Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket

Chapter 8: Newcastle to Narvik

Douglas Simon (left) and Stuart Marshall (right) at Wesleyan University, 1972 (photographer unknown).
Click here to download Zones 1971 - 72, Marshall's MA Thesis for Wesleyan University Department of Music, 1972.

Poster for opening season of Ayton Basement, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, December 1976.

Peter Todd and Nicolas Collins, Ayton Basement [1976] (2019). Orpheus Instituut, Ghent, September 2019. No documentation of Stuart Marshall's Ayton Basement performance remains beyond a few photographs. Forty years later Peter Todd (a student of Marshall's and one of the founders of Ayton Basement) and the author recreated what they could based on their memories of the event, and updated it slightly where memory failed them both.

Brian Eno says "no". At the suggestion of Gavin Bryars I had submitted a tape of Pea Soup for consideration for Obscure Records.

Record cut in a recording booth in the station hall of the Rome Termini train station, June 1977. I slowly opened the sliding door of the booth to fade in the soundscape of the station which, as busy as it was, was buried in the grit of the groove noise.