2024-09-06 The Watt from Pedro Show

September 6th, 2024, it's a Waffle Pedro Show!

Waffle Pedro Show!

Piedra Pedro Show, Happy Friday!

Start off with a live excerpt from the Linderhallen, Stuttgart, West Germany, November 4, 1963, John Coltrane.

This is the promise of live excerpt from a tune called The Promise.

The promise.

mike cooper with his uh new release steal away this is steal away a seven different pieces people

uh it's um well i'm gonna let mike cooper because those estonian software engineers

with their skype invention i got mike welcome board mike yeah last time i was in roma

that's right i was in rome yeah i was in rome we i used to live in rome i lived there 30

30 years or more and uh i was back there because we still have a place there and i was doing some

renovations so um there was good you were playing there that night while i was there so it was great

yeah absolute absolute that was before we played there was some fire kind of circus act before us

really trippy stuff i dug that gig much it was the people it was also that's right yeah

yeah

that's a that's an interesting place that it's uh it's an old um it was an old weapons arsenal

it's called and it's been it's one of the oldest squats in rome i guess because of the size of it

and the geographic location it's actually outside of the city uh it's it was it's been left alone

you know and it's so popular that the police really don't do anything at all about it

second time there i dug it much a lot of trippy artwork and that's right is that they have a lot

of uh good events there they even have like a wine fair and shit like that you know well let's get to

this music that you just made okay steal away you were commissioned by uh venice uh school there

yeah initially um it's the soundtrack to a french uh silent film from 1924

for for a silent film um it's called the film is called lin humane or the inhuman and um

it's about a guy who uh it's a kind of science fiction film because it's about a guy who

invents a system of bringing people back to life from from death and uh his subject in the film

is this opera singer who wants to um resuscitate her career

and uh he's he figures that the way she can do that is if she dies first and then he brings her

back but the thing is it's a very special film very special film because it was made um it was

made by basically the whole of the french art group that was in paris in 1924 so in fact eric

sati is in it and picasso is in it only only in crowd scenes but uh

a lot of the uh the shinography the you know the the sets and stuff were designed by ferdinand

the painter and um stuff like that and they initially um they they commissioned um darius

milhoud who was a classical music composer to do the soundtrack for it which was to be played live

and unfortunately the score that he made has been lost so no one actually knows

what it would have sounded like what his music sounded like and this fashion school in in venice

they were interested in the film because of the the futuristic fashion that is there's in this

film and um one of the organizers knew me from previous collaborations of doing music for silent

films and suggested me to do to do a live soundtrack and so i took darius milhoud's

um brief for the film apparently he he made a very percussive score for the for the film we will

never know because it never even found and so i took that brief so i would make a very percussive

score i made i used a lot of um jungle hip-hop rhythms for it and steal away is another version

of of that piece that are the the pieces that i made

it's a another version of the rhythm tracks that i used when i played live for the film

and on steal away i uh i indulged my um my love of lap steel guitar playing

and which as you know spans the whole world music scene it's everywhere lap steel guitar

i think every culture's got some kind of lap steel thing going right

absolutely everywhere

india indonesia japan everywhere and so i wanted to do um i used those rhythm tracks and i wanted

to play lap steel across the top of it and so i just um i got in my studio one day and they're all

first takes that i just played that that's basically all done me playing live lap steel

across my rhythm tracks and those rhythm tracks i processed them even more than uh than the ones

i used in the film

uh because it it was a record it wasn't going to be a live thing because i wanted it to be different

soundtrack so um i processed them so they were processed twice in fact and then i played them

live in my studio and just played live across the top of them into my into my zoom recorder

okay let's listen to number one and number three we're going to walk in this chunk of music here

and we're going to listen to number three we're going to listen to number three we're going to listen to number three

we're going to listen to number three we're going to listen to number three we're going to listen to number three

We'll be right back.

This is an architectural sort of thing.

I guess by being here I didn't make Schindler's List,

but I might have made Schindler's Rolodex.

© transcript Emily Beynon

¶¶

Thank God we rehearsed that piece so carefully.

¶¶

Thank you.

So don't, don't you let slip away

When you're leading the brigade

Hey

Even angels need a sign

Change

What needs to change

Sacrifice their own side

Time to leave them all behind

Easy, easy, easy, easy, easy

Come, easy, go

Don't you let it slip away

When you're leading the brigade

Hey

Even angels need a sign

Change

What needs to change

Sacrifice their own side

Sacrifice the fear inside

Thank you.

The cloud's not a cloud, it's a building on the ground

Sucking water and electrical current

The mind's not a gas in a bottle when it is trash

It's a bottle in social occurrence

The mind's not a gas in a bottle when it is trash

Metaphors matter

Thank you.

And the morning on the night

She's waiting for Friday

In the morning on the day

She's waiting for Friday

To burn her soul

And fuck them all

In the morning on the day

She's waiting for Friday

To burn her soul

And fuck them all

Her skin is burning

She wants to fuck off everything

But this time her body

Has a new one from me

Her skin is burning

She wants to fuck off everything

But this time her body

Has a new one from me

And fuck them all

Her skin is burning

She wants to fuck off everything

But this time her body

Has a new one From her body

She's reaching for him

And in the morning on the day

She's waiting for Friday

To burn her soul

In the morning on the day

She's waiting for Friday

To burn her soul

Thank you.

I'll tell you the story.

I was doing a film one time and I drank far too much beer before the gig.

And about halfway through, I'm really busting.

And so, unfortunately, I stopped using them so much.

I had this looping machine.

So I just put this loop on and ducked out.

Holden pattern.

And ducked out.

And my wife was in the audience.

She was the only person that noticed that I suddenly wasn't there.

And she said, I wonder what the hell had happened.

I thought you'd had a heart attack or something.

And I came back very quickly and carried on.

No one noticed apart from her.

It was good.

You can do that.

So, yeah.

So, I mean, directors.

I mean, I wonder how that works.

You know, I have noticed, like, drummers end up doing a lot of soundtracks to films.

Like.

Cliff Martinez on the last Cap'n Beefheart record.

He never got to do a gig with the Cap'n because he quit music and started doing art.

But he ended up doing all these.

And I wonder, and maybe you, being a slide guitarist, it gives you another perspective than somebody on a piano or, you know, traditional kind of composing stuff.

That's right.

I mean, you know, it's a whole different field.

Because initially, most of those silent films were accompanied by piano players.

As you've just said.

And the thing is, those guys, those people, the women as well, that did those soundtracks, they improvised all the way through those things, you know.

They had a head full of licks and stuff that they knew.

But they would make it, apparently, make it different every time they screened it, you know.

I guess some of them probably only got to do, you know, the sound.

Or sometimes maybe they were there for a week.

I don't know, you know.

And then, of course, there was also, some of those silent, old silent films had pre-recorded music that went around on gramophone records.

I don't know if you know that.

I did.

And, yeah, they used to play records.

Play records.

And so you sometimes find these.

There were cylinders, right?

Yeah.

I don't know whether the cylinders figured in the silent movie soundtrack era, but the records certainly did.

You sometimes.

You always find those records because they're huge.

Right, right.

They're like.

Do you know where I saw them, Mike?

Big 24-inch things.

I would see them up in Hollywood and when I'd get records mastered, they'd have them on the bulkhead there like as souvenirs.

Like, look at this.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There really wasn't a lot of tape recording.

Actually, the first.

That's right.

The first recordings were wires and they just sounded terrible.

So they made these giant records that would play for like an hour, hour and a half.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And one of my main inspirations when I started doing this long, I did it like 20, started doing this with films 25 years ago, was Bruce Brown.

He made Endless Summer.

You probably know that movie.

Endless Summer.

Yeah.

And Bruce Brown was a great inspiration for me because that's what he did.

No one would release his film.

And so what he did was he actually premiered Endless Summer.

In a cinema in the very center of America, apparently.

He found the town that is in the middle and he hired the cinema and he put the film on.

It's like as far away as you can get from any ocean at all.

I think in Kansas.

Yeah.

And he played records with the film and they toured with that Endless Summer just playing records.

And it was kind of, you know, gave me the idea of doing music for silent films.

That's how I started.

Oh, wow.

That's how I started doing it.

Okay.

Because that was kind of a groundbreaking thing.

Right?

Yeah, indeed.

Yeah.

Absolute.

Okay.

Let's listen to Steal Away 6 and 7.

We'll be right back.

Here we go.

Let's go.

¶¶

Thank you.

Samuel Lockwood out of Iowa City with the messenger, Mike Cooper, Steal Away.

Mike, the movie's called Inhumane, but why do you call your version of your own soundtrack Steal Away?

Because I did issue a version called Inhumane earlier on, which is the unprocessed rhythm tracks for that film.

It's on my bank account, so a bit further down, probably, down there.

Okay, so you didn't want any confusion there. Why did you choose to call it Steal Away?

Yeah, well, it's a play on the steal, steal, steal away, steal away, steal guitar, steal away, run away, be away.

I was thinking of a homonym, you know, steal, like thieving.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that as well.

Yeah, I think Uriah Heep had a song called Steal.

And I think that meant just getting away.

Yeah, yeah, indeed, yeah.

Yeah, and there's an old blues song called Stealing, Stealing, Stealing Back to My Old Time Used to Be.

Right, right, okay.

And you said you did this at home.

Indeed, yeah, I make all my records here at home nowadays.

I haven't been into a studio for years, years.

And has it...

Do everything.

When you started, where you're at now, did you do a lot of progress?

You know, because a lot of people, right, it can't be good unless I get more and more gear.

No, no, I'm a devout minimalist, I tell you, man.

But you notice it's about humans, right?

They've got to worry about which gear they're using, right?

Absolutely. They drive me fucking crazy, to be honest.

What microphone do you use in your studios? I don't have one.

Yeah.

What kind of quill did Edgar Allan Poe use to write The Raven?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really, I don't have a microphone.

No, the only time I would go into a studio, and it has been a long time, is if I need to do vocals.

I don't like to do vocals at home.

In fact, in my whole life, and I've been playing 60 years, I have never sung at home, in my house or in my studio.

I've only ever sung live.

And this is why...

A lot of my record output is live stuff, because I think live recording is the best music, to be honest.

I know you spend a lot of time in studios, but I don't know how you feel about that.

No, there's a spirit.

I feel that my best music is live, you know.

There's a spirit. I mean, you could tell John Coltrane, when he's in the studio, he's being too careful.

When you hear these live bootlegs of him playing, oh my God.

Okay, maybe the fellow...

Well, he's not the same, but there's a kind of spirit, a kind of energy that's missing from the studio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just sharing the acoustic space with other people as well, I think.

That's what makes a difference to it.

When you're live, when you're doing live.

There's this thing, too, they call red light fever, like you know it's being recorded.

Yeah.

And instead of working in a room where you've got a kind of responsibility to adopt...

Yeah.

Maybe you don't start getting so self-centered so much.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

The other idea, the other thing about the Steal Away is I like to listen to the different kinds of reverb that is applied on lap steel guitar around the world.

I mean, those African guys used to use these incredible repeat things on that.

Yeah.

So I sort of exercised a little bit around that on Steal Away.

So there's different reverbs and different echoes from different places spread across that record as well.

Whoa, interesting.

So that's like your producer hat, right?

That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But why not?

Because they sound different.

They sound different wherever you go, those lap steel guitar records.

Like Sly said, it's not where you're from, it's where you're at.

Exactly.

We're at the end of the second hour.

September 6th, 2024, this is WAP Feedro Show's special guest, Mike Cooper.

Hold time for hour three.

September 6th, 2024, third hour, WAP Feedro Show.

Thank you.

I'm not an ornithologist, but the other day I followed a bird for about 40 yards.

I was only following by default because I was walking along the sidewalk

and this particular bird, which was a robin, was walking along in front of me.

It wasn't walking so much as running in order to move forward at the same speed I was or better.

What got my attention was that the bird maintained its course down the sidewalk in front of me.

At any moment I expected it to take flight or divert from the pavement onto the adjoining lawn.

But it continued running.

It continued running along, leading a parade of me.

Obviously, it was just trying to stay out of my jaws of death or whatever danger it perceived I might be.

Finally, the sidewalk crossed a wide paved driveway and the bird turned ever so slightly to the right.

It stood in the driveway as I continued straight along my way.

It occurred to me that perhaps the bird thought I had turned and it had outrun me.

I don't know.

Why did the bird not fly?

I'm so used to the fact of a bird flying off as I stride down the sidewalk

that this deviation became the most bird-wondering I've ever done.

I can still see the bird on the other side of the sidewalk, so I'm gonna try and shoot it once.

But I'm just gonna try andmovre it over to my right.

I can't even take it in my hands.

I'll try and get it to move forward if it gets it to move back.

Oh, it's gone.

I can't believe it didn't jump in from the sky.

I mean, I know it can't.

It's a mistake.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for spending the evening with us and

I really respect the people of the band,

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for all the information.

Thank you.

And finally Mike Cooper, The Road To Hana.

So, tell us about this Volcano record?

Yeah.

We've been talking about, I played, my main instrument has always been lap steel guitar,

whether it, and I started off playing acoustic and I put, then I went across to play electro

acoustic and later started to play guitar.

and then electric lap steel.

My main instrument for most of my life, and I still have it,

and it was almost the first guitar I ever bought,

is a Resophonic 1932 National metal-bodied guitar.

And I've been many places and had many journeys with that musically.

And that features mostly under the volcano.

And it's an homage to, first of all, to Joseph Kekuku,

the Hawaiian guy who invented the lap steel guitar in the first place.

And not enough credit is given to Joseph

because he not only came up with the idea of playing the guitar

with a slide or a piece of metal or a penknife or whatever,

but he had some other innovations

because he...

He realized that you had to raise the strings up off of the fretboard

because otherwise you get the sound...

When you're sliding up and down the strings,

you get fret rattling on the steel bar.

So he raised it up.

And he also realized that he could make the thing louder with finger picks.

And he's the first guy to wear finger picks on the guitar.

And not a lot of people know that.

No, no, not at all.

You know, I read...

Some people, some people, yeah.

I read a book on Charlie Christian.

What's that?

And some of the first electric guitars were actually lap steels.

There was an amplifier company called a Wahoo.

That's right.

The first electric guitar was a lap steel.

Yeah.

I wouldn't doubt it.

Yeah.

And then, you know, people try to use microphones on arch tops and stuff.

But actually with these lap steels, no acoustic version.

They were the full-on first electric guitars.

That's right.

And they have amazing pickups as well.

I have a national, very old national electric lap steel.

And the pickup on it is phenomenal.

And in fact, if you look at Rykuda closely on stage sometime.

Yeah.

He's got on his Telecaster, I think it is.

He's taken the pickup off of a lap steel because it's got a big...

It's mounted on a large metal plate, in fact.

And he put it onto his...

It's either the Tele or the Stratocaster.

He's got this old lap steel pickup.

It was the bridge pickup.

And they are incredibly loud and with a beautiful tone.

You can plug it into any amplifier and it sounds amazing.

You know, I read somewhere that the Thunderbird bass that Gibson had in the 60s,

to make that bass pickup, they just took it off their lap steel.

There you go.

You see?

Ha!

Whoa.

I've got a couple of those.

I've got two of those.

What about this?

Let's go back to the record.

Yeah, that's mostly...

I'm playing mostly my National Resonator 1932 guitar on that.

It's also processed in places.

And there's some background electronics going on.

But most of the background electronics, in fact,

is processed lap steel guitar, acoustic lap steel guitar going on there.

Well, the title...

It's only kind of soundscapes with...

Yeah.

This title of this next tune I'm going to play,

it sounds like...

It's a documentary thing with Uncle Saul at Bailey House.

Yeah, it was an homage to, as I said in the line of notes,

it's an homage to places and people that I went to and met when...

I've only been twice to Hawaii, a long time ago now, 1995, 94, 95, something like that.

And I met a lot of people there and still stay in touch with the ones

that are still alive.

Yeah.

And still have good friends there.

Yeah.

And it's places...

Well, let's listen.

People are like postcards.

They're like postcards.

Yeah.

And diary entry.

Yeah.

, yeah.

Yeah.

¶¶

Thank you.

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is harassing me can i sit down and talk to you and he said sure why not and that's how we met fig

and and she started talking to him and she's you're american yeah where are you from he said

i'm from hawaii and she went hawaii that's where we're going next week

life is a trip and it was lovely it was great and we became great friends and um it turned out that

the the fig and his partner serena they lived this uh life of avoiding the sun and they would

travel between um between brazil alaska and the south of italy each time being in the winter in

each place because they'd had enough of the sun living in hawaii forever you know let me tell

the people and we stayed friends that's great that's beautiful so uncle saw at bailey's house

at cooper and we had bombers printing the old wind blows no good

pollution opera would bite old alfred road from faisaram

by muskeg mudset out of anchorage alaska and then finally tell me about this tune their voice

struck the black sunlit liver river like subterranean lightning ah now that's off of my

forthcoming cd on room 40 which will come out in november the titles all the titles on this cd

are

taken from a book which i have by my bedside here i'm laying on the bed talking to you

it's called it's called the guyana quartet by wilson harris the man watson harris wilson

harris was a guyanese writer and it's four four books in uh and it is one of the most

extraordinary books i've ever read because it's this kind of um magical realism but it was written

a long time before they coined the phrase magical realism and it's one of the few books

so i've read an old i sometimes reading it and i thought i have no idea what i'm reading

i can't understand i can't understand a word of it i'd have to go back and read it all

again and it was atlanta is the most extraordinary book i think goiana quarter and so i will

as i went through the book reading i i took out little um titles that had something phrases

or lines that had something to do with music and uh each of the pieces on the cd is called

slow motion lightning the cd is quite foggy and unembarrassing and for the has a lot of

by the way slow motion lightning it'll be on room 40 in november and each of the titles is

they are all taken from the guyana quartet by wilson harris that's the story folks yeah well

when it comes out in november can i put the invite out now because i'll be just getting

back to the tour come back on the show we can play it and talk about it absolutely yeah that

would be great and you know it was a joy magical uh realism i when i hear that you know latin

america writers right and i think of louis yes borgia right sure yeah yeah stuff like that yes

think about it literature is kind of dreamy and magical they're little symbols that we try to

make sense out of anyway absolutely i agree totally yes it's a great thing for inspiration

for music you know you don't have to worry about ripping off the licks yeah

yeah

you

it's abstract enough right yeah yeah right so yeah an artist can speak to another artist and

feel protected about his own uh protective yeah his own stuff his own licks mike it's always great

to have you on i can't wait till november and you come back on and we'll talk about this one here

you did a real good job with this uh inhumane soundtrack and the steal away version thank you

so much thanks yeah absolutely thank you people it's been september 6 2024 just what pedro should

keep

you