People Make The World Go Round

by Charles Rice Goff III

1 Rickey Tie Ty
2 Taped Rugs
3 Idiosynchronicity
4 Half Crazy
5 Texas Two Step
6 Hit Me
7 Uncommitted
8 Family Values
9 Magic Potty Baby
10 Seismology
11 FYI
12 People Make The World Go Round (Bell/Creed)
13 Pus Wheezer
14 En Dag I Guds Frie Natur (Bruun/Goff)
15 Bleeping Song About Anger
16 Cirkus (Fripp/Sinfield)
17 Fun To Be Thirsty

During the majority of 1992, Charles Rice Goff III was fighting for his economic survival in a recession-ridden United States. When he wasn’t applying for work or appealing the denial of his unemployment benefits, he had a lot of time to watch the TV and assess his society accordingly. Producing the cassette album: "People Make The World Go Round" during this time period was one of the ways that Goff maintained his own sanity in what he perceived as a culture gone crazy. Much of the album weaves Goff's words and sonic atmospheres with television and radio broadcast clips. The results vary from humorous observations to deadly serious commentaries.

Goff produced the compositions for People Make The World Go Round on a 4-Track tape recorder. Several of the compositions showcase the recorder's potentials for backwards recording and for varying the pitch of individual tracks. The compositions presented here have all been digitally remastered and/or remixed from the original 4 Track master tapes. Among the instruments and sound generators that Goff used to compose the music on People Make The World Go Round are:

electronic guitar and guitar effects pedals
electric organ
micro moog synthesizer
acoustic guitar
a Frippertronics-style tape loop system
loop cassette tapes (the type used in telephone answering machines)
modified digital casio keyboard
tongue drum
marimba
a collection of resonant metal objects
a bicycle
a tambourine
phonograph records (often skipped, played off-center, or played at various speeds)
radio broadcast audio
television broadcast audio



Some Further Specifics:

Track 1, “Rickey Tie Ty” is Goff’s personal account of witnessing Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson tying Ty Cobb’s all time record for stealing bases (and not witnessing him break Lou Brock’s record). It features a bit of audio from A’s announcer Bill King.

Track 2, “Taped Rugs,” Track 6, “Hit Me,” Track 9, “Magic Potty Baby,” Track 11, “FYI,” and Track 17, “Fun To Be Thirsty,” were all created for a compilation of home-recorded, minute-long commercials. The person who solicited these pieces from Goff, however, never produced the compilation. Magic Potty Baby inspired the name of the Taped Rugs band called “The Magic Potty Babies,” which emerged for a brief time at the turn of the 21st Century. Fun To Be Thirsty is based on an actual Fanta soft drink commercial from the 1960’s.

Track 3, “Idiosynchronicity,” is a modification of a Frippertronics-style tape loop composition that Goff had notated and recorded in the mid 1980’s. The original piece was dubbed “Whirling.” Idiosynchronicity was created by subjecting the 1980’s recording of Whirling to a number of manipulations and synthesizer embellishments. A PDF file of Goff’s Whirling manuscript is included in this archive.

Track 5, “Texas Two Step,” focuses on Ross Perot’s schizophrenic presidential campaign of 1992.

Track 8, “Family Values,” focuses on the 1992 Republican presidential campaign issue of right-wing morality.

Track 12, “People Make The World Go Round” is a Goff interpretation of an original song written by Thomas Bell and Linda Creed, made popular by The Stylistics in 1972.

Track 13, “Pus Wheezer,” is based on a song that Goff had written in 1979 with different lyrics called “I Want Your Doll.” I Want Your Doll was one of the few songs in the repertoire of the late 1970’s Taped Rugs band, Temporarily KY.

The melody for Track 14, “En Dag I Guds Frie Natur,” (A Day In God’s Free Nature) had come to Goff in a dream in 1992. After recording the instrumental parts for the song, Goff asked Jan Bruun of Norway’s Hypertonia World Enterprises (who was visiting Goff in mid 1992) to provide a Norwegian monolog for the composition. Only a few hours after Goff and Bruun had finished recording the monolog, they debuted the finished song for the public on John Gullak’s No Other Radio Network on KPFA in Berkeley, California.

Track 15, “Bleeping Song About Anger,” features cuts from televised news and science fiction programs, blending their audio imageries over a Frippertronics-style tape loop guitar improvisation. The bleeping anger is generated as the boundaries of artifice and reality overlap. The piece features an all-star cast of characters.

Track 16, “Cirkus,” is a Goff interpretation of an original song written by Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield which appears on the King Crimson album, Lizard, released in 1970. The dark insanity of Sinfield's lyrics are emphasized by Goff’s arrangement and production.


Copyright 1992

by Taped Rugs Productions

www.geocities.com/padukem





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