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
#2I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of feminine beauty and grace, was accosted by old ladies in parks to shame her for "pretending" to be a woman once she was outed by UK tabloids just as her career began to take off. It's understandable why she'd want to avoid embracing fame. Even today trans people, and especially women, are an acceptable punching bag for both the public at large and public figures to take out their frustrations on....
She didn't become world famous like she may have if she'd been lucky enough to be born cisgender, but the thing that matters most is whether she found happiness in her private life. I hope she did.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#3I 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.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#4I lived in Pawtucket, Rhode Island where Wendy was from in 1982 when Wendy did this and never heard of her. Pawtucket was a tough multi-ethnic working class town, so I can't imagine how difficult it was for her to be public at that time. I was really into synthesizers then too. Amazing stuff.
Tron Suite - Wendy Carlos (1982)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5RcNuQXuR4
Clockwork Orange [1971] - Theme
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#5I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…
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/indifference wasn't available to everyone -- it probably helped to be wealthy enough to do what you want, and to be already established as a respected musician (Carlos actually was and still is world-famous!), and I'm sure it wasn't even as universal for Carlos as she was feeling it to be when she gave that quote in 1979 -- the quote makes me wonder if things have gotten worse over the past few years.
While there's more public acceptance in some quarters, it's also become a much bigger controversy in fact. It's hard to imagine a public figure feeling the kind of "indifference" Carlos described, where it didn't actually effect her career much, it wasn't a big deal to it. It was seen as an oddity, yes, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now.
Rather than "even today", I wonder and suspect that some things may actually have gotten much worse than they were in 1979 -- for all kinds of things, actually.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#6Still 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.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#7I 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.
Every time I hear the Shining theme I feel the room get cold. So powerful.
Same with A Clockwork Orange (Queen Mary's funeral theme).
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#8I visited the Moog museum this summer with a friend while visiting Asheville, NC. I asked if they had any Wendy Carlos related memorabilia and they didn't seem to. I think may be there was a Switched on Bach vinyl up on a wall in the back.... It made me feel a little sad. I think living with gender dysphoria hurts people's self-esteem tremendously. She also lived in a time when April Ashley, who was the image of femi…
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/…
As that one quote says, paraphrasing: when you get old you realize that nobody was thinking about you this whole time anyway.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#9Owed 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.
Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer
#10The Clockwork Orange score still goes hard today. Love it.