played cello, not piano. That Ravel piece is challenging. I spent a long time working on it, and would play it with a violin friend. There are sections where the cello plays very high and the violin very low, so the notes overlap. I thought that sounded so cool.
The keyboard I play is a Roli Seaboard, which is a keyless, fretless rubber surface, and so people often ask me if it was difficult to adapt to playing it. No, it’s like cello, at least both instruments require similar hand gestures.
In this Ravel duet, the melodies drift from the bars, untethered. I am still always desiring that quality! Those lunatics Deleuze and Guattari filled a lot of pages of nonsense, but that line, “One ventures from home on the thread of a tune,” that’s accurate. That whole section is good.
4) What is your favorite air-guitar song?
Air-veena? S. Balachandar, ‘Raghupathy Raghava Rajaram.’ Blinding bright and speeding up. I think that recording was a concert bootleg. You can find it on YouTube.
5) Which song do you associate with your 20s?
One year I kept hearing ‘The Minotaur’ by Dick Hyman. Why do things happen this way, it’s a random song. It planted a seed, full portamento. I like the attitude.
6) From which song do you know the lyrics by heart?
‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow.’ I’m just killing time until that copyright expires.
7) Which song gives you consolation when you feel sad?
‘On The Road Again,’ Willie Nelson. I don’t get too sad. But I do get a bit drab. Then it’s time to book a tour and hit the road. When my mind wanders, I see roads. The rumors about Americans are true.
8) Tell me about a song you think people wouldn’t expect you to like.
They will be surprised if they think I listen to much music at all! I mostly listen to the news all day long.
9) Which song do you recommend to people if you think they don’t know it?
Nina Simone’s version of ‘My Sweet Lord’ on album ‘Emergency Ward.’ I’m surprised when people haven’t heard of it! Forgive me, I’m going to go long on this one, the subject requires it.
I have a pet peeve: interviews and documentaries on Ms Simone usually focus on her politics or her mental health. This isn’t unusual, people rarely ask musicians about the procedures of music itself. Music journalism often makes a presumption that the mechanics of music are difficult for non-musicians to understand, and so the focus is put on context of biography and scene. I’m generalizing, but it’s common enough that I think you will know what I’m talking about.
Personally, I think this presumption is wrong. The average layperson has the basic intelligence to understand concepts outside their own field, and that intelligence can and should be respected by not dumbing anything down. So, with Ms Simone. Yes, her politics were extremely important. Yes, she fired a gun at her manager, and that’s totally insane. But, focusing on that ignores the most notable thing about her: she’s one of the highest musical operators who ever lived, that is more insane than anything else, so why not ask her about that. Imagine you are sitting in front of one of the most astounding musicians and arrangers of all time: why is the main question about pulling a gun on a dude? Come on now. Wouldn’t you want to ask her how she managed to transfigure every version of every song she covered into its best possible expression that’s lightyears better than the original version?
She did it with every arrangement, but take ‘Please Read Me’ as one example. The original was forgettable, an early Bee Gees B-side. If you only heard that version, you wouldn’t think much could be done with it. But she somehow identified the latent trajectory of possibility within the song, rearranged it to an entirely different endpoint, not apparent in the original. She found the seed, she did that with every arrangement she made. That’s a wild ability.
The recording of ‘My Sweet Lord’ is from a live performance in 1971 at Fort Dix, a military base, for an audience of soldiers. This is the height of public outrage for the Vietnam war. The men who are listening are about to go across the world and blow people up. By that year, about 60% of the men who were in that audience were not serving voluntarily, and the average conscript age was 19 to 20 years old. Some of this audience will be blown up. You hear “We want Nina, we want Nina.” We must imagine this situation. I’ve looked for first-hand accounts of this concert, but I couldn’t find any.
She comes out, and we all know this song, but it had just come out the year before. She takes it, arranges it for a fully rocking gospel band, gospel choir, lots of tambourine, lots of clapping, very persistent bass player, and she stretches this field of activity out to 18 minutes long. She leaves out Mr Harrison’s “hare krishna, krishna krishna.” And, unlike him, she isn’t just wishing to see the Lord, she is imploring: you must show yourself, don’t you know, these people must see you. Then beyond, she turns it into a medley, including a spoken word poem, ‘Today Is A Killer’ by David Nelson of The Last Poets, set to a beautiful melody.
Mr Harrison’s version is nice, but Ms Simone makes his appear flaccid. She includes the reality that he left out, the pain of the eternal question. If my God is a sweet Lord, why are the joys inseparable from the bitter horrors? Why is this world so often cruel? Mr Harrison left that unaddressed. That’s what makes her recording much truer to reality. She blasted right into it, and let the full contradiction be in the forefront, expressed without offering any resolution. That’s how it is, there is no answer. Her exacting ability to comprehend and express reality is something one purposely cultivates, it doesn’t just magically occur in the minds of some but not others. It’s work. That’s why I wish they had asked her, how did she do it?
No spoilers, but the last line, goddamn. Anyway, go listen, crank up the volume. They should play this music for children at school, so they understand the parameters of this life will be. “I never dreamed, I certainly never hoped, That one day, I’d be screaming. Bout something.. my MOTHER.. TOLD ME.. I NEEDED.. IN THE BEGINNING.” Jesus, christ, tell the kids about that.
10) ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton is a break-up song (about a couple who decide not to tell their friends they just broke up because they don’t want to spoil a party they’re planning to go to). Strangely enough, this song often gets played as the opening song at weddings. Tell me about a song you misunderstood when you first heard it.
‘I Never Thought I’d Get This Lonely,’ Harry Nilsson. When I listen in my car, I mistake the click-y percussion for sounds coming from my engine. This has happened multiple times, I have even pulled over, slightly panicked. Just Harry, no problem.
11) Which song always makes you do silly dance moves?
‘Shelly Ann’ by Red Rat. I love Red Rat, what a maniac. The way he says “Oh nooo” is a lot more than a funny catchphrase.
12) Which song do you quote most often? Which line?
Right now, Kris Kristofferson, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” has unfortunate utility today in the USA. You can make that line mean whatever you want, making it a handy quote that equally applies to a whole spectrum between true liberation and deeply disturbing distortions. These days apparently anyone can make our constitution mean whatever they want, too, so. Goddamn. There is no consensus of what freedom means here in the USA. We’re losing our minds. Sorry to end on a sour note, it’s how it is today.
Joeri Bruyninckx
