(Credits: Far Out / Video Still)
Cat Stevens as soon as mentioned, “In music, you can use metaphors with ease – if a person doesn’t understand the parable, they can still enjoy the melody of the music. If, however, a person reads a book and misses the meaning of its metaphors, this will be extremely disheartening for both the reader as well as the author.” This is evidenced completely by the totally confounding effort, ‘Was Dog a Doughnut’, from his 1977 electro album This is it.
It is difficult to decipher precisely what this instrumental is attempting to convey with its odd, emotionless jazzy association, the place prospers of instrumentation are dispersed like samples. This is it arrived shortly earlier than he transformed to Islam and took up the moniker of Yusuf. While ‘Was Dog a Doughnut’ would possibly sit in his second-to-last file earlier than this religious transition, hinting that he was, maybe, in a headspace looking out past the stilted atmosphere that the studio had grow to be for him, you couldn’t fairly accuse the observe of being filler, merely for the extent of experimental innovation at play.
However, from a singer who only some years prior was plumbing the depth of timeless heartbreak and reconciling the on a regular basis with folks masterpieces like Tea For the Tillerman and Mona Bone Jakonthere’s a degree of puzzlement that comes with the pure sonic experimentation of the impassive ‘Was Dog a Doughnut’. Alas, maybe that’s all that’s at play: a cool-sounding experiment. Does there have to be extra? This is a tenet that hip hop would quickly relish in, typically prising a cool backing observe with no mounted emotive spirit to be able to push inventive wordplay to the fore and permit the poetry of the topline to have footloose really feel reasonably than ushering it in direction of a set sentimental key.
As a consequence, the previous folks icon‘s largely forgotten electro oddity quickly turned an enormous affect in hip hop circles, solely unbeknownst to Cat Stevens, and utterly inadvertently. It might need peaked at 70 on the Billboard Chart, however over on the hip hop tally it rose to 53. This was a sure-fire trace at its sudden affect.
Years later, Questlove would meet Steves (now Yusuf), and clarify to him how pivotal his forgotten misfit proved. “We talked about an obscure album cut from 1977 called ‘Was Dog a Doughnut?’“ Questlove told Paste Magazine. “It was really just him creating a filler cut, experimenting with some electronic instruments – he fucked around, man, and created a B-boy classic. What was just him messing around for four minutes in the studio wound up being a staple in the hip hop world, which he was very shocked to discover.”
The observe happened in a decidedly hip hop-like method too. Using an Arp 2600, an impact was by chance crafted that sounded a shade like a barking hound. So, utilizing this uncommon tone, a two-beat drum sample was put to tape by Stevens, and his collaborators Jean Roussel and Bruce Lynch (Ringo Starr was additionally concerned with This is it someplace alongside the road however his contributions have been shelved). This allowed them to create a loop. Then with this spine in place, they might merely layer in synth bass, guitar riffs, and chuck keyboard whizz Chick Corea on there, whereas Stevens added some drums. The Arp Sequencer was then ran by means of a synth to create the singular, looping music, rife for improvisation.
In hip hop, this technique makes excellent sense. The style depends a lot on topline lyrical melodies and wordplay that you really want the backing to have an almost key-less core so it will possibly waver the place ever the rapper pleases. But what precisely was Stevens hoping to convey along with his instrumental? Well, in 2014, whereas discussing the music’s city afterlife, he informed Uncut: “In the ’70s, there was an article that made me livid, but additionally made me chuckle, known as ‘Was God An Astronaut?’ The entire premise of placing God into an area rocket was so outrageous I simply determined to have a go and wrote that music.“
Quite how a cool jazz sequence captures that’s one other thriller, perhaps it was simply the collision of absurdity however an in any other case cool idea?
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