Old Sonic G Spot

2000 Words On Why Songs Are Like Duck Eggs

A Sonic Hormone

I haven’t always liked songs, but I have always been strongly affected by music; both nourished or diseased by it. Sonic constructions have always either aroused or repulsed me at extremes. I’ve never been one for grey areas. And this is good and this is also bad.

During puberty, I had a developed a curious awareness of the affect music could have on me and I think I was around fourteen when I discovered I owned “a sonic g-spot.”

I frequently “used” music to alter my brain chemistry as only an addict would understand. Surfing on the aesthetics of raspy acid house with my limbs flailing like I had some advance motor-neurone disorder, I would flood my brain with electronically pure and concentrated endorphins, born mainly from acid house, administered at least on a weekly basis.

But I over-indulged on this new “bliss button” over and over, till eventually it broke and then I grudgingly hung around in restless silence until I could administer another hit (but only when I had done enough research on what other tunes would push the button. Don’t forget, this was the 1980s, way before the internet, when research was actually rewarding because it took true effort that weeded out the serious culture vultures from the modestly interested)…

Wave Culture

My public displays of sonic devotion were rare, as there were limited opportunities and outlets for my tastes in Cleveland. Raves were happening hundreds of miles away, so the tv news suggested. None of my friends understood or cared. To make matters worse, I was growing up as a very shy but secretly passionate teenager. And if I could have only gotten rid of my podgy belly…

As a result, sonic ingestions became very personal out of necessity. They were very, very private and as a result they felt like quite an unconsciously spiritual part of my artistic development. Generally they involved lots of beach ambling with the walkman drip-feeding me. A smell of saline on the sea air perhaps amplified this metaphor.

Usually, a two mile stretch of sea and sand between Redcar and Saltburn, with the unclipping of the dog on and off the leash became of pilgrimage-like significance as did the ritual of inserting 2 x AA batteries and the joy of a bespoke compilation cassette.

By the way, I always carried spare batteries. To run out of batteries in the throws of a favourite piece of music was a cruel lesson in death.

Five mile-rs

A kind of fitness developed. My dad would ask if I was taking the dog on “another five mile-r” and indeed the dog and I would get fit, and walks of five and ten miles were not uncommon when I had only intended to get as far as the lamp post. Something happened when I put the beats on, my feet began to co-operate only at 120 beats per minute. The belly slimmed a little… I felt very powerful.

And when I decided that I would actually try and get even fitter, I found myself suffering from sonic withdrawal symptoms because when I took up running* the music distorted when I pounded the pavement (this was before the days of an “anti-roll mechanism) and I couldn’t bear not being able to run and hear music at the same time.

But even now, even on a Buddhist retreat, in fact, especially on a Buddhist retreat I find it hard not to have a walkman on whilst going for a walk. But at the same time I realise that this is a bit sad. I really do. If I have a walkman on, I feel like I have cut part of my consciousness away. Withdrawal from music into silence is initially terrifying. But this is what I have become. It really is a kind of addiction. I preferred it to conversation, people, it was my own private thing.

Eargasm

The music I used in my teens (and beyond) enabled me to charter an as-the-crow-flies course to a more or less guaranteed “eargasm” to borrow current digital darling Andre3000’s metaphor. The faster it got me there and the longer it held me there, the better.

But I particularly liked remixes, because the remixer tried to extend the pleasure of an already effective track. Girl, we couldn’t get much higher. But we did! 808 State’s “Cobra Bora,” A Guy called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray” and, oh! Stakker Humanoid’s “Humanoid” plus the twelve inch ten minute remix of the Stone Roses “Fool’s Gold” (see, not everything was electronic!) were particularly pleasurable choice cuts. And they’ve generally stood the test of time.

But the price for this rhythmic indulgence was an inability to listen to anything that didn’t re-set my brain waves to 120 beats per minute. In listening to much music made by programming and sequencing, I had accidentally programmed myself to listen to a very small but specific pothole of music. And that’s OK sometimes, because even when the pothole is small, it can still be quite deep, but also I could disappear down it for months, years even.

Dido. No, I really mean Dildo this time.

This reminds me of an episode of Sex and the City where one of those loathsome women had overdone it with a dildo and had to be de-programmed out of using a machine that could reliably hit her g-spot. She had to become human again.

My remedy was usually very severe. When I’d overdone the endorphins, I would cruelly cut off the source and try and rebuild my life back together again. If I’d ever become a Herion addict, no doubt the kind of detox I would have found myself involved in would have been the absolute removal of the source. The cruel but faster option.

But I would try and find a silver lining. I would search for the antidote, which was often choral minimalism, Gregorian chants and the like and requiems. Plus I had flirted with the cello and sang in a choir a few times.

But over the next twenty years I would oscillate between hardcore but minimal electronics and when they stopped working at plus ten, try and find the minus ten to equalise it all out.

At Last! Emotional Engagement!

If I paint a picture of my teens as being somewhat narrow with my tastes, I would prefer to say “selective” – but then, especially when I was on a “downer” from these highs, I discovered the joy of melancholy. The emotions got involved.

Now even my downs had their own soundtrack. I discovered The Smiths. I didn’t buy the whole miserable thing per se. I hated the Goths. I found them all a bit obvious and literal. I didn’t even get into Joy Division, Nick Cave or any other movement for miserable angsty boys (I was never really truely miserable, existential, yes, but I think I had always been unconsciously attracted to the subtle optimism in Morrissey’s songs).

I had intense experiences on Smiths tracks like “The Death of a Disco Dancer” which was an interesting track because it had some of the sonic repetition and drone that my acid-y tracks had, but it also had a kind of requiem-like emotional engagement that the beats lacked. And it was also really funny! It had a lot going for it.

The beats transcended my surroundings and filled my head with pleasure, but with the addition of words, it all became a bit more whole, holistic even. I know this sounds obvious to people who listen to songs, but I hated most of the songs I found within the North of England 1980s zeitgeist.

My audio acid tendancies never went away, in fact, by listening to Morrissey (and also Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel) I accidentally gave the dance music time to rebuild it’s efficacy for the next time I desired an endorphin rush.

Packed with Meaty Goodness

In writing songs, I have tried to make sure that each song has enough “data” in it. Partly inspired by “singing science” records that have resurfaced online, I am intrigued an excited by a song’s potential to educate with the chief student in the short term, being myself. It was exciting to be able to include the words “copus luteum, graafian follicle” in “28 Days in Lace.”

* and developed an eating disorder but that’s another story.