Seizure
28 August 2002
An Evening of Chamber Music with Rick Burkhardt
William: Tonight on Eclectic Seizure, we welcome back once and future co-host Rick Burkhardt. [sound of applause and pinball machines] A long tall friend and a ferociously playful composer of music, Rick Burkhardt is the McCartney to anyone's Lennon, and vice-versa. It brings me distinct symptoms of pleasure to think back on the infectious chemistry we contaminated the airwaves with back when Clinton was in office and Adam Cain was in the mood to perfect something sonic. And now it seems like more than ever what America and even the world needs is the sort of radio show you can tune in only in Urbana. The sound of an uncontrollable spasm that crosses genre lines. Because in the past decade either America or my attitude seems to have gotten unmistakably worse. Rick, if professional English Studies Scholars get to choose whether to write poetry, fiction, drama, or criticism, or, for money, copy and documentation; what are the choices for serious composers working at the graduate level?
Rick: There are none. Remember when we used to write the radio show on typewriters during the show? That was before laptops, you see, and we had to do things differently. But frankly I think the experience steeled us, and without it we would not be doing radio today with as much...
William: ...er, hastily-written dialog...
Rick ...as we can today.
William: You bet. What I remember is that to get to the station we had to use sled-dogs. That was before WEFT put in the fancy bullet train.
Rick: Whew! I hated having to go outside every hour and chip the ice off the microwave link with a pickaxe. To think that nowadays WEFT volunteers complain about having to empty a little airconditioning drip bucket... But doing our show, the listener knew that, if we seemed a bit preoccupied as we mumbled our way through station IDs, it was because we were typing scripts while we were ad-libbing and reading PSAs.
William: Yeah, we were talking while typing, but most nights Adam Cain was talking, typing, and pedaling.
Rick: Oh yeah, I remember the emergency generator! Man, since the glacier receded, doing impromptu radio theater is easy. And to think that the other day I was talking to the woman who does the hanggliding show here on WEFT, and she was complaining because WEFT can even afford to get her a wireless microphone, so she has to do her show while hangliding with this microphone cable trailing behind her.
William: (saracasm) Oh, so she wants a wireless microphone.
Rick: Yeah. She's concerned about her microphone cable snagging on mountain peaks or something while she hangglides between them.
William: (snorts with derision)
Rick: (snorts with derision) Oh yeah, and you should hear Coleman complain.
William: Coleman, the guy who does the plumbing show?
Rick: Yeah, he keeps getting shocked by the microphone trying to, like, fix the sink and ad-lib at the same time.
William: Well, I'd say that's just all part of doing a plumbing show in a station that needs lots of work. You know.
Rick: Oh believe me, I know. I've had to be a substitute paradigm shifter on that show before.
William: Oh we all did. Back then. But you know the show I dread subbing the most is the astronomy spot they do weekday mornings.
Rick: The Sky Tonight. That's a dangerous show to be on. Oh man, the WEFT Space Shuttle is getting old.bdf.k
William: Yeah. It's kind of leaky.
Rick: Yeah.
William: Interesting how we used to write scripts with a piece of coal taped to the microphone instead of downloading them like we do now.
Rick: I had to download myself in order to even be here.
William: You look a little fuzzy.
Rick: Well I've been having some trouble with my webserver as usual, but it's the sound that's important, on radio at least, and that's why I'm here using a new MP5 technology a step ahead of the MIT media lab team led by Youngmoo Kim,who by the way hasn't worn a green tie since 1988.
William: Your tie turned blue for a second there.
Rick: whoops! I must have selected it by mistake with the cursor. don't move anything or it might get deleted.
William: You'd be amazed how many times that's happened around here. The entire Cajun music section was accidentally deleted last week when somebody forgot to close it before turning the station off.
Rick: I think the script we're speaking right now is kind of bluish, and I don't really know how to fix it.
William: Honestly, Rick, you're going to end up being one of those parents who needs their kids to set the blinking clock on their VCR.
Rick: No I'm not.
William: All you have to go is go to the paragraph selector, select "toggle" in smart quotes, go to edit, select file, hold down control, follow the prompts, and right doubleclick on the aurora symbol. If that doesn't work, repeat all but the insert function from the file select menu.
Rick: What? bbbbxcvbvvxcvxvbnvmn hf,jmb gvcbbnvjnvnv vchncvnbvbv