52 splogweeks

jan 12, 2004.

After the past 365 fodderdays, the year 2004 will be counting 52 splogweeks: music teacher and 'obsessive collector of amazing sounds' Jan Turkenburg (aka Splogman), from Zwolle, the Netherlands, started a one-year project inspired by and in the spirit of Otis Fodder's 365Days.

"What can you expect?" Jan wrote in an announcement of his 52Weeks. "Musicians only locally known in places where I've lived (Vinkeveen, Haarlem, Antwerpen, Amersfoort) and of course from Zwolle, either on vinyl, CD or recorded with a small walkman recorder by myself; historical recordings which I came across while researching the history of dutch radioprograms for children from 1950 till now, rare instruments like street barrel organs and gamelans and the kind of odd stuff you've become used to at 365-days ..."

Another great opportunity for all collectors of 'auddities'. I'm not such a collector per se, but I am pretty happy with the 365 tracks that I downloaded throughout 2003 from Otis Fodder's site. With some exceptions, the recordings in Otis Fodder's project are American in origin, and I really think one can listen to the 365Days as a campy sort of crosscut through 'the sound of America'. One of the interesting aspects of Splogman's project is that this time around the recordings will be mainly from the Netherlands.

Each week will 'run' from sunday till sunday. The sound files are available for download only during 'their week'. What remains are a short extract ('the echo'), and the written documentation. Including a december prologue, this is what has been up in Splogman's World sofar: [prologue] early 1970's recordings from the Catholic Youth Choir from Vinkeveen; [week 1] a (musical) portrait of the curator as a young man: the first part Jan Turkenburg's flautobio; [week 2] souvenirs from Holland: Amsterdam Gateway to Europe; Bernhard Drukker, the Amsterdam City Bell Ringer. And playing right now: [week 3] The Blue Finger Cops: a band whose members are police officers from the city of Zwolle.

[ more '52Weeks'-weeks: splogman's grand tour :: sergeant pepper taught the band to play :: water, wind, zeilen ]

manou

jan 06, 2004.

* ([pM03_22]) Listen carefully... I'd like tell you about another one of Pierre Delhumeau's cassettes, the one I've been playing this afternoon. It is a Sony CHF30 Type I (Normal) cassette. Not the most common of types. A playing/recording time of 15 minutes for each side. Not the sort of cassette bought by the average user. Ideal for demo-ing a handful of musical tracks, though, or for recording spoken letters.

Maybe at the time of recording this was meant to be such a spoken letter. Or spoken diary. Or 'memo to self'. It might have been intended as such.
There's a word (name) written in pencil on both of the labels. Rather shaky on the A-side. Somewhat better readable on the flip-side. I think the word (name) is: Manou.

The word is written on both sides. There's nothing recorded on the B-side though. And nothing much on the A-side either. There's mostly hiss on both sides.

The A-side does begin with a couple of impressive cracks. And a distorded voice. Noise and distortion as caused by a deficient microphone cable? There's a handful of tens-of-seconds long fragments, each followed by longish passages of mere tape hiss.

And through all this hiss and distortion, twice or thrice, there resounds a human voice.

Whispering. As if spoken by a sick, old and physically very weak person.

"On a besoin de moi pour accompagner des gens," the voice whispers.

Later, amongst lots of noise and highly distorted there's "... pourtant, j'veux pas partir ..."

That's all. Now listen...

[ previous related SB-entry: rockin' satan ]