My First Test Audience

I tried a little experiment today . . .

I had the same rendered CD from the raw track listening party (more of a get-together, I guess) last night with me in the car as I drove to work. I parked and looked at the CD player. I was wondering how the kids would react to my music.

I plopped the CD out and carried it into work. At 11:00, circle time, I asked the kids if they wanted to hear the product of what I did every night when I left them to go home. With an extreme amount of enthusiasm they said "YEAH!!"

I put the CD in, and being unmastered and all, the volume was really low. The CD player could only play it so loud, so it was hard to keep their attention intact, but here's why:

I started playing "Typosgraphy". Around thirty seconds into it my voice starts up. The kids' eyes lit up. "That sounds like you, Peter," one child said. Then three quietly agreed. The song's main purpose is to surprise people into paying attention. That's actually one of the made-up meanings for the word "Typosgraphy". It was magnified in the children.

The music BLASTS into a huge wall of sound and guitars. The kids' eyes got wide, and they all started flapping their arms frantically while laughing/screaming. I had to pause the song and calm them down. Then I said "You guys wanna hear the next one?"

"YEAH!"

"Trachomanic" started up. The stop/start nature of the first verse is supposed to mimic a mechanical fly. The kids found this hilarious. Two stop/starts in the kids were rolling in laughter. I had to pause again. Wait. Then the song picked up into its main groove. The same flapping occurred. I had to halt the listening party completely in order to maintain a sense of order before lunch, or else lunch would have been a disaster of food mess, nobody eating, spills.

After nap, I brought out "In Hopes to Mend", saying I had to skip around parts because some of it was inappropriate. The beginning piano started, and one kid asked "Is that inappropriate?". Once the groove started, the kids started a dance party. Butts were shaking all over the room. I put "Switch" on, making them promise to be quiet, seated, and restrained (in kid terms). The same "Inappropriate" questioner had his eyes half-closed and was shaking his head in an almost trance, like a blind black man listening to blues on the porch humming "Mmmm-mmmm . . ." Once the end rolled around, a super intense collage of guitars, effected air raid sirens, and screams, this same kid got serious and said "Can you turn it off now?"

I asked him "Why?"

He said "Can you turn it off?" No reason. It was either too long for him to sit through, or it was mud to his ears. I think it was a bit of both.

As a child left with his parents in the evening, he said to his parents "I heard Peter on the radio!"

Oh, if only . . .

Brian Eno -- "Another Green World"