“I’m all lost in the supermarket / I can no longer shop happily”
I’ve been working on an essay about how broken modern consumer technology (software and hardware) is when it comes to downloadable files, like MP3s and FLAC. And then Bandcamp.com, a leading retailer of DRM-free audio files and a cultural force in independent music, goes and gets re-sold by the company that bought it just last year. Bandcamp began as a self-owned entity, then it was bought by Epic, the video game company, and now it’s been sold to Songtradr, a music licensing firm. The word “precarious” has been floating around in my imagination all day.
Let’s be clear: companies get bought and sold every day. That is business. But for musicians and music fans alike, Bandcamp plays a special role. Its social tools are quite minimal; it makes no claims to be, say, the internet’s town square. But if there even is such a thing as the internet’s town square, then Bandcamp is the record store on the corner.
The Assignment: Do something you've been meaning to do.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 2, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 28, 2023.
Step 1: Include “disquiet0613” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0613” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. Maybe length is, in fact, something you’ve been meaning to experiment with.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 2, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 28, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 613th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Test Drive (The Assignment: The Assignment: Do something you’ve been meaning to do), at: https://disquiet.com/0613/
I’m very excited to have a short piece on Ornette Coleman in this upcoming online series at hilobrow.com about “proto-punk records from the Sixties (1964–1973).” And what a lineup of contributors, including Stephanie Burt, Jonathan Lethem, Lucy Sante, and Mike Watt. When I was invited to contribute, my initial idea was to write about “Excursion on a Wobbly Rail” by jazz pianist Cecil Taylor, because I’d read that its title was used by the Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed as the name of his radio show on WAER 88.3 FM (at Syracuse University in New York), but that track wasn’t in any evident way “punk,” and it came out too early to slot into this Hilobrow conceit (1959 — it closed out his Taylor’s sophomore record as a leader, Looking Ahead!). I’d also read about Reed’s affection for Ornette Coleman around the same time, and then this track came to mind. My piece will be out in maybe a couple months?
These miniature photo essays on doorbells that I’ve now been writing for years, perhaps a decade if not longer, tend toward the neutral. The subjects are mundane, and they are purposefully so. That is what catches my eye, and my imagination. Often what makes the images — and their subjects — interesting to me is less the human factor than what the elements have brought to bear. Then again, what the elements have done reflects, generally, a lack of concern on the part of humans — lack of concern itself being a human factor, perhaps a defining human factor. Taking no action, making a poor decision, not planning ahead — these are themselves examples of agency.
Every once in a while, though, there’s clearly a different sort of human factor at play. The “call me” seen here expresses an act of desperation, one that is unfamiliar from all the doorbells I’ve studied or, for that matter, glanced at over the years. Each letterform here is the result of multiple layers of scrawl, an emphatic cry; to see the letters is to hear the scratching. And if the urgency of the writing isn’t evidence enough, then the paperwork in the background — the trespassing notice, the additional material taped to the front door, the image of a municipal seal — along with the heavy chain and lock says that something life-altering has occurred.
A doorbell, at its most basic level, is a means for someone outside a home, or business, to send an audible signal to someone inside a building. Occasionally a doorbell will include some form of writing, in addition to an address or apartment number, often affixed with tape to a gate or door — such as instructions to delivery services, or a note that the bell itself has ceased functioning. Circumstances here, however, have turned a doorbell into a platform for communication in the opposite of its normal, intended direction — not a loudspeaker, more a bulletin board. Here, in stark contrast with mundane daily life, the doorbell has been repurposed by someone who has been removed from their home, and who needs to get a message out.
