Q107 Radio Supersets Redux: Revising the Past

I blogged on winning a Superset contest at Q107 Radio in 1978 where I received the most disappointing prize of an LP record from a leftovers box in radio station hallway.

And so now, to right this wrong, I present additional Supersets from that era and the prizes they deserve:

Superset I/Greatest Super Short Songs: Paranoid (Black Sabbath) 2:48, Come On Get Happy (Partridge Family) 1:06, And The Gods Made Love (Jim Hendrix) 1:23, But I Might Die Tonight (Cat Stevens) 1:54 Prize: Six Pack of Molson Diamond Beer

Superset II/Greatest Bad Songs: Let the Lizard Loose (Goddo), Ridin’ High (Moxy), Strutter (Kiss), Joker (Babe Ruth) Prize: Pinkish Pimp Hat

Walter Matthau playing the drunk in Earthquake!

Superset III/Music to Think/Remember/Die By: The Heavenly Music Corporation (Fripp & Eno), The Heavenly Music Corporation Reversed (Fripp & Eno), The Heavenly Music Corporation Half Speed (Fripp & Eno) Prize: Enlightenment

Pyramid Mountain, British Columbia

Music for your Bacchanalia

A genuine bacchanalia needs the right music, music that evokes a sense of raw desire, truth in flesh, that kind of thing, not superficially bald renderings such as Madonna’s Like a Virgin or at your local electric zoo. Music for your BacchanaliaDance party music is often predictable, denying the subtlety of the bacchanalia, the potential for a slow build, heightening the tension, a move to the side, and then incrementally back toward inevitable release.

Some alternate bacchanalia soundtracks to consider:

4. Uah (Mouse on Mars)Music for your Bacchanalia

Stripped down, dream-like, this music moves between slumber and fever.

3. Supplication (Grateful Dead)

Music for your BacchanaliaJazz meets psychedelia, spiraling toward electric understanding..

2. Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix)

Music for your BacchanaliaTowering worlds climb and collide, fade into the distance, resurrected, flying again, impossibly so.

1. Heavenly Music at Half Speed (Fripp & Eno)

Music for your BacchanaliaThe feeling of a vibrating whole reduced to a devastating note washing over, continuing without end. Something like that.

An Ominous Sound for an Ominous Future

Fripp & Eno started it with The Heavenly Music Corporation, not ambient music but ominous and terrifying sonic explorations, lovely too. (Click preceding link to listen.)An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureI heard the sound again, years later, at a Grateful Dead show in Miami in 1988; it was like being inside a jet engine, all-encompassing, so very loud.

An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureAnd then, in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2006), a new version, low and distant, perhaps over-produced, arrived on screen. (Click preceding link to listen.)An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureIt arose again in the trailer for Chris Nolan’s Inception (2010), promising aural profundity; regrettably, the sound was brief and the movie was not.An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureThe sound became more realized in Gravity (2013), providing the soundscape for the impending doom of debris.An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureIt has now returned to the frontier of music, more than My Bloody Valentine’s sonic wall, in Sigur Ros’ latest work, Kveikur (2013).An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureLouder and deeper, back-filled by drums and wailing voices, the sound builds, just falling short of the next plateau. An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureAs this sound continues in its evolution, getting deeper and fuller, it might even be a synchronistic backdrop for our promised apocalypse.