It’s the fifth and final day of the Great Podcast Releasathon 2012!(tm). (“But Tony, you said it was going to last a week!” — I meant a work week, sue me!) Here’s episode 89, Heavenly Noise, starring DaveX, Tony Youngblood, Tom Denney, Kevin Vogel, and Matt Giant. We recorded Heavenly Noise way back in 1999 at my college radio station WIDB on the campus of Southern Illinois University. It was the ninth episode of the original incarnation of Theatre Intangible, ~Ore~ Prefab Audio Extrapolations. We were trying to spoof a Christian call-in show, actually trying to get real people to call in and contribute money to our “interfaith” cause. I vaguely remember DaveX and myself flyering the buildings at SIU with a faux Christian student group flyer that must have been pretty blasphemous; they were taken down by some unknown force by the next day.
Apologies to listeners who are religious or who have, you know, taste.
Update: Dave adds his thoughts:
“I don’t think that’s the Lord anymore.” Pretty much sums up this rather silly outing for ~Ore~. I detect some of my Tom Jones record in there, and that weird sequencing freeware we kept using. And a healthy dose of random preaching records. As I recall, I was always very much on-edge during these shows. Live experimental improv is always going to be tough, but making ~Ore~ was rather like jumping in the deep end head first. I don’t have Tony’s natural ability with instruments, so I probably had to work three times as hard just to keep up. On an episode like “Heavenly Noise,” pretty much everything I did was a sort of point blank improvisation, literally learning my “instrument” (devices, the studio, actual instruments, etc) as I went along. Absolutely flying blind, but listening and learning along the way. It took a long time before I trusted myself enough to just work a single idea– I distinctly remember scoffing (mentally) at the guest who brought in a singing drum and just played it for an hour (on another episode) and though I still don’t think he was really participating with all of us very well, I’ll admit that focusing on process or developing a simple idea ended up being something I really appreciate now. Like I said, there was (and still is) a lot to learn! “This makes me ill. This sickening blasphemy. It makes me churn!” A hilarious addition from Tony’s brother there, who sat in (or called in, as he did here) during numerous episodes. (Tony’s note: I think that might have been Matt Giant.) Tom Denney also makes some great contributions here– I love the bit about being made to dress up in women’s clothes, classic. I hear some “he was doing it, but he wasn’t really doing it”, which I’m pretty sure came from an interview with one of Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriends, from the Rainbow Bridge film, sounds like a little microcassette work, but perhaps pre-recorded for this episode. Yeah, definitely that album– I still quote the bit at the end every now and then, “I’ll always touch you.” Funny how certain things stick with you.
And oh yeah, here’s a flyer to dig on. It’s not specific to this show– we didn’t always make one with the theme represented, because we didn’t always know very far in advance what we were doing. This was from right around that time, though. I ended up recycling these images many times in various flyers, but always worked my way back to the “old lady” gag, because I think it’s hilarious.
–DaveX
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:01 — 114.6MB)