Pynchon/Roth/Bellow/Updike on the 1960s

[Robin Landseadel]

Speaking as someone who once was a radio DJ and a recording engineer  
of classical music, I found Mucho's enhanced listening abilities:

	"It's extraordinary," said Mucho, "everything's been—wait. Listen."
	She heard nothing unusual. "There are seventeen violins on
	that cut," Mucho said, "and one of them—I can't tell where he was
	because it's monaural here, damn." It dawned on her that he
	was talking about the Muzak. It has been seeping in, in its
	subliminal, unidentifiable way since they'd entered the place, all
	strings, reeds, muted brass.

	"What is it," she said, feeling anxious. "His E string," Mucho
	said, "it's a few cycles sharp. - He can't be a studio musician. Do
  	you think somebody could do the dinosaur bone bit with that
	one string, Oed? With just his set of notes on that cut. Figure out
	what his ear is like, and then the musculature of his hands and
	arms, and eventually the entire man. God, wouldn't that be
	wonderful." "Why should you want to?" "He was real. That
	wasn't synthetic. They could dispense with live musicians if they
	wanted. Put together all the right overtones at the right power
	levels so it'd come out like a violin .. ."

. . . and his meditations on "She Loves You"

	"Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd continued, "I really
	do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about
	'She loves you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any
	number of people, all over the world, back through time,
	different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but
	she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the
	human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes
	brimming, reflecting the color of beer.

To be pretty "on".

To be a recording engineer/record producer you have to hear that  
sharpened e string. Sampling synthesizers [not in existence in 1964 or  
1966] do "dispense with live musicians", they do "Put together all the  
right overtones at the right power levels so it'd come out like a  
violin", that's become the musical vox populi. Most people don't [or  
can't] hear the difference between the string section of the Vienna  
Philharmonic and a E-MU Emulator. Knowing [and working with] that  
difference is a real, marketable skill. One the jobs of a record  
producer is marking on the score when that errant violin sharpens so  
you can cover it in "patch" takes later. Note that Mucho becomes, in  
time, a record producer. And even though Mucho eventually goes "on the  
natch" he never loses that "Acid Vision"

Mucho sounding off on how " . . .she's any number of people, all over  
the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes,  
distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. . ."  
sounds like a manifesto from the Woman's Spirituality Movement.

On Feb 26, 2009, at 8:03 AM, rich wrote:

> You tell me that you've heard every sound there is
>
> --sounds like the much creepier Mucho in Lot 49 after taking LSD.

But the pre-"creepy" Mucho is a neurotic train wreck. Following Mucho  
to his San Francisco pad in Vineland, some 5 years later, he seems to  
have become a better person from the LSD experience.