Tuesday 3 November 2009

David Ewan Campbell : Stucked - Up PART ONE (Stucks One to Twenty-Six)

This self-released, no-company-name 60-min cassette from sometime during the 'nineties was assembled by I'm Being Good's David Ewan Campbell, who recorded vinyl sticking on an irritatingly malfunctioning record deck, turning things around to make a virtue out of a hindrance.
No source listing, though David included a folded piece of paper showing approximate timings; and, if more than one for a source track, disc speeds. The inlay's spine reads, "Stucked Vinylesque Emmisions (sic)." The shortest stucks are a scant fifteen seconds apiece, the longest clocking in at a respectable-for-a-punk-45 2:36.
David invited folk to mail him blank cassettes which he promised/threatened to fill with their choice(s) from this collection - "guaranteed to be mesmerising, even mind-warping." He continues, "I defy anyone to gues where all these come from....." - quite a challenge. He did reveal his sources to me once, but - aside from his beloved Bonzos - I've entirely forgotten, which is possibly more fun than having immediate access to my jotted-down info, if indeed I still own that document. Knowing David, I'd wager there'd be some Beatles or an unusual Beatles cover here somewhere... Yesterday was my first listen to this cassette in years.
There's some jazz - David gives us a few secs past the stuck bit, but I don't recognise it. A nice one features some tuneful jazz piano with the typical appreciative smattering of applause which just continues and continues. Something that sounds like cartoon music reveals itself to be from a crackly old E.P. called Musical Multiplication Tables. Side B opens with a 45 version of side A's 33 closer, putting me in mind of when Neu filled a side of an album with a single played at different speeds - supposedly due to no recording budget remaining, or is that a myth ?
There's little chance of mistaking Beefheart - another of David's favourites.
On more than one piece it sounds as though David was monkeying about with the turntable, speeding up the disc with his fingers for comic effect... or perhaps he'd placed a finger on one of the tape machine buttons, half-depressing it to slow down the cassette so it'd play back super-fast. Or both.
Some tracks were recorded sticking at different speeds and in a variety of spots - there are as many as five examples from the disc used as the source for side A, number 6. Some have been faded carefully, others chopped abruptly.
Appropriately, David selected a Rev. Awdry illustration of a stuck steam engine for the b&w Xeroxed inlay - the inside has a quote from an Awdry Thomas story. My tape is black and labelled with manual-typewritten slips of paper, cut out wonkily and sticky-taped on.
To end the whole shebang, some spoken word : something perhaps Churchillian (?) and suitable for these stucks' "unquenchable spirit" (until, that is, David decided to fade/chop them) : "unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit/of the great and unquenchable spirit of the British race."

David Ewan Campbell
I think this photo was taken several years after the cassette...

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