Thursday, December 16, 2010

X File


     Check out Matt Coker’s mini-interview with Exene Cervenka: Exene X's Out Nostalgia.
     X, for which Cervenka is lead singer, was perhaps the greatest of LA area bands in the 80s. I listened to them while in grad school at UCI; meanwhile, a younger Rebel Girl was closer to the action in South LA County. I’ve gotta get her to write about that scene.
     Back to Cervenka. Coker asked her to reminisce about the recording of the band’s classic debut album, Los Angeles. Reluctantly, she did, speaking of producer Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist who, fourteen years earlier, discovered Jim Morrison for his band the Doors:
     [Manzarek] read X lyrics in an L.A. Reader review slamming the band, [and he] realized the verse nailed the times and immediately sought out a show in whichever La-La Land hole X were playing at the time. ¶ Blown away by the haunting harmonies of Cervenka and her future ex-husband John Doe, as well as the musicianship of guitar god Billy Zoom and hot drummer D.J. Bonebrake, Manzarek made the proper introductions, went on to back X on keyboards live, and produced Los Angeles and three subsequent, critically acclaimed albums.
     “Even though it was really serious, it was still really fun,” Cervenka says of the Los Angeles sessions. “We were kids, and we’d do a take, and I remember hearing Ray over the phone telling us, ‘Remember, this is forever,’ which is the worst thing you could say, and he knew that. But, guess what? We just stopped goofing off.”
     She says Manzarek “did an amazingly great job,” although she now wishes the engineering on that record had been better.
     “In New York and London, they had state-of-the-art studios for people like Brian Eno and Elvis Costello. Stuff was taken more seriously in those cities,” she recalls. “Here, our engineering, when you even got in good studios, those engineers used to work with the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, country rock, hair rock. They had their version of what a snare drum sounds like. Ray would have to communicate what he wanted to people who couldn’t speak the language we were speaking to get the best sounds.”
     Manzarek, who is joining the band on keyboards for the first time in 30 years at the anniversary shows, deserves the credit as much as anyone for getting the essence of X on record, according to Cervenka. “It was very live, very much uncensored, pretty raw,” she says. “I think what that captured was more important than the tone or whether the drums could have sounded better.”….

The cursing philosopher and other tales

CSEA election results:
     Before leaving campus this afternoon, I ran into a classified employee who informed me that the “incumbent candidates” were elected in today’s CSEA election (in the SOCCCD). Let us know details if you have them.

UPDATE: The chapter website—SOCCCD Chapter 586 CSEA—is congratulating the winners in today’s election: “Congratulations to Daune Main Chapter President Gee Dickson 1st Vice President Megan Newton, Secretary Have a great Holiday” [original syntax]
     Presumably, they mean to say, "Congratulations to Daune Main, Chapter President; Gee Dickson, 1st Vice President; Megan Newton, Secretary. Have a great Holiday!"

Today in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

• University Cans Cursing Philosophy Lecturer

     ...The lecturer, Daniel Petersen, said he had told students that “stuff happens”—though he used a more emphatic word than “stuff”—to illustrate concepts like free will and determinism. Parents complained, and Mr. Petersen was suspended without pay. Then he was informed that he wouldn’t be returning to teach next semester....

• Congress Approves Changes to New GI Bill

     A bill to expand the benefits of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which helps finance higher education for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, received approval by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, clearing the way for President Obama's signature....

• Scholars Elicit a 'Cultural Genome' From 5.2 Million Google-Digitized Books

     The English language is going through a time of huge growth. Humanity is forgetting its history more rapidly each year. And celebrities are losing their fame faster than in the past. ¶ Those are some of the findings in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science by a Harvard-led team of researchers. The scholars quantified cultural trends by investigating the frequency with which words appeared over time in a database of about 5.2 million books, roughly 4 percent of all volumes ever published, according to Harvard's announcement....

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...