Contact 21 Grand (21grand@...) if you're
interested in participating:

Call for Participation: Duck and Cover 2 at 21 Grand

What Is This Duck and Cover?
Duck and Cover will be an evening (maybe two or
three) of radical reinterpretations of popular songs
performed/reformed/deformed by musicians,
performance artists, dancers, and the like to take
place Halloween weekend at 21 Grand in Oakland. (Dates
haven¹t been solidified yet.) Hopefully, there will be
an audience, and participants will be paid.

Why A Night of Covers?
This show came out of a discussion about audiences
for experimental music and issues of ³relevance² of
experimental music performances to the general public.
It is also in response to the resurgence of pablum pop
(a la Brittney Spears), the resurgence of intellectual
property issues, and the show, ³American Idol,² where
talent is judged based partly on one¹s ability
to perform a relatively faithful rendition of someone
else¹s material. Unlike the previously mentioned
televisual endeavor, we aim to present unfaithful
renditions that deconstruct the song, work with it in
an unconventional way, or use it as a leaping off
point to do something more interesting. Besides, it
just sounded like fun.

Are there Criteria?
The premise is to take songs or pieces of music with
which a general audience is likely to be familiar and
then perform it in an unconventional way, whether
through sampling/digital processing, interpreting it
via another art form, improvising upon themes or
patterns of the music, or doing a relatively straight
rendition using radically different instrumentation.

A maximum of 20 minutes will be alloted to each
selected performer/group, therefore you could
conceivably cover multiple songs.

If you are doing a more or less ³straight² cover, no
more than half of the instruments (including voice)
commonly associated with said song can be used. For
example, if you were to cover a conventional rock
song, (vocals/guitar/bass/drums) you could use at most
two of these instruments. You could choose vocals and
guitar, but it would be more interesting with trumpet,
tone generator and theremin.

How do I communicate my desire to participate in this
event? You can e-mail 21grand@... with your
name, contact info, and a description of what you
would do, including which song(s) or music you would
do it to. It could be a bit vague (e.g. butoh dance to
Black Sabbath; duet for tuba and laptop of Broadway showtunes).