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October 1999
New Mp3 Track Download
30.10.1999 / 1. The man of to-morrow. Having
recently visited The City by the Bay (with its pendulous bridges) and,
coincidentally, fresh from a video screening of Vertigo, we —
editorially — are moved to announce that, for us, anyway, ‘suspense
is the name of the game.’ So, rather than revealing the whole graceful
swoop of the banana, we will reveal our new recording Good Times in
cereal-bowl-ready slices, one track per week. Each Monday, we will add another
track from the album to the mp3 collection already available from this site. It
will be the record that took six months to reveal (on the web anyway, since you
can buy the CD at any time).
This week’s selection is track 12: The man of to-morrow. It, as
they say, is a real teaser. It neither typifies the other tracks, nor does it
summarize the theme of the work. What it does do, in our opinion, is give a
scent of what is to come.
24.10.1999 / Travel pictures. I returned from
my trip to San Francisco a week ago, but I found that our shipment of Good
Times CDs had, at long last, arrived. So I immediately set out to doing our
normal promotional mailing, fashioning a press release and a packet of
accompanying information. That task done, I am now able to report that I have
posted a number of photos from my visit with Ralph Johnson.
• Look at my travel pictures from California
20.10.1999 / John Oswald announces: “a
prerecorded message: some time soon there will be a release of a plunderphonic
box set with over 60 tracks from 1969 to 1996. this will include previously
unheard alternate or remastered versions of everything on the original
plunderphonic CD plus an awful lot of other surprises plus an informative
booklet with some pretty good photo collages. it’s not completely settled
yet how this will come out but, unlike the last time around, i will not be
giving any copies of this one away for free; it’s just costing too much to
make, & there’s no time for me to go back into the free distribution
business. meanwhile, keep an eye on the plunderphonic webite for info on how it
will be available. :j.o.”
• The Plunderphonic web site
NEW RELEASE
Tape-beatles Make Good with ‘Good Times’
16.10.1999 / The Tape-beatles are pleased to announce
the release, and immediate availability, of a new Compact Disc Recording, their
5th major audio work, consisting of 23 tracks with a running time of 51 minutes,
and entitled Good Times.
Here as in previous releases, the Tape-beatles make exclusive use of found sound
which they bend, shape and otherwise change to suit their ends. These sonic
manipulations, sometimes subtle — often drastic, create new works that can
unambiguously be attributed to the Tape-beatles, but at the same time, the
sources are evident, too. The result is a richly layered, sumptuously produced,
carefully conceived and realized audio banquet that may sound familiar, yet is
completely new.
The title ‘Good Times’ refers explicitly to the current state of the
economy in the West, and the defining role economic realities play in
determining human and cultural possibility. For example, the tracks
‘Education of the will’ and ‘Human machine’ take
snippets of text from actual interviews with food service workers and combine
them with spartan percussion figures, edited and timed to provide a rhythmic
backdrop. The text of the piece questions human dignity and fairness in the
workplace and how these are often at odds with modes of production in the
service industry. The answer to questions raised in this sequence come in the
next track, ‘Byways of Ghostland’ which is a richly detailed kinetic
collage of Hollywood style disaster movie soundtrack, suggesting that the result
is catastrophe, to the worker, as well as to society.
Further, all the tracks on the album form a tightly knit sequence that looks at
the 90s Economic Boom from a number of perspectives. Some hopeful, some
humorous, some disparaging, some almost mystical, wistful and yearning. This is
how the Tape-beatles work; years of research (the current opus was 3 years in
production), painstaking editing and sequencing, and critically observant of the
world outside of music and art.
The tracks on Good Times make use of, for example, a speech by
19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie, musical riffs from Aaron Copland, a
Georgian folk song, physicist Edward Teller discussing the origin of the cosmos,
happy ad-speak from a women’s products syndicate, aggressive drums from a
stereo test recording by a microphone manufacturer, testimony of Oliver North
before the U.S. Congress, a Coca-Cola television commercial, radio interviews
with pop musicians, and much more.
• Here’s how to get your copy of the new Tape-beatle CD “Good Times”
Site award
10.10.1999 / We are pleased to announce that this site
has been selected as the alt-music.net
Site of the Week. It may interest you to know that this is the first
award of any kind we have received for this site since it was begun in January,
1997. We are pleased at the recognition, but it makes us think back to the early
days. If you could compare the crappy PageMill-generated pages of those days to
the sleek unctuous streamed lines of the current screens, you’d probably
think less of us. But never mind! Those pages are lost to the mists of time.
• BBEdit changed my life
7.10.1999 / Brainstorm warning. Lloyd Dunn will
being paying a week-long visit to Ralph Johnson in San Leandro this weekend.
There they will lock heads in figuring out what to do next. Expect them to meet
up with some of the unusual suspects while there. Reports anon.
I know, already. Delivery of the Good Times CD has been
unforeseeably delayed once again. What we have expected in the past has not
panned out for various reasons outside our control, so I am loath to make a
solid prediction. However, all signs are pointing to receipt of delivery on or
before Oct. 18.
• In the meantime, let us know what you think of our site redesign
Site Overhaul, Course Correction
2.10.1999 / Having commented on nearly everything
else, I will now comment on a lack of news from the Tape-beatle ‘theatre
of operations’ as it were. We are at a crux, a nexus, a lynch-pin, and, as
if that weren’t enough, a turning point. The CD Good Times has been
released; it is available in Europe. We at the GLNA (Glassed-in Labs, North
America) are still waiting for our shipment so that we can fill the advance
orders we already have for it — our apologies to those who are waiting. We
fully expected to receive them Friday but they never arrived. UPS failed to
darken our door. We would hold our baited breath until we turned blue if we
thought that would help, but tantrums have never been our style. As an
alternative, we advise continued patience.
But back to this ‘turning-point.’ Ralph ‘Danger’
Johnson has let us know that ‘The Tape-beatles’ as a
‘concept’ is suffering from rigor mortis and needs immediate
cremation. Is he right? Is he wrong? Probably, and probably! We’ve reached
a point where ‘audio collage’ as a genre lacks the enervating
freshness of green spring shoots and takes on rather the cast of a cawing flock
of autumn crows. Skillful examples of the kind of work we set out to do can be
heard in television advertising. Perhaps without the apocalyptic fury of our
best work, but nonetheless, one might be forgiven for making the observation
that the musical dialect of sampling seems a bit stale.
Guy Debord would be vindicated, but not pleased. It was he who always maintained
that a new ‘style,’ no matter how ‘revolutionary,’ will
in all cases eventually be used to sell carbonated beverages.
At the same time John ‘Sullen’ Heck must needs believe in the
patented ‘Tape-beatle Process.’ There is yet truth to be wrung from
these rags. For, if our future wanderings lie along a misty trail, we are forced
to inspect the sights along the way more closely then, to see them clearly. And
should the fog rise to reveal, what — a labyrinth? — it will also be
so that there are dozens of dead ends, yes, but there are also dozens of soft,
chewy centers to reach as rewards.
As usual, this writer comes down firmly on both sides of the fence. I will be
here to report on and participate in each of the forked activity’s several
tines. And this bodes well for our ‘fan’-atics, since the future
will show them continuing projects under both names ‘Public Works’
and ‘The Tape-beatles.’ Let it here be understood clearly that our
enthusiasm for our new release Good Times does not flag. We will put it
out into the world for a life of its own.
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