Teen-Beat 274. FLIN FLON. Boo-Boo. Boo-Boo (Version).

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Flin Flon

Boo-Boo and Boo-Boo (Version)

Upper Ferry
Shuffle Board
Mistaken Point
Jumpers
Floods
Trinity
Virgin Arm
Leading Tickles
Happy Adventure
St. Patricks

VINYL LP (VERSION)

SIDE ONE

Jumpers (Version No.2)
Floods (Version)
Leading Tickles (Version)
Happy Adventure (Version)
St. Patricks (Version)

SIDE TWO

Upper Ferry (Version)
Jumpers (Version No.1)
Trinity (Version)
Mistaken Point (Version)
Virgin Arm (Version)
Shuffle Board

Compact Disc (CD) ($14,44)

10-panel folder, in jewel case
with black tray.

Download (FLAC/MP3) ($9,90)

Listen and purchase FLAC or MP3 files from our friends at Midheaven.

Purchase

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MARK ROBINSON Canada's Green Highways album

FLIN FLON
Boo-Boo
CD cover

FLIN FLON Boo-Boo Version vinyl LP album

FLIN FLON
Boo-Boo (Version)
LP jacket

LINER NOTES

PLAYERS

Matt Datesman, drums

Natalie "Nattles" Mencinsky, bass guitar

Mark Robinson, vocals, guitar

PRODUCED BY

Mark Robinson

and D. Trevor Kampmann

RECORDED BY

D. Trevor Kampmann,

at 11th & P, Washington, D.C., USA

March 17 and May 2, 1999

MASTERED BY

Charlie Pilzer,

at Airshow, Springfield, Virginia, USA

DESIGN, CARTOGRAPHIC IMAGES,
AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Mark Robinson, Teen-Beat Graphica

FONTS

Minion

and Helvetica Neue

GERMAN TRANSLATION

Nancy Marion

FRENCH TRANSLATION

Lisa Goldstein

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Jonathan Cohen

WHALE IMAGE

courtesy New England Whalers (1972)

TEEN-BEAT COMMUNICATIONS LOGO

ET CETERA

All songs composed by trio Flin Flon: Mark Robinson, Matt Datesman, Natalie Mencinsky (BMI)

The letter "B" is printed on the CD. "B" for the second Flin Flon album release.

"This recording should be played at a volume comfortable for the listener."

The track "Shuffle Board" is identical on both the CD and the LP "Version", while the rest of the tracks are different versions, mixes, or re-mixes.

Audio captured & assembled on an Apple® Macintosh G3 with the assistance of Pro Tools®.

Visual designed on an Apple® Power Mac 7500 with the assistance of QuarkXPress® and Adobe® Illustrator.

SLEEVE NOTES

From Wax Cylinders to Mini-Disc and MP3
A short history of audio formats

Imagine life without records, tapes or CDs. Imagine no walkman, no hi-fi, no car stereo. You could hear music only by way of live performance. Perhaps an orchestra in a concert hall, a skillful band at a night club, a child singing in the streets. This is what it was like prior to the advent of audio recording in 1877.

In the late Nineteenth century, popular music was distributed to the public via sheet music. If you didn't know how to play the piano, you could purchase a player piano which would play by itself. This was perhaps the first home entertainment center. When inventors found a way to capture sound, capture the sound of not only voice but of a musical performance, they revolutionized the way in which people listened.

The first popular format for mass produced recorded music was wax cylinders (invented by T. Edison in 1888). Cylinders were not unlike the later common phonograph as a needle would pick-up the audio signal from grooves etched into a wax lacquer. As new listening devices were invented, record companies would release their artists' music on all of the available formats. They would even promote the addition of new formats with the idea of increasing sales. In the 1950s, albums were released simultaneously on the Columbia Records backed 12" LP (long player) and the RCA backed 7-inch 45 EP (extended play). In the 1960s and 1970s, it was reel to reel tape, the eight track cartridge and cassette. In the '80s and '90s compact disc, digital audio tape, mini-disc, and digital cassette. Today we have MP3, a technology which lets you load a digital music file onto your computer.

To come up with something more interesting for the listener, we have come up with a new idea in audio programme formatting.

Flin Flon
"Boo-Boo"
& "Boo-Boo (version)"
In the Spring of 1999, Matt Datesman, Mark Robinson, and (the singularly named) Nattles composed and digitally recorded fourteen pieces of music using analog instruments.

Ten of these songs were chosen to represent the band on their second full-length document.

Why not just produce one format? We realize that there are currently at least two popular formats that make sense for the Flin Flon album; the digital compact disc and the analog long-player. We have mixed and edited each song (for the CD) and then re-edited and re-mixed "versions" for the vinyl LP, making them two completely different albums. Instead of manufacturing the same thing twice, we are offering the listener two different options.

an excerpt from "Leading Tickles"

relay transmission signal
A.M. F.M. shortwave tone
implant seduction dial
come clean, reverse your smile
Textbook Example: Fission
turn-off that television
cut your cable

De cylindres en cire � Mini-Disc et MP3
Une histoire br�ve des audio-formats

Imaginez-vous la vie sans disques, sans bandes magnétiques, sans disques compacts. Imaginez-vous qu'il n'y pas de walkman, ni d'haute fidélité, ni de stéréo dans votre voiture. Vous ne pourriez entendre que de la musique jouée en public. Peut-être un orchestre dans un music-hall, un groupe dynamique dans une boîte de nuit, un enfant qui chante dans la rue. C'était comme �a avant la venue de l'audio-enregistrement en 1877.

Vers la fin du dix-neuvi�me si�cle, on vendait la musique populaire sous forme de partitions. Si on ne savait pas jouer du piano, on achetait un piano mécanique. En développant des moyens d'enregistrer le son, particuli�rement le son des interprétations musicales, les inventeurs ont révolutionné la fa�on dont les gens écoutaient la musique.

Les enregistrements musicals étaient fabriqués en série pour la première fois sous forme de cylindres en cire (inventés par Thomas Edison en 1888). Comme le phonographe, qui n'était pas encore venu, les cylindres en cire contenaient des sillons desquels un saphir captait des audio-signaux. Comme des appareils nouveaux étaient inventés, les disques sortaient sous tous les formats disponibles.

Avec l'adjonction de ces formats nouveaux, les ventes étaient en hausse. Pendant les années 1950, des albums sortaient simultanément en microsillons chez Columbia Records et en disques doubles chez RCA. Pendant les années 1960 et 1970, ils sortaient en bandes bobine-à-bobine, en bandes à 8 pistes, et en cassettes. Avec les années 1980 et 1990, on voyait la venue des disques compacts, des mini-discs, et des cassettes digitales. Aujourd'hui il existe le MP3, avec lequel on peut installer un fichier de musique digitale dans un ordinateur.

Pour produire quelque chose de plus intéressant pour le public, nous avons ajouté une nouvelle idée à l'histoire des audio-formats.

Flin Flon
"Boo-Boo"
et "Boo-Boo (version)"
Au printemps de 1999, Mark Datesman, Mark Robinson, et (l'exceptionnellement appelé) Nattles ont composé et enregistré digitalement quatorze morceaux de musique avec les instruments analogiques. Dix de ces chansons étaient choisis pour représenter le groupe sur leur deuxième document de long métrage. Pourquoi ne produire qu'un format? A présent, les deux audio-formats plus populaires sont le disque compact digital et le microsillon analogique. Nous avons fait du mixage et mis au point chaque chanson (pour le CD) et puis nous avons remis au point et fait du remixage pour le microsillon. Le résultat: deux albums totalement différents. Au lieu de fabriquer le même produit deux fois, nous offrons deux options différentes au public.

un extrait de "Leading Tickles"

relayez le signal de transmission
A.M. F.M. le ton à ondes courtes
implantez le cadran de séduction
soyez honnête, renversez ton sourire
Un exemple classique: La fission
éteignez cette télévision
coupez ton c�ble

Von Wuchszylinder zu Mini-Disk und MP3
Eine kurze Geschichte der Tonstrukturen

Bitte stellen Sie ein Leben ohne Schallplatten, Kassetten oder Cds vor. Stellen Sie auch vor, daß es auch keine Walkman, keine Hi-fis oder keine Autostereoanlagen gibt. Man konnte Musik nur bei liven Veranstaltungen hören: vielleicht ein Orchester im Konzertsaal, eine gute Band im Klub, ein in der Straße singendes Kind. So war es vor dem Aufkommen der Aufnahme im Jahr 1877.

Im späten neunzehnten Jahrhundert wurde populäre Musik per Notenblätter verteilt. Falls man das Klavier nicht spielen könnte, könnte man ein "Player Piano" kaufen, d.h., ein Klavier, das sich selbst spielen kann. Dies war vielleicht das erste Tonwiedergabesystem. Als die Erfinder einen Weg der Ton einer Stimme sowohl auch einer musikalischen Veranstaltung aufzunehmen fanden, wurde die Art und Weise revolutionisiert, in denen man Musik zuhört.

Die erste populäre Struktur der hergestellten Musik war der Wuchszylinder, der von Thomas Edison 1888 erfinden wurde. Wuchszylinder waren ähnlich den späteren Schallplatten, in dem einen Tonabnehmer empfängt den Hörempfang von den Schallrillen, die in einem Wuchslack geätzt wurden. Als neuen Geräte erfunden wurden, veröffentlichten die Musikfirmen die Musik ihrer Künstler in jeder Struktur. Neue Strukturen wurden geworben, um mehr zu verkaufen. In den 50er Jahren wurden Schallplatten gleichzeitig hergestellt, von Columbia Records mit der 12-inch Schallplatte, was ein LP genannt wurde (Engl. "Long player", "lange Spielzeit"), und von RCA mit der 7-inch Schallplatte, was ein EP genannt wurde (Engl. "Extended play", "erweiterte Spielzeit"). In den 60er und 70er Jahren gab es Tonband, 8-Track Kassetten und Kassetten. Neuere Strukturen seit den 80er Jahren sind Compact-Disk, DAT, Mini-Disk und digitale Kassetten. Heute gibt es MP3, eine ttechnologische Erfindung, die einem digitale Musikdaten im Computer speichern läßt.

Um etwas Interessanteres für den Zuhörer zu erwerben, schufen wir etwas neues für das Audio-Programme-Formatting.

Im Frühling 1999 Matt Datesman, Mark Robinson und die einzelgenannte Nattles komponierten und aufnahmen digital mit analog instrumenten vierzehn Stücken.

Flin Flon
"Boo-Boo"
und "Boo-Boo (version)"
Zehn dieser Lieder wurden als repräsentativen Werken der Gruppe auf ihrem zweiten Album ausgewählt.

Warum nich nur auf eine Struktur veröffentlichen? Wir wissen schon, daß es zur Zeit zwei populären Strukturen gibt, die zum Album Flin Flons passen: die digitale Compact-Disk und die analoge Schallplatte. Wir schnitten jedes Lied einmal für die CD und noch einmal für die Schallplatte zusammen, deshalb gibt es für die Schallplatte Versionen. Da sind die Zwei vollkommen verschiedene Albums. Anstatt dasselbe zweimal herzustellen, bieten wir dem Zuhörer zwei verschieden Wahlen.

Eine Ausnahme von "Leading Tickles"

Relais - Sendung - Wellensignal
AM, FM, Kurzwellenton
Impfe Verführungswahlscheibe ein
Gesteh alles ein, Dreh dein Lächeln um
Ein Textbuchbeispiel: Fission
Mach den Fernseher zu
Schneid deinen Kabel

REVIEW

"Boo-Boo, the new album by Flin Flon, comes in two flavors. Besides the CD, there's a vinyl LP edition, Boo-Boo (Version), with different mixes of every song. Both are on singer/guitarist Mark Robinson's label Teenbeat. The basic sound of the material doesn't differ in any major way. Grooves lurch like a cheetah at top speed, sparkling with just enough guitar to keep from touching earth. The difference is in the structures of the tracks. On the CD, they're songs first and foremost, developing logically from introduction to conclusion and propelled by the rhythm section's post-disco jerk. The LP version is nothing but that propulsion, quick and jolting, edited down to rhythm patterns that dispense with the extraneous gestures of songwriting. The band are fast and wiry, but the beat always seems to be leaning to one side. It's the same kind of rhythmic sleight of hand that drove Joy Division and early New Order -- bands whose musical ideas turn up all over Boo-Boo, from the ultra-dry recording of Matt Datesman's hi-hat-focused drumming to the way Robinson has largely ditched chords in favor of darting around the bass lines, one or two spindly notes at a time. Meanwhile, Robinson's lyrics have become a deliberately meaningless excuse to sing; the words to "Jumpers" seem to have been lifted from a dental surgeon's notebook, and the chorus of "Upper Ferry" goes "34/34/34."

The mercurial Robinson has been heading toward Boo-Boo's unalloyed groove for a while now. His best-known band, Unrest, first hinted at it with a string of extraordinary singles and their last two studio albums, Imperial f.f.r.r. and Perfect Teeth. They drew on the fluid repetitions of the New York funk group ESG and the artists on the British post-punk label Factory, molding them into songforms of their own, where the rhythm section mostly just provided support for Robinson's forceful, clean-toned guitar strumming. Unrest mutated into the chewier Air Miami, after which Robinson formed Flin Flon.

That's just one genealogy for Flin Flon, but there's an alternate chain of development whose relics have just resurfaced. Before Unrest were a groove band, they were an oddball neighbor of the DC-area punk scene. The two fun, spazzy late-'80s Unrest albums that document these period have been out of print for close to a decade. But No. 6 Records has now reissued both of them. Malcolm X Park sounds like the product of a band set on avoiding stylistic continuity at all costs -- it's a wonderfully (and terribly) messy one-band mix tape, with frenetic punk, acoustic abstractions, faux art-film music, a straight-faced cover of Kiss's "Strutter," a piano-and-drum drone piece, a sweet little love song, and an inept Elvis impersonation invading one another's personal space. That was followed by Kustom Karnal Blackxploitation, on which Unrest can't quite decide whether they're a sex-crazed power-rock trio or a sex-crazed joke about '70s wah-wah funk. Song titles include "Black Power Dynamo" and "Kill Whitey." Still, parts of it are awfully clever. The chorus of "Teenage Suicide" conflates a joke from the movie Heathers with the title of Robinson icon Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography: "Teenage suicide/Don't do it/Teenage suicide/Yes I can!"

Before Unrest, there was Unrest, the 1974 album by the English art-rock group Henry Cow that gave Robinson's group its name. Henry Cow were one of the first bands to be both seriously interested in making the distinctions between rock and improvisation and "serious" compositional music irrelevant and seriously equipped to do it. Although its members (including guitarist Fred Frith and bassoonist Lindsay Cooper) tended to overindulge in number-crunching time signatures, they were subtle players more interested in supporting one another than in showing off. Unrest, newly remastered and reissued on East Side Digital, was recorded when they found themselves in the studio with only half an album's worth of material and punted. The second half of the disc is based on a series of textural improvisations (menacing buzz, woodwind whir, bash-and-scrape freakout) arranged into complicated, coherent pieces with the help of tape manipulation and overdubs.

Unrest doesn't sound a thing like Boo-Boo, but they're related, most of all in the artists' slipperiness. Whatever you think I am, they argued, I'll refuse to be that -- even to the point of not releasing "definitive" versions of their albums. (Henry Cow's 1973 Legend is now available in two different mixes too.) Both mutated from paradigm to paradigm too quickly to be attached to any one genre, until incrementally they'd built styles of their own. And though Flin Flon and Henry Cow share little in terms of sound, the two groups illuminate each other from a distance as cousins whose shared bloodline is a hidden one."
- Douglas Wolk, Smallmouth,
in the The Boston Phoenix