Isotopica

A Single detour this week with a mash up of a dramatized performance of the Badder meinhof Trials, with a 59.02 minute (post) Krautrock classic by Ash Ra Tempel founder Manuel Göttsching

Featuring Harry Houdin’s wife and Alva Alto and and and

Houdini was the most famous escape artist of all time. But was he able to escape Death?

If anyone could return from The Other Side, it certainly would have been Houdini. Like many people, Houdini desperately wanted to believe that Spiritualism exists, that we can communicate with the spirits. The loss of his mother was devastating to him, and he sought comfort in the advice of the spirit mediums of the day. Unfortunately, many of those mediums were pure frauds, using magic tricks to fool the public into thinking the spirits were speaking through them. Of course, Houdini recognized tricks when he saw them, and decided to devote half of his stage act to duplicating the methods used by the mediums, exposing the frauds to the public. This pitted the famous magician against the popular mediums of the day, including Margery Condon. The exposure of Margery’s methods became a large part of Houdini’s show, right up until the end of his life.

But just because Houdini was skeptical did not mean that he was a complete disbeliever. On the contrary. Despite his skepticism, Houdini and Bess promised each other that whoever died first would try to contact the other “from the other side”. He and Bess devised a secret message, a code phrase that would be used. The phrase was one they had used years before in their vaudeville mindreading act. The message was, “Rosabelle- answer- tell-pray, answer- look- tell- answer, answer- tell”. Bess’ wedding band bore the inscription “Rosabelle”, the name of the song she sang in her act when they first met. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a mentalism act. Each word or word pair equals a letter. The word “answer” stood for the letter “B”, for example.”Answer, answer” stood for the letter “V”. Thus, the Houdinis’ secret phrase spelled out the word “BELIEVE”.

After Houdini died in 1926, Bess began the tradition of holding a séance on the death annivarsary to see whether Houdini, the Man No Jail Could Hold, could indeed escape from death. These séances, of course, provided rich publicity, and Bess was dedicated to promoting the Houdini name.

In early 1929, a very ill Bess was approached by “Rev.” Arthur Ford, a young and eager medium. Within weeks, Ford triumphantly announced that he had successfully delivered the correct message to Houdini’s widow. It did not take long for the press to discover that Ford’s claim was a hoax; and that Bess had inadvertently revealed the message to several reporters a full year before.

In 1936, the “Final Séance” was held on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles. Ten years was enough, and Bess admitted that she had never received the message from Houdini.

But that was not the actual final séance. The magic fraternity quickly took on the task of conducting the annual séances, with numerous notable magicians heading the table, including Walter Gibson, Houdini’s ghostwriter. The group photo of the 1948 séance at the left shows Walter Gibson, Sidney Radner, Bob Lund, Litska Raymond and Chrystal Dunninger at the table.

Despite all of the effort, attention and interest, Houdini has apparently not spoken to anyone since he breathed his last earthly words to his brother Hardeen on Halloween night in 1926.

“Magic information provided courtesy of MagicTricks.com.”

This is the episode that starts off in a delicious amateurism with The Portsmouth Sinfonia,

I then ask you to consider what would the world be like if Mick Jagger were french, with a Gallic turner from the classic 60’s film Performance,

after which we veer sideways into last weeks end piece character 60’s avant-garde sound artist Alvin Lucier, this time he is performing and then discussing some of his work, and at some point he segues back into the fabulous Dr. Chicago character and then back into Artist Lucier, at which point i ask you to really meditate upon where one begins and another actually ends…… Patty Hearst, Captain Beefheart and some 78’s move us towards a sound recording of the security at the Really Free School and we limp toward the end of our hour with disgracefully disgraced sex therapist Wilhelm Reich or at least his Wife…..

An Excerpt from a 15 hour performance by the obscure, Dangerous and Influential Austrian (stateless?) Artist Otto Leipzig

Isotopica

Sutton

On this weeks isotopic detour, amongst the irregular sounds and samples,

tyszko is in conversation with national treasure, actor Dudley sutton.

during this chat sutton reads through an excerpt of peter handke’s self

accuse. a classic piece of minimalist european experimental theatre from the 1970’s that may or may not become a film piece directed by tyszko.

Dudley also gives us a reading of one of his new poetry pieces  called ‘the shitty committee”.

we can also see this beautiful film of dudley reading one of his poems in the grounds of the chelsea arts club

This is the episode in which the computer crashed and i threw something together at the last moment. never the less, it’s isotopica

This is the episode that hovers in the deliciously seedy depths of sixties

strip-club culture with the first screen appearance of NICO (velvet under ground etc etc ) with music by Serge Gainsbourg and style beyond in the 1963 French B movie striptease (sweet skin), sideways we move to west london and a man who’s advert i have seen on a tree for years discusses his psychic talents under the wing at phlight. Burroughs struts his stuff in Ah pook the destroyer, Gainsbourg zigs zags us to a father and son duet in the streets of Lhassa after which we land in 1950’s Holland to discover how Kodak film is made (in dutch). You call everybody darling is a seventy eight i recorded for a girl friend whom did as it said on the record label as we head back to striptease and further 60’s romp with Peter cook singing the hauntingly stylish theme of Bedazzled.

Next we learn how sound is added to max fleicher cartoons, segued into two palestinian radio clips which in turn become a horrific 1950’s anti gay propaganda clip which could so easily be the same today in far too many places.

I finish with a 1930;s hawaiian 78 and plug for the show

Episode one

Starts off with a discussion of class and privilege with Pippa and Stewart Small somewhere in the Cotswolds,

We then veer off at right angles with Wim Wenders to the libraries of Berlin then neatly land somewhere in the Welcome Library with a brief excerpt of a discursive tour of the shelves with rogue enthusiast David Ellis, Somewhere in the mix is Dan Langton as Madam Daniella, and today we tail off with a few words from Dr Chicago

This week a single track by...

La MontyYoung is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer.[1] His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music.[according to whom?] Young is especially known for his development of drone music. Both his proto-Fluxus and "minimal" compositions question the nature and definition of music and often stress elements of performance art.

This week a single track by…

La MontyYoung is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer.[1] His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music.[according to whom?] Young is especially known for his development of drone music. Both his proto-Fluxus and “minimal” compositions question the nature and definition of music and often stress elements of performance art.