What if... Jeff Buckley sang Take Me To Church instead of Hozier. With grittier 90s production.

I have been invited to give a 60 second lecture about noise and audio restoration at my alma mater, The New School, where I earned a M.A. in Media Studies. Oh yes, that's 60 seconds. Fortunately, my background as a radio announcer serves me well in this situation. I used to be able to hit those 30 and 60 second marks so perfectly when on the air at WGBH. Here is a sneak preview of my lecture, all 187 words of it (which, to be fair, is the highly condensed version of a talk I gave at this year's Experience Music Project Pop Conference:

But Can You Dance To It?: Technological and Aesthetic (In)Correctness in Ata Kak's Obaa Sima

All recording technologies impart noise that locates them in time and space: tape hiss, vinyl pops, the variability of linear media. That sonic fingerprint is important; it gives context and dimension, but it can overpower the message. It can also change the message entirely.

Ghanaian highlife singer Ata Kak’s cassette Obaa Sima was a flop when released in ‘93. When it hit the crate diggers’ blogs in the early 2000s, it began a slow burn to cult popularity. But the cassettes were accidentally manufactured at two very different speeds - “normal,” and sped-up, “Chipmunk-y.”

I determined the “correct” speed scientifically, using technological tools. But the incorrect, “Chipmunk-y” version had already enraptured the fans.

This journey of Obaa Sima - from Ata’s makeshift recording studio to the blogs and dance floors to a proper reissue in both speeds - reminds us that even after recordings are put to tape, they are rarely immalleable documents.

Though technically wrong, the sped up version is, aesthetically, simply more danceable.

SoundofMusic8Track

Did I buy this 8-track of The Sound of Music soundtrack at a stoop sale? For $1? You bet I did!

Did my son really ask me what REW and FF mean and express awe that pushing buttons opened the cassette drawer exposing the tape heads of this abandoned boombox? Of course he did, child of the 2010s.

ClydeBoombox