I don’t do much
cross-posting with my other blog, The Hot Hero Sandwich Project, but this one is worth a look. I just completed an interview
with animator Mary Beams, whose career from the 1960s to the 1990s produced
some wonderful short animated films, some of which are archived with the Museum
of Modern Art (MoMA)! Beams produced three animated shorts for Hot Hero Sandwich in 1979 which we take
a look at together In Conversation with Animator Mary Beams.
In 1998, Joybus,
an Alt Rock band from the Albany, NY, area, released the eponymouslytitled JoybusEphemera, a
project combining uncompleted and completed material. It began in 1991 with a label, Blue Lunch, looking for releases to showcase the company’s talent roster
and production abilities. Joybus was put together for the purposes of the
project and gigged a bit before they went on to the banality of life’s more mainstream pursuits. Only fifty
copies of the CD were produced and that was pretty much it. Life goes on and so
did the members of Joybus.
The complete album is available above with links to individual tracks below from the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
The 1990s were
probably the last decade I actually listened to and followed contemporary
rock/pop music. While dance and techno were, as always, popular, the bands I
was drawn to at the time include Blind Melon, Green Day, Nirvana, Third Eye
Blind, Urge Overkill, among similar others, who channeled their angst,
disaffection, and dissonance with the times into their music. There is a
certain amount of detachment and distance with society expressed in their music
that gives it an observational nature.
Rediscovering Ephemera among my mountain of old CDs, I
thought that there were some echoes of themes on the album from those ‘90s
bands I listened to — in spirit if not exactly in sound.
As I considered
this, I thought of Generation Jones (1954-1965), that shadowy generation
between the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and Gen X (1965-1980). Too young to have
served in Vietnam or participate in the Countercultural revolution, and too old
for, or, remembering Vietnam, uninterested in the Middle Eastern wars of the
1990s, then dominated by older Baby Boomers in the workforce, and overtaken by
the technical savvy of Millennials born squarely in the modern Computer Age,
members of Generation Jones were often put in the position of observers along
for the ride rather than the drivers themselves.
Extending the bus analogy, Boomers were driving the bus, Gen Xers thought buses
were lame, and Millennials took Ubers. Meanwhile, Generation Jones went along for
the ride, not wholly in control of where we going, and not always knowing where
we wanted to go. Not so much individually, but collectively as a generation as
it regards our cultural impact on society. In some respects, Generation Jones
is more of an attitude than an age.
The term
Generation Jones also nicely dovetails with the last name of Eric Jones, Joybus’
guitarist, and Aeolus 13 Umbra’s occasional creative consultant, who, while
probably refusing the title of band leader, took the lead on wrangling the
disparate group of oddballs who contributed to the album. The band itself is
also comprised of Dave Ritrovato, vocals; Michael Caputo, drums; and Matthew
Smith, bass. The members of Joybus all generally
fit into the age range of Generation Jones, including the very many friends
they took along on the ride.
Eric Jones joined
me to discuss putting the band and album together.
Joybus
(1998), left to right: David Ritrovato, Matt Smith, Eric Jones, and Mike
Caputo (photo credit Steve Swanson).
Ae13U: How did Joybus come together?
Jones: Mike [Caputo, drummer] and I had
been in and out of a bunch of different projects together, and we decided to
start a fresh new one. So, he and I were just basically starting to write some
songs and then, Blue Lunch Records . . .
Ae13U: I remember Blue Lunch Records.
Jones: A friend of ours ended up
getting involved with Blue Lunch with Mark Wilkin, and his name was Phil
Santandera — it’s in the liner notes.
Ae13U: Right.
Jones: I was charged with putting a band together and writing an album. Matt [Smith,
bass] was temporarily living in our basement and within about two days of
living there, he started picking up instruments. Matt is probably one of the
smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. I taught him how to play bass and
within a month he had surpassed my abilities.
Ae13U: Fantastic.
Jones: It’s just unbelievable, right?
And, you know, so here we started writing that stuff immediately.
Ae13U: Where does Dave Ritrovato enter the
picture?
Jones: Matt found Dave. He had known Dave from the Quintessence circuit, I
guess [Quintessence was a popular Albany nightspot from the 1980s through the
early 2000s]. Dave was already a few years older than us and had just gotten
his masters.
Ae13U: I’m looking at the liner notes and
it seems like you kind of drew in a lot of your friends, including myself, and
fellow collaborators into the project.
Jones: Yeah, for two reasons. One was practical. I was I was contracted to
produce an album from Blue Lunch Records, right? I had to sort of like Boston [the band] without any of the
talent, just make the thing up as I go, and that’s how the band ended up
jelling. I would ask friends to write the lyrics for this thing that play horns
on this, do this, do that. But the other part of that was that it gave me a
chance to play with other people in a way that they could contribute
meaningfully.
Ae13U: So, production was more organic than
systematic.
Jones: It’s part of the growing
process. There’s a lot of experimentation. There’s a lot of improvisation.
There’s a lot of bad engineering. Unfortunately, we also were short on time. Most
of those songs were written between ‘90 and ‘92, and the second batch of them
were written after we had done the initial Blue Lunch recording.
So, you can tell
when you listen to it, some songs sound like they’re recorded differently. That’s
because they were. They were recorded like six, seven years apart. So, we sort
of went back in the studio and Dave and I produced, it’s a fancy way of saying,
paid for it, the songs that we loved, that we wrote, that we never got the
chance to record.
Ae13U: I know at least according to the
copy I have — numbered nine out of fifty — just fifty copies of this particular
CD were made. I don’t recall, did you guys gig as Joybus?
Jones: Yes, we did gig as Joybus.
Ae13U: How did the name come about?
Jones: Picking a band name is one of
the hardest things anybody can do.
Ae13U: Which you’ve written about in the
liner notes.
Jones: We settled on the one that was
least offensive to everybody and then after the work came out, we’re like, “Oh,
Joybus, yes!” So, that’s how that ended up happening.
Ae13U: Considering how you took along so
many friends along for the ride in producing the album, it seems like the
perfect fit. Speaking of taking your friends along for the ride, who did the
art for the cover and liner notes?
Jones: That’s Michael Neff. He had fun with
it, and he’s a brilliant artist, really. I gave Michael complete artistic license. I shared
some general ideas on the layout, gave him the copy and I said, “Have fun with
it,” and so he did. Everyone loved it. I
am still very grateful.
Ae13U: That cover is the perfect visual
analogy for the album.
Front cover. Liner notes page 1.
Liner notes page 2. Liner notes page 3.
Liner notes page 4. Liner notes page 5.
Back cover.
Digital
Segues
Ae13U: One aspect of the album that got my
attention is the electronic segues on three songs, “I See Dinosaurs,” “Take,” and “Life Student.” I love these and wish you did more for
the album. With today’s click – copy –
paste audio software, I don’t think people appreciate it was a bit more
challenging to put these sound collages together thirty years ago. As late as
1995 at WAMC [Northeast Public Radio], I was still using a razor blade,
splicing block, white Crayon, and splicing tape to do edits like we hear on the
segues on Ephemera. By 2000, I think,
most radio stations had switched over to sound editing software. Given that Ephemera was released in 1998, sort of
in the middle of this change, I wonder how you put these segues together.
Jones: Yeah, that stuff was actually
done back in ‘91 and what it’s what happens when you give a monkey a Fostex F-15!
Basically, it was that old four tracker from the eighties that I bought from my
high school friend, Sean Feeney, and I had been getting into a bit of trouble
with that thing for a few years at that point. So, if I remember correctly, I
think all I did was download, or I should say record, random samples of
shortwave noise. My idea was to take satellite signals and different, you know,
blips and bleeps and all that. As I’m traveling through the dial, running the 4-track,
all of a sudden I hear somebody talking, and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a phone
conversation!”
Ae13U: Those old cordless landline phones
weren’t very secure.
Jones: And so, I just kind of let it
record for a little while. Then, at some point, I just mixed it all together. There’s
a song on the record called “Happenstance,” and there’s a lot of happenstance
on this record, including a lot of those [segues].
A couple of those segues Matt had put together. Everyone had fun playing with that thing.
And the one in
particular that you’re referring was just a happenstantial random shortwave
recording. I’d run through, you know, I’d record ten minutes or fifteen minutes
and then I’d back up and I’d run another track and then I’d run another track
and then another track. Once I loaded it up, I just bounced it down to a master
by fading and twisting and turning and all that.
Ae13U: The segue that leads into “I See
Dinosaurs” [whose lyrics this author
contributed to] starting off with announcer from The War of the Worlds 1950s version, that was just perfect.
Jones: There’s also another little show of our sense of humor is just before “I
See Dinosaurs,” you hear somebody speaking and it’s backwards. It’s our dear
friend Hajji who has passed. But it’s him, you know, the whole Beatle “I buried
Paul” with John Lennon saying “cranberry sauce backwards.” That’s Hajji saying,
“I buried Matt’s cranberry sauce.”
Ae13U: [laughter] No comment on Matt’s
cooking I guess! Those segues were pretty influential for me. I did my own take
on “I See Dinosaurs” using my original lyrics with some changes, and your segue as the
leader. My piece, American Air: The Sound of the 20th Century, is more directly influenced by the
introduction to Joybus’s “I See Dinosaurs.”
The segues, given that they repackage
sounds from other sources, sort of align themselves with the observational
proclivities of Generation Jones.
Jones: I agree with that to an extent,
but if you listen to Dave’s lyrics especially, there’s a lot of coming-of-age
stuff going on, like transitioning for either from college into adulthood or
into a career.
Ae13U: Right.
Jones: There’s a little bit of putting
that off, there’s a little bit of delayed acknowledgement of inevitable responsibility.
. . also moving on in terms of, love,
and love lost, and love accomplished. It’s just It was the “fin de siècle.” We
were not expecting this explosion of good times and great oldies, but . . .
Ae13U: But as it turned out, we were let
down. After the fall of the USSR and the First Gulf War, everything was anti-climactic.
Even Y2K fizzled out. We didn’t even get a good Y2K.
Jones: Exactly. So, I think there was a
lot of that spirit. I had just graduated from college and I was facing my
student loan debt, right?
Ae13U: Oh, yes, we all shared that burden!
Jones: There's a song on there called
“Signature” that I think David written partly out of my situation. Because it's
like, “Yeah, I've got all this debt and no money.”
Ae13U: Yeah, and life sometimes doesn't
change.
Jones: I just focus on self-reliance
and the ability to have positive experiences.
Ae13U: Which I think, perfectly sums up
Generation Jones and a good note to end on.
Ephemera was put together throughout the
‘90s beginning with some experiments in creating sound collages as we hear in
the segues to the collaborative effort leading up to the album’s release in 1998.
Joybus’ experience was probably pretty common with many bands at the time
across America who had talent, tape recording equipment, and a connection with a
local label.
Today, the
production process is more decentralized with affordable software not only
being able to emulate the sophisticated production of professional studios but
also AI music generators which can translate your ideas into a range of styles,
with vocals. One can literally sit in one’s bedroom, create an album, and make
it available to the world, just as Grammy-award winner Billie Eilish did with
her brother Finneas O’Connell for her first LP.
Yet, as the
production process becomes more decentralized, the artist becomes more
isolated. Collaboration is still possible, but often at a distance — via email,
social media, and Zoom. Ephemera was produced at a time just as
software was just beginning to radically change how we do things.
Powerless to
change it or slow it down, all we can do is just go along for the ride.
On Saturday, August 29, 2026, Aeolus 13 Umbra hit two million individual page visits. To put that in context, it took 14 years to hit one million, but just 17 months to hit two million. At the
present rate of page visits, the blog hit three million in about 12 months. While
the number is perhaps not as impressive as an influencer’s blog or a published
author’s, it’s not too bad for a personal, academically oriented, history and literary journal.
The
main contributing posts towards the number of hits are much the same as
reviewed in Aeolus 13 Umbra: ONE MILLION HITS! While a broad range of topics are reviewed, over
time, a trend towards chronicling mid-Twentieth century social history with
multimedia content has emerged.
Some things that are unique for the
blog include that of the hundreds and hundreds of videos embedded or linked to
in the articles all are hosted on one of over a dozen Ae13U YouTube channels (see Media Links on left). There is nothing more frustrating than
finding an article with a clip of a video that is a dead link. Of the hundreds
of videos posted, only one is off-site and that is from PBS.
Another feature is how the text is laid out and formatted. Nearly all the posts are double-spaced, and all have justified
margins and a larger text size, 14-point rather than the default 12-point size.
Instead of the standard left aligned text, justified margins,
where both ends of the line are aligned to the left and right margins, are used. Most
people just skim text and do not read every word. If the margins are justified,
then the eye will more likely follow along until the end of the line. Left
aligned margins, which produce a ragged, uneven end to the lines, reinforce the
natural tendency to skim text while margin justification engages the eye and
helps maintain focus.
Additionally, the blog and YouTube
channels are not monetized. The main reason is that ads ruin the aesthetic of
the design, such as it is, and the page already has a lot of imagery, but also when trying to get an interview with a
noted individual (and I have done dozens for this blog), the lack of ads means
that my interest in an interview subject is based on a sincere interest in
their work, rather than how much money can earned from ad revenue.
Special thanks to all my readers for
joining me in this journey and making it successful!
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau is a documentary series that
began with a special in 1966 and followed by 36 episodes that ran
from 1968-1976 on the BBC in the United Kingdom and on ABC in the United
States. The impact of The Undersea World
of Jacques Cousteau on popular culture cannot be understated. It
led to a wider knowledge of the undersea environment and fed into the rising
environmental movement. Indeed, if there are secular saints, Cousteau certainly
qualifies as one.
The complete series is available on the Ae13U Blue Planet YouTube channel and in links to individual
episodes at the end of this article.
Cousteau was not only an undersea explorer but
also an engineer constantly looking for new ways to explore in a hostile
environment. As noted by National
Geographic, Cousteau, with
French engineer Émile Gagnan, invented the Aqua-Lung, a self-contained
breathing system that spawned an entire industry and revolutionized underwater
exploration. Later, with another French engineer, Jean Mollard, Cousteau
designed the saucer-shaped SP‑350 Denise, which used revolutionary water
jets for unparalleled maneuverability and was frequently featured throughout
the series.
Cousteau and the SP‑350 Denise.
Produced by Alan
Landsburg, the series was narrated by Rod Serling
in the United States and by British actor Richard
Johnson in the United Kingdom; however, it is
Serling’s narration that is most identified with the series, in addition to the
Gallic intonations of Cousteau himself. As Serling’s health deteriorated prior
to his passing in 1976, actor Joseph Campanella filled in for the last six
episodes of the U.S. version of the series from 1974-1976.
The camera operators were members of the crew
and experienced divers, including Cousteau’s son Philippe.
Considering the difficult and unforgiving environment in which the crew
operated, the overall production qualities set the gold standard for nature
documentaries, proving that high-quality film under difficult circumstances can
be achieved with a dedicated and professional crew.
The legendary Lalo Schifrin, who composed music for hundreds of films and
TV shows, was assigned those duties for the first special, “Conshelf
Adventure,” but the music for most of the series,
including the iconic theme, is provided by Walter Scharf. Other noted film composers, including Leonard Rosenman,
Kenyon Hopkins,
Lyn Murray,
among others, also contribute music for one or more episodes.
An observant viewer will notice similarities
in the production values of the very fact-based The Undersea World of Jacques
Cousteau and In Search of . . . , the series that “presents information based in
part on theory and conjecture.” In fact, Alan Landsburg, the producer of The
Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, also produced In Search of . . . , even down
to asking Rod Serling to narrate the new series. Serling did host three
television specials produced by Landsburg to test the concept, including In Search of Ancient Astronauts and In Search of Ancient Mysteries, both in 1973, and The Outer Space Connection
in 1975. Serling, however, due to the aforementioned health concerns, was not
able to do the series, so the narration duties fell to Leonard Nimoy. More
information, including the complete series run, is available at Aeolus 13 Umbra: In Search of . . . A Series Retrospective.
At a time when the airwaves are populated by
game shows, reality shows, and a 24-hour news cycle, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau is the type of programming
we would not likely see on network television today. Cousteau’s environmental
advocacy would also likely put him at odds with various corporations and
governments. Yet, Cousteau was, if nothing else, an indomitable Frenchman. He
was completely committed to his vision of preserving the environment.
On
matters of climate change, overpopulation, pollution, even his faith, Cousteau
never shied away from making his opinions known. He never sold out his name for
profit, even suing his own son over the use of the name for an island resort.
Cousteau built his brand with passion, commitment, intelligence,
and integrity — a rare combination in any era, especially today.
John Denver singing his classic tribute to
Cousteau and his crew, “Calypso” (1977).
