Steve Mykolyn | Songs For A Funeral

Steve Mykolyn

Songs For A Funeral

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2019

12" vinyl record, gatefold sleeve

Edition of 144 copies signed and numbered copies

With all of the celebrity deaths in the week between Christmas and New Years (Dorothy Iannone, Pele, Vivienne Westwood, Pope XVI, Barbara Walters, gallerist Ronald Feldman, Modest Mouse drummer Jeremiah Green, etc.), I found myself wondering if it was a genuine phenomenon that more people die at this time of the year, or if it was just the result of an otherwise slow news week, with obituaries dominating the headlines.1

But the statistics bear it out: there is a notable spike in deaths this week each year, and in fact, the most deaths of any day of the year is typically today, January 1st.2

This made me think about Steve Mykolyn's Songs For A Funeral, a work about mortality that ages with the buyer.3 Released in November of 2019, the work is an artists' record in which the cover is as important - possibly more so - than the music inside.4 

Producing the lavish LP - which includes a signed print, poster and guitar plectrum - had been a labour of love for Mykolyn, for over two years. He began working on the piece in 2017, a year that took several of his musical heroes: Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Leon Russell and Prince. 

When an artist you admire dies, it takes a toll. If they die young you are robbed of future output, if they die naturally you are reminded of your own mortality. One might mourn the death of a celebrity as a way to rehearse grieve, a few times removed. 

Mykolyn commissioned illustrator Chad Eaton to produce ninety-six portraits of forty-eight musicians - first alive, and then dead. Eaton works in a woodcut style similar to the influential Mexican political lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852 – 1913), who used skulls, calaveras5, and bones to convey political and cultural critiques.

The gatefold LP sleeve features the portraits tiled four-by-three, on all four sides. Visually, it is not dissimilar to another elaborate LP design: the cover of the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls, which featured band portraits alongside celebrities, using a die-cut design.6 But conceptually, it has more in common with another celebrated album cover - the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, designed by Pop Artist Peter Blake. 

Even if one is disinclined to side with the Paul-Is-Dead conspiracists who view the album cover portrait as a funeral scene7,  the pictured cardboard cut-outs feature actors, authors, musicians, comedians, scientists, politicians and athletes who the band admired. Blake assembled his own list of favourites, as did gallerist Robert Fraser, and Beatles John and Paul. George Harrison suggested six Indian gurus and Ringo was reportedly happy to defer to his bandmates: "Whatever the others say is fine by me."

For his list of favourites, Mykolyn settled on Jimi Hendrix, Nick Cave, Lemmy from Motorhead, Bryan Ferry, David Byrne, Amy Winehouse, Iggy Pop, Ian Curtis from Joy Division, Brian Eno, Joe Strummer, Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Lou Reed, all four Beatles and Yoko, three Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, John Cale, Nico, Joey Ramone, David Johansen, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Thom York, Michael Stipe, Beck, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, and about half a dozen others. 

Regardless of their status at the time of production, the musicians are featured on the cover as their living selves. To view their corresponding 'dead' portraits, the buyer must scratch-off the printed silver coated material (similar to a lottery ticket, see below). 

Mykolyn is the former CCO of ad agency TAXI8, and a partner in the design firm Castor. In 2008, he was co-curator of the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture. That same year he created and distributed seven thousand coats to the homeless (a New York Times article about the coats can be read, here). In 1997, he wrote and directed El Dia La Noche Y Los Muertos, an award-winning documentary about Mexico's Day of the Dead festival. Songs For A Funeral features music from this film, connecting the Memento Mori9 of the LP to an over 25 year-long investigation into the subject. 

His background in advertising and design serve the work well - everything about Songs For A Funeral  is highly considered: the protective plastic sleeve accommodates the opening of the gatefold (a first in all of my years of record collecting), the printed guitar pick is not an unnecessary flourish - it functions as a tool to scratch away the living portraits. 

Songs For A Funeral  was produced in an edition of 144 copies: 48 on white vinyl, a dead edition of 48 on black vinyl and a ghost edition of 48 on transparent vinyl. I regret buying only one (from the ghost edition) as I might be more inclined to scratch off the deaths as they occur if I had a second, pristine copy. 

1. I don't think Modest Mouse have ever made it to the CNN front page before, for example. 

2. In North America, anyway. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20805014/

3. An obvious personal interest of mine. See this work of mine, for example. 

4. Another shared interest. One of the first exhibitions I curated was of artist designed album covers. And preceding that, I produced this catalogue. 

5. A calavera is a representation of a human skull, mostly edible or decorative, handmade from sugar or clay. They are used in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead. 

6. Many of them threatened lawsuits: Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Liza Minnelli (representing Judy Garland, her mother), Raquel Welch, and the estate of Marilyn Monroe all threatened to sue for the use of their likenesses without permission. The record was quickly reissued with the celebrity images removed and the phrase "Pardon our appearance – cover under reconstruction" in their stead. 

7. Sgt Peppers is ground zero for Paul-Is-Dead clues many of them involving the funeral-like cover portrait. For example, the yellow flowers at the bottom right are said to be in the shape of Paul's bass guitar and spell out the name PAUL, followed by a question mark. McCartney is seen wearing what looks like an OPP badge (Ontario Provincial Police, for some reason) but it is purported to actually read OPD (officially pronounced dead), etc. etc. 

8. TAXI is a marketing communications company that was founded in 1992 in Montreal. In 2009, it was awarded Platinum status by Deloitte based on six consecutive years among Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies. The following year, TAXI was named Agency of the Decade by Toronto-based Strategy magazine.

9. Memento Mori is an artistic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. It's translation from Latin is "remember that you have to die". 

 

Ocean Child: songs of Yoko Ono

[Various Artists]

Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono

New York City, USA: Atlantic Records, 2022

12" vinyl LP

Edition size unknown

I recently read Ray Padgett’s entry in the 33 1/3 series, about I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. The book uses the titular 1991 compilation to examine the goals and impact of tribute albums in general. Most hope to celebrate a songwriter, and introduce their work to "a broader audience”. Often they are released in aid of a worthy charity. And even the best of them are entirely patchy affairs. 

My personal favorite might be Sweet Relief 2: Gravity of the Situation, with artists such as Joe Henry and Mary Margaret O'Hara covering songs by Vic Chesnutt. It’s the sequel to Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams, assembled to raise funds to cover the cost of Williams’ medical bills after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.1 Williams selected Chesnutt for the follow-up because "not only is he an unsung talented singer/songwriter... but he represents the plight of a physically handicapped musician who's still out there working".

The problem with the disk is that to get to Kristin Hersh and Red Red Meat's excellent renditions, one has to skip past Hootie and the Blowfish and Soul Asylum. Those bands have likely sold more records than all the other contributors combined, but it's doubtful that their fanbase would seek out this, making their inclusion more than a little unfortunate.

The latest entry in the tribute album genre is Ocean Child: The Songs of Yoko Ono, which was released two months ago, on the artist's 89th birthday. Like the Cohen tribute(s) and the two Sweet Relief records (and perhaps Neil Young’s The Bridge, another solid entry), the impetus for this collection is likely the conventional wisdom that the songwriters might reach a wider audience if it weren't for their voice. 

I suppose that the countless covers of Cohen's "Hallelujah"2 (has anyone even heard the original?) give credence to this notion, but for the most part I suspect that if you can't get past Vic Chesnutt's voice you probably aren't going to appreciate his songwriting anyway. And Yoko Ono more so. 

I would argue that the first tribute album ever made was also a Yoko Ono tribute album. Every Man Has a Woman, from 1984, was created as a labour of love and intended as a 50th birthday present from her husband, John Lennon, who was killed before he could complete it. The only major collection of note to proceed it is Amarcord Nino Rota. The 1981 jazz album celebrating the composer best known for his Fellini collaborations was compiled by Hal Wilner, who died in 2020, of Covid. Wilner is often (rightly) credited as the grandfather of the genre: he is responsible for several well-curated collections of reinterpreted music by Kurt Weil, the Walt Disney Corporation, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Harry Smith, and Leonard Cohen (his third tribute). But Amarcord Nino Rota is an instrumental album and ultimately falls outside of the pop tribute album as we've come to understand it. 

Every Man Has a Woman features Elvis Costello delivering a decent reading of "Walking on Thin Ice" and Lennon’s own take on the title song (simply singing over her original backing track) is notable, but the disk is padded out with a lot of unnecessary MOR. The net was not cast wide: Roberta Flack lived in the same building as Ono; Eddie Money’s brother was head of Lennon and Ono’s security detail; the German band Trio (best known for their hit "Da da da” two years prior) were scouted and produced produced by Klaus Voormann3; and Harry Nilsson was an old friend and collaborator.4

The record was ultimately an unsatisfying and inessential disc at the time, and the production on most of the tracks hasn't aged well. 

Yoko Ono is also the subject of no less than five remix albums, many of which feature cover/remix hybrids. The first, Rising Mixes, from 1996, featured remixes of the previous year's excellent Rising LP, by Cibo Matto, Ween, Tricky, Thurston Moore, Perry Farrell, and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Tricky, Ween and the Cibos all contributed their own vocals to the songs that they remixed. 

Yes, I'm a Witch from eleven years later took the premise a step further, with about half of the tracks on the remix LP becoming more like cover versions that traditional remixes. Peaches and Le Tigre are both well suited to Ono's music and contribute strong cuts, but the standout for me is Cat Power's duet with Ono on Revelations. The original is excellent, but Chan Marshall's childlike piano chords and restructuring of the lyrics pays off nicely. 

The sequel to the LP, arriving nine years later, is less effective. Yes, I'm a Witch Too features reworkings by Moby, Portugal. The Man, Sparks, Peter Bjorn and John, Tune-Yards, Cibo Matto and others. Death Cab for Cutie's remix of "Forgive Me My Love" is likely the link between this record and Ocean Child. 

The band's singer, Ben Gibbard, initiated and compiled Ocean Child, reaching out to bands he knew and  others he thought would be interested in participating. Not all of the tracks work, but he does a decent job selecting artists and sequencing the record. 

The album opens strongly, with "Toy Boat", by the always excellent Sharon Van Etten. She maintains Ono's melody and phrasings, but updates the production. 

David Byrne enlists Yo La Tengo (saying he was drawn to the dreamier songs the band has released) for his cover of "Who Has Seen the Wind", which initially appeared as the b-side to Lennon's "Instant Karma" single, in 1970. Given that the opening stanza 

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by

is borrowed from a 19th-century poem by Christina Rossetti, Byrne takes license to alter some of the lyrics, removing the more personal references in the song. 

The third track is the most striking. "Dogtown" ranks among my favorite Ono songs and the violinist and singer Sudan Archives manages to make the song her own. She minimizes the off-kilter phrasing of the original (dropping a word or two here and there) but does so to find her own rhythm in the song. It's a beautiful, sultry reading of an excellent song. 

The Flaming Lips (who have collaborated with Ono, and previously appeared on I'm A Witch) cover 

the the song "Mrs Lennon" from Ono's classic Fly LP. The conventional sounding ballad is about the fear of erasure (from becoming both a wife, and the wife of a superstar) and ironically became better known as "Holocaust", Big Star's second sweetest song, when Alex Chilton pinched the melody.5

Japanese Breakfast - who had just been nominated for a Grammy shortly before the release of Ocean Child - turns in a simple piano ballad version of "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" (an arrangement not dissimilar to Cat Power's "Revelations"). We Are King contribute an atmospheric R&B version of "Don't be Scared", from the posthumous collaboration with Lennon, Milk & Honey. There are also entirely competent covers by other bands I love, such as the Magnetic Fields, Deerhoof, and US Girls. 

The weakest track comes from compiler Ben Gibbard's band, Death Cab for Cutie. The original version of "Waiting for the Sunrise" was never a favourite of mine, but at least conveyed the sense of a woman worn down by the world but still able to locate a kind of fragile hope. Gibbard's reading makes it sound like a guy laying awake in bed waiting for his alarm to go off.5

 

But overall Ocean Child is a strong entry into the tribute album genre, and (next to Rising Mixes) the most consistently listenable of the six7 compilations that celebrate Ono's songwriting. And (like many tribute albums, the proceeds benefit a worthy cause: WhyHunger. 

In a podcast dedicated to the disk, Gibbard described all the standard reasons for compiling the tribute, though noted one generational difference. Unlike a decade or more ago - when Ono's catalogue would either be out of print or hard to locate - listeners interested in learning more after hearing younger acts performing Ono's songs can now very easily locate the originals instantly. 

I'd suggest the early classics Fly and Plastic Ono Band, the 1995 "comeback" record Rising and the record Ono was working on when Lennon was shot and killed, Season of Glass. Oddly, I think my favourite is A Story, which was recorded in 1974 during the 18 month separation from Lennon, and not released for decades. I first heard it on Onobox, which came out in 1992 and it was given a standalone release five years later. It's nowhere near as important as the above disks, but it contains the sweet song "Winter Friend", and the original appearance of "Dogtown". 

1. As I recall, the proceeds went to a general musician’s relief fund and the subject of the tribute received their songwriter’s royalties, which would not have been insubstantial given that Pearl Jam’s version of her song “Crazy Mary” became a hit for the band. Lou Reed, who also contributed, later took Williams out on the road with him as his opening act, raising her profile further.

2. John Cale covered "Hallelujah" on I'm Your Fan and Jeff Buckley essentially covered his version (omitting the same verses, for example). Subsequently it practically rivals "Yesterday" in the ubiquity of cover versions, each less interesting than the last. 

3. Klaus Voormann was a friend of Lennon’s from the early days of the Beatles, who they met when the band performed in Hamburg in 1960. He designed album covers for the Beatles (Revolver and the posthumous Anthology series) and was a member of the Plastic Ono Band, playing bass on both of Lennon and Ono’s solo debuts, as well as Live Peace in Toronto, Imagine, Fly, and Sometime in New York City. 

4. Harry Nilsson first met Ono and Lennon in 1968, on the weekend Cynthia Lennon moved out and Ono moved in. He co-wrote the song "Old Dirt Road" with Lennon, who produced Nilsson's 1974 album Pussycats. In addition to the three tracks for Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him (("Silver Horse", "Dream Love", and "Loneliness") Nilsson planned to release an LP in 1985 titled Harry Does Yoko. His version of "Never Say Goodbye" appeared as the b-side of a 1994 CD single from Ono's New York Rock soundtrack. His adult contemporary version of "Listen, The Snow Is Falling" appeared on his posthumous collection Losst and Founnd. In a recent interview with SiriusXM, Sean Lennon stated that he is mixing tracks for the eventual release of Harry Does Yoko. 

5. In a 1987 interview with Dawn Eden, Chilton was asked "Did you have that song in mind when you wrote “Holocaust”?" He replied "I don’t know. I think that it was one of those instances of plagiarism that you sort of are aware of somewhere in your mind, but not…I think that, at the time I was doing the tune, I didn’t realize that I was copying it."

6. It reminds me of the time a pre-famous Vanessa Paradis covered the Velvet Underground’s "Waiting for the Man". The song was transformed from the story of an agitated junkie in need of a fix, to that of a woman whose boyfriend is running late. 

7. I've just learned of three additional independent tribute records to Ono: Mrs. Lennon (2010), Cut Pieces (2015) and  SuONO (2019). 

Arnaud Maggs | Hotel

Hotel by Arnaud Maggs was published in 1993 by Art Metropole in Toronto and Presentation House in Vancouver. The title includes 165 black and white photographs of Paris hotel signs, organized by typographical style. It's available for $38, here.

Maggs (85), known for his portraiture work (of Joseph Beuys, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton etc), opened a new exhibition last night of self-portraits, at Susan Hobbs Gallery.