Teenage Girl had anoise band in the 30s -

http://www.regurgitron.com/grandma.htm

As far as I can tell, there's no written record of the first noise band, however, a couple transcription discs and a few wire recordings are said to exist - along with some blurry rumors and ancient rural folk tales. So, how did a teenage girl start the first noise band back in the 1930's and is she still living among us today? I spent quite a bit of time researching the possibility and here's what I came up with:


gramophone


The Great Depression

In 1933, "Grandma" was typical of most 11 to 13 year old girls. She lived in a small midwest town and was part of a poor rural family. Like most, she struggled during the Great Depression. Money was scarce, jobs almost nonexistent, and an overall feeling of hopelessness prevailed especially in what was then known as the "dustbowl". And, yet, from this impoverished setting, would come a form of entertainment that was decades ahead of its time.

Although the stories are sketchy, it seems that around 1933, a young girl, we'll call "Grandma" comes across a discarded radio on the side of a dirt road - probably the victim of a pothole which dislodged it from its baggage carrier. It's a strong possibility, as many families back then packed up everything they owned and drove to California to find work. The radio was typical of that era, a wood enclosure with rudimentary tube electronics that enabled it to receive and amplify AM and shortwave signals. This was a significant find as Grandma's family didn't have a radio. The legend then says that Grandma made her way home to the tin roofed shack that her family of 10 shared. She plugs in the radio only to find that it doesn't work. No sound comes from it at all, but she notices that the tuning dial lights up, so she believes that it "sort of" works. She decides that she'll fix it and then her family will be able to listen to radio shows and get the news. They'll be able to hear President Roosevelt himself as he speaks to the struggling nation and unveils his "New Deal".


antique noise meters


Proto Circuit Bending

Grandma opens up the radio. She's looking at a complete mystery. Wires, tubes, strange metal objects, and other stuff, for lack of a better term, inhabit this wooden box. Bewildered by this proto-electronic maze, she shakes her head. What's Grandma to do? Well, folklore describes her poking around in the radio for hours, then days. First with sticks and twigs, then with metal, possibly bicycle wheel spokes or something similar. Remember, this is "depression era" rural USA, tools and supplies are very hard to come by.

Not one to be discouraged, and who of the "greatest generation" was ever easily discouraged, Grandma worked intensely. She stopped at nothing to get her radio working, bridging connections with wheel spokes and other found objects. She connected things that she thought needed to be connected. It's even said that Grandma got her hands on a crank phone and other trashed radios and then added their parts to her prized device.

Weeks went by as Grandma became even more obsessed with fixing her radio. Finally, all her efforts paid off. The results of pure luck, crude experimentation, childhood curiosity, and home-grown American ingenuity were heard by Grandma as a blistering noise spewed from the partially functioning radio's speaker. She turned the tuning knob which unveiled a deep palate of noise flavors from a shearing wash to gurgles and static pops. Keep in mind that this is 1933, and Grandma has essentially circuit bent a radio some 34 years before Reed Ghazala - or so the legend has it.


A New Deal - of Noise

Grandma had turned a broken radio into a radical noisemaker and although that wasn't her goal, she was proud nonetheless. She would lose herself for hours on end playing with her new noisemaker. She was constantly filling her family's small shack with all kinds of distressful noise. Later, she began to "entertain" her family by putting on Vaudeville inspired shows where she would pretend to be all kinds of new and wonderful characters. These "characters" would touch the insides of the radio which belted out all kinds of different flavors of noise as they sang and danced, sometimes in a seizure like fashion. After a few shows, her family would have no more of this mess. They pressured Grandma to dismantle her creation and go back to school, but it was too late. Grandma had been bitten by the "noise bug" and there was no going back. Grandma took her noisemaking radio and ran away.

Legend has it that she made her way to Chicago, playing gigs wherever she could. Sometimes at general stores or bars. Sometimes outside on street corners. Though she did generate quite a bit of attention, her shows were never that well received. One story tells of a small crowd in Kansas City that is seen throwing rotting vegetables at a teenage girl who carried a loud radio. Other similar tales crop up in parts of Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky and Illinois during the mid and late 1930's. There was even talk of Alan Lomax types of field recordings being made of a young woman who "played" a radio back in 1937. Then, nothing.


No More Noise Deal

Information about Grandma and her noise band stops around 1941. Why? Did the US entry into World War II have something to do with it? What did Grandma do as part of the war effort? Was she a nurse in the Army? Was she part of the USO? Or did she just get married and "settle down"? Did she have any children? Is she still living among us? We may never know. But, we do know this, Grandma had a noise band in the 1930's and she is said to have spewed out a noise of such wholesome goodness that only a Grandma could make. If you have any further information about Grandma and her noise band, please contact me.




mike@regurgitron.com thanks mike, for this.