Duckin' and Dodgin' (Poor Reception)

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined version of Duckin' and Dodgin' by Christian Hagelskjaer From.

"From the beginning, my idea was to mess with the somewhat joyful vibe of the song. Even if the lyrics of the first two verses aren't really party material, the whole thing still boogies quite a bit. I played around with a few different ideas all aimed at getting more "prison" and less "song". I tried isolating the vocals and replace the grooving guitar with something more somber, but it didn't quite click.

Then I had the idea of filtering the track to make it even more "old-radio" sounding than it already is, while varying the gain, in a slightly erratic way - reminiscent of poor radio reception. I mean, what are the odds of getting a good, strong signal, behind the steel bars and reinforced concrete of a prison?

To add to the vibe, I whipped out a little contraption of my own making: two springs from a Luxo lamp, suspended over an empty 19 inch rack enclosure. Makes great steely reverb sounds when bowing the springs with a cello bow, and works well as a percussion instrument too."