It's amazing the things you find
on the street in New York and I'll admit whenever I
pass by a particularly appealing pile of discarded junk
I can't help but at least cast a cursory glance to determine
whether a guitar neck or a keyboard is included in there
somewhere.
I didn't have to go far from
home, in fact about half a block down Kingsland Ave.,
to encounter a bonanza of unwanted ephemera. I distinctly
remember a complete vintage bar glass set, an oversize
robotic doll still in its box (one leg worked the other
didn't), and, my find of the day, an Emenee organ. It
was similar to one I'd had as a kid but for some reason
the Bakelite was molded into the shape of a church's
pipe organ only in laughable miniature. It powered up
when I plugged it in but wheezed like an asthmatic and
didn't smell very good either. I made sure not to play
standing directly over it. Most of the keys worked but
when writing a song for it I had to make sure not to
include any notes that my sad little organ couldn't
articulate.
Right click and save to desktop.
Since the noise from the organ
was considerable I made the practical choice to pair
it with something equally dirty that would drown out
any background noise and I had just the thing. The Optigan
was Mattel's home keyboard of the early 70's. A position
that would later be usurped by Casio ten years later.
Only the Optigan's backing tracks weren't digital bleeps
and blurts they were recordings of live musicians. Unfortunately,
though, the loops weren't seamless and the optical discs
that they were stored on eventually scratched much like
vinyl records. The result is something that 30 years
later sounds less like a drummer and more like a factory
assembly line. And in this case what I found was not
an actual Optigan (I've still never seen one in person)
but a digital file somewhere on the vastness of the
internet.
Add to this a little guitar,
bass, someone who answered an ad for a saxophonist,
lovely female vocals and the result isn't too shabby.
I like to think of this song as a celebration of found
sound – physical or digital. It's amazing what
you can find when you're looking.
