[NetBehaviour] Music to Listen to

Alan Sondheim sondheim at gmail.com
Wed Aug 9 17:16:10 CEST 2023


Hi Johannes!

Thanks for this. The club wasn't obscure - it was the Starck Club and we
chose the baseroom area, played in the closed room, people listening from
the hallway, whatever! We did well there.
It was David Smith who worked with Lee Murray; they were a team. He died a
few years ago, before Lee did; they were still working on projects
together. He had a group which is online now, around the same time, which
broke up soon after we arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Accident - they were married
in real life and broke up somewhat soon after we arrived, I think. Good
music with strange back beats / lyrics. I don't remember the keyboard at
all - the make - but it might have been a Mirage - I bought one again about
15 years ago, but it broke soon after. The Mirage was unique and probably
still is; it used floppies. I don't think David had one but might have.
Other than that, I don't remember the brand.
He pretty much wired everything from scratch. Btw, wasn't messing w/ the
keyboard - playing it.
The tapes sound identical to the way they sounded then. I'm sure of that.
Things survive far longer than they're supposed to - the Acker tapes are
far earlier and made it through.
I'm against disintegration because things become permanently lost that way.
Everything I think depends on storage conditions. Storing various tapes in
metal containers keeps magnetic fields away from them. Tape splices are
always brittle, decay.
I did lose a lot of early computer tapes as well as some audio etc., all of
which were stored at my parent's house in Pennsylvania; when the
Susquehanna flooded in the 70s, they were destroyed along with so much else
-
As you know Murray's films, w/ David as well, are up on Lee Murray's
website that Barbara Simcoe created somewhat recently. They're utterly
brilliant.

Best, Alan, and thank you so much - oh not the Midi pioneer!

On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 6:47 AM Johannes Birringer via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

>
> Hallo,
> Alan thanks for this music from old times. It's wonderful.
> I was not in attendance, but distinctly remember another concert night in
> Dallas, around 1986, where you were eating or playing audio tape that you
> had ripped from the reels and torn around the room like a mad obsessionist.
> I think the concert was in an obscure underground club in Deep Ellum.
>
> I checked on your reference, "Guide de la Conversation Francais-Anglais, A
> L'Usage des Voyageurs et des Etudiants," as it intrigued me and one of my
> younger sports friends is preparing to travel to Paris next week; I found
> an excerpt in Bellenger's (& Poppleton?) edition of 2015:  [p.208]
>
> « Monsieur, j'ai pris la liberté de vous envoyer chercher. Je crains
> d'avoir besoin de votre assistance. Comment vous trouvez-vous en ce moment
> ? Je ne sais. Je me trouve tout je ne sais comment. J'ai la tête tout
> étourdie, et j'ai de la peine à me tenir sur mes jambes. Je ne suis pas
> bien du tout. Je me sens bien malade. Je suis d'une faiblesse étonnante.‎
> »
>
>
> Please tell us about David Smith (or was it Dave Smith?, the midi pioneer?)
> what keyboard instruments were you messing with?  I really love the sound.
>
> On another note, re: preservation. I am surprised the tapes survived and
> you can play them, or do they now also sound different, with mulch?  A
> Canadian friend of mine passed in early 2023, and for his memorial we are
> trying to exhibit some of his early work, video and audio tapes from the
> 80s; his son wants to digitize the early works, but has been warned that he
> may only have one shot before old brittle tape disintegrates. (Not that I
> am against disintegration, don't get me wrong.)
>
> with warm regards
> Johannes Birringer
> Outrenoir*
>
> (Just found out about Pierre Soulages's work, now on view at Musée
> Soulages in Rodez. Fascinating)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 7:45 AM Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour <
> netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Music to Listen to
>>
>> https://youtu.be/A4eF9yfkgf8 video
>>
>> David Smith and Alan Sondheim, Dallas, 1985-1987
>>
>> "Was the concert numerously attended last night? The house room
>> was so full that we were suffocated with heat. In that case I am
>> glad not to have been there. My dear it is a great pity for you.
>> That concert was highly interesting. I did not see the program;
>> but I had heard that very remarkable artists were to be there.
>> It was so; the most distinguished performers in this country and
>> several famous Texan and Pennsylvanians virtuosos were there.
>> The pieces of music were as well selected as could be. They
>> began with the Symphony and chorus. I don't like that style and
>> that music always great upon my ears. And yet he attained great
>> success that night. The first flute at the opera delighted us.
>> The organ concerto was executed brilliantly. In find the
>> orchestra was accompanied with rare precision ." (19th cent.
>> Guide de la Conversation Francais-Anglais, A L'Usage des
>> Voyageurs et des Etudiants, L. Smith, modified.)
>>
>> Dallas Texas, David Smith's Mac electronic music studio
>>
>> Unsure who did what here, a long time ago. He had the most
>> brilliant, streamlined, intense, sound manipulation / creation /
>> recording system I've ever seen. And he's passed on, like our
>> equally brilliant friend Lee Murray, filmmaker, who collaborated
>> with him. The studio was one room, a very large empty U-shaped
>> desk, a very large monitor and speakers, everything white or tan
>> or beige as I recall, very sparse, a couple of chairs, computer
>> keyboard, mouse, music keyboard. From what I remember.
>> Everything I think may be wrong.
>>
>> I found cassette tapes of the two of us, from a long time ago.
>> They were pristine. I played them back on my Sony TC-152SD
>> cassette machine which still functions well after 45 years.
>> Line out went into a Zoom H2.
>>
>> I detect the long moments of exhalation which would have come
>> from me. There's no way I can tell at this point, but what is
>> true, the music is wonderful, and this would have been recorded
>> while I was teaching at University of Texas, Dallas, sometime in
>> 1985-87.
>>
>> Glad that the tapes survived. The single image is of a slime
>> mold after a fairly violent storm.
>>
>>
>> +++
>>
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