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1.
The Switch Doctor.
An open reel tape recording of the BBC radio programme featuring Daevid Allen’s tape composition, “The Switch Doctor”, broadcast on the Third Programme on September 19, 1967.
Quarter inch tape on a 7-inch plastic spool, recorded at 7.5 ips. Duration 32.20 (including George MacBeth’s introduction, in which he refers to Soft Machine’s “experimental amalgam of poetry, psychedelics and pop”, and the continuity announcer who begins and ends the broadcast in true BBC received pronunciation).
Allen was commissioned to make the tape collage for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1965, and he produced it in 1966 using his own equipment. MacBeth’s introduction was summarised for the Radio Times: “In this free-flowing treatment of poems, conversation, snatches of music and electronic sounds, Mr. Allen has constructed a radiophonic work in the borderland between literature and music. It takes its place alongside other recent experimental programmes, including [Edward] Crook and [Tim] Souster’s Seasons through the Day of a Town by the Sea and Rosemary Tonks’s Sono-Montage, but ultimately it should perhaps be listened to more in the spirit of a piece of music, such as John Cage’s Fontana Mix.”
MacBeth mentions William Burroughs in relation to Allen’s group, Soft Machine, but makes no mention of the fragments of Burroughs’ recorded voice which appear intermittently during the second half of the work, notably at the very end - “You never existed at all” (Allen knew Burroughs from the Beat Hotel and participated in Le Domaine Poétique).
“The Switch Doctor” was eventually released in 2013 as part of “The Death of Rock & Other Entrances” CD (not including MacBeth’s introduction), and the name ‘Switch Doctor’ was given to the live sound technicians for Allen’s post-Soft Machine band, Gong, in the early 70s.
In addition, the recording is preceded by another BBC programme, “An Anthology of Canadian Poetry”, first broadcast on the newly launched Radio Three on October 4, 1967. The programme, introduced by Douglas Hill, is notable for the inclusion of three poems read by “the young poet Leonard Cohen… whose writing is always aflame with surrealism and sexuality”. Duration 29.10. Produced by Dorothy Baker (who a few years before had been instrumental in getting Burroughs’ “Nova Dispatches” broadcast as part of Eric Mottram’s programme, “The Algebra of Need” [see item #41]).
Tape digitised and transferred to an accompanying CD. Contained in original, somewhat worn Scotch tape box.
Provenance: The Fred Hunter Archive.
