~ORE~ Prefab Audio Extrapolations – The Seeds of Theatre Intangible
DaveX over at Startling Moniker and I have been a little wistful lately about our old radio show ~ORE~ Prefab Audio Extrapolations, broadcast at WIDB from 1998 to 2000. I wrote this post about Dave’s experimental music blog and wound up reminiscing about the show we created together. Dave fired back with a most excellent history of ~ORE here. Follow that link now and then come back. It’s really an amazing read. Here’s a particularly vivid excerpt. The notes in underline are mine.
Tony and I had apparently soaked up Wu-Tang Clan’s greatest lesson, too– make it a franchise. Thus, the original ~ORE~ was endowed with “Prefab Audio Extrapolations” as a tagline. Even while fighting to keep up with a one-hour weekly broadcast, we were thinking of the future! (Now accepting franchise applications. Who wants “~ORE~ Miami”?) At times, it seemed like anyone who was listening was actually AT the broadcasts, or helping make them. (Some things never change) Although we were doing something amazingly different on the SIU campus, we didn’t exist in a bubble. Flyers and chalk were our outreach. Wednesday nights, we’d gather under the dim yellow lights of Faner Hall, and begin our amazingly huge chalk runs. We got our friends and family into it with us, making teams to cover as much of the 900-foot length of the breezeway as possible before the chalk bucket ran out. By morning, Faner was a pastel mess of dogs and cows spouting absurdist essays extolling the virtues of experimental radio, mixed with the inevitable Xeroxed flyers cooked up special for the occasion. Although the flyers rarely made much sense, we knew that they would reach others like us– weirdos, makers, noise-enthusiasts, record collector scum, freaks… our people.
Takes me back! More photos and stories from the old ~ORE~ coming soon. Stay tuned for one of the Prefab Audio extrapolation episodes to come out as a Podcast in the next few weeks.