TW #65–#66 — Tracking as an Olympic Sport, parts I–II (Blackwolf)
Written from Atlanta during the 1996 Games: a mock letter to the organising committee proposing tracking as an exhibition sport, and a mock refusal. The joke describes, quite precisely, the compo format the scene took for granted.
Key claims#
- The proposed event is a standard compo scaled up: the sample pack is handed out at the opening ceremony, entrants have two weeks in a "Tracking Venue" and "have to use the trackers provided and the samples provided", the songs are played to an audience, "music judges from around the world" vote, the winner plays at the closing ceremony (#65).
- The "teams" he lists are the scene's national strongholds as seen from #trax in 1996: a USA "Dream Team", "the Finnish World Domination", Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Greece (#65); part II adds Australia and the Netherlands and complains that "just about everybody on the USA Dream Team is either named Andy or Dan" (#66).
- The refusal's punchline — "Faster: it doesn't take any skill to up the tempo of a song" — and the moral: "maybe it's good to stay underground so-to-speak, and break out of the cave gradually … Tracking is cool, go track, be the best that you can be" (#66).
- Part II opens with the Centennial Park bombing of 27 July 1996, which dates the piece.
Relevance#
Light reading, but the only TraxWeekly text that spells out the generic compo procedure (fixed sample pack, fixed tools, time box, jury/vote) outside the 20-minute-chip-compo rules — used on compos.