This must be what it sounds like in one of those Covid 19 temporary hospitals. Lots of coughing ,throat clearing and straining sounds. Either that or a lunatic asylum.
The oldest instrument a human posesses is 'The Voice',or throat.Followed closely by the drum.
In fact Bob Cobbing and his canadian mates sound like they are communicating in some ancient language. Either that or they have discovered the rosetta stone for the language that 'Bill and Ben The Flowerpot' men spake on the BBC's watch with mother series back in the fifties.
Yet again Bob clears a room with ease.This is comfortably in the top ten of room clearing recordings, as well as for throat clearing.
And we wonder why volume two never appeared?....or did it?
Tracklist:
A1 Prelude: Clearing
A2 White Sound Cycle No. 5
A3 Fugitive Poem
A4 The Dream As Real
A5 Quatz
A6 Ouph/Voicings No. 5
B1 Duplicator Print
B2 Cranes Of Different Heights
B3 So Long (Geronimo)
B4 Coda: Re-Clearing
I bought this tape because I though it had "The Self-Preservation Society" song from the hit movie starring Michael Caine and Noel Coward on it......of course, NOT the crass American remake,the original one......naturally I jest, but you can't rule out the possibility that someone did? Mistaking it for the Quincy Jones penned,classic soundtrack,on cassette.
Now the scene is set, we can sit back and imagine the purchaser slipping this cassette into his Sanyo music centre and making himself comfortable ready to sing-a-long to those embarassing cocknwy-isms crowbared in by the American producers.
What he...its always a'he' isn't it?....what he, gets instead, is Bob Cobbing and Peter Finch whinnying,grunting and croaking through a bank of voice processors for half an hour,and NO singalong to be seen,or heard.Not only could this empty a room, it could empty a full football stadium, in orderly queues,by the start of side two.
This of course is a desirable quality in any music with any meat on the bones.And,to be topical yet again,a very good tool for 'Social Distancing'.Play this over a network of speaker systems and everyone is guaranteed to remain behind locked doors for the duration.
When I say everyone, I mean 'Normal' people, not 'Us'.Ah bless 'em, they haven't been exposed to music, or otherwise, as much as ...er...'Us'? So, they don't understand, bless 'em again.This is where the 'Pop' of the future comes from.The Stormzy's of the 22nd century will be doing stuff like this, and it'll be number one.Mainly because the Virus will have wiped out 90% of humanity by then.Leaving the 10% who didn't run away from a Bob Cobbings tape,but listened intently to remain socially distant.In turn causing those with the virus,and those with simplistic musical taste, to stay away and enhance the 10%'s chance of surviving.They do say a symptom of Covid19 is, coincidently, 'A Loss Of Taste'.
Then ,post-pandemic,all that are left to raid abandoned supermarkets and hunt human flesh will be Bob Cobbing fans.
This is Evolution in action.
All together now....
"We are the Self-Preservation Society,
We are the Self-Preservation Society.
Gotta get a bloomin' move on...tra la la la la la laaaaa la etc"
DOWNLOAD the bob cobbing preservation society HERE!
I can just imagine Bob Cobbing standing up in the middle of that Bus from the previous post...."Spoke- New Scottish Voices", and doing one of his sound poems. He would have received a pretty comprehensive kicking.....and maybe worse from the one called 'Chick',who would have probably slashed him and then claimed authorship of the poem that caused all this aggro in the first place.
Y'see, the deliberatly uneducated,or the conditioned factory/family fodder, don't like to be made aware of their lack of education,and the educated classes are prone to rub their faces in it from time to time.Result...violence.
If poetry like this has to be performed it must be done in a sealed room,with like-minded people, or receive the wrath of the underclass who really wish it was them doing it; but, as they are on the sharp end of the big stick of repression wielded by both their own species,and the ruling elite,this really isn't an option,except for the very brave.
I, not proudly I may add, came from one of these working class ghetto's, and if anyone strayed from the accepted path,like going to University,or passing exams, the naked envy was painful....sometimes lierally.Like smokers who resent any of their demographic group actually giving up something that gives you cancer.They will persist in offering the ex-smoker in their social group a Carcinogenic product to which they are hopelessly addicted. The underclass are also hopelessly addicted to hopelessness,and hate anyone who 'gets out',and they hate anyone who's different to them,as much as the elite hate anyone to get above their station when they were earmarked for factory fodder, or breeding factory fodder. The trouble is,robots can do all this, so what's gonna happen to the 'underclass'?...I know, an epidemic.The necessary humans will have been vaccinated.......at least that will rid us of those ridiculous 'anti-vaxxers' I pray?
As we are living through an experiment in disintigrating civilisation at the moment.It only seems fitting that this British Arts Council funded album, featuring Bob Cobbing and cohorts,and the only appearence of Bob's group, 'Konkrete Canticle', experimenting with abstractions of the spoken word is ushered forth to represent those missing citizens in the form of the missing letters in these sentences.The silences between the letters can be regarded as a space where a human being one stood.The victims of this avoidable pandemic.
I'm not usually one for pathos,but the empty applause that is ringing in the streets of the UK and elsewhere, to patronize our underpaid health workers, when before this crisis the government continuously failed to support them (and will do so again in the future), is a cheap veneer over the horrific facts that are already seeping through the cracks. The gaps, the silences, represent individuals reduced to nothing more than a statistic, a mass grave of numbers.
But as uncle Joe Stalin said, "When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is merely a statistic."
Indeed I do apologise for the uncharateristic humanity of my writing in this case.I know you expect me to say something like, "well that's a few thousand pensioners who were gonna die anyway off the planet";but I don't wanna sound like a stuck groove do I?....nonetheless, this pandemic shit does offer an opportunity for a new way forward.A few necessary lessons from Communism perhaps? A world wide decision to sequestrate the vast wealth of individuals,and redistribute it....this doesn't mean the end of capitalism of course,just a fairer, dare I say, greener, capitalism..for all!?...even for our chums in the Underclass.They can be re-educated....in camps.....far away from me!
Nah!...it'll never work.....we're well and truly,in the disintegrating words of Charles Verey, 'f ck d'!!!
Tracklist:
A1 –Charles Verey - Blood Rumba
A2 –Charles Verey - Morning Was
A3 –Neil Mills - Seven Number Poems
A4 –Thomas A. Clark - Spell For Sarah
A5 –Charles Verey - Some Very Idle Diamonds Reset For John Ruskin
A6 –Neil Mills - Gong Poem
A7 –Neil Mills - Squalinda
A8 –Thomas A. Clark - Some Flowers
A9 –Charles Verey - r t e p gr a
A10 –Charles Verey - n annu eve
A11 –Charles Verey - f yo o t Ne toKi
A12 –Charles Verey - ip og it u
A13 –Charles Verey - Cry Jim Sped
A14 –Charles Verey - whi ing & wou ing tend her
A15 –Neil & Elaine Mills Number Poem For Two Voices (Two Sections)
A16 –Thomas A. Clark Mantra
B1 –Konkrete Canticle - Breeze
B2 –Konkrete Canticle - Ga(il s)o(ng)
B3 –Konkrete Canticle - Coacervate Poem
B4 –Konkrete Canticle - Energygalaxy
B5 -Konkrete Canticle - Suesequence
B6 –Konkrete Canticle - Astound
B7 –Konkrete Canticle - A Sandwich Poem
B8 –Konkrete Canticle - Hymn To The Sacred Mushroom
