Nichols Collection 0005
- Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork
- A Song Cycle on Poems by Richard Brautigan
- Gene Nichols. Text by Richard Brautigan
- Stereo audio tape, with score
- Performed by Gene Nichols with the Neoteric Ensemble
- April 17, 1981
- Northern Illinois University
- Music © 1980-1981 Gene Nichols, text © 1971 Richard Brautigan
- Collection of Gene Nichols
- The second half of 1981's April 17 program was given over to these interpretations of Brautigan's 1971 poem collection Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork. Each segment is a separate poem, with its own instrumentation and score. (In what I take to be the spirit of the work, though, I have made each Flash player a separate instance; so, if you like, you can play all the poems at once.—daa)
- Please contact us with more information about this work or the performance itself. Notes and commentary can be inserted along with each file below.
4' 19"
Dedication 1: for Diane Ragains
Dedication 2: for Diane Ragains, Joe Pinzarrone + the Neoteric boys
November 1980
0' 47"
Things begin to look a little looser...
1' 19"
1' 09"
1' 32"
Things become looser still...
1'28"
1' 26"
A brief return to conventional notation...
1' 20"
6' 06"
1' 44"
...followed by "Hot wailing"...
3' 44"
3' 10"
The score flirts with orthogonality, then segues to something a bit more episodic and instructive: "Some instrumentalists apply light, fast 'karate chops' to the vocalist's back during this passage."
1' 26"
Coffee (or something) has its way with the score.
0' 42"
0' 34"
1' 19"
(There's something about this work that wants to stay a secret. The published poem includes the comment, "...[I can't make the next two words out. I first wrote this poem in longhand]..." which Gene transcribes in the score, along with stage directions. This sheet [page 23] came to me with a folded-back top right-hand corner. It had clearly been fed into the copier that way, as the print runs right up to the bent edge. The page number is missing. Of the twenty six pages of score, this sheet is the only one that misfed in the scanner. It survived, not without a struggle.—daa)
3' 09"
2' 54"
The final note: "November 25-26, 1980; rearranged Spring, 1981 DeKalb, Illinois"
