I think I first heard Kenny Dixon Jr. play it at a 3 Chairs night at what was The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield on Saturday 11th May 2002. It’s one of those tunes that deposits itself in your memory bank, with the lyrics being a repetition of the tune’s title, and the title of the tune itself seeming like a self-referential affirmation of the tune’s hook. It’s one of those tunes that’s so good that you just have to track it down. And track it down was what I tried to do, although initially with little success. I distinctly remember searching for the tune in Northampton, Nottingham and Leeds, but to no avail. Even the Internet proved fruitless with online stores being ‘out of stock.’ But despite not having a copy of the tune, I listened to it silently – silently through memory. In itself, this is no big deal. I’ve had these experiences countless times before, playing tunes back through the sound system of my mind. In fact, in one instance I had to rely on this silent approach to listening throughout an eight-year search for a different tune – that shall also remain nameless – but this tune had no vocals, no well known sample, in short, nothing to ‘go on.’ Following a lead from a fellow reveller who informed me of the record label, I finally tracked the record down in Oxford. So consequently, with my frustration threshold set pretty high, I knew I had it in me to continue searching for the record I think I first heard Kenny Dixon Jr. play at a 3 Chairs night at what was The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield on Saturday 11th May 2002. And indeed I continued to search, until three years later, when I picked up a copy of the tune in Vibes record store in Oak Park, Michigan. The tune was now tangible, at least to me. And I can listen to it repeatedly for real, although when I am away from the decks it still plays silently in my mind. And now it’s like the tune is further rendered silent through an absence of information, with this silence further alluded to via the accompanying image of the grooveless flip side; the flip side of the tune that I think I first heard Kenny Dixon Jr. play at a 3 Chairs night at what was The National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield on Saturday 11th May 2002.
This work was exhibited as part of the show Then the Silence Increased curated by Ben Gwilliam & Helmut Lemke, at the Chapman Gallery, the University of Salford in 2007.