- A Dozen Or So Facts About Amsterdam That Are Known By Very Few Of Its Own Residents, REEL to REAL vol. 1, Lascaux Easton
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Radio is both an audio & literary medium for me. It began in 1986 or so with fill-in shows at WFMU in a dingy, cramped basement that made you think you were experiencing the London bombings of WWII. I played spoken word as if it were something intimately connected to everything else around it. You could separate the words from their original intent to heave them into a greater [dis]order. I eventually set aside a little spoken word ghetto within my program called "Word is the Bird," a not-so-subtle reference to one of the songs that formed my early experiences of music as something physical – "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen. The only lyrics are basically the frantic chanting of "Bird, bird, bird, word is the bird."
In 1988, I moved to Paris where I begged to get a show at Radio Libertaire and this worked. It is here that I came up with the name "Wreck This Mess." This led to greater mixage, to more messing with the borders of words and noise, how the 2 infect each other. Being vaguely impoverished although rich enough in my own mind to seldom have it hinder my fun, I set out to beg for free discs and this required coming up with evidence of my existence beyond the air waves - playlists. These playlists got me some freebies, which were a lot less forthcoming back then... But, after I eventually got a computer these playlists became something more, they became a second broadcast. The lists, now elaborately annotated, became a sort of place or framework where memoir and investigation became one. What was the music and how do you describe music in non-musical terminology. Eventually this led to how music from past and future affected me, what it did for me and how it dug up memories and emotions. and this led to actual essays based on the week's playlist – what emotions, events, faces, and regrets did these songs call forth... |
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