RADIO WONDERLAND

Radio Wonderland
welcomes the fall and the election media season with:
Freaks and Geeks,
a free outdoor show,
and more

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1. Thu 04 Sep 2008: Freaks and Geeks, East Village
Freaks and Geeks "Eclectric" Cabaret Show

Erotica + Electronica
Sideshows + Go Gos
Performance + Magic

10pm+ Thursday 4 September 2008
Freaks and Geeks
@ Identity Bar
511 E. 6th Street between Aves. A & B, NYC 10009
$6.00 212-995-8899

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2. Sat 27 Sep 2008: Le Petit Versailles, East Village
Sunset outdoor show with the towering writer, artist and consummate authority on things avant, Richard Kostelanetz.

6pm Saturday 27 September 2008
Le Petit Versailles
346 E. Houston Street between Aves. B & C, NYC 10002
Rain or Shine FREE (but donations gracefully accepted) 212-529-8815

Le Petit Versailles is a NYC public community garden in the East Village that presents a season of events including art exhibitions, music, film/video, performance, theater, workshops and community projects from May - October. LPV is a project of Allied Productions, Inc., a non-profit arts organization.

New Museum Thursday 7 August


Thursday 7 August 2008, I perform in a duo with Todd Merrell for a CD release party. I'm calling it very fun, arty, and indeed way cool: varied groupings of free103point9 transmission artists performing at different locations in the newly-built New Museum on the Bowery. It's not your aunt and uncle's Lower East Side anymore....


http://www.newmuseum.org/
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1942/
Continue reading "Not your aunt and uncle's ... »

Yikes: 5 shows and 2 talks in 3 days. Heat, sunshine, and some really fun crowds and great tech crews. Pics should be up soon; and today Cleveland Ingenuity kicked off their final IngenuityFest News E-Flash with a Q&A by yours truly.

E-FLASH #11 | 07.27.2008
NEWS FROM THE CLEVELAND FESTIVAL OF ART + TECHNOLOGY
www.ingenuitycleveland.com


Q&A WITH JOSHUA FRIED: RADIO WONDERLAND

Joshua mixed FM radio into electric oblivion this weekend, using a boom box, old shoes and a steering wheel, completely wowing the audience in Radio Wonderland. Check out his Sunday performance at 2:00pm on the NPi Stage, or visit his website here.

Your performance is completely alive in that it is subject to constant variation. How do you deal with the element of surprise and how has it enhanced your work?
JF: Because my source is live FM radio, the unexpected is built-in.  I structure my work on this foundation, deliberately.  Every artist chooses problems to solve.  To figure how to reign in chance and get beautiful (danceable, tuneful, harmonic, funny, stirring, hypnotic) results is to tap into the highest mysteries,  I think.  Simply to frame the chance material is amazingly powerful.  Since I'm using commercial material I often get iconic, uproarious clips. It's odd:  people usually comment that I got lucky during the show they just attended. 

What do you think the role of a new "recycled musicality" could be within the industry, reusing not only material, but also audio (the digitally recyclable)?
JF: Not sure what you mean by industry, and the difference between "material" and "audio". But the sampling and general intellectual property debates are so tough and so important.  I don't believe in what I call "artificial scarcity".  Digital data can be copied infinitely and society must grapple with this sensibly.  The arts evolve best, artistically speaking, when borrowing is pretty free.  This is part of why reggae grew so gloriously in the '70s.  And Mozart had to quickly arrange his music for various types of ensembles just to beat his competitors to the punch. Would I bite the hand that feeds me?  Give my music away?  Well, my dad did write music for TV and his royalties sent me to college. But this is a new world.  We have to embrace Quark even if the typesetters lose their jobs.   The artistry that goes into the Quark document, however, or into music, for that matter, does not diminish or become less necessary in the digital revolution. 

How have your collaborators influenced your style or process?
JF: Oh, hugely.  I get the advantage of their own ears  and their own musical history.  The deadlines and the requirement to support another medium--or other musician--help me shore up my current skills.  Collaborators help me relax away from the usual artistic torment. 

If FM radio is accessible music/news for the masses, do you, in a sense, make the mainstream accessible to the musically "elite"?
JF: By the time it hits the speakers, the radio is too mangled by me to call it mainstream,  I think.   I recontextualize the mainstream so we can hear new things in it, new aspects, but it is no longer mainstream.  And sure, I can get a smile at a snippet of cheesy arena-rock, from someone who would otherwise be mortified to be caught enjoying it. I might even say that I make found sound accessible to the mainstream. And I try to make all of my music, based on found sound or not, accessible to humans, not 'musicians'.  I want everyone to hear the power of, say, phase patterns, polyrhythms/cross rhythms, beautiful chord changes, a deep house groove. Why keep it a secret by means of obscurity?

With the increasing corporate-ness of radio, have you ever considered your work as politically charged, taking something that is carefully controlled and re-controlling/ re-releasing it in an uncensored, democratic environment?
JF: Yes, I have.   In fact, that's what I explicitly aim to do.   I want  to expose the commercial stream as something to be messed with by everyone (not just gearheads or theorists).  I want to show those who may be cowed by technology:  LOOK!   --We can interrupt the never-ending flow.  I put a mustache on the Mona Lisa,  so you can too.  Er, well...Duchamp a mustache on the Mona Lisa first, so I can too. So you can too. 

The title of your performance, Radio Wonderland, conjures the thought of an imaginary landscape of sound. If you were to visually describe this "wonderland", what would it look like? 
JF: Well first of all, you're there too. Yes YOU.  You look great.  And say, the balloon seller is giving them away for free!  The disco ball is turning.  Let's dance.

Ben Neill, the mutantrumpeter and new music demi-god, will sit in for part of my set at The Stone on Saturday!

THE STONE
Avenue C at 2nd street
New York, NY 10009

ADMISSION
$10 per set
children 12 and under free
No advance sales; all admissions are at the door prior to each set.

Why not come for Ben Neill's 8pm solo set too -- there just may be a special guest appearance by a certain steering wheel + shoeist. Ben is the inventor of the electro-acoustic instrument Mutantrumpet; he's a long-time creative force in new music, and sometimes he deconstructs early music like Radio Wonderland deconstructs pop. http://benneill.com

Both sets were curated by the splendid bass clarinetist/composer Michael Lowenstern.

The Stone is a not-for-profit performance space, founder and artistic director, John Zorn. "There are no refreshments or merchandise at The Stone. Only music."