Episode 187, Some Assembly Required

Episode 187, Some Assembly Required

01 Soundhog – “A Day In Tracy's Life”
02 Negativland – “Michael Jackson”
03 Speaker Freaker – “Christian Collateral Damage”
04 DJ Schmolli – “Luxurious Diana”
05 The Evolution Control Committee – “Kill me”
06 Invisibl Skratch Piklz – “Word Cut Skratch”
07 Donna Summer – “dreize cassette”
08 Kool DJ E.Q. – “Hide Your Wrecords When We Come Through”
09 The Bran Flakes – “Speak To Me Through Your Shoes”
10 Stop Children – “To The Fullest Extent Of The Law”
11 Steve Janke/Black Dad – “My Bway”
12 Wobbly – “Saxgag”
12 Arty Fufkin - “All I Need's A Smile”
13 Think Tank - “Unrealpolitik”


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James Tenney

James Tenney

I often refer to James Tenney's collage compositions, when referring to the fact that artists have been sampling pop music since the very beginnings of pop music. Tenney worked on "Collage #1 (Blue Suede)" in an electronic music studio at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) in 1961, just five years after the release of “Blue Suede Shoes,” the Elvis Presley record which gets sampled in the piece.

Another Tenney collage is a bit longer, and composed a bit later (in 1967). "Collage #2 (Viet Flakes)" is also the soundtrack to a film of the same name, by Carolee Schneemann. The film is a collage of violent images from the Vietnam War, while Tenney’s composition collages bits of audio from sources such as Vietnamese and Classical music, along with American Pop music.

Tenney was an extremely respected experimental composer and music theorist (he passed away in 2006). He was an author and a teacher, and performed with many artists, including Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The bulk of his work has very little to do with collage, though of course that's the aspect of his career that we've focused on here, at Some Assembly Required. Thanks to Gayle Young, at Musicworks, for her help with this feature on Tenney, along with websites such as The Canadian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, of course...

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with James Tenney (as answered by myself and Gayle Young)...


*Name: James Tenney

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Both Blue Suede and Viet Flakes were created with magnetic tape editing techniques, cutting and splicing. The works juxtapose and combine pre-existing (and often familiar) sounds and excerpts of songs. These two pieces stand out from Tenney’s other compositions, which were largely instrumental or used computer-generated sound. They show his interest in popular music and, in the case of Viet Flakes, his interest in interdisciplinary art forms—the piece was originally the sound component of a performance piece by Carolee Schneeman.

*Another genre descriptor: Electroacoustic Music, New Music, Stochastic Music, Computer Music…

*Why you use this descriptor: Stochastic elements, in music, are randomly generated elements, created by mathematical processes…

*Creative/artistic background: Tenney’s work deals with perception, just intonation, stochastic elements, information theory and arch form, which he referred to as “swell.” He studied information theory under Lejaren Hiller and composed stochastic early computer music, eventually becoming very focused on writing for instruments, utilizing tape delay and alternative tunings. He performed with John Cage, and with the ensembles of Harry Partch, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. In the sixties, he worked with Max Mathews at Bell Telephone Laboratories, developing programs for computer sound-generation and composition. An entire issue of of the academic journal, Perspectives of New Music, was devoted to his music, in 1987.

*History: Tenney was born in Silver City, New Mexico and grew up in Arizona and Colorado. He attended the University of Denver, the Juilliard School of Music, Bennington College and the University of Illinois. He studied piano with Eduard Steuermann and composition with Chou Wen-chung, Lionel Nowak, Dorothy Taubman, Paul Boepple, Henry Brant, Carl Ruggles, Kenneth Gaburo, Lejaren Hiller, John Cage, Harry Partch and Edgard Varese. He taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California and York University in Toronto. Tenney died in 2006 in Valencia, California.

*Born: August 10, 1934.

*How would you like to be remembered: Tenney will be remembered as an influential music theorist, and composer.

*Web address: http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0003383


www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 54, Some Assembly Required

Episode 54, Some Assembly Required
[07.Q15.054]

01 Holger Czukay - “Hollywood symphony”
02 James Tenney - “Collage #2 (viet flakes)”
03 Negativland - “Helter stupid”
04 DJ Shadow - “Napalm brain/scatter brain”


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A plus D

A plus D

A + D is Adrian & the Mysterious D, a mashup team from California, known equally as well for their popular mashup night, Bootie. Since its inception in 2003, Bootie has grown to include events in Los Angeles, New York and Paris.

Adrian is also the lead singer for a band, called Smash-up Derby, which does live cover versions of popular bastard pop songs, along with mashups of their own creation. It was of course bound to happen, and for the time being at least, they bear the distinction of being the world's only live mashup rock band.

They've hosted DJs from all over the world and are consisently spinning at events beyond their wildly successful Bootie night, which was voted "Best Dance Club" in the Readers Poll of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's BEST OF THE BAY 2006, and included in Spin Magazine's "101 Best Nights Out This Month" (July 2006). Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with A plus D...


*Name: We are DJs Adrian & The Mysterious D. We produce mashups under our bootlegger moniker A plus D, and we're the creators of Bootie, America's first, and now the world's biggest mashup bootleg party. Our first Bootie party started in San Francisco in 2003, and we have a sister party, Bootie LA, in Los Angeles started in 2005, and this year, brand new Bootie parties in New York (run by us) and in Paris (run by our bootlegger pal ComaR and his posse).

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: "Poster children of the American mashup scene!" We always loved that one.

*Do you use a pseudonym? Adrian doesn't. Deidre does. (Whoops! We just revealed the mystery behind the "Mysterious D"!)

*Members: Just us ... two (Adrian Roberts, Deidre Roberts). However, Bootie wouldn't be what it is today without the international bootleg community and a tight group of fellow bootlegger friends.

*Founding Members: Us: Adrian & the Mysterious D.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Of those three descriptors, definitely "digital deconstructions." Although, it's more like we're RE-contructors -- we take songs and instead of just taking them apart, we put them back together in new and interesting ways. We're mashup producers/DJs.

*Another genre descriptor: Are we the last ones left who don't think that the term "mashup" is a bad word? ;-)

*Why you use this descriptor: ... 'cuz we "mash" up songs. :-) The name of our club Bootie is actually short for “bootleg,” another word for mashup made popular in the UK. However, if you say you play "bootlegs" in San Francisco, people think it means you spin songs from old Bob Dylan or Grateful Dead live concert bootleg recordings! So the word mashup explains what we do a bit better.

*Location: San Francisco is our home base, although we've got "offices" (ha ha - actually, our friends' apartments) in LA and NYC, where we stay at one weekend a month, almost every month -- to do the LA and NYC Bootie parties.

*Original Location: A is originally from Ohio. D is originally from Texas.

*What is your creative/artistic background: We've both been intimately involved with music since our early teens. In college, Adrian studied art and theatre, while programming the college radio station. After college, he started a rock band, where he was the singer for nine years. D has been an avid music collector and maker of popular "mixtapes" since the word mixtape still meant assorted musical gems mixed together on a cassette. :-) Both of us have a voracious love of music from all kinds of genres and eras.

*History: We've been working together as a DJ team since 2002.

*Born: Adrian was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, in 1968. D was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1972.

*Motivations: We love music of so many different styles, genres, and eras. And we love to bring it all together. We love looking around at our club Bootie and seeing such a truly diverse crowd of people -- ages, styles, sexualities, you name it -- all smiles and hands in the air, dancing together to the music that we love. We love how our mashup club's music inspires connection between groups of people that might normally not share a dance floor, and how it lends itself to an unpretentious good time.

*Philosophy: To bring disparate musical genres together in an effort to make statements about music and pop culture ... and for the pure pleasure of hearing old and new favorites in a fresh way.

*How would you like to be remembered: As the couple who were instrumental in bringing a wider awareness and acceptance of mashup bootleg culture to the world ... and who threw a great party doing it!

*Web address:
http://www.AplusD.net
http://www.BootieUSA.com
http://www.smashupderby.com


www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 186, Some Assembly Required

Episode 186, Some Assembly Required

01 Party Ben – “Golden Boulevard”
02 Weird Love Makers – “Humping Henry”
03 Russ Johnson – “Rock Around (23 seconds of) The Clock”
04 Forty One – “The let's pretend story of strawberry shortcake”
05 DJ Astro – “Hate Me”
06 B'O'K – “Addicted to Oil”
07 Wobbly – “Damn I Can't Go Uh-Uh, No!”
08 Alex H – “Moon Frog”
09 Splatt – “No one sings like you anymore”
10 A plus D – “You Believe Me All Night Long”
11 People Like Us – “Ipanmnmna”
12 X-ecutioners – “One Man Band”
13 John Oswald – “Ebb”
14 Sucking Chest Wound – “America Is Angry”
15 Porest – “Composition of sheep”
16 Listen With Sarah – “Another Nice Mix”
17 A plus D – “Sexy Peek-A-Boo”


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