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Wesley's McOil Change

by Wesley Willis

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YEAR 3.6

Price is zero to infinity. You choose. I donate 90% to local autism societies (my field of work this decade). Wesley Willis was a Chicago street performer with various disabilities. He played a Casio keyboard's built-in pattterns and made up lyrics to go with them (about half of his songs use the same background pattern). At the end of every song is, "Rock over London, Rock on Chicago, ..." and then a line from a popular US commercial. He was picked up by a producer and put out a lot of CD's. Even toured as "The Wesley Willis Fiasco" for a while with an acoustic rock band. Very interesting story and character.

A Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada radio staion played "Rock and Roll McDonald's about 4 times back to back one night during a fundraiser until someone made a 100-dollar donation to shut it off. It was introduced as interesting but awful music, but I think people actually wanted to hear it 3 or 4 times, because it was so different and had such a good story behind it. I was driving a security truck at about 4 in the morning at the time (2001 I think) and almost had to pull over from laughing so hard).

So, I took two of his songs and changed their speeds to the average of the two and mixed back and forth between them to try to create new meanings, funny parts, or a riddle for people to figure out (how the songs sound separately, for example), throwing in effects, loops to change timing, etc. Listen a few times at high volume to catch all the nuances. Try to figure out what was added and what was original (sometimes easy, sometimes hard, even for me), what's looped and what's not? My mixes are all made in real time on the fly so there are usually unintended consequences, and pleasant surprises, but every year the ratio of the latter to the former improves. …except it doesn't. the desire for more and more randomness and surprises keeps things always unexpected.

LIke my wife's saori weaving, "there are no mistakes". Try to enjoy it all.

...And if you know of a developmentally disabled person with some clear sounding tracks, let me know. I'll mix 'em up and have fun with them and put them on here if they want.


2:35.99
80 bpm

{ Shhhhlisten }

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released December 20, 2013

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Spooly the Editor image

Spooly the Editor Victoria, British Columbia

All my edits have 5 things: Me, Others, Technology, Real Time Improvisation, and "Mistakes". I have been researching & playing with music intensely since 2011 on the Numark NS6. The screen shot is a sound grab from Sunset Room in Victoria, BC, using an ipod app. I recommend playing these tracks quite loud and downloading the better quality files. Music is fragile; handle with care. ... more

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