My First Sound Collage: Escape Mechanism

Well, not the first, which would be, maybe in the 7th grade? But this is the first I put out professionally, on CD, about a decade later (1998).

I can’t say for sure, and we’re old friends now, ourselves, but I believe I met the artist who made the video side of this, through an old friend, at the time.

Like, a really old friend, from grade school, even. We attended the same little one room schoolhouse, in fact. In Minnesota.

This one room school house is also in Minnesota.

Just up the snow covered hill, from a frozen lake and the little Lutheran Church where he and his family went to pray, every Sunday. It sounds quaint, because it was. It was quaint as hell. That's why he refers to it that way, still, when talking about it.

He was charming, that way. I looked up to him, in the class ahead of me, from the fourth grade, as we were running out to the playground, at recess, everyone bundled up in slick, puffy coats and fat, funny 'moon' boots.

Our cheeks already flush, from the cold air, outdoors, he'd struck up a conversation with me one day, about my new pocket knife. My Show & Tell item, that day. I was 9.

My first pocket knife

But I was in a hurry, eager to impress the boys from my own class, who couldn't care less. And after a particularly humiliating round of dodgeball, maybe, ran to catch up with the older classmate, instead, and I did show him my awesome new pocket knife, which Dad bought for me, at the Hardware Hank, in New Hope, Minnesota.

Hank

He and I went to the same schools for four or five years before his family moved away, and he was probably my best friend, when I was little.

And then, later, in college, an acquaintance of his was the guy who made this great video collage. The artist's name is Aaron Prust, and you'll find him busy, usually, come wintertime (about half the year, there), doing something for The Art Shanty Projects.

"Culture" by Escape Mechanism

Thanks for listening!

...In other news, I've been focusing on Some Assembly Required, and a Radio Perzine show I've been doing for a couple of years, on and off, in The Wiggle Room, but there are plans for a new RADIO RETROFIT, too. In fact, the music JUST clicked for me, this past week. I'd been struggling to find the thread...

And here's where I just go on and on, so... if you've enjoyed the video, and got better stuff to do... Off with you, now. It's a good point to split. Otherwise, read on, if you like TMI.

...Sometimes it's a struggle. There was a learning curve, for instance, that nearly laid me out, but instead of just going back to more of the same, I spent some time figuring out WHY the original followup failed.

The first KBHR attempt was scrapped, and the third one’s linked to from the main collection (a personal fave), but it’s the second version which turned out to be a learning experience. It was hours long, and I never quite got it to work…

I can say that confidently, because it's my own work, and there's no one to argue. But people loved the Fever mix, a LOT. I'd never gotten so much great feedback. It's more or less why this website exists. The first thing up was that audio.

I put it there, so I could share it with a radio group, online. Some folks I thought might get a kick out of it. And I thought I'd put the zine here, when it was ready. But who knew when that would be. ...Or knows, still.

Anyway, the Fever mix is good, but I didn't know why. So, when I tried to do it again with a show even MORE dear to my heart (Northern Exposure), I assumed it would just magically work again, the way the first one had. But, no.

Say… What gives?

Classic sophomore slump, I guess. So, now I know what that slump is all about, too. If you got lucky, and some attention, with your first record, or book or whatever, the question quickly becomes, what made it work? What, specifically…

And "all" I did, with the Fever mix, was record every DJ break, from the series where he features, and listen, over and over and over, on my computer, for months, while working on other stuff, in my spare time.

I was a stay at home Dad, if that puts it into perspective, for you. You get a couple hours free between school drop offs and pickups, and making meals and very poorly keeping house. I was working on radio, instead. Oops?

So, I was listening to it for fun, in my spare time, and had slowly started editing the music back into the scenes which would always panned away, audibly, so to speak, from the record the DJ just introduced.

If this explanation sounds tedious, it's because collage is often like that. The process is more a meditation than a thrill. Especially in this case, maybe. There was no direction. No deadline. No fantasy of playing it on the radio. I was just screwing around, having fun.

If anything, I'd been forced to give up thinking there might be a new sound collage record out of any of it, as even I know you can't just play the ENTIRE SONG, with zero changes. And if I couldn't put it out, what was the point?

It only occurred to me, it wasn't an album (it was a how), when Hesseman passed, and the lightbulb went off: 'Oh, I have the perfect homage to his character, right here.'

…It's a radio show, duh.

Aha!

But that's how it started. Listening to the same source materials, over and over and over and tweaking lots of tiny, little edits, over and over and over, with an eye towards making a collage.

Eventually, connections between all the different parts started to come into focus, like with any collage. There weren't many obvious patterns to follow, that I could see, but I came to see how I could fake some…

I started stringing parts together, strategically, combined with other pieces, changing the times and days mentioned, and other things, to make it sound as though the Doctor was stuck there, overnight, just playing music on the radio, and then the morning show, and into the afternoon, and with him in some kind of crisis, too.

And for some reason he just stays in the booth, all day, announcing and playing music for about 12 hours, during a big snowstorm. I decided that was the reason. He was covering shifts for his fellow, snowbound DJs... playing the music he always played, plus.

And it rocked and I credited that to him, or the show’s producers, but I was secretly thinking, maybe I'd contributed more than I actually had. I was very aware of how much work had gone into the collaging of all the audio sources. But that didn't always have a lot to do, really, with the music working as well as it did...

So, you can see, probably, why the next one was harder. My hand wasn't being held, in quite the same way. I didn't fully realize just how important that music direction had been.

Music, Directed

Getting to work on the KBHR mix, I had just grabbed all the dj breaks again, from the show I'd loved since watching it religiously with my Dad, in college...

Maybe I thought, since I was so familiar with these dj breaks, already, having watched the episodes through, so often, I wouldn't need to soak SO long, in all the source material, as before, in order to make it work?

And just like the first one, I intended to use the music from the show, as exclusively as possible, thinking this was the formula, but this was actually the missing, as yet misunderstood ingredient... It was not to be. Not so easily, anyway.

The show is well known for it's diverse, authentic, left of center soundtrack. A lot of it is really great. And most of it is fantastic, within the context of the SHOW... But you wouldn't want to listen to it, necessarily, just one after the other ...on the radio.

Nx fans may argue that one, but I doubt it. I've shared the original mix with groups of Northern Exposure fans and I can tell you, the downloads are nowhere near where WKRP's were. The spark's just not there. And it was because of the music. And actually, the production, both...

Back to the drawing board...

I just re-listened to it. Poor Chris is made to get on-mic after just about every song, for one thing. No rhythm or reason, at all. And the music is just a best-of, from the show's legendary soundtrack, as the character of Chris Stevens, actually... rarely plays any music.

I've written about this before though, so if you're curious, that's covered in one of my first blog posts HERE.

Personally, I might like to move on to something new. And what I've ben experimenting with is the Radio Perzine I did last week in The Wiggle Room. And that’s why I started this post out with the tangent, about my childhood buddy, and his acquaintance, who made a video collage accompaniment, for me.

Those are the kinds of stories I enjoy telling, as I read from my own journal, on the radio. My childhood journal. 1986, most recently. I've only produced five hours, so far. But something clicked this last time, and I think I might like to do more.

Aw, Phooey

So, there's my update. Pretty excited, about the new Radio Retrofit, on the way. I could not figure out which direction to go with it, for the longest time. That will keep a project from rolling, at all. Can't start to roll, until you know which way you're going.

Now that I know, it's amazing how fast it's coming together. And what I was getting at, above, is just how important it is, to "spend time with" the DJs, listening to them talk, and to the music they’re playing, and learning about the station (or the stations it's based on), and the formats they're following and the music of the time period, and what was new, that year, etc. etc.

That's when it starts to get fun...

Looking fwd,

Jon Nelson