Reflection:
I ultimately ended up selecting what was once the music club CBGB as my historical site for my sound walk. Having been the starting place for many well-known bands (in addition to my own personal interest in the genres) I felt that it was an important spot that deserved to be recognized. My sound walk, titled “NY’s Punk & Rock Scene – CBGB”, is meant to be informative, with occasional clips of live music performed by the bands that played there throughout. Including sounds such as a narrator, the voice of the owner of the club himself, the voice of The Ramones, music and street noises, I made sure to have a variety of clips, keeping things interesting. Overall, I wanted the audience to leave really knowing more about this location than they did before as well as get a feel for the punk scene. As far as information is concerned, I had my narrator talk about the things I researched and pulled clips from an interview where Hilly Kristal (the owner) talks about the club and his experiences. To get that punk feel, I chose an interview with Kristal (who’s voice is deep and old) that sounded somewhat gritty and made sure that the music clips I was including were from live recordings so that the audience could hear its imperfections. A clip of a song by Dead Boys was also intentionally placed at the very beginning of the audio in order to get the audience in the right mindset for the rest of the piece. I even went as far as to look up some punk posters from the club and tried to reference that in the map I designed through both style and color. I liked the idea of my audience being able to hear all of these archival sounds and have references to the style of the time while walking through the area present day, imagining what it must have been like and submerging themselves. Ultimately, I was satisfied with my piece, and want to continue experimenting with audio in the future.
