"A little net.music"

[nessus (Doug Alan)]

[This is a note that Gregory Taylor (gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP) posted to
net.music about his usenet music compilation tape.  He asked me to
tell all the Love-Hounds about the tape, so here it is...]

Well, it's on it's way to the duplicators even as you read this.
"A Little Net.Music: The USENET Cassette" is now reality...or virtual
reality, anyway. Very soon, you'll be able to subject yourself and
your boombox/walkperson/kooky cat tape player/golden ears stereo to
90+ minutes of music produced and recorded exclusively by net denizens.
That's right, a double album's worth of the same plucky signal-to-noise
pluralism you know and love in PHYSICAL, 1 7/8 ips form.

The logistics of all this will be contained in the followup "Release
Party" posting. I can't tell you the neat stuff (the colour of the 
cover, the name of the person who did the Japanese calligraphy, etc.)
until then. But for now, I'll bet you'd be REALLY curious to know what
is actually on the tape, right? Okay...scan this list and see if there
aren't a few net names you recognize. We'll talk about the rest later
(ie DON'T send me any mail about getting one in your hot little hand
NOW, okay??? I got other stuff to do)>

(DRUM ROLL, LIGHTS UP, BRING ON THE DANCING TAKE-UP REELS...........)


Side One: 
tjjw!?vax Intro/Vegetableland 
What? Toejam Jawallaby HERE? On this cassette? No lawsuits? Es verdad?
Yes, it's all true. The man himself has elected to include a golden
oldie that obviously influenced George Martin's production of Jeffy
Beck's "Blow by Blow". Isn't it wonderful that Toejam is such a pro
that he suffers imitators so gladly? Nina Blackwood (presumably clothed)
elected to introduce things.

guidos@brl-lfd.arpa Got A Bad Heart 
That drawl draws you into a story of mayhem, government harassment,
and ruin. Some Derridian thoughtfully added a Guiro for accompaniment,
and Bernie blows the harp. Folk Rock? PostModern Narrative? Features
the prize couplet (from memory, I could be wrong) Dogwood's Dog/Gotta
Lotta Heart/Hair Like Wire/Goin' Arf Arf Arf. Pins the needles on the
smile meter.

bentley!egw The Fall of the Shah 
Devotees of Der Deutscher Pulse take note. We're looking at that European
inflected electronic beat, with a little synth that neatly recapitulates
the fall of the mighty. In MacLuhanesque terms, we mean Hot title and
Cool Medium. Like the fall of the mighty, it's business as usual
right up until the threads pull loose and rain random notes on
the masses.

pur-ee!hsut The YoYoDyne Mix 
You're a fan of the treated piano? You wanna know what a tape recorded
at high speed in reverse sound like when used as a rhythm track? You
wanna hear Bill Hsu reading a Conceptualist text written by Doug Alan?
Well, here you go. Pour yourself a bowl of Green Elephant Breakfast
cereal, turn the Kate Bush poster to the wall, and listen.

iham1!rwn Baby Do Your Thing for Me 
Serious technopopper Bob Neumann crossbreed Kraftwerk, Oberheim, and
a little Prince to come up with this little ticker. This cut
features the best little strangled yelps and vocal utterances on
the tape, synched right up with the Tin Man's heart.

esc-bb!brad Gosharaku Kyu 
The subtle and refined music of the Japanese courts is rat cheer on
the net tape to realign your hearing. A probable source of trouble
for those of you who are serious Ethnocentrists, this cut falls into
the "pre-emptive" strike category. If it's any easier, you can imagine
the Art Ensemble of Chicago in one of their most careful moods. But
when you're done, as Brad the questions. It's not often we get a real
expert on the net.

tellab1!etan Crossover 
As they say, the family that plays together stays together. Nate and
the wife and band turn in a shiny performance about the vagaries and
split allegiances of the modern world, with a nod to the roots of the
Authoritarian urge ("Tell me what I am"). Again, the title is cleverly
punned, since this is crossover material.

g.cs.cmu.edu!ckk I Have A Dream 
Chris is working as a composer in residence at the Carnegie-Mellon
electronics studio, and spending much of the rest of his time playing
a kind of Chamber Free Improv. On this cut, he takes Martin Luther King's
famous oration (done in Sprechstimme), hooks his voice to a Pitchrider,
and sweetens things with a little trumpet and woodwind. The aural effect
is a little like watching a yard full of rambunctious children at work-
darting bits of improv, randomized sounds, and the occasional snatch of
intelligeable text. All this fits the simple spirit behind all of the
text's portentious rhetoric.

svaporvax!bornak Sno-Cones in Hell 
If Pandemonium (Milton invented the word for use in "Paradise Lost")
had a nightly news show, this would probably be the human interest
story portion. The scene of the disaster is New Jersey, and the backing
is that relentlessly skewed clatter that reminds you of the look and feel
of some parts of Northern NJ...the portions that resemble the inside of
an old radio.

dadla!jrb Scrapple From the Apple 
The only appearance of a VAX on the tape, and a drum machine that
you're gonna love. Free associative pattern drumming over those FM
vibe patches. The elite lay awake at night worrying that there are
people who work on this kind of stuff. Binkley rescues them from worry
by giving what they worried about with a twist all his own. NOTE to
purists: this is the closest to jazz we come here, so look out. This
is not your normal cover it and blow session.

ihuxx!phedge Electronix 
Again, we hear from the 20th century. THe music of the line priinter
opens and closes this very intimate dedication of undying affection
to that thing in the chilly room that crunches your numbers for you.
Features the closest to speed vocals you'll find on this tape, and
one of those lovely bits where the singer almost loses it and starts
laughing. Self control is so much fun to listen to.

Side Two: 
nrl-css!wicinski Electroglide
This is definitely "skank around the house vacuuming the blinds"
stuff. A slithery little slap-bass funk groove with that Loooooowwww
ZZ Top rumble vocal and little splinters of noise. It churns away
and then fades out. Tim Wicinski is probably still dancing out there,
wondering how life is on the *outside* of the Cabaret Voltaire/Material/
Shreikback orbit.
 
dec-pldvax!janzen  Caterpillar Blews 
Tom Janzen, that erstwhile performance artist, net.music.synth whiz
and theorist, lays out an ?? to the bar blues that more closely resembles
the rippling euphonia of Fats Waller crossed with Philip Glass' additive
cycle technique. An interesting introduction to the man's work.

hofmann@amsaa.arpa Suburban Voodoo 
Don't let the marimba fool you (don't worry, it won't). From deep
in the heart of darkest Amerika, the conceptual son of Chuckie Bukowski
and Ronold Shannon Jackson link up with the marimba player from
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood to give you not one but two little slices
of life on the ranting edge. Is it poetry? Is it confession? Is it
theatre? What is Hofmann's back yard *really* like, anyway?

pyuxd!rlr Fair Exchange 
Sure, he's the darling of many a terminal's n-key, but did you know
that he can play? If you want to spend the rest of your life dealing
with an image of Good Old Rosen, don't dare listen to this restrained
meeting of Minimalism and the Solo Guitar. Not only that, I heard a 
*whole* tape of his stuff and guess what? He knows what he's doing. Oops,
now the cat's out of the bag. I'm against cruelty to animals and also
all for a little hosing with the standard Min format.

potomac!jsl What is Wrong with My Dog 
You remember wondering about exactly how difficult it was to correctly
identify specimens from Phylum Chordata in High School Biology? Well,
the protagonist of Johnny Labovitz's little epic has the same problem
in spades. No hassle for John, though....monster CHUNKCHUNKCHUNKCHUNK
CHUNKCHUNKWAH licks, epic dog howl imitations, and quite an ear for
the rhyme. Nasty, brutish and short.

stolaf!robertsl Ink Now Blood 
For this to work, you've got to imagine Lawrence Roberts in a big
room full of Minuteman and 2i posters up there in the dead of 
the Minneapolis winter. His pogo pals are gone, the record is spinning
furiously at the end of some single, the party is over and the boy's 
heart is still full of the unresolved tensions of like in the modern 
world. There's this piano there, and they're all alone. LR sits down 
and begins to play....

dec-baxta!bottom_david  Just for Kicks 
Poor Dave. He is the tried and true victim of that archetypal mean
old woman who plays with heart while he plays his guitar alongside
his drummer and bassist pals. Those blue notes just come sputtering
out of that guitar, stopping only for those little syncopated hooks
at the end of the 32 bar phrase. The guitar hero with the tale of
romantic woe and those nights by the phone lives on.

hao!pete Shakuhachi I 
This one leaped off of Pete's cassette on first hearing, and is a very
small slice of what I tend to call "Imaginary Ethnography" I like it.
What can we say here? The music of an invented culture? Do It yourself
Home Ritual Recordings? The only appearance of an oven rack as a 
percussion instrument? My only complaint is that it was too short.

amdcad!linda Chopin Polonaise No. 2 Op. 40 
And you though you could escape without any High Culture whatsoever,
didn't you? No way, you little Philistines. Siddown and listen to a
pro riff through a little piece of 19th century weather. The modulations
are complicated, the shifts like a pack of fleecy clouds before a high
wind. Not a I-VII-IV chord chain in sight. Linda acquits herself well,
and may never forgive me for allowing such control and grace into the
rest of this madhouse.

cubsvax!dss Sergury 
You remember analog synthesis, don't you? Like Walter/Wendy Carlos
and those great little signature tunes with the shifting timbres
they used to play on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered"?
This is the hard stuff, and we've got a nifty piece of it here from
David Silver. The title derives from the Serge Modular System that the
piece was realized on.

rossi@nusc.ARPA Psychadelic Nightmare
You may have heard about Coitus, Rossi's old band. Here's your chance to
get a taste of their work. This could easily fit in nicely to one of
those "Teens Gone Astray" movies, full of black light shots and loony
camera work. As a piece of psychedelia, this was a pretty restrained
bit of production, betraying a certain commitment to craft.

astroatc!gtaylor Answering the Cloud
Since I was worried about all this stuff fitting on a 90 minute
tape, I stuck myself at the end. Due to the length, there wasn't 
enough space for what I'd planned, so you get the first and only 
rough dub of a work in progress. One of those collisions between
that awful atmospheric stuff and a little Javanese subdivision with
little bits of leftover solo instruments flying in and out of things.
We're talking cultural plunder, I think. Mea Culpa.