I didn’t set out to be a music critic, and I’m not sure exactly why I
started writing about the tracks in my favorite virtual crate of records.
I’ll speculate it was because I was writing nonfiction for a class with Joe
Bonomo and didn’t have a steady DJ gig, so I figured if I wrote about the
records, maybe people would listen to them without me being in the room to
push the buttons and start them going. Never really thought about it
before, but I’ve been copping Bonomo’s platform’s style in
a different genre ever since I started writing about these tunes on
Facebook. I think he’s the only person I know in real life who consistently
writes a blog, so I must have had No Such Thing as Was in mind when
I decided I needed a blog for the WGRS referents in How to Observe the Sun Safely. The entry for No. 154 is certainly an allusion to No Such Thing as Was. I’m not consciously trying to emulate
Bonomo’s voice, although I do think often about things I learned from him,
in particular a trick about blocking up lined verse as prose. I’ve not yet
tried it out, but I mean to.
Another impetus to write about these tunes was my desire to subvert the
DJ’s tendency toward secrecy. I wanted to tell everyone every record I had
in the good stuff crate. I realized back then that it would take years and
started anyway. One day I’ll sit down and cover all the rest of these
records in a day, a week, a month, converting a periodic practice into a
nonstop typing marathon, clack clack clack through a long roll of paper,
and then we’ll be done. One day. Probably years from now when there are
only a handful of tunes left to write about anyway.
In the
Introduction to the last mixtape I went into detail about the transitions between songs, some more
successful than others and still more getting descriptions more florid than
perhaps they deserved. Not this time, except to note that I like the
high-pass filter sweep bringing “Party Freaks” in over “Monkey See, Monkey
Do” around 18:50. It’s simple, and it adds a cascading, grainy texture like
playing sandpaper blocks down a Slip’N Slide.
Mostly as I listened back to this tape I thought to myself, “A lot of these
mixes are lazy.” Some are extra good because of this laziness, but others
of the mixes leave finesse and elegance to be desired. Cf. the mix out of
“I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops!)” into “Rock Your
Baby,” which is discordant and fades The Gap Band out too rapidly just
before 42:00. And four bars too many of Shadrach et al. over Stevie at
57:50. Sorry about that.
The more of these end-to-end overlays I make (and to this point I’ve made
about 270, having just started mix 10), the more I think about excerpting
smaller snippets of these songs and making something more compositional,
like Ken Raw’s Left Handed Scissors or something even more
complicated like I gather The Avalanches record my sister gave me for
Christmas is. Gotta throw that one on the platter yet. Got a new platter
for Christmas too. Our house is now home to a lovely piano black Pro-Ject
turntable and a skein of yarn made from the coats of qiviut by a woman who
oversees every inch of production. The people who deal in vicuña are
jerks, apparently.
Anyway, a new year’s excitement abounds, and records flutter in the wings
waiting to be transcribed. For now we’ve got to get back to the record
show. Baby, let me do it, let me do it to you, baby. This is
Warm Glow Record Show 5: We Can Workflow.