This is another tape I recorded largely from the radio. This one's from 1996 and was taped during a period when I only listened to the oldies station, CBS FM in New York City.

It was a tortured relationship, because they played extremely annoying commercials in between the most delicious music ever recorded. Even when I wander off into minimalism, or noise rock, or free jazz, I come back to oldies.

The first side

Early in the mix on the first side is Joe Jackson doing "Steppin Out", which was a song I tried to get us to cover in Dick Army. Unfortunately, it's not easy to play. It's too fast. The lyrics can be seen as very punk ("We are young but getting old before our time"), perhaps, but it's the bassline that I thought would really work. Even now, I have to plug in my speakers to listen to this song very loud. It took me a long time to listen to other non-radio Joe Jackson tunes, but Beat Crazy is a great album.

"Breaking Us In Two" is also here.

I have to confess that this tape is pretty hard to listen to. It jumps back and forth between songs, and they're all really good songs where you want to hear the whole thing. I was making music at the time, and if I could have blended all of these sounds together, that was the sound I wanted to make. The best way to think about this tape when listening to it is, you're walking down the street and it's summer, and as cars pass by and you walk past shops and playgrounds you hear parts of songs and snippets of noise.

Doo Wop is ridiculous love music for guys who break each others' noses. I love it. It makes me realize I can't even imagine the 1950s! It was probably tougher and quieter. I wanted to have that toughness in my own performance.

"If You Really Love Me" by Stevie Wonder speeds up and slows down. The hand claps make it, as do Syreeta Wright's vocals.

That's Ray Charles doing "What'd I Say" and Creedence doing "Down on the Corner", both with amazing drums. That's Fugazi (around 24:45) doing their best song, "Defense of Humans".

George Harrison got sued for "My Sweet Lord", and I heard it kinda fucked him up for a while, which is understandable. That suit is total bullshit IMO.

So is carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. Some people believe that there's outside influence in left-wing political movements in this country that makes them do foolish things, or encourages the most insane members. Personally, I don't think outside influence is necessary. Possessing and articulating a coherent political position outside of the mainstream takes insight and research, and few people, even very passionate ones, have thought through their beliefs or subjected them to some objective analysis. Thus, carrying pictures of Mao. These are the people who've taken over Critical Mass as well. If I ever have a left-wing political movement, I'll be merciless in expelling dissenters.

At 39:08 is The Marvelettes doing "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game", which is a Smokey Robinson song. He wrote every other song from 1965 to 1968.

Chuck Berry, "Johnny B Goode" is from 1955. It's hard. 1950s music is hard as a rock. Like, survive-in-the-wilderness-for-days-with-nothing-but-a-guitar-and-a-suit hard. Who can channel this now? Nobody's flinty. I want to make a movie where the hero survives on sheer flintiness. It will be called "The Flinty Fellow Survives".

The other side

"New Orleans" is a Bill Haley song. No idea who's playing it there, but it's great.

No satisfaction. A little bit of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" with its gritty, dangerous riff. That is what summer in the city is like, or it should be.

"You're Like Quicksand"... that's rather feminine, isn't it? Being like quicksand, I mean.

"Hey You Get Off of My Cloud" is some Anglo Saxon testiness.

"Peggy Sue" is bizarre early Rock n Roll perfection. What was Buddy Holly in to? What was his scene? I think, or imagine, country music. I have no sense of the man as a person. Very nice? He sure looks nice. Buddy Holly Lives! Whereas The Clash (21:00) are from a later era where there's documentary film about everything. Still later, there was a documentary about everything, usually with an interview with Henry Rollins and DJ Spooky.

At 25:15 is "Hocus Pocus" by Focus. They don't play songs like that on the radio anymore, but they should, even though they won't. The ways in which they have fucked up are numerous and terrible. They will pay, though. They already have, but not enough. Think upon these words, oh Record People, whenever you hear "Hocus Pocus" by Focus.

Morrissey and The Smiths (33:00) get stuck in my head. There is a KRS-ONE quality of explaining reality to The Smiths. He is the son and the heir of a silence that is criminally vulgar. He seriously needs to talk to Mick Jagger. (Also: I heard a drunk guy singing this on the street last night around 7:30 p.m.)

Thought: is "How Soon Is Now" about being gay?

Whereas Led Zeppelin (36:00) deny reality altogether, which can be cool, too.

5-13-01_JAM_SESSIONb.mp3

This recording is from a tape labeled only "5 / 13 / 01 JAM SESSION" in my handwriting. It's a tape-over of a "The Best of Prodigy, hosted by Kay Slay" tape, which also says "Same flavor both sides" and retains the piece of adhesive tape I used to make the cassette recordable.

Side 1:

I think it was recorded with Lars Weiss and maybe somebody else. I think that Lars made the beat on a sampler. I was playing the electric piano, and some third person was playing a saxophone or some woodwind. You have here, in contrast, three musicians. Lars, whose harsh, angular beat underlies the whole thing, the woodwind player, who smooths it out, making it into an actual piece of music, and me, trying to play a clean rhythmic piano line, and failing to synchronize with the beat. This sort of shows you why I stopped making music. I am just not a musician. I'm fairly happy with my decision to step away from musicianship, and this recording just reinforces that happiness.

Side 2:

If you only listen to one minute of this tape, start around 9:00. on this side.

This starts out with a repeating bassline, distorted to the point where I can't tell what instrument it is. Over this, I again play electric piano, and it's clearly me because I recognize my signature lack of rhythm. This tape makes me question any musical ability I ever thought, through many doubts, I might have. I will think twice about dancing in public or singing in the shower.

At 2 minutes or so, the tape is restarted. There is a beat which sounds like my 606 (a drum machine) and is not completely terrible. Maybe I just need to work in a medium where rhythm is unnecessary. Over the drum machine I play, again, unfortunately, the electric piano. The cheap synth and the electric piano is an odd sonic combination, but I would judge this to be the best part of the tape. I go off on a musical tangent at one point playing with my tone control. I should have run the 606 through the tone control.

At 6 minutes or so, on this side, things get really strange. I don't know what instrument that is, or who's playing it. Maybe a techno musician robot wandered in off the street an blew a fuse at the sound of my terrible piano playing. Maybe it's my Pro-One (an analog synthesizer made by Sequential Circuits in the 70s). Also audible is a drum machine from a Casio toy synth. For a non-musician I sure had a lot of musical instruments.

10:45: a repeating figure starts. I think this is the built-in sequencer of the Pro-One. Over this, someone plays piano. I think it's not me. Either that, or I got better. There's about a minute and a half of that.

12:45: someone is playing unaccompanied synth. If you want to sample some analog synthesizer, and the web's vast store of these samples is not sufficient for you, then here you go.

14:28: unaccompanied electric piano, in a mellow vein. At 16:17 you can hear a car honking. Much vibrato is used. Or is that tremolo?

1700: the unaccompanied piano continues. The vocal part of the performance starts, as I can be heard calling out the chords. Maybe this sounds OK because I'm not trying to play to a beat. At 18:13 or so I explain something about the key this is in, then continue with the chords. Again at 23:. How did I know what a C minor 7th was? I don't remember knowing such things.

24:10: "Alright, here's another soul number" I declare. I'm not sure there was a first soul number, but apparently, in my mind, there was. This lasts less than a minute.

46_answering_machine_b.mp3

This is the answering machine tape from my parent's place at 46 Great Jones Street.

It won't be of much interest to you if you're not Maggie Nachlin, Wendy Young, Jason Leaf, Matt Israel, Ben Posnack, Sonya Newell, Isabel Pippolo, Lisa Townsend Rogers, Mikaela Frank, Doug Margolis, etc.

Side A

The first message is from a real estate agent wanting to show the place, so this sets the date around Spring 1992.

The place was two lofts, the third and fourth floor, of an 1880s factory building, in which my sister Maggie and I grew up. My parents bought them in 1970 or 1971 when they were cheap and their friends said "why the hell are you moving all the way over there", so let that be a lesson to you, real estate speculators, not that you haven't learned it already. It was great growing up there. New York in the late 70s and the 80s sucked, so I spent a lot of time indoors. I learned to ride a bike in there. These were big apartments.

Ben sounds jolly; Mikaela Frank sounds hurt as she asks me to a party. There are recorded messages, clicks, and beeps of the analog phone system, all left in for your edification and pleasure.

I haven't seen Mikaela since I was at Hunter College and she was my manager at New World Coffee on 68th and 3rd Avenue. Actually, she got me the job. During the time I worked there, and she worked in the company headquarters, we became less friendly. Maybe it was that she took the company seriously, and in my eyes that made her uncool. As an adult, I now realize (though haven't fully accepted) that someone has to take things seriously.

Carlos is there, inviting me to a rave. Jeremy inviting me to Sticky Mike's, the club under Time Cafe. Jim Mastoros from Brooklyn College is at Mona's. Matt's still in Conneticut. Then he got shoved and kicked in front of Tower Records. My parents got to the country OK.

Side B

Jason Leaf was one funny guy and he still is. His delivery when he's inviting me to a party is exquisite. That's the first thing on this side.

Then it's me inviting Maggie to come on the Circle Line, where I was working at the time. I'm affecting a New York accent. Everyone at the Circle Line had a New York accent. Not the kids working the concession stands, but the regular workers, the deck hands and engineers, who worked the tugs in the winter.

303_Unlimited_B.mp3

This tape was made for me in March of 1993 by my friend Carlos, who used to DJ at the Limelight under the name DJ Tera or DJ Teras. This is the second tape he made me and there's an earlier one, an acid house tape I can't find right now which I must have listened to a thousand times at least. In fact, that earlier tape was the influence for this whole project. This tape is pretty damn good, too.

Entitled "303 Unlimited", this is the kind of techno we were listening to at the time, when Carlos was working at Sonic Groove records and they were throwing huge raves in warehouses and roller skating rinks around the NY metro area.

It's easy to make fun of it. It's full of outer space noises, or places where the drum machines drop out and a man says, "It's getting strange. I can feel it ... all around us now", which one is supposed to take as a drug reference. The beat on this tape is relentless. You kind of have to be on drugs to listen to the whole thing. Another problem, listening to this tape in 2009, is that, of course, none of these sounds are fresh anymore. Ubiquity has kind of killed this period of techno. Its sonic palette was borrowed by a later form of intensely bad rave music, and its instruments were all recreated as plugins for every piece of music-making software.

But techno is cool. It's music that sounds like it was made by a lonely dude at a basement, but it's listened to at parties. Even the DJs are anonymous, hiding unseen in a DJ booth and not using their real names. It's the opposite dynamic to a rock concert - here the music's fans are the debauched ones.

That lonely dude in the basement (actually there's no need for a basement, since no accoustic instruments are used, you can just listen to your synths with headphones) is bound by formal constraints of the moment, and one song flows into the next. It takes real funkiness to stand out (Side A, at about 37:20). It takes a lot of restraint not to get very cheesy.

Also, I need to point out Carlos's turntable mixing. It is impossible, without knowing the individual tracks that make up this recording, to precisely detect any place where one track ends and another track begins.

The title of the tape refers to the Roland TB 303 Bassline, a small sliver plastic bass synthesizer that was part of Roland's amazing 1980s synthesizer range, which shaped the sound of dance and rap music.