Mass Mobs

Transcript

chaos/improv/jamming is not linear..U2 and the songwriting process

From Forbes article:

..."The thing about U2 songs,” guitarist The Edge told Rolling Stone about the making of their forthcoming album, “is there is no set way they come into being. A couple of songs on the album have literally been like, ‘We’re all together, here’s some chords, let’s see what happens.’ And suddenly, an hour later, there is a song, an arrangement and a recording. Other things, you know there is something great in there, how to make it really count.”

U2’s songwriting started out chaotic because they were four teenagers who didn’t know what they were doing. Nearly four decades later, and despite becoming accomplished musicians, they have held on to their chaotic method of songwriting.

Most bands have one or two primary songwriters who bring semi-completed songs to the rest of the band, who polish them and stamp the band’s sound onto them. U2 is one of the rare bands that initiates the songwriting process with skeletal ideas that they jam, or improvise on, until a song emerges. Or doesn’t. It’s an ambiguous, long, and frustrating process with many false starts and dead ends. It takes patience, commitment and faith.

Which U2 has. They’ve been through enough transitions as a band – for example from the soulful Joshua Tree to the edgy Achtung Baby and back – to know that as a creative unit, they are most likely to grow by maintaining this improvisational working method. Because it’s worked for them in the past, U2 has resisted the temptation to adopt a more formulaic approach.

Research shows that in other creative domains, significant work comes from a chaotic rather than a structured linear process....continued

"The Matrix in Real Life" by Improv Everywhere

Because there is just Something  so

                    God-haunted  and gospel-echoing
 about

• The Matrix (see posts tagged "the Matrix")

and

• improv  (see Ron Martoia and N. T. Wright for that connection)

..I was glad to see that

 Improv Everywhere

 staged 

"The Matrix in Real Life".

Video below, backstory here

progressive "improv theatre" worship with Pastor Paul McCartney

Play some random tracks from "Electric Arguments," the third album by "The Fireman"...(or the first two albums,   "Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest"[ audio here ]and  "Rush"[audio here] for that matter, as they're instrumental, and kind of ambient-techno )...and have people guess 
who
        it
             is.

For a really good time, play tracks 10-13 (videos below) from   "Electric Arguments,"  right now for someone, and ask them who they think the artist is.

Was Paul McCartney even on their list?

If your first thought of Paul McCartney is
 "silly love songs" 
 sappy pop;

                         and you saw Lennon or Harrisson as the experimental  Beatle..

Try on The Fireman albums...Paul (with some help from  Youth (Martin Glover, one of whose bands is Celtic Cross, and who has worked/associated with Godhaunted types like U2, Maria McKee and Zoe) is the Fireman, and reviews routinely drop comparisons to

Pink Floyd, 
           Tubular Bells,
                           King Crimson and...

Yes, you read right!

A bit of Eno..a touch of emo.

 techno,
         trance,
                                  house,                     Celtic and........

"Sing the Changes" is not the most representative song of the third album, but it's the most likely to be sung in church! (Hey.."I'm not religous, but I'm very spiritual"  Paul has already prayed for U2..and prays with his band every night ..why can't we play/pray him in church?)

Here it is below.. it is followed by some interviews, and then the whole album.
On a few songs a listener might say "That sounds a little like McCartney..but it can't be."

From Wikipedia:

The duo borrowed the title "Electric Arguments" from the poem "Kansas City to St. Louis" by Allen Ginsberg. In Wired magazine, McCartney stated this was because "he's been looking at the beauty of word combinations rather than their meaning."^[3]

“	We had a ball making this album, and it was a great departure because it seemed more like improv theatre. In the improv spirit, there are William Burroughs-type cut-ups in the lyrics. I came to "Sing the Changes," as well as all the other songs in the album, with absolutely no concept of what the melody or lyrics would be about. So it was like writing on the spot, which I think lent an electricity to the whole sound.	”
—Paul McCartney [4]

Almost sounds Bongolesean.
When I had had my wife guess who this song was, she ventured "U2?"

"Sing the Changes"

like the sun playing in the morning 
feel the choir, feel the thunder 
every ladder leads to heaven 
call it ransom, draw the picture 

sing the changes as you're sleeping 
feel the quiet   thunder 
see the changes o'er and o'er
feel the choir hear the thunder 

like  the sunflake  in the morning 
see the quiet feel the thunder 
every ladder leads to heaven 
colored pencils draw the picture 

sing your praises as you're sleeping 
sing the changes any wonder
i feel the sense of childlike wonder 
sing your praises as you're sleeping 

sing the changes as you're sleeping 
feel the quiet hear the thunder 
sing  the changes o'er and o'er 
feel the choir in the thunder 
sing your praises as you're sleeping 
feel the quiet  hear the thunder 
sing the changes go on  on  
and everybody have a sense of  shine like wonder 

sing His praises as you're sleeping 
feel the fire  hear the thunder 
sing the changes o'er and o'er    
and everybody's  got a sense of 
childlike wonder 

I want some more  __ fire 
you can't stop me, time!

Official "Sing the Changes" video:
 "Sing the Changes" live ("Good Evening New York"):
br />

"Sing the Changes" on Letterman...on the rooftop (another U2...and Beatles) reference):


 Interview:

Written interview here

-- --
 1) Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight:


2)Two Magpies:

3)Sing the Changes


4)Travelling Light":

5) Highway:

6) light from your lighthouse:
7)Sun is shining:

8) Dance 'Till We're High:

9)Lifelong Passion:

10)is this love?

11) Lovers In A Dream:

12)Universal Here, Everlasting Now
13)"Don't Stop Running"..even ends with backmasking...guess Paul isn't dead...interesting message: "warmer than the sun and cooler than the air,"  I wonder Who that is.

H

Hidden track.e
  

The shared experience of absurdity: Charlie Todd

See also: 

• all "Improv Everywhere" videos
•  "Improv Eveywhere" documentary trailer

"Improv Eveywhere" documentary trailer

Bible as improv, our story and God's story (Martoia)

--

improv and container-creating nut brokers who refuse to shamanistically count, steal, and sexualize sheep

Knowing that the "three temptations" of the pastor (at least here and now  in the US)  may well be to

•  count sheep,
• steal sheep             and
• sexualize the sheep...............

Remembering  with a shudder that day a few pastorates and moons ago when I realized the woman I was counseling in my pastor's study would do anything I said, as she saw me as the God-man.....

I am glad the times and wineskins....especially cultural expectations........... are changing.

As you can see on the "topical diving" list at right, my most frequent topic around here (other than U2-klessia, of course) is "the role of the pastor."  I am on a roll  here:

role of the pastor (194 posts)

I have so many problems  with all the ways we have read into the Bible what a pastor is and should be, I don't know where to start.

How about with the truth every pastor should know: officially, the word "pastor" shows up a total of zero times in the Bible!

That was not just a trick question..but a way of reminding me that it only shows up in the plural..and in passing.  That will preach..Time to let all the saints (another word that shows up not once in the Bible in the singular) come marching into the discernment and dialogue...

I won't even mention what every pastor knows: the Bible knows absolutely nothing of Christians showing up for a weekly worship service where a pastor preaches a sermon..

But I will mention how proud I am of my students  (I mean my fellow learners, thanks to Len Sweet..I love how  Sweet, when introducing former students of his, says something like, "This is Ted, we studied together in the nineties."...Not, "I was Ted's professor in seminary.") who are required to plant churches  (on a posterboard, see some here and here)) based only on the key passages in Scripture about church..the results are amazing, subversive, refreshing  ("Can we have a church in the park?")....and I think only once has a church poster even mentioned a pastor.

Having said that, there is a role for us pastor-types.
Since  in the only  Scripture that "pastors" shows up is Ephesians 4:11, it is coupled with (sometimes hyphenated with) "teacher,"...

 ..besides the obvious primary role of "shepherding" (which is what the word literally means), there is obviously something so primary  (maybe secondary) and primal  to the role of teaching.

Which brings me to "The Bible as Improv,"  (excerpt here, large sample from Google books here)  one of the many vital books by a guy formerly known as a pastor and now known as a "transformational architect": Ron Martoia. In a paragraph which begins with those five word phrase that consume my blog posts:

"the role of the pastor can be to broker the historical communities' reading of the drama.  They can provide the resources of what current drama script-ure reading experts are saying these days  (read, theologians)  and what histotrically our tradition has understood.  Pastors  provide context  and create containers for community but move out of the mythic role of walking answer manuals. " p. 161

This is great, not only does it connect me to the "broker" image  (see "i broker and sell nuts...who may contain a small amount of alcohol")that St. Tony Bagato got me midrashing on, it reminds me that Rabbi Adam and his congregation do so well: midrash (assuming  the rabbihood of all believers).  Their current wikiseries is actually/delightfully  called "'Drashing Through  Matthew."

Of course, this is simply  a "binding 
and loosing" as the Jews understood it, anyway.
A binding that looses the pastor to be looser.

Or a "wiki-synthesis"  that keeps the pastor in charge.....of the fact that he's not always in charge.


More from Martoia:

a wiki-synthesis  exercise ought to be a primary practice in church today.  We have given people the atomized, dissected, broken-apart version of the bibical narrative but haven't done well in helping them capture the big pcture.  This requires pastors to practice a different sort of skill.  Intsead of being the shamans and dispensers of gnostic truth--"the stuff only I can learn because I have the tools and you don't"--we become reading facilitators.  (p.,160)

It made my day when one of my sharp students responded to a final exam question asking the class to list several of the suggested  (read, the "correct") answers to the narrative flow/structural outline of the Gospel of Matthew with "Is it okay if we include some of our own that are not on the list?"

My only answer could have been "I would be thrilled if you did that!"
Every teacher needs more students like that!

Someone will ask "Doesn't that open the door to heresy?"

The only answer is"of course it does...do it, anyway!"

 It also opens up the door to God teaching the pastor-teacher a thing or three.

Act 5 is on..