Remnants Of A Past, Never To Be Repeated

While clearing out some files from my monolithic work laptop other day, I found this. Back in 2001, just after the shit hit the fan, I met up a few times with a couple of friends with a view to writing something to be performed somewhere. About a year later, we managed to do Grey, but that was a separate effort.

What we did was go into a room, make each other laugh, make notes and record ourselves on Minidisc (I know, this was 2001 after all). The recordings are lost (at the moment at least), but what follows is a list of the tracks on the disc, with a description of what was discussed in each. It makes pretty interesting reading.

Tracks from disc recording of 17/10/01

Present (alphabetically):

  • R**** D*****
  • Matthew Petty
  • G*** W*****
  1. some songs, very bad cassette recording: Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday; Art of Noise – Close to the Edit/Chow Mein; Malcolm McLaren – Something’s Jumping in my Shirt (Mark Moore mix).Meeting recording starts here – they begin coherent and become more worrying
  2. Language / Conversation / Accents
  3. Structure?
  4. Pirate Radio?
  5. Alpha Boss Description
  6. Alpha Boss Readthrough
  7. Alpha Boss Discussion – Minutes?
  8. Alternatives / Setting
  9. Alternatives / Setting – more
  10. Childish businessmen / TRUTH
  11. Childish readthrough
  12. aftermath
  13. NO-men
  14. Other Business – Fire 4m30s
  15. Other Business – Fire – more
  16. Sane Person
  17. More Fire
  18. Fired!
  19. Fry & Laurie Arse
  20. Robin’s Health & Safety
  21. Health & Safety in Fired!
  22. What’s next?
  23. Gren’s break
  24. Medieval Boss beforehand
  25. MB Setting
  26. MB Readthrough
  27. Tom Brokaw
  28. Even Deeper Voice
  29. Polarity – Biblical
  30. Fry & Laurie – RomeCorp
  31. More biblical ideas
  32. Bob character – normal – Kafka
  33. Invasion – Satire?
  34. Jokes about Bin Laden
  35. Chickens Interlude
  36. War tactics in Business
  37. God having a meeting
  38. What have we learnt?
  39. OHP – how did that get in there?
  40. More OHP ideas
  41. What have we learnt now?
  42. Clean off what we’ve done
  43. Characters
  44. Why record? Keep track
  45. Poetry / Performance
  46. OMSK
  47. Doodles / bits of paper
  48. Dick Butler / Ad treatment / TV License
  49. Chart Listening / Do it over
  50. Bilko replacement
  51. We’re Fucked / Cookies
  52. Winnable Nuclear War
  53. Hanging, Anarchy, Conscription
  54. Can you feel my breath?
  55. Rumsfeld / Christian / Pol Pot
  56. Taking out rubble
  57. Occupation Finland
  58. Wussy people / Symbols
  59. Peterborough / Paedophile
  60. Better wrap this up / Rearing Children
  61. Penalty Charge

RECORDING ENDS

What it reminds me of is when you get up, hung over, after a party, to find the bits of paper you were using to play Pictionary late last night, only to be utterly flummoxed as to what the drawings are supposed to be of. It all seemed so clear at the time…