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*****
- 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
- Language / Conversation / Accents
- Structure?
- Pirate Radio?
- Alpha Boss Description
- Alpha Boss Readthrough
- Alpha Boss Discussion – Minutes?
- Alternatives / Setting
- Alternatives / Setting – more
- Childish businessmen / TRUTH
- Childish readthrough
- aftermath
- NO-men
- Other Business – Fire 4m30s
- Other Business – Fire – more
- Sane Person
- More Fire
- Fired!
- Fry & Laurie Arse
- Robin’s Health & Safety
- Health & Safety in Fired!
- What’s next?
- Gren’s break
- Medieval Boss beforehand
- MB Setting
- MB Readthrough
- Tom Brokaw
- Even Deeper Voice
- Polarity – Biblical
- Fry & Laurie – RomeCorp
- More biblical ideas
- Bob character – normal – Kafka
- Invasion – Satire?
- Jokes about Bin Laden
- Chickens Interlude
- War tactics in Business
- God having a meeting
- What have we learnt?
- OHP – how did that get in there?
- More OHP ideas
- What have we learnt now?
- Clean off what we’ve done
- Characters
- Why record? Keep track
- Poetry / Performance
- OMSK
- Doodles / bits of paper
- Dick Butler / Ad treatment / TV License
- Chart Listening / Do it over
- Bilko replacement
- We’re Fucked / Cookies
- Winnable Nuclear War
- Hanging, Anarchy, Conscription
- Can you feel my breath?
- Rumsfeld / Christian / Pol Pot
- Taking out rubble
- Occupation Finland
- Wussy people / Symbols
- Peterborough / Paedophile
- Better wrap this up / Rearing Children
- 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…