Make your own kind of music.
Mama Cass, LOST, John Cage, and the power of routine in the chaos
Ellen Naomi Cohen, better know as Cass Elliott, died in her sleep when she was 32.
She died in a bedroom in Harry Nilsson’s flat, the put-the-lime-in-the-coconut that everybody’s-talkin’-at guy.
Four years later, Keith Moon of The Who would die in the same bedroom at the age of 32.
Mama Cass died of a heart attack in that bedroom. The autopsy revealed no drugs in her system.
Her choking to death on a ham sandwich story was an intentional rumor in “The Hollywood Reporter” because asphyxiating on a chunk of swine was preferable to any association with drugs.
Mama Cass first rejected the pressure to produce “bubblegum music.”
She wanted to make music that really said something.
But Mama also conceded that maybe her voice wasn’t suited for heavier material.
“Make Your Own Kind of Music” at least said a little of something. The lyrics make a case for striking out and doing things on our own, a forward-thinking take on Sinatra’s “My Way,” which looked back and applauded the same spirit of living.
In other words, you can’t do it “(your) way” unless you “make your own kind of music.”
And Mama did do it her way, didn’t she?
She made her music, her own mythical explanations for unintended or undesired experiences.
John Phillips, and wife Michelle, later two members of The Mamas and The Papas, first did not allow Cass Elliot into their group at the time because of her weight.
She didn’t fit his image of what a Mama should be, especially next to a Mama like Michelle Phillips, a skinny white blond waif. Mama was a stocky Jewish girl.
John Phillips instead blamed it on the lack of Mama Cass’ lack of vocal range, claiming it too low.
So what did Mama Cass do?
She got hit on the head with a lead pipe, then claimed that the accident enabled her to reach new high notes in her vocal register.
Mama followed the other three Papas/Mama around, trying to get into the group any way that she could. Finally, John relented after understanding the vocal value she brought.
Mama Cass made her own kind of music.
“Make Your Own Kind of Music” is one of those songs that penetrates the public consciousness once every two decades or so.
Last year, it was a prominent part of a trailer for the “Barbie” movie.
Barbie, that franchise that preaches to little girls they have choices and aspirations.
There is a climactic sequence in the very beginning of the second season of LOST.
We are taken into an underground bunker of sorts, one of the island’s stations. A man wakes up to a beeping sound, gets out of bed and stumbles over to a retro-style computer and inputs a series of numbers. There is a clock counting down on the wall that resets after this input. The man then puts on a vinyl record and the velvet voice of Mama Cass fills the cavern.
He exercises, eats breakfast, then shoots himself with what appears to be a vaccine, all while Mama’s strong and earnest vocal implores him to make his own kind of music.
LOST, among a myriad of other things, is about the interplay of fate and free will, the possible existence and mirage of both. The island where the plane crash victims find themselves is full of mystery and no apparent answers. As viewers, we plug along, episode after episode, hoping for a revelation, not understanding until the end that it was a celebration of asking questions instead of answering them.
Mama’s daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugel, noticed “Make Your Own Kind of Music” was all over Tik-Tok last year, due to it’s use in “Barbie” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”
Elliot-Kugel added, "And I'm loving, in particular, the context that people are using the song because it's completely accurate in the whole attitude. 'Make Your Own Kind of Music' is really about like 'f*** you. I'm gonna do whatever I want, no matter what anybody thinks.'"
I started this essay before trump’s 2.0 attack on American democracy, decency, morality, goodness, diversity, inclusion, civil rights. I thought I would shelve it in the hopes that in two years we will be in a better place and Mama’s song about making my own kind of music would make a bit more timely sense.
Nothing feels like bubblegum music right now, which is how Mama Cass labeled her own song. She compared it to Chinese food; you stuff yourself on it but you’re hungry again in an hour.
But maybe this is the best time for it.
Maybe we need bubblegum and Chinese food.
Maybe it needs to be the soundtrack to our time, where our routines might not make sense in the larger scheme of the world that is on fire, inputting a series of random numbers into a computer to stave off the specter of a looming tragedy.
John Cage also made his own kind of music.
John Cage was an American composer with great interest in the indeterminacy in music, or leaving the possibility of chance or change up to the composer in any given moment. This gives any piece the option of being performed in different ways and allows for greater interpretive ability to the one making her own music.
Here is an example:
(Go ahead, I’ll be here when you get back.)
What the hell was that?
If you aren’t familiar with “4’33”’ it is an entirely silent composition (on the surface). This piece was reportedly Cage’s favorite. It was inspired by his visit to Harvard’s anechoic chamber which was designed to eliminate any sound and produce exact quietude. Instead, Cage could hear the sound of his blood pulsing, his nerves afire.
No two people will ever hear 4’33” the same.
No two people could duplicate their environment, the rhythms of their own hearts.
4’33” will take on the sound of the cosmos around you.
In fact, you’ll never hear it the same anytime you give it a listen.
It is a deeply personal experience.
It is your own kind of music.
Listen, the world feels batshit crazy right now. And it’s hard to grasp onto anything firm. For Desmond, the man in the bunker in “LOST,” he found purpose in the routine, the necessity of the series of numbers every 108 minutes or the end of the world while Mama’s croons filled the space with her own kind of music.
So, the best thing I know to do right now is my routine. Walking my dog, baking the pies, writing the words, capturing the joys, feeding the people, feeling the fears. It’s fighting off the end of the world.
And all this while, I’ll keep on making my own kind of music.
It won’t be like yours - yours will be your own.
But together, it will be deafening.
Love this. Have been vibing on what is our own for some time, and it’s so nice to consider it through the lenses of Mama Cass and John Cage. 4’33” is a revelation a la literally any pie you’ve made.
Bubblegum is definitely not my music of choice these days (tho Mama Cass kicks ass). I have been unable to tear myself away from female rage in song form - and because I'm a late GenXer, for me that means '90s femme punk and rock. My playlists these days are all Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, the Cranberries and the Breeders, Veruca Salt and Garbage and even the occasional Liz Phair or Alanis Morrisette...etc. But the main thing is to exactly what you said, for us all to keep making our own music (or loudly scream along to other people's music, which is a sort of music all its own).