ALICE NOT JOHN Episode 13: A Fictional Radio Transmission Guest: Fred Frith
ALICE NOT JOHN
Episode 13: A Fictional Radio Transmission
Guest: Fred Frith
Host: Joeri Bruyninckx
A conversation I overheard in a record store:
Customer: “Do you have Coltrane?”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
Customer: “I mean Alice, not John.”
Record shop owner: “In the jazz section.”
ALICE NOT JOHN is the name of a fictional radio show. The idea is this: for every episode, I ask a musician the same 12 questions. The answers I receive are the “playlist” of my fictional radio show. The questions are these:
1) Which song always brings you back to your childhood?
Fred Frith: ‘The Ying Tong Song’ by The Goons.
2) Which is your favorite shower sing-along song?
‘Hooray for Captain Spaulding’ from Marx Brothers Animal Crackers.
3) What was your favorite song as a teenager?
‘Bike’ by Pink Floyd.
4) What is your favorite air-guitar song?
‘Have You Heard’ by John Mayall.
5) Which song do you associate with your 20s?
‘Beautiful as the Moon, Terrible as an Army with Banners’ by Henry Cow.
6) From which song do you know the lyrics by heart?
‘Shipbuilding’ by Elvis Costello (as recorded by Robert Wyatt).
7) Which song gives you consolation when you feel sad?
‘Que Sera Sera’ by Sly and the Family Stone.
8) Tell me about a song you think people wouldn’t expect you to like.
‘Miserere’ by Zucchero and Luciano Pavarotti. Everything I hate in music—bombast, bad taste, rampant commercialism… Compulsive listening!
9) Which song do you recommend to people if you think they don’t know it?
‘Little Person’ by Jon Brion, as sung by Deanna Storey in Synecdoche New York.
10) ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton is a break-up song (about a couple who decide not to tell their friends they just broke up because they don’t want to spoil a party they’re planning to go to). Strangely enough, this song often gets played as the opening song at weddings. Tell me about a song you misunderstood when you first heard it.
‘All Night Long’ by Lionel Richie: I thought he was singing the chorus in French, saying, “en Thaïlande, en Inde, en Inde, en Thaïlande, en Inde…”
11) Which song always makes you do silly dance moves?
‘You and I’ by Ingrid Michaelson.
12) Which song do you quote most often? Which line?
‘Ballad in Plain D’ by Bob Dylan,
“Are birds free that are chained to the skyway?”
Joeri Bruyninckx
Credit: Arturo Di Vita
Fred Frith Website
