MWOP 7 Remastered

Happy 2011! As New Year’s Day tradition dictates, a hearty heaping upload is in order. And we’ve got a doozie: Through the tubeless tire-less efforts of our crack legal department, this wafflecast has secured the exclusive rights to feature, one episode at a time, the entire Music Without Perspective series. As a first installment we offer up number 7 of the series, recorded 10/9/80. MWOP was audio program hosted by Vince Valparaiso and Ken Westby. It ran from August 1977 to October 1980. Newly-released alblums would be played and reviewed / critiqued by the two illustriously immature hosts. Except for the 4th broadcast, MWOP reviewed alblum cuts by “vocalist” Tom Brown. Mr. Brown had been an OSHA compliance officer. By the mid-70s he was a freelancer, giving instructive seminars around the country in the name of workplace safety. A November 1976 remote recording gig meant Baltimore-based audio engineer Larry was dispatched to a Philadelphia hotel ballroom to record such a (yawn) day-long seminar presented by Tom. The intent was to market the blah-blah audio to factory managers desiring to stay out of trouble with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration arm of the US government. Indeed, “Coping with OSHA” -- a 5-cassette binder of Tom’s industrial blather -- was released to the masses in the spring of 1977 and a splendid time was guaranteed for all. But back to Larry. Scurrying from Philly to the Baltimore studio in his beige Plymouth full of ¼” tapes-o-Tom, Larry begrudgingly pounced on the rather ominous task of editing the lengthy OSHA seminar to a more easily-digestible audio product. As the reader can imagine, this took months to finish. In the tedium of editing Tom’s snarky delivery of the English language Larry amused himself by putting Tom’s voice to stock music. Little did he know that another equally immature audio engineer toiling across the hall in another studio was growing increasingly curious about the musical creations wafting forth from Larry’s audio cave. As 1977 dawned, that other audio guy, Steve, was now egging Larry on to produce even more Tom. Recognizing the genius of Larry’s edited “songs”, a vehicle of delivering Tom Brown to the public was needed. The two came up with “Music Without Perspective”; an interview show featuring the vocal stylings of Tom Brown. Cassettes of MWOP were circulated throughout the Baltimore-Washington area and soon MWOPs 1 through 3 were gushing forth from car stereos of the region. Early 1978 found Larry and Steve trying to outdo the other in the Tom Brown department. Tape loops became more elaborate. The envelope of Tom’s musical Je ne sais quoi was pushed. Bear in mind these were tape “loops” in the purist sense of the word: Samplers and digital audio workstations did not exist in the 70s. Some of their tape loops stretched down the hall to a secretary holding a pencil through a spinning 5” reel atop her knuckle, providing tension to the capstan 40 feet away. And it cannot be understated that Larry and Steve got paid for such clowning around. All MWOPs were produced on company equipment on company time, “live from exit 20”. In all, seven MWOPs were produced. The MWOP featured here is, ironically, the final program of the series. We are not purposely going out of order: All seven MWOPs are / will be painstakingly restored and digitized for the Internets. It just so happened that # 7 was the first tape found in the vault. The hope is that the other six will be located, cleaned up, and published to the Web. Please stay tuned. Sleep well at night knowing standard When Waffles Matters episodes shall be forthcoming. Three new shows have actually been in the hopper for about a year. They’re all nearly complete yet require a bit of tidying up before they get Lenny’s stamp of approval. But for now, sit back and situate yourself inside a 1980 Baltimore recording studio with orange walls where it is always live from exit 20...