My Favorite Noises

When I was formulating the initial concepts and rationales for starting the Notekillers in our first go-round I had just come off of two years studying jazz dissonance under Dennis Sandole, a year of playing guitar twice a week with Cecil Taylor, and then a year plus of exploring patch bays, alternative analog controllers, and tape splicing as a guest of Princeton University. I had also made my first forays into microtonality. The conclusion I came to after all these excursions into the sophisticated end of the avant-ville pool was that no matter how far, wide and deep my dabblings took me, I would remain a rock & roll musician. Any value my musicianship held, and everything I would do in my musical life, no matter how seemingly far afield, would come from that place. I began seeing how rock & roll intrinsically included every extended technique and advanced sonic development that these other forms encapsulated. Soon after, I started mulling over how to create a purely rock-based set of song structures which could innately and seamlessly include any revelations gleaned from my recent pursuits. But the goal was clear: the end result would have to be a music that was more raw for its use of unusual harmonies, and rocked harder because of the weird time signatures. I hated progressive rock and any middlebrow attempts to teach rock some new highfalutin (but not really) vocabulary words. This mixtape represents a bunch of artists I used to make my case to myself and anyone else who listened. 

The tracks here span the late 50’s to the early 70’s - all rock oriented music from a time before noise became a strategy with a name. Before it was a part of every thinking player’s palette, let alone a category in record stores, blogsites and festivals. Sounds were mangled with minimal resources by players compelled to express their rudest kinetic impulses any way they could. The earliest stuff here is often the most outlandish – it was a true wild west of ideas where nobody was sure what wasn't allowed and insanity slipped through the resultant cracks. 

As you’ll hear I've loosed the noises from their moorings leaving as little context as possible to best appreciate their essence. Sort of like one of those Internet porn sites that isolate the good parts away from their annoying plotlines – call it noise porn. In many cases the outpouring originally occurred during the outro of the song as if special permissions kicked in once the responsibilities of verses and choruses had been met and jettisoned like a spent booster rocket. It was easy to imagine the unfaded song continuing in another dimension on a journey that eclipsed the original elements, effectively demoting them to the function of the "head" in a jazz tune. Intros, on the other hand, were often treated as a spineless primordial ooze that evolved eventually into a more civilized species of song. Then there were the inevitable out of control bridge solos during the body of the song itself by players demanding some and, of course, songs that were beginning-to-end just completely nuts. 

In order to stay true to my mandate, I stayed away from self-consciously arty songs. In my developing view an almost accidental novelty was preferable. “What was that? “Not sure”. “Can you do it again?” “Maybe.” trumped all. Most of the songs included here were by mainstream artists – many made it into the top 40 and some were bona fide hits, or at least became standards on progressive (later “classic”) rock stations. No high-concept eccentric fusioneer style-grafters ala Frank Zappa or even Captain Beefheart would be allowed into this rock noise manifesto. No Sun Ra covers. No slumming avant ringers (I’m talking to you, Joseph Byrd and Tom Constanten) and no one-off psych experiments (no Revolution #9, please). I was not looking to show how rock & roll could be improved with the help of exotic outside influences. I wanted to strip away surfaces and reveal what was already there.

Just to be clear, I’m defining noise here as a sound has nothing to do with functional notions of melody, harmony or rhythm and is used as an effect – a more or less singular moment, not a formal stylistic innovation. Oft times, as humans have, no doubt, been doing since antiquity, its injection was for onomatopoeic reasons – to imitate the sounds of animals or other natural phenomena, or in the case of instrumentalists, the human voice. I’ll probably kick myself for forgetting a few, and I’m sure there are some great ones I am/was completely unaware of. But these are the ones that came immediately to mind – they’re my noises, the ones that shook me loose from my moorings and they vibrate inside me to this day. 



Tracks (start times in parentheses)

1) “Great Balls of Fire”/Jerry Lee Lewis (0:00) - Jerry Lee played with his feet and set his piano on fire years before the avant-garde. This, the earliest song on the list, reached the highest on the charts: #1 U.S. Billboard Country, & UK Singles charts and #2 U.S. Billboard Singles chart.

2) ”Mumblin’ Guitar”/Bo Diddley (0:17) - What exactly did the recording engineer think Bo was DOING? This one blows my mind like nothing else on the list. It's all there - every friggin' technique of the last 40 years.

3) “She Said”/Hasil Adkins (2:11) - Everything about this is noise.

4) ”Run Chicken Run”/Link Wray (5:03) - A classic barnyard imitation. Which is a healthy sub-genre unto itself.

5) ”Here ‘Tis”/Yardbirds (5:15) – And what was your favorite British Invasion band doing in March, 1964? The only live track here, chosen for those of you who think Clapton was always a wuss. 

6) “I’m a Man”/Yardbirds (5:52) - The rudest half minute in a top 40 (#17 US Billboard chart) song ever.

7) ”Mystic Eyes”/Them (6:17) - The spookiest half minute in a top 40 (#33) song ever.

8) ”Out in the Street”/The Who (6:46) – Pete rocks the pick-up switch, rinses, repeats.

9) “19th Nervous Breakdown”/Rolling Stones (6:55) - great bubbling bass.

10) “If 6 Was 9”/Jimi Hendrix Experience (7:17) - Ironically, the free-est noise thing Hendrix ever did was on a soprano recorder. Just learned that on Wikipedia after a lifetime of wondering what it was. A classic example of how, in some ways, when a master plays an unfamiliar instrument, it gives the clearest indication possible how his/her mind works.

11) “Inna Gadda Da Vida”/Iron Butterfly (8:36) – What to say about this? The quintessential example – one of the best little noise solos ever by one of the least “significant” bands on this list. It didn’t take genius..

12) ”The Fool”/Quicksilver Messenger Service (9:00) - The greatest wah-wah implementation ever. Cipollina was a sawtooth Garcia.

13) ”Straight Arrow”/Spirit (9:15) - Your typical anarchic ending to a fluffy pop-country confection.

14) “Children of the Future”/Steve Miller Band (9:36) - if he would have stayed here he would have been a hero to hundreds. Must've been a tough choice.

15) “21st Century Schizoid Man”/King Crimson (10:21) - Almost too self-conscious, but still wild. I mean, it was definitely a decision, but I buy it.

16) “I Heard Her Call My Name”/Velvet Underground (10:48) - Almost definitely too avant-aware. I sweated this one more than any other, but how could I not include the greatest guitar solo ever?

17) ”Whole Lotta Love”/Led Zeppelin (13:07) - Guessing it's the #1 most heard noise segment of all-time and deserves inclusion for that reason alone.

18) ”All Shook Up”/Jeff Beck Group (14:26) – Ahh, well, the guy who made me want to play noises on guitar. But not just playing favorites - he's here twice (see track 6) on merit.

19) ”August”/Love (14:37) - An amazing version of Arthur Lee's band that could've changed music had they stayed on this path.

20) ”Drive Back”/Neil Young and Crazy Horse (15:31) - Neil chasing the voodoo down. Still don't know where those sounds are on the neck.

21) ”Monterrey”/Tim Buckley (15:42) - Again, almost an art experiment, but Tim's singing with way too much desperate abandon to be flagged. Saw most of the people on this list perform live, but this band might’ve been the best of them all.

22) ”It’s a Gas”/Alfred E. Neuman (16:21) – The epitome of rude noise, bar none (well, maybe one..). Probably the first noise I ever heard in a song.
Contact info

David First is a guitarist/composer living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. His projects include the bands Notekillers and Matter Waves, the monthly drone & acupuncture performance SWATi, and the Western Enisphere Drone Ensemble.


http://www.davidfirst.com/
http://notekillers.com/
first.david@gmail.com

Psychic Mule Records

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