Issue #11 : Music for Running (and/or Death)

This issue’s featured piece of music is:
‘Symphony #9’ by Anton Bruckner
Conducted by Bernard Haitink
Performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Here are some strange words; ones I never thought I’d utter, yet alone write down: I am running a half marathon; and in under two weeks’ time. Well, eek.

I have never run; I did briefly, at school, on Southampton Common in a navy blue vest pausing briefly within bushes for a Marlboro Light or Menthol we’d hidden down our pants on a day trip to Calais. These were the days when running was still kind of idealistic; naïve; a game of football only with the football temporarily mislaid. How rangy we all were! Our internal organs didn’t have all this… fur. These days I feel my chest is like a mismanaged kettle; so long as the orange light comes on though, we’ll still get a cup of tea, nevermind the limescale. Second para and that’s already one metaphor strangled at birth. Hopefully not death too.

Actually I have occasionally enjoyed the running. At first the pain was too much; my face, heart, lungs and legs were deeply etched with pain all the way around – felt gouged at, perhaps by a screwdriver. It’s very hilly here. But then my body got used to it – it’s amazing how bodies can get used to stuff – and then I even received fleeting glimpses of that mythic thing known as the Zone. Nothing hurt for a whole thirty (downhill) seconds. And then I would run into tree again, and start crying, again.

Things became considerably less tedious – because let’s face it, running is actually incredibly boring - two weeks into my training schedule, approximately three weeks ago, when I belatedly realized that I could listen to music as I ran. And that listening to music might a) distract me from the pain, and b) inspire me to i) keep going, and ii) run slightly faster. Thus I began a strict auditioning process, quite literally road-testing various pieces of music in search of the ultimate piece of motivational audio-vascular distraction. This has now become rather an obsession.

The obvious initial choice, because of its unyielding relentlessness thereby performance elevation, was techno. Presumably one could hook up to the beat like plugging into the National Grid or something. As I’ve never been a full-on technohead, I tried some more minimalist stuff like Basic Channel, but found it all too synthetic-sounding. The sound of repetitive machines, no matter how feathered, is not conducive to a calm and functioning physiology. T’were all too close, too much immediate nfff, nfff – there wasn’t any space left in my head to relax into the running with all this going on in the foreground. I also couldn’t keep up with the BPM; it felt like I was constantly in a Benny Hill chase scene.

Next I tried various drone records – hanging myself out on the line, in other words. Run to the unraveling ball of wool – well it made sense on paper. Yes it did. Yet this was even worse than the techno; it was just annoying – like having a wasp, though not as bad as W.A.S.P. – trapped in your ear. One’s head requires air circulating around it in order to be able to surrender itself to the Drone. To contextualize that delicious sine-wave tremble, natural environmental ambience is required; it must be approached askew, like one must approach a sheep.

Then, on a whim, I tried Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, and everything suddenly clicked. Here was a vast palate of fundamentally organic, physical sound that I could actually run inside. I felt cocooned within it; protected; metaphysically buoyant. Hundreds of wooden and brass and whatever-clarinets-are-made-of instruments sympathetically tickled, all captured in some big old (Dutch?) concert hall on yards of old fashioned magnetic tape. Sound as subsistence! At last, here was the musical nourishment my devastated knee joints had been craving all these… couple of days. Brucker’s monumental, Zen-like artifices – akin to agonizingly long, oceanic drift; plate tectonics, even – made the whole of the world around me epic, yet refreshingly cheese-free. It was like being in a film - a really long and rather boring film, perhaps following a glacier very slowly down a valley, riveting yes, but a film nevertheless. And I was the star; that interminable glacier was me. Even in the most prosaic of circumstances. For example:

Standing with a stitch waiting for traffic lights to change in evening drizzle and gloom with people in passing cars secretly laughing at you.

Without music: somewhat humiliating
With, say, techno: belittling
With Bruckner’s Ninth: deeply humane

Tripping and sprawling over a root on the footpath through the golf course in front of two old ladies out walking their dogs.

Without music: frankly pathetic
With, say, techno: geeky and a bit tragic
With Bruckner’s Ninth: noble

Spitting but it going down your t-shirt instead and to cap that, those teenage girls over there saw it happen.

Without music: probably an arrestable offence
With, say, techno: like something out of an Adam Sandler film – i.e. inexcusable
With Bruckner’s Ninth: avuncular

By running this half marathon – the Great Clarendon Way, on September 30th - I am attempting to raise a grand total of £2000, for two extremely worthwhile causes:

Wells for India (www.wellsforindia.org)
and
The Southampton and Winchester Visitors Group, who work with refugees and asylum seekers in the Hampshire area.

Both of these organizations could really do with the money. So please sponsor me online here: www.justgiving.com/sebhunter

Or, if you would like to sponsor me on behalf of the SWVG, simply hit reply to this newsletter and I’ll email you a postal address to send a cheque to.

I know how easy it is to ignore this kind of exhortation, but please – I beg you! – just click the link above or reply to this email – any money you might be able to spare will be massively appreciated. It’ll take no time at all, and at justgiving.com you can donate as little as £2. Like one of my best friends has. The tight Scottish SPAM FILTER.

Other music that I have found it somewhat rewarding to run to includes:

The first Agitation Free album, Malesch
John Cage’s Indeterminacy
Bruckner’s Second Symphony
Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony

There hasn’t been time to try much else, as all these Bruckner symphonies tend to go on for several hours.

I have a thing for Bruckner; have had for a while. Though he was a Late Romantic, with all the OTT dynamic bombast that usually implies, there’s none of that frenzied egomania and self-righteous, tortured navel-gazing you get with the likes of Mahler and R. Strauss. Instead of this usual heightened sense of inflated self, Bruckner used these uber-orchestral rotors to reach out in the other direction: towards the eternal; the timeless; the selfless. And this epic selflessness will accompany you all the way to the horizon and back, several times over. And that’s just the first movement, available below. Bruckner died before he could finish the symphony BTW. That’s the curse of the Ninth - often it’s their last: Beethoven, Bruckner, Schubert, Mahler, Schnittke, Vaughan Williams – all succumbed to it. Ninths all reek of death – that long and terrified stare into the abyss; indeed the very pressure of Ninth-composition alone has killed several.

Please sponsor me though. I’m miles away from my target, and you can help me reach it. Imagine how guilty you’ll feel if you don’t and then I die during the race, or have to be shot, like a horse. On this uplifting note I bit you adieu. Ready, steady, Chariots of Fire.

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Download the First Movement of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony for free here

Buy the fabulous box-set it’s taken from, from amazon.co.uk here

Or from amazon.com here

Don’t forget to sponsor me here

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Readers’ Comments pertaining to Issue #10

‘My friend Andy calls cassette singles "cassingles".’ – Andrea, United States 

‘Just last week I learned that almost every album I need (whatever format it may be in) can be found at a resale store. (Isn't THAT comforting thought for a teenager.) I bought a bunch of records, but only one tape. This tape- my very first one - happens to be Flesh & Blood by Poison. I paid 45 cents for it. I kind of bought it as a joke, but really it's not half bad. My parents think I'm crazy, but I don't pay any attention to them- I can't. I'm too busy trying to remember how to work the tape player so I can listen to it again. Haha Thanks!’ - Nadia (Chicago, USA)

‘Music collectors are the most desperate guys (always guys) in the world. So... Well no, I don't think they're crazy enough to pay money for an empty box. However: Daryll-Ann is no longer and Seaborne West is a hard to find gem. Bettie Serveert btw used to be an excellent band. Used to be is the keyword here: like so many other bands it was better for them and for us to split after their first - truly excellent - album. Oh well, tonight This is Spinal Tap on Dutch television, maybe we'll learn something on carreer planning for bands (or on how to grow a cool mustache). Greets.’ - Jan Peter, Holland

‘Please can I have the Spiritualized tape if you don’t want it?’ – Chris McT, Littleton

‘Like the way you blame all the goth stuff on your poor wife. Think I’ll try that one.’ – Jarvis Storm (it says here), UK

‘Seriously, can I borrow the Rave Generator?’ – Rob, Winchester

‘Can I recomend readers of the Bitterest Pill to recordings of the Chopin Polonaise by Rubenstien (mid 1930's) and/or Schnabel/Fischer or even earlier in 1907 try Vladimir de Pachmann (if you want the true mad Russian-German eccentric angle) Compared to Peter Katin (who he?!) these are better renditions, musical pure...superb. And on 78 records and in mono, but you can't win them all!’ - Andy from Loddon, Norfolk.

‘I love the Bitterest Pill – don’t ever stop writing it.’ – Fiona, location unknown (though not my house, honest)

‘Funny how all your cassettes are exactly two thirds of the way through side 1, as mine are exactly one third of the way through side 2. Most odd.’ – Astroturf, Brixton

‘I have several shoeboxes of old cassettes. They are kind of like porno magazines in that you just can't bring yourself to throw them away. Most of these are from my college days when I lived in a dorm, borrowed records from everyone I met and recorded them, increasing the size of my music library in massive proportions for a minimal cost. 

Most of these tapes went unheard for over a decade until my company transferred me to Cleveland, Ohio for a one year assignment. Sorry Cleveland, but the only thing you really have going for you is a fantastic rapid transit system. 

After realizing that riding the train downtown and to the far flung suburbs every weekday was a boring experience, I bought a cheap Walkman knock-off and would listen to one 90 minute cassette per day. That was one side, usually one whole album, on the way to work and another on the way back. I refused to let myself hit the fast forward at any time and just pulled a new tape from a box at random each morning until I had gone thru them all. It was great to rediscover all my old music. Well, most of it.  I can't believe I used to think some of that s**t was good. 

Being the poor college student that I was at the time, if there was a song I liked that got a lot of airplay on the radio, or just a one hit wonder that I wanted off of an otherwise lack luster release, I would tape it in the blank space at the end of one of my albums I had already copied. I had forgotten about that, and these "bonus tracks" that would pop up on the end of each side of the tape were a real treat. Thanks for the laughs as always.’ - Christopher from the USA

‘I'll see your 'proper manufactured', and raise you...
Living Colour, Vivid
Wendy & Lisa, Fruit at the Bottom
Star Wars, Original Soundtrack
Bad Religion, No Control 
Father Abraham & The Smurfs (self titled)
Danzig, Thrall-Demonsweatlive
Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation 1814
Kiss, Killers
Michelle Shocked, Short Sharp Shocked
Adamski, Killer (cassette single, slip box)
The Beloved, Happiness (boxless)
Ice T, Power
NIN, Pretty Hate Machine (boxless)
Jesus Jones, Doubt
Faith No More, Angel Dust
Bruce Hornsby & The Range, Scenes From The Southside
Journey, Escape
Tricky Disco, Tricky Disco (cassette single)
Dog D'Amour, A Graveyard of Empty Bottles (boxless)
The Stone Roses, Elephant Stone (cassette single, boxless)
Weird Science, Original Soundtrack
3rd Bass, The Cactus Album (boxless)
Tom Robinson Band, Power in the Darkness
Georgia Satellites, (self titled)
Tool, Opiate
... kept/found, barely alive, in my parent's cellar, in a damp fungus
covered old Stussy satchel.
I fancied Wendy from Wendy & Lisa, and Kelly Le Brock
from Weird Science, plus my dad knows Michelle Shocked
and Tom Robinson, so that at least explains four of the above.
Thanks for the somewhat urgent Chopin number.
Watch Li Je playing Paganini: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98y0Q7nLGWk&mode=related&search=
Peas, David’ – ‘David’ (real name and address withheld)

‘Owning Look What the Cat Dragged In by Poison is a crime against humanity.’ – Stevie Gibson, Old Compton Street, Soho, London

[That’s enough Poison – Ed.]

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The Bitterest Pill welcomes all readers’ comments. A selection of your comments will appear at the bottom of the next issue. To comment, merely hit ‘reply’ and simply pour on the sarcasm, vitriol and angry tellings-off. I’m sorry this issue was so delayed; it’s because of all the running.