Ghost In The Drum Machine
by Daniel Chamberlin

from http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/27/a.php

John Wood’s eyes scan the crowd in front of Amoeba, the massive Hollywood record store at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga. Teenagers stand on the corner, waiting for rides. A weather-beaten man sells incense next to the bike rack, and a hot-dog cart is parked around the corner. There’s a small scene here each weekend, though people are mostly on their way into the store, so it stays fluid. Wood has to work fast if he’s going to sell any of his bumper stickers tonight.

A pair of twin brothers dressed in hooded sweatshirts make their way across Sunset, and he catches their eyes with his wares. “Drum Machines Have No Soul,” reads his sticker. The twins pause to read the message. One reaches for the sticker saying, “You better believe it!”

“It’s a common-sense call for better music,” says Wood. “They cost a dollar each.”

On first impression Wood is a gregarious crackpot. He wears a hat announcing his “Drum Machines” slogan and a mauve dress jacket over a checkered button-up shirt. His glasses are large and plastic, his sneakers white and scuffed. Once he’s made eye contact with a potential customer, his sticker pitch — “It’s a common-sense call for better music” — is not far behind. A mussy-haired mod and his girlfriend stop and dig in their pockets for change.

When I approach him, Wood immediately launches into a polemic on music and social revolution, citing George Orwell and warning that “rampant technology will leach the meaning from life and relieve untold millions of their livelihoods.” After this proclamation he tells me that our interview is over. His one-man organization — the Society for the Rehumanization of American Music — is going to be bigger than Beatlemania. But it’s too early for him to talk to the press.

The interview isn’t really over though because Wood — a 53-year-old pianist — keeps talking. He tells me that his father is Randy Wood, founder of the old-school soul, gospel and rock & roll label Dot Records, an early home of Pat Boone. Then he tells me that he — John — ran the Studio Masters recording studio here in Hollywood for 25 years. Most important, he tells me that multitrack recording — the process by which members of a band record their music separately in the studio — is killing music as we know it.

Despite the rise in sightings of his sticker on record-store walls, lampposts and hipster bumpers, Wood is a less-than-convincing evangelist. When challenged, he insists that the statement on the sticker is not an argument but an objective fact. When I decline his offer to collaborate with me on writing this article, he asks if I am threatening him.

“This is my life,” he tells me as we pace the pavement. “If I’m going to talk to somebody about these things, I’d like you to understand it. But this is all grinding to a halt here.” Then he gets into his Volvo station wagon and drives off.

“Drum Machines Have No Soul” is nothing new. Wood’s concern with the purity of art echoes the sentiments of cultural critics such as Walter Benjamin, as well as pro-vinyl didacts Neil Young and Steve Albini. But there’s something brokenhearted about Wood that gives pathos to his tired nostalgia trip. So much so that when he calls me 30 minutes later, I scribble down the instructions to his apartment without hesitation.

An off-white 1929 Steinway piano dominates the single that Wood rents in a turn-of-the-century South Los Angeles house. A heavy blue punching bag sits nearby. Records are stacked on the floor next to an old two-track analog tape machine. Wood is divorced, and there’s a photograph of his two sons balanced on a speaker.

He’s much more relaxed here, though his message is no more flexible. He walks around the space, pausing to punch me on the shoulder as he holds forth on the value of old-school recording techniques. He says that modern pop music is to pre-’70s pop music as pro wrestling is to professional boxing. “LL Cool J is not Marvin Haggler,” he says. “LL Cool J is Hulk Hogan.”

It’s all just more nostalgia until he sits down at his piano and starts to play. “That’s what I do,” he says after improvising a tune. “I’m a musician.” He’s so earnest it makes me want to cry, despite his claim that OutKast doesn’t count as “important music.” He then shows me several of the albums he’s recorded over the last 30 years. My questions about what he is doing hawking bumper stickers get me more platitudes about “making people happy” and instigating social revolution. He soon lapses into what the world would be like if his manifesto were to come to fruition. Billboards honoring Art Blakey and Duke Ellington figure large in this fantasy.

You really miss those times, don’t you? I ask him.

“I think we all do,” he says. “Though a lot of people who are most excited about the bumper sticker are young guys with baseball hats going sideways and skateboards.”

What does the sticker mean to them?

“They just want to hear some real playing. It’s not complicated.”

-- Daniel Chamberlin

And now for some letters the LA Weekly printed in response to the above piece:

GLORIFIED MUZAK

Daniel Chamberlin’s piece on John Wood’s rants about drum machines and popular culture misses the point [A Considerable Town, “Ghost in the Drum Machine,” May 28–June 3]. Pop culture changes daily. Technology changes daily. The art of music making, however, does not change quite as quickly. What’s wrong with today’s popular music is not that it is not the Beatles or Frank Sinatra, but that it seems to be dominated by amateurs. Since the beginning of language and culture, music has been made by musicians. Today, being a musician is no longer a requirement for making musical products. Perhaps this explains why Wood, a fine jazz pianist and someone who is part of a family business that recorded some of the finest black artists of the 20th century, is now disgusted by the current trends in music and technology. Actually, his original idea for a bumper sticker was not “Drum Machines Have No Soul” but rather “Every Drive-By Shooting Is Accompanied by a Drum Machine.” Perhaps this is more to the point. As for me, I give away Wood’s bumper stickers to my students, and I wish him success in his attempts to rehumanize American music.

—David Johnson
California Institute of the Arts
School of Music
Valencia

What is the point of “Ghost in the Machine”? Is Daniel Chamberlin trying to say that it’s passé to love music? The only good parts of the article are the quotes by John Wood. At least he is someone willing to stick his neck out to make a difference. Why doesn’t Chamberlin take his OutKast CDs and drum machines and cram them up his ass? Real music is made by musicians. Perhaps there is already a piece of software that will make Chamberlin redundant, too.

—H. Fortner
Los Angeles

© 2010 Daniel Chamberlin