The first music I ever purchased was Queen’s “A Night at the Opera.” I’d spent the summer of 1976 in Hollywood with my Admiral shortwave transistor radio going crazy and stopping whatever I was doing every time to listen enthralled by “Bohemian Rhapsody” whenever it would play on 94.7 KMET.
I preambled that because I was going to start this post with my first music purchase being Kraftwerk’s “Computer World,” but obviously that’s not true. What is true is that Kraftwerk’s wonderful work of technoelectropopmuzik genius was the first cassette I ever purchased to play in the Sony Walkman that I bought at the old Adray’s on Wilshire Boulevard with money I took out of my mom’s checking account using one of them newfangled ATM cards that she’d given me strictly for emergencies (but that’s a story whose decidedly unhappy ending involving mom swinging a crutch at me for being such a selfish stupid idiot is one I believe I’ve told before or if not is for another day).
The whole point of this is that I’ve just found an artist — Tyler Walker –who when I listened to the sampling of tracks on his Myspace page, totally made me remember the joythrillwantnow upon hearing Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” for the very first time.
Discovering Walker’s intriguing musicality is a perfect example of the entirely random way you can discover stuff out there in the ether. I was on Tony Pierce’s blog and he had a post that included a Revver vid embed of the Improv Everywhere group’s recent and triptastic “Human Mirror” mission on a subway train. Check it:
I was immediately struck by the bitchin’ track accompanying the vid and at the end of the clip I was rewarded in the credits with a link to Walker’s Myspace page, where I found a selection of his other works.
Even if techno ain’t your thing, you should check it out. In the meantime I’ll be downloading whatever he has available and eagerly wanting more.
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