The Audio Kitchen

The web stream that accompanies the Audio Kitchen blog (“Chunky Homestyle Radio”) is down. My non-stop audio-stream of found and obscure recordings is on hiatus until I can resolve a technical problem here at the house. The other day I noticed that the cranky old Pentium II box that sends out the chunky sounds  had shut down. And then after rebooting the old boy a couple times and restarting the stream I’ve come to realize that the computer will only run for an hour or two before passing out again. My hardware guru tells me it’s probably the power supply or the processor fan. I have yet to actually open it up and learn more.

However, I have to admit that I wish I could report that I’ve received numerous complaints about this outage. But sadly, nobody seems to have noticed but me. And frankly, I’ve been surprised and a little dismayed at) how few people have actually taken advantage of the Chunky Homestyle station I installed with this blog. Perhaps I haven’t promoted it very well, but since I opened this site for business there was only a smattering of interest in Chunky Homestyle Radio. And within a few weeks the listenership dropped down to little more than a handful of people tuning in at one time, and then often none at all.

While it takes me quite a bit of time to get the posts where organized and written, but the Chunky stream has always been a way I could easily and indiscriminately share my bulging collection of home recorded detritus. It’s no surprise to me that providing some context would drum up anticipation and curiosity and make the make listening to the blog post audio more popular than clicking on the Chunky Homestyle stream and its random deluge of found sound. There’s many hundreds of hours of conversations and performances and untold numbers of lost dispatches and messages in the Chunky Homestyle Radio library. I personally find it an intriuging stew of words, noise and situation. But there is no announcer or  blogger to guide your mind through the arbitrary blather. Maybe it’s too much for anybody to handle. I don’t know. Either way, the Chunky stream will be coming back sometime soon. At least for a while.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

“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. 

This one came in on the request line. And if your’re in the mood to hear a haunting high tenor belt out a few cat ballads, then you are in luck. But first let me digress here for a moment, and then… music!

I do like requests. Bring ‘em on. If there’s a particular recording or performer you wistfully recall from my old radio show that you think would make a good feature here, drop me a line. Of course, my intent is to do more with this blog than rehash the rehash the contents of the old show, so general requests for particular genres of amateur audio might be helpful, and give you a voice in the proceedings here. You wanna hear some drunk people? Answering machine tapes? Loopy kids hopped on sugar? Arguments? Voice practice? Hypnosis? You just let me know. I won’t promise I’ll post anything in particular, but it would be nice to have a sack of suggestions to reach into now and then.

I have to admit that so far it’s been a bit easier to make content choices for my other blog (The Radio Kitchen). I already have a few dozen posts for it started in my head and ready to pull off the shelf. But dealing with the magnitude of amateur recordings that fuel this blog, there’s SO many divergent paths to venture down that I get headaches just trying to get a game plan for posting here. It’s not just that there’s a lot of stuff to pick through (and there is), but it’s the VARIETY. And the variety of varieties. In fact, I decided on the audio for one post here by cramming over three-thousand files into Winamp and hitting shuffle, letting the first one that hit me over the head win the day. But you know, I didn’t have to scan through many before I found a good one.

While it’s no secret that some amateur recordings can drive you batty (or put you to sleep), but there are a few with curative powers. Like the “Kitty Love Songs” of Terry McMahon. When I made up a short list of possible initial posts, I’d already included these. And then when I recently got an email suggesting I feature them, I moved ‘em to the front of the queue.

And then in posting this, I’m possibly tripping over a new threshold in all my years of presenting found recordings. Not surprisingly, every once in awhile I’ve gotten online to try and see if I could track down a few of the characters I’ve heard on found recordings. It’s not something I obsess over, but every now and then curiosity gets the best of me and I do a little searching. I’ve actually located maybe a handful of people online that way, but I’ve never attempted to contact any of them. Why should I? But by posting these recordings up on the searchable info grid of mankind I realize that the inverse will eventually occur, and some of these artifacts are going to find their creators. It might happen with this post. I see Mr. McMahon has a website or two.

It doesn’t bother me, sharing people’s home recordings– personal or not. Let’s face it, once the artifacts of your existence end up in resale shops, the mass of it all is passed down. Passed along. Iti’s more than fair use. But It’s history on the march. But for a number of reasons. And I think Terry is going to be just fine with his cat anthems getting some play here.

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The initial appeal of these recordings for me was Terry’s voice– a tender upper register not unlike Robert Wyatt with a little Art Garfunkel thrown in for comfort. And the musical stylings are orchestral pop/rock, as rendered by a moderately priced one-man-band keyboard device. And he’s one of those masterminds who knows where to find all the keys, buttons and switches to make his gadget sing, and how to tickle them appropriately. And lyrically, he’s the master of the cheap non sequitur rhyme.

These songs are as simple and silly as they are sincere. The sense of humor is cornball– good-natured with almost no irony. And the arrangements are good too. Is it kid’s music? Maybe. But it’s really more than that. 

Or less…

It’s the true story of “All Ball” the kittycat and that sign-language talkin’ Gorilla, Koko. Some meaningful cross-species diplomacy going on here. After all, “love is a language that all of us know.” Deep stuff. And from the narrative details captured in his lyrics I’d wager that Terry probably owned the book.

Terry McMahon - 04 - Scaredy Cats

Quite an evocative stew that one. Nice effects and more shameless rhymes.

On his site, says “Molly Malone was a song originally written with a Public Service Announcement in mind.” Which never would have occurred to me, but the gist of the song was to admonish “those who might toss their kittens into the wild and abandon responsibility for their care.” And I heartily concur!

If there’s a single in the bunch it’s “Secret Agent Cat.” It’s a catchy ode to a feline forest ranger turned undercover operative, and his penchant for tuna pie. This tight and urgent arrangement is as spectacular as it is wacky.

However, the album closer wraps things up nicely. Like a few numbers here, "There Will Always Be Kitty Love Songs" combines McMahon’s own homebrew of light classical music and adult contemporary schmaltz. It’s easy to imagine a video of this– with McMahon performing in a tidy white tuxedo, supported with some evocative backlighting.

Yes, I think there always will be Kitty Love Songs. I don’t see why not. They’re high grade amateur recordings– folk art flavored compositions done with a professional flair using an affordable musical gadget. It’s a pleasure to share them here. (And yes, they are cute.) As far as Terry McMahon, at the time of this writing I’m putting up this post without contacting him directly. But I suppose I will. If he’s still checking his blogs…

Okay here’s three short ones, all from found cassettes. I’ve grouped these all together in one post for a simple reason. They all express a mode of affection for a dude named named Bob (or Robert). And really, who hasn’t loved a Bob at one time or another? The name just has an affable buzz. Think about it. Sometime when you feel the need to reach out, you really just wanna grab a hold of some Bob out there and squeeze.

The first selection comes from an unmarked tape I found in a box in my room. I don’t really know how it came into my possession I suspect it might be from a junk store in the neighborhood, but I really have no idea. Sadly, this has become the case with too many tapes stashed away in bags and boxes around the house. Ever think about how cool it would be if you could afford to hire an assistant? Man, could I ever keep that person busy.

Anyway, this is a quirky tune. The band, such as it is, seems to be a few wholesome college types with a keyboard device. The cassette collection of songs I have from these folks is actually quite entertaining. Very earnest. A little odd and kinda kooky. Art school perhaps. I think these songs hail from the 1980’s. This particular number is a tight and out of tune plea for Bobby companionship. The vocals are fast paced and overlapping, and I suspect it might be a gay kind of thing. The Bobby protagonist of the song is referred to as “sugar,” “darling,” “honey,” and “angel” (and maybe “throbby” as well). And the crescendo at the end is a celebration of the “three of us.” Not quite like anything I’ve  ever heard before. And you? I think I need to make a point of sharing more of this tape in a future post. It’s a lot of fun. Musical nerds having a good time.

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The next offering is a bit strange, which may have gay overtones as well. (Okay, there are girls named “Bobbi” out there, but it’s not that common.) It’s a unique item, recorded on a late-model audio cassette. I’d guess it’s from the 1990’s. The “creator” of this recording has foisted his microphone up to the speaker of his stereo while playing the opening of a soprano sax power ballad. And then, right before the female singer starts to warble on nostalgically about never ending love the guy holding the mic intones– “Bobby” in an urgent half spoken whisper. Then she sings for a minute about the wild and free days of yore. He then hits the pause button, restarts the song, and does the same urgent thing all over again– the sax intro, the “Bobby” whisper, and that pop diva chorus about wildness and freedom (and love). He does this several times.

Although it’s impossible to be sure, the cryptic presentation here doesn’t seem to hard to decode. It would seem that the fella misses his “Bobby,” and can’t stop thinking about all the wild and free fun they used to have. And perhaps he’s trying to reel him back in by repeating this bit of what might have been their special song. Just guesses of course. Somehow when I hear this tape, I see two slender preppie guys in cardigans walking along a beach, laughing and smiling as the waves crash and the sun sets. And I’ll bet if I mixed in some seagull noises you might see the same thing…

That little wonder was unearthed at a thrift store in Youngstown, Ohio. While I didn’t find much in the way of lost audio the last time I swung through there, Youngstown is one of those hardscrabble rust-belt cities where life is kinda cheap, and there’s some big thrift shops crammed with inexpensive goodies.

The final entree here also invokes “Bob love.” Actually the it’s the love of a Robert and his bride to be, Sandra. However, instead of idealized adoration or yearning for the return of a Bob, this is fully realized affection. No irony either. Not to reveal all the details in this rich two minutes of fun, but there’s some sweet singin’, a little Waffle House poetry, and a lusty invitation to wash up. From the sound of it, these folks aren’t so young and probably ain’t all that pretty either. But they sure are realistic! And they sure sound happy too. Brian Belott discovered this brief masterpiece at a thrift shop in Sarasota, Florida. Like the first two selections, I didn’t edit this in anyway.

That’s it for today’s post– three quickies that kinda show you how there’s more to found recordings than kiddie tapes, answering machine messages and audio letters. And there really are a lotta ways to love a Bob. But you probably already knew that. 

Short and sour amateur metal (or a joke?). Great. All the attitude, none of the skills. New distortion guitar song writing, and the lyrics match the playing level.

There ya go. Apparently somebody is going to die. Possibly in a car accident. And his name might be Alex. Quite a bit of guitar experimentation with monkey-like interludes. I guess you could call this a demo. If it is, I’d sure like to hear the complete version with the full band.

What do you get when you take a corny shell of a man, and fill him up with meaty teen passion and lots of cheesy on-the-job behavior? You get a trashy little fast-food affair, documented in this found tape.

This is the tale of Travis the Taco Bell manager and his fiesta menu of uniformed young girls. Actually, we only hear one side of the story, from Christine, a teenage taco stuffer who offered him her virginity, along with some cologne and a funny sign for his parking spot.