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Brian Smith And Trey McManus Bend Atari Consoles To Their Musical Will
■ guess I've just known Brian Smith for too
I long. I say this because hearing that he'd
I been working with Trey McManus using Atari
2600 units as musical instruments didn't surprise
me in the least. After"bug sculptures, spy cars and
taxi cabs, the progression to creating
music using obsolete video game con-
soles seems completely natural.
Smith and McManus have both
been in Athens playing music for a
substantial amount of time. In the
most recent incarnation of Ordinary
Germans Like Yourselves, or OGLY,
they do it with a pair of Atari 2600
video game consoles that have been
modified to suit their purposes.
Earlier this year, the duo maintained a
Monday night residency at the Go Bar,
and on Thursday, Apr. 28, OGLY plays
at the Soft Magic Records showcase
[see p. 41 for more information] at
the performance space located at 744
Barber St. that's become known aptly
as The Barn.
After going to see them there
twice, I caught up with Smith and
McManus at Java out toward the
chicken plant. Given the nature of the
project, it seemed all too appropriate
a setting: surrounded by half-air
planes, disemboweled beige Macintosh
computers, three-wheeled cars and a
mile-long list of obscurities like bulk
bags of lucky rabbit feet After a ciga
rette and some coffee, we chatted
over the din of MIDI surf rock tunes
chirping from a nearby computer.
Flagpole: So how did you guys
come across the Atari cartridges?
What's the deal with that ?
Brian Smith: Well... [extended
pause, exchanging of glances]
...we're going to remain obscure on ^
that point. s
B
-<
FP: Okay, fine... you know, all these
questions that I ask that are sort of general and
vague are going to be specific and on track when I
go bock and write them down to look as if Vve pre
pared them.
BS: Suffice it to say the Ataris are "heavily
modified.*
FP: Heavily modified—could you elaborate?
BS: Well you just solder in an output...
sort of conglomerate?
BS: Well OGLY basically started when I was
kicked out of the Quiet Men. I had this 3-6 a.m.
deejay slot at 90.5, so me and a friend, well
actually several friends...
FP: If memory serves, even me a
couple of times...
BS: Right and we would make psy
chedelic sound collages that every
week kind of gained in intensity and
depth and complexity until there were
dozens and dozens of tracks of psy
chedelic shit happening at once, and
we would just broadcast that, every
week. The name of the show, to reflect
the obscurity, and the tongue-in-
cheek avant-garde dorkness of it was
from Dieter, on [Mike Myers' "Saturday
Night Live" sketch] Sprockets, or what
we supposed he would play on the
radio: "We are ordinary Germans, like
yourselves." Plus, it was fun to say.
So, anyways, OGLY became kind of
a catch-all term for anything I was
doing that, uh, didn't involve the
Quiet Men. Since then, it has assumed
many identities. There was the
Chocolate Album and Peter Keane and
I put together an arcade-music album.
That is essentially a nine-song album
full of arcade songs made from sam
pling multiple arcade machine emu
lator software.
So I had been doing that and Trey
knew this programmer and we talked
about it and it was like, 'Oh yeah,
okay, this is a natural fit* I had
always wanted to take the arcade
music live, but it was just too much of
. an ordeal to do it So, now, here's the
hardware and you can't actually play
"songs" but you can perform and
improvise with it Geek-jazz.
FP: Talking about the machines.
there are nine tones available on the
machines, is that right?
BS: Twelve.
FP: So is it a 12-tone scale?
BS: No, there are octaves and there is a I-IV-V
in there, and you can switch between major and
minor and atonaL The possibilities are... limited.
FP: So what are your working methods?
Trey McManus: ...and have a friend who writes
a program for the console.
FF: So you know the guy who makes these car
tridges?
FP: Admittedly...
BS: So how did Trey and I meet?
TM: It's about as "anti-rock* as you can get.
BS: Trey used to play in The Envelopes, and
then...
TM: I met him on the Internet and we just
started shooting the shit
FP: How did the two of you come up with the
idea for this project? Was it driven completely by
the idea of a musical Atari?
TM: Pretty much... the idea of an Atari 2600
that you can make music with is... weU... [makes
a series of favorable expressions].
TM: We had a mutual friend: Jeremy Smith.
BS: So, after I got kicked out of the
Modfathers, Trey got called in to replace me, then
he got kicked out of the Modfathers. So we had
been hitting each other tangentially for years and
we were brought here by Rick.
FP: So are you guys the bst remaining members
of Ordinary Germans Like Yourselves or is it still a
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Raspote Guide to Athens
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36 FUGP0LE.C0M • APRIL 27, 2005