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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 8. 27 April 1972

Contemporary Sound

page 13

Contemporary Sound

Contemporary sound banner

Item: "Scratch Orchestra Which turns out to be scratchy choir, sprinkled like frogs among the audience. 'Are all the groups ready?' Fingers everywhere clicking, tongues ducking. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ing Whistling monotones, I see a participant smiling self-consciously. Bodies slap themselves. The baby whimpers. The 'orchestra' is dapping, the people join in. There never was any distinction. A man in striped trousers prostrate on the floor begins to laugh hilariously.

Rex: 'Thank you for your patronage, we hope you'll visit us again. Oh no. We've forgotten to tape the ripping of paper'. Newspapers are handed round, it's the new Dominion. People are talking, then the tape is on. Uh oh they're flapping paper, bloody rowdy this flapping paper ripping. Newspaper collation in a madhouse. Newspaper uncollation in the music department. People giggling, even chuckling sort of. Oh use somebody elses'. It's always better at the time—this tape will sound awful, the future for me now. Flap flap rip rip rubwhizz of corrugated cardboards. Now they're throwing shreds of paper all over everyone including me. Victory sign for the intrepid reporter. 'Oh'

"Clang ! Honk ! Tweet! OOO000OOO000OOO !!

EEEeeeEEEeeeEEEEE ! ZOW Pow ! Sproing ! Zonk! Flash ! pretty good stuff we have there brother!!!!! says someone. Flap flap like in the Rastus joke. Flap flap of whacking on the boards. And the baby boy-ecstatic—I've never seen a baby get his thrills vicariously, a baby grinning, flabbergasted. I'd like to get a photo, but that would be so lifeless in comparison.

I tell Rex I might do a light review, ask him it he'd like to do a heavy one. He replies 'although there are serious reasons for all this, just do a light review. Look, somebody's been ripping up the Salient'. I exclaim something like 'fuck the lot of you' which is very appropriate. Rex: 'I never knew that paper could be such fun'. While I'm disentangling scraps of it from my hair.

People stand around, discussing, though there's no sign of the heavies. A leggy girl wearing transparent red stockings and a split miniskirt kicks paper — amazing! People are leaving for lectures. Lectures will ever be the same.

R.W. Steele

Image of a man with a top hat

"The music of a well-ordered age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restive age is excited and fierce, and its government is perverted. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad and its government is imperiled."

- Lu Be We, ancient Chinese philosopher