ON REPEAT: Ruth Mascelli, Mamman Sani, Anadol, Charlie Megira, Twinkle, Gabor Szabo, Shuggie Otis, Low
"Woof"
Well, I’m getting tired of unprecedented catastrophes. I hope you’re okay. I’m okay. I’m in a “city” part of the city which hasn’t been too severely impacted by the fires. Hopefully, things will remain that way. A lot of people have reached out and the concern is greatly appreciated. One silver lining is this screenshot from the news:
It’s Steve Guttenberg, who was just interviewed as a “citizen” who was helping people evacuate. Even though there’s an imminent disaster, the ticker crawl has a headline about one of my least favorite people, Hulk Hogan, getting booed by LA this past Monday, which feels approximately six months ago.
A lot of people are not okay, however. Everybody’s at least a little traumatized. Some people have lost so much.
My friend Katie McVay posted these links and frankly, she’s smarter than me:
GoFundMe has put together a list of fire victims who need your help
The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank is looking for volunteers and donations
The Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network has put together a spreadsheet of mutual aid groups in LA looking for donations or volunteers
NEVER DONATE TO Salvation Army or American Red Cross.
Here are some songs I’ve been listening to past few days, with little context and some stuff I copied and pasted because I’m exhausted and have a headache.
Twinkle “End of the World”
I put on my doomsday mix when I linked up with some friends as the fires suddenly got a little too close for comfort and they took me and my cat Nancy to a hotel in Anaheim with them. A very funny place to be when you’re evacuating from a natural disaster is Disneyland. This is an appropriately funny song to play in such a circumstance.
Bluey played on loop in the lobby. There was a serious conversation about heading to “Goofy’s Kitchen” (the nearest restaurant). Everybody looked psyched coming to and from the park. My friend once told me she spent 9/11 at Disneyland and now I kinda sorta understand.
Back when Eng-a-lind swang, there was a girl named Twiggy, and another named Lulu, so being known by a one-and-only cutie-pie name was real gear. Looking sweet 16, Twinkle was such a part of the silly pop scene that she dated Peter Noone (the adorable leader of Herman's Hermits) for a while. Still, it effectively captures the pink blues of girls who drew hearts on the covers of their notebooks, and dotted their i's with a little circle.
Gabor Szabo “Theme from Valley of the Dolls”
I’ve never actually seen the movie and probably never will because I prefer associating this song as the thing I’ve played while crying in the car in the past.
Szabó was born in Budapest and began playing guitar at the age of 14, inspired by jazz music on the Voice of America broadcasts. He escaped Hungary and moved to the United States in 1956, a year of attempted revolt against Soviet-dominated Communist rule, and attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
His playing incorporated elements of folk music from his native Hungary and rock music's use of feedback.
Charlie Megira “Tomorrow’s Gone”
Charlie Megira is a modern mystery. A casual search turns up little aside from a few cryptic articles. His was a music both familiar and entirely alien at once. It touches on corners of darkness, an isolation both lonely and sweet, all wrapped in a cold glow that draws the listener into each note, each melancholy melody triggering unrecorded experiences. His various projects put out music which began as a junction point between Link Wray’s surf guitar and the theatrical psychobilly of The Cramps, took a turn towards goth-inflected post-punk, and towards the end of his career would sojourn back into his earlier musical fascination with late 1950s and early 1960s rock ‘n’ roll.
I listened to this a lot during the 2020 wildfires were very far away but I could still smell the smoke. I’ll always associate it with the feeling when things looked like this:
Mamman Sani “Five Hundred Miles”
If you can believe it, it’s a cover of this old folk song most famously covered by Bobby Bare.
As a young man, Mammane became a functionary for UNESCO, during which he traveled to Japan and Europe. During one of the UNESCO meetings, a delegate from Rwanda had brought along his Italian “Orlo” organ. Mammane was captivated by the sound and convinced him to sell it. He began to compose songs on the organ. Many of these songs were interpretations of Niger folkloric classics.
Mammane is hardly esoteric or forgotten in Niger. His music today is known by everyone – it forms much of the repertoire of televised intermissions, radio segue-ways, and background music.
Ruth Mascelli “Missing Men”
This is Ruth from Special Interest, though it sounds nothing like Special Interest.
Shuggie Otis “Pling!”
Made famous (to me) as the bed music for Therese’s WFMU show.
Guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis may not be a household name, but his "Strawberry Letter 23" is in the record collections of millions of households. His LP Inspiration Information was issued in October 1974, with Otis playing all of the instruments on jazzy and Latin-tinged R&B numbers.
Anadol “78 Yılının En Uzun Dakikası”
[spoken aloud, with confidence, to no one in particular] MY FAVORITE SONG BY ANADOL IS “78 YILLY-NIN EN USS-UN DAKY-KASY”
Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. This project represents her liberation from a rather academic approach to electronic composition which she pursued during her music technology studies in Istanbul. She calls her education the "darkness of serious music" where she first tried to belong, then to break free with the help of lo-fi synth pop. Her Anadol project walks in the footsteps of lone synth experimentalists like Bruce Haack and The Space Lady with their childlike curiosity for electronic sounds, pushing the boundaries of minimal equipment.
Low “Caroline”
Low was a slowcore band formed in Duluth, Minnesota, United States in 1993, by Alan Sparhawk & Mimi Parker. In an interview Alan Sparhawk says of descriptions of their music: "What's the cheesiest? Slow-core. I hate that word. The most appropriate is anything that uses the word minimal in it, but I don't think anybody's made one up for that,"
Mimi Parker passed away from cancer on November 5, 2022. Sparhawk noted: "I'm learning not to be surprised by anything. There is a weird process going on and I have to allow myself the possibility that I have no idea what I'm going to be by the end of this." In June 2023, Sparhawk confirmed via Twitter that Low had ended with Parker's passing. "Low is and was Mimi," he wrote. "It was amazing. I'm grateful."