The Audio Kitchen » Anger

Four Scorned and the Guys Who Let Go

prof — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:46:04 +0000

It wasn’t that long ago that one of the most important social networking tools in the house was a little blinking box next to the telephone. Not only did cell phones and voice mail kind of eliminate the need for answering machines, but more people take advantage of all sorts of ways to type to each other through the ether these days. While all that telecommunication doesn’t really leave artifacts behind for us to dig through, there is a lurking bounty of audio treasures out there from the golden era of the answering machine– many thousands of cassettes (and microcassettes) filled with communiques and intimate details of human lives that have been left behind in piles of resale goods. When I’m wondering through a thrift store I never pass up lifting the lid of an old answering machine to see if there’s an oyster in there.

Some incoming message tapes are quite boring (perhaps not unlike the lives they document), others yield a memorable moment or two. But the prize cassettes are packed with humanity, surprise and mystery. And they come in many flavors. Some tapes are wild. Some funny. Others are sad. Some are just a collage of voices and situations. But the very best unfold through a compelling series of events and offer narrative rewards. Such are the four answering machine tapes I’m offering here.

More than most home recordings, incoming message tapes are often candid documents. And they can provide some of the most intriguing red meat in the found sound business. While there’s an inherent awareness of being recorded that comes along with leaving a phone message, the more urgent or emotional the message is the less likely the caller is going to have posterity on his or her mind. Immediacy trumps self-awareness.

These four recordings are complete artifacts, with all the messages in the order they appeared on the tape. At least two of these tapes have chunks of captured conversation between the messages.The most likely cause is when the phone is answered after (or at the same time as) the machine has been triggered and keeps recording for a while as long as it’s getting levels. And some answering machines actually have a button you can push that simply engages the recorder to capture the call. Either way, getting some back and forth on the phone can be a big bonus, offering a taste of the personality of the owner of the machine and perhaps providing context for some of the messages left behind.

The overriding theme of these four recordings is bad behavior, specifically female misbehavior born of hurt feelings and rejection. Of course, exhibiting bad judgement in the middle of getting dumped is universal beyond gender (or just about anything else). It makes you kinda stupid.

Okay, let’s meet Mark. Is there any doubt this guy has just about everything going his way? He has a new birthday, a new abode, and he’s preparing for a London holiday where a sweet bird awaits his arrival. And more to the point– this guy is just popular. All the voices on this tape sound to be fresh, free and female. Even if they’re not all hot, Mark has options.

Mark’s Answering Machine 6:25

(download)

About three minutes in the tone shifts drastically. It’s incoming wrath from a spurned girlfriend. Or perhaps just an episode of serial dating gone all wrong. I suspect that the first half of the tape with all the birthday joy may have been recorded at a later date. The first onslaught from her you hear starts in mid-sentence. Rewinding the answering machine and then letting new messages collect from the beginning would cause this effect. Some moving moments may have been lost.

As the curtain rises on the melodrama we hear the victim holding back tears, wishing and hoping that Mark might have been just a blt more emotive at their break-up scene (which may have just taken place an hour or two before these calls come in). But since he’s either holding is feelings back or doesn’t have any, she’s chosen to lather up his answering machine with her feelings until he finally feels something. Bottom line, she’s doing her part to make sure he is not happy. Which might be tough with a bevy of broads dialing him up around the clock.

While Mark’s ex only flogs him with raw hurt, the wronged woman on tape number two shoots with real ammo. This answering machine kept messages for a guy named Kevin and a few others (Tara & Debbie). I believe one of the ladies runs a nail care business. This tape stumbles along in a rather humdrum fashion until you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a ripping feud between Kevin and his girlfriend.

Kevin’s Answering Machine 8:58

(download)

It all started at some social event. Apparently in some small way she gave him some grief about not spending enough time helping her out with her kids (or something like that). And then he “totally and completely yelled” at her in front of “a whole bunch” of their friends. Not a good idea, in retrospect. But it does engender some cogent dark comedy for the record.

I don’t want to spoil the plot before you hear the tape, but let’s just say that she’s so unflinchingly merciless that it’s hard to imagine Kevin would ever take a call from her again. And the end of this tape is sadly telling. Perhaps there are people you can win over lovers by shoving them away, but I’m not so sure they’re the ones you’d want to stick around. Cooler heads and nicer folks move on to more friendly and fertile territory. And while it’s good to be direct, cruelty is problematic. And isolating.

Although the last two furious females may have been lacking in clarity of mind flailed their men over the phone line, they seemed sober enough. For the next offering, this clearly is not the case.

This tape is a murky affair. One nice bonus is that it starts with an outgoing message from the owner of the machine. It’s the only time you hear his voice. And is it my imagination, or does everybody on this tape sound chubby and black? The first caller is a horrendous mouth breather, almost impossible to understand. He calls the owner of the machine by name, but I have no idea what that might be. All I can glean from the message is that the caller is going to help him out sometime soon with something. Then there’s an invitation to come over and see “the fight.” That’s the first minute of the tape. Then the fun begins…

Pussy’s Answering Machine 5:28

(download)

Apparently, the guy is in some financial trouble and having trouble keeping up with some mortgage payments. And again, there was some type of a break up scene or argument providing the catalyst for this series of messages. And the woman who can’t stop calling does say “If you need me, I will help you,” in reference, I assume, to his financial woes. Or at least she’s willing to look out for his “part of the end” [sic]. But not only were her feelings trampled in the recent skirmish, but she seems to be at loss as to what is was all about. He just doesn’t like her? She did something to him? Or perhaps it has something to do with her drinking problem.

Okay, maybe she doesn’t usually drink herself into oblivion. But as the salvos start coming in, each message is sloppier and nastier than the last. It occurs to me that she may have a speech impediment as well, but with each call there’s more slurring and more spittle. By the end of it you gotta wonder if all that anger and hurt is the only thing keeping her on her feet and attempting to talk. You can almost smell the rank sweat and acetone breath.

Like Kevin’s girlfriend, the hammered hussy takes aim at the manhood. Only she derides his prowess in the profit column instead of the bedroom. And her insults are vulgar schoolyard stuff. Shamelessly crude and a lotta fun. You might wanna shoo all the small children and bible bangers out of the room before you listen to this one.

And to wind things up, we have Frank and Bess. And this incoming message tape is a little different than the other three. It’s longer and you actually get to hear several of their conversations between them. And there’s none of the belligerence and backbiting so evident of all the other tapes here. Yet, I find this rather sedate and relatively uneventful recording the most depressing of the bunch.

The star of this tape is the resonant self-absorbed voice of Frank himself. As it’s recorded from his phone line, he’s louder and clearer than all the other voices calling in. And besides talking about a lot of nothing (mostly weather and processed meat products) he just groans, sighs, yawns and exhibits an extremely annoying fake laugh over the course of his conversations with Bess. But all he really wants to do is get off the phone.

Frank’s Answering Machine 31:28

(download)

Instead of the coda to a meltdown, the repeated calls from Bess follow a more sedate and ambiguous break-up. The details aren’t readily easy to discern, but the main point is that he’s just moved far from her neighborhood and that the separation coincided with the conclusion of an intimate relationship they’ve shared. And perhaps they lived together. I’m not sure. And Bess? Nice. She sounds very nice. So how did a nice girl like this end up in a matching set of ugly break up tapes? It’s the cruelty.

And it does get ugly, in a low-key slow motion fashion. The best example comes near the ten minute mark. Bess emits an “I love you.” as a men’s underwear commercial blares in the background on Frank’s TV set. And then Frank offers the same reassuring affection she’s waiting for, with a caveat. “I love you," he responds followed with a big greasy pause– "… for what it’s worth.”

“That kind of devalues it,” she says, unhappy that he can’t be nice too.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. An indignity she ignores. Not only that, but a minute or two later she starts to get worked up in the other direction and mentions that she’s all wrapped up in Frank’s bathrobe, luxuriating in his odors. “Your SICK,” he squirms, finding her intimate affection patently offensive.

Seems to me, that would be the perfect moment to challenge Frank’s manhood, let alone his emotional depth. But unlike the wronged women on the other tapes, Bess never lashes out or takes him to task. And you know, if she just would have ripped into the moron it would have made this tape a lot more entertaining, and probably would have provided the best results for all concerned.

In The Beginning There Was Angst (And It Was Good)

prof — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:03:26 +0000

As this blog begins, I suppose it’s fitting to go back to the beginning of my fascination with found sound– a day of sorting through junk that launched what has become a large and disparate collection of amateur recordings over at my house.

Actually, I was looking for records down in the golden peninsula of discarded goods, Florida. The combination of northern pilgrims coming to retire (and all that follows) and the subtropical transient lifestyle of the state, provides for a constant flow of surrendered possessions filling the junk shops, thrift stores, pawn shops, and flea markets with SO much junk that some of it has to be good.

It all began on a hot dusty afternoon in 1996 as I was browsing through a squalid little booth at a Florida flea market. It wasn’t the tied-died shirts or patchouli oil that had kept bringing me back this particular dealer. No, it was his abundant selection of cheap and dirty albums. I’d often dug up gems out of those splintering crates, but not that day. I had been there a week or two before and wasn’t finding anything I hadn’t passed up on other trips. As the friend I came with was still elbow deep in the lp’s, I started prowling around under the tables. In the middle of a lot of useless crap I came across a little cardboard box filled with cassettes. The stout bearded guy in the psychedelic wifebeater told me they were ten cents a piece.

I snatched up a few, primarily because they’d looked to be good candidates for recording purposes. However, the ball point scrawl on one particular tape suggested something more. It was a 1970′s era Memorex cassette (one of the least dependable name brands out there), and carved into the silver label were the words (in cursive and in print): “Has my voice about saving the earth.” And above that on the same side: “Has our voice about talk & seating around on side 2.” It was cryptic, yet intriguing. On the way home, I cracked open the dusty case and popped it into the deck. Like uncorking a long lost message in a bottle, the car stereo conjured forth the voice of a desperate 70′s teenager in the middle of a strange and urgent secular prayer. I’ve never heard anything like it, before or since.

For those of you who weren’t around in the early mid-70′s, it was a rather messy and pessimistic time. While the political assassinations, urban riots and the Vietnam War (which we’d just gotten out of) had driven many to anger, isolation or a drug-addled haze. And then there was the Watergate scandal, runaway inflation, another Arab-Israeli war, and a worsening oil crisis. Like today, if you were paying attention to the news it could put you in a bad mood. “We can’t go on living like this,” the kid exclaims. But instead of seeking guidance from god, or religious or political figures, his entreaty is decidedly secular. Almost cynical.

No, he theorizes that the world could be saved by tracking down the world’s top scientists and asking some hard questions. Who else might have the answers? The generals. Some people "in the other worlds” (like Russia). And if the scientists and generals are less than helpful, he’s prepared to force their hand. His plan of action? Firearms (he yearns to become a hit man), or perhaps hypnosic persuasion. On the other hand, perhaps the release of a really meaningful movie might do the trick. He’s really all over the map. Then again, other things he says make a little more sense. Like taxing the rich, or working together to solve a common future crisis. And even his “Free to Be, You and Me” language about people “putting a garden in themselves” isn’t too off the wall. It’s as close as he gets to seeking a spiritual solution.

From the accent, I’d guess the kid grew up in or near Georgia. His family may have relocated somewhere down the line, as the tape bears evidence of being recorded in California (a military brat perhaps?). It’s easy to laugh at the cockeyed concepts and mangled syntax here, but this artifact reveals the inner struggles of an anxious baby boomer on the verge of adulthood. It’s a young confused guy wondering aloud about his purpose in his life, and how he can make a better world. I guess to me the most striking thing is how contradictory it all is. I mean, about three and a half minutes into this bit, he turns a corner and sounds strikingly similar to type of urgent bonehead you might hear call in to a contemporary right wing talk show: “No more people comes to the United States!" he insists. "The United States has got to start taking power. United States got it– They’re going to use it.”

Those might have been the most prescient words spoken on this tape. Here’s the audio:

(download)

Okay, while the screed above was certainly the main feature on this tape, the casette was filled leader to leader. Following the planet saving diatribe, the rest of side A is a parade of popular (and sensitive) 70′s ballads by Billy Joel, Simon & Garfunkle, Three Dog Night, etc. You get the idea. However, at the very end of side one is some slightly more interesting content, which puts a likely date and location for the recordings on the tape. It’s a radio ad for an upcoming Virgil Fox concert, at a concert hall in the San Francisco area in September 1975. At the time I recall hearing the radio ads for the grandiose Virgil Fox organ roadshow coming through town, not really understanding why bombastic classical music with laser beams was being marketed to rock and roll teenagers. But maybe this was the kind of guy who might go for that sort of thing. And then, before the spot is over our protagonist tape jumps in to remind himself or somebody about a Native-American themed novel: “Seven Arrows” (orginally published in 1973). From the reviews I looked at online, I can see how this book might have fit into his vision quest.

(download)

While he mentions regretting souping up his car against his parents wishes and generally goofing off in his supplication to science and warfare on side A, side B is the flip side to all the sober consternation. Here’s our hero at play. It’s a party. And a couple of guests have brought in a guitar and a banjo. And it’s a teenage “pot party” jam session, including "Proud Mary," “Stairway to Heaven,” and the theme to the “Beverly Hillbillies.” It’s not a great recording. The instruments sound out of tune, and there’s lots of chatter and party coughing. I’m including it to provide a more representational archive, and to give the fossil sounds of a forgotten gathering some online posterity. I almost feel like I was there.

(download)

This tape was quite a find, but there was another compelling series of recordings buried within that little batch of crusty cassettes I picked up that day– Not as profound, but certainly containing more complicated subject matter. A lot more. But that’s a topic for another post. Or maybe a few posts…

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