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During this year's Miami Winter Music Conference, the New York-based Made Event will host 10 parties over the course of five days starting Tuesday, March 20.
Once again, Made will bring together some of the best electronic music artists from around the globe, including such names as Danny Howells, James Holden, Armin Van Buuren, Lee Burridge, Loco Dice, Richie Hawtin, Steve Bug, Martin Buttrich, Gabriel & Dresden, Mistress Barbara and many others.
Just like last year, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer will be heading down to Miami, chock full of custom installations of the Integral Sound system that will be utilized to create customized sound solutions.
MP3:
1 Overture (Instrumental) (2:09)
2 Rockin' With The Mods (2:55)
3 Give Me An American Girl (2:51)
4 Looks Like You're Falling In Love (2:15)
5 How Would We Look Without Zippers? (2:33)
6 He's A Penney Man (2:45)
7 There's Gonna Be A Party Here Tonight! / I'm Home / R.S.V.P. / There's Gonna Be A Party Here Tonight! (6:12)
8 Opening Day At The Golden Rule (7:13)
9 The Spirit Of '66 (1:57)
Spirit of '66 is a great intro to the world of the always upbeat, corny, bizarre, privately-pressed 1960s Industrial Musical. It's a findable record, and it's a perfect example of the outrageous expense corporations took on when staging these monstrosities during the 1960s. It's got a large cast of Broadway and Off-Broadway actors, one of the top composers in industrial theatre, and a gatefold cover. And all that for what normally was a one-night affair, or perhaps at most a two-week affair, with the show touring to several cities where the company had a corporate presence.
Michael Brown (pictured in the bow tie on the front cover) composed this show, and this was not his first musical for the J.C. Penney Company. In 1962, he composed and staged Penney Proud, on the advent of the company's 60th anniversary (and if you're lucky enough to find a fully loaded copy of that LP, you'll find lyric sheets and sheet music given out at the performances), and in 1960, he penned A Birthday Garland for Mr. James Cash Penney, an exceptionally rare industrial show.
In fact, Brown in his heyday was actually a renaissance man – his numerous musicals for corporations (DuPont, Belk's stores, Singer, Woolworth's, Talon zippers (!), Holiday Magazine) are all charmingly written and performed with utmost professionalism. Each has at least one if not several standout cuts. He also got the most out of his material. Case in point: in Penney Proud there's a song titled “The Penney Manager's Work Song” – in his 1965 Woolworth show Mr. Woolworth Had a Notion, there's the “Woolworth Manager Work Song” and the same goes for Belk's. In fact, in Brown's 1967 Talon zipper show, he repeated the track “How Would We Look Without Zippers?” from this show for Penney's.
Brown began his career on Broadway in Leonard Sillman's New Faces for 1952, and New Faces for 1956, both of which featured his original songs. Lest you think he was square, in 1962, he released an LP on Impulse titled Alarums and Excursions. He's also known for the popular series of children's books about Santa Mouse. And, he and his wife Joy entered literary history during the 50s when they gave writer Harper Lee a gift: enough cash to quit work for a year and write To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course... I love him for “He's a Penney Man.”
- Contributed by: Jonathan Ward
Images: Front Cover, Back Cover, Credits, Titles
Media: 12" LP
Album: J.C. Penney Company presents An Evening With Michael Brown And His Friends (Spirit of '66)
Credits: Words and Music by Michael Brown. Musical Director Norman Paris.
It wouldn’t be a winter NAMM music trade show without the galleries of musical curiosities that are Barry Wood’s NAMM Oddities. Barry’s finds range from the unique and useful to the utterly baffling. Many of the techno geek toys aren’t strictly new, but they are strictly strange and unusual. And there’s plenty of evidence to suggest us digital musicians aren’t nearly as odd as the people who play guitars made to look like women’s anatomy or constructed from hunting trophies.
Barry writes to his fans:
This was the tenth year that I’ve put myself through the torture that is a NAMM Show in order to expose these specimens to the harsh light of day.
I hope you appreciate my sacrifice ;)
We do, Barry, we do. We’ll sacrifice some productivity in your honor:
Delicious.
Mike aka Chronovalve writes CDM to share two new projects: a circuit-bent keyboard called Debris and the Musini, a children’s toy turned into a surprisingly sophisticated ambient music generator.
Here’s the surprise: just because these are circuit-bent / DIY projects doesn’t have to mean they sound like glitchy chaos. One of the conversations I had with Reed Ghazala, the “father of bending”, was about his disappointment that benders weren’t exploring broader timbral and musical horizons, at least for his taste. Mike definitely gets some interesting sounds out of these. For instance, the keyboard can absolutely rock the glitch:
But it can also enter traditional synth lead territory, with some subtle twists:
The Musini enters an entirely different musical dimension with some wild sonic landscapes, all from an aleatoric children’s toy:
More pics and sounds:
