V03-T06 Mike Beck In Science Class

.....Here I get to combine my love of comic books with recordings again.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 6

• 0:49 "MIKE BECK IN SCIENCE CLASS" (Lynda Barry) [excerpt from "I REMEMBER MIKE"]
• performed by Lynda Barry
• original source: VACD FIRST WORDS Gang of Seven 74144-22000-2 (US)May,1992
• and my source: VACD RADIO EDITS Gang of Seven 74144-1992-1 (US) Late 1992

.....This disc was the first release on the Gang of Seven label, devoted to spoken word recordings. After Will Ackerman sold the Windham Hill label to BMG, he made plans to launch a new label that wouldn't be saddled with the narrow-focused reputation from which Windham Hill briefly prospered. However, one stipulation of his lucrative sale was that he not participate in a competitive business for at least three years. Interpreting that as meaning a new-age label, or even more broadly any music label, he began the label as a spoken word venture. It would have been interesting to see if he could build a different aesthetic brand identity from WH by using the selective issues of spoken performers and then transfer that identity to a stable of musicians (after the three years had lapsed) and retain the same audience. We'll never know because the label lasted about a year and a half.

.....FIRST WORDS was a label sampler introducing a prospective roster of 14 artists, including some known quantities in spoken performance: Spalding Gray, Tom Bodett, Nora Dunn, Wallace Shawn and my choice for the mix tape, Lynda Barry. She was represented there by a 5+ minute track called "I REMEMBER MIKE", but I was considering isolating a snippet as an interstitial when I compared my choices to pre-edited excerpts on the radio promo RADIO EDITS, circulated sometime between the label's sixth release in September and the seventh in January 1993. I decided that the edit "MIKE BECK IN SCIENCE CLASS" stood up as a self-contained, if brief, track in its own right. The full track was eventually used on Barry's own full-length disc THE LYNDA BARRY EXPERIENCE, released June 1993. There should also be more of her work accessible through npr.org (check the links to the right).

.....Tomorrow we flip the gender dynamic of this track to bring you a guy intrigued by an outsider girl.