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Over the Edge (radio)

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Over the Edge (or, OTE) is a sound collage radio program hosted and produced in the United States by Don Joyce, who is also a member of Negativland. Founded in 1981, OTE is broadcast live on KPFA in Berkeley, California, every second, third, and fourth Thursday morning from 12am to 3am. On the rare occasion of a month with a fifth Thursday OTE runs an additional two hours, from 12am to 5am.

1 History and format
- 1.1 Topics
- 1.2 Receptacle programming
2 Discography with Negativland
3 External links

History and format

Joyce has broadcast OTE since June 1981, usually solo, but sometimes with collaborators. OTE began as a rather conventional music show, though Joyce gradually experimented with the format, due to his disaproval for what he saw as radio's primary function (encouraging listeners to buy music recordings).

In the mid-1980's, when Joyce began collaborating with Negativland, OTE established the distinctive format it currently follows. All or some of Negativland's other members occasionally make guest appearances on OTE. Joyce uses sound collage techniques, weaving many sources together throughout the program. Sources might include recordings of other radio programs (including old time radio shows), portions of documentary films, songs and various special effects, typically all related to a pre-selected theme. Joyce declares that with OTE, he and his collaborators "create 'direct-reference' collages, manipulating and mixing both found and original sounds to produce a new kind of audio animal. O.T.E. is always concerned with recycling existing cultural elements to some new, unintended effect."[1] Crosley Bendix was a pseudonymous radio announcer personality created and played by Joyce for a series of commentaries for the radio program. Bendix was touted as the Cultural Reviewer of the Universal Media Netweb; a fictional, authoritative body on all things multimedia. He typically greets listeners with a cheery "Good hello!" Most famously, Bendix introduced listeners to "squant", the fictitious "fourth primary color", which was also the only primary color to have its own unique scent. UMN is supposedly funded by a wealthy recluse, C. Elliot Friday, who lives in a secret retreat on or near Howland Island and emerges every four years to run for President on the Universal Party ticket. The opening theme music is from Heaven and Hell (1975), by Vangelis. At the end of each episode, a woman's voice is played, reading a statement attributed to photographer Man Ray: "To create is divine. To reproduce is human."

Topics

Joyce typically follows one theme for an entire program. Topics vary wildly, from motion pictures, to various music and copyright issues and the CIA; one episode each was devoted to Ken Nordine and to radio comedy team Bob and Ray. Usually only a few times a year, Joyce does an episode in a series called "Another UFO". Each episode examines one facet of the unidentified flying object phenomenon, such as alien abduction, cattle mutilation, or the Roswell UFO incident. These episodes are a fan favorite, based on the fact that these are the only OTE episodes with their own category on Negativland's mail order page. Most of 2006 featured a lengthy series, first called "How Radio Isn't Done" (about pirate radio and other broadcasting renegades), followed by "How Radio Was Done" (about the history of radio as a cultural phenomenon).

Receptacle programming

The audience phone participation ("Receptacle Programming") is another element: listeners are encouraged to call in, and are placed on-air, sometimes two or three at a time, with no prior screening. Listeners can then play their own recordings for OTE, offer commentary or non-sequiturs, or, less often, converse with Joyce. People are allowed to remain on the air as long as Joyce judges their contributions valuable, from a few seconds to several minutes or more. The highly improvisational content and late hour of the broadcast attract a variety of colorful callers. According to Joyce[2], Receptacle Programming is, ideally, a collaboration:

Receptacle programming is there to deposit ideas and sounds from the real, live, simultaneous life outside our broadcast studio. Real-time participation allows a direct interaction with our mix as it is happening. Thus, musicians can join in with an over-the phone instrument and follow our live beat or provide a responsive bed for our elements. This, as we like to say, is best accomplished by listening to the show on stereo headphones tuned to KPFA when you call, and holding the telephone like a microphone. Then the caller is "in" the mix, hearing his or her own real-time sounds being broadcast right along with our mix in headphone stereo. Some callers have their own mixers which they connect to their phones and send in their own rather elaborate mixes of music and tapes with their own effects added.

There are only two rules for callers: (1) When the phone stops ringing, you're on the air; (2) Don't say "Hello."

Discography with Negativland

Throughout the '80s and '90s and beyond, Over the Edge has also been an outlet for Negativland's creativity. The group participated in many of the shows, a few of which have been released as edited-down CDs: