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BACON SANDWICHES16 JULY 2006 On the plane high above the Alps. On our way back from Vienna and heading for somewhere that is sort of home. The notebook is on my lap and the pencil is out and the trolley is yet to arrive with refreshments. I’m trying to tie some thoughts together. I’m not going to bother you with that whole rock thing or whether older men can have fresh ideas. I will leave that until later in the book. What is concerning me is what did and didn’t work with this visit to Vienna and what can be learnt for the future and what opportunities it has opened up. First, what didn’t work. The heat. The performance started at 5.00. It was not late enough in the day for the heatwave we are in the middle of across Europe to subside. To do the introduction to The17 thing you need all air conditioning switched off. If left on, the sound is always picked up and interferes with the recording. For the same reason, all windows and doors must be kept closed to prevent sounds from the street entering in. The room was too small, or too small considering we had to have 19 people crammed in there with no air conditioning, no windows and no doors open for nearly two hours in the middle of a heatwave. It took its toll, my concentration kept wandering when I was doing the talking bit. During the singing I think all anybody could think of was ‘When is all this going to be over so we can get some fresh air and a long cool beer?’ Next there was the light problem. Light could not be sealed out of the room. For this to work fully we need to have almost total darkness so people can feel more at ease with the singing and to create the right atmosphere for the playback. John Hirst reckons that in future we should stipulate the room dimensions we need and that the room should be ‘light-tight’. ‘Light-tight’ were his words, a phrase I had not heard before but he assures me is not some affected turn of phrase but industry-standard terminology used by photographers. He also reckons I shouldn’t do any promotional stuff on the same day as doing a performance, which to me sounds a bit diva-ish on my part. The promotional stuff I had done was a one-and-a-half-hour interview for a program on the Austrian state radio the specialises in new music, be it from the classical, jazz or any other tradition that is interested in breaking with form. The other interview was with Radio Orange itself. It was an hour long and went out live. It was done almost immediately after the performance of The17. It was through this interview that the listeners of Radio Orange, other than the 17 of them who had been able to get tickets for the performance would have any idea of what had been going on and why it could not be broadcast. If I have not said before, I love the twist that this musical performance was being done for a radio station and could not be broadcast, only discussed. I got a lot out of doing both these interviews, not because of any promotional influence they might have but because I found myself having to challenge my own thoughts on what this whole 17 thing is about. I was forced to try and articulate things that might have just been left vague and unfocused in my head. Not quite Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House Of Commons but still a good thing. Trying to explain why I think recorded music is in the process of becoming as dated as mosaic or pottery is pretty difficult when for most of us recorded music is the form of artistic communication that has had the most emotional impact on our lives. The two TV things that I did were both trivial sound-bite things and with any luck were only seen by a handful of people watching some late-night cable channel. The good things to come out of the visit were the possibilities of coming back at a later stage and doing a full-scale exhibition and series of events, maybe once this book is out. Eva Kuntschner was the woman at Orange responsible for putting the logistics of the whole thing together. She had also had to do menial things like pick us up from the airport on Friday morning and take us back there this morning. This morning she had her partner with her who was also called Eva. I thought this was great, a lesbian couple both named after the world’s first woman, the mother of us all. I bet they would inspire much Adam and Steve type laughs and bigoted debate in the heartlands of the US Christian Right. But that’s enough sexual politics for this book. Maybe another book one day will sort all that out for everyone. Right now I still have to sort out music. Eva is a smart woman, with plenty of ideas and seemingly the wherewithal to make them happen. This whole Radio.Territories: Interventions In Urban Space event that is linking up seven community radio stations across Europe has been instigated by Radio Orange and she is coordinating it. I ask her which cities. She tells me Berlin, Prague, Bratislava, Sofia, Budapest, London and Vienna. I ask her what station in London. She tells me Resonance FM. I tell her how I bumped into Ed Baxter, who is in some way at the helm of Resonance FM, in a pub in London a few weeks back. And how we discussed Resonance observing No Music Day on 21 November this year. I explain what No Music Day is to Eva and about nomusicday.com. How it started from the personal and how I want to broaden it out. And then I suggested that maybe Orange 94.0 would like to observe it. She thought this could be a good idea but thought the individual producers at the station might think it a difficult concept to take on board. But she was up for the challenge of trying to convince them. Way above the clouds and whatever nation lies 30 thousand feet below us my ideas are getting a bit carried away. But before I tell you them I want to quote from some of the blurb about radio.Territories: Interventions In Urban Space, there’s a difficulty because most of it is in German and what isn’t is in art-speak that has been translated from German into English. But here goes: Addressing broad audiences the electronic medium radio establishes part of the public sphere. Considering the heterogeneous constitution of European societies, there is a need to develop new forms of diverse communication – also reflected in contemporary art. The project ‘radio.territories’ intends to link artistic production with the means of media and ongoing discussions on participation of citizens in pluralistic public space. And even if you can’t read German you might get the gist of this. radio.territories umfasst: So what I’m thinking is, wouldn’t it be good if I could get all of these seven radio stations to observe No Music Day. If not this year, next, and have it all coordinated from Orange 94.0 Das Freie Radio in Wien. Ok. No more German. I will email Eva tomorrow and start a dialogue with her about this. The trolley is now here. They had promised us bacon sandwiches, which had sounded good. It is in fact ham made from chicken meat (sic) with some sliced gherkins. That sounds as far from a bacon buttie as you can get. |