The ride was terrific. Unfortunately, my playlist never got past a zippy little Yves Montand number called “Vel’ d’Hiv.” The song is named after a Parisian sports stadium, the Vélodrome d’Hiver, used for indoor bicycle track racing until its demolition in 1959. Just to prove they were really in Paris, the stadium’s final night featured Salvador Dali exploding a miniature Eiffel Tower.

“Vel’ d’Hiv,” while not as well-known as Montand’s “A Bicyclette,” is a fine little bike song. But my bicycle playlist ground to a halt when I found out Montand recorded the song in May 1948. That’s less than six years after the same bicycle stadium was the site of one of the most horrifying episodes in French history, the Vel’d'Hiv Roundup. On July 16 and 17, 1942, French police arrested more than 13,000 Jewish men, women and children. Most of those arrested were held in the Vélodrome d’Hiver. The victims remained there for five days with no open bathrooms and almost no food or water. Then it got much worse. Under orders of the Vichy government, the detainees were handed over to the Nazis, who sent them to their demise at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Long-hidden details of the roundup are featured in a recent novel and film, Sarah’s Key, and a moving documentary, La Rafle. The Vichy government’s secretary-general of the police, René Bousquet, personally refused to spare children from the roundup. He managed to avoid major legal consequences after the war, and later became a friend and financial supporter of a prominent French politician. Someone from the LePen family, perhaps? Surprise, it was actually Francois Mitterand.

Back to music: a fascinating site called Music and the Holocaust has an intriguing section on the “double life” of jazz during Vichy France. Performers often used “Frenchified” American titles and substituted French names for those of American composers (Louis Armstrong’s songs, for example, were attributed to Jean Sablon). This dubious makeover, which seemed to bring jazz closer to French nationalism, may also have helped keep the music alive and under the political radar during the war.

Others couldn’t conceal themselves so easily. It took a “miracle” for Gypsy innovator Django Reinhart to survive the war. He actually was captured, and escaped only because the commander happened to be a fan.

Yves Montand, “Vel’ d’Hiv”

Bee Gees, “To Be Or Not To Be”

Smiths, “Shakespeare’s Sister”

Moby Grape, “Omaha”

What’s the business, yeah
Don’t take my life away
Don’t take my life away

Merrill Garbus
Tune-Yards, Bizness

The MIDI signal from the guitar is routed through a fiber optic cable to control the Tesla coils.

About ArcAttack:

Creators of the original Singing Tesla Coils, the crew of ArcAttack uses their high tech wizardry to generate a truly ‘electrifying’ performance. Two custom engineered hand built Tesla Coils throw out electrical arcs up to twelve feet long, each one acting as an instrument with a sound reminiscent of the early days of the synthesizer. A robotic drum set accompanies the spectacle, it’s high power LED’s flashing bright colors with the stroke of each mechanically actuated stick, while ArcAttack’s six members churn out rhythmic instrumental melodies. Live instruments meet drum loops and samples to produce rock, electronica and indie with a splash of punk and a dash of metal served with a side of pop. During the show, the MC engages both the crowd and the Tesla Coils by walking through ½ Million Volt sparks wearing the relatively thin layer of his chain mail Faraday suit.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.

A movie about Glennie’s life and music, Touch the Sound (2004), moved me profoundly. The film steps slowly, observing Glennie as she plays a lone snare in the middle of Grand Central Station, ticks out a percussion masterpiece on an ashtray, water glass and plate in a Fuji sushi bar, creates a symphony with junk found behind her family barn in Scotland, watches/listens to a Zen monk raking gravel. Between clips, Glennie is caught in contemplative moments, explaining her philosophy of sound and vibration, about how sound is so much more than hearing.

Footage of her collaboration with master guitarist Fred Frith at an abandoned sugar factory is woven through. In one segment, Glennie is on the ground floor on marimba, Frith on a catwalk 100 feet away, the two of them communicating delicately through the echoing space. By halfway through, the raw emotion of the piece is apparent in Glennie’s face; by the end, she’s in tears.

Her 2007 TED Talk, How to listen to music with your whole body: is powerful.

Take a quiet night, chillax, rent this movie, and re-think how you think about sound.

Cafe Tacuba, “Rarotonga”

Instead of a standard review, decided to try and tell the story through Storify, capturing other people’s impressions and images (both from tonight’s performance and of Spalding in general) via social media, interwoven with some of my own commentary. Not sure this works – what do you think?

• Samuel Barber, “Adagio for Strings” (According to Alex Ross, “whenever the American dream suffers a catastrophic setback, Barber’s Adagio plays on the radio.”)
• The Who, “Pictures of Lily” (Boy sees girl of his dreams and discovers she’s been dead for four decades.)
• Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “Tears of a Clown” (When clowns aren’t creepy, they’re liars, or worse, opera fans.)
• Richard Thompson, “End of the Rainbow” (The author of ditties like “The Wall of Death” sings to a baby, claiming there’s nothing at the end of the rainbow. Thanks, Dad.)
• Nina Simone, “Little Girl Blue” (Bored, sad girl counts the raindrops and discovers evaporation.)
• Marty Robbins, “Streets of Laredo” (The singing gunslinger gets shot to death in “El Paso,” but that’s mild compared to this cowboy variation on the ancient “Unfortunate Rake” story.)
• Billie Holiday, “Gloomy Sunday” (The darkest version I’ve heard of the Hungarian Suicide Song. The composer later committed suicide.)
• Louvin Brothers, “Knoxville Girl” (The most violent song on the cherub-voiced death-gospel duo’s aptly named Tragic Songs of Life, reworking the English “Wexford Girl” murder ballad.)
• Big Star, “Holocaust” (Power pop drained of any power, words drained of any meaning, Beach Boys melodies sinking into quicksand.)
• Hüsker Dü, “Too Far Down”/ “Hardly Getting Over It” (The titans of melodic noise at their greyest, not seeing even a little light.)
• The Antlers, “Bear” (Heartbreaking ode to premature senility and the animal inside.)
• Etta James, “I’d Rather Go Blind” (Passive-agressive romantic obsession turns the lights out and entertains us.)
• Carter Family, “Engine 143″ (Lots of songs are metaphorical train wrecks. This one’s the real deal.)
• Graham Parker, “You Can’t Be Too Strong” (“The doctor gets nervous completing the service, he’s all rubber gloves and no head.”)
• Pernice Brothers, “Chicken Wire” (Garage clutter, exhaust fumes, and no redeeming sentiments.)
• George Jones, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (Why? Because he’s dead, that’s why.)

That playlist could keep you in therapy for years. But none of them outdo the real King of Pain, Skip James. Blues was never bluer. On “Devil Got My Woman,” Skip out-depresses the whole field by declaring that he’d rather be the devil.

Skip James, “Devil Got My Woman”

Big Star, “Holocaust”

Nina Simone, “Little Girl Blue”

Joy Division remains the foundation of Manchester’s Factory Records sound, featured in the fascinating movie 24-Hour Party People and a more serious biopic, Control. Overcome by epilepsy and a bizarre love triangle, Curtis committed suicide just before the band’s planned world tour. The surviving members formed New Order, an equally influential band that was hardly chipper by any normal standard (“Love Vigilantes,” for example, basically retells the Top Forty war weeper “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” from the perspective of the dead guy). But compared to Joy Division’s intensity, New Order might as well have been Kajagoogoo or Wang Chung.

Earlier this month, I got my first chance to see Unknown Pleasures performed live, in a Los Angeles show featuring Joy Division and New Order’s former bassist and backup singer, Peter Hook, and his new band, the Light. I could quibble about the Light’s performance. Hook’s vocals were decent, but sometimes sounded like he was leading cheers for Manchester United. Guest singer Moby looked enthusiastic, but came off a bit like last century’s lightbulb. Still, the band was good enough to revive the majesty of these songs (and make me feel as if that bad date had never ended).

To perk myself up after the show, I scarfed too many shots of espresso and jotted down a few mildly happy thoughts about the Joy Division revival:

1. Their Disease is Still Better than the Cure

It’s easy to smirk at Joy Division for inspiring future mopeheads to whine into their microphones. Interpol and scores of other less catchy Joy Division-inspired bands have certainly overdone the emoting. But Joy Division also deserves better than to be known only as the emirs of emo and designer doom. As Robert Christgau has noted, Joy Division struggled against depression, rather than wearing it like a designer suit. Joy Division has inspired legions of misfits–among them Bono, Kurt Cobain, Thom Yorke, Morrisey, and even Robert Smith–to reach great, if sometimes grandiose heights. And the band’s taut riffs, fusing punk velocity to Can’s minimalism, sometimes have a life of their own.

Joy Division, “She’s Lost Control”

2. The Muppets Never Covered Any Joy Division Songs

Okay, go ahead and snicker. But a 2009 piece on the Topless Robot blog, The 7 Most Depressing Songs Ever Sung By a Muppet, refers to Kermit and Rowlf’s duet on “I Hope That Something Better Comes Along” as “pretty much the pre-schooler equivalent of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.” And here’s the really depressing thing: this song only rates as Number Six on the list of the most depressing Muppet songs. The winner is a Fraggle funeral dirge, which we won’t post here because we care about our readers.

Muppets, “I Hope That Something Better Comes Along”

3. They Didn’t Write the Most Depressing Song of All Time

Many have cited Joy Division’s final single, “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” as the most depressing song ever. It’s a remarkable song, whose first passage captures in a few bars the end of one era and the beginning of another. But I can’t rate it the gloomiest. The music has too much energy. I keep thinking of it as half of a medley with “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and wondering how Toni Tenille would sing it. There are stacks of of George Jones, Leonard Cohen, Son House and Tom Waits songs I consider more depressing, but lists like this have to get personal. My selections follow in the next post.

Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Neil Sedaka, “Love Will Keep Us Together”