Alexander von Humboldt

She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.

Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.

Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.

The record label will never put her name on the album.

Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.

The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.

Carol could do it on the first try.

She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.

But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.

That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.

She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.

Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.

She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.

The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.

For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.

Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.

And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.

But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.

Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.

And then I grew up and it turns out the world is going to shit and there’s a class war everywhere and my livelihood is under constant threat because I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into generational wealth and climate change is coming fast and god, the powerful are so selfish and and and- and yet, I do still dance in my kitchen. Sometimes my cat asks to be picked up and I sway around in a made up waltz with her tucked into my arms. (This is one of her favorite activities)

I play card games and gossip and watch movies with my friends every few Saturdays even though we’re all overworked and exhausted. i create things in the pockets of time between sleep and work and sometimes I create while I’m at work and I race home to finish it with a childlike sort of excitement. I’ve seen very little of the world but it’s still more than most of my family has. and these things are still just as wonderful as I dreamed they’d be, it’s just that they’re grounded firmly in a reality that’s harder to thrive in.

it makes me sad, because I feel like a lot of people are grappling with how much more difficult it is these days to create a life you survived for. And it can feel sometimes like it was all for nothing- all that stubborn determination to stay alive and keep trying, keep going got us to a world on fire, with all the folks who could do anything about it shrugging and saying no, nothing can be done, it’s too late, it’s just how things are.

Except it isn’t. There will always be dancing, there will always be companionship, there will always be room for hope. It’s never useless to hope for a better life. It’s never useless to believe it can be.

So, the question got asked under the heat advice post a couple of times, making me realize this is not common knowledge, apparently. Because a bunch of people have asked "why do we need tree shade, sun gets through the leaves still!" And given I am Solarpunk posting either way, let me quickly go over this - because hey, this is actually a topic I have taken part on some research on. So yeah, I do know some about this.

So: when it is hot and sunny, obviously you want to see shadow. But generally you will often find that the shadow of trees feels nicer than the shadow of buildings. And this is because of the "urban heat island" effect, and because of the evaporation of trees.

To make it somewhat simple: when it is hot and sunny, it tends to be a good bit hotter in big cities than outside of the cities. This is because a lot of modern architecture is kinda concentrating the heat.

You might have noticed that concrete is fucking hot when it the summer sun is out. It basically absorbs heat energy and kinda holds onto it rather well. Concrete is used a lot in modern architecture not just in the streets. And obviously the very glass heavy fronts of modern buildings at times also focus the sunlight, and generally do just not help to allow the heat in the cities to evaporate. Which creates the effect of "Urban Heat Islands". Cities just heat up, and with the dense city centers often also not allowing for wind to properly move through them heat at times can collect there for days with little ways to get out.

Now, old stone buildings are already better. They heat up slower than concrete - though they, too, will heat up eventually and then at times hold onto the heat for a while.

Wood buildings do the entire heating up less, which makes them often nicer in summer, but obviously a bit of headache to keep warm in winter.

Now, here comes the part with the green cities.

And I have realized... some people really think that Solarpunk has all those green buildings, green streets and what not for aesthetic reasons, or maybe because of the insects.

Uhm... yeah, that is wrong. Solarpunk has those green cities, because green cities are better thermoregulated, and urban planners are already pushing for cities to become more green.

See: plants are full of water. And water evaporates in the heat. And whenever water evaporates, it takes some of that heat out of the environment to do that. So: if you are around plants in the heat, it is nicer and cooler. You will notice that if you seek shade underneath a tree, that shade often is indeed cooler than the shade of a building. This is why.

Additionally, if you have a lot of green in a city, you often also have some open ground - rather than ground that has been sealed. And natural ground also is better at regulating heat than concrete or even cobblestone. Because, again: there is some water in there. And that can evaporate.

Generally: if it is hot and sunny and you walk on concrete, or similar ground you are gonna burn your feet. If sun has been out for a long summer day, same will likely happen on cobblestone. If you meanwhile just walk on earth, you likely will be fine. On grass you definitely will NOT burn your feet.

So, yeah: green cities are amazing. Not just for the vibes, but also because they help the city cool down. And generally: even in a grassy field without shadow you will be cooler than in a concrete parking lot without shadow.

Plants help you cool down. Support plants.