Eno/Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts Reissued?

The bad:
Another one of these damn cheap cardboard sleeves. You know, the ones that are so tight that it's a bitch to extract the jewel case and you're going to end up destroying it anyway or throwing it out since it has nothing inherently useful.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/24/The_Medium_is_the_Massage_cover.jpg

I first heard it when I was 20 (in 2000) and it was quite possibly the record that made the fact that something special had been doing on "post-punk," that the Talking Heads and Elvis Costello and Siouxsie & the Banshees and Gang of Four and Wire records I loved weren't abberitions. I think it startled me because it was borrowing from music from around the world *without* being awful hippie "world music," which I didn't know was the modus operandi of art/underground music of the time.

It probably says something that your ears are no so accustomed to the hybridisation this record captures that because of its relative simplicity you associate it with hippie appropriation from an earlier time (a la Beatles re: sitars, hippies re: drum circles, Paul Simon a la "Me and Julio").

which is why I'm so allergic to the packaging on this reissue putting so much energy into making a case for it's 'importance', the new digital cover, the essays, the many boring pictures of them in the studio taking up full pages... the original packaging was perfect and author-anonymous. the new record ditches the sample attribtions in favor of a long winded toop essay about how important this record is. it's a fine essay, but bundling it with the record even puts me off and I love this record.

also... the new tracks are worth hearing but they're even more ephemeral and inconclusive... great to hear, but they do dilute the impact of the original record. calling them 'side 3' instead of 'auxillary' is going pretty far.

I've been enjoying the bad reviews the reissue's gotten though, they're validating... this record still isn't for anyone

well, ok then. for me the sound design is the main appeal on this record. I'm hooked three seconds into the first track.

George Harrison was actually a fairly decent player - nowhere near the way that Hindustani classical players can play, but I think the Beatles used sitar well and he wrote some good songs after having studied No. Indian classical music some. Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band was also a decent player.

How is this album a more "intelligent" use of world music elements?

Well, for starters, Eno & Byrne don't attempt to sing the melodies themselves, knowing they couldn't do it as well as the music that was inspiring them. For me that differenciates it from appropriation--they aren't standing off from afar worshiping the purity of something, they're unafraid of recontextualisation, but they're not going to try to pretend to be the source. It's like the way hip-hop musicians can respect the originality of the breakbeats sampled, but not be afraid of creating something new. Much as I enjoy the Beatles cute use of the "exotic," it comes off as basically an adornment, rather than an integral element.

It's like a record I heard of my parents' friend, wherein a group of aging white hippie women decided they wanted to create a record of "Native American" songs and chants, out of some (to my mind) misguided desire to honour "the" culture. When you want to recreate "world musics" like that, it seems to me you've got to bear an incredible responsibility to understand the music on its own terms--which if you did might make it clear you aren't in a position to recreate it. Eno and Byrne aren't beholden to that responsibility because what they're creating is overtly a fantasy--not a facsimile. I imagine they hoped that if someone were pulled most especially to the vocal melodies in the pieces, that person would seek out original recordings. They weren't seeking to replace the originals--whereas plenty of people only know the Sitar as a sound in the Beatles music (though I'm not sure that's entirely the Beatles fault).

I also wasn't really so much thinking of the early hippie indulgences in "Eastern" music as just bad drum circles I observed in college. And I was also thinking of bad "World" music artists that seem to think their unique blend of hip-hop elements and traditional Kora music, or whatever, is really innovative. I give Byrne and Eno more credit than that in terms of their inentions, but the sonic results of the former and the latter aren't all that different to my ears.

I'd venture that the difference between Harrison and Byrne in this case has more to do with the type of "recontextualization" they're interested in -- with Harrison it seems like it had more to do with experimentation and spirituality, with Byrne it seems to be more about anxiety and dislocation.

.... pretty please....?

How is this album a more "intelligent" use of world music elements?

-- Tim Ellison (thefriendlyfriendlybubbl...), April 26th, 2006.

This is only tangentially related, but Jon Pareles and David Lewiston (Nonesuch Explorer series dude) were just on Soundcheck on WNYC talking about what "world music" is and George Harrison figured heavily in the discussion. The really interesting bits, though, are the parts where Lewiston talks about his first trip to Bali to record gamelan music:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2006/05/10

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WSwpm0N8yMA/T8TAFLnG1mI/AAAAAAAAANY/tEZrq_u-Wxw/s1600/scan0001.jpg

http://mywalloftapes.blogspot.com/2012/05/life.html

still hissy, mastered very quiet, but still, better fidelity than the Ghosts bootleg

Unfortunately, that's gone.

I recently pulled this out again as I got interested in finding out how Eno was using his AMS DMX delay box to do the cut-up vocals on this (that's been unsuccessful).

But a few days ago, I found an interview from 1980 with Eno in which he talks about MLitBoG a bit -- and plays a few rough mixes he'd done of "America Is Waiting" (sans vocals, which he calls "Garbage Disco"), "Mea Culpa" (just the synth arpeggio and vocals), and a very early version of "The Carrier" (I think -- I get some of those tracks on the second side mixed up). Pretty interesting stuff:

http://ubu.com/sound/eno.html

oh, cool, think i've just heard an excerpt of that interview. thanks!

Rough mixes supposedly from a cassette Byrne gave to a guy when he was living in Alphabet City in the late 70s/early 80s. By far the best quality boots I've heard of this material.

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1121

Holy shit, this sound pretty familiar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIas_yxduDw

Admittedly late but what am I missing here, Josh? Is that supposed to be a groove Eno and Byrne appropriated?

Kind of reminiscent of Regiment?

No resemblance at all. A groove's a groove's a groove.

So this is being reissued again, on vinyl this time, with additional bonus tracks:

http://hhhhappy.com/my-life-in-the-bush-of-ghosts-set-for-vinyl-reissue-with-new-surprises/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/11/better-late-than-never-how-brian-eno-and-david-byrne-finally-laid-a-musical-ghost-to-rest

that's really interesting, thanks!

The Rolling Stone article mentioned towards the end is fascinating as well:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/my-life-in-the-bush-of-ghosts-252823/

I was expecting "sampling isn't real music" but it's a lot more nuanced, and encapsulates all of the criticisms that were levelled at world music many years later. Eno and Byrne just brush it off in their article.

So, I guess people from the past weren't a bunch of stupid racists after all. It also reminds me that I haven't read anything at all by Marshall McLuhan. He was huge before I was born, but when I was young it was all No Logo and whatever else you were supposed to pretend to read to be hip. McLuhan was a bit old-hat back then. I learn from the internet that he wasn't a real Marshall. That was just his name.

I never thought that Pareles review was able to land a convincing blow. Like: "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts does make me wonder, though, how Byrne or Eno would react if Dunya Yusin spliced together a little of 'Animals' and a bit of 'The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch,' then added her idea of a suitable backup. Does this global village have two-way traffic?"... Is he really suggesting he thinks they'd be upset? Seems like they would each have died to hear what that would have sounded like!

No Dunya Younes albums on Spotify

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR715ql1-Fk

that is awesome