Tag Archives: Ravi Shankar

Music to Write By: Looping Sounds

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I do my most satisfying writing when listening to looping sounds. Around and around, on repeat and again.

My love for repetitive music started when I was a kid. My favorite song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Chris Superstar wasn’t I Don’t Know How to Love Him or Superstar but Trial Before Pilate (including the 39 Lashes).

39 Lashes features counting, whip Foley and a guitar riff that goes around and around. That’s basically it. I felt weird about liking it so much. Did I enjoy hearing a man being whipped? No, it was the sound. It went around and around. I liked that.

I discovered more looping magic over the years in the music of John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar, The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Fripp and Eno, Eno and Byrne, Godspeed You Black Emperor, NIN, Stereolab and My Bloody Valentine.

My Bloody Valentine, Hammerstein Ballroom, 2009

Bandcamp now feeds my addiction, offering an endless ebb and flow of the sounds, such as Off the Sky, Alex Bober, Drape, Keith Berry, Green Kingdom. The list goes on.

There are times I find these sounds in the city, a distant jack hammer, air conditioner units, honks, whirring and yelling, but it never holds and dissipates into a mess.

There just has to be a sound – preferably electronic – that goes around. I will listen to that on repeat, the song of the repeated sound again and again. There is something pure in that. Something divine. Something definitely to write by. The problem can be coming up for air.

Top Ten Concerts

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Yes, I admit this is both anal and childish, but I like to remember the places where my thoughts worked best – even if I didn’t remember much of it at show’s end.

10. Ravi Shankar, Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto (1983) Beautiful hall, incredible music. Top Ten Concerts

9. Emmylou Harris, The Boot Saloon, Toronto (1992) A honky-tonk night.Top Ten Concerts8. Tragically Hip, Cleveland Flats, Cleveland (1995) Canada’s greats, straight & full-on.Top Ten Concerts7. Guided by Voices, Fillmore West, San Francisco (2002) The club is open.Top Ten Concerts 6. Jane’s Addiction, Key Arena, Seattle (1995) Farrell and Navarro in summer dresses. Top Ten Concerts 5. Low, The Aquarium, Fargo (2012) Three full sets.Top Ten Concerts 4. My Bloody Valentine, Roseland Ballroom, New York (2008) Ears are still ringing. Top Ten Concerts

3. Noel Hill & Tony MacMahon, Mother Red Cap’s, Dublin (1994) The pure drop in a tavern.

. .Top Ten Concerts

2. Sufjan Stevens, Bowery Ballroom, New York (2013) The end of the world – December 21, 2112 – with a few hundred others. Top Ten Concerts 1. Grateful Dead, Oklahoma City Zoo, Oklahoma (1985) Full moon, at a zoo.Top Ten Concerts (walstib)