What’s Cooking Here?

Welcome to The Audio Kitchen. Glad you could stop by. If you like home recordings, eavesdropping on the past, or the sound of people trying to sing, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve established this site as a place to share and discuss found and amateur recordings, mine and hopefully yours. The Audio Kitchen is intended as an interactive archive (a portal perhaps), where you’re welcome to explore a growing online museum of amateur recordings, and to contribute similar audio and contribute to the online resource (and immortalize otherwise lost relics).

By amateur recordiings I mean all the myriad sound artifacts created by ordinary folks using everyday home recording equipment. Some are more formal documentation of events and audio letters. Then there’s more incidental and ephemeral recordings, like answering machine tapes, personal notes, voice lessons, AA meetings, and all the imaginative antics that can occur when a kid gets a hold of a recorder. And there’s music too.

In general, the recordings featured here are relinquished items, disconnected from their past. For many, the anonymous and mysterious nature of these items have a mystique all their own. While it’s intriguing to try to decode how and why they were made, it’s equally as rewarding just to consider them as audio samples of the human condition. Although savvy scavengers have long sought out cool clothes and records and household goods from resale shops and junk peddlers, more personal artifacts from the pre-digital 20th century are being sought out as well. For those who dig deep into preowned piles of life detritus there are human treasures to be found–  like lost photos and home movies, and abandoned letters, notes, and diaries. It’s junk archeology of the recent past. And for some of us, it becomes a habit. Even a sport.

Before digital technology changed all the rules, amateur recording artifacts were scattered through our lives. For some reason, few people put together an audio equivalent of a scrapbook, photo album, or slide show. The artifacts somehow go from stashed away box to oblivion without anybody really notcing. Unlike family photos and home movies, recordings like these rarely gotten the respect accorded to the visual records of our past. And the tragedy is that most of these recordings probably end up in a trash heap. However, the same disregard that directs so many of these archives of our lives into the land fills does offer a positive side effect. These tapes, records and spools are often a hidden bonus within the piles of of goods donated to thrift stores or abandoned in storage bins. And some are occasionally fished out the garbage. The point is, the what makes these recordings rare is also what has made such a variety of them available to collectors.

The irony in this is that although the recent leaps in technology and telecommunications has make it possible to now globally share these recordings has to a great degree has drawn curtains on the era of found sound artifacts. Of course, the onset of cheap and easy video recording shifted the focus of immortalizing events and occasions away from audio archiving since the 1980′s. But at the end of the 1990′s dirt cheap long distance phone service largely ended the era of the audio letter. And increasingly more phone messages are stored on automated voice mail servers, or on the chips of digital answering machines. Although audio cassette recording is still valid in some circles, it is quickly being displaced by methods of digital recording on portable devices and computers. While I suppose there’s always the possibility of rescuing a hard drive or digital audio gadget and bleeding off the audio, it’s not nearly as easy or inviting as buying a tape or record at a thrift shop that has ball point scrawl identifying the contents as “Dad’s Birthday,” or “Trudy Sings.”

Okay, it’s a new era and with growing world of podcasting and audio blogs there may be more “amateur” recordings being made and distributed than ever before. But they’re being created with the reality (or illusion) that the audio can or could reach people around the world. When somebody sent a steamy audio letter in 1984, or left an angry message on their boyfriend’s answering machine in 1995, they never considered that their words and thoughts would be immortalized and a valued artifact of the human experience. For the most part, the era of the easily identifiable candid home audio artifact is over. So, were left to look for the scraps left behind, and to cherish them. 

If you’re wondering why I  continue to identify the recordings interchangeably as found, or amateur, or home recordings, it’s because they’re really the same but some aren’t from an anonymous  source. Some people actually have held onto the audio remnants and archives of their lives, and one way or another these recordings have found  their way into the hands of people already collecting found sound. While there’s not much mystery in the origination of recordings like this, they still have the same raw texture and period dynamics of the old found recordings. They can be just as much fun, and will be included in the posts here, as they were in my original radio show.

If I’ve romanticized collecting (and listening to) home recordings as cosmic experience, I should add a strong caveat. The found sound business is a crap shoot. Anybody who has sought these recordings has probably spent way too much time listening to hours of mumbling and droning conversations trying to figure out if there was any reason to ever hear that recording again. It’s not all sizzle and whimsey.

Putting together the Audio Kitchen radio program involved plenty of frustration and disappointment. I can’t tell you how many hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours were wasted trying to find the magic moments in found recordings, or attempting to decide if there was one good reason to incorporate any particular segment into a tightly formated radio show. After hours of trying to make sense of incessant mumbling, kids screaming, adults arguing, or just an non-stop stream of uneventful phone messages, you at risk of wearing out your ears and numbing your brain.

That said, there is often plenty of raw humanity to consider and enjoy in home recordings that don’t yield a magic moment, or red meat for a radio program. And I have plenty of tapes here that I’ve never had the time to comb through to find the “good parts.” Yet, many are worth sharing for their reality value. So, while I’ll try to featuring the more intriguing recordings for blog entries, I’m going to provide an online non-stop broadcast where you can hear some of these more obscure and obtuse home recordings– “Chunky Homestyle Radio.”

Chunky Homestyle Radio on Winamp Along with all the recordings you can download and listen to via the blog, I’ve put together a 24-7 internet radio station I call “Chunky Homestyle Radio” (you can listen to the MP3 stream with this link). It’s an automated affair, with my three year old daughter providing station ID’s. Along with more succulent selected delights, the Chunky Homestyle stream serves up extended recordings of many flavors, and recordings I never played on the radio and some that will never be archived through this blog either. I will warn you that some of what you will hear is ridiculous and unintelligable. But if you’re brave and adventurous click and listen anytime and let the rare and curious homemade sounds fill your bowl.

And it’s my hope that the feast here will also be a pot luck affair. I’m working on setting up a gadget here that will easily let you post your home recordings through the website. Until then, there’s a number of ways you can get your found sound to me. This page will give you the details.

There’s plenty more to say about the grit, grime and glory of enjoying home recordings and found sound, but I’ll leave those discussions to the individual posts on this blog. And as always, I look forward to your feedback and responses. Comments on individual posts are open to everyone (but please be nice). And as far as general questions, comments and suggestions regarding this site, please send me an email from this page. I do look forward to hearing from you.

Okay, let’s have fun.

The Professor