Music and Noise, Pt. 2 (#20)

Originally broadcast on October 5, 1996, and show source found here.

I feel my role for these programs now is part historian and interpreter, and sometimes apologist. I recount the facts and details about the original show and how it was made, I provide context from the intents and environments at that time, and I also admit when the shows fail to live up to their potential. This one feels at times like it needs apologizing for, with dead-air minutes and interminable stretches of unpleasant scrapings.

This is, however, what this show is also fundamentally about: pointing out the subjectivity of sound appreciation and attempting to sow seeds in the extreme outer corners of the possible aural field. Music is sometimes differentiated from noise as being organized or desired sound. But putting Music and Noise on a linear axis varying in degrees of Organization or Desirability does not address the subjective nature of those factors. Repetitive factory sounds, clumsy guitar dismemberment, slap funk bass, scrambled tape feedback, reverberating vocal grumbles as found within this show are all equally organized/disorganized, or desirable/undesirable based wholly upon the listener's sensibilities.

As the second of a two-show theme, this recording captured myself, possibly alone at the controls, challenging my future self's definitions and acceptance of music versus noise, contrived versus accidental, and beautiful versus unlistenable in the context of radio programming. I won't bore you how I like it now, but I find it still makes me think, which I count as a kind of success.

1. Dot matrix guitar
2. Guitarpentry
3. 1959 guitar lessons with 3-minute break
4. Hi and lo white noise
5. Cave flautism
6. Caveman at open mic night
7. Actual beats and basslines
8. Jajouka versus breakaway tape machine
9. Fire engines in freefall
10. Weird noise club next door
11. Behemoth speaking slowly
12. More cave guitars with Anton LaVey
13. Relentless house paranoia

Beatleshow 2 (#73)

Show source here. Originally broadcast on September 11, 1997. This was the second of two successful-seeming shows dedicated to the Beatles and their celebrity.

Hopefully, this show can't be mistaken for a fully-earnest Beatlish tribute, due to the constant (mis)handling and sabotage of playing anything just as it is. This program presents a uniformly blended mishmash of confused and entertaining shreds from the Fab Four's commercial discography, press interviews, post-Beatle careers, and subsequent oddball or eccentric Beatles covers. As soon as a song appears recognizable, an unseen hand wrenches it into parody or dissonance.

I am reviewing this show without the benefit of the tape case or any notes, but I know that several tapes existed in the aftermath of the Beatle-shows, some of which were post-produced edits, and so this one may have been trimmed from raw broadcast for the most interesting bits. In this state, it feels pretty organically evolved.

Also, I note another brief appearance partway through of a call-in contribution, a friend playing tapes of more scrambled interviews over the phone lines. These calls happened more often without success than with it, so it feels like a small triumph to hear it working here.

1. Strawberry cellos forever
2. Long & winding bad trip
3. Sobbing, tearing hair
4. I'm pretty sure you didn't bury Paul
5. My funny birthday drums
6. Helter Skelter = Merzbow ÷ Melvins
7. Help, help, help
8. Persistent and annoying organ pulse
9. Ringo the dog presents the Rutles
10. How big are they?
11. All about the money
12. Emperor Lennon is insulted
13. Sha la la la la. La?

This show's playlist.

Tape Loop Bureaucrat (#68)

Source here. Originally recorded on August 7th, 1997.

Another short one and another skipped week. This summer is shaping up to not shape up at all. Still, I care about each one (both) of you and I'm putting in the time. The title implies an oppressive, "normalizing" regime holding court over an army of drones. This moves slowly, so titling was annoyingly hard.

1. Monster Moment
2. Don't go in the Master Control Room!
3. The bugs in the background are chewing on me
4. Slowly ground down
5. Spin Cycle
6. Gravel Driveway
7. Code Talker
8. Falling Apart
9. Scratching the Surface
10. Turning the Crank
11. The Yo-Yo Makes It Work
12. Elliptical Sander
13. Background Murmur Metal Recap

Added by IanF-R: Purely provenance side-note: this show is the next-generation descendent of the previously posted show "Tape Loop Marxist". Is it more distributed, less political, than its parent? Is it half-speed for half as long? I can hardly say. One listener's boredom is another's catharsis.

Drones (#66)

Source here. Originally recorded on July 24th, 1997.

I could say I've been on "Summer Hiatus" and to a certain extent (except for the summer part) that's true. The Big Lazies have gotten to me the past two weekends (in a ROW), and we've all suffered as a result.

Drone music does nothing to shake off the lazy feeling, even enhancing it if you play your cards right. Given that, it's amazing that this is such a short bit. With the abrupt start, it's probably one we started recording somewhere in the middle, or accidentally forgot to flip the tape, or something like that as the music overtook us. This is all muddy (in the good way) resonant ringing drone, and pretty fantastic at that.

1. Gurgle gurgle gurgle puke
2. The spins with a catchy beat
3. Interstellar Autobahn
4. Wrung out all wrong
5. Stop with the shouting!
6. It's thunderous, but it's not applause
7. The drill bottoms out
8. Jimmy Carter Noir
9. Flying away on a robot intermodulator
10. Reference tone manipulation
11. Quiet water-powered xylophone
12. Chewy reverb harmonium sound
13. Phone tone lone drone
    

Radio Radio (#64)

Source here. Originally recoded on July 10th, 1997.

This is all about making radio while making radio. There is all sorts of radio theater gaggery going on here, with lots of audio sound effects and wonky juxtaposition. It strikes me now that we may be in the last days of live radio, or that live radio is really the only kind of radio left worth listening to.

With MP3 players / Last FM / Pandora on your phone / Satellite radio providing all sorts of different ways to listen to what you want to hear while getting introduced to new stuff you might want to hear; live radio, and possibly talk radio, are the only reasons one might spin the tuner dial and check out what's coming over the airwaves.

I've flirted with the idea of doing this sort of show again, except over the Internet, but the problem is the temporally shared experience lends its own energy (and I'm using this in the non-scientific way) to a performance such as this. I'm not saying we could tell if people were listening or not. It was more subtle than that, and losing that ineffableness is one of the things that keeps me awake at night. You can't measure it, but you know when it's gone.

1. Steve Allen's large salami
2. Come in, North Pole
3. Let's go back to the year 1942
   
4. Mexican Radio
5. Echo Sonata
6. Never Enough Loop
7. Never Enough Loop (reprise)
8. 1000 Vices
9. Minor Mellow Moment
10. I'm only getting noise
11. ORIGINAL CREAM
12. The Eagle Has Landed, Man
13. End Transmission