Riffs Experimental writing on popular music Issue 1 Volume 2: October 2017 ISSN 2513-8537 I shot this photograph on a roof in Marylebone. Jesse Hector is one of the great lost figures from the music scene, his band The Hammersmith Gorillas steered glam into punk. You know that ‘first punk festival’ they had in France, with the Damned etc? Jesse headlined it. Yet at the moment when success was almost guaranteed Jesse withdrew from the limelight, escaping to the safety of his cleaning job, the only constant in his life. It’s such a shame, Jesse is still a raw talent, it was a huge privilege to hear him play and photo- graph the man. - Brian David Stevens Front cover image: Copyright of Brian David Stevens. Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music A song can be about anything About peace or war, or the sins of industry Or the discontents of fame, or of obscurity Or how we first met, on the warmest day And how I hadn’t planned to love someone until you came Or how we survived on happiness and sleeping on the floor Or how you used to love me but you don’t even know me anymore - Dan Wilson, ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’ from Love Without Fear Issue 1 Vol. 2 October 2017 Riffs Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR), Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University 5 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD, UK Contents Guest Editor Editorial 6 - 7 Simon Barber, Birmingham City University Simon Barber (Birmingham City University) Managing Editors Dropping Pebbles 8 - 13 Craig Hamilton Brian David Stevens Sarah Raine Mimesis (1, 2 & 3) 14 -20 Editors Tom Pierard (The Eastern Institute of Technology, New Zealand, Mmus) Emily Bettison Asya Draganova About About: A songwriter’s perspective 21 - 27 Stephanie Fremaux Tom Wilson (Royal Holloway College) Matt Grimes Bethany Kane Unbroken Chains: The fascination of psychedelia with bicycles and the long 28 - 33 Dave Kane strange trips that ensued Ed McKeon Camila Asia (London South Bank University) Richard Stenton Sebastian Svegaard SONG-PEACE-WAR-SINS-INDUSTRY-DISCONTENT-FAME-OBSCURITY 34 - 38 Iain Taylor Daniel Fardon (University of Birmingham) Riffs is published twice a year. El Tren Fantasma: A familiar journey into unknown narratives 39 - 43 Fiamma Mozzetta (Goldsmiths, University of London) A Call for Papers will be circulated before each issue. All written, audio, and visual contributions should be submitted in accordance with the editorial guidelines (provided at the end of this issue). Bone Machine (1992): What the hell is Tom Waits singing about? 44 - 51 Adriano Tedde (Griffiths University) Send all contributions to [email protected] How can you sing a song if you have no voice? Disabled musicians, activism, 52 - 59 Advertising: For further details, please contact [email protected] technology, and the authenticity of creativity Leon Clowes (University of Huddersfield) Copyright Contributors hold the copyright to their submitted piece. They may distribute their work in the journal Aotearoa: Picturing the lyrics of the land 60 - 66 format as they see fit. Contributors also have the right to republish content without permission from the Katie Rochow (Wellington University) journal. Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music (online & print) ISSN 2513-8537 Printed and bound by Digital Print Services (DPS), Birmingham City University Issue 1 Vol. 2 October 2017 Editorial Some song lyrics seem to spill out of my subconscious mind, with little effort beyond my desperately writ- Simon Barber ing down the ideas as fast as they come. This was one of those. I think I had a finished demo within an hour Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University of thinking of the first line at the piano. That title is a brave statement and maybe even a brave song title. For awhile, at least during the first verse, the lyrics proceed as though the title were true. These lyrics name Songs are funny things. Well, actually, humour is just one of the many tools a songwriter might use to con- possible things that a song might be about, strung together in a long list connected by the word ‘or.’ vey meaning in a song. As vessels for musical and lyrical ideas, songs can provide listeners with everything from hedonistic escape to life-changing honesty. Songs might report to our ears, but they make their im- Just to be clear, though, these things listed in the verses are not what the song is about. They’re just exam- pact felt in our hearts and minds, claiming a central position in popular culture in the process. Sometimes ples of what other songs might even the most seemingly innocuous tune might contain a devastating line about heartbreak, a crushing be about. This song, if it’s about critique of modern politics, a perfectly rendered observation on celebrity, or just a few laughs. anything, seems to be about how other songs can be about It was in this spirit that the words of songwriter Dan Wilson provided a fertile prompt for this issue of Riffs. anything at all - how there are no If you’re not familiar with Dan, he is a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, producer and visual artist who limits to what other songs might was the frontman and principal songwriter for Semisonic, the Minneapolis band behind hits such as ‘Se- be about. cret Smile’ and ‘Closing Time’. He went on to become an in-demand co-writer, having worldwide success with songs like ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ (Dixie Chicks) and ‘Someone Like You’ (Adele). The diverse group But by the time the pre-chorus of artists he has written with and produced includes Adele, Dixie Chicks, John Legend, My Morning Jacket, arrives, you might start to feel Carole King, P!nk and Taylor Swift. His fourth solo album, Re-Covered, featuring his interpretations of songs suspicious. For one thing, the list he wrote for and with other artists, was released in August 2017. of things a song can be about starts to include a lot of things On his previous solo album, Dan staked the following claim: about falling in love with some- one and feeling like you’re always A song can be about anything going to be with them. Your About peace or war, or the sins of industry suspicions might be complete- Or the discontents of fame, or of obscurity ly confirmed when the chorus Or how we first met, on the warmest day arrives. Because a song can also And how I hadn’t planned to love someone until you came be about ‘…how you used to love Or how we survived on happiness and sleeping on the floor me but you don’t even know me Or how you used to love me but you don’t even know me anymore anymore.’ - Dan Wilson, ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’ from Love Without Fear A friend of mine told me it was very clever of me to write a song about how songs can be about anything, and then to turn around and have that song really be about the one thing that almost all the other songs In marrying these words with a striking melody, Dan not only wrote an affecting song, he also provided us are about: losing in love.He might have been right, it might have been clever, except that I wrote the thing with a productive way to open up discussion about what songs are, what they are for, and what they can so quickly that I never even noticed its neat irony. In fact, I hadn’t noticed that until my friend pointed it be about. Reminded of the potential for songs to address a multiplicity of themes, scholars have responded out. So much for cleverness. herein through their own research. This issue of Riffs therefore contains a variety of experimental writing on popular music by Adriano Tedde, Fiamma Mozzetta, Camilla Aisa, and Leon Clowes; multimedia essays Occasionally, I accidentally sail into the dangerous waters of assessing my life and my contributions to mu- including performances of songs and interpretative musical scores by Tom Pierard, Tom Wilson, and Daniel sic. No one piece of music can ever be enough on its own to counterbalance mortality and time’s all-erasing Fardon; and photo essays by Brian Stevens and Katie Rochow. You’ll also find a variety of ‘bonus materi- passage. The consolation I keep coming back to in those moments is my effect on other artists. Did some als’ on the Riffs website (riffsjournal.org) such as a podcast featuring a conversation inspired by one of the young musician learn some cool chord voicings from my songs? Did my melodies eventually seep into some books under review in this issue. What better way to begin, then, than to turn to songwriter Dan Wilson for other songwriters’ melodies? Did some peculiarly Dan Wilson-ish lyrical turn of phrase become somebody’s his memories of writing ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’ and a description of the ‘shambolic and relatively go-to move? Did a record of mine lead to someone’s performance at a talent show? random’ process that led to this exchange of ideas. So this issue of Riffs is a particularly gratifying event for me - the idea of using my song as a jumping-off point for these various experiments and commentaries is a highly organized version of the shambolic and Words from Dan Wilson relatively random method of ‘sending songs out into the ether and seeing what comes back.’ ‘A Song Can Be About Anything’. I wrote this song during a very fertile songwriting period.