The Avant Gardenist

After watching the soundcheck (see previous post) here a song from the gig filmed with a phone by someone in the audience.

Papal Breakdance by Psychic TV/PTV3 Express Festival, Arena Puccini, Bologna Italy. 28 May 2009.

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The Avant Gardenist

Today, 1 year ago, Genesis Breyer P Orridge passed away. In memory some unpublished material from my private archive. Film recordings from a soundcheck in 2009 at the Express Festival, Arena Puccini, Bologna Italy. Date: 28 May 2009. David (guitar) carried a camera on that tour. He stuck it on the side of the stage filming the soundcheck. Further musicians are Edley (drums), Gila (bass) who replaces Alice on this one tour, Jess (Keyboard) who passed away last month and of course Genesis Breyer P Orridge.
Notice the positive atmosphere and joking I will miss a lot. It was always great fun touring with PTV.
Songs performed: Kiss Me, Higher And Higher, Papal Breakdance.

The Avant Gardenist

Lets stay a bit into the recording ‘tech’.
Below a comment from David Briggs (February 29, 1944 – November 26, 1995). David Briggs is mainly known as producer of many Neil Young records. Young’s records sound extremely good, especially very dynamic, but not ‘clean’. You hear musicians making playing mistakes, singing out of tune, putting down a (beer?) bottle, hitting a mic, a.s.o….. Listening to Neil Young recordings, all these extra sounds never bothered me. Clearly the tracks are recorded live in the studio, all playing at the same time. I assume thats the secret of the dynamic sound. Neil Young is a very popular recording artist for many generations, until today. It doesn’t seem to be the absolute perfect clean recording that makes a record sell….. I often try to explain to younger technicians taking tracks through digital cleaning procedures, meanwhile killing dynamics.

David Briggs, How to Make Records:

I can teach you everything I know in an hour. Everything. That’s how simple it is to make records. Nowadays, buddy, the technician is in control of the medium. They try to make out like it’s black magic, or flyin’ a spaceship. I can teach anybody on this planet how to fly the spaceship. If you look at the modern console, there’ll be thirty knobs – high frequency, low frequency, midfrequency, all notched in little tiny, tiny, teeny tiny degrees – and it’s all bullshit. All this stuff doesn’t matter, and you can’t be intimidated. You just ignore it – all of it. I walk into studios with the biggest console known to mankind, and I ask for the schematic and say, “Can you patch from here to here and eliminate the ENTIRE board?” I just run it right into the tape machines. All the modern consoles, they’re all made by hacks, they’re not worth a shit, they sound terrible. None of it touches the old tube stuff – like the green board from Heider’s. It has two tone controls – high end, low end and a pan knob – and that’s it. I had great good fortune when I was a kid and started makin’ records. I made ‘em at Wally Heider’s, Gold Star, so all the people that taught me were Frank Dimidio, Dave Gold, Stan Ross, Dean Jensen – these guys were the geniuses of the music business, still are. They taught me more about sound and how sound is made and the principles of doing it, and it’s unshakably correct what they said to me: You get a great sound at the source. Put the correct mike in front of the source, get it to the tape the shortest possible route – that’s how you get a great sound. That’s how you do it. All other ways are work. The biggest moment of my life – the one I haven’t been able to get past every, really – is 1961, when I first got to L.A. I got invited to Radio Recorders to see Ray Charles, and I walk into the studio, and Ray’s playin’ all the piano parts with his left hand, reading a braille score with his right hand, singing the vocal live while a full orchestra played behind him. So I sat there and I watched. And I went, “This is how records are made. Put everybody in the fuckin’ room and off we go.” In those days everybody knew they had to go in, get their dick hard at the same time and deliver. And three hours later they walked out the fuckin’ door with a record in their pocket, man. Of course, in those days they didn’t have eight- , sixteen- , twenty-four- , forty-eight- , sixty-four-track, ad nauseum, to fuck people up, and that is what fucked up the recording business and the musicians of today, by the way – fucked ‘em all up to where they’ll never be the same, in my opinion. People realized they could do their part…later. Play their part and fix it later. And with rock and roll, the more you think, the more you stink.

The Avant Gardenist

Something different. Found this interesting video from 1979 where Greg Calbi explains mastering/cutting vinyl. He shows how he edits (cut) a master tape.

Starting as pre-digital technician myself, yep thats how I did it too…. But this vid is not just nostalgia.

He shows how the vinyl-mother is made. A process that didn’t change much until today, with exception that some equipment became digital.
Greg Calbi is one of the most known vinyl masterers. Every vinyl collector has some records mastered by him. During the filming he was mastering ‘making movies’ from Dire Straits (not my favorite), released in 1980. By that time Calbi was mastering vinyls for 7 years.
Interesting his remark about how to become a good tech in the music scene. Just start doing it, even if it is not paid, get into it, learn yourself and from others who do the job already. You don’t learn it at school…….

A message to those fresh from the (then not existing) pop-academies

Enough of my yacking…….. lets boogie

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The Avant Gardenist

Tom Jones, 80 years, no more voice, released a new track few days ago:

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The Avant Gardenist

Partly with English translations, please watch the video until the end!

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The video is from 12 December last year. Its titled ‘Kunst.In.Aktion. Risikotruppe Bern’.
The video is not mine. Took it from the internet. I have no connection with this group.
On few requests after publishing on this site, I made a limited English translation.
Only the last, very essential, part is English titled. Subtitles all the way trough would have destroyed the impact of the video.
Some voices are in English. Those in German are easy to guess what they say. Names of the speakers appear on the end.
Below an attempt to translate the German voices in English.
Please DO understand. The lines below are translations of what is said in German. Assume they do not reflect the art-group opinions (neither mine). They are samples from interviews, news, public speakers,…. Its a compilation building dynamics towards the last part of the video (opening the map). What you see is ART with a message.
THINK, have the guts to be critical and questioning everything! All the rest is up to you…..

  • We are in war. the government must take all steps fighting the epidemic.
  • Soon everybody will know someone who died on the corona virus.
  • The amount of deaths are the same as in any other normal, not corona, year.
  • Trust the health-department, trust the WHO, thrust common sense and journalistic diligence in quality media.
  • There will be investigations into Bill and Melinda gates on suspicion of crimes against humanity.
  • We will have to adhere to these regulations for months. they have to be the standard and never be questioned.
  • Those who decide are not elected and those who are elected have nothing to decide.
  • Tomorrow from noon on, our liberty will be severely restricted.
  • It won’t be the same as it used to be until we have vaccines and drugs.
  • We’re all assuming vaccines will be approved next year. We don’t know exactly how they work, how well they work, what they do, but I am very optimistic that there are vaccines.
  • Disinformation can cost lives, but together we can fight fake news.
  • We are at war and the nation will support its children.
  • If you want to have a real world order, a global political order, then you will not be able to avoid all subjects on sovereignty, rights, to give to others
  • That means that other international organizations can then punish us when we don’t follow the regulations.
  • Bill gates, UNICEF and the WHO are also accused of deliberately vaccinating Kenyan children through the use of a hidden toxin in the tetanus injection.
  • Vaccines, tests and drugs must be available, affordable and accessible to all people in the world.

The Avant Gardenist

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The Avant Gardenist

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