Video: Fiery Furnaces, “Charmaine Champagne”

July 30, 2009



This video was posted to Vimeo eight days ago, but we are only now putting it up out of fear the Friedbergers may have lost their marbles. As the band stated on their website yesterday, their next album will be a silent one. Read the whole crazy statement after the jump, go see them on their upcoming tour, buy their new album filled with scattered jams like this one and view what may be their final listenable video above. Save their marbles!


Because file-sharing, or downloading, or whatever, has notoriously, or supposedly, made the production of the conventional ‘with-audio’ record obsolete, the Fiery Furnaces will release a Silent Record.

The Fiery Furnaces’ next album will consist of instruction, conventional music notation, graphic music notation, reports and illustrations of previous hypothetical performances, reports and illustrations of hypothetical performances previous to the formation of their hypotheses, guidelines for the fabrication of semi-automatic machine rock, memoranda to the nonexistent Central Committee of the Fiery-Furnaces-in-Exile concerning the non-creation of situations, Relevant to Progressive Rock Division, conceptual constellations on a so-to-speak black cloth firmament, and other items that have nothing to do with the price of eggs, or milk, or whatever the proverbial expression ceased to be.

In other words, a Silent Record. You will note that there have been countless Anticipatory Plagiarisms of this endeavor. For instance, more than a millennium of sheet music. We hope to have learned from their numerous mistakes.

Upon release of the record, the band will organize a series of Fan-Band concerts, in which groups of perfectly ordinary Fiery Furnaces’ fans will perform, interpret, contradict, ignore, and so on, the compositions that make up Silent Record. Write to thefieryfurnacesemail@gmail.com to nominate your post office break room, truck stop parking lot, municipal arts center, local tavern, or what-its-name to host one of these ‘happenings’. By ‘happenings’ I mean, what will be in the future, perfectly normal rock shows. And propose yourself for Fan Band participation.

No experience necessary.


Video: Fiery Furnaces, “Charmaine Champagne”