Hauntology: 1969

It seems that as history progresses the world is moving ever closer to a reality predicted by Philip K. Dick. Here he gives us a foreshadowing of the emergence of the idea of hauntology:

But why hadn't the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato's ideal objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. The form TV set had been a template imposed as a successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately — and against ordinary experience — vanished. The man contains — not the boy — but earlier men, he thought. History began a long time ago.

Philip K. Dick - Ubik, 1969.

Dreams of Faraway Vinyl

Flipping through the vinyl bin of the local Salvation Army store is not archaeology. The looters have already been here before me. This is not science. I am a Zabbal pawing through that which society has cast off. No, this is not science, but it is a slice of cultural and economic history. Not only does this exercise provide an insight into what people once bought, Herb Alpert and 101 Strings LPs in their hundreds and thousands, but a snapshot of what is valued today. If there's any demand for it nowadays it will most likely not be found in this bin. The gems are glaringly obvious by their absence. The rare exception to the rule, whenever actually found, is the jewel in the midden.

You could create a map of sonic culture this way, going from country to country, junk store to junk store, cataloging the offerings in the dollar, pound, or euro bins. Batches of Vaughn Meader turn into Heino or Rolf Harris as you move from country to country. And, at least in my imagination, as you reached the thrift stores of China (for such things do exist in the China of my mind) you would likely find bin after bin of propaganda-jacketed vinyl from decades past. 

On January 28, 1967, Billboard magazine reported:

Red China Chairman Mao Tze-tung has cut a record. "Red China's millions are being urged to Sing Along With Mao," reports Edward Keilan, a correspondent with Copley News Service. "Things being what they are in Red China," Keilan said, "the platter is bound to 'sell' more than a million."

Online auction lists show that during the 60s and 70s China produced a sizable number of discs, LPs of political speeches and EPs of screeching choirs of schoolchildren singing hymns to the State, often as embodied by Chairman Mao. Do these relics of a lost past now sit dust-covered in the record bins of Nanjing and Chengdu? Or are they suppressed, long ago relegated to the incinerator or landfill? Or have Western collectors simply snapped them up for their camp value?

Lachrimae Antiquae Stockhausen

Moodily, General Buckman opened the third drawer of the large desk and placed a tape-reel in the small transport he kept there. Dowland aires for four voices...he stood listening to one which he enjoyed very much, among all the songs in Dowland's lute books.

For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.




The first man, Buckman mused, to write a piece of abstract music. He removed the tape, put in the lute one, and stood listening to the Lachrimae Antiquae Pavan. From this, he said to himself, came, at last, the Beethoven final quartets. And everything else. Except for Wagner. He detested Wagner. Wagner and those like him, such as Berlioz, had set music back three centuries. Until Karlheinz Stockhausen in his Gesang der Jünglinge had once more brought music up to date.


Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, 1974.

Slaves and Masters

Reel to reel tape duplicator, 1967.

Classical Music From a Future Past

The hooting was replaced this time by a recording of Arkezian's Ad Astra, opus 61 in C major. It was the controversial London Symphony version with the 14-cycle 'scare' notes buried in the timpani.

-Robert Heinlein, Double Star, 1956

Alvin Lucier: Music on a Long Thin Wire

And, by the way, there have been some tests lately, there's a recording called "An Eighty-Foot Wire" or  "Music By a Long Thin Wire"–I thought this was a joke recording. It's an eighty-foot wire, they strung an eighty-foot wire out and they played a single tone through it and then they recorded it, but the eighty-foot wire did a single oscillation. The oscillation never varies. The oscillation [is] absolutely steady, the pulsations fed through the wire. And they recorded four LP sides, that wire creates the most incredibly beautiful sounds you've ever heard. And it doubled back, the sound[s] would come back and overlay each other, and there will be intervals of exquisite beauty. This is just an eighty-foot wire.

-Philip K. Dick, January 10, 1982.

Alvin Lucier: Music on a Long Thin Wire

Conceived in 1977.

Released on Lovely Music Ltd. VR1011-12 (double LP) in 1980.

Ghost Story (Circle of Fear)

Sony has recently announced the release of the early 70s supernatural TV series Ghost Story (later changed to Circle of Fear), for May 1, 2012. Produced by master of exploitation William Castle, the show was basically a rip off of the superior Rod Serling's Night Gallery, with Sebastian Cabot playing Serling's role as figurative cryptkeeper. Even the theme music to the series was composed by Billy Goldenberg who had done the music for the pilot episode of Night Gallery.

The show will probably only be a curiosity to most modern viewers, a period piece, but it did feature some A-list talent. Actors such as Helen Hayes, Gena Rowlands, Patricial Neal, and Janet Leigh show up in episodes and there are also early appearances by Jody Foster and Martin Sheen. For those in search of lighter 70s pop culure icons, both Leif Garrett and Susan Dey appear in the episode "Doorway to Death".  The series also recruited some quality writing talent such as Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, and D. C. Fontana, known for her work on the original Star Trek series.

Sony is releasing this set of DVDs as "manufacture on demand", a brilliant idea to keep overhead costs down while still offering offbeat content to those of us who might be interested in owning it. Now available for pre-order on Amazon.

This Perfect Day

Published in 1970, Ira Levin's This Perfect Day reads like a good pulp serial from an earlier era, a departure from the two lightly postmodern, almost-tongue-in-cheek works that bookended it. Written just after Rosemary's Baby which was turned into a very successful cult film by erratic genius Roman Polanski, and just before The Stepford Wives, which also went on to cult cinematic triumph, This Perfect Day was never filmed. 

With obvious inspiration from Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, Levin spins for us a vision of a dystopian, technocratic, socialist society in which everyone is, according to official dogma, perfectly equal. This equality extends to all aspects of the population, physical characteristics have been "normalized" through genetic manipulation and behavior is controlled through chemotherapy. All of this is governed and run by UniComp, a supercomputer buried deep inside a mountain in what was once Switzerland but is now known as EUR00001. 

The four founding fathers of this society are Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, the last two being fictional characters. The society has fully embraced the economic teachings of Marx and the pacifist teachings of early Christianity to the extent that words like "fight" are used as expletives. Violence and aggression are practically unheard of (thanks not only to policy but to large doses of behavior controlling drugs.) This quartet of heroes is given the same sort of status as a Lenin or Mao, it is very common to see framed prints such as Marx Writing or Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists on apartment walls. Levin seems to have drawn heavily from Maoist China for his model of a socialist society. There is a sense of Cultural Revolution style conformity, albeit more subtle: dissidents aren't punished but are "helped" through chemotherapy. There is no room for individuality, even down to the tiniest details. All of this is monitored and controlled by UniComp. But if rumors are true, somewhere out in the world there are areas which are not controlled by UniComp, these are the homes of The Incurables.

Despite the totalitarian cookie cutter aspect of this society there are many benefits. There is no crime, no murder, no racism or classism, no alcoholism or drug addiction (notwithstanding the monthly "treatments" all citizens receive), and no violence of any sort. Everyone is housed, clothed, and fed. Disease has for the most part been conquered. There are no haves and have nots. Overpopulation is controlled. Everyone is assigned a career suitable to their talents and skills as decided by UniComp, education is of course free. Sex is considered normal and healthy and not at all taboo or dirty, as is nudity. In short, most all the ills of society have been "solved". The only Horseman of the Apocalypse the society still has to contend with is Death, which happens predictably around age 62. The trade offs to these leaps in progress are a loss of most personal freedom and of the glorious emotional highs (and, yes, sometimes devastating lows) that normal unmedicated living can offer.

SPOILER ALERT: Though I'll not give away the whole plot if you read from here down there is a chance of spoilers if you plan to read the book.

Enter our hero, Li RM, also known as Chip. Chip is a free thinker. We watch his development from a child who simply questions some of the more basic ideas of the society he lives in ("Why can't I choose my own career?") into a full blown revolutionary as an adult. After meeting a group of like-minded individuals he and his girlfriend finally make it to an island which is not controlled by UniComp but by humans, The Incurables.

This is where the novel falls apart for me and is possibly why it was never filmed. Levin is thought to have been influenced by Ayn Rand's brand of libertartianism and is thought to have met her, at least briefly, on more than one occasion. It also seems that in recent years this novel has been championed by radical Libertarians as a "great work of Libertarian thought".

The new society in which Chip finds himself is one that would be very familiar to any citizen of the late 20th or early 21st cenury. The island of Majorca, now called Liberty, is run by the natives (also known as "lunkies"), a population which were never conquered or controlled by UniComp. There is also a population of refugees from the UniComp controlled areas, known as "steelies". The steelies are decidedly an underclass, akin to the Irish in mid-19th century America. Chip finds lodging in a shared tenement filled with shrieking alcoholics and screaming children. He finds work as a laborer in an iron mine and his girlfriend in a factory, both incomes are needed to make ends meet. He hears stories that some steelies have actually become successful and escaped the cycle of soul-crushing work for litte return. He later runs across a friend from his early days who has also escaped and subsequently became successful as an artist.

Overall this newly discovered society is one of squalor, poverty, misery, and backbreaking toil. Even the successful artist friend from Chip's past only maintains his position by kow-towing to the natives and doing commercial work that caters to their tastes instead of his own. But the society does offer freedom in the sense that one's choices are not controlled by a government or a computer, but by economic reality. Despite all the horror and misery of this society Chip prefers it to his past life. The failure here from a narrative point of view is that this is presented as common sense, as if 100% of the reading audience would consider this far superior to life controlled by UniComp. There is a sense of trade off here but it's not a no-brainer choice, if anything it's a dilemma: "Do I simply give in and take the easy route (the old life) with its perfectly functioning peaceful society, at the expense of personal liberty? Or do I suffer hostility, hard labor, and poverty, with only a slight chance of escape in exchange for what may very well end up being only an illusion of personal freedom?" A successful novel would've played on this dilemma, perhaps pointing out that there were no easy answers. By not doing so the novel becomes almost dogmatic.

This apparent dogmatism becomes all too apparent when compared with Levin's other works from the same era mentioned earlier: Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. In the original novel versions of these stories there's a sense that you're pretty sure of what seems to be happening but you're never certain. There's enough mystery left over to give the stories some universality and even depth. Still, This Perfect Day is a worthwhile entertaining read if you're a fan of dystopian fiction. It's not terribly original but does have some interesting approaches that don't appear in other works of the subgenre, particularly the use of chemotherapy as a societal panacaea. 

Given Ira Levin's track record of success when his novels are turned into movies (The Boys from Brazil was another of his novels) it's a bit of a surprise that this one has not made it to the big screen. Hollywood is very good at editing out unwanted political messages so the Libertarian angle shouldn't be much of a hinderance. It would be a brilliant opportunity for a composer to create a score that musically opposed the two societies (a la The Residents' The Tunes of Two Cities), the sounds of a sterile technophilic society colliding jarringly with those of a more earthy one that smells of whiskey and fish. 

Better Living Through Chemistry

Hungary, 1970s.

Gil Millé

In 1969 Rod Serling unveiled what was effectively an updated version of The Twilight Zone, his iconic series that gave Americans a distinct sense of unease throughout the first half of the 1960s. This new series, Rod Serling's Night Gallery, was The Twillight Zone for a generation that had already experienced hippiedom and the Summers of Love and '68. Night Gallery's characters wore bell bottoms and turtlenecks. In one episode, "Hells Bells", John Astin plays a full on hippie with shoulder length hair and a mustache worthy of Lemmy Kilmister, decked out in velour pants tucked into checkered brown leather boots, his speech peppered liberally with "man", "beautiful", and "bummer". The opening theme for the pilot episode was a relatively traditional horror theme with brief flashes of dissonant electronica composed by Billy Goldenberg. Given that the theme for The Twilight Zone had been positively radical when it first aired Serling and crew were obviously capable of stretching the limits a bit further. Once the series went into regular production in 1970 the theme had been replaced with one composed and performed by John Gilbert "Gil" Mellé, a sometimes avant-garde jazzman who had drifted into electronica. Supposedly the first all electronic theme music for a nationally televised program in the US (if anyone has any earlier candidates we'd love to hear about them), Mellé's piece was a warbling, wafting bit of surreality that told the viewer that he was entering a darker realm for the duration of the program. While not as catchy or even as memorable as the Twilight Zone theme, it was just as effective.

Gil Mellé was born in the New York City area (one source says Jersey City, New Jersey) in 1931, and was abandoned by his parents at the age of 2. He was raised by a family friend and began showing artistic tendencies early on, both in the visual arts and music. He began playing saxophone in the Greenwich Village jazz clubs while still in his teens. At 19 he signed to the legendary Blue Note label, becoming the first white musician on their roster. He began releasing records on the label, many featuring his own artwork on the covers. This led to his artwork being used on records by other musicians including Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins. In 1956 he signed with the Prestige label and recorded three well regarded, somewhat experimental LPs for them. 

By the 1960s Mellé was living in Los Angeles and composing scores for television and film. This period also saw his initial pioneering work in electronic music. Most early electronic musicians had to be as much technical wizard as musician and Mellé was no exception. He built his own synthesizers and an early version of the drum machine, according to some sources the first ever built. He began to perform electronic music with his band The Electronauts and then went on to record an all-electronic jazz album for Verve in 1967, Tome VI. 

A milestone in Mellé's career was his score for the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain. Based on Michael Crichton's 1969 novel of the same name, the film deals with an impending biological apocalypse of extraterrestrial origin. Mellé's all-electronic score for the film was groundbreaking in that it was practically unheard of at the time to score a film completely on synthesizers without the use of any traditional instruments. It also managed to create a taut sense of futuristic doom with its angular, jagged tones arhythmic amid washes of white noise. The original soundtrack LP in its original "octagon" sleeve (which has folded cut-outs that when pulled back create an octagonal opening through which the record can be seen) trades among collectors for relatively high prices. The album is a quality example of early dissonant electronica. Given the relative obscurity of most releases in the genre it's all the more surprising that it was released on a major label (Kapp) to a mass market audience, and would've been available for purchase at the local Kresge's or Woolworth's.

During the course of his career Gil Mellé wrote over 125 scores for television and film. Besides those already mentioned, he penned scores for Columbo, Frankenstein: The True Story, Kolchak: The Night Stalker,  and The Six Million Dollar Man. In later years Mellé spent more of his time focusing on his computer based digital painting and less on formal musical endeavors. He was also an avid hobbyist: collecting musical instruments, and restoring old cars and airplanes (as well as piloting them, a hobby shared by 2nd generation electronics artist Gary Numan.) Gil Mellé died of a heart attack in Malibu, California, in 2004, at the age of 73.

Artifacts of Past Futures

Simply stated, The Elsewhen Library is an archive dedicated to the study of futures past through the examination of the cultural debris those futures have left us in the present. Anachronism runs rampant here. The concepts of past, present, and future being ever fluid means that The Library has an ever shifting point of view. 

On this blog we plan to examine ephemeral objects from the global mass media from roughly the late 50s through the early 80s, the Golden Age of Analog. These "objects" include television programming, cinema, mass market literature, and of course, music. Most of the objects examined here will have been originally created for a general audience. We plan to stay away from self-conscious "high art" while at the same time searching out examples of esotericism that found their way into mass culture. 

Time and memory will be major themes here. Our sense of time is spherical, not linear. Time will become "unstuck" and flow backwards and forwards, up and down, all possible outcomes exist at once. We will present things almost remembered, never remembered, or dredge up lost memories from seemingly unrelated associations.

None of this is meant to sound like faux cultural theory mumbo-jumbo. The Elsewhen Library cannot be easily pinned down in a sound bite. We hope that as this blog develops a better sense of our mission will emerge and that it encourages our audience, however small, to pursue similar investigations of its own.