NOISES ON AND OFF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 351, 15 March 1946, Page 16

NOISES ON AND OFF

Spike Jones and his Futurist Background

NE third of a century has passed since the Italian Luigi Russolo put out his Futurist Manifesto on "The Art of Noises" in which he said music would have to break out of its narrow circle of pure musical sounds "and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds." Not nearly so long a time has passed since "Spike" Jones, a former drummer in the dance band accompanying Bob Crosby’s radio show, decided to experiment in sound effects as a substitute for music, and shortly found that musical nonsense was a highly profitable stock-in-trade. Now, Spike Jones is to music and commercial radio as Salvador Dali is to art and windowdressing. His latest record, according to a December copy of Time, is a cranky version of Tchaikovski’s Nutcracker Suite. In this, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy has camel bells (whatever they are), the Arab Dance has "an accompaniment of carefully modulated burps." Tchaikovski's flutes, piccolos, and muted strings are drowned out by noises made with washboards, police sirens, and breaking glass. \ Previous records by "Spike Jones and his City Slickers,’ some of which are broadcast in dance music sessions by the NBS ("Chloe," "Hotchi Cornia," and "Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep," for instance) have contained cowbells, a motor horn, a.popgun, a saw, an octave of flit-guns (tuned in E flat), two octaves of tuned doorbells, a .22 pistol, and "every conceivable noise capable of emerging from a human larynx." Spike’ Jones is also said to have

invented an "Anvilphone,"’ a "crashophone"’ (breaking glass), a poontangophone" (cigar box and lathe), and a "latrinophone" (a lavatory seat strung with catgut, very popular with GI’s on a tour in Europe). History Predicts Itself All this is not entirely new. Luigi Russolo thought things out quite fully in 1913. In his Futurist Manifesto, Russolo wrote: "Life in ancient times was silent. In the 19th Century, with the invention of

machines, Noise was born. To-day, Noise is triumphant, and reigns supreme over the senses of men. For many centuries life evolved in silence, or, at most, with but a muted sound .. . if we overlook such exceptional phenomena as hurricanes, tempests, avalanches, waterfalls, nature is silent. ... "The art of music at first sought and achieved purity and sweetness of sound; later it blended diverse sounds, but always with intent to caress the ear. To-day, growing ever more complicated, it seeks . . . sounds thet. fall most dissonantly, strangely, and harshly upon the ear. We thus approach nearer to the Music of Noise. ... "The most complicated of orchestras reduce themselves to four or five classes of instruments differing in timbre. .. . So that modern music .. . struggles vainly with this circle. "We must break out of this narrow citcle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noisesounds. ... "We futurists have all deeply loved the music of the great composers. Beethoven and Wagner for many years wrung our hearts. But now we are satiated with them and derive much greater pleasure from ideally combining the noises of street-cars, internalcombustion engines, automobiles, and busy crowds, than from rehearing for example the Eroica or the Pastoral." Six Families After a good deal more about the noises of a great modern city, sounds of air, water, or gas in pipes, purring of motors ("indubitable animalism’’), flapping of awnings and flags, railway stations, forges, power stations, etc., Signor Russolo enumerates the futurist orchestra’s six families of noises, "which we shall soon produce mechanically": (1) Booms, thunderclaps, explosions, crashes, splashes, roars. (2) Whistles, hisses, snorts. (3) Whispers, murmurs, mutterings, bustling noises, gurgles. (4) Screams, screeches, _rustlings, buzzes, cracklings, etc. (5) Noises of percussion on metals, wood, stone, terra-cotta, etc. .

(6) Voices of animals and men: shouts, shrieks, groans, howls, laughs, wheezes, sobs. That was away back in 1913. It didn’t catch on. Russolo gave exhibitions in European cities. But Europe was getting ready to make a louder noise than anything Russolo could fix up. His exhibitions were followed by violent disturbances, And at this stage the musical reference books drop him, and we have no way of finding out what happened to him. : Mussolini Approved However, his friend F. T. Marinetti (who actually put out the first Futurist Manifesto, four years before Russolo’s) got on quite well in the world. Mussolini called him "the fearless soldier who offered his country a dauntless passion . . « instilled in me the feeling of the ocean and the power of the machine,’ made him a Senator, and put him in charge of the cultural side of Fascism. Marinetti and Russolo together gave a concert in Milan in April, 1914, with 19 noise-instruments: 3 bumblers, 2 exploders, 3 thunderers, 3 whistlers, 2 rufflers, 2 gurglers, 1 fracasseur, 2 stridors, and 1 snorer. There was, according to Marinetti’s account of the affair, a deafening uproar of "pastists’ who wanted to break up the concert. Suddenly "an extraordinary thing" happened, five futurists (including himself) descended into the audience and attacked the pastists with punches, sticks, etc., "drunk with stupidity and traditional rage." The battle lasted half an hour, while Russolo continued to direct his 19 noisters on the stage... . Pastists Pasted "Our knowledge of boxing and our enthusiasm for fighting enabled us to emerge safe and sound," said Signor Marinetti. "The pastists had 11 wounded, who had to be taken to the first-aid station." But Marinetti kept on. Even after 20 years (in 1934) he put out a "Futurist | Manifesto of Aeromusic, Synthetic, Geometric, Curative": "Our futurist temperament, accelerated by the dynamic quality of mechanical civilisation, has attained a hypersensitivity thirsting ‘after essence, speed, and trenchant decision. Long declamations, ‘hesitation, analysis and endless trains. of words-lamentations-and-bells die in boredom in the ears of those’ who are swiftly rising in the air...,

"Futurist music, a synthetic expression of great economic, erotic, heroic aviational, mechanical dynamism, will be a curative music." America Caught On Italy still didn’t catch on. Perhaps Russolo and Marinetti didn’t know-as Spike Jones evidently does-just how to go about it. Spike Jones was bored, too. He had been beating the drum in John Scott Trotter’s "slick sweet band" for six years, when he decided to "louse up some old cornplasters like CAloe." Soon he had ten players (nine men and a girl harpist) synchronising his noises with a high degree of proficiency. To record "Hotchi Cornia" he rented a goat that bleated when its tail was twisted. For "Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her, Jeep" the City Slickers ripped an old car to pieces. When these things were not enough, the players crunched walnuts in their teeth, and ripped mustard plasters from each other’s chests. "They did it," says Time, "with deliberate and conscious musicianship." The Slickers’ best seller was in 1942, a Hitler lampoon called "Der Fuebrer’s |

Face" (it isnot broadcast here). It sold 1,500,000 records. Then the Slickers went on tour, "We were too corny for sophisticated people, and’ too sophisticated for corny people," says Spike Jones. Then he "set about deflating some of Tin Pan Alley’s more pretentious tunes . «. played Chloe straight, with all the tomtoms and jungle mating cries that everyone else affects, then gave it the business (‘Chloe, where are you, you old bat, you?’)." When they did Cocktails for Two (to a 1934 sob ballad) it was so popular in the jukeboxes that the Victor Company made 150,000 discs with/it on both sides so that both could be worn to death. When they did. the Blue Danube it was, musically speaking, an imitation of Wayne King’s orchestra, "plus four strategically placed belches." Coming up are said to be "Chopin’s Mayonnaise"; a parody of Xavier Cugat called "Benzedrine Beguine"; and another new version of Carmen. But what Spike Jones wants to do most of all is have a section of ’cellos playing under water. He doesn’t know yet how it will be done,

Se Children’s Session at 3ZB is again featuring the Stamp Man, who, incidentally, is collecting from young listeners stamps for the Queen’s Hospital for Children, in London. One of the wards of this hospital is maintained solely by the sale of stamps, from all over the world. * * % STATION 3ZB is now presenting "The March of Industry," covering the story of the rise of New Zealand’s secondary industries. . Processes and products of Dominion manufactures have been filmed and exhibited from time to time and now radio is taking a hand. The programme is heard on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10.15 p.m.