{"id":1739,"date":"2023-06-11T17:49:20","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T00:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2024-06-10T04:15:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T11:15:17","slug":"music-more-slave-to-the-rhythm-with-stephen-lipson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/music-more-slave-to-the-rhythm-with-stephen-lipson\/","title":{"rendered":"music: more &#8220;Slave to the Rhythm&#8221; with Stephen Lipson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Continuing on from <a href=\"\/blog\/2021\/02\/music-trevor-horn-gigantism\/\">Trevor Horn gigantism<\/a>&#8230; I watched &#8220;Songs That Changed Music: Grace Jones &#8211; Slave To The Rhythm &#8211; with Stephen Lipson&#8221; from the <a href=\"https:\/\/producelikeapro.com\/blog\/slave-to-the-rhythm-grace-jones\/\">article by Produce Like a Pro<\/a>. He&#8217;s credited as co-writer and performer on lead guitar, bass, and keyboards, but his production and engineering contribution is even bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Songs That Changed Music: Grace Jones - Slave To The Rhythm - with Stephen Lipson\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/47M5Oz6kUKs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through a routing glitch on a Chinese server I somehow accessed &#8220;Slave to the Rhythm&#8221; on YouTubifyy Music from far in the future, and the top-rated comment was &#8220;Who&#8217;s still digging this and neuro-remixing it in 2073?&#8221; As @Jacco Talman wrote in a YouTube comment &#8220;it has it all: a thundering drumtrack, a funky bass-line, a haunting guitar [multiple guitars!], a complete classic orchestra [Richard Niles wrote an entire orchestral arrangement of which Horn and Lipson only used a few brilliant bits], and of course the unforgettable voice of Grace Jones.&#8221; I&#8217;d add all the &#8220;little bits of jewelry&#8221; like the <code>23:5<code>0<\/code><\/code> Dinngg! sound (from Luis Jardim), the <code>12:<code>2<\/code>8<\/code> thrUMMM upward keyboard whoosh (from Bruce and Andy Richards), the <code>3:59<\/code> &#8220;not Pan pipes&#8221; flute, a dozen more motifs and riffs, the glockenspiel, the portentous Ian Shane narration&#8230; In 1985 I thought making an album out of one song was lazy pretention, but listening to remixes like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_DnEjwwj8L4\">Drupus&#8217; Rough Slave Mix<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1MTOI2DdWjg\">Bruce Forest and DJ Friction&#8217;s Rmx<\/a>, you realize &#8220;Slave to the Rhythm&#8221; is a never-ending 30-course gourmet buffet. Every meal is different and special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The work it took to assemble a 24-track digital master of this \ud83e\udd2f: record new sound effect to half-inch tape, play it in sync with the original, punch it in to record onto a spare track on a second 24-track digital recorder, later program the playback offset to record tracks on the second recorder back to the first one&#8230; If that&#8217;s <code>2<code>1:28<\/code><\/code> &#8220;one day of recording&#8221;, it was a long day! Nowadays a musician opens a simple &#8220;breathy singer recorded in the bedroom with guitar&#8221; file in a DAW, and the screen fills with 70 tracks, so many the artist can&#8217;t remember what they all are. Mr. Lipson is being ridiculously modest at <code>4:2<code>0<\/code><\/code> &#8220;that&#8217;s kind of all there is&#8230; it is really a pretty bare track&#8221; and <code>26:<code>1<\/code>7<\/code> &#8220;It&#8217;s pretty simple, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;\ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Choose your magnum opus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve got no beef with people anointing &#8220;Poison Arrow&#8221; (ABC, 1982), &#8220;Buffalo Gals&#8221; (Malcolm McLaren, 1982), &#8220;Owner of a Lonely Heart&#8221; (Yes, 1983), or &#8220;Welcome to the Pleasuredome&#8221; (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 1984), or even later Seal pop as Trevor Horn&#8217;s greatest achievement, but &#8220;Slave to the Rhythm&#8221; is at least their equal. And it&#8217;s great to see Stephen Lipson getting more credit for this masterpiece and giving it back to the musicians and writers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Two and a half hours of Trevor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m also digesting Trevor Horn&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redbullmusicacademy.com\/lectures\/trevor-horn-buggles-in-the-bassbin\">mammoth interview with Red Bull Academy<\/a>, which ended up a 2 1\/2-hour video <em>after trimming out all the songs<\/em>. I want to turn it into an entire multimedia presentation hyperlinking all the names, with music\/YouTube clips of every musical influence and recording that Trevor and the interviewer mention. Where are today&#8217;s multimedia authoring tools?! I can&#8217;t even figure out how to make the timestamps in the above paragraph jump to a particular point in the Lipson interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Trevor Horn talks Buffalo Gals, Grace Jones and Double Dutch | Red Bull Music Academy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DR4GwBRWR6Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Also, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bruce_Woolley\">Bruce Woolley<\/a> pops up again as original writer. He also worked with Thomas Dolby at the time but I know nothing about him. Amateur musicology is never-ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continuing on from Trevor Horn gigantism&#8230; I watched &#8220;Songs That Changed Music: Grace Jones &#8211; Slave To The Rhythm &#8211; with Stephen Lipson&#8221; from the article by Produce Like a Pro. He&#8217;s credited as co-writer and performer on lead guitar, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/music-more-slave-to-the-rhythm-with-stephen-lipson\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2003,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/2003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}