Hot Dog, You Bet!

• click on title to listen  (10 minutes 11 seconds) •

Hot Dog, You Bet! is an audio-montage composed for – and released on a flexi-disc in – the third issue of Smegma the Magazine in 1979. With the creative camaraderie of artist and magazine co-editor Scarlatina Lust, it was edited and executed by AleXander Hirka. The final recording was assembled in a friend’s multi-track home-studio in Manhattan.

Hot Dog, You Bet! was voted a favorite recording by noted music critic Lester Bangs in the November 1980 issue of the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll.

Among the sound treasures included in this piece are: a dada sound-poem by Raoul Hausman read by the late artist Buster Cleveland, an entire song by the local New York City band Tina Peel, Theodore Chipmunk manually “sampled” chanting the title, bits of a Beatles’ Xmas record, choice lessons from a sexual hygiene recording,  a reference to writer Thomas Pynchon, a fragment from a multi-album vinyl recording of somebody’s actual wedding found in a trashcan in NYC, Hayley Mills providing feminine laughter etiquette,  and ~ the audio kitchen sink.

All 4 issues of Smegma the Magazine now reside in the Museum of Modern Art library’s permanent collection. Complete sets are extremely rare and sell for around 1000 dollars.

(Eva-Tone, at that time the only domestic manufacturer of flexi-discs, refused to produce the disc because of its content. Thus, the flexi-disc had to be pressed in England and shipped back to the U.S., risking problems with importation. Thankfully, all went well.)

This track was included on the compilation CD entitled “Beethoven’s Fifth Nightmare” and other sound montages of Alexander Hirka.  Read about it here.