"Everything's new to someone" as popular wisdom has it, but back in '69 this music was new to just about everyone. Our someone hearing it for the first time today would find it generically familiar, and check the boxes (ambient, electronica, etceteraria) before moving right along.
Back then (yesterday, in any meaningful sense) we didn't have the boxes to check. Little Boxes were stereotypical, aspirational, suburban homes made of ticky-tacky for pod people. Today the boxes are mental compartments for pod people. Everything gets genred, everything is informed by, rinse and repeat.
In 1969, the box didn't exist for Terry Riley to tick. A Rainbow In Curved Air was music, and that's as far as we needed to go. Music of our time. Riley's previous album for the CBS Music Of Our Time imprint, In C, was a little too formally academic for most, although it has become a standard in the contemporary repertoire.
Rainbow was just a record like no other.
The cover, with its Telly Tubbies good vibes, is absolutely right for the music and the times. Terry riding the rainbow and rocking a hairline receding faster than the Summer Of Love, already an embarrassment for the children of the revolution. This was '69, kaftans burning symbolically in the streets. Two albums featuring "electronics" that better mirrored that depressing year were Pierre Henry/Spooky Tooth's unlistenable Ceremony, and Electric Storm, by White Noise, both dark, scary soundtracks that threw the bad vibes right back in our faces. An early cover for Rainbow toed the dystopian line, all skulls and snakes, but got correctly rejected. So here's Terry, smiling like a sunrise over the Elysian fields. And a damned good thing.
Top side, the title track, was the aural equivalent of well, what? It made me unaccountably, unreasonably happy, and proved a fantastic part of the LSD experience. Flipside Poppy Nogood was night for Rainbow's day, without the nightmares. By today's standards, the "electronics" are primitive, the production almost lo-fi bedroom quality, but the music ...
His sound and technique was quickly picked up in rock music; Colosseum, Soft Machine, the Monkees, and The Who using it as tonal colour. But nobody, including himself, ever again bottled the lightning. A Rainbow In Curved Air is eternally bubbling Champagne, never exhausted. The genuinely new never gets old.
Fascinating analysis here:
https://teropa.info/blog/2017/01/23/terry-rileys-in-c
Happy 90th birthday, Tezza!
In the larfably unlikely scenario where you actually don't have this wonderful thing in your life, ax! Nobody's going to think ill of you. Maybe a little sorry for you, in a kind of patronising way, but nothing you can't cope with, you unhip total loser!
ReplyDeletewell, i missed it. damn. Based on your bullying pressure, I guess I should give it a listen. What hoops do I need to jump through to get back into the cool gang?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.imagenetz.de/dAdCV
DeleteLink contains a bunch of his albums, including the essential (no, really) In C and Rainbow. The rest you can file under "of interest". I used to have everything the man recorded, but I never listened to most of it, like you do.
Here's how ungrateful I am: I read "a bunch of his albums" and instead of gratitude, I thought Farq has struck again, and I'm going to have to look at Riley's damn discography and sort files into folders, rather than listening to the first cut of every album, followed by the second cut of every album, etc. Yup, that's just how it is.
DeleteI mean, really, at these prices... Um, yeah.
Hey, thanks for the bounty, and the opportunity to learn a bunch more about the Artist than I had anticipated before logging on! Thank you! Very generous!!
D in California
Not sure I understand this "sorting into folders" thing? Upspeaking? All you have to do is de-compress the files, drag everything into iTunes (other mp3 players are available) and the files automatically separate into albums, all the tracks in order, correctly tagged with artwork. No sorting or additional folders required.
DeleteI'm pretty sure we've had this exact same conversation before. In the six years I've been shoveling stuff up onto the internet I've had this complaint from a number of people, and you're exactly half that number.
DeleteI *wish* I was still using iTunes more-than-occasionally, but the ideal state of that software was fifteen year ago for me. Nothing automatically separates for me, but so what? If I care, I do my own sorting and learn something; if I don't, either I don't download or don't complain. Well, I broke that self-imposed rule, and (again) "at these prices," it's a good one. I'll repeat my thanks and add that I now understand why this works well enough for you and yours.
DeleteD in California
I'm still using Mac Sierra, which is like a landline phone, and the oldest version of iTunes that functions, because in all my searching I've never found a better music player, in spite of all the bloat and feature creep I never needed and don't want. On my (Android) phone I use Musicolet, which is hands own the best music player for phones. I make maybe one or two calls a week, mostly using my phone for music and reading books and listening to old radio shows. And I have an entry-level Samsung tablet with a 1TB chip for music, and wifi internet, and no chip for phone use at all. No social media anywhere, no apps for texting or banking or whatever. So that's the tech device status on th' IoF©. It's manageable, just!
DeleteHa, so I'm not the only one using 'our of date, but working fine' tech., old Mac with High Sierra, works for me. My worry is if and when the Mac stops working will I manage with a newer version, doubtful. I'm hoping my ancient Nokia phone will be ok in the uk for a few more years.
DeleteHowdy Pardner.
ReplyDeleteRiley is the only "minimalist" that can write a middle eight I recon. La Monte Young probably can, but it'll take you a month to get to the change and then that change will last month and by then you'll have forgotten what the change was in the first place. If the fine readers of the isle are interested in a later work by Mr. Natural's brother by another mother, I recommend Atlantis Nath from 2002. It's about as LP focused as he gets versus one piece compiled with another piece.
As ever,
Billy Gates of the Doubble XX ranch.
Riley didn't used to be respected by the contemporary/experimental/avant garde fraternity. Too populist. Maybe that's changed, I'm out of every loop. But snobbism in this (very broad) field also relegated Stockhausen to "European art composer". My point? Damned if I have one.
DeleteJust to add another two cents to your two cents and get us a penny over a nickle - Moondog had that sort of thing going on like Riley, if you knew you knew, but outside of that - shunned by academia and embraced (if briefly) by them long hairs.
DeleteAs ever,
Billy Gates of the Doubble X ranch.
Some of John Coltranes's extended solos in his last few years paved one way to this trance inducing music, Indian Dhrupad, and Pakistani Sufi music were another path, Don't forget John Lee Hooker by Johnny Rivers, a long forgotten extended hypnotic pop song. Mid 60s neo-classical musicians from all over Europe started using pulse and minimal structures, and in the US of A it even became a style.
ReplyDeleteVexations by Eric Satie and Bolero by Ravel can be considered unintentional early masterpieces of minimalism.
Riley was very influenced by Indian music.
DeleteI don't have a copy of A Rainbow In Curved Air, but I'm pretty sure I heard it years ago. I think it may be time to listen again. Thanks
ReplyDeleteA couple of other one-track-per-side electronicy-new-agey-ambienty albums I enjoy are Fripp n' Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and Steve Hillage's "Rainbow Dome Musick".
Deletewalked but periodically I look back and saw this terry riley post. great stuff great music always been a fan of his. my hat's off to you not only do you entertain you can also educate those that follow you.
ReplyDeleteSalome Dances For Peace is my favorite riley work
woody
Hey woody - been a while!
DeleteI backed into this one through the Velvet Underground....John Cale and Terry Riley's "Church of Anthrax" LP led me to it.
ReplyDeletethe only two genres i recognize are good music and bad music. anything in-between takes too much time to sort through. also, good and bad is not subjective.
ReplyDeleteGood music in the morning can be bad music in the evening. Other genres are Nice music to woe, and rough music when it doesn't happen. Common music for others, and weird music for me, Badly played good music and perfectly played bad music.
Deletefine true thoughts and i wish for another lifetime to explore your fascinating other genres. and i don't mean this in a sexual way!
DeleteHave you ever considered boring music a genre. Played well, adequately written but ultimately boring.
Deleteno but there is so much of it that it certainly deserves to be official. jazz especially enshrines a storehouse of the pedestrian and the mundane.
DeleteAnd to think he could have been cock rocking as part of the Zeppelin... beggers belief !!!
ReplyDeleteHe also auditioned for the Monkees.
DeleteI'd never connected the cover with Teletubbies but you may be right about this LP being the seed for the show.
ReplyDeleteBought this on 26/06/82 in Liverpool. He's lasted well, and his rejection of the harrowing jarring soundscapes and vibes of the 20th century Western Art Music establishment has paid dividends in the long term. He's long been a grand old man of the raised-on-rock counter-establishment, like Peelie, Michael Eavis and Corbyn.
Can't remember Peel playing him on't wireless - seems unlikely given the length of his tunes. So he's a rarity. You had to buy the album to hear it. File under "never heard on the radio".
DeletePoweramp. For Android. Will tweek your aerials and blow your trumpet. Simple, elegant yet contains deep arcana for those who like to fiddle n flop.
DeleteWill literally expand your stereo.
Poweramp is swell, but Musicolet is *free* and does the same thing(s).
DeleteIt is alleged that John Peel played No Pussyfooting backwards on his radio show in 1973, no-one noticed because it was new and was played from a reel to reel tape machine.
DeleteThanks.Looking forward to listening.
ReplyDeleteI'm not generally one for the avant garde but 'Rainbow' is without doubt pretty damn listenable; so much so that I'm going to invest in the Sony Retrospective Box Set due out next month which offers "Rainbow", In "C" and a bunch of other stuff
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone, especially Terry Riley, made the claim that he's avant garde. The avant garde (a bunch of snobbish assholes, basically) wouldn't have anything to do with him. Thirty Minutes With The Avant Garde, in the last stages of fluff and fold, will contain everything - actually more - that anyone needs to know (and more importantly, forget) about that art-house aristocracy. Terry was never up for inclusion.
DeleteLet grandpa tell his ideas about the old avant-garde, when it was still revolutionairy.
DeleteBefore the Great War of 1914-1918 Young, Loud and Snotty composers like Schönberg ans Stravinski shocked the musical snobs of their age with radical innovations. These did not always work, and were soon abandoned. Some highlights remained, like Le Sacre du Printemps. After The Great War the twenties not only opened up for light entertainment, also Sturm & Drang, Cabaret Voltaire, Da-Da, Surrealism. In music Edgar Varese a.o. came to fame. World War Two shook the foundations again. After that a New Wave of avant garde emerged with electronic possibilities, a new found freedom of expression. Everywhere new music was coming and going. Lots, and I mean lots of electronic studios produced brilliant music, lots of ensembles played new compositions. And then first commercial radio, and after commercial television kicked in and everybody started mocking these experimentals. If you don't sell, if I don't know you, if you are not on mtv, how can you be any good. This ain't no Hank Williams song, a critique against rednecks became the mantra for the rednecks, just like Woody Guthrie's This Land became a right-wing anthem. The world upside down.
The Avant-Garde of the 20th century has brought us beautiful music, amidst lot of not interesting stuff. Just like jazz, just like cuntry, just like hip-hop, just like a.o.r., just like hard rock/heavy metal just like any genre.
Revolution No 9 is not avant-garde. Sgt Pepper was 100% up in front of anything (production/studio wise) and therefor one of the true great avant-garde pieces of music. Before that music was made to be performed live, after Sgt Pepper, music didn't have to be.
Thank you for your time.
Great comment, and thank you for YOUR time.
DeleteBut - there's nothing new on Pepper in terms of production. Nothing they hadn't done before on Revolver, even.
You're right Revolver has all the same techniques. For me Sgt Pepper is more explicit in showcasing them.
DeleteYou have this?
Deletehttps://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2019/03/hello-goodbye-paul-mccartney-interview.html
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/04/hello-goodbye-george-martin-interview.html