Paul Rooney: Lucy Over Lancashire
Sunday, June 28, 2015
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This isn't a music track. It's a:
Sound work for radio and red vinyl 45rpm 12” record (blank 'A' side, single track on 'B' side), stereo, 16 mins, 2006-2007.Because Paul Rooney is an artist, you see.
The blurb accompanying an excerpt on Vimeo explains what is going on here:
The record comprises a single voice monologue above and amidst music influenced by dub reggae and Lancastrian post-punk. The voice on the piece is that of Lucy, a ‘sprite of the air’, an airborne spirit, who is possessing the grooves of the record itself, and is damned to endlessly repeat stories about Lancashire she has been told by the evil and shadowy figure of ‘Alan’. She cheerfully relates a twisted tale – partly in Lancashire dialect – in the desperate truth-stretching style of internet conspiracy theorising.
The tale describes the pivotal role that the English county of Lancashire has in the plans of Satan, ranging from the Pendle witches and the 'dark Satanic mills' of the Industrial Revolution, right up to the bile of the Red Rose Radio phone in shows of Allan Beswick (who also appears on the record).
Other Lancashire linked characters mentioned within the work, with names changed or slightly distorted, include Lee Scratch Perry, Marx and Engels, Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, The Fall -– particularly the debt that the band owes to dark Lancashire folk-lore -– and the Radio Lancashire ‘On the Wire’ programme itself, whose longstanding commitment to dub reggae provided one of the inspirations for the work, and on which the piece was first broadcast on 18th November 2006.There are many such excerpts around, but I believe this is the whole work.
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