New Monday 101
Happy Monday
NAMM is days away. Who’s going to be there? Come see us! We’re at booth number 15924, right beside Avalon Designs and across from Soundtoys. Come and get some Chocolate Milk from us!
I don’t know what to write this week. We’re busy to the point of overwhelm, with booth design, coordinating flights and cars and accommodations, and wrenches thrown into the works at seemingly any moment.
Jessie Mazin
Jessie Mazin is a singer/songwriter based in California. You might have heard her cover version of Never Let Me Down on season one of The Last of Us. She doesn’t have a website, or from what I can tell, a record deal. She exists on TikTok, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube—an existence as ethereal as her voice.
Her voice... it’s simple and beautiful. Her writing is straightforward. She’s a kid negotiating a weird, confusing world, strumming her guitar and mostly making her own stuff, on her own. I’m curious to see how her career goes. I do not know if there’s a place for her in the post-AI music economy. She seems to have found something.
There’s an interesting thing going on with one of her songs, Late Stage Capitalism. Start here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQxFawMkgQq/
This is the first thing I heard of her. It’s the kind of thing you just want to loop—between the voice and the melody and the words... addictively catchy. But it’s not out as a record, or anything beyond a snippet that lasts just over a minute.
So, this guy took her video and overdubbed a drum part on it: https://www.tiktok.com/@handsomefuture/video/7571486897156001037
And then this guy took that video, and put a bass over it: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebretcrowshow/video/7573925207866346783
This guy went back to the source and redid everything, including adding a flute and a fiddle: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR1PbaCDysJ/
Everyone’s a producer these days! And it seems Jessie is encouraging it—explaining the tuning, the chords, and asking you to do a cover and tag her: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMLs5KJB_qo/
She even gives lessons on how to play her songs. The amount of sharing boggles the mind.
I’m old, and I am trying to wrap my head around this moneyless music economy that smart, talented kids are building. My orientation for most of my life has been towards record deals and major labels as the goal. The majors shot themselves in the foot back when they totally dropped the ball in their response to the rise of streaming. Now they’re all getting in bed with AI platforms and making clear what's always been known: that they’re only in it for the money.
Here’s Jessie’s Instagram. I went through it, from song to song, with her wonderful voice and writing—her music on Instagram and TikTok is more interesting than her things on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music. She's basically keeping a musical diary and letting whoever wants to read it, and remix it.
I know a bunch of you are thinking, “Luke. You’re a moron. This is SOCIAL MEDIA. This is what people do. Duh.” I get it. I suppose these additive remix things are a kind of “Stitch.“
I hear ya. But maybe I’m not writing this to preach to the choir. I’m writing this to the bunch of you that love writing, love recording, and feel unheard and left out, like a grape on a vine, hidden behind a leaf at harvest time, never picked, never to be made into wine. <--- there’s a lyric in there somewhere. Please feel free to find it.
The world isn’t going back to how it was—It never has done that. It’s a New Year. Let’s go forward. Maybe take a Jessie Mazin tune and add to it. If you do, send me a link. Or better yet, post it up somewhere, where a curious soul might find it.
Maybe I am writing this for myself?
V - IV - I
Late Stage Capitalism uses three chords—D, C, G, which is the V chord, the IV chord and the I chord. This is a super common progression you’ve heard in songs like Sweet Home Alabama, and the best three-chord song anyone has ever written, Fortunate Son.
You can also look at the progression as I - bVII - IV, which it can be as well. It depends on the melody, and how long one lingers on chords, and how that convinces our ear that this is the key we’re in. Sweet Home Alabama sets up the progression as V - IV - I; Fortunate Son sets up I - bVII - IV.
But we’re talking not about Alabama, but of girls from California, so let’s stay with that and...
Our Lips Are Sealed
The Go-Go’s Our Lips Are Sealed uses V - IV - I, and some other chords, and it’s frickin’ great. It hit #20 in the US, but the album, Beauty and the Beat, was a surprise hit in 1982, selling millions—one of the best-selling debut albums ever. More importantly, it was the first time an all-girl band wrote all their own material, played their own instruments and got to #1 on the album charts. Beauty and the Beat is a cornerstone of New Wave. It’s now 45 years old and it still is a great record.
It was produced by Richard Gottehrer—he also produced Blondie’s debut album in 1976. Gottehrer had a knack with both female artists and pop. He wrote and produced My Boyfriend’s Back and I Want Candy, and produced Hang On Sloopy. He turned out to be a perfect choice for the Go-Go’s. The band hated the record when they first heard it. Consensus was it was too smooth, too pop. Live, the Go-Go’s were basically a punk band. Gottehrer cleaned up their sound for radio, and eventually the band came around. After all, one day they’re playing the Whiskey in LA, a year later they’re opening for The Police on the Ghost in the Machine Tour. What’s not to love?
Beauty and the Beat was cut at Penny Lane Studios in NYC (the studio isn’t there anymore) to 24-track analog tape. The console was either a Trident TSM or a Trident 80B. Ah, Tridents... there will be some stories involving Trident coming up very soon... (hint hint hint hint!)
Our Lips Are Sealed is wonderfully produced. Virtually everything about it is a hook. The drums come in (Gina Shock)—the part is just a kick, a snare, a hi-hat and a tambourine—but it’s a thumpy, goofy, almost playful sound, and instantly recognizable. Then come two flinky rhythm guitars, panned out wide left and right, followed by a shimmery arpeggio riff and then a contrapuntal bass line by Kathy Valentine, and the hook is set and bites deep.
The opening lyric is “Can you hear them?” What better way to open an album?
Belinda Carlisle’s voice is doubled, and a bit pitchy, but there’s something endearing about it. It’s pulled a bit back in the mix.
The first verse is spare, but things start adding as it moves into the first pre-chorus, as guitar parts add drama and color. They’re easy and fun to hear, panned all over the place and very clear in the mix. It’s perfect playing by Charlotte Caffey—lovely, textural parts. There might be a vocal pad tucked in back there, in addition to what sounds like a keyboard pad.
There’s a wistful bridge, sung by Jane Wiedlin, who co-wrote the song with her paramour, Terry Hall of The Specials. He was married at the time... you can get a sense of where the lyrics might have come from.
After the bridge, we get more vocals, more guitars, and my favorite part, the CLAPS! Clap clap clap clap on the quarter notes! I love claps. My theory is that claps are the one instrument that almost anyone can play, so put them on your records, damnit!
Our Lips Are Sealed is how you produce a record: it starts as a train far down the tracks, gets right up close to you after taking a detour for the bridge, then steams away, sometimes with you on board, sometimes leaving you behind—it depends on the ending. But always that sense of building, of coming towards you, always presenting a new thing to hear but never distracting you from the journey of the song.
The Go-Go’s developed a reputation for being as debauched as any boy band. Their own memoirs suggest that the reputation is overblown. Yes, addiction was rife in the band, but the one time they destroyed a hotel room, they felt guilty and cleaned it up. As far as having guy groupies, evidently the five Go-Go’s all together were intimidating, so guys wouldn’t approach them, and the one time they sent a roadie out to pick men out of the audience for backstage fun ala Aerosmith or Van Halen, when the guys came backstage the Go-Go’s hid in their dressing room, embarrassed. As Belinda Carlisle suggests, aside from the drugs and drinking, they were basically good girls.
Whatever. A great band with strong albums and a bunch of killer pop tunes.
That’s all for this week. I hope I see some of you at NAMM. Have a great week. Get in the studio!
Warm regards,
Luke