Side A:
In the director’s cut* of Memento, the protagonist barges into his neighboring hotel room** to find out what all that shrillness and buzzing is about. He discovers an empty space***, but for one electric guitar, run through a dangerously rusty delay pedal, into a fairly large amplifier that has, indeed, seen better days, itself.
His anterograde amnesia does not allow him to remember that used to play for Shipping News**** back in the day, but somewhere in his blood, he knows of the freedom-justifying maxim that “if you play the wrong note, play it again, only louder”, and that, although decibel level isn’t exactly what Mr. Davis***** was talking about, persistence, patience, and forgiveness sure as shit was.
He picks up the guitar, strums a chord, picks a few bass notes, &strums again, letting the slightly sharp strings ring out, bounce back from one wall to another to another to his own hear. He strums again…and has forgotten what he has already played. Soundcloud was not a thing back then.
Side B:
Is a lot like Side A, but with some pretty COOL****** surrounding sounds from outside said room incorporated. Perhaps a window was opened. Perhaps a radio tower was fritzing more heavily than normal, eliciting robotic possession of said beat up amp…
and, man…once you get to the end of this relatively short tape, there is one SICK door-hinge riff that absolutely SCREAMS!
It is worth mentioning that listening at different volumes to this recording yield DRASTICALLY differing results. Explore!
*I am totally making this shit up as I go along ok
**Seriously I can’t even remember anything about this movie other than the short-term memory loss theme please bear with me
*** Bluesharp the recording artist is all about a recording environment’s stranglehold on soundwaves and how they make it to your ears and or a recording device so know that ok
****Seriously I could not begin to stop hearing “Axons and Dendrites” and wondering if this “Green Burial” album is what the beginning of that song might have sounded like were it written while coming down off any number of powerful narcotics or downers or tranquilizers or other such stuff
*****Miles Davis never said this and I can’t figure out who did or if I’m just referencing some false memory or whatever but you get the idea
******Cool as in a Cool Person as in a reference to yet another rad artist on the Permanent Nostalgia roster!
https://permanentnostalgia.bandcamp.com/album/green-burial-permanent-nostalgia-no-36
--Jacob An Kittenplan