Found Tapes Exhibition (more info)

Found in Maastricht

Three years ago, in the summer of 2005, I was in Maastricht with my wife and two children, where we visited my mother and my brother and his family, like we so often do, for many years already. Late on a saturday evening in july my brother drove us back from his home in Heer, back to my mother’s house, in Malberg, where we were staying.

When he turned up the John F. Kennedy bridge, to cross the river on the corner of the Sibemaweg and the Dokter Nevenstraat, in the light spreading from the streetlights I noticed a but too familiar reflection on the pavement ...

Ever since in early 2002 out of curiosity I started to pick up clods and tangles of thrown away cassette tape that in those days still were abundantly littering the streets of most of our cities, in order to find out what is on them, I developed something like a ‘third eye’ for tape litter lying around in the street.

I notice these bit and knots of tape because of their texture, the way in which it reflects the light, and the way it moves with the wind …

Also this time it was indeed a cast-away piece of cassette tape lying there on the pavement, wound around the pole of a street sign, in the glow of a street light ...
I decided that I would go back there to pick it up the next morning.

On that morning – it was Sunday july 24th , 2005 - I had an early start. I left my mother’s house in Malberg, in the very upper north-east corner of town at 8h45, and started walking, knowing that on an early sunday this would surely lead me to my destination far more quickly than waiting for one of the sparse buses would.

I walked down the Via Regia, continued along the Ruttensingel, went left on the Tongerseweg, then took the Hertogsingel, and crossed the John F. Kennedy bridge.
At about ten o’clock I reached the corner where the other night I spotted the tape. Sure enough, it was still lying there, still wrapped around the metal pole of that street sign.

On the way, to my own surprise, I had already picked up two other clods of tape. One was lying on the grass of the roundabout where the Via Regia crosses the Nobellaan and the Porseleinstraat, and a second one I picked up on the Kennedy bridge, near the beginning of the Alfons Ariensstraat.

And there was lots more of them to cross my way on my way back …

When I arrived at my mother's house, at about 12h15, I carried with me no less than fourteen plastic bags that I had filled with ‘tape salad’ ... Half of this I found along the Cabergerweg and the Carl Smulderssingel, which lead from the center of town to Oud-Caberg and Malberg ...

Curious to know what was on them ? Then listen to the ‘Found in Maastricht’-tapes audio montage, here on ‘Maastricht Moet Je Horen’. It has, in chronological order of their finding, fragments of each one of the fourteen cassette tapes that I picked up in the streets of Maastricht on july 24th, 2005 …

The first one, that I picked up on the Via Regia about nine o’clock in the morning, proved to be the most curious one of the lot. On that tape we hear a young man from Maastricht who is singing popular songs, while accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar. His repertoire consists in a large number of oldies ("Oh my darling Clementine", "House of the Rising Sun", "Love me tender") and some of the classic pop hits many of us know and love, like "Nights in white satin" (Moody Blues), "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (U2), "Venus" (Shocking Blue), "Streets of London" (Ralph McTell) … More curious even is the fact that apparently this young man recorded the songs on a telephone answering machine, as his singing and guitar playing is alternating with recorded telephone conversations in Maastricht dialect. Several of these conversations are with a friend. They make plans for the weekend, and discuss what and how much one should eat in order not to get too drunk too quickly, and avoid a hangover ...

Enjoy! And if by chance someone recognizes the young man’s (his name appears to be Kurt), his friend’s (Gerrit ?) or his mother’s voice, then please let me know! I would love to know how on earth the tape with their recordings ended up on the grass of that Via Regia roundpoint …

Harold Schellinx
Found Tapes Exhibition / Found in Maastricht