Shake, Rattle, Roll is a radio manifesto dating from 1993. I used every category of material at my disposal, and every compositional and editing technique, explored in shorter castaways; digital audio tape was part of my studio by then, used in tension and interplay with my workhorse Otari reel-to-reels. To decay or not to decay, among my questions.
Made during a very intense period of two weeks for New American Radio, the hybrid assemblage explores themes of structural entropy in relation to free play; the living dancing with the dead; the bottomless cave mixed with the ephemeral utopia; songs collapsed into screams and scrambles; language elucidated and on the verge of disintegration.
Sheila Davies (an ideal listener, to be sure) wrote:
Later distributed in a lovely black box by the indispensable Netherlands V2, together with a companion piece, Degenerates in Dreamland.
The play/performance has received many dozens of broadcasts in every conceivable context, and I enter its circles and cycles into the cultural commons, though the V2 release is quite stunning in its own regard, and is still available here.
Gregory Whitehead 