The Medium Is the Massage (album)

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The Medium Is the Massage
Studio album by
Marshall McLuhan
ReleasedJuly 1967
Genre
Length42:36
LabelColumbia
ProducerJohn Simon

The Medium Is the Massage is an album by Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan, released in July 1967 by Columbia Records. It is the audio companion to the book of the same name, co-authored by McLuhan with Quentin Fiore, which explores the subconscious effects of mass media on the global psyche. The record was produced by John Simon of Columbia, who took creative control of the recording, and co-ordinated by Jerome Agel.

Based on a script written by McLuhan, Fiore and Agel, the record is a sound collage[1] that features McLuhan reading prose set to a cacophonous array of sound effects, voices and musical snippets. To create the collage, Simon and Agel used razors to cut pieces of magnetic tape and splice and overlay samples across each other in surreal permutations. The record specifically examines sound as a format of expression and experience separate from books, as per McLuhan's central theory that 'the medium is the message'. According to Agel, the record was intended to be as played like a pop album.

After the record's release, Columbia organized an elaborate promotional plan, involving advertisements in an eclectic array of publications and a unique campaign which saw female models in

information age
.

Background and recording

The Medium Is the Massage is based on the best-selling 1967

live" by Columbia, with "members of the press actually participating in the recording session."[2]

Having worked at Columbia since 1963, Simon had established himself by the recording of Massage and was "given full creative control of the project".

overdubbing snippets of sound "atop and across one another".[9] In music writer Oliver Wang's description, the record was created by "taking a razor to hundreds of yards of reel-to-reel tape, spliced and overdubbed together in chaotic permutations".[10] Simon scored the musical interludes, manipulated hundreds of audio snippets and arranged them with liberal use of stereo effects, with juxtaposed, overlapping samples appearing in opposite channels.[7] McLuhan supposedly recorded his parts first without any knowledge of what Agel and Simon would eventually create, a process that Wang considered to "honor the theorist's ideas; McLuhan was always interested in the participatory potential of emergent media forms."[9]

Composition

Marshall McLuhan in 1967

The Medium Is a Massage presents McLuhan reading prose over a range of

chirping birds.[9][10][nb 1] McLuhan's spoken text forms a "conceptual basso continuo" as it provides a fixed pointed of reference.[8]

Agel stated that the album "is designed for young people. It is designed to be a 40-minute interface–it is designed to be heard again and again and again and again and again, like a

pop-art audio collage version" of the book and compares it to the John Benson Brooks Trio's Avant Slant (1968), which also tiles together similar sounds into random-sounding arrangements as a representation of the media age, although he writes that Massage "layers its audio elements much more densely, distorts its sounds, and foregrounds the materiality of its recording media. And the strata of sounds transform at different times and rates".[8]

Author Grant Bollmer writes how an array of recordings, voices and effects are fused into a sound collage, with "McLuhan's voice

library music that mixes profundity, non sequiturs, and just plain strangeness at will", and believes it to be the only possible album version of McLuhan's book, which was heavy on typographical quirks including "pages printed backward"; he added that as McLuhan's subject is "the subconscious effects of media saturation on the global psyche, the structure of the album – with its TV interference, snatches of cartoon music, and various sped-up and slowed-down voices – was entirely fitting."[4]

Release and reception

The Medium is the Massage was released in July 1967 by Columbia,

Advertising Age, Evergreen Review and Saturday Review,[2] while a special promotion saw women in miniskirts standing outside broadcasting and advertising centres in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, carrying large advertising posters depicting the album sleeve and giving out complimentary copies of the record to passers-by.[2][16][nb 2] At a Columbia-sponsored event in Boston, the models gave copies of the LP to ten winners of a competition, while in Los Angeles, copies were presents as door prizes at the Publicity Club.[17] The 'miniskirt' campaign garnered coverage in The New York Times and other newspapers.[2]

In their contemporary review,

FM radio in the late 1960s.[4] John Benson Brooks, whose similar album Avant Slant was still in production when Massage was released, expressed his annoyance in July 1967, saying of McLuhan's record: "not bad, but not very good either. Music, comedy, electr. sounds, poetry, lecture on the age & history of the Mediums of communication–he beat us to it though! Pain in the ass–(they'll say I took his idea!)"[8]

Legacy

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[4]

According to Wilmott, the Massage album was the "high point" of McLuhan's "real media dissemination" in 1967; he was adopted as a

surreal humor" soon appeared on Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy (1968), the Monkees' Head (1968), the Beatles' "Revolution 9" (1968) and the "entire catalog" of the Firesign Theatre.[4]

The Medium Is the Massage was re-released on CD in 1999 and 2017 by

information age, where the austere, professorial voice of authority must contend with a constant barrage of old and new media intruding."[10] In a piece for NPR, Wang writes how the album is often considered to be the first mixtape, and considers Simon and Agel's work on the LP to be examples of "proto-mashup styles".[9][nb 3]

Track listing

All tracks written by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel.

Side one

  1. "The Medium Is The Massage: With Marshall McLuhan" – 19:21

Side two

  2. "The Medium Is the Massage: With Marshall McLuhan" – 23:15

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes of The Medium Is the Massage[6]

  • Marshall McLuhan – script, voice actor
  • Quentin Fiore – script, voice actor
  • Jerome Agel – executive director, script, voice actor
  • John Simon – producer, music, director, voice actor
  • Ralph Curtiss – effects
  • Walt Gustafson – effects
  • Ann Lynn – voice actor
  • Bob McFadden– voice actor
  • Bryna Raeburn – voice actor
  • Elisabeth Lohman – voice actor
  • John Culkin, S.J. – voice actor
  • Sugar Wagner – voice actor

Notes

  1. ^ Other sounds include the sly comment "John? John who?", inserted by Simon,[7] and what Greil Marcus of Artforum calls it a "a crowlike voice squawking out, 'The medium is the massage! The medium is the massage!' over and over."[1]
  2. ^ One advert for the album read: "SOUND AFFECTS. As no visual medium can. That's why books may soon be obsolete. Marshall McLuhan says so. In his book." According to author Justin St. Clair, the quirky irreverence of this advert underscored the "bookish anxiety" that was to become typical of multiple "multimedia releases" over the coming decades.[7]
  3. Ghost Box.[23]

References

  1. ^ a b Marcus, Greil (September 2012). "Twentieth-Century Vox: Marshall McLuhan and The Mechanical Bride". Artforum. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Col's Big Campaign for McLuhan's 'Massage' LP" (PDF). Record World: 37. August 5, 1967. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Col Waxes McLuhan on 'Medium Is Massage'" (PDF). Cash Box: 16. May 20, 1967. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Milano, Brett. "The Medium Is the Massage Review by Brett Milano". AllMusic. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  5. ^
    ISBN 9780226753454
    . Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  6. ^ a b The Medium Is the Massage (liner). Marshall McLuhan. Columbia. 1967.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-1032101699
    . Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  8. ^
    ISBN 9780199939923
    . Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d Wang, Oliver (March 20, 2012). "'The Medium Is the Massage':A Kitchen Sink of Sound". NPR. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  10. ^ a b c Spin Staff. "The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s". Archived from the original on July 13, 2017. Retrieved July 27, 2023.
  11. ISBN 9780429997679
    . Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  12. ^
    ISBN 9781433110672
    . Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  13. ISBN 9781501337109
    . Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  14. ^ "Columbia Markets July LP's & Tapes" (PDF). Cash Box: 15. July 15, 1967. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  15. ^ "New Album Releases" (PDF). Billboard. July 22, 1967. p. 41. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  16. ^ Barrett, Charles (August 12, 1967). "Talent" (PDF). Billboard. p. 21. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  17. ^ a b "Columbia Plugs McLuhan Album". Billboard. Vol. 79, no. 35. September 2, 1967. p. 14. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  18. ^ "Album Reviews". Billboard. Vol. 79, no. 29. July 22, 1967. p. 72. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  19. ^ "Album Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box: 58. August 5, 1967. Retrieved August 14, 2023.
  20. ^ Watt, Douglas (July 16, 1967). "Record Reviews". Daily News. New York: 5S. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
  21. ^ Pinnock, Tom (July 31, 2015). "The Band, Bob Dylan and Music From Big Pink – the full story". Uncut. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  22. ^ "The Medium Is the Massage Releases". AllMusic. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
  23. ^ Jones, Mikey IQ (August 23, 2023). "The Essential… Broadcast". Fact. p. 13. Retrieved August 26, 2023.
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