Uncharted Waters (#37)

Source here. Originally recorded on January 11, 1997.

Yes, I know, I'm late this week. I plead vacation, and then vacation recovery, and then vacation recovery recovery, for the delay. My body was in revolt (and revolting it was), due to the medley of maladies I visited upon it.

Enough about me, this is about you. This track begins like a maelstrom across a tundra of metal garbage, and the title suggests a journey with unknown destination. After listening to it twice and then three times, I'm still not exactly sure what kind of trip it is (man). Time and distance are compressed and expanded at whim, and sense of place is nebulous at best.

Draw your own conclusions.

1. The Howling Abyss
2. It Was the Beat that Drove them On
3. Martin Denny is not good for a Hangover
4. The Dogs did not Approve
5. Leviathan: 1; Musical Theater: 0
6. Four Documentaries and a Parade
7. Seeing-Eye Lion
8. Cafeteria on Fire
9. Wait, what kind of Mushroom?
10. No Parking in the White Zone
11. Theme from a Parisian Picnic
12. Distant Techno
13. Wunnerful Wunnerful
    

The Salutatorian Weeps (#36)

Source here. Originally recoded on January 4th, 1997.

I'm not entirely certain what this one "means", and - apropos of nothing- I've filled four boxes of tapes for storage. This could be a rejection of all things related to Pachelbel's Canon in D (which figures greatly in this), or perhaps a meditation on the movie "Ordinary People". A full picture may reveal itself later upon relistening, although I might skip past all the violins.

1. Wow and clatter
2. Aliens and violins (Pachelbel's laser cannon)
   
3. More sax and violins
4. We are not done with that cannon yet
5. Children merrily skipping
6. Alpert and Esquivel fight it out
7. Burroughs struggles to be heard
8. That would be fine
9. Kleztistic
10. The Little Fishes are in Bed
11. Take a breath
12. The floor is about to give
13. Oversize linotype

Added by IanF-R:
After hearing this one all the way through a few times, I think this show has long been one of my favorites in its evolving, un-themed, sporadic and organic development. The long continuum from W. S. Burroughs' appearance to the questionable "wake up!" shriek is one I remember well. Hearing it again, I can also name some of the sources long forgotten even though I don't have the flowsheet to share:

• Dr. Fiorella Terenzi (space sounds)
• Nonsense Verse, album of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear
• Del Wood, queen of honky tonk piano
• K. K. Null and Jim O'Rourke, A New Kind of Water (garbage guitars)
• Smegma, unknown album (loops, horns, and car alarms)
• De La Guarda
• Music to Grow Plants By (the cheesy "Alpert/Esquivel" music masking a weird high-pitched tone heard between tracks)

Xmas Substitute Attempt of Radio (#32)

Original source here. Recorded on December 21, 1996.

Christmas in July I understand, but April? We're only a quarter of the way through the year, barely done with Easter. Even with me being late a day and everything. That's just the luck of the draw, I guess. I grab tapes, put them into the computer, upload them and post them in order.

Christmas, at least as known by the people who won't go within 10 miles of a mall during that time, is rich with various media tools. Even though we select only sound, we have nearly three quarters of a century of recorded media to draw from.

This selection may lead to feelings of vertigo, slight nausea, disorientation, and tidings of comfort and joy.

1. Super Creepy Santa
2. Hip Hop Ren Stimpy
3. Xmasoqatsi
4. Mallocalypse Now
5. Swingin' with Santa
6. Dance of the Eightball Fairies
7. Weaving Towards Bethlehem
8. The Hardest Working Santa
9. Santa's Delight
10. It doesn't get Whiter Than This
11. Chuckle
12. Yuletide Stringing
13. Inexplicable Outro
    

Added by IanF-R:
When Jason says above "It doesn't get whiter than this", he's referring to a featureless & foreign-pressed Pat Boone record of Christmas songs that had the most garish and grotesque cover art imaginable (Boone's teeth were whitened by scratching the printing plates). Sadly I no longer have this monster.

"May Contain Some of the Following Ingredients..."

I wanted to chime in and mention that I've added flowsheet links to all currently posted shows, and I'll continue this as new shows get updated. Since Jason is posting the show itself, I'll add the flowsheet links to his posts as they appear. They are also collected into a Flickr set.

Flowsheets were the station's method of tracking which songs get aired when. This included "playlist" or recommended tracks as well as local artists and some genre variations. In earlier shows, I was solo and required to include playlist songs. Later, the show was designated specialty (exempt from playlist requirements), we sometimes had show themes, and I recruited friends into helping me. This meant I couldn't know what musics other people were adding, sometimes from another room, and I was just busier throughout the show.

From the early flowsheets, you can see these music and collage segments pretty clearly. I'd play a cluster of playlist tracks (marked in the margin with "I", "II", or "G"), and then I'd switch to audio-collage with various and random collected materials. Six playlist tracks were required each hour. I liked the playlist music, but for solo collage I often used thrift-store finds or non-musical audio to layer into "figure vs. ground" or "conversation" mixes. Of course, I was never able to write down every piece of sound that made it to the air. Some shows have only the barest notes on the corresponding flowsheet, due to the difficulty in reporting what we had specifically played.

The earlier shows are also "Excerpts" tapes, which means I was only stopping and starting the tape to record the collages as well as music I particularly liked. This means (almost) everything in the recording would be on the flowsheet, but not everything on the sheet was recorded.

In any case, between Jason's subjective "Notes" lists and the (more?) objective flowsheet documents, you might get a textual sense of what is contained in each show's audio. We were usually laughing out loud at the juxtapositions which occurred during the shows; for me, the point was to enjoy the absurdity and un-realism. Hopefully you the reader might also find the audio enjoyable to hear now, as time removes the recordings further and further from the current musical sound culture.

Another slight diversion.

This is what archiving looks like.... (Flickr page here)

Thanksgiving Break (#29)

Original Source here. Recorded on November 30th, 1996.

Given the date, there's really no overarching theme here, but the fact that Thanksgiving and Ostara are two holidays for overindulgence could lend a certain thematic tone to at least this post above and beyond what we were reaching for on that particular night.

Thanksgiving (and, by extension, Easter I guess), are lonely times at college radio stations. Most of the main DJs are gone, and the second stringers are in full force. Being perennial second-stringers we generally had all the time we could claim (not necessarily a good thing). Like the Grateful Dead, and extended remix might give way to distended sessions of noodling.

Sometimes this worked out just fine.

1. Come On, Every Beat Box
2. Back in the 20s, we only had wood burning Industrial Music
3. Not the First Song From Our New Album
4. 80's Horror Movie
5. We're Going to Take a Bath on This One.
6. Strings or Hinges
7. Story Chant Time
8. Where is it Hiding?
9. Alvin, Simon, Theodore
   
10. The Man Who Killed Carlos Santana
11. I Ended up Barfing on Bing Crosby
12. Will You? Won't You?
13. I Tripped Over Can

Added by IanF-R:
This show's flowsheet is a little more informational than others due to the show's less thematic, more ad hoc format.