The Music Will Never Stop 66

Oh, dear. The next tape was just labeled “Stuff,” and I had no idea what was on it, but I recognize it. It’s from a drunken prank I played on a friend of mine who was a late-night DJ on WPRB. I really should have confessed the next day, when we were sober, but I didn’t; I made this tape to follow through on it.

The prank was that I told him that I’d found out from contacts in the music business that every song Jim Morrison wrote for the Doors was actually part of a single massive suite that was going to be his masterwork. Except that my victim believed me completely, and wanted me to tell him details.

So this tape is a bunch of Doors music rearranged more or less randomly into a fraction of this alleged “suite.”

And there’s even more crap after it, but this I didn’t remember at first. It appears to be an attempt at improvisational comedy. It’s not quite as bad as the stuff on Side 2 of the previous tape, so far.

Ah, but eventually I recognized the other voice. This is me and Steve goofing on the idea of Gabriel’s trumpet. Steve played Gabriel, explaining that the end of the world was delayed because of a stuck valve on his trumpet; I was an interviewer.

After a slow start, this got kind of amusing.

“…I complained, and asked, why couldn’t it be the last clarinet?”

Steve really got into it.

In fact, listening to it again, I conclude that the worst parts are when I attempted to contribute; the best parts are when I got Steve started and just let him roll. It’s all improvised, ex tempore, but by the end of the bit Steve’s created this entire alternate mythology about how God provides every planet with its own Bible, and how Earth is too new to have ever heard of some of the senior angels, such as Oscar, the former director of the Heavenly Choir, who retired before Earth was created. The trumpet note that destroys worlds is A below middle C, and not being able to play it safely makes horn practice challenging.

Gabriel had originally played the clarinet, it seems, but when his family got him the job destroying worlds he had to switch to the trumpet because God had already written “trumpet” in hundreds of different Bibles and wasn’t willing to change it.

I’m saving this. May send Steve a copy.

The last half-hour of Side 1, after that stuff, was blank, so I assumed Side 2 would be, too.

Wrong. Instead there’s half an hour of me experimenting with an electric guitar, seeing just what sounds I could get out of it. Answer: Some very weird ones. Some of them are still kind of neat. Every so often it sounds as if it’s about to turn into music, but it never quite does. (I never really could play the guitar.)

I’m guessing this was with a borrowed guitar, probably Paul’s; I think this dates to well before I bought my own. Besides, there appears to be a wah-wah pedal involved, and I don’t have one, but Paul did. And I don’t think I can get such interesting feedback effects with my current amp.

I’m saving that, too. I might even find a use for it somewhere on a soundtrack.

After that, the rest of the tape was blank.

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