First, a transcription of the first half of the note that precedes the piece:
"Don:
"There were two things I wanted to mention to you:
"(1) I would like to have a copy of the tape of Finnegan's Wake you made. I have a stereo recorder and a a side of stereo tape. Could I bring my machine in and record 1 track on one side sometime soon? Please don't destroy it before. I really liked the end, for some reason it seemed very sad - almost the way that passage should be read -- all of it.
"… Ellen Jean Danner"
I found this note in my mailbox at Antioch on Tuesday, January 27, 1970, and discovered it among my "stuff" last October. I was 18, the second quarter into my first year in college. I had been hired the previous Fall as the Chief Recording Engineer at WYSO, the college's radio station, and I spent much of my time playing with the recording equipment during the station's off-hours, experimenting with what the machines could do beyond recording and playing back records or speech.
The experimentations would continue into the Winter 1970 quarter. During that first month in January, I had a very rough concept in mind: I asked three people to separately read the same passage from James Joyce's Finnegan Wake. The two women may have been fellow students and WYSO staffers Angie Brown and Ellen Jean Danner, the person who wrote me the note above. The third was Tim Mabee, the station's manager.
I think that after the first reading, the second and then third reader would hear the first in his or her headphones so that they could attempt to match the timings. But I honestly don't remember.
I then combined their readings, syncing them as best I could with three tape recorders simultaneously playing each back into a fourth. Then added a recording of Bach's well-known 1st Prelude from his Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1. The idea was to have the Bach play in reverse while the Joyce passage was read by all three, then switch the process, with the Bach forward and the Joyce backwards.
A simple, primitive concept. As I said, I was 18.
But Ellen Jean seemed to like it, and she left me that note, requesting a dub.
I had completely forgotten about it until I found it last August in WYSO's online archives. I hadn't listened to it in 52 years.
So I decided to make a video of it today. Not exactly a masterpiece, but it's what I was doing back then.
Regarding the second half of Ellen Jean's note:
"(2) There is a boy in my dorm who is into new forms of music -- guitar. He might make an interesting show. Tad Lathrop is writing some of his own music. It would be something original -- rather than just flipping sides of records as some shows do. A new and original(!) sound. Well, something no one else has done.
"You could talk to me or Tad; PBX 492
"Tad Lathrop
"Ellen Jean Danner"
I called Tad, and instead of a show, we arranged studio time on Friday night, January 30, at around 1 am, after the station had gone off the air, to have him come in and record some songs. He brought a friend, Barry Hyman, to accompany him.
That night was my first encounter with Tad Lathrop. We'd soon become musical partners that has since lasted for over half a century.
6 мар 2023
