Juno-106 by Roland was the first
synthesizer I ever touched and played. I didn’t buy it but took up an offer from
my friend, who encouraged me to learn to play the instrument and generously
allowed me to borrow it indefinitely. I borrowed it for about one and a half
years until he finally asked me to return it back but it was quite instructive
and precious experience for me to have been able to have much time for operating this specific
analogue synthesizer.
This tune originally had its own theme
and preceding intro but the main purpose I meant on writing this tune was to create
enough time and space for sound-editing of the synthesizer to replace playing a
long ‘solo’.
This was also written for The Rotten
Brains, my band at that time, and the tune became one of our main repertoires
during the summer of 1990.
Introducing programmed synthesizer into
a live band to play together is not a novel idea. Apart from my personal demo
recordings, this tune was the first attempt for my band Culotte to play with
pre-recorded synthesizer part in a recording session in studio. There were some
advantages for taking programmed synthesizer into our music. It could expand
the range of music we play, and it could occasionally reduce the amount of
effort I had to put into for writing music and making basic demo recordings for
other members.
When I first wrote this tune, in early
1993, I also wrote lyrics to go with. At that time, I called this tune ‘Happy
One’s Out for Walking’ because the lyrics were about a happy man, who goes out
for walking in order ‘to seek for misfortune’ (Johnson, Jeri (ed.) (1998), Ulysses by James Joyce, Oxford
University Press - P. 575). Apart from this subtle quotation from Joyce’s
character Stephen Dedalus, the lyrics had little things to talk about. The tone
was dominantly pessimistic because the ‘Happy One’ weighs misfortune and
suffering over positive things like just being happy. Now, as a middle-aged
man, I can hardly sympathise with the ‘Happy One’ or with the author of the
lyrics… my young self.
For making this video, I rather focused
on emphasising its inorganic atmosphere embedded in urban life. You see many
people moving and walking in big cities, but if you see these movements are
utterly meaningless and irrelevant to your existence, then, you would be able
to share the pessimism and isolation the composer originally put into this
tune.
Basically, as far as the music concerns,
my conceptual work titled Music for a
Story-Telling is a collection of re-working of my past compositions written
in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn’t exist enough long to
perform it, or works for a students’ theatrical project that failed to feature my
works in full when the actual performance took place. For example, the piece
written for a string quartet featured here in the intro and the outro was
originally written for the latter project. Nonetheless, the main body of this
tune, performed by my band called Culotte, was newly written for this
conceptual work in 1993, reflecting the Grunge-era-Zeitgeist at that time.
Whilst the string quartet sections are
both assigned to the Narrator to explain the scene, the main body features
conversations between a couple of convicted criminals coincided to be tried in
the same court room. One of them is a local thug, who speaks the language of
the state he belongs, and the other is an ‘intruder’ from the outer space, who
speaks his native language somewhere far away from the planet where the story
takes place. Therefore, the conversations between these two figures do not
establish any sort of exchanging of meaning, understanding, opinions nor
information whatsoever.
Nevertheless, viewers of this video are
expected to learn certain things from these seemingly meaningless and absurd
conversations appear on the screen. One thing is that while Wella, the local
criminal, provides his knowledge on what is going to happen to them next, he
seems to reveal his ignorance on basic idea on what is death, by failing to
respond to his opponent’s gestures. On the other hand, Kelp, the intruder, also
reveals his distasteful bad nature through showing his obvious contempt not only
for authorities but also for a fellow criminal before him.
Of course, as the author of the story, I
can hardly refrain from pointing out such trivial things in order to establish
each character effectively and taking this opportunity, I have to confess that
it feels enjoyable to insert some politically partial opinions disguised as a
fictional character’s view.
This tune was originally written as a quiet
part for bridging Rock jam parts of a long composition I wrote in early 1991
and later converted to this form to be fit in to a conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling. As the title
clearly says, the work is about telling a story and this tune is given a
function of Intermezzo, in which, the story is to be told without featuring any
word. Therefore, it inevitably requires actors to perform pantomime on the
stage, but in this video version, I replaced possible explicit acts with
showing some classical art works. What the story holds for this tune is a
sexual intercourse takes place deep in a forest between a male antagonist and
an innocent village girl, awkwardly accompanied by another male character, who
can only break through both parties’ language barrier.
Intermezzo is set in the
half way through the whole story, in the middle of Part 2 out of 3, and it
provides an important twist to the flow of the story.
In terms of music, this tune has little to talk about. By the time I wrote, performed and recorded this instrumental tune, I have already got used to writing a tune with sophisticated chord progressions like this and it required me relatively little effort to work out a thing like this. It was also my musical homage to Super Session, an inspirational album by Al Kooper for my formative period as a musician, and its closing track Harvey’s Tune, written by Harvey Brooks. My intention was to write an instrumental tune suitable for exposing my guitar playing in the form of a four-piece-band and in that sense, I guess this recording went well, overall. In addition, in the original scheme at that time, this tune was supposed to be the closing track for a collection of my original recordings focused on exposing myself as a guitar player.
This tune was one of the earliest works I wrote and recorded in a flat I newly rented at that time. It was the first occasion for me to live somewhere out of my parents’ place. All I wanted was a place where I can secure my privacy and now, over a couple of decades later, I have no hesitation in calling it a hermitage. In making this video, for enhancing the theme of the tune, I tried to display how my ideal hermitage would look like and how my ideal life in it would seem to be; humble way of living represented by the candles, reading and studying represented by the Bible and indulgence on music represented by the guitar.
Things motivate me for writing music are
usually quite trivial, especially for works written when I was young. This
instrumental tune was originally titled The War, but I knew there was no
significance in this title. It was more about pragmatic reason that motivated
me writing this tune, which was to utilise the chord progression in the Major
Key that had been originally written for an abandoned conceptual work in the
previous year. The main body of the tune, in Minor Key, and the chord
progression for the guitar solo were new materials at the time of this demo
recording. The fake helicopter sound-effect in the intro and the outro was one
of products of my long time indulgence in sound editing on the analog
synthesizer. Ever since I first heard the Doors song The End in a movie theatre, mixed with the helicopter sound, in the
beginning of 1980’s, the core imagination for this tune began to grow within my
mind.
When I finished this demo recording, I
had no idea on what to call this tune. Though I definitely knew where the
inspiration came from: The Doors song featured in a film set in the Vietnam
War, personally I have known no war as my first-hand experience. Therefore, I
likened my musical struggles and efforts I put into for making this tune as a
light-hearted game to play.
