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Tramps’ Dregs - The “A” List
by Ken Fox
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Episode of Naval Aviation In Audio, Radio program on
Regina Community Radio. No.255, aired April 2, 2014.
The price of used CDs at Tramps in Regina has been
falling for years - they likely haven t added to their
stock in more than a decade. The result is a well-picked-
over, but still sizeable musical collection of mainly two
types: (1) artists no one has ever heard of, and (2)
famous artists who no one likes anymore. Well, it seems
Tramps is finally saying good-bye to CDs, dumping them at
$1 a piece. So I took part of a lunch hour to have one
more look thru the stacks for covers that suggest
imagination, hard-core intensity, or anything out of the
mundane. I gave myself 10 minutes and a roughly $10
budget and started at the beginning of the alphabet, and
ended up with 15 CDs all s. While the clerk was cutting
open the plastic shells with a pair of metal shears (the
security key having long been lost, CD s being
essentially worthless), I checked out the s, and found 2
more, which the clerk threw in for free thanks man. So, a
radio show devoted to Tramps Dregs then a good prospect,
I thought, maybe even two shows ...
But a depressing exercise. I ended up with a pile of
mostly 1990s rock CDs. The 1990s indie rock world was
great at cover art, but gawd so many grey, depressing
Sonic Youth imitators and bored suburban post-punks. It
turns me off rock music, it really does. I love electric
guitars, I was musically weened on them, for so many
years I lived with them, on them rock as the staff of
life. But after subjecting my ears to this pile (and
others, in the past, because I ve done this to myself
before), I feel like I never want to hear a friggin
electric guitar riff again the rock of life has become
the stone slab that seals my soul in its tomb.
I m feeling better now having just listend to Iancu
Dumitrescu s Plutonian Frenzy, and followed that up with
some sublimely violent Napalm Death.
But what to do with this 17-CD pile? This is the DJ s
challenge. Take a pile of rubble, and find the gold
inside. But here s the catch: There is no gold. It is all
rubble mediocre music-industry crud. Also, it is all gold
or at least each recording represents a moment when
somebody thought they were doing something brilliant
enough to capture on tape & share with the world,
difficult as it is to believe in some cases.
The problem is that the recording industry, in creating
the CD format (a variation & continuation of the LP-
record format), encourages artists to create sellable
units of 35 65 minute duration. So for many rock bands,
even ones who can put on a decent live show, the result
is too often bland, unfunky mush. There may be moments of
redemption & vivid colour but the sound of recorded rock
music in the digital age is so grey & uniform, after ten
minutes it quickly becomes depressing. How, then, how to
extract the brillance? How to detourne music industry s
horribleness, and hear the actuality of human creativity
behind it?
The good news is that the 17 CDs were not all rock. So my
challenge was to create a show that makes the rock tracks
(the best I can find in that particular pile) sound as
brilliant as they did to the people who originally
created them, and the audiences at their concerts by
offsetting them with what non-rock and spoken-word
elements I can find.
So here are the results - all of them by Arists starting
with an with the exception of Negativeland s Over The
Edge Vol.7: Time Zones Exchange Project, which I found on
a previous excursion at Tramps, and haven t used on my
program until now. Most of the spoken-word bits you hear
are from The Piddle Diddle Report from that collection of
prepared broadcasts. Negativeland s satiric radio play
transformed this for me from a bargain-basement radio
hour to a pleasantly bizzaro listening experience. The
Time Zones Exchange Project also had its own occasional
musical accompanyment so in places that music blended (or
didn t blend) with the music I was playing from a
different CD, and there is one patch on Part 2 where
Negativeland was left to play by itself.
Part 1
1. Chinese Roulette AIDS Wolf
2. Medication Alice Donut
3. Fully Loaded Action Swingers
4. The Yellow Bridge Alice Donut
5. Naval Aviation In Art? Frank Zappa
6. Cry For Persia Ron Allen
7. Jure Crache Amnesie
8. UFO Action Swingers
9. Bonaparte s Retreat/Arkansas Soldier Jimmy Arnold
10. Skicap! Action Swingers
Part 2
1. Prototype Andre s Last Chance
2. Manifestation of the Disease- Acrid
3. Going To Be Ron Allen
4. 55 Seconds Acrid
5. The Piddle Diddle Report Negativeland
6. Southern Comfort Jimmy Arnold
7. Self-Destructo-Man Aversion
8. Instrumental Action Swingers
9. Psychobabble Aversion
10. The Past Ron Allen
11. We Multiply AIDS Wolf
12. Pas De Leurs Amnesie
13. Air Traffic Control Tristan Psionic
Date Published: 2014-04-05 22:00:14
Identifier: NAIA140402Load
Item Size: 86745159
Media Type: audio
# Topics
Negativeland
Amnesie
AIDS Wolf
Ron Allen
Aversion
Action Swingers
Jimmy Arnold
Acrid
Andre's Last Chance
Alice Donut
# Collections
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community
# Uploaded by
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