The Archive Series: Emily Saliers - July 1992

 

Indigo Girls – Celebrating the Rites of Passage

Interview with Emily Saliers

 

For the first time, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray──better known as Indigo Girls──have stepped outside the bounds of the sound they’ve come to be known and loved for. On Rites of Passage, the duo’s third major label release, there’s a new rhythmic undercurrent provided by a variety of Latin and African percussion instruments. The stellar supporting cast, including B-52s’ bassist Sara Lee, drummers Jerry Marotta and Kenny Aronoff, and various members of Siouxsie and the Banshees, provides an exquisite musical palette on which Emily and Amy paint their most vivid pictures yet. Their harmonies, perhaps the most powerful and striking among the ranks of newer artists, send a nonstop barrage of chills down the spine. The songs truly mark the duo’s passage to a new level of maturity and depth of outlook.

During rehearsals for their current U.S. headlining tour, Emily Saliers took a break to talk about the duo’s past, present, and future. More like a conversation with a long-lost college friend, our talk covered a lot of ground, and left no doubt that the combined talents (and refreshing intelligence) of the Indigo Girls that has brought them this far will carry them further still.

Roy Abrams: Your earlier LPs consisted largely of material that had a solid performance life behind it. This album marks a radical departure from that. The recording process must have been markedly different from the past. What were the sessions like?

Emily Saliers: Well, from my point of view, it felt like a wide-open world for what we could do with the songs. When we first out, I think Amy and I were a little afraid of losing our essence by adding things on the record. It was our first “real” studio experience; in a way, on the first record and even on Nomads, Indians, and Saints, we sort of hampered (original producer) Scott Litt’s wanting to expand a little more, musically, I think. Then, we switched producers, and Peter Collins did this one. Amy and I started talking about all the ethnic musical influences we wanted, with the Irish musicians and Talvinde from Siouxsie and the Banshees playing the tabla and percussion. We started picking out players and influences that we wanted on the songs, and it was just such a creative and fun process. I think the fact that the songs were new and hadn’t been weathered by tons of performance left them open, which was very healthy.

RA: The guest singers on this album are a “who’s who” of some of the best harmony singers on the  planet: The Roches, Jackson Browne, David Crosby──how did they get involved?

ES: We sort of kept running into these people. We met Jackson a couple of years ago. We were doing a show in L.A. and he sang a song with us that night, and we stayed in touch. We did a benefit (later) for the Verde Valley School in Arizona, which is a really cool private school that Jackson’s been involved with for years and David (Crosby) was at that concert. He and Graham (Nash) sang some songs; he told me he liked our music. I knew we were about ready to record, so I asked him if he would sing on the record. He said yes, and I almost died right there in front of him! The Roches we’ve known for years. I grew up listening to their music. It’s a dream come true to work with these people.

RA: I would imagine. How did you put the vocals together on those tracks?

ES: On “Airplane,” The Roches did that arrangement themselves. Amy and I didn’t touch it. We sent them a demo of the song with just the two of us singing, and they wrote their arrangement, came to the studio, we sat around five microphones, Amy and I strummed the guitars, and that’s how we did it!

RA: I hope flying’s getting easier for you, by the way …

ES: [Laughing] It’s not! I’ve had a setback, but it’s just something I have to deal with. It just makes me very uncomfortable. I can’t understand how a big old piece of metal can get off the ground.

RA: How did you put “Let It Be Me” together?

ES: Jackson and David sang on that. We just sat down together at a piano and picked out a few notes ... it happened just like that.

RA: It must have been something else to have been in that room at that time.

ES: You know, you try not to act like it’s blowing you away! God, this year’s been chock full of so many wonderful experiences like that.

RA: Your own sense of harmony is what draws a lot of people to your music. Is it an intuitive thing with both of you, or do you sit down and work them out?

ES: It’s intuitive to the extent that I feel how the harmonies are going to work. When I finish a song, I start to hear lines come into my head. We actually pound it out after the intuition. Sometimes, we have to step back and look at how the song will build dynamically. Amy’s got a real good sense of that──when to add, when not to add. I have a very innate sense of harmony, so that works that way.

RA: The combination is very intriguing. Distinct personalities, very different voices, and songwriting styles yet the blend touches on the magical, often crossing that border. Any thoughts on your influences on each other?

ES: Well, it’s definitely a yin/yang chemistry, completely. Our personalities are really different. We listen to different kinds of music. Amy’s much more rock and roll, alternative music influenced. I’m more influenced by singer/songwriter narrative music. Amy comes from a lot of anger, writing of the earth and sensual images. I intellectualize things a little more; I write my songs like an English paper!

RA: I get the feeling from your lyrics that you read quite a lot. What’s inspired you, both musically and in literature?

ES: Actually, our literary influences are more aligned than our musical influences. We both love Southern literature──Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor; that sort of bizarre, steeped-in-Southern-thickness style of writing. I rediscovered Virginia Wolff this past year. Amy found this poet named Frank Stanford. He really moved her to write. We’ve both been reading a lot of non-fiction too; a lot of history. Musically, my greatest influence has been Joni Mitchell. She’s still new to me; I never get tired of her stuff. Bob Dylan’s the other big one. Amy’s also into Dylan and, at an earlier stage, Neil Young. We both liked James Taylor at a very early stage. Later on, Amy got into bands like Husker Du, the Replacements, and the Jam.

RA: When did you and Amy first start working together?

ES: We met at elementary school. I moved to Atlanta from Connecticut when I was nine. We lived in the same neighborhood.

RA: That’s pretty convenient …

ES: Yeah, really! We got to be good friends toward the end of high school. That’s when we started playing professionally, around 1980. I went off to Tulane University  for two years Amy went to Vandy (Vanderbilt University) for a year, and then we both ended up transferring to Emory in Atlanta. That’s when we became the Indigo Girls and our fan base became solid, at least locally. That was the catalyst.

RA: Who came up with the name?

ES: Amy found the name in the dictionary. She was thumbing through it for some ideas, you know, and that word popped out. Pretty plain and simple!

RA: What were the early days like?

ES: The sentiment felt exactly the same. We still feel the same way playing together as we did back them. The only difference is that we had so much to learn. We had to run our own sound system, book our own gigs, call up the radio stations ourselves after we’d sent out the records from the post office. It was sort of a nine-to-five job! We were, I guess, paying our dues back then, although it didn’t really feel like it.

RA: When did you first realize that you were on the way to “making it”?

ES: Well, “making it” is such a relative term. Each step along the way seemed like “making it.” The first time we got a gig playing at an open mic night, we thought that was heaven. Then we got a gig playing at a regular bar where we got paid; after that, we got to open for someone like John Sebastian. At that point, we felt like that was everything. So, each step of the way felt like success. We were never stagnant. It was a very natural and healthy progression.

RA: I know it’s kind of tough to put the creative process into words, but can you describe how your creativity gets sparked?

ES: I sort of feel it all the time. I get pricked by different thoughts or experiences. If I’m out at a bar listening to music and I notice something going on at the next table, or if I’m getting cynical about relationships, or read something in the paper … I mean, the inspiration is all around, in life. You feel it growing inside you, this thought that has to be put down. I know Amy keeps a little book and she jots down her thoughts, which is a good thing to do so you don’t forget. So, it sort of broods inside you, then you pick your time, when you sit down with your guitar. I like to be in a real quiet space where I can gather my thoughts.

RA: What was the inspiration behind “Ghost”?

ES: I’m typically a bleeding-heart type of person. You know, the feelings between two people, feelings of love and attraction that get sparked … that’s one of my favorite things to experience and to write about. That was the seed to be planted for that song, and I found those chords early on. I started playing them during soundchecks and they had a good, somber, but rolling feel to them. Then I just started thinking about the way it can happen that either you fall in love with someone, or there’s a relationship for a time, and then it ends, and it just gets built to be this powerful, mysterious force in your life and you’re never going to get over it. It’s alive and well, even though the ties aren’t there anymore. I think that’s a basic human experience.

RA: How did Michael Kamen turn up on that track?

ES: [Giggles] That was Peter Collins’ doing. Michael Kamen did the strings on “Silent Lucidity” (Queensryche), which Peter produced. Peter was really bucking for strings on that song. When I first wrote it, it was a very intimate song, and I was very afraid that the strings would turn it into a sweeping ballad, and I didn’t want that. So, we fought over it, in a friendly way. Finally, we grew to respect Peter’s opinion so much that, in the end, I said, “Okay, Peter, if Michael can do this … “ Michael loved the song; he gathered his orchestra and put all this stuff down, and then we weeded it out a little bit and ended up with a compromise.

RA: “Galileo” is another really interesting track.

ES: Reincarnation is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past year and a half. Actually, I don’t think about it all the time, but it seemed to get brought up, and it’s a very popular subject among certain friends. This one friend and I were discussing it into the wee hours of the night. When I started writing the song, I wanted to approach it from a lighthearted point of view. I just figured, since Galileo had discovered such great truths, he must be an advanced soul in some way. And his name had kind of a ring to it.

RA: What are some of your favorite Indigo Girls songs from all phases of your career?

ES: Well … of Amy’s songs, I always like “Kid Fears.” It’s really very powerful, especially live, when people are singing along with it. I think it’s a great song. I love singing “Secure Yourself,” too. I find it very uplifting … I also really like singing “Pushing the Needle Too Far.” It’s a powerful, raw rock and roll song. All of Amy’s songs on the new record I really like. I think “Cedar Tree” is a powerful song in its simplicity. Of my songs, I think the best one I ever wrote was “History Of Us.” It just poured out of me. I was in Europe with my family; it’s all true, the images, nothing was made up. I put everything into it and it flowed out. I think “You And Me And The 10,000 Wars” is a good song. It’s hard to talk about your own songs, but I think my favorite of mine on the new record is “Ghost.” It seems like the songs that really just pour out of me are the ones that turn out to be my best.

RA: Where do you think contemporary music is headed?

ES: That’s a hard question, ‘cause there are so many different kinds of contemporary music. The only trend I see that bothers me is that music is becoming more and more mindless on the radio. The lyrics don’t mean anything; the songs aren’t musically interesting (not to my ears, anyway!). I think we get lazy with what we accept as music … and what MTV promotes. I hardly ever find something new that blows me away. Well, Wynona Judd; I love country music. All the new artists that keep coming out of country (music) are great. But then, I also go back and listen to Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, CSN, Jackson Browne. We both are influenced by a lot of people from Atlanta, local artists like Kristen Hall, Gerard McHugh, and the Ellen James Society. You know, the stuff that counts will last and stand the test of time.

RA: I think your music will have a place of its own in that category.

ES: We’ll see. I hope so, ‘cause we’re having an awesome time!

RA: What are your plans for the rest of 1992?

ES: I think we’re gonna be touring behind this album for quite some time. Afterward, Amy’s got her record label (Dameon Records) that keeps her very busy. I’m interesting in writing a bunch of songs and maybe doing some collaborative writing, and maybe trying to get my songs to some other people and see if anyone wants to record them. And I want to become a better golf player, too!

RA: Golf? Okay.

ES: And I wanna have fun.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Island-Ear, July 14-27, 1992 issue

The Archive Series: Tony Banks - October 1992

 

Tony Banks: More Tales From The Book Of Genesis

Genesis has joined the ranks of those groups that can count more than one generation among their fans. With a career spanning nearly a quarter of a century, Genesis has undergone remarkable transformations and upheavals, both personally and musically, emerging as one of the biggest acts in the music business. Of course, the astonishing success of vocalist/drummer Phil Collins’ solo career has eclipsed that of the group several times during the past decade, causing several pinhead radio deejays to refer to “Phil Collins and Genesis” when playing a Genesis track … no big deal in itself, but highlighting how perceptions can change when one member of a band achieves great individual success.

Though Phil Collins’ solo efforts may be the most financially rewarding, his bandmates have also forged separate musical identities. Bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford has released several albums, both as a solo artist and with the Mechanics, and has made his own mark upon contemporary music. The solo career of keyboardist Tony Banks, while never quite catching fire (yet) has included four unusual, highly musical efforts: A Curious Feeling (1979), The Fugitive (1983), Bankstatement (1989) and Still (1992). Any fan of Genesis , whether they’re more into the early or later periods, will find a treasure trove of singularly creative moments in these works, which could only have come from the mind of Tony Banks, one of rock’s most underrated songwriters.

I spoke with Banks during the early part of the current Genesis tour …

Roy Abrams: Is it difficult to go about selecting the songs you include in your set, given the catalog of material Genesis has accumulated?

Tony Banks: It’s not as difficult as you might think, really. Obviously, we as a group are more interested in playing more recent stuff, though we like to reach back a bit as well. We look at the new album and we do as much of that as we can. Then we go back and do the songs from the previous set that we still feel pretty close to … and then we look back into our early days. On this tour, we decided to do a different “old” medley, if you like. We did a twenty-minute medley last time, we’re doing a different one this time, (consisting of material) from the ‘70s.

RA: What made you decide to go the open-air route for this tour?

TB: Well, the main reason was to try and keep the length of the tour down a bit, with quite a few different things going on for everybody. Also, having children at the age where you don’t want to leave them for too long. We felt that the best way of covering the ground and not be touring for two years would be to do the open-air shows. Having done a bit of it on the last tour and quite enjoying it, we thought we’d try it this one time.

RA: Are you as comfortable performing live as you are in the studio?

TB: I’m in this business as a writer, really. Making records I see as an extension of the writing process. Playing live … I enjoy it, but I’m not a natural. I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t my music; I really wouldn’t do it for any other reason.

RA: Since the Genesis LP (1983), the band has taken two extended leaves of absence, the second larger than the first. What’s it like getting together after those types of layovers?

TB: We’ve been doing that since ’79, really, although the periods off were shorter in those days. Once you set the patterns, it’s easier once you expect it to happen. When you come back, it’s very easy to get back together again. We slip back into it after about a week or so. It’s like you’d never done it any other way, almost. It hasn’t been a problem.

RA: Your solo LP, Still, was released rather quickly after We Can’t Dance. Chronologically speaking, which project were you involved with first, and how long did the recording of both albums take?

TB: I did my solo album before the Genesis record. The recording process of my album took about three months. (On the Genesis record) we took a couple of months to write it and another two or three months to record it. I was in the studio pretty much continuously from one project to the next, which is not really how I like to do it, but it just worked out that way!

RA: Three of the tracks on Still are collaborations. What was the extent of the collaboration as compared with how you work with Genesis?

TB: The collaborations (on Still) were somewhat different because it’s a fairly straight division between music and lyrics. I’d written the songs pretty much completely, melody and everything. The lyrics are from the people I worked with──both Nik Kershaw and Fish are people whose lyrics I like a lot. Also, I think there’s no doubt that singers have a tendency to sing their own lyrics a bit better, ‘cause they know what they can get their teeth around.

RA: How did you go about choosing the four other singers for the album? I know that Jayney Kilmek appeared on your last LP.

TB: Well, she was an easy decision because I’d worked with her, and I like working with a girl singer as well, because it’s so different from what I do with Genesis. Fish is someone I’d worked with in the past, quite a long time ago. We got on really well, and we always talked about doing some more stuff. When I decided that I was going to use a number of singers (on this record), I thought Fish was an obvious choice.

RA: Has anyone mentioned that “Another Murder Of A Day” (a Fish/Banks composition on Still) has a distinct early Genesis feel?

TB: Well, to be honest, it was a slightly conscious thing. I mean, I can write those kinds of things all the time, you know, but it’s more difficult now within Genesis; we don’t do quite as many things of that nature. Fish has his roots in a band called Marillion, which at one point was considered to be a sort of Genesis copy. He’s about as long-winded as I am, so that two of us did one long track where we let ourselves go a bit. I wasn’t going to do an “old” song or a “new” song; I just let myself do what came naturally.

RA: On the new record and the Bankstatement LP, you sing one track each, but on The Fugitive, you did all the vocals on the entire record. I’m curious as to why you moved away from that.

TB: Well, there’s somewhat of a divided opinion on the state of my vocals! I thought that on The Fugitive, I did a reasonable job, but the point is, there’s more to it than that. If you’re going to be the singer of an album, you’ve got to be able to front it in some kind of way. It means if you ever do a video or a TV show, you’ve got to be the singer. I really don’t feel comfortable doing that at all, and my voice──although I can get away with it in the studio──really isn’t good enough for a live situation, certainly not without quite a lot more experience. I don’t have any particular desire to promote myself as a singer, but on the other hand I’ve done one song on each of the last two albums to keep my hand in. I think it’s quite fun to do that, to remind yourself of what you’re putting these other people through all the time!

RA: Is there anybody that you have not worked with that you might eventually like to put something together with?

TB: Not specifically. There’s a lot of people I like, but it’s really a matter of when the time comes up, I start thinking about it. It’s not necessarily “I want to work with the people I admire the most,” because I don’t think they need me, for a start I chose Nik Kershaw this time, who’s someone I’ve admired for years, because he seemed to have a fairly blank period recently, and I thought he might be interested in doing something.

RA: Do you foresee a time when you and Peter Gabriel might work together again?

TB: I certainly don’t think it’s impossible. Peter and I are good friends, and we like each other musically as well, you know. [Laughing] It’s a difficult question, because it gets around to the fact that Peter doesn’t really need me; do you know what I mean? We’d only get back together, I think, because it would be a fun thing to do. We both have careers of our own, but we definitely worked together well back in the early ‘70s. Some of the songs that became classic Genesis songs were the results of the two of us working together. So, it’s certainly not something that I would rule out. We never really talked about it because we’ve been going our own musical way.

RA: I understand you’ve got a great deal of unreleased material. Will it ever come out?

TB: The trouble is, I’m one of those people who, if I haven’t done anything with a song for a while, it tends to get forgotten and discarded. I’ve got some instrumental things that I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ve always been hoping to do a film soundtrack, to get some of those pieces in. At some point I may decide to do an instrumental album to get it all out of my system! You see, when it comes to my songs, I tend not to write a lyric until I know that the song is going to come out. I tend to work with music first. So, there’s a lot of material; I have no lack of stuff. But when you’re doing a new record, you like it have more recently written songs, I think.

RA: Have you ever considered doing any kind of solo tour to stretch out on your own? Assuming, of course, that you could find the right people to work with.

TB: It’s something I’ve thought about, but decided against, for a few reasons. The problem is this: in the early days with Genesis, we were onstage, playing songs nobody had ever heard, and tried to convince the audience from the stage. I don’t think I could do the same thing with my music because I haven’t got the necessary projection myself unless I was with some other “right” people. But I can’t start right at the beginning again like that. I’ve always said that if I had some success as a solo artist, I would be more inclined to tour. When Mike (Rutherford) went on the road with the Mechanics, he had three or four songs he could go to in a set, like “Silent Running,” that people at least had some sort of idea about, and the rest of the stuff could build to these moments. I don’t really have that yet. I know a lot of people like the solo albums. Obviously, I like ‘em all. It’s difficult to know──you never know; the reason they didn’t do better than they did is that they didn’t have any singles on them, or anything that wound up capturing enough people’s imagination. Unfortunately, rock music is totally controlled by singles, and I would say that singles have always been my weakest area.

RA: What are some of your keyboard and overall songwriting influences?

TB: Back in the early days, I was most influenced by the writers from the ‘60s: The Beatles, the Kinks, the Tamla Motown stuff. Those songs excited me the most at that time. As for players from that period, there’s Alan Price, who was one of the first keyboard players I ever noticed as a keyboard player. From the late ‘60s, there was Keith Emerson when he was with the Nice … and the keyboardist in Procol Harum.

RA: How would you rate yourself as a keyboard player?

TB: It always sounds like false modesty, but I know that I’m pretty limited. There are a lot of people with a hell of a lot better technique than me. The only way I can judge myself is as a writer. I think that as a writer, and as a player of my own songs, that I have an originality. That’s the strength, if you like. Certainly not in the technique, because it’s no better than in dozens of keyboard players you could find anywhere. I consider that, in my career, I’ve been very lucky with a lot of the people I’ve been with, you know, which has got me into the position where I can actually be a professional player.

RA: What keyboards are you currently using?

TB: My current favorites, well, I’ve got the Roland JD800, which is sort of like the D50 but you’ve got all the faders, so you can alter tones as you go through. Also, the basic sounds are better than the D50. The Korg Wavestation is my other favorite instrument I’m using. On this tour, I’m not using anything that I used on the last tour, in fact! Some of the old sounds that I like I’ve got sampled and stored on the E3.

RA: Your lyrics, over time, have gone from a storytelling approach (e.g., “One For the Vine”) to more personal songs like “Still It Takes Me By Surprise.” Which approach do you find more challenging?

TB: The reason why it’s taken me longer to get to more personal things is that I find it more difficult. Sometimes I’m writing about real things in a fantasy, but “One For The Vine” was really sort of an allegory. I still read a lot of fantasy, but I’m slightly more aware that, at the moment, fantasy in rock music is something that makes it appear very dated. With songs like “Undertow” on And Then There Were Three I first started writing with a more “real” kind of sense, although there’s been the odd fantasy lyric thrown in, like “Cul-de-Sac.”

RA: Have the technological advancements altered your basic approach to songwriting?

TB: Definitely, I think. The technology can lead you in a direction that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought about. Particularly, I like the sampling machines. If you sample little riffs of music or just random sounds that occur in the studio when you’re playing, you can get something that sets you off on an idea that you wouldn’t have thought of.

RA: Can you pick out a few songs that are really special to you?

TB: “Supper’s Ready,” from the early period, was a combination of bits and pieces, and stood out, if for no other reason because of its length, but I always liked the way it went from mood to mood. From the slightly later period, one of my favorites has always been “Duchess.” It’s a very simple song, and the first time we ever used a drum machine on anything to do with Genesis. It set us off in a slightly different direction. In terms of my solo stuff, A Curious Feeling has always been very close to me──the whole album, particularly the instrumentals. “The Waters of Lethe” is one of my favorite instrumental things that I’ve ever written. The Fugitive LP was fun for me because it involved singing and taught me a lot. I think the atmosphere on that album works as a whole. On Bankstatement, my favorite track is “I’ll Be Waiting” and on the new record my favorite is “Water Out Of Wine.” It’s a personal thing, it captured the mood, and I love Jayney’s voice on it.

RA: How about anything from We Can’t Dance?

TB: Well, I love ‘em all really. “Dreaming While You Sleep” is probably my favorite track──it’s got drama and an atmosphere about it which I think is one of the keys to Genesis. “No Son Of Mine” and “I Can’t Dance” also really work. “I Can’t Dance” has no excess baggage; it’s a very straightforward thing, but it’s got a real atmosphere.

RA: Phil Collins has referred to you as the most important songwriter in Genesis, in terms of being the nucleus of what makes the band unique. Do you have any comment on that?

TB: Phil always tries to redress the balance a little bit when given the chance, because there’s always the tendency for the media to view Genesis as Phil’s vehicle. He likes to stress what everybody else does. Over the years, I suppose I’ve been responsible for more Genesis music than anybody else, and I certainly don’t mind that being emphasized. From any other point of view, as a performer, I don’t care that much, really. I don’t particularly care what people think of me as a keyboard player; it’s as a writer that I want to be judged.

RA: You’ve been a part of one of the most evolving, creative bands for more than twenty years. Does it feel like that long of a time?

TB: I never think of it in time scale; it’s a funny thing. It was ’68 when we released our first single … [pause] It’s just part of my life, it’s what I am it’s my identity. [Laughs] I’ve never looked ahead or looked back. I would never have anticipated in the 1970s that the band would still be going in the 1990s. I would have been somewhat horrified in a way, I think! What we’ve managed to do is adapt the band to our own needs. It doesn’t take up all of our time, we do things outside of the music business, and yet still keep Genesis going, still producing music we find satisfying. It’s an incredible luxury, really, but I’m not questioning the luck.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Island-Ear, October 5, 1992

The Archive Series: Todd Rundgren - December 1993

 

Todd Rundgren: Hello, It’s TR-I

Todd Rundgren has always pushed the envelope of recording, from both musical and technological aspects. During the course of his career, he has stretched the boundaries of invention time and time again, not only with his own albums, but as a producer of more than fifty albums by other artists. Rundgren’s work with Meat Loaf (Bat Out of Hell), The Band (Stage Fright), The New York Dolls (The New York Dolls), and XTC (Skylarking) are but a few examples of the diversity of Rundgren’s abilities.

1993 heralds the release of No World Order, Rundgren’s latest solo album──and the very first interactive format CD. While the interactive format allows the listener to, in effect, customize the music in more than a million different ways (via a CD-interactive player), the non-interactive version is a cause for wonderment in itself. The waterfall of musical invention cascades out of the speakers, carrying the listener along at an almost break-neck pace. It’s an exhilarating ride, though. Rundgren has managed to capture his new musical vision with utter clarity; to listen is to see.

I spoke with Todd Rundgren (or TR-I, as he prefers for the moment), who shared some thoughts on the album, his career, and the state of music in general.

Roy Abrams: No World Order incorporates so many different musical elements, with intricate layers of sound. Was there an overall blueprint you worked from regarding arrangements and song structure?

Todd Rundgren: It’s been a while since I’ve used sequencing at all. On most all of my records, I might have used a drum program occasionally and then played everything else more or less live. It was overall much more of a serious sequencing job than I had ever undertaken before.

RA: I was especially intrigued by your integration of rap. It sounds as if you had a lot of fun exploring the element.

TR: It was fun, actually. At first, I was pretty apprehensive. I thought, am I gonna sound like Vanilla Ice or something? It’s one of those things where I thought for a long time, this is not really my thing. I’m not really that much into rap, mostly because of the subject matter and the essential prerequisites for being taken seriously in that area. It’s a very groin-based approach. I started to become aware of some artists moving it a little bit toward the head, and that’s when I got the idea that perhaps I might take a crack at it and see what I could do with it in terms of appropriating it to my own style.

RA: Which artists are you referring to?

TR: Well, there was PM Dawn and Arrested Development, KLF, and various other people where the subject matter would get off the usual street rap kind of gun-packin’, ho-beatin’ biggest penis in the land kind of approach. And then there’s the dance factory, quasi-industrial music machine approach, where rap essentially had to do with exhortation to boogie and that wasn’t really my thing either. So, putting a social conscience into the form made it seem like there was a little more freedom for me to do my own thing, which isn’t necessarily any of the above!

RA: You mentioned in the past that at times you felt that your lyrics could get a bit obtuse. Lyrically, the ideas on No World Order come through in a vividly direct way. Did rap’s influence cause you to approach your lyrics differently?

TR: The essential freedom that rap brings you … well, there are two things. One, certain words when spoken don’t sound as goofy as when you try and sing ‘em. Some words just don’t sing well, so if you’re speaking, you have the latitude to use certain words and phrases that just wouldn’t translate into melodic context. In addition, there’s a rhythmic freedom that comes with it. Melody implies a certain motif of rhythm in order for the melody to be recognized. At least, in pop music, it’s by implication a repetitious theme. The advantage in rap is that you’re not always stuck in the same rhythmic mode; you can do a lot of things that make it much more interesting from phrase to phrase. I’m not looking to completely deconstruct the elements of repetition or form; at the same time, I’m trying to take advantage of whatever freedom is there.

RA: The new album possesses a certain link with 1973’s A Wizard, A True Star in the way that both albums seethe with invention. No World Order sounds like a rediscovery of the fun you had making the former album.

TR: I had a lot of fun, actually, once I had really gotten the concept down of what I wanted to do. There were musical goals, there were technological challenges, and between the two of them, I had an opportunity to rethink my approach to music. In other words, with the final version of the album that came out, I really didn’t know what it would be, even after I had recorded all of the music and gotten it all cut up into this sort of database of musical ideas. When I finally got down and said, “okay, it’s time to put together fifty-plus minutes of music that’s gonna make up this first pass of the record,” I didn’t have a lot of rules. I could really experiment with the order of the musical ideas, even with how the lyrics were set up and framed. The ability to, for instance, push them to the front by taking various instruments out. I had three or four different versions of every part of the songs that would have various combinations of instruments and voices. As I went along, I could emphasize and de-emphasize various aspects of the performance, kind of in a cut-and-paste way. It wasn’t like this long, seething, and evolving concept that could only come out one way, like (XTC’s) Skylarking was. A Wizard, A True Star, even though it has this stream of consciousness quality about it, I didn’t have the freedom afterward to rearrange things; as the recording progressed, I know how the sequence of events was gonna come out. In the case of No World Order, I finished the recording process, but I had no idea exactly what order the songs would come in or whether they would come out as whole songs. In the final product, songs come in as fragments; they’re split up in two or three different places throughout the record. It was a whole chance to reassess how I wanted the album to sound.

RA: You mentioned Skylarking. As a producer, the number of artists you’ve worked with over the years is quite large and the musical diversity of these projects underscores your own. Which of these experiences provided the most challenge and satisfaction?

TR: The challenging albums usually are by nature──if I know what the challenge is before I go in──the more satisfying ones. You can get a lot of satisfaction out of an album that seems to be really easy to complete, but often the particularly challenging albums hold out a reward that’s kind of uncommon, like panning for gold or something. You don’t always go into it with the total confidence of achieving that goal, sometimes not even with a 100% clear vision of what the goal is, just a great belief in the potential. In the case of Skylarking, there was always a great belief in the potential; the hardest part about getting there was really [laughs] the politics of getting the final performance, because there was such a rich vein of musical ideas to tap into. I actually had pretty much the concept of the album, even the running order of the tunes, settled before we even started recording. I was fairly confident that I would be satisfied with the final product. The hard part was whether we would ever get it finished!

RA: A quick production question: What’s the secret behind the Todd Rundgren drum sound?

TR: [Chuckles] I don’t know! When I first got into recording, it was the instrument that I invested the most time in, trying to get the sounds that I wanted out of the drums. At this point, it’s really just second nature. It doesn’t take me a long time. It’s more unusual to not be able to get a good drum sound nowadays than it is to be able to get one. In other words, it has to be a peculiar combination of a strange drums and a bad microphone or something like that. Usually, given somebody’s raw tapes──unless they’ve done a really bad job of recording──I can get the sound I want out of must about any recording situation.

RA: Given the exponential pace of change in recording technology and your fascination with it, as a songwriter and a musician, can you paint a picture of what you perceive the musical environment may look like in ten or twenty years’ time?

TR: Ten or twenty years’ time! Well, I imagine just about the time I get into this more technical, contemporary approach to music, everyone will decide that they just want to hear folk music. [Laughs] Plain old, you know, troubadours just strumming, simple ensembles and things like that. I’m expecting at some point there’ll be a reactionary phase if, in the long haul, things are evolutionary. It used to be that music was──before there was recording──always an event. Any kind of ensemble music was an event because it required you to be there listening to it in real time; there was no way to capture the music for later replay. Recording has changed a lot of the ground rules of music to the point that people don’t see music as being a singular event, something where you actually have to be in the presence of a musician to enjoy it, and so people apply music to all other circumstances in their lives. They listen to it while they drive the car, do their aerobics to it, they dance to it, do chores while it’s on, they expect to see video with it, they hear it behind advertisements for products. I remember in the ‘60s when a Beatles album would come out, it was like “shutter the windows, lock the doors, and turn off all outside stimuli, sit down and listen to the Beatles record five times through … and people don’t do that anymore. Music is an adjunct to other things. So, if there’s a reaction, or even an evolution, it may get to the point where music again becomes an event where you may go  out to hear music that you’re completely unfamiliar with, a unique circumstance. The same way, one hundred years ago, the way a composer would debut a piece of new music, and there would be one performance on which so much would hinge. Like Ravel’s first performance of Bolero, which most people didn’t even hear the end of because there was so much racket going on in the audience──so much reaction to the newness of the music. Things may evolve to where music is the singular focus and the actual notes, the performance of the music, will become an event, not necessarily the antics of the performer.

RA: Speaking of performances, what about yourself?

TR: I’ll be going out this fall to do an interactive live show; it’ll be different every night, and there will be some degree of audience participation in the direction of the concerts, although I’m not sure what that’s gonna be yet!

We’ll find out soon enough: Todd Rundgren is bringing his interactive show to town on December 4^th at the Roseland in New York City.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Island-Ear, December 5, 1993

 

 

 

 

The Archive Series: David Crosby and Graham Nash - June 1996

 

Crosby, Stills & Nash: Back On Their Feet & On The Road

Well, it’s summertime again, which is prime touring season for the majority of artists. At the Jones Beach Amphitheater, Crosby, Stills and Nash have appeared nearly every summer since the venue began its rock concert program. In 1994, celebrating the band’s 25^th anniversary, as well as promoting their newest album, After the Storm, CSN hit the road with a vengeance. In the middle of everything, the tour ground to a premature halt due to David Crosby’s failing liver. After receiving a liver transplant in November of that year, Crosby focused his sights on regaining his health, while Stills and Nash busied themselves with individual musical projects. Stephen Stills toured America last year with his own band, coming to New York City’s Tramps last June and delivering a knockout performance. Graham Nash concentrated on putting the finishing touches on his one-man, multi-media show, dubbed LifeSighs. A project which had been evolving for several years, Nash took LifeSighs on the road briefly this spring, postponing the remainder of the tour until the fall.

The final months of 1995 saw David Crosby back on his feet and back on stage. CSN performed a handful of gigs as a sort of warm-up for a Crosby/Nash tour, which came to Westbury Music Fair last November. The success of these shows set the plans in motion for the current CSN tour, which began in May and will run through September.

I caught up with David Crosby and Graham Nash for a conversation about things past, present, and future.

Roy Abrams: I hear that the shows are going to be a little different this time around.

Graham Nash: Yeah, they are a bit different. We decided that we would do a bunch of songs that we’ve never done before and a bunch of songs that we very rarely did.

RA: Can you elaborate?

David Crosby: Oh, man … where are you?

RA: New York. I’ll be seeing you at Jones Beach.

DC: Oh, Jones Beach? No, I can’t tell you. Well, I can tell you, but I’d have to kill you. Well, we just changed the set up. Probably two-thirds of it is different than the last tour, at least.

RA: Are you going out acoustically or with a full band?

GN: This’ll be a full band. We have Michael Finnigan on organ and vocals, Joe Vitale on drums, and Gerald Johnson on bass.

RA: Graham, how did your initial LifeSighs concerts go down?

GN: They went extremely well. I was very happy. It was very enjoyable to be actually doing it instead of talking about it. It was a long project; it was four years of work. Of course, I’ve shut it down for the summer because CSN is out, then I’ll fire up again in the fall.

RA: Are you planning New York area shows?

GN: Yeah, I’m hoping to.

RA: There’s a group called The Posies which bears a remarkable vocal similarity to The Hollies. Have you ever heard them?

GN: Yeah, I’ve heard them. They did a Hollies song, as a matter of fact.

RA: Right, on that Hollies tribute album, The Hollies Sing in Reverse. What did you think of that?

GN: I that that whole album was fabulous. I really liked “Jennifer Eccles” by that guy, I think he calls himself “E.” It was pretty cool.

RA: Who are some up and coming singers whose harmonic ability has really turned your head?

DC: The best new practitioners are the black groups like Boyz II Men. There are two or three other black vocal groups, but particularly Boyz II Men are incredible harmony singers. They’re just stunners. But the people that I’m really fascinated with are the singer/songwriters. The ones that just kill me are still the ones that killed me last year: Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Paul Brady, and Michael Hedges (who opened CSN’s ’92 tour).

RA: The last time we spoke, you both mentioned that there were several projects planned for 1996, but you couldn’t go into detail at the time. Aside from this current tour, what else is in the cards for this year?

GN: I think we’re gonna go into the studio in October to cut a new record, then I’m gonna take LifeSighs out again in the fall.

DC: I’m writing a book. We just sold a book to Harper/Collins that I’m doing, called Stand Up and Be Counted.

RA: What’s the subject matter?

DC: Benefits, peace marches, civil rights demonstrations, anywhere where we played for a cause rather than cash.

RA: During one of our earlier conversations, you said that there was a whole wealth of archival material that never made it to the CSN boxed set: demos, first takes, unreleased tracks. At the time, your thought was that we’d get to hear them at some point.

DC: Yeah, we could do it, but the only people who would want it are total fanatic fans. Do you know how many of them there are? About thirteen.

RA: Well, I must be one of those thirteen people …

DC: [Laughing] Okay, then fourteen! Maybe sometime it’ll happen, but it’s not a high priority to the people who are counting numbers, ‘cause there’s just not that many people who really care that much.

RA: David, you and Chris Hillman had approached Roger McGuinn after contributing vocals to four new Byrds tracks for that group’s boxed set. At that point McGuinn wasn’t interested in doing any more work in that vein, although you and Hillman were eager to do so. Has there been any change in McGuinn’s attitude since then?

DC: No. I’ve seen him since then because we got together when they did a CD-ROM for Forrest Gump, and Roger and I did an interview for it. We’re still friends; I like the guy a lot. He just doesn’t want to do The Byrds and that’s his right, that’s his privilege. I think he’s being a complete fool because it’s great music and we could have a tremendous amount of fun doing it and everybody wants to hear it. I can’t tell him what to do; he’s a grownup.

RA: For the past few years, you’ve spoken about your desire to do another Crosby/Nash album. With all of the current activity, do you foresee this happening sometime down the road?

DC: Graham and I really miss doing that. Those were some of the best records either of us ever made in in our lives. Wind on the Water … that era contained some of the best music we ever made and we miss it a lot. We still have a very strong urge to do that. I also just love making solo records! That last live one that I did was such a kick in the head. I had so much fun doing it!

RA: “Camera,” from the After the Storm album, was the second time that you ever shared writing credits with Stephen (the first being “Wooden Ships”). How did that collaboration come to pass?

DC: He came up with a chorus. I wrote the whole song. I had a chorus, and he had a better one. [Laughs] I said, “There you are, we just wrote a song together!”

RA: Speaking of choruses, your voice brought the chorus of the first single (“Hold My Hand”) by the ubiquitous Hootie and the Blowfish to life. How’d you get involved with that project, and what are your thoughts on the way they’re getting slammed by the media despite their obvious commercial success?

DC: Well, I can’t explain the media … the media slams us, too. I have no idea why. They’re really nice guys. Their producer is an old friend of mine. He and a woman named Jenna Rankin was who was working for Atlantic Records are the reasons why I wound up singing on the record. I went over, listened to the tune, met the guys. They were really sweet kids; I mean, they’re not kids, but to me, they’re kids. They were young, very innocent very nice kids──nice people──and I liked them, so I did the harmonies.

RA: I interviewed one of your old friends recently, John Sebastian. One of the subjects we touched upon was Woodstock ’94. Compared to both your predictions about and memories of the event from prior interviews, Sebastian’s recollections were a bit softer in tone. Has the passage of time altered your memory of the event in any way?

DC: Nah. I saw it as a media zoo. I saw it as way too contrived. Yes, some good music did get played, and music will always triumph over all that other bullshit, because music is magic. Some magic did take place because music determinedly went out there and did its thing. But, Christ, you couldn’t go two feet without some dork saying [assumes pompous newscaster voice] “How’s this different from the first time, Dave?” It was too contrived, man, way too contrived.

RA: Last question: When you and I spoke last fall, you told me you had songs cooking all the time. How many have popped out of the oven since then?

DC: It’s a secret. I have some that I really love. Let’s leave it at that.

Crosby, Stills & Nash will be at Jones Beach on June 21 and 22.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Island-Ear, June 10-23, 1996

The Archive Series: Graham Nash - September 1995

 

Graham Nash: A Man and His Music Go Multi-Media

Some people are thinkers, others are doers. Graham Nash has always been part of the latter group. From his early days in The Hollies to the hey-day of Crosby, Stills and Nash up through the present, Nash has always remained focused on whatever he sets his mind to. As Nash has always maintained, it is quite possible to change the world──as long as you have the information available on how to go about doing it. As a parent, Nash has grown more deeply concerned with the issues facing children coming of age today’s society than probably any other socio-political movement he’s been involved with. Grappling with the challenge of how to best address the matter, Nash is putting the finishing touches on what he hopes will not only be one man’s solution, but also a revolutionary form of entertainment designed for everyone to enjoy.

LifeSighs, as the new entertainment form is dubbed, is the combined brainstorm of Nash and the technical wizardry of digital designer Rand Wetherwax (with technology supplied by Silicon Graphics, Inc.) wherein the audience will experience a “one-man, musically-driven, multi-media theatrical production,” designed as much for their empowerment as for their entertainment. In a nutshell, by guiding the audience on a historical journey through his own life, Nash hopes to be able to both educate and inspire others to take action on issues that affect their lives.

The genesis of LifeSighs goes back to the mid-‘80s, when Nash was doing some college speaking engagements. “I just saw the original notes on the speech that I gave at four colleges in 1986, the first one being Kent State, which was very interesting,” Nash explained. “The colleges had asked me to speak. I accepted the gigs and then panicked. I had no idea what they wanted me to talk about. You know, give me a guitar , I’ve got you for at least a couple of hours, but the thought of speaking was kind of terrifying. They said, ‘We just wanna know about you, about your early beginnings with The Hollies, coming across to America, David, Stephen, Woodstock, Kent State, the environmental movement, the No Nukes movement, and all that.’ So, I put together this outline and gave these speeches including a half-hour question-and-answer session, and it was absolutely fabulous. After a while, I began to realize that if the kids could see what I was talking about──no matter where I went or how deep into it──then this would be a new form of entertainment.”

“In the late ‘80s,” Nash continued, “I met Rand Wetherwax, who seemed to be the kind of person who would be able to translate what I wanted into the computer world. So, when he heard what I wanted to do, he told me it was possible but that the technology was still six months to a year away. It’s been since 1988 that we’ve been working on this.”

As one might imagine, rehearsals for an undertaking such as this would bear little resemblance to standard tour preparation, although practice remains a key component. “What we’re doing is rehearsing each segment and at the same time trying to make the segments flow seamlessly together,” Nash said. “We’re accessing massive amounts of data from my life in real time. We’ve created this database that’s kind of like a time tunnel of my life from the day I was born to the night of the show in whatever city I’m in. All of it is accessible to me in past, present, and future (tense), in great depth. If I want to talk about Kent State for two minutes one night and 10 minutes the next, I’ve got at least 20 minutes of information on that subject in the database. I don’t know where I’m going to be going and that’s kind of the thrilling part, it’s a voyage of discovery on my part also.”

Accompanying Nash on his voyage will be CyberGraham, a 20-foot-tall three-dimensional digital puppet that Nash refers to as “my conscience, my jester, and (someone to) keep me honest throughout the show. He’s the only thing in the show that’s not at my control. There’s a voice actor backstage and the puppet’s mouth is lip-synced to the words coming out of the mouth of the operator. When you see it 20 feet high talking to me in real time, it’s pretty impressive.”

How does one go about creating a digital alter-ego? “About three or four years ago, as part of the process of putting this together, I went to Silicon Graphics and had my head scanned,” Nash explained. “I sat there and had this 360-degree scanner whiz ‘round my head a few thousand times, creating digital information of my face, which was eventually transformed into a three-dimensional moving puppet.”

Music will play an integral part in the production, to be sure, with Nash’s extensive catalog providing the material. There will be plenty of chestnuts (“Military Madness,” “Chicago,” “Cathedral,” “Wind On The Water”) and newer songs like “Unequal Love” and “Liar’s Nightmare.” For the final song, Nash plans to video interview a random selection of audience members prior to each concert, asking them about their dreams. The resultant video montage will be included in the performance of “Find a Dream” Needless to say, the tour will be a series of unique events in which the audience will have a direct impact upon the nature of each show.

Nash is planning on hitting the road soon, although the exact tour dates and venues are still being worked out. “Because the technology is being driven by our needs,” he said, “it’s slower to plan out than usual. I know that I’m going out this fall, it’ll be a 30-city tour. Right now, we’re looking at 800 to 2,000 seat theaters or college venues, something small and intimate.”

Commenting on the ground-breaking nature of LifeSighs, Nash is very matter of fact. “It’s certainly very different and very unknown, and I don’t believe anyone has attempted this at all. People have worked with parts of this, but nobody has done what I’m trying to do.”

Graham Nash retains all of the enthusiasm of a young boy when talking about this latest project of his. You can be sure that by the time he takes LifeSighs on the road, it will be the embodiment of all the creativity and energy that has come to define an artist who has, in his own way, managed to change the world.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Music Paper, September 1995

The Archive Series: Ian Anderson - September 1995

 

Ian Anderson: Making the Rules and Breaking the Rules

No one could ever accuse Ian Anderson of being at a loss for words. As one of rock music’s most articulate spokesmen, Anderson has never hesitated to speak his mind both powerfully and lyrically. His innate intelligence and wit, not to mention an extremely musical mind, is the backbone of Jethro Tull, whose eclectic sound remains unduplicated by any “son of” band to this day. Anderson has grown older gracefully and is known not only as one of rock’s elder statesmen, but also as a highly successful businessman in Great Britain.

With more than a quarter century at the helm of Jethro Tull, Anderson has seen a lot of things come and go in the music business, and with time comes perspective. As economics have come to play an even greater role in the music business, many artists never miss the chance to spew bile when discussing the industry. Not Anderson. “Well, it’s a two-edged sword,” he counters. “I think, on the one hand, it’s good for the record industry that it has become very business-like, necessarily engaged with the realities of selling the product, so these days record companies tend not to be run by frivolous, flighty personalities like Richard Branson or Chris Blackwell; it tends to be run by hard and fast business-type people who understand the job they’re doing and understand the world that they’re working in. The downside, from the artist’s point of view, is that things do come down to dollars and cents. At the end of the day, not many artists are going to be encouraged to do things that don’t have an obvious payoff. I still feel that the bleating, the moaning, the self-pitying of people like George Michael are to be deplored, because the bottom line is that there are record companies out there who will make the effort if they believe in the artist if the artist gives them the sense of wanting to believe in them. But if you go about your business with the sort of precious sense of, ‘I am the pop star. I’m gonna do what I like and I’d also like a $20 million advance, by the way, before I give you a record,’ you can’t really expect too much in the way of sympathy or, ultimately, respect if you don’t deliver the goods. My feeling is that you just have to understand that from the artist’s point of view, it’s too easy to blame the record company and from the record company’s point of view, it’s too easy to follow the lure of the greenback dollar. But the mold is broken from time to time, and the mold is broken happily, because out of it comes music that I think we’re all delighted to hear, which we all recognize breaks the rules and, almost in spite of itself, happens to appeal to a lot of people.”

Regarding the current state of musical affairs, Anderson looks westward across the Atlantic and sees interesting things afoot, singling out Pearl Jam and Soundgarden for special praise. “I’m beginning to get that feeling from some of the newest bands, who are mostly of North American origin, not British. I am not enamored of the current state of UK pop and rock music, which I think is insular, very inbred, and rather precious. It doesn’t really have the earthiness of a lot of the American bands at the moment. American music, once in a while, shows us all the way.”

A conversation with Anderson brings with it a great deal of insight, candor, self-deprecating wit and, perhaps more than anything, the feeling of one who is still very much inspired to make music to maintain a creative edge.

With the recent release of his solo instrumental album, Divinities: Twelve Dances With God (Angel), the feeling is proven correct. As the album title suggests, the work consists of 12 separate musical pieces, each focused upon one of the world’s religions, both current and primitive, yet working together to form a cohesive whole. This religious theme has found its way into much of Anderson’s work; thinking back to the incendiary lyrics of “My God” and “Wind Up,” I wondered if Anderson’s religious perspective had undergone a mellowing metamorphosis.

“Well, I don’t think it’s really changed fundamentally,” he said. “It’s become a bit more refined, a bit broader in terms of the detail and the awareness of religion in its broadest sense. I think the main difference (with the new album) is I’m trying to focus on the ‘up’ side of religion in the way in which it represents (to me) something very unifying. There’s a unifying thing about religious belief that we can all benefit from. I don’t think that anyone could argue that the God of Islam, the God of Judaism, and the God of Christianity are different. We’re all dating the same gal! That’s something that would do so much good for us to teach our children. On Aqualung I was being a little negative about the aspects of dogma and ritual as they affect religion, primarily in terms of Catholicism. Here I’m trying to look at the positive side; I see (Catholicism) as something that makes Italian footballers burst into tears on their mother’s birthday.”

The origin of Divinities is an interesting story in itself. It seems that Anderson had been putting off overtures from Angel Records, EMI’s classical division, who had requested to meet with the artist to discuss a project they had in mind. Anderson takes it from here. “I put if off for about six months, then eventually went to explain to then this sort of thing was not what I thought they had in mind. Indeed, they didn’t want to do ‘Jethro Tull Meets the London Symphony’ nor did they want Ian Anderson to attempt the impossible, which is playing the flute to the melodies of Mozart. They wanted me tow rite some music with the flute as the main instrumental voice, but for other orchestral instruments (as well). I’m choosing these words carefully to avoid suggesting that they wanted me to make a classical record. It made me a little nervous because it wasn’t something I thought I had the skill to do.”

Elaborating further while getting in a sly last word, Anderson explained, “I’m just an amateur fooling at it; there are probably a bunch of second-year college students at the Royal Academy of Music in London who could wipe the floor with me in terms of orchestration and music writing, but they don’t have a record deal and I do!”

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Music Paper, September 1995