Qwerty

Friday, 11 April 2008

While working on a compilation of songs that have something to do with typewriters, I stumbled upon this site.
I had never heard or seen anything of Paul Smith before yesterday and the story and the artwork of this man touched me deep. People like Paul Smith are true heroes, and they are examples for how I want to live.
One of my biggest problems is self-pity. It comes in waves. Sometimes everything goes well for weeks, and then WHAMMY, I suddenly find myself thinking that Life is extremely unkind and unjust. To everybody, but most of all to me. It is such a nonsense, but I it always takes me days to realise this again. It sure helps to see a video of hero as Paul Smith. Watching this makes me feel ashamed for all the time I waste on self-pity.

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As far as I know it was Leroy Anderson who made the first record on which a typewriter was used as a musical instrument. On YouTube is this video of a man called Survivor Teymuralp, performing the composition live with an orchestra:

There are quite a few interesting recordings about typewriters, by the way. My favourite has been for a long Drums in my typewriter by Woody Leafer, which I have already posted somewhere in this blog. I discovered that there is another version of this song by Shorty Petterstein a.k.a. Henry Jacobs. Haven’t heard it yet, but I am curious how anybody did a cover of that song. Another nice surprise in this twilight zone between literature and music is a tape by Janis Joplin and some friends. One of them was Jorma Kaukonen, who used a typewrite for drums. Here is their version of Hesitation blues:

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And, for the die hards, here is a video of The Boston Typewriter Orchestra:

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