This is one of my favorites. Of course there's a
sentimental attachment both to the work from this
period and specifically to one of the pieces: I was
sitting in the room with Doug when the KXLU piece was
recorded. (The rest of the small audience you referred
to consisted of the other band members of Paper Bag,
the engineer up at the station, the DJ, and various
people who just always seemed to be up there. The show
was well known and well frequented by musicians in the
L.A. underground, and it was not unusual to bump into
all sorts of people there.) He was staying over at the
Paper Bag band house for about a month, during which
we listened to a ton of his tapes, he went to shows
with us, and he and I even did a show together at a
little dive in Culver City called The Cavern.

I can remember watching him work up at KXLU and being
completely amazed. The only other time I'd seen anyone
handle an ARP that well was when I saw Tangerine Dream
at the Santa Monica Civic in April '77.

Of course when Doug sent me this CD, I knew what to
expect from the KXLU track (and my memory hadn't
deceived me as to how good it was). The track from
April '87 is something I might have heard while he was
staying with us; he had a very large duffle bag full
of tapes, mostly things he'd done, and we listened to
those all the time. The track from '88 was new to me
and I really enjoyed that.

Let me just say that I'm very glad the moderator of
this group has taken the effort to promote
conversatiion about Doug's work, which truly deserves
all the exposure it can get, and which has enough
depth and diversity to bear a pretty much limitless
amount of discussion.

-Greg Segal

--- Kohntarkosz <kohntarkosz@...> wrote:

> OK, well, now that I acctually have other members
> joining the group, I
> better start posting content, shouldn't I? Hence
> here's a quick
> review of one of the AP releases I have:
>
> Spaceboyz Social Club: Unreleased Recordings
> 1987-1988 is a collection
> of three long tracks from the end of the Reagan era,
> when AP consisted
> of the duo of Doctor Synth and Carl "No Musick"
> Howard. Doc played his
> usual assortment of synths, sequencers, keyboards,
> organs, electronic
> flute, glissando guitar tapes, and effects while No
> Musick is credited
> with playing synths, sequencers, keyboards, and
> effects.
>
> The first track, City Across The River recorded at
> the Space Station
> Studio in April of 87, and is the closest to a
> professional recording
> on the entire disc, having been recorded on a 4
> track reel to reel
> machine. It clocks it at around 30 minutes long and
> basically sets the
> tone for the disc: a very deeply spacey improv,
> reminding one of the
> early Cluster records (in particular, Cluster 71,
> and the two records
> the German group made as Kluster, when Conrad
> Schnitzler was in the
> group).
>
> The second track, City In The Valley is a Doctor
> Synth solo piece,
> recorded during a radio broadcast in LA on August
> 19, 1997. This was
> the time of the Harmonic Convergence (remember
> that?) and also the
> 10th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley.
> Despite that latter
> statistic, I doubt there's any chance you're gonna
> mistake this piece
> for anything by the So Called King Of Rock N Roll
> (Pretender To The
> Throne is more like it). Like City Across The River,
> this piece is
> very textural, with little in the way of rhythmic or
> melodic movement.
> It rather comes off as a more intense than usual
> ambient piece
> (actually, the other disc is like that). Clocking in
> at about 20
> minutes, this piece seems to also have a small
> audience, as one can
> hear applause at the end.
>
> The disc wraps up with City By The Sea, recorded at
> Floyd Bennett
> Field in Brooklyn, and while this is where Welcome
> Back Kotter was
> set, once again, there was little chance of this
> music being mistaken
> for that of John Sebastian (D'OH!!! Now I've got
> that damn Welcome
> Back song stuck in my head!!!!). This is the
> shortest of the three
> pieces, recorded during a live performance.
> According to the liner
> notes, Doc and No Musick pumped all their gear
> through NM's practice
> amp, which dyed in mid performance, thus ending the
> piece. It's kind
> of interesting, as you hear the die down in the end,
> and then you hear
> someone comment about the amp's imminent demise, and
> I think that's
> Doc himself who's heard chuckling briefly. As the
> music abruptly stops
> the audience applauds. Where they applauding the
> fine performance, or
> the fact that the set ended, or was it the WAY it
> ended (I'm somehow
> picturing smoke pouring out of the amp, but I dunno
> if that would
> actually happen when an amp dies or not...well, I
> take that back, I
> know Steve Howe once said one of his amps died
> during a recording
> session, a point that nobody realized until they
> noticed all the smoke
> in the studio!).
>
> Anyway, this is perhaps not the best recording to
> start with if you're
> not familiar with the band, unless of course you're
> all into the more
> extreme areas of electronic music. If you like stuff
> like Faust,
> Cluster/Kluster, or Morton Subotnick (Silver Apples
> Of The Moon is one
> of my favorite electronic music recordings), you
> might dig this.
>
>
>
>
>
>




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