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Chaumont (((O))) Lecture
Listening/reading session04.06.2005, page 2 of 6
Set the controls for
the heart of the sun
01. The Beatles
'Here Comes The Sun' 03:05
A logical choice to begin this compilation with, George Harrison's 'Here Comes The Sun' is a beautiful and simple ode to the sun. Over a crisp and clean grid of a plucky guitar and a wobbly Moog, sentences are repeated in an almost typographic way. This pattern-like feeling is strongest in the middle section, when the repeating phrase "Sun sun sun / Here it comes" is interweaved with a geometric composition of dry handclaps.The first song of side B of the Abbey Road album, 'Here Comes The Sun' feels like a relief (or like a sunset) after the last song of side A, John Lennon's obsessive and almost unhealthy 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)'.
So why does the link between the sun and music, as displayed in this song and countless others, feels so logical and natural? Our guess is that the answer might be found in the ritual roots in music.
As the birth of music is without doubt connected with prehistoric belief systems, and as the oldest religions were in fact all variations on solar worship, it is safe to assume that music always had this ritual element of celebrating the sun as a deity. An explanation George Harrison would be quite glad with.
To push our luck even further, we also think that there is a logical connection to be found between the idea of 'sunny music' and the city of Chaumont. After all, 'chaud' means 'hot' and 'mont' means 'mountain'. Hot mountain.
And to continue the pseudo-religious trip we started a few sentences earlier, the idea of a mountain as a place to come closer to the sun is a reoccurring theme in the Old Testament. Judaism is very much a 'volcanic' version of solar worship, one in which the sun reveals itself as a mountain god, through burning bushes and flaming rocks. In Exodus 34:30-35, when Moses returned from the mountain Sinai, his head was literally shining like a sun. In other words, the 'music-sun-mountain' association is not as farfetched as it seems. (Okay, we admit, it is pretty farfetched. But it made for an interesting story, didn't it?).
LP: The Beatles 'Abbey Road', Apple Records (1969).
02. Velvet Underground
'Who Loves The Sun' 02:48
Sung by Doug Yule, who in retrospect looks a little overshadowed by the other members of the VU, 'Who Loves The Sun' is a rhetorical tune that almost seems to echo The Beatles' 'Here Comes The Sun'.But despite its faux-naive song structure, and its sweet 'pa pa pa pa' chorus, the feeling projected here is somewhat more pessimistic: "Who loves the sun / who cares that it makes plants grow / who cares what it does / since you broke my heart?". Sun-dazed depression at its finest.
Brian Eno famously noted that, although the Velvet Underground didn't sell a lot of records in its lifetime, everyone who bought one went out and started a band of their own. Which is quite a hopeful model, an example of how small, marginal groups of people can influence, in indirect ways, a seemingly untouchable mainstream.
We're not saying that we compare ourselves to the Velvet Underground, that would be ridiculous; but we do admit that there is some hope to be found in the idea that small cultural phenomena can have effects beyond its direct reach.
LP: Velvet Underground 'Loaded', Atlantic (1970).
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