What? Music? 21.1

What? Music? 21.1

https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-covers-deep https://youtu.be/4j7ug91FUzs?si=mKUfG6FVpPQa8DSr This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com [https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

What? Music? 20.1

This particular song ties so many things together. During the last century there were juke boxes in all the bars full of 45 RPM singles. The place where you interfaced with the Juke box might be all full of mirrors and you could see the little records mechanically take their place on the turntable. Kids in pizza joints used to get quarters from their mom and go pick the same song over and over. I used to day drink in this place where I occasionally worked as a door guy. Iowa City is kind of a famous writer town. One day I met this guy who, when I walked in the door was hanging his face over the juke box with a pitcher of beer in one hand, playing old country tunes and crying, and swaying. He eventually came and sat at the bar where I had posted up and told me who he was. He was a little older than me. He’d had a newspaper career and then published a book that had done pretty well. His literary agent had talked him into coming to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop to make connections with people who were going to be the famous novelists of tomorrow. He hated it. Years before that I had worked at this restaurant/bar that tolerated the staff staying locked in all night to drink and listen to records. We listened to this record called Maxinquaye by this British dude who went by Tricky. Built into some of the beats was what I assumed was the scratchy middle of records. When the music is over on an LP if you have a player that doesn’t return the stylus to the start it stays in the middle of the record and spins and spins the same little set of dust bunnies and scratches over and over until you get to it and lift the needle. There were these scratchy bits buried in the beats on that record that I assumed came from that spinning phenomenon. Anything takes on a groove you can rock to after a high number of repetitions. The skips are the time. There was a revelation in there about the distinction we probably all make between music and noise and how it was arbitrary- the distinction was arbitrary. I bought records of bands I liked and played them and drunkenly scratched the ones I liked to play the most, because drunkenly. But I loved some of the less interuptive scratches. They became part of the music. I imagine a couple both putting their drunken heads into the window of the jukebox and seeing each others faces reflected from odd angles, picking something sweet to listen to and swaying there. And the thing they pick to listen to is a 45 that is a little beat from living in a jukebox in a bar where people bump around it dancing or heading to the pisser. In a perfect world all the scratches on a 45 like that are the result of pristine timing guided by nothing but the music itself, like a landscape scalloped with the evidentiary trails of dancing human traverse. A 45 with Every Skip in Time Are there things you wish you’d left to do? Are there things you’d left undone? ‘Cus my life begins and ends with you and I have just begun a 45 with every skip in time. Well it’s ring around we used to do til the lights of closing time. And the juke box mirror shows me you and we play it one more time- a 45 with every skip in time. I had at the time of recording this just started playing with Ryan Bernemann. He was out of college and starting to get things going for himself and he had this recording gear, nothing too fancy, but he had it, and I was writing so I asked if we could do some recording at his place. We recorded this one and then his girlfriend [now wife] and one of her friends were recruited to put on a string part that he wrote. Laura Goddard and Laura something else. I no longer have any copies of this record. I purchased the recording off the Internet this morning. I bought and downloaded the whole album. It was cheap for me because the money I spent on it mostly just deposited back in my account. It will be more expensive for you, but if you are touched by this recording, and I mean.. how couldn’t you be… you should go to the Bandcamp link on this page and buy yourself access to the whole thing. https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/splendor-3 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com [https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

What? Music? 20

This particular song ties so many things together. During the last century there were juke boxes in all the bars full of 45 RPM singles. The place where you interfaced with the Juke box might be all full of mirrors and you could see the little records mechanically take their place on the turntable. Kids in pizza joints used to get quarters from their mom and go pick the same song over and over. I used to day drink in this place where I occasionally worked as a door guy. Iowa City is kind of a famous writer town. One day I met this guy who, when I walked in the door was hanging his face over the juke box with a pitcher of beer in one hand, playing old country tunes and crying, and swaying. He eventually came and sat at the bar where I had posted up and told me who he was. He was a little older than me. He’d had a newspaper career and then published a book that had done pretty well. His literary agent had talked him into coming to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop to make connections with people who were going to be the famous novelists of tomorrow. He hated it. Years before that I had worked at this restaurant/bar that tolerated the staff staying locked in all night to drink and listen to records. We listened to this record called Maxinquaye by this British dude who went by Tricky. Built into some of the beats was what I assumed was the scratchy middle of records. When the music is over on an LP if you have a player that doesn’t return the stylus to the start it stays in the middle of the record and spins and spins the same little set of dust bunnies and scratches over and over until you get to it and lift the needle. There were these scratchy bits buried in the beats on that record that I assumed came from that spinning phenomenon. Anything takes on a groove you can rock to after a high number of repetitions. The skips are the time. There was a revelation in there about the distinction we probably all make between music and noise and how it was arbitrary- the distinction was arbitrary. I bought records of bands I liked and played them and drunkenly scratched the ones I liked to play the most, because drunkenly. But I loved some of the less interuptive scratches. They became part of the music. I imagine a couple both putting their drunken heads into the window of the jukebox and seeing each others faces reflected from odd angles, picking something sweet to listen to and swaying there. And the thing they pick to listen to is a 45 that is a little beat from living in a jukebox in a bar where people bump around it dancing or heading to the pisser. In a perfect world all the scratches on a 45 like that are the result of pristine timing guided by nothing but the music itself, like a landscape scalloped with the evidentiary trails of dancing human traverse. A 45 with Every Skip in Time Are there things you wish you’d left to do? Are there things you’d left undone? ‘Cus my life begins and ends with you and I have just begun a 45 with every skip in time. Well it’s ring around we used to do til the lights of closing time. And the juke box mirror shows me you and we play it one more time- a 45 with every skip in time. I had at the time of recording this just started playing with Ryan Bernemann. He was out of college and starting to get things going for himself and he had this recording gear, nothing too fancy, but he had it, and I was writing so I asked if we could do some recording at his place. We recorded this one and then his girlfriend [now wife] and one of her friends were recruited to put on a string part that he wrote. Laura Goddard and Laura something else. I no longer have any copies of this record. I purchased the recording off the Internet this morning. I bought and downloaded the whole album. It was cheap for me because the money I spent on it mostly just deposited back in my account. It will be more expensive for you, but if you are touched by this recording, and I mean.. how couldn’t you be… you should go to the Bandcamp link on this page and buy yourself access to the whole thing. https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/splendor-3 The first one is always free kid. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com [https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

What? Music? 40

This one is from the cutting room floor. Ten years ago, I had started this project. It was big and musical and it was a group of friends and we traveled and played and it ran out of steam, and I chose not to continue to push, for many reasons. I had started working on what I was determined would be a record. It became Donkey Island. We recorded on and off for more than a year before letting it languish in digital silence for a decade. There are a bunch of songs that didn't make the cut for one reason or another-feelings at the time, changes in the metaphorical wind that might blind one to goodness. I wrote some advicey and explainy songs and some funny ones. If Andrew Brockman had got to choose what songs were on that record. This one would have been on. There were a number of things that, given the lense that is the passage of time, although I disagreed then, Andrew was right about. When someone is fussy it's the absolutely wrong time to tell them to calm down. You may have noticed this as well. A thing you can do is step back and process and then write a catchy little song about it, as a friendly reminder a body can carrying their mind's ear. I wrote this for one person to hear, but it is for everyone really. Here, take it Ain't often enough said, but it's not he less true. It's the worry that get's you, not what's worrying you. So pull your hair back. Get the sun on your skin cuz the day's about over. The night's about to begin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com [https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

What? Music? 39

I wrote this song when I was 25. For the record, I got carded for cigarettes until I was 29. I was by all accounts a kid when I was 25. I did not have financial goals or complex responsibilities. I had to make rent and I needed beer money. The rest of my head space was taken up with dreams. Kids dream differently from grown-ups. The way you imagine the world as a young person is similar to a dream. You don't know enough to understand the world with any depth and you deduce the rest. It seems fully fledged but it will be decades before you realize how half hatched it all is. And your limited understanding makes your dreams seem almost as real as real stuff. Young people maintain that sense of whimsy and pass it around. Some people seem stodgey from the onset. This song is the story of an accidentally successful messianic figure. I knew enough to know I wouldn't want to continue to be observed as an authority about anything in the spring of my adulthood. I recently put the album this song was first on onto Bandcamp and decided to learn it and make a recording with gear from the 21st century. Mudfence Turnaround has songs on it, recodings that are more than 30 years old. It has promise. I found myself liking it. It's funny to look back and find yourself astute. Thirty years gives a piece of art long enough to lose the relevance of being “contemporary” in a specific time. This one still works. well I waited and waited for the word to come. I got tired of waiting so I started to hum. I came to a thought.wrote me a line. gave it significance and called it a sign. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. now people come around just to hear me give 'em that line. I got fat I got settled. I get laid all the time. I know I believed it when i first wrote it down, but now I don't go over to that side of town. maybe it's me.I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. they built me a city and they built me a road, and they built me a wall around the truth I had told, and I got three squares and a chair and the details are out of my hair. they call me an institution and say that you gotta go there. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. now, I don't wanna tell 'em that I changed my mind or that this kind of thing happens to me all the time, but truth as a vehicle has called it a day. now show me to the hole in the wall and thanks anyway. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. Ultimately, I escaped. Here's a link to the Bandcamp: https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/mudfence-turnaround And a video link- https://youtu.be/pYflZR6WT8s?si=9z69T00JF_CxKfvU This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samknu.substack.com [https://samknu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]