A message of some sort or another
I was sitting in a meeting - a process meeting, no less, when the following lyrics popped into my head out of nowhere:
America is waiting for a message of some sort or another.
Takin' it again. Again! Again! Takin' it again.
Well now... no, no... now, we ought to be mad at the government not mad at the people.
Takin' it again. Again! Again! Takin' it again.
I mean, yeah, well... wha-what're ya gonna do?
America is waiting for a message of some sort or another.
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever! Absolutely no honor.
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever! Absolutely no integrity.
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever! I haven't seen any any any citizen over there stand up and say "Hey, just a second."
No will whatsoever. No will whatsoever! I mean, yeah, so... wha-what're ya gonna do?
America is waiting for a message of some sort or another.
These words were spoken by Ray Taliaferro back in April 1980. At the time, Taliaferro was an indignant San Francisco radio talk show host. Today, he continues to be an indignant San Francisco radio talk show host.
Yet his contributions to music remain uncredited. If you look at the credits for the song "America is Waiting," the song is credited to the following individuals:
BYRNE DAVID (USA) BMI 30234438
ENO BRIAN PETER GEORGE PRS 77467634
LASWELL BILL O BMI 85063671
VAN TIEGHEM DAVID ASCAP 125812982
WRIGHT TIM
Why? Because Taliferro's voice was a found voice.
You remember found objects, don't you? Brian Eno and David Byrne's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" was an entire album of found voices, and was very influential in some circles in the early 1980s. I remember a cassette tape entitled "Reed New Music Sampler" that was issued at my college at about that time, and there was at least one song with found voices. (Quite good, actually.)
Brian Eno:
"The most obviously different idea about that album is the use of found voices, although I don't feel it to be unique any more."
Eno and Byrne's technique on Bush Of Ghosts is to use a number of voices they came across - a Lebanese mountain singer, an indignant San Francisco radio host, an exorcist, a radio evangelist and others - and sew them into the fabric of the tracks as lead vocals rather than background sound effects....
Eno and Byrne started collecting interesting voices before recording, and began combing through their new-found library to select their recordings from radio or other records to enhance or create musical moods.
"We are both fairly disenchanted with ordinary song structures - the voice you record is invested with your own personality. What we wanted was to create something more mysterious, and by taking voices out of context, but featuring them dominantly as the main vocal performance, you can go on to create meaning by surrounding the voice with a musical mood.
"In a way it was an experiment to see if you can create fairly sophisticated moods with voices outside their linguistic meaning. Basically I'm so fed up with reading reviews of records that concentrate on the lyrics, quoting them as if they had some great relevance, but ignoring the music.
"How they'll get on with Bush Of Ghosts with some unintelligible and some foreign vocals and no lyric sheet, I don't know!"...
"I'm particularly fascinated by radio, especially in America. It's extraordinary just how out of control it is.
"In Britain or Europe the presenters are picked for their qualities of calmness and obvious rationality - over here it's the ranting fringe that seems to get on the airwaves. It sounds such a mess compared to the ordered delivery you get in Britain.
"Here you get the nuttiest people in charge of the airwaves - it's fascinating.
"It seems to me that radio in America states the boundary conditions of madness - you have a constant source of extreme points of view on tap!"
And this is something that Eno said 25 years ago. A lot has changed in 25 years, but radio talk still consists of a lot of extreme views.
Comments
As a regular listener to KGO AM in the eighties, I had no trouble at all identifying the voice of Ray Taliaferro; chums of mine from high school were fond of imitating his cadences and his style: "NO, sir, I'm SORRY, sir, you DO not have your FACTS straight, sir."
Why am I visiting this post again in May 2008? Because I found a YouTube video of this song.