THOMAS PYNCHON

American Novelist

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Pynchon on Record, Vol. 4

September 28, 2017 by Christian Hänggi 28 Comments

“Entropy”

Warren Zevon
García Iborra and de Jódar Bonilla (40) write that in the liner notes of his 1996 compilation I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, classic rocker Warren Zevon acknowledges having been inspired by “Entropy.” Links and further reading: modern word | allmusic.com | discogs.com

V.

Mimi and Richard Fariña: “V.” from Celebrations For A Grey Day (1965) ♥

Richard Fariña’s liner notes of Celebrations for a Grey Day.

In the liner notes of Celebrations For A Grey Day, Richard Fariña writes: “Call it an East-West dream song in the Underground Mode for Tom Pynchon and Benny Profane. The literary listener will no doubt find clues to the geographical coordinates of Vheissu, the material antecedents of the younger Stencil, and a three dimensional counter-part of Botticelli’s Venus on the half shell. May they hang again on a western wall.” Pynchon was Fariña’s friend, best man, and pallbearer. Gravity’s Rainbow is dedicated to Fariña and Pynchon wrote an endorsement and an introduction to the 1983 issue of his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. It can be argued that Fariña is also one of the people Tyrone Slothrop is based on. Listen to the song on Youtube.

Soft Machine: “Esther’s Nose Job” from Triple Echo (1970/1988) ♥
A reference to Esther’s nasal surgery in chapter 4. The song that is up to 15 minutes in length, sometimes made up of two parts, was also released on Live at the Proms 1970 (1988), as a bonus track on the 2007 CD reissue of Third, on a 2014 four-CD set Live in 1970, and on a number of other Soft Machine albums. See Moore 56–57. Listen to the song on Youtube.

The Insect Trust: “The Eyes of a New York Woman” from Hoboken Saturday Night (1970) ♥

Insect Trust’s second and last album, containing “The Eyes of a New York Woman.”

The lyrics of this pretty little tune are verbatim from the song of the same title (V. 141). García Iborra and de Jódar Bonilla write that “Pynchon was displeased with the band and threatened with legal actions if the band did not withdraw the album. After some negotiations the band agreed to stop its performance live and Pynchon stopped legal actions” (40). I have not been able to trace this story to its origins, but Mike Weaver provided me these two links by Ed Ward (in one of which he erroneously attributes the lyrics to The Crying of Lot 49): NPR | furious.com. See also Daw 46–47. Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com | Youtube

Benny Profane: Where is Pig? (1986)
The English band Benny Profane, active 1985–90, borrowed their name and the title of their 12” vinyl Where is Pig? from Pynchon. Benny Profane is also credited as the writer and producer of the songs (among which “Vain Profane”) and as one of the graphic designers of the cover. Listen to “Vain Profane” on Groovesharks.

Ed Hall: “Rachel Hourglass” and “Roger Mexico” from Gloryhole (1991)
The indie band from Austin, Texas, dedicated a song each to two of Pynchon’s characters: Rachel Owlglass from V. and Roger Mexico from Gravity’s Rainbow. Links: allmusic.com | Youtube: “Rachel Hourglass”, “Roger Mexico”

Tim Ware: “She Hangs on the Western Wall” (mid-1990s) ♥
This website’s own Tim Ware recorded some music inspired by Pynchon. One is a reference to V. Link: timware.com

Favorite Color: “V. in Love” from Color Out of Space (1996)
The lyrics, credited to Pynchon, are not from chapter fourteen by that title but those of “The Eyes of a New York Woman” (chapter six, 141). The band is named after a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, and another tune on this record is entitled “Valis,” a reference to a novel by Philip K. Dick. Link: allmusic.com

Time in Malta
The San Francisco hardcore band, active 1997–2004, apparently got their name from V. to which the lead singer turned after giving up on Gravity’s Rainbow (read here). Links: allmusic.com | discogs.com

Forked Yew
There was an experimental rock band from the American South, Pynchon fans apparently, that got their name from the bar in V. Band member Dead Joe contributed a text to themodernword.com.

The Whole Sick Crew
Another V.-named band, this time Irish-style. They have one track, “Honest Sailor,” on a compilation. They also released a demo-CD that is available on Youtube. Other tracks reminiscent of Pynchon, at least by title, include “Girl at Every Port” and “The Vomits,” possibly a reference to Vineland’s Billy Barf and the Vomitones

Thrice: Vheissu (2005)
The album title is a reference to the mythical land of Vheissu. Novelist Dave Eggers is co-credited for the cover artwork. Links: Wikipedia | last.fm | discogs.com | allmusic.com | Youtube

Matt Pavolka: “Vheissu” from Something People Can Use (2008)
Another Vheissu reference, this time in the jazz idiom. It also appears on Pavolka’s 2014 album The Horns Band. Links: discogs.com | allmusic.com

Mike Cooper: Spirit Songs – The Pynchon Project ♥
For a number of years, British blues guitarist Mike Cooper has cut up parts of V. and Gravity’s Rainbow and turned them into music. Read his statement on his website and watch him perform on Youtube.

Unverified references
L.A.-based Tiger Army released an album (their fifth) entitled V ••• – in 2016. Although the singer Nick 13 cites World War II and paranoia as inspiration in an interview and reviewer Hal Horowitz compares their music to a great number of artists Pynchon mentions too, there is no indication that the album was inspired by the novel. Other albums with the title V where a Pynchon connection could not be verified include those recorded by the metal bands St. Vitus (1990), Spock’s Beard (2000, their fifth), Centvrion (2015, their fifth), and The Flight of Sleipnir (2014), as well as surf rock band Wavves (2015, their fifth).

A Laserdisc Best of B.J. Thomas compilation includes a song with the title “The Eyes of a New York Woman,” credited to Thomas Pynchon. The song exists but the credit is likely the product of sloppy work on a not properly licensed collection (or the doings of a Pynchon fan) as this compilation does not appear on the official B. J. Thomas website and the song is usually credited to Mark James or B. J. Thomas. Still, Thomas could be a model for the type of torch song anthology for male vocalists Zoyd Wheeler fantasizes about as he has recorded at least one of the songs Zoyd had in mind, “Since I Fell for You” (Vineland 36). Other oldies mentioned in Vineland Thomas has published on his many compilation albums include “So Lonesome I Could Cry” (6) and a number of pop Christmas tunes.

Contents

1 Introduction
2 “Entropy” and V. (this page)
3 The Crying of Lot 49
4 Gravity’s Rainbow
5 Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and miscellaneous homages
6 Bibliography and Biography

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Filed Under: Pynchon Analysis, Pynchon General News, Pynchon in the Media, Pynchon Inspired Tagged With: Pynchon Inspired, thomas pynchon

Comments

  1. N.P. Elliott says

    September 28, 2017 at 12:05 pm

    For myself, reading Pynchon is such a personal experience that I really prefer providing my own soundtrack. This is still a very interesting look at the quite wide influence that Mr. Pynchon ‘s work has had on musicians. I hadn’t realised how wide. My personal preference is Devo’s “Whip It”. It is direct and to the point without extraneous extrapolation. Just sayin’.

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      October 2, 2017 at 3:02 am

      Your preference for providing your own soundtrack for reading Pynchon is probably a feeling shared by many of the musicians on this list, I would think, which is why they did create their own soundtrack. Some of the above tracks and albums would still fit nicely into my reading.

      Reply
  2. Ian Shaw says

    September 28, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    I enjoyed this very much and look forward to reading more. A lot of this was new to me and I will seek a lot of these recording out, particularly those which have tried to create songs from the books. One of my favourite things about reading Pynchon is when characters burst into song.

    Reply
  3. Mike Weidenhamer says

    September 28, 2017 at 2:00 pm

    The debut album of the ambient music project, Shadowy Lines is devoted entirely to Gravity’s Rainbow. The album is called “Mindless Pleasures”. You can download it on Bandcamp as a Name-your-price deal. Here’s their webpage:

    http://www.autohypnosis.net/shadowylines/albums.html

    Here’s the Bandcamp link:
    https://shadowylines.bandcamp.com/album/mindless-pleasures

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      October 2, 2017 at 3:08 am

      Thank you, Mike, for these additions! Thanks also to John Krafft and Thomas for a good number of other suggestions! I added them all. Now I count about 95 entries, but still not a single one for Inherent Vice or Bleeding Edge. Anyone want to do a recording of Meatball Flag’s timeless surf classic “Soul Gidget”?

      Reply
  4. Thomas Joel says

    February 1, 2018 at 8:57 am

    Singer/Songwriter David Arthur Brown is a self-expressed Thomas Pynchon fan and often alludes to his work via his band Brazzaville. Most notably the song “Soft Parade,” from Morrow Bay (2013).

    “Summer days remind me of the Soft Parade. Seventeen in L.A. and my heart kept breaking. So long ago—road trips down to Mexico—with ‘On The Road’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.'”

    Reply
  5. vilma voldoni says

    July 5, 2018 at 12:04 pm

    The Jazz Butcher – Lot 49 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8EVyEaXu_I

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      July 6, 2018 at 1:41 am

      Thanks! This one is already listed (with a different Youtube link) as “Looking for Lot 49.”

      Reply
  6. NJ Lester says

    September 10, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    So “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads isn’t a condensed view of GR?

    What is GR if not life during wartime?

    “I’ve changed my hair style so many times now I don’t know what I look like.” That’s not Tyrone Slothrop who changes his personality/name three or four times until his atoms just dissipate?

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      March 30, 2021 at 3:41 am

      Yeah, possibly. Thanks for this. Before I add it to the list, I wonder if we can get more info to corrobate this. After all, there’s also a line that is very un-slothroppy: “No time for dancing, or lovey dovey I ain’t got time for that now.”

      Reply
  7. Carolyn Zaremba says

    September 22, 2019 at 9:46 am

    I am on the recording of “Unsung Pynchon” by Barry Koron, who was my partner at the time we recorded it in New York in the 1980s. We made a CD, of which I have a copy, but I don’t know if there are any of them left. I thought I gave you this information a few years ago, since you seemed to know so little about it. It’s a wonderful recording.

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      March 30, 2021 at 3:44 am

      Sorry about my late answer… If you still have the CD, I think it would be wonderful if you could upload the MP3s somewhere and share them with the universe! That way I could link to those tunes.

      Reply
      • Carolyn L Zaremba says

        May 4, 2024 at 6:54 pm

        Barry passed away last year and I don’t know what the copyright situation is (if any) regarding these songs now. I will ask his daughter.

        Reply
  8. Frank Benjamin Finger says

    July 13, 2020 at 2:20 pm

    Full of references in the track titles here:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      March 30, 2021 at 3:45 am

      I wonder if these are actual references and not just resonances that we as readers of Pynchon are sensitized to. Is there any other piece of information to corroborate that these songs were inspired by Pynchon?

      Reply
  9. Otto says

    January 27, 2021 at 12:11 am

    The song in page 300 of my edition of V is very similar in content to “We Suck Young Blood” by Radiohead, who are previously known to have made several Pynchon references.

    Reply
  10. Anthony Gudwien says

    March 5, 2021 at 10:47 am

    The song “V” by Golden Smog from 1995’s Down by the Old Mainstream. It’s a great song!

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      March 30, 2021 at 3:26 am

      Thanks, Anthony. That is a great song! I’m just not convinced that it’s a reference to Pynchon. Except for “V” there’s little to make that assumption, I think, and I found the following on the internet: “V is an ode to a friend of the band’s, a bartender from the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis.”

      Reply
  11. Eric Gilliland says

    March 29, 2021 at 11:37 pm

    Here’s a Gravity’s Rainbow playlist I put together as I read the novel over the past several months

    https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IwJR1RYnxY2LARCnT1X6d?si=b52b7eedcc164aa1

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      March 30, 2021 at 3:22 am

      Thank you, Eric. Would you like to explain what made you include songs? Inspiration, resonances, occasional reference perhaps?

      Reply
      • Eric Gilliland says

        April 6, 2021 at 10:58 pm

        All three of those. Some of the songs directly reference the novel, while some deal with similar themes. I also tried to imagine what Pynchon may’ve been listening to as he worked on the novel. But mostly the playlist was an exercise to help me make sense of the novel, even imagining what a film soundtrack would look like.

        Reply
  12. Carolyn L Zaremba says

    January 3, 2022 at 3:30 pm

    I think I may have written to you before about Barry Koron’s Unsung Pynchon. It was recorded in New York in 1987 and I am one of the performers on the recording. Barry was at that time my fiance and he wrote all the songs when we were living together, so I got to sing them all (but not on the recording).

    Reply
    • Christian Hänggi says

      January 3, 2022 at 3:55 pm

      Hi Carolyn, yes you did tell me a little over two years ago. It would be great if you could make the recording available! I will probably go through these pages soon and update some links, add a bit here or there.

      Reply
  13. wharf99 says

    March 25, 2022 at 4:00 pm

    Thanks for this – was prompted to come here when trying to locate some info about my own band, Greenfield Leisure, who are kindly included in your list (“too fat to frug, baby, that’s what you tell me all the time!”). If I recall correctly, we even tried contacting Mr Pynchon via his literary agent to get permission to “adapt” the lyrics, but something about the author living in a cave meant we didn’t get a definitive reply – so we thanked him anyway on the record sleeve. The late John Peel played “Too Fat To Frug” on his BBC Radio One evening show back in the day – there is an audio clip of Peel’s wry intro somehwere on the interweb. Greenfield Leisure still pop up from time to time on college radio, internet stations, eBay, Discogs and YouTube. Oh, and for die-hard fans, there’s a bunch of stuff on Bandcamp. Thanks for listening.

    Reply
  14. mike cooper says

    November 4, 2022 at 2:03 pm

    For the past twenty years i have been performing, live and on record, something I call Spirit Songs. They are all generated, William Burroughs/Bryon Gysin style, by cutting up Gravitys Rainbow and V. I improvise the backing to these pieces rendering each rendition completely different. No fixed harmony, tune or melody. There are many versions scattered across the music platforms. One of my favourites is this one – https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-spirit-songs-live

    Reply
  15. Charles Evans says

    April 11, 2024 at 3:51 pm

    While many of these references are to single songs and less well known acts one should note that Mark Knophler’s entire album Sailing to Philadelphia was influenced by Mason/Dixon.

    Reply
  16. JB says

    January 1, 2025 at 7:52 am

    I’m digging this one right now:
    The White Visitation by Beksinki
    https://open.spotify.com/album/6Q1n8JNR8DVrBWGQtM7FXt?si=JT4cvELVRWegNbv0mGXVVw

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Pynchon on Record –Shipwreck Library says:
    January 20, 2022 at 4:58 pm

    […] Pynchon on Record, Vol 4 In 1999, Juan García Iborra and Oscar de Jódar Bonilla published and update to Moore and Daw’s “Pynchon on Record.” Known as “Pynchon on Record, Vol. 3,” the essays is no longer available online. In 2017, Pynchon scholar Christian Hänggi published “Pynchon on Record, Vol. 4” online at Tim Ware’s Thomas Pynchon site. While there’s obviously some repetition between all these sources, Hänggi and Ware have different takes on these musicians, and it’s always pleasurable to lose oneself in Ware’s Pynchonian labyrinth! In 2020, Christian Hänggi published the definitive examination of Pynchon and music, available through Diaphanes Press: Pynchon’s Sound of Music Christian Hänggi Diaphanes, 2020. Publisher’s Description: Pynchon’s Sound of Music is dedicated to cataloging, exploring, and interpreting the manifold manifestations of music in Thomas Pynchon’s work. An original mix of close and distant readings, this monograph employs a variety of disciplines—from literary studies and musicology to philosophy, media theory, and history—to explain Pynchon through music and music through Pynchon. Encyclopedic and eclectic in its approach, Pynchon’s Sound of Music discusses the author’s use of instruments such as the kazoo, harmonica, and saxophone and embarks on close readings of the most salient and musically tantalizing passages. Zooming out to a bird’s eye view, Christian Hänggi puts Pynchon’s historical musical references and allusions into perspective to trace the trends and tendencies in the development of the author’s interest in music. A treasure trove for fans and an invaluable source for future scholarship, this book includes the Pynchon Playlist, a catalog of over 900 musical references in Pynchon’s oeuvre, and an exhaustive index of more than 700 appearances of musical instruments. Authors: Dr Larry Daw & Allen B. Ruch Last Modified: 19 January 2022 Main Pynchon Page: Spermatikos Logos Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com […]

    Reply

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