[NetBehaviour] Music to Listen to

Wed Aug 9 22:24:15 CEST 2023

Monsieur Sondheim,
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...

...oh, and you remember everything crystal clear.... then I got the
humorous reference wrong, I thought you were unsure who did what when
there, a long time ago..
but thanks much for your response, I really like the playing of the
keyboards.....

warm regards
Johannes Birringer

On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 5:17 PM Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

> 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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