Ron Geesin

Composer, performer, sound architect, writer, lecturer, broadcaster and interactive designer, was born in Ayrshire, 1943.

He co-wrote Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother [EMI CD] and made Music From The Body [EMI CD] with Roger Waters. After his first solo album A Raise Of Eyebrows [Transatlantic 1967], he became one of the first one-man record companies with As He Stands, Patruns and Right Through. His first book of poems and stories Fallables appeared in 1974.	At Abbey Road with his Atom Heart Mother score
CDs include HEADSCOPE's Funny Frown (1991) and Bluefuse (1993), CHERRY RED's Hystery (1994) and CLEOPATRA's (LA) Land Of Mist, June 1995. SEE FOR MILES reissued his first 2 albums on CD in 1995.

His Tune Tube,a giant interactive walk-through tube in sound and light 'played' from the inside by individuals' body-movements, was a huge success at The Art Machine exhibition for 'Glasgow 1990' ("it takes the prize": The Times).

In the Tune Tube

For Expo 70 (Osaka Japan), he made a large multi-source sound-work in the British Pavilion. He and his wife Frances designed and installed Tri-Aura (interactive textile triptych) at The Science Museum in 1996 and he designed the quadraphonic Singing Bridge for its new Challenge of Materials Gallery in 1997. In 1998 he created 2 public interactive events in Portsmouth: Sound-A-Maze for Shock Waves Festival and Sea Sound, the University of Portsmouth's exhibit for the International Festival of the Sea.

Media appearances range from sound specialist on The D.I.Y. Animation Show [BBC1TV], to his own One Man's Week [BBC2TV], commissioned features for Late Night Line Up [BBC2TV] and Crossing Bridges [C4TV], and character acting in Scotch Myths [C4TV] and Closerap [C4TV].

His improvised one-man show has been performed from folk clubs to the Albert Hall, from Scotland to Scandinavia since 1965 and features banjos, guitars, piano, poems and stories, milkchurns, electronics, coat-stands and, most importantly, the audiences themselves.

His collaborations with artist/writer Ian Breakwell include the quadraphonic Bellring (1996), their acclaimed 1993 large-screen video installation Auditorium and Breakwell's autobiographical TV series Public Face Private Eye [C4TV].

He describes his live improvisations as "sub-conscious flow", studio music as "electro-melodic sound-painting" and his life as "chance careering". Tony Palmer [The Observer]: "behind this manic subterfuge there lurks a powerful musical intelligence". Robin Denselow [The Guardian]: "an accomplished composer and musician, an experimenter on the free form edge, poet, and a comedian with a taste for the absurd".

Musical History

I was never particularly musical as a child but tended towards the solitary pursuits of stamps, moths, butterflies and girls. After shocking myself clawing up a pebbledash wall to catch sight of 3 naked girl-cousins changing clothes in my own bedroom, I turned to blowing harder on the mouthorgan and venting nervous energy on the banjo.

Actually, my first musical influences turned out to be awful. At the age of 10, I idolised 'mouthorgan virtuoso' Larry Adler and was allowed to stay up late to watch him on TV. I suppose 'watch' is about right since his hands fluttered like moths' wings and his forehead stood out like a ---! Later I realised the bloke was a joke when I got an EP of him audaciously jamming with the Quintette of the Hot Club of France. Against the soaring Django Reinhardt, Adler 'swung' like a badly-moored boat in a fast-flowing tide. Anyway, I was blowing, man - but after being jolted from the regular breath of sleep to huff and puff a bit of Bach across a smoked and fumed sitting room for some dinner guests of my parents, I never recovered. The classical LP in the house held sequined excerpts by that Queen of the piano, Liberace. To purge this, I had a 78 of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor by the organist Fernando Germani. Side 1 stopped in the middle of a light single-line passage and one had to attempt continuity by flicking the disc over quickly. Now, every time I hear that popular work, I expect it to pause in that awkward place. In sound, first impressions tend to stick.
Probably as a deep counter to all that polite Scottish-middle-class posturing, I took up the banjo and spent more time sitting on the toilet learning it than I did studying for my 'highers'(school exams). Toilet acoustics were beneficial too.

The banjo led me deeper into its origin via 'trad' jazz. I discovered jugband music . In parallel with my current theory that the 19th Century Afro-American could laugh at his 'boss' through banjo music, he could fart at him through the jug - usually a 2 to 5 gallon stone jar with a narrow neck into which was blown a 'raspberry', sometimes in tune. So, at 16, I was a one-man jugband with kazoo and mouthorgan in a neck sling, jug on a stand and banjo in both hands, laughing and farting at my environment.
Piano? My two sisters took piano lessons - a bit like a disease really. Every time I entered the room when they were practising, they stopped. So I started - playing the blues with three fingers on each hand. Before a year was up I had stretched to a total of nine, met the Original Downtown Syncopators at a gig in Glasgow and joined them six days later - professionally - thereby setting a model for my later definition, 'PROFESSIONAL: one who is paid by the public to continually practise on it.'

The Original Downtown Syncopators c.1962

Having thrown myself in and held down by having to play the 2nd half of that first night at the Mecca Ballroom, Preston, I progressed in bleeps and wounds. Even now, the fifth finger on my right hand creeps out only when everything's quiet around.

The next instrument I added to my one-man band was the tape recorder. At 21, I didn't actually swop a horn gramophone for one but it was nearly like that. Now I could make vast vistas of organised noise - and did .

Razor-Blader Ron - 1975

In 1981, helped by royalties from Atom Heart Mother and hours of TV music for Schools' maths and science programmes, I afforded a Fairlight II music computer. This further extended my palette of possibilities. An E-mu Emax and an early Mac were soon embraced. Now, I'm a confirmed E-mu man and continue with Macs - brand loyalty - but don't really care what the gadget is, so long as I can get something out of it. There's a problem now: I really need a permanent assistant to read the LogicAudio manual, just to tell me what to do. It's more than 'drowning in software' - we are a digit in the word! I'm glad one of mine still curls up a bit.

Influences

You'll see some of the bad ones in Musical History . The first main good ones were Victor Borge, The Goons, Chic Murray (Scottish comedian, deceased) and Surrealism.

The Hanging Bug (Geesin) c,1959

About the same time as banjo fixation I started to paint with water colours, sometimes greatly softened and applied with a collar-stiffener. Sometimes I couldn't sleep until I'd done one, leading me to the conclusion that, "Making art, being creative, is a positive way of using our nerve-ends." I walked about with my bible 'The Secret Life Of Salvador Dali' under my arm. He was a great artist - at playing the media.

Of the other surrealists, I still hugely appreciate Yves Tanguy and collect the illustrator Gustave Doré .

Absurdity in general fairly fires me up. When I was starting my own one-man eruption in clubs like Middle Earth, London, I never forget catching the end of the anarchic, dadaist organisation called 'The Alberts'. One of them, Bruce Lacey, played the amplified bicycle wheel and I very nearly wet myself.
Original (prototype) jazz music has eaten deep into my soul, or at least clings to my pullover like Indian cooking, and I still collect original 78s of important artists such as Coleman Hawkins, James P. Johnson, Buster Bailey, Billie Holiday and Earl Hines. Big bands such as McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Cab Calloway and Luis Russell, and chamber groups the John Kirby Sextet and MJQ are also very inspiring.
What I always called 'virtuoso ethnic music', later commonised as 'World music', has been a strong influence. When my good friend, jazz collector and sound restorer John R.T. Davies first played me a 1930s Dutch radio transcription disc of Balinese Gamelan, I was seduced. This soon led me into Indian and African music, and now I'm an avid follower of the bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) virtuoso Hariprasad Chaurasia and his disciple Rupak Kulkarni.
You can see that many individual artists amaze me. Labels and categories are just a bloody nuisance, but I love Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Elgar, Wagner, Schönberg, Varèse and Berio and hate Britten and Stravinsky. Joni Mitchell and Jaco Pastorius appeal too. A bit like pears and wine, I like things to mature before consuming.
The Dali bible has long gone but I found a better one about 25 years ago: 'The Importance Of Living' by the 20th Century Chinese philosopher/novelist Lin Yutang (surname first). He was an advocate of Taoism (the inevitable balance of all things) and gently reminds one of the Reasonable Way with such topics as 'the Importance of Loafing' and 'On Having a Stomach' - no mystic mug.

Interests

I love wood and sometimes collect it, intending to work it into some useful suitcase support or bookcase, but the woodworm usually gets there first. Particularly interesting are Walnut, Plum, Laburnum and Box. After doing the sound structure for an Arts Council film on the wood sculptor Sam Smith, I got to know him and first experienced woodturning on his lathe. He was a rough scraper man with blunt tools so I sharpened them - I wonder if I should! If I had another lifetime - after all the other ones - I'd turn wood .

Ron's Executive Toy

In England, there are so many wonderful apples with superb and contrasting flavours. You can't get them in shops of course. We've got Epicure, Ellison's Orange, James Grieve, Cox, Laxton's Superb and the great Bramley, but there's a constant war between the trees and fungal infection because we don't spray. I used to make cider from some of the Bramleys but the French do it so much better - with the right cider apple varieties - so le Chunnel is very handy.
If wine and beer is well made, without additives/chemicals, I'll probably like it. Less keen on red wine from cooked grapes: more keen on Burgundy (too expensive) and Loire than California and Spain. I get quite passionate about English real ale, properly served. Pubs with good cellars and caring landlords are rare and much appreciated.

My enthusiasm for Adjustable Spanners is the big one right now. The Americans call them 'wrenches', but good ones don't wrench, they grip and turn smoothly. My definition is: Any hand-tool specifically designed to be adjustable enough to grip and turn any nut which is within its span range - with the minimum of damage to the nut.

The Spannerium

The tools usually have either:
1) parallel jaws, of which at least one is adjustable, or;
2) one jaw formed as 2 sides of a hexagon - for hexagonal nuts, or;
3) other novel means of firmly gripping a nut, such as a tube containing sprung hardened-steel pins.

I got fascinated by the hundreds of ways we've thought up to grip and turn a nut. It all started when I stole a rare wedge-adjustor from my Dad's toolrack. I pick them up at car boot sales and sometimes from dealers, but like them 'as found', rusty. Cleaning's a secret!

Rare Wedge Adjuster

Indian and Chinese Food. I've never found birianis like they used to make in Leicester in the 1960s, so I set out to collect Indian cookbooks, the right spices and any techniques along the way - still learning, and doing. With most eastern cooking, the preparation embodies a lot of philosophy.
Genealogy. "Geesin? That's an odd name. Where's it from?" I was asked that question once too often so, spurred on by a virtual silence from my father, I set out. One of the most memorable events was cleaning the earliest-known 'Geesing' gravestone in the depopulated village of Barkestone, Leicestershire. I got a direct line back to 1650 with intermittent links to the village of Gissing, Norfolk around 1200. Sorting that out would take another lifetime. Now I've found American cousins an' everything.

Family

As it says on the original sleeve of 'A Raise Of Eyebrows' "married Frances Helene Reid on 27/8/66 and a good idea!" Well, it still is: we produced 3 boys who are all producing stuff in turn.
In between work, Joe's been producing the Nazereth fanzine, but has just done the last one. He also writes articles and reviews for Record Collector and is still looking to properly use his degree in Waste Management or how to lose turds.
Dan's in Amsterdam, Holland, being an artist with three prongs: 2- and 3-D work, videos and live performing songs with a small harmonium and a big voice.
Fraser's a comic - artist - in Brighton. At 6'5" (1.96M), he should be in Amsterdam but folds himself around a computer to make rhythmic sound utterances with a view to a view to a view. He's done a few gigs too - with his back to the audience - after the old man, I dare say.
Yes, I hate Christmas newsletters too.

Electroplate Bowl

Dr. Frances is very skilled in electroplating textiles and, for a lot of money, will wire you up and lock you in forever. For a bit extra, you can have trapdoors built in, and for even more a thought-operated system to open and shut them.

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