Playlist

Recorded

April 21, 2018
She's Creepy - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

Imagine if The Sonics' ur-proto-punk The Witch had been written by Paul Revere and performed, by The Raiders, as though they were The Ventures. How Northwest can you get?

Play Station Central - Orion O'Malley Hughes & Lightnin' John Daley Three Turtles [from Sonicabal Vol. 2]

noise not reduced
mega chalkboard skqqqueeeel

microphone held right up to the crater's edge

Caldero del Diablo - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy - Interstellar Pianos]

bare figurations from the fount of bare figurations

battle ray guns and shields zip zap zzzzingggg

Banned Rehearsal 792 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2011]

music box joplin picks up where it left off in the last episode

we take pine cone turns to speak until distinction is presumed to talk at once

follow each thought pattern as it puts itself together
center on the most difficult
maintain incongruity in a leveling world

rhythm generation
low tones on electric piano
frame drum wash board suspended cymbal
xylophone various gongs and what nots
tasteful use of the pitchbend on the midikeys

The Humma Song from OK Janu - A. R. Rahman, Badshah, Tanishk Bagchi, Shashaa Tirupati & Jibin Nautyal [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

appropriating cultural appropriation
lots of characters to keep track of

April 22, 2018
The Carmans Whistle - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Imagine the englishy words: "Heare the carmans whistle blowe" or the like, in the likeness of the children's round Hear the Lively Sounds of the Frogs in Yonder Pond, which now I imagine one could use as the basis of a Byrd pastiche.

That last simultaneity is a killer.

Graysom Street Blues - Margaret Johnson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

following each vocal line find the instrumental commentary

Rock and Roll Ruby - Warren Smith [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

hold tight to the formula
be sure the brand name is clearly visible at all times

My Romance (take 1) - Bill Evans Trio [from Waltz for Debby]

magical dance of consideration among the trio members

Homeward Bound - Simon & Garfunkel [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme]

This is about as tightly written a song as any they produced back in the day. Up there with The Boxer.

April 24, 2018
Unnamed Track 11 - Tillicum Junior High School Band, Bob Runyan [from my mom's tape of a concert on March 3, 1971]

One of those tunes ubiquitous on UHF commercials 100 Favorite Classical Melodies (none of that boring stuff in between)

A Song for Cynthia - Walt Wagner [from Caprice]

off the shelf tune-smithery, pre casio pre-set

Cache Cache - The Who [from Face Dances]

I'm honestly not sure why anyone bothered with this.

Dulcimer Tunes and Anti-Muffins - Karen Eisenbrey [April 1986]

She could have been out partying (I was in Australia) but instead she made this tape. First some tunes then she reads a L'Engle story. Almost finishes it too!

April 26, 2018
Lounge Act - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

It starts with a second or so of Lurchish groan. At the very end is a similarly brief electroid fade-out. These post-production idea bits come across as being distinctly outside the songness of the song (which song I rather like by the by). They are production decisions, or electronic music compositional decisions - in that they force us to take this recording as a recorded object, in contra-distinction to allowing us to accept it as a song that happens to have been recorded for distribution. They echo each other bookend-ishly: a framing device, an Apology, in the old sense, much in the same vein as the arch title. Interesting, but I'm not convinced it does the song any particular favors.

Evil Martian - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

Same pre-ambular idea as LA above, but this time straight out of the novelty song grab bag: a sci-fi sound of yore around which a pastiche of yore is woven.

Sphygmomanometer - Mabuse [from Sonicabal Vol. 2]

The opening hit is allowed to inhabit and breathe, inadvertently highlighting the problem with inserts from outside the song such as in LA and EM above: they tend to either outshine or distract, as though the song were not convinced of its own entityhood. Here the insert is the show, with no song to photobomb its glory.

Banned Rehearsal 701 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2006]
we are waiting for Neal to arrive (he does about 10 minutes in)
me on electric guitar
Karen an various crude bells, whiny wind, washtubbass
there he is, through the door in the left speaker
another guitar amplified, amply modified
lifts Karen back to crude tractor clutch bells
we shred after our fashion
recede to dry bones
scratchy throat
done

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 23, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 957 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Ominous