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The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is better than Bachman-Turner Overdrive
03.12.2019
02:00 pm
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Somewhere Tom Hanks is weeping. For when the Boston Typewriter Orchestra performs, the primary musical technique consists of beating holy hell out of a bunch of vintage typewriters. The filmic embodiment of Chesley Sullenberger is known to be such a fan of old typewriters that he recently published a moderately typewriter-themed collection of stories called Uncommon Type, which (of course) was written on a vintage typewriter. 

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra doesn’t collect typewriters—it punishes them. In their promotional materials they claim (boast?) that typewriters do not last longer than two years once they have been recruited as instruments for the waggish collective.

The combo, which occasionally calls itself “BTO,” has been in existence since 2004 and has a 2008 album and a 2017 10-inch to its name. It has never been idle, performing multiple times in every calendar year since then; despite logging dozens of performances in the New England area, they have never ventured further south or further west than Washington, DC. That changes next month when they play Phyllis’ Musical Inn in Chicago.
 

 
As will readily be imagined, the BTO’s primary mode of music is percussive, although they do get a lot of mileage out of the damned bell that chimes whenever the typist reaches the end of a line. (Then again, bells are percussion instruments too—Wikipedia’s description of a bell runs “a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument,” ahem.) Suffice to say that with a gizmo as complicated as an old typewriter, there are a lot of solid moving parts to fiddle with—you can bash the keys, bang on the housing, crank the platen around, slam the carriage back, and (as mentioned) twiddle on the bells.

Who are the relevant comps for a band like this? The BTO strikes me as a hipster’s cheeky version of a jug band, although I can see an argument for Einstürzende Neubauten. Visually the gang tends to adopt the garb of a midcentury office drone, meaning lots of jackets and ties.

It’ll be a while before the Boston Typewriter Orchestra passes the “other” BTO in terms of sales. I refer of course to Winnipeg’s greatest contribution to boogie rock, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, who released five gold albums during the 1970s. When are the typists going to release their version of “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”?

In 2017 the group released a 10-inch (the title is adapted from George Michael) called Termination Without Prejudice, Volume 1. Etched in the runout of side 1 is the phrase “HOW MANY WORDS PER MINUTE?” You can buy it on Bandcamp.
 

 
Here’s Termination Without Prejudice, Volume 1, available on Bandcamp:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra covers Kraftwerk’s ‘Radio-Activity’

Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.12.2019
02:00 pm
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Clackity clack: Typewriter art throughout the 20th century
04.24.2014
04:33 pm
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Typewriter art
Italic Ode, Dom Sylvester Houédard (U.K., 1971)
 
In 2014, ASCII art has been a familiar form of pictorial art for at least two decades, whereas typewriters are hardly ever used un-ironically, they have become the vintage terrrain of hipster collectors. But it was not always so. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at least to judge from Alan Riddell’s fascinating 1975 collection Typewriter Art (available for free download at monoskop.org). In this well-organized and respectful volume, you find out that artists have been tinkering with typewriters in a serious way at least as far back as the 1920s (at least that’s where Riddell starts his narrative). We’ve all seen dada experiments with typography; it was a Bauhaus domain of playful experimentation as well.

Riddell includes a terrific 1878 quotation from Mark Twain, describing his recent acquisition of a “new-fangled writing machine” that had been perfected by Christopher Latham Sholes and put on the market in 1874: “It will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don’t muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.” How many of you out there are “leaning back” while piling “awful stacks” of pixelated words on your screen? Actually, I am doing that right now (leaning back, I mean).

Riddell’s book includes selections from the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India, Turkey, and many others. The artworks span the 1920s to the 1970s, but in truth an awful lot of them are concentrated in the 1968-1972 period—it appears to have been something of a vogue, sharing at least a little DNA with, say, the Fluxus movement.

I’ll say this: ASCII art this ain’t. (The book does include some portraits of Churchill and Gandhi and a few other personages that are quite similar to ASCII art.) I prefer this stuff, the fact of it having been created by an inky mechanical contraption gives it more charm.

 
Typewriter art
Typestract, Dom Sylvester Houédard (U.K., 1972)
 
Typewriter art
Homage to John Cage, Bengt Emil Johnson (Sweden, 1962)
 
More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.24.2014
04:33 pm
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Chihuahua skeleton made from old typewriter parts
12.19.2013
12:05 pm
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I wish there were more photos of this chihuahua skeleton sculpture made entirely from typewriter parts by artist Jeremy Mayer. I wonder how big it is? Is it life-size? It must be.

According to Mayer’s Tumblr, he’ll be posting more photos of this piece in the next few days. Hold tight.

Via Boing Boing

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.19.2013
12:05 pm
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Vintage Graphic Designs for Olivetti Typewriters
05.10.2010
08:18 pm
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image
designed by Egidio Bonfante for the Olivetti Valentine - 1970
 
image
designed by Giovanni Pintori - 1949
 
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designed by Ettore Sottsass for the Olivetti Tekne 3 - 1964
 
Loads of delightful images here.
 
Graphic Design for Olivetti

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.10.2010
08:18 pm
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