Fever Song by Howard Stelzer

I began writing "Fever Song" sometime in November, then in December I became quite sick. At first, I ignored my cough, putting it down to some seasonal something that must have been going around. Eventually, I had a low fever. I took some medicine and soldiered on. After all, I'm a public school teacher; kids get sick, a bunch of people catch whatever bug it is, we deal with it and tough it out. Teachers like to brag about becoming immune to illness after awhile.

Days went by and it was clear that I wasn't getting any better... at my wife's urging, I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with pneumonia. Now, pneumonia can be caused by many things... it's more of a symptom than a single illness. But I took some medicine, got into bed and remained there for a month.

Once the fever lifted, my wife told me how bad it had actually been. I only vaguely remember that stretch of time... we watched some movies, I tried to read but had trouble concentrating, I tried to eat but had no appetite... which is extremely out of character for me. In hindsight, I suspect that I had Covid-19... though there isn't strong evidence yet that the virus was in Massachusetts when I first became ill. Right now, all I know is that I've never been sicker my life.

My fever lifted at the very end of December... not completely, but I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. As soon as I noticed, I headed into my studio and completed this album. It typically takes me a year or so to write and record a piece of music on a scale like this one... but the urgency of "Fever Song" sprung from profound relief. And besides, I had this music in my mind the entire time I lay in bed, so I was clear about what I wanted out of it... the compositional decisions had been made during the haze of half-awake delirium ... they just needed to be ironed out.

I also, typically, like to release my music in some physical form... as I worked on "Fever Song", I'd been weighing which labels might want to release it. Again, recovery from my month-long illness changed those plans. I wanted people to be able to hear this right away. And so, considering it done, I released "Fever Song" as a digital-only album via Bandcamp, iTunes, all the usual online spots. The cover art reflects the urgency I felt... that's a post-it note on my kitchen floor. Ironically, it wasn't much longer before the world took cover indoors... and lots of artist/composers created work to be distributed only online, again because of the urgency of the pandemic but also because manufacturing and printing facilities temporarily shut down and the post office became a potentially dangerous place to go to... so labels had to slow their activities.

And so... what is "Fever Song"? The sounds were taken from instruments processed via cassette tapes and from recordings of controlled demolitions of power station cooling towers, notably those at Brayton Point Generating Station formerly located in Somerset, Massachusetts. I've had a lifelong fascination with power stations... they're amazing and terrifying structures. My "Brayton Point" album was built from recordings of the power station in action; "Fever Song" includes the sounds of its cooling towers being taken down with strategically-placed dynamite. The whole station was deactivated soon after I made "Brayton Point", due to environmental concerns... I'm not sure what's to become of all the buildings at the site where power generation took place... it's probably not safe to turn them into luxury condos... maybe Somerset MA can do what Berlin did with the power station in the center of their city, and turn it into an art/performance space. I'd go to that.

From my perspective half a year later, the coronavirus has devastated lives and economies around the world... and continues to do so... but America is in worse shape because President Dunning-Kruger abdicated responsibilities that he never had the capacity to fulfill in the first place. Maybe if we had more testing and a coherent pandemic response, I'd know whether I had Covid 19 or not. And maybe I'd know if it's possible for me to catch it again. But right now, in June, my country is falling apart... people are terrified... the coronavirus still rages, but so does racism and police brutality and so many other things... becoming healthy after a month+ of fever felt pretty great at the time, but today it seems unseemly to celebrate such a small personal victory.

So I offer you an album built from the sounds of a massive, dangerous power structure being taken down by force.

- HS. June 2020

Tracklist

1.	Fever Song	41:46

Credits

released December 30, 2019

composed/recorded at The Hotel Amnesia (Lowell, MA) Winter 2019.
tapes, percussion, strings, woodwinds, microphones, etc.

License