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alloy-digest Wednesday, July 31 2002 Volume 07 : Number 149
Today's Subjects:
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Alloy: Wreck of the Fairchild, The Golden Age [William Steffey <wcs@willi]
Re: Alloy: Wreck of the Fairchild, The Golden Age [Brian Clayton <stemish]
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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 01:04:09 -0500
From: William Steffey <wcs@williamsteffey.com>
Subject: Alloy: Wreck of the Fairchild, The Golden Age
A very public thanks goes out to Melissa for snapping up the Airwaves /
Wreck of the Fairchild 45 for me. It came today exquisitely wrapped and
the vinyl was flawless. WOTF was really cool, and a perfect bw for
Airwaves. It was awesome to hear another treasure from the Wireless
era. On the topic of wireless:
Is Wreck of the Fairchild the only track where TD tries to "pitch" the
tuning of a shortwave radio? That "radio dial being surfed" is in alot
of tracks, but I can't think of any where Thomas is actually trying to
play it in tune with the chords.
Wow... I just thought of something and it's made me think of Wireless in
a whole new light. I've always thought artists of a given time need
adopt not only a medium, but I suppose, also engage in 'modes' or
'languages' that resonate with the times. To explain a bit better...
the medium in this case would be popular music... the mode in this case
would be "radio" or specifically the advent of "wireless." While the
songs on the album travel in the vehicle of popular music, the lyrics
allude to deeper messages through the extended metaphors of radio and
the physics of sound-
"night so bright- transmission smooth"
"strange how the scale forms"
"turn the dial til the needle's in the white"
To boot, the music is appropriately fleshed out with sonic artifacts
from the same symbol set the lyrics are (tuning radio, various samples
of FM transmissions). [Alloy yawns "welcome aboard, William"] Well,
obviously I've noticed all these facts before about this album, but
never thought of them all together as a unified theory.
Does anybody know if all this was an intentional construct on the part
of TD? if so, does anybody know if there is any specific latent content
to "The Golden Age of Wireless"? Meaning, is there another subject that
the metaphor of wireless radio is representing?
I guess I thought of all this because of WOTF where the shortwave plays
in tune with the song... it introduces a higher level of reference, as
the metaphor mode (wireless radio) actually merges with the medium
(popular music.) I guess this convergence made me conscious of the
precedent level.
and then I took some MORE peyote,
WS
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Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 02:40:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brian Clayton <stemish@lns.com>
Subject: Re: Alloy: Wreck of the Fairchild, The Golden Age
On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, William Steffey wrote:
> A very public thanks goes out to Melissa for snapping up the Airwaves /
> Wreck of the Fairchild 45 for me. It came today exquisitely wrapped and
> the vinyl was flawless. WOTF was really cool, and a perfect bw for
> Airwaves. It was awesome to hear another treasure from the Wireless
> era.
Hmm, was that the very last copy? I realized that I don't have that
single! (But I have WotF on the original Wireless LP).
BC
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End of alloy-digest V7 #149
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