According to my extensive research, Stan Laurel's comedy formula was "tell them what you're going to do, then do it, then tell them what you just did."
In this spirit, I posted about a Hot Plate! recording session, then went to the recording studio and recorded the session, and now I will tell you how it went.
We recorded a few different segments. One recurring feature of the show, Devil's Music Advocate, focused on avant garde music this time around. We listened to music by infamous British guitarist Derek Bailey, who some consider to have been a notorious charlatan or con artist. The list of people who don't like Derek Bailey's music is not a long one, because if you've even heard of him at all you're probably an adventurous listener. He pings, plonks and scrapes his way through a tiny personal universe, creating musical statements that are absorbingly beautiful if you know how to listen to them. Devil's Music Advocate is about learning how to listen to music. I have years of musical training etc., but learning how to listen doesn't require much training or effort. If you've ever taken a yoga class, sat through a Super Bowl, or watched an episode of the heinous sitcom Two Broke Girls, you're more than intellectually qualified to listen to avant garde music. And contrary to the assumptions of many of my friends, it's actually fun.
One of my favorite overheard quotes about avant garde music (in this case it was a jazz skronk session filled with squealing and shrieking saxophone) is "I just don't see how any human can enjoy this, except for the musicians and their spouses."
We avoided skronk territory on this episode, in favor of a more low key chamber music kind of aesthetic. In addition to a lot of Bailey, we looked at solos and duets by Eugene Chadbourne, Steve Lacy, and Evan Parker. One track that may surprise some listeners was from a glittering banjo duo performance with Chadbourne and the much more mainstream Tony Trischka.
We also recorded a conversation with local amuser Dave Nuttycombe, in which we lightly dusted Dave's illustrious career with Travesty, Ltd., but mostly talked about Neil Simon's older brother Danny Simon. If you like comedy, you'll find this stuff fascinating. If you don't like comedy, the medical community probably finds YOU fascinating. As well as lucrative.
I had an enlightening, perhaps even history-making interview with future-predicting chimp The Amazing Bonzoni, which will appeal to fans of prophecy and simians alike, and we rounded off the session with the first installment of Bedtime Story with some short fiction by Saki, an author who stands with Wilde and Bierce as one of the most bitterly hilarious people to write in English.
The Bedtime Story feature is basically public domain short stories that bring some royalty-free literary panache to the Hot Plate experience. I read this maiden entry, but our News Reader Dagny Coleman will help lighten the load in the future. We may also be combing the countryside, in the manner of the search for Cinderella, looking for that vanishing American, the person who can read and speak at the same time.
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