Radio II.1, side A, tracks 1-5: “The One And Only” by Wes Harrison

Oh, Wes Harrison, you presented me with a conundrum.  You see, my neighbor saw you perform at the Pipestone County Fair, and she bought your cassette and let me borrow it so I could copy it.  And copy it I did, and I played it again and again throughout my childhood.  Your down-home humor and the amazing sound effects you were able to make with just your mouth and a microphone were astounding.  In particular your train impersonation was phenomenal; to this day I still can’t figure out how you were able to add the “clickity-clack” sound of the rails underneath the overall train sound.  It was great, and made me want to try my hand at sound effects as well, which I did, very poorly. 

The problem you presented me with was that your tape only ran for about 35 minutes, meaning that I still had a big chunk of unused tape on side A and nothing on side B.  So now I had to come up with some content so I didn’t put all this tape to waste (cassette tapes don’t grow on trees, after all).  And so side A became the Wes Harrison side, along with some little audio experiments, and side B became my “lost” radio tape.  I didn’t listen to it as much, because if I wanted to just listen to some good music off the radio, I’d have to fast forward all the way through side A to get to side B.  I’ve learned recently that this is what is known as a champagne problem.

Introduction

The Big Duck Hunt

Odds and Ends

Take a Train

Wes’ Car