I've tried to notice when people have responded to my blog posts. There are two friends who have written responses, neither of whom use their birth names for online purposes when possible, so I won't either.
Today however, I received an email from one Robert Carey of (or really, is) Orchid Spangiafora. The link for my original posting is at the top of the pasted message.
He wrote that Blogspot wasn't permitting him to respond to my posting. (I assume it's my fault, some setting I probably need to change.) Because this is the primary source, the genuine article, I thought I'd include his email as a separate posting and not just paste it into the responses myself.
Something I mentioned to him when writing back: I wrote to him once before, asking if he knew anything about the Conglomerate Records tape collection. Like everyone else I asked, the answer was no. If you have no idea what I'm referring to, I'll write more in a future message.
Thanks for the review! It is very cool to be able to read people’s takes on FPAE. I remember thinking when I made the record I would never get to hear people’s reactions to it. The web has changed that.
I have a few comments.
I am certain she is the reason WRCT bought the Orchid Spangiafora LP. "It's really good" as she would say in her quiet manner. Curiously, the original album was released on Twin/Tone Records. Twin/Tone was a Minnesota indie that released the likes of The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Mekons, Yo La Tengo: guitar-driven stripped-down new wave bands. Yet, somehow in 1979, the Orchid Spangiafora LP was released.
I forgot Yo La Tango was on Twin/Tone. Georgia was in elementary school at Friends Seminary when I was in high school. I got to know her and Ira better in the late 1970s when I was seeing Georgia’s sister Emily and Ira was working at NY Rocker. Before Flee Past’s Ape Elf I made a 7” record of Dime Operation. My college roommate, Chris Osgood, was in a band called The Suicide Commandos and they put out some EPs via Paul Stark, who founded Twin/Tone. So my record came out on PS records. Later Chris worked for Twin/Tone and he proposed an Orchid Spangiafora album to the other guys there.
So what is it? Musique concrète, audio cut-ups, Plunderphonics before such a word existed. (I assume, I think John Oswald would create the word some years later.)
I always thought of it as Concrète, but historically that genre typically emphasized found sounds other than voice. It has a little in common with Come Out by Steve Reich, but it is not as formal, and I think it owes more to Burroughs and Gysin. I first heard of Plunderphonics when Byron Coley played me the record with Michael Jackson on the cover - particular the track based on Trout Mask Replica. I think that was in the late 1980s. Plunderphonics to me is more about repurposing selections of existing music to create a new piece that sounds like it could have been assembled by the original artist. Somewhere in between you find things like 448 Deathless Days by Steve Fisk (which I highly recommend.)
The emphasis is on voices, particularly found voices; the first work, "Dime Operation", is a furious collage of voices that sound like they were recorded off of television. (I recognized Monte Hall's voice in there.)
“I had so much fun with those dolphins.” Yep, a lot of television and radio combined with friends’ voices and anything else that happened along. The first one was Coarse Fish. I came into the Hampshire College electronic music studio in 1973 to find that John Kilgore had left me a huge pile of loose recording tape on the table with a note on top saying, “Robbie, knock yourself out.” It was recordings of a nature show about the ocean. It became Coarse Fish.
One phrase stood out, from two speakers edited one after the other: "Fashioned to a device behind a tree." This would become the title of a Nurse With Wound piece, first appearing on a Come Org compilation in 1982.
Stapleton misheard that. It actually says, “Fastened to a device - behind a tree.” Not that it really matters at all.
The reissue comes with a second LP of unreleased (at least to vinyl) works. The first side is different, more of a low-tech electronic work, but again with some emphasis on editing. The second side though, it's all voices. One after another after another after another, cut/cut/cut/cut/cut. It's listed as four pieces, but it runs continuously and I'll be damned if I can hear where one ends and the next starts.
I did Asafoetida in October 1972. The studio at Hampshire had an Arp 2500 synthesizer which was a great teaching machine but somewhat noisy. A lot, but far from all, of the sounds in that piece come from the Arp, but nearly all of the composition was done with loops and edits on the tape decks and combining tracks with the mixer. There are many many tracks layered in that piece. Unfortunately it is a little muddy because it was, in fact, somewhat muddy to begin with due to certain constraints of the studio but mostly due to my inexperience. Also the original tape was lost long ago, and the recording on the album is from a not-very-carefully made dub. Secondhand Smoke was done on a computer when storage and processor speed was just barely up to it. Hold Everything was done after Hampshire in my parents’ apartment on a cheap Akai tape recorder. There is more Orchid material from feeding tube if you are interested. Visit https://feedingtuberecords.com/. There are also some odds and ends on bandcamp.
*Regarding Boyd Rice: Hoo boy. I guess he still has his defenders, it's not a scene that I've followed closely.
Boyd sent me some records by Non in the late 70s or early 80s. They were interesting. He had drilled alternative spindle holes in them so you could play them off center. I met him when he did a performance at Hurrah in NYC. The performance was good. I found him interesting but somewhat hostile. I recently bought a book by him called “No,” but I have not given it the attention it deserves. Beyond that I do not know much about him. I believe you can find more personal notes about him in Drugs Are Nice by Lisa Carver, another book that is sitting unread on my shelf. I should get around to it.
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