“This Record Was Made To Be Played Loud”

Trivia question: What was the first album in the history of rock to include the disclaimer, “This Record Was Made To Be Played Loud”? I cannot provide a definitive answer to that question, but in my (limited) experience, it was an album by Mountain, titled Climbing!, released in March 1970 (which includes the band’s biggest and perhaps best known hit, “Mississippi Queen”). Of course, loudness is not noisiness, but at the time that album was released, the terms were often used interchangeably, and the injunction to play the record loud was meant to suggest that if the listener would play the record at a high volume, it would sonically recreate, as closely as possible, the live concert experience.

Loudness has to do with volume level; noise typically refers to disagreeable sounds (which may be loud) rather than to music. Early on, “noise” (and “noisy”) was a pejorative term applied to rock, which meant that [fill in the blank] was not music at all. Hence the word “noise,” as Jacques Attali has pointed out (Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1985), is really a category of taste. I remember hearing the word “noise” quite a bit in 1964, the year the Beatles were introduced to America. For those Americans born before the war who grew up listening to jazz and swing, what the Beatles played was not music but noise, which, translated, meant that the music challenged what were presumed to be clearly defined notions of good and bad taste.

Hence, while there is such a thing as noise, noise-as-noise, in rock music, because it is a product of culture and technology, noise is never noise, but rather noise-as-code. Even so-called “feedback,” which might be considered as an accident or a form of error, can be considered noise-as-code: because of the theatrics of the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix and The Who, by the late 1960s rock concerts often concluded with guitarists leaving their instruments on the stage in order to generate self-sustaining feedback while the audience left. At the very least, this practice challenged conventional notions of taste. Yet because “change is inscribed in noise” according to Attali, it also, obviously, represented rebellion, but perhaps more importantly a new, perhaps “revolutionary,” order outside the hegemonic norm (the “mainstream”). Feedback, in other words, was not noise; it was ideology.

Noise-as-code pre-dated Elvis, but he was certainly aware of its existence. By the late 1960s, noise-as-code could be deployed both as an individual statement as well as a critique of cultural violence and chaos, and there is perhaps no better illustration of noise-as-code in the history of rock than Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in August 1969. That the performance was understood to be an ideological statement was revealed by the cultural debate that occurred almost immediately after the release of the film WOODSTOCK in March 1970 (coincidentally, at about the same time as Mountain’s Climbing!). As is typical of much public discourse, the issue quickly became polarized: was his rendition of the national anthem an anti-war statement, or a statement on the divisiveness that characterized America in 1969? Idealism or disillusionment? In retrospect, the moment was so significant that subsequent developments of noise-as-code, as exemplified by movements such as “industrial music,” “electro-industrial,” and “industrial rock,” can be understood as mere gloss on this historic moment.

Update: 31 March 2009 9:02 a.m. CDT: Ian W. Hill wrote in (see comments) and indicated that the first rock album to carry the disclaimer was Let It Bleed, by The Rolling Stones, released November 1969, which contained the injunction to “play it loud” on the inner sleeve (as well as a note to play side one first). Thank you very much, Ian, for writing in and supplying the information. I forgot that the Stones album contained the injunction; for some reason I remembered the Mountain album instead. Given that the albums were released just a few months apart, I suspect we now know not only the first album to contain the disclaimer, but the second as well.

The Twelfth of Never

“The Twelfth of Never” is a colloquial expression referring to a hypothetical event that will never happen in the course of one’s lifetime, and one that is unlikely to occur at all. It is also the name of a frequently covered pop song that was a hit in 1957 for Johnny Mathis. Since “The Twelfth of Never” is a love song, the title refers to the moment in time when the singer will ever stop loving his beloved—in other words, never.

I’ll love you...Until the twelfth of Never and that’s a long, long time

Since he’ll never stop loving her, he will love her “forever.” Randy Travis sings in the song that became a No. 1 hit, “Forever And Ever, Amen,” “If you wonder how long I’ll be faithful/I’ll be happy to tell you again/I’m gonna love you forever and ever, forever and ever, amen.” As the saying goes, love, like a diamond, lasts forever (amen), except for the skeptic Arthur Lee, who perversely titled Love’s third album Forever Changes (1967), in flat contradiction to the widespread sentiment that love lasts forever, even though he often sang very much like Johnny Mathis on that album.

Thus is my preamble to a blog entry in which I originally set out to discuss songs with numbers in them, prompted by hearing Tommy Tutone’s marvelous “867-5309/Jenny” on the car radio the other day. But I discovered that at least one site has already done something like what I set out to do, so there’s really no need, as the saying goes, to reinvent the wheel. However, lists of songs with numbers in them is one thing; what they mean is, well, a horse of a different color.

There is one particular song with numbers in the title that has always especially interested me—Jimi Hendrix’s “If Six Was Nine,” on Axis: Bold as Love (1967). In 1967, when Hendrix recorded the song, he was writing within a long tradition of pop and rock songs with numbers in them—and a time about ten years after Johnny Mathis recorded “The Twelfth of Never.” Just to get a feel for the subject, I’ve listed some pop songs (including country songs) with numbers in them, in order to reveal the affinity “If Six was Nine” has with songs such as “The Twelfth of Never.” I should add that I’m reasonably confident that all of the following songs appeared before the recording of "If Six was Nine," in October 1967. The list should not be considered exhaustive by any means.

Various numbers: The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, 98.6, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, 1941, 18 Yellow Roses, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
Highways: Route 66, Highway 61 Revisited, Highway 49
Cars: Rocket 88, 409
Girls: Sixteen Candles, You’re Sixteen, 96 Tears (note: 96=16x6)
Trains: Wreck of the Old 97
12: The Twelfth of Never
10: Ten Little Indians
9: Love Potion No. 9, Apartment No. 9, If Six was Nine
8: Eight Days a Week
7: 7 and 7 Is, 7 O’Clock News/Silent Night
6: Six O’Clock, Six O’Clock in the Morning, If Six was Nine
5: Take Five, Five O’Clock World
4: Positively 4th Street, 4th Time Around
3: Three O’Clock Rock, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
2: Two Faces Have I, Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms), Little Deuce Coupe
1: 1-2-3, Fool #1
0: Love Minus Zero/No Limit

Mickey Newbury’s “33rd of August,” written around the same time as “If Six was Nine” (but probably after, in 1968 or '69), contains the disorientation and dislocation of songs such as “Love Potion No. 9” and “7 & 7 Is” (“I'd sit inside a bottle and pretend that I was in a can”). In these songs, number is associated with external reality, a quotidian grounding in sequential, day-to-day life, the linear world of scientific, instrumental reason. But...that dreary day-to-day reality frequently doesn’t match the internal world of the desirous imagination (or confusion, for that matter), unfettered by quotidian time. Mathematics is a matter of reason, love is a matter of desire; numbers are invoked, but they require a disinterested intellect, in contrast to what is the absolute certainty of feeling. Think of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”:

Don’t know much about geography
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra
Don’t know what a slide rule is for

But I do know one and one is two,
And if this one could be with you
What a wonderful world this would be

Hence “The Twelfth of Never” points to a non-event, a moment in sequential, calendrical time that will never happen, a point in time that will never be reached. Just like the “33rd of August,” it refers to an impossible moment in time. In my view, "If Six was Nine” refers to this same impossible moment, a mathematical impossibility, the non-moment in Never when six shall be nine. For me, the song is a declaration of independence. I hear Thoreau in the song, and his statement, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

If the sun refused to shine
I don’t mind, I don’t mind
If the mountains fell in the sea
Let it be, it ain’t me

Got my own world to live through
And I ain’t gonna copy you

Now if six turned out to be nine
I don’t mind, I don't mind
If all the hippies cut off all their hair
I don’t care, I don’t care. Dig?

‘Cause I’ve got my own world to live through
And I ain't gonna copy you

White collar conservative(s) flashin’ down the street
Pointin’ their plastic finger at me
They’re hopin’ soon my kind will drop and die
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high. High!

Wave on, wave on

Fall mountains, just don’t fall on me
Go ahead on Mr. Businessman
You can't dress like me

[inaudible talk—see below]
Don’t nobody know what I’m talkin’ about
I’ve got my own life to live
I’m the one that’s got to die
When it’s time for me to die
So let me live my life the way I want to…
There.

Sing on brother, play on drummer

In other words, the day will never come when I'll be like you. So there.

I’ll admit my interpretation doesn’t explore the possible “occult” inferences one can find in the song, as Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek do in their book Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995). I suppose my interpretation is fairly banal when compared to theirs; for instance, the reference to "Mr. Businessman" invokes, for me, anyway, the '50s novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (filmed 1956), a code for the ultimate conformist, a person interested only in material acquisition. In contrast, Shapiro and Glebbeek aver that the line, “If the mountains fell in the sea,” refers to the “second world of Hopi creation mythology” (225) because Hendrix was interested in Hopi mythology (or at least read a book about it). They go on to write:

Jimi was interested in the esoteric significance of colours—the ‘vibratory’ power of colour that lies behind expressions such as ‘green with envy,’ ‘seeing red,’ and ‘feeling blue.’ As a lead-in to the last verse . . . Jimi introduces colour symbolism to reinforce the enigmatic nature of his lyrics (‘there ain’t nobody knows what I’m talkin’ about’). He speaks of ‘purple, red, yellow and green’ where (in ancient scripts) purple rays make the individual a self-ruler, red is the colour of the pioneering spirit, green is the ray of balance and harmony achieved through struggle and conflict, while yellow is the colour of creativity. The final occult inference in the song is located in the title itself: in the I Ching commentary, 6 is one of the numbers of Earth, 9 one of the numbers of Heaven.... (225-26).

I’ve never actually heard Hendrix say the four colors that Shapiro and Glebbeek refer (I can’t make out what he is saying, despite the many dozen times I've listened to the song on headphones; I do admit, however, that he is saying something), but I’ll take their word for it. Most certainly colors--in the sense of one's "true colors"--are invoked by his reference to "flag," which carries one's "standard" in a military sense, or identifying colors. "Freak flag," of course, suggests unusual colors, or perhaps even black, as in skin color. And if--as Shapiro and Glebbeek claim--in the I Ching, 6 is indeed one of the numbers of Earth and 9 one of the numbers of Heaven, then the idea of the two places ever possibly being the same names an impossible moment in time--just like "the twelfth of never."

Are You Experienced (Enough)?

Several news articles have appeared on the web this morning claiming that a roughly 11-minute video has been released for sale on the internet that shows the late Jimi Hendrix having sex with two women “in a dimly lit bedroom.”

Although the DVD version (and perhaps the version available for download, I don't know) apparently contains the testimony of two former Sixties groupies—one the well-known fellatrix Pamela Des Barres, the other Cynthia Albritton aka “Cynthia Plaster Caster” averring the authenticity of the footage—there is every reason to believe the video is a hoax, as “authentic” as the video purportedly containing footage of an alien autopsy. Whether Jimi Hendrix indulged in the ménage is not the issue here; I’ll leave that for others to fret over (assuming it makes any difference to anyone). However, the reasons for my suspicion that this video is a hoax are as follows:

1. Anecdotal Evidence:

A.) Vivid Entertainment Group (VEG) averred “in a press release” (i.e., a photocopied sheet of paper, not a sworn affidavit) that they consulted with many “experts.” Experts on what? The anatomy of Jimi Hendrix? (Are there such experts?) The period authenticity of the putative source materials, the alleged film footage—it was the pre-video time period, remember, when the footage was shot? The décor, meaning they can ascertain whether the location was Britain or America by means of furniture, wall fixtures, etc.? The aforementioned former groupies are among the so-called experts. VEG’s claim is that the former groupies, more so than anyone, ought to recognize the genitals of someone with whom they were intimate, even if that intimacy (of whatever sort) was forty years ago. After all, claims VEG, their chosen area of expertise was male genitalia.

B.) Vague, questionable provenance: Some news articles refer to a “tape,” although again if the event recorded actually took place forty years ago, it is highly unlikely that the footage was shot on video, but more likely film (one article I read did in fact refer to “8mm footage”). VEG purchased the “tape” from an individual named Howie Klein, who brought the “tape” to Vivid after he, Klein, acquired it from a collector “who found it.” How and where was it found? Where has the footage been stored for the past forty years, and how was it discovered? Who is the unidentified “rock and roll memorabilia collector” referred to in some news articles, and how did he (or she) acquire it? What was the method by which Mr. Klein authenticated the “tape”--or film--prior to purchasing it? Who is the cameraman who claims to have shot the footage? Why and under what particular circumstances was he hired (or designated) to do so? If the material object in question were a painting rather than very easily faked video footage, would its authenticity be unquestionably guaranteed by such a dubious provenance?

C.) The location of the ménage, “a dimly lit bedroom,” smacks of the “unidentified location” where, for instance, the alien autopsy took place. Moreover, the fact that the bedroom is "dimly lit" is suspicious, as it makes the identity of the individuals in the scene more difficult to determine. VEG claims the footage is forty years old, but unless the 8mm footage can be produced and can be subject to the same intense scrutiny as the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination, VEG's claim has the same truth value as an opinion of belief.

D.) VEG lawyers allegedly hired “private investigators” to track down the man who claims to have been the cinematographer of the event. Even if this is true, it doesn’t “authenticate” the footage. There have been individuals over the years swearing to have seen dead alien bodies after the supposed Roswell UFO crash. Neither lawyers nor private investigators have access to the private contents of a person’s mind; all they can do is verify the actual identity of the person making the claim, and verify that this person, so identified, swears (believes) he or she is telling the truth about the matter. An individual may swear he or she is telling the truth about seeing the body of a dead alien, but this does not prove whatsoever the existence of the alien body. As many studies of perceptual cognition have revealed, what one sees isn't simply a matter of sensory apparatus (the eyes), but what thinks one sees (think of the famous example of the "duck-rabbit"). Perceptual ambiguity is precisely the issue here: who is that person in the footage?

2. Counter-Evidence:

A.) Kathy Etchingham, Jimi Hendrix’s long-time girlfriend, after viewing several still photographs of the footage, has told several newspapers, “It is not him.” Doesn’t she qualify as an expert?

B.) Charles R. Cross, author of the excellent Hendrix biography Room Full of Mirrors, who saw the footage while he was researching his book and dismissed it at the time as fake, also disputes the identity of the man in the "tape," claiming among other things that Hendrix was too painfully shy to have agreed to perform sexual acts on camera. Like Kathy Etchingham, he also claims the person is not Hendrix. Doesn’t he qualify as an expert? The fact that Mr. Cross saw the footage while researching his biography means the existence of the footage has been known for, at the very least, four years (the hardcover edition of his biography was published in 2005), and perhaps longer, but no one took it seriously.

C.) At the time (ca. 1968), most enthusiasts purchased unexposed negative for 8mm cameras in the form of cartridges containing a film spool three minutes in length. While it is possible the alleged footage could have been shot using several such cartridges, the color film in each cartridge, unless the conditions were extremely well-controlled, often would often develop with minor differences in contrast levels and color saturation. I haven’t seen the footage of the menage, but if it consists of one uninterrupted eleven-minute sequence, it’s likely faked. However, someone trying to pull off a clever hoax, knowing how amateurs purchased 8mm film stock at the time, might well have used computer technology to imitate different color and contrast levels in roughly three-minute segments.

3. Legal Status of the Footage:

A spokesman for Experience Hendrix, the Seattle company owned by Hendrix’s relatives that controls the rights to his music, said, “We’re in no position to verify [the tape’s authenticity],” meaning his company doesn’t claim to have anyone on staff with the competency (expertise) to very the authenticity of the footage--in contrast, to, say, VEG--meaning the company isn't saying one way or the other. The company's denial of expertise thus enables VEG legally to distribute the footage because as far as VEG is concerned, the person being filmed doesn’t have to be really Hendrix anyway, but merely a person possessing “Hendrix’s likeness.” Surprisingly, it seems that the rights to Hendrix’s likeness remains an unsettled legal issue--the loophole necessary to have enabled VEG to distribute the video.

Thursday, January 21, 1960: Them Changes

This morning’s paper brought the sad news that George “Buddy” Miles, Jr. (pictured with Jimi Hendrix) died Tuesday night, February 27, of congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, at the age of 60. Miles, inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame in 2004, was born in Omaha, Nebraska (my neck of the woods) on September 5, 1947. His father, George Miles, Sr., was a jazz musician, and according to Miles’ obituary, by January 21, 1960--age 12--Buddy Miles, nicknamed “Buddy” after has idol, jazz drummer Buddy Rich, was playing drums in his father’s jazz combo, The Bebops. By the age of 15—if The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Rolling Stone Press/Summit Books, 1983) is correct—Miles had played drums for the session that had produced the Jaynetts’ 1963 hit, “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” (later covered by the British band, The Pentangle). Buddy Miles never finished high school, dropping out of Omaha North High in 1965 in order to become a professional musician; he was awarded an honorary degree by the school in 1998.

Hence by the time I was first made aware of Buddy Miles--although, ironically, until age 12 I never lived at any time more than 40 minutes from Omaha North High--on the Electric Flag’s 1968 album A Long Time Comin’ (loaned to me by a friend in either ’68 or ’69), he’d already years of experience behind him. He was not yet twenty years old when he joined the band. As is well known, The Electric Flag was formed by ex-Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield. He, along with bassist Harvey Brooks and keyboardist Barry Goldberg, recruited Buddy Miles for the band, at the time (early 1967) drumming for Wilson Pickett. What isn’t so well known is that two other members of The Electric Flag—sax players Stemzie Hunter and Herbie Rich (the latter also a member of the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame)—were also from Omaha. Moreover, when Bloomfield left the band in 1968, he was replaced by guitarist Hoshal Wright, who was from Omaha. (Herbie Rich and his brother Billy were later members of the Buddy Miles Express.) For some reason, A Long Time Comin’, and its follow-up, titled simply The Electric Flag (which had Miles’ large, round, slightly menacing face on the cover behind red, white and blue neon lettering), didn’t quite click for me, although somewhat serendipitously I only recently picked up A Long Time Comin’ on CD (Columbia CK 9597) along with Old Glory: The Best of Electric Flag (Legacy/Columbia CK 57629). Having not listened to the band’s music for many, many years, I discovered I liked it, and have come to appreciate it. I'm glad for that.

In 1968, after abandoning, reluctantly I think, any hope that The Electric Flag might be viable as a band, he formed the Buddy Miles Express out of the Flag’s tattered remnants, releasing Expressway to Your Skull (Mercury Records, 1968), an unusual mélange of rock, funk, and soul which included an imprimatur, in the form of liner notes on the album’s gatefold sleeve, by Jimi Hendrix. Subsequently, Hendrix would produce the next, more funk oriented BME album, Electric Church (Mercury, 1969).

Then, of course, came Band of Gypsys, the short-lived collaboration consisting of Jimi Hendrix, Miles, and Billy Cox, referred to on Miles’ MySpace page as “one of the first all-black rock bands,” but perhaps more accurately called the first all-black power trio. “Machine Gun” in my estimation is one of the great live improvisations in the history of rock, and I can’t immediately name a drummer other than Miles who could thunder one moment and play delicate jazz flourishes the next. But after the BOG's live appearance at Madison Square Garden on January 28th, 1970--the infamous performance in which Hendrix took the stage high on drugs and unable to play--Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffery, fired both Cox and Miles (and subsequently rushed former Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding to the United States to cobble together what amounted to Hendrix’s final tour). Despite the hesitations of certain critics such as Robert Christgau, Band of Gypsys is now considered a classic album, and has withstood the critical acid bath.

Miles next appeared on John McLaughlin’s Devotion (Douglas Records, 1970), recorded early in 1970 and comprising what is a dazzling admixture of guitar virtuosity and psychedelic fusion that also featured Larry Young on organ and Billy Rich on bass. (Somehow I missed this classic when it was released, not discovering it until around 1979, when I purchased a mint used copy at the local record store at the urging of one of the store’s employees.) Later that year Miles released the album Them Changes, his only significant hit and the song for which he is most remembered, and which premiered on the Band of Gypsys album. Them Changes included his tribute, “Paul B. Allen, Omaha, Nebraska,” dedicated to Paul B. Allen (born in Omaha), the former Platters’ vocalist (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”) and the person Miles largely credited for enabling his musical career.

In 1974 he tried to revive The Electric Flag along with original band members Mike Bloomfield, Barry Goldberg, and Nick Gravenites. The reconstituted group released one album on Atlantic, The Band Kept Playing, but the group dissolved by the end of that year.

And, afterwards, Miles’ career became more elusive. Twice in the next decade—in 1976 and again in 1985—he served time in prison. But things seemed to turn around for him in 1986, when he became the vocalist for the “California Raisins,” a series of commercials that made Miles’ vocal rendition of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" a popular hit. A “California Raisins” album followed, which was highly successful.

Although I don’t remember hearing about it, for a short period in the mid-1990s Miles drummed and sang for the Mighty Jailbreakers, a popular band in the Omaha area. I do remember reading in the paper about a later event, when Miles was to perform at the Omaha Riverfront Jazz & Blues Festival, corresponding to the moment he was formally inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame. The next year he was inducted into the Omaha Black Music Hall of Fame, which he said was one of great moments of his life.

Buddy Miles has been accused by some critics of over-estimating his own importance in the history of rock—largely by virtue of his backing Jimi Hendrix during the Band of Gypsys period—and by others of having an ego the size of Texas (hence, I suppose, it is only appropriate that he died there). But as Greil Marcus observed many years ago, any authentic rock and roll artist, in addition to raw talent, has to have “volcanic ambition” and also must have--equally as important--no real sense of his or her own limits. Certainly it can be said that Buddy Miles performed with some of the greatest names in rock history, and played on many of its most significant recordings. I’ll allow those who can properly access his technical virtuosity to do so, but as far as I’m concerned, when I listen to Buddy Miles, I hear someone playing only as one can when playing itself is all that matters, playing like one who doesn’t care a jot for so-called "limitations."