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Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

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Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#31

Post by daneel_w »

Blackthorn wrote: post #15
daneel_w wrote: post #9

Owed to my father's long interest in electronic music, I'm the thankful owner of several of the 1960s/1970s original print Walter Carlos-attributed vinyl records and a few of the 1980s Wendy Carlos-attributed ones. Switched-On Bach/Brandenburgs, Sonic Seasonings, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer etc. all played a large part in my discovery of electronic music as a child.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

Ripping these original vinyl editions is already somewhere on my list of things-to-do-before-I-get-too-old. Currently I don't have a functional pickup for my record player. I will get around to it, some day. The Switched-On Boxed Set (CDs) was released in the late 90s, and I happen to have ripped that one about 20 years ago. I should do another FLAC or high-quality AAC rip of that box, for posterity, before eventual CD rot happens.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#32

Post by TchoBeer »

anamexis wrote: post #16
Blackthorn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them. https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos

You have no idea how long I've looked for this, thank you so much lol.

edit: wait, is this just a place that sells physical copies?

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#33

Post by thewebcount »

jancsika wrote: post #21
jrochkind1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

> in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman.

That local reporter was Tucker Carlson's father, Dick Carlson.[0] Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Carlson

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#34

Post by drannex »

lordfrito wrote: post #24
racl101 wrote: post #6

Still love the original theme from Tron. As much as the Tron (2010) movie's score had a "cool" factor it lacked the heart and soul of the original. If they ever do another one I'd like to see the original Carlos' Tron's leitmotif woven back into it.

Tron 2 soundtrack was such a huge disappointment from me, and I'm a die hard Daft Punk fan. Listened to it once, never went back to it. The original Tron soundtrack is such a joy, totally underrated... Amazing how she blended electronics with orchestration... in my memory it feels like a purely electronic soundtrack but it's not at all. The artistic impulse would be to go full electronic with something like this, she…

Marginally off topic here, but Occams Laser created a 'sequel' album to the Daft Punk score, and I feel it more closely feels like an updated original Tron soundtrack.

There are two complete albums they've released: The Grid[1], which is a concept album based on the 1982 original, and Return to the Grid[2] which is a reimagined concept album for Tron Legacy, both that I absolutely love listening to.

1. https://occamslaser.bandcamp.com/album/the-grid 2. https://occamslaser.bandcamp.com/album/return-to-the-grid

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#35

Post by MomoXenosaga »

sassyonsunday wrote: post #14
jrochkind1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final paragraph of the article is interesting though: > Her self-imposed seclusion is a cautionary tale for us today, something that she admitted in the 1979 People interview. “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent,” she said. “There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.” While that kind of tolerance/…

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating me…

I am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#37

Post by Gordonjcp »

danidiaz wrote: post #25

Adult Swim's "Lords of Synth" comedy short contains a homage to Wendy Carlos in the form of a certain "Carla Wendos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino There's also the documentary "Sisters with transistors" about women pioneers of electronic music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-3hlzpV7M

I did actually come looking for a reference to Lords of Synth, and I wish I could upvote this twice.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#38

Post by trynewideas »

at_a_remove wrote: post #3

I have this two CD compilation of Carlos' work on The Shining , probably a bootleg but how else could I get it? It's quite interesting and I think Kubrick ought to have used more of it.

There was Rediscovering Lost Scores, a two-volume CD set, as mentioned in the article. https://www.wendycarlos.com/+rls1.html https://www.wendycarlos.com/+rls2.html

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#39

Post by jrochkind1 »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #35
sassyonsunday wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years. They've gotten consistently worse since about 2015. I started transitioning in 2009 when I was 18. I come from a very conservative environment and growing up I'd even tried to come out as gay a few times only to be "shot down" more or less but in college I used my own money and I found doctors to help me look how I wanted and I started dating me…

I am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.

Every single person on the planet will have regrets in 20 years. A significant portion will have large regrets about things they cannot undo. This is human. It is not your job to make trans people miserable today because of your worry some of them might hypothetically have regrets in the future.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#40

Post by jancsika »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #22
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

That seems sensible too. What then do you make of Carlos' quote there from 1979? Maybe not even true for her as she was saying it? (why might she have said it then?) Or she somehow had very unusual experience? (for unclear reasons?) Other? Who knows, but you don't think it was an accurate or representative thing to say?

Look back in the article at what she was sacrificing in order to avoid potential problems. She had Stevie Wonder and George Harrison in her house and couldn't make herself walk down the stairs to meet them. When she did meet face to face with people, she pasted on sideburns and dressed in a suit to appear as a man.

I mean, think about that last part for a moment. Gender dysphoria caused distress in Carlos. Transitioning eased that distress for her. Then she was dressing in drag to present publicly for her career-- dressing in the exact way which previously caused her so much distress that she decided to transition in the first place!

Those practices are almost certainly the "monstrous waste of years of my life" she's talking about.

Anyhow, both things are true. First, the public was vastly more tolerant/indifferent than what she was protecting herself against (and, therefore, the precautions she had taken turned out to have been too extreme). Second, transphobia was so common during the time that even well-known feminists could spew forth with literally no repercussions for decades (and even then, no discernible repercussions AFAICT).

In short, Stevie Wonder and George Harrison are pretty cool guys. :)

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