Clack-Clack-Clack

Friday is fun because it's about music. So there's always at least one playlist...

I feel like we know each other pretty well. I mean, I won’t ever met you in person perhaps. But we’ve shared a lot. And I’ve been sharing a lot about myself – through writing – for a couple of decades now. Longer, if I count my first forays into writing. There wasn’t much of an audience for that. Though it was never for my lack of trying.

Anyway, I feel very comfortable telling you about the p0rn that I am into.

Yes. It’s typewriters.

I’ve got saved searches on TradeMe, Etsy, eBay…the works. I’ve started listening to a typewriter podcast. I’ve downloaded pictures. I have a folder of YouTube videos – documentary snippets, mostly I’m into the vintage stuff.

Like most obsessions, it just kinda crept up on me.

One day I was there thinking about how I’d love to own an Adler, because it was one of Stanley Kubrick’s favoured models. Next thing, I was thinking about how the typewriter models get switched in his version of The Shining – and hardly anyone notices. Let me tell you, it was a short series of, um, keystrokes later, and I’m all signed up to a lot of watchlists.

I like to watch.

Typewriters are my connection to writing. When I first started putting down stories and poems it was on an electric typewriter – because my handwriting has always been like that of a drunken doctor.

My dad seemed to win things in sales competitions. That’s how we got our first CD player. And how I got my electric typewriter.

We had an old analogue typer in the house when I was younger, and I used to muck around on that. Such fun.

When I’d visit the office where my dad worked, I’d clack on the keys of an abandoned typewriter if we were in there over the weekend. The office had a residual fog and stench of cigarette smoke and I liked to imagine it being all go there – people yelling across the clacking of keys: A scoop here, a scoop there…

It wasn’t a newsroom. It was the accounts department behind the sales offices in a car yard. But in the 1980s, offices all blurred – and looked like the offices on TV and in the movies. And typewriters and very primitive computers made them all look as one.

Anyway, what’s this got to do with music you are rightfully asking – if you’re still reading, that is…

I’ve made a giant playlist of Typewriter Music.

There are more songs out there with a typewriter working percussively, or sampled as a sound effect, mood-setter or looping agent than you probably realised. There are songs that have typewriter in the title and lyrics, and there are duets between drums and typewriters – because one of the great reasons I love typewriters is that percussive aspect. I love that about computer keyboards too. Though it’s not quite the same.

I made this playlist – and decided to write about my newly (re)discovered typewriter fetish – because I got to thinking about several, er, key songs and musical motifs where the typer was part of the song, or set the mood.

The Prodigy’s breakthrough album, Music for The Jilted Generation, was one of the records that kickstarted my own vinyl collection – and it opens with a sample which I think is from the movie of Naked Lunch – “So, I’ve decided to take my work back underground”.

The Beat writers were a big part of my love of typewriters when I was at university. I’d travelled from Hawke’s Bay to Wellington with a car full of records and CDs and VHS tapes, my computer, my TV, my stereo…and my typewriter. Nowadays a student would have a phone, Bluetooth speaker and laptop – that would be everything. But I spent a day unloading all my stuff.

A few weeks later I’d be reading about the Beats, I’d be buying as many Bukowski books as I could, I’d be re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – and within and around all of these things, the typewriter was a motif.

I would hack out my own poems and stories on my electric typer. Partly because my handwriting was so bad I could barely read it myself, but also partly to feel connected to the legacy – I could call myself a writer (even if I wasn’t ready to put it on the departure cards). I was doing the thing. Writing, like the writers I loved. The end result wasn’t the same – the material wasn’t as good, but the process was in place. That’s what mattered most.

I loathe the term Fake It Until You Make It.

But I see now that’s what I was doing.

In the early 1950s, the composer Leroy Anderson created a wee typewriter concerto – using the office equipment as a musical instrument, it’s for a percussionist as much as it’s ever for a receptionist; it’s lovely rhythm both musical and comedic in a piece that has been performed on stages all around the world, and appeared in cartoon form, or live action.

Perhaps I saw Jerry Lewis’ rendition first. That might make sense. But I have loved the piece – as a serious work. So I like just listening to it, taking the comedic performance element away.

About a decade ago I was lucky to see the Blade Runner soundtrack performed live by an orchestra on a stage in Sydney. They used analogue synthesisers and typewriters as part of the line-up of instruments.

And another of my writer heroes, Lester Bangs, would take his typewriter on stage and smash out a review as a performance piece, even joining a band.

I dreamed of doing that. I really did.

My typewriter was thrown in a rubbish skip by my landlord. And I’m hazy on the details, beyond knowing that it was likely my fault. Or my laziness at the time.

A few years on, we bought a cheap typewriter as a prop – staged it in the house. It worked. But it mostly sat on a desk as a wee monument to writer. An installation. Then the kid arrived and as visiting toddlers liked to jam paper and bash keys we decided we maybe did not need the installation any longer.

Now I’m ready – again – for a typewriter. But it will be a vintage piece. And I will stop at one. I might have subscribed to a podcast, and got several books about typewriters out from the library. But I’m not about to be the next Tom Hanks.

Typewriter people scare me a wee bit. Like any mad collectors, there’s this sad/funny element, where you wonder what they’re actually collecting – and why.

And I’ve been there. In other ways. With other things.

This picture (below) sits above my desk. It’s been there for years. A reminder of the twin passions that push me to write. Music and typing. It’s always been about music and typing for me.

The love I have for typewriters is real. And today it extends over to some favourite pieces of music that feature typewriters. Scattered throughout this piece and collected up in the playlist.

Bonkers? I hope so!

But there’s another playlist as always. So there’s no typewriter extracts or references there. That’s just 20 songs you might enjoy over the weekend. A slight blues/R’n’B feel dominates today’s selection. It’s Vol.81 of A Little Something For The Weekend…Sounds Good!

Any typewriter enthusiasts out there?

Actually, keep your perversions to yourself. I don’t want to know!