Monday, July 13, 2009

Moon Landing Party Jam

Photobucket

Photobucket

Another track from the April 17th 2003 Hooked on a Feeling show, the Moon Landing Party Jam focuses on the 1969 communication between NASA mission control center in Houston and the Apollo 11 moon landing team of Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins. The other source audio is the "phone call" that President Nixon made to the astronauts. This presidential conversation was televised to millions around the world split-screen with footage of the moonwalk. The source recordings here represent the first inter-lunar communications ever recorded and they are far from clean. Every voice is over-modulated and the dialogue is puncuated by slightly piercing beeps. These beeps are there to let the earthlings know when the moonmen's transmission has finished and that they are ready for a response from earth.
Photobucket
The audio for most of this track is composed by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, original acid house samplers from the UK in the 80s. The Ancients were forced to remove many of their initial records from stores as this was prior to the existence of sampling laws for musicians. Drummond and Cauty of the JAMs went on to form the KLF, a popular psychedelic dance group fairly similar to the Ancients. The more prominent song featured here was one of their hits as the JAMs, Doctorin' the Tardis, a song that fits the interstellar theme quite well. Later, the K Foundation burned a million UK pounds for very little reason.



Four funky fresh fellas

Photobucket


MOON LANDING PARTY JAM

Moon Landing Party Jam - HOAF Tapes by slim

In 1969, the America was in the depths of the Cold War, struggling to come to terms with the Civil Rights Movement while the war in Vietnam raged on without a foreseeable end. It was a tense time for most Americans as the vision of 1950s wholesomeness grew tarnished and tired in the face of nuclear armageddon.

For a brief moment, the moon landing lifted that communal depression in America. As the masses watched from their living rooms, two men conquered the dreams of star-gazing children forever. Now that travel to the moon was a possibility, the dream had died. No longer could young boys and girls speculate about the skin-color of moonmen and whether or not the surface was indeed composed of swiss cheese. Snatching these colorful fantasies from the minds of children forever, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong trampled on top of those youthful dreams of a craterous moonscape. Like conquistadors, they quickly defiled the soil and planted their flag.



*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.


EXTRA CREDIT ALERT
Little known fact: Nixon thought the astronauts had space cooties.
Photobucket
Here's an old song by me called "Equal Rights for Moonmen". It's an anti-war protest song I wrote back in the Bush administration.

Equal Rights for Moonmen - Slim Oliver

Friday, July 10, 2009

Eulogy for JFK in Two Movements: The HOAF Tapes

Photobucket
Animated Gifs
From October 2002 until June 2003, I hosted a weekly radio show called "Hooked on a Feeling" on WCFM 91.9FM, Williamstown, Masssachusetts. It is a tiny college radio station broadcasting from within a valley in the Berkshire mountains. The peak of Mt. Greylock and the rest of them intercepted the transmission before it could reach beyond the valley. At max, the broadcast reached about six local town centers. Of course, the internet stream was up and running and I'm sure maybe three people listened to that as well. My show was on Thursday nights starting between 11pm and midnight.

With two turntables, two cd players, and a mixer in the middle of them, I began to mix spoken word tracks onto music in order to create sound collages. The plan was to create new musical documents that illuminated the popular culture associated through juxtaposition and the accompanying dissonant and synchronous moments. By manipulating the four sources in front of me, I created many mash-ups whose musical and intellectual intent has evolved from the source material. While much of the resulting material has political overtones, others are attempts at transcendent children's music. Some tracks even make the hubristic boast of approaching the level of "art".

Affectionately called the HOAF (hoof, or ho-af) Tapes, these tracks have languished for the past six years confined in their plastic prisons of magnetic tape. That ends now. Some of these tracks suffer from overmodulation on the source recording-I just consider it an artifact of the old machines available for use in the radio station. While I have made noble attempts at re-mastering, some of these artifacts will still be present.

Photobucket
Jack on the yacht; note his posture that shows his physical deformity and the illness he hid throughout most of his short life


Eulogy for JFK in 2 Movements - HOAF tapes by slim
THE EULOGY OF JFK IN TWO MOVEMENTS
This track is a fairly simple composition featuring the words of JFK and Moms Mabley and the music of the Sandpipers and John Williams, as well as other bits and bobs of audio. This track attempts to evoke the accessibility of the charismatic Kennedy and the chaos and confusion in this nation following his assassination.

*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.

EXTRA CREDIT ALERT


Photobucket
The potently mystical Shroud of Brookline

Also, this guy:
Photobucket
He is the Solomon Islander that saved JFK's life in WWII.
You can read about that over here:
When Jack Fell Off the Boat