My favorite discovery of Jon Solomon's 2020 25-Hour Holiday Marathon on WPRB was that the Mars Williams behind the "Albert Ayler Xmas"  series of albums is the same sax player who played the hook on the Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping.”

Tickled by that intersection of experimental jazz and new wavy pop I put together a contribution for the 2021 marathon designed especially for the weird late late night stretch! I took that Mars Williams’ sax hook from the Waitresses' tune and looped it, but each time it came around I added another copy of it, slightly out of sync, on top. It keeps going round and around for 3 1/2 minutes until I let it collapse. 

I call it “I Am Wrapping In A Room (Merry Christmas, Alvin Lucier)” because its construction was inspired by Lucier’s conceptual sound art piece “I Am Sitting In A Room” which I fittingly first heard on WPRB, on the “Arcana” program around 1994.    

The "cover art" was made in the same spirit: a picture of a picture of a picture of a picture of a still from the original Waitresses' music video 

While this was made before Lucier’s  recent passing, this is still a memorial to his adventurous spirit and long artistic career that expanded my idea of sonic artistry. RIP

WPRBXMAS 2021?

I Am Wrapping In A Room ( Merry Christmas, Alvin Lucier)

I recently rediscovered this original "song" made by my young rocker self. It was hidden at the end of my dubbed cassette of Def Leppard's "Pyromania." I guess I had a boombox in the room playing Motley Crue's "T.n.T./Dr Feelgood" as my backing track. At 0:53 I dis a certain  vocal group that was popular with the ladies. 

"Crash Course" circa 1989

recorded monaurallly in the crooked room at the Ritz.
used: TCS-30D (x2), TCM-454VK, UB802, 32-1105A
all tied together "incorrectly" with cables and adapters 
in real time: 2015.11.22

Round Valley Remembrance [2015.11.22]

recorded monaurallly in the crooked room at the Ritz.
recorded as pictured, using: TCS-30D (x2), TCM-454VK, UB802, 32-1105A, MT-45, M10, and my own whistling voice. 

in real time: 2015.12.07

Kazdocs/groove (fragment/in-progress)

After Britten's music on the 1200 stopped, this started. 2017.03.02

Side4endBellloop3345 - (BrittenWarRequiem)

recorded 10April2017 in the Crooked Room at the Ritz

Deleted User (spring/sprung)

"Reflections" skip/loop from a beat-up copy of the Rocky soundtrack.

Mirror in a mirroR

UPDATE- song is definitely “ "La Veuve De La Coulee“ by we still can’t find an exact match for the recording. Despite what I wrote previously, the tape is almost definitely from before dec  2002 and is quite possibly from as early as 1993 or 1994— when my grandparents bought their one and only tape recorder. I can hear my grandpa talking in the background at one point (the recording is from a condenser mic placed near the stereo speakers.)  My grandpa slipped into a coma late 2002 and died December 26th of that year.  The identifiable news broadcast from 2003 is actually on a different tape. 

This tape is a mix my grandma made mostly of her own polka records, but the end of the tape features songs from the radio. She was tuning in from Bayonne, NJ which is just a few miles from New York City. “ "La Veuve De La Coulee" “ cuts in and the song directly before it is from one of my grandma’s own records. Directly after  "La Veuve De La Coulee" the songs cuts to another song, this time a polka by a different group that I’m pretty sure is sung in Polish.  There’s then an instrumental polka or two and then a DJ starts to say something but the tape cuts before he even finishes a single word and cuts directly to some syrupy 101 strings style music before the side ends.  The tape is blank on the other side.

Sto Lat!- Sophie Ciarkowski's  100th b-day memorial mix (culled from her records and tapes)

"La Veuve De La Coulee" unknown recording taped from the radio between 1993-2002

Casio PT-82, Sony TCS-30D, Behringer UB802, Realistic 32-1105A, Vestax VMC-004 creatively inserted RCA and 1/4" cables

MorseRescue(20181113)

I was diligent about making solo noise every day during most of November with the idea of combining little bits of the sessions into a coherent album length piece. I haven't played much since the new year and haven't put that album together (yet) but I do like how this piece from11/17/18 turned out. I used a drum loop from a Casio PT-82, a vocal-type mix set up right near the playback speaker, and 2 dictaphone cassette recorders. This was all fed into a behringer mixer featuring some creatively inserted cables.

sebastian, darkly