A carefully planned programme which still managed to go slightly wrong. The deliberate mistake being that Rave Slime by Evol starts at 33rpm instead of 45rpm which affected the schedule. James, engineer at Resonance, preferred it at 33rpm and said he liked it so perhaps nothing to worry about. Both sides of Rave Slime are interrupted by four tracks from the soundtrack of “Drive” a new film which I haven’t seen. The score is by Cliff Martinez.
Author Archives: jtreg
Wavelength – Occupy!
Saturday 15th October sees the start of Occupy the Stock Exchange, an ongoing protest which started on Wall Street a few weeks ago. By next Friday the Bank of England will be in ruins, the Stock Exchange will be rubble and The Square Mile will be a desert. Today’s programme starts with Joy from a new CD by David Shrigley and Iain Shaw; Feet Live Their Own Life by Langston Hughes; Truce by Shrigley and Shaw; Western Omelettes by The Bohman Brothers and finally Dancing in the Sun by Winter Family from Red Sugar, their latest release on SubRosa.
Wavelength – Untitled.
A regular customer, called Richard, came in to the book shop where I “work” and asked me how to pronounce the name of the artist Peter Doig to which I facetiously suggested “Do-ig”. He thought that with my Dutch connection I might have suggested “Doigh” but as Doig isn’t Dutch or Flemish this was fairly illogical. I had always thought that Doig was Canadian but actually he was born in Scotland. At this point, a woman who was in the shop browsing through catalogues and ephemera relating to failed artists, joined in and said: “My friend wants to marry Peter Doig. She was taught by him in Stourbridge. The problem is that he’s already married, has five children and lives in Trinidad”. Richard looked thoughtful and I asked him if he would be buying the book on Volker which he had nearly finished reading. The tracks this week are L’Amour est Belle by Chantal Robette; Wapusk by Kathleen Edwards; The Way it Will Be by Gillian Welch; Republique by Winter Family, a duo from Jerusalem and Paris featuring the voice of Ruth Rosenthal and a short track by Martha Grunenwaldt.
Wavelength – Salad Nicoise.
It seems that this link erroneously plays the Messerschmitt programme. This will hopefully be corrected soon. Ten past six in the evening, a cafe on Nice beach. A hazy day has made the horizon disappear and the normally azure sea blends into a light grey sky. Occasional swimmers, stark and sharply focussed. A man with a close-cut beard, maybe thirty years old, is wading clumsily over pebbles into the water accompanied by a girl, maybe nine or ten, in a crimson swimsuit. He sits in the shallows to pull on plastic shoes. She splashes him, calls out “Papa” and remains close by his side. He stands upright again, takes a few more steps into the sea and then swims back to the shore, just three strokes, stands, the girl joins him again. Something about his movements, the direction of his face, the slight hesitation. She calls “Papa” and they both laugh. She takes his hand and now it’s obvious that he’s blind. La Chanson Dada by Tristan Tzara and Georges Auric performed by The Hafler Trio, Manoir de Mes Reves from Gitane by Charlie Haden and Christian Escoude, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg by Christian Marclay and Ubiquitous by Dennis Coffey all played over/under recordings made in Nice.
Wavelength – Let England Shake.
…back in Syston Health Centre, the muzak in the waiting room is now playing “Have you seen her” by The Chi-Lites. Fight the Flu with a quick simple jab. Your mystery pain could have a name. Low immunity, are you at risk? A voicemail from the Nu Swift fire extinguisher service engineer. Sorry about the fiasco last week, will I be in tomorrow morning? No. An email from my brother who is in New Orleans working on a remake of Point Blank starring Jennifer Lopez. The delay between analogue and digital. You need a scart cable, a set top box and a new remote control. Market Harborough has a short platform. Does it matter if it’s 15:05:00 or 15:05:01? MM’s Bar by Sandra Cross, Wall Street by Van Dyke Parks, Three Hundred Grams of Latex and Steel in One Day by Evol, 3 tracks from Let England Shake by P.J. Harvey.
Wavelength – William English and William English
Googling my own name, first past the post is William Hill Bookmaker even though I’ve Googled William English. Second by a short head is William English filmmaker and broadcaster (me) and then running into third place by a nose is William English Post Punk group from somewhere near Thetford. The idea of a group calling itself William English is quite strange and intriguing. I briefly surmise that a group of Estuary Post Punks are avid Wavelength listeners and are so impressed that they decide to call themselves after me but it turns out they’ve never heard of me and are named after William English Walling the radical American socialist. After contacting the group I now have a printed tee shirt with two crossed flintlock pistols and William English emblazoned across the front and a CD. William English, the group, have a new CD coming out soon and they will be guests on the programme in October. Playlist: Nelson’s County from Home by William English (not me) 2010. Sequence of short ads from 78rpm Victrola Favourites. Melancholy, debut single from Louise and The Pins (featuring Martha Wainwright). Chair, debut single by Big Deal. Never in my Life, by Mountain. Final Alert (Euro Jaxx) by Mixed Bizness. Monad by Bruce Gilbert. Beauty Strange by Louise and The Pins, flip side of debut single.
Wavelength – Messerschmitt.
I recently screened my short film “Mini-Cars” in a garden behind the Danielle Arnaud Gallery. The film features Messerschmitt bubble cars along with Goggomobils, Peels, Trojans, Heinkels and various other miniature vehicles, two examples of which I once owned. To accompany the film I played a CD called “Messerschmitt” by Michael Esposito which employs recordings based on David John Oates’ experiments and theories of Reverse Speech Phenomena. The CD was released in 2010 by Firework Edition Records. Michael Esposito is a descendant of Alfred Vail who invented Morse Code and several early telegraph devices with his partner Samuel Morse. Another ancestor, Jonathan Vail was office manager and assistant to Thomas Edison in his later years when Edison attempted to develop a device for communicating with the dead. Over the years, under the Phantom Airwaves institution, Michael has participated in hundreds of paranormal investigations all over the world. He has conducted extensive research at many active locations and has developed a great deal of unique theory and devised many unique experiments within the field of Electronic Voice Phenomena which is basically the recording of inexplicable voices. Focusing primarily on EVP research, he has collected tens of thousands of EVPs and video. Working extensively with EVP’s relationship to experimental music, Michael combines EVP with field recording and related frequency tones of research sites. Michael is currently published by Touch Music UK. I’ve recently been in touch with Michael Esposito and hope to have him on as a guest probably in October. It is worth remembering that the Messerschmitt had a unique reversing system which involved stopping the engine and then turning the ignition key anti clockwise which restarts the engine in the opposite direction. For the skilful or foolhardy this offers the interesting possibility of travelling just as fast backwards as forwards because of course top gear can be engaged with the engine spinning in either direction.
Wavelength – Martin Kippenberger Musik 1979-1995
Music by German artist Martin Kippenberger from the CD issued by Edition Krothenhayn. There are 21 tracks in all, about half of which are straight jazz (Kippenberger’s passion was swing music, expansive, pompous, big band jazz) and a fairly bland version of Bang Bang which I find less interesting than the more experimental tracks played here today starting with “Ja, Ja, Ja, Nee, Nee, Nee” a tongue in cheek hommage to Joseph Beuys.
Wavelength – Pete Challis side 2
Side 2 of Pete Challis cassette recorded at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in 1978.
Wavelength – Electric Music by Pete Challis
Side one of a rare cassette recording of Electric Music by Pete Challis from a performance at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery 5/7/78 – 22/7/78. When the gallery went bankrupt in the 1990s boxes of stuff from the gallery were auctioned off at Sotheby’s. I bought a tea-chest of mixed items; artists’ books, LPs by Yves Klein “Prince of Space” and a few cassettes including the Pete Challis.