Earth Chronicles Audio Vault

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Love of Rock

By David Kattenburg

Between the winter of 1992 and spring 1994, backpack on my back and vintage, analog Nagra III reel-to-reel tape recorder over my shoulder, I traveled across Canada – twice — visiting places and interviewing people from Prince Edward Island to the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Out of this audio-recording adventure, thirty-two hour-length docs emerged, exploring planet Earth, global ecology, and sustainable human endeavour. The Earth Chronicles, the series was called.

Together with co-producer Peter Hutton, I raised an astonishing $120,000 for the radio project (equivalent to about $220,000 dollars today).

Producing The Earth Chronicles was a task of epic proportions. In a room at the Yellow Brick House, on Strathcona Street South, countless hours were spent listening back to all these voices, recorded on dozens and dozens of reels of quarter-inch tape; wax pencil and razor blade in hand, slicing, splicing and assembling sequences; lengths of magnetic tape around my neck, over my shoulder and knees, and piled up neatly across the floor.

Across town, in the production studio of 93.3 CFMU, McMaster University Radio, I pumped out thirty-two editions of the Earth Chronicles, all perfectly narrationless — voicescapes.

Here’s one of the first editions in the Earth Chronicles series — Earth in Motion — featuring some of Canada’s great geologists and Earth system scientists (William Fyfe, Digby McLaren, Paul Hoffman), and a host of other Earth scientists, geologists and humble rock lovers.

Earth in Motion also features a singer-songwriter named Shawn O’Halloran. Shawn was one of Hamilton’s most talented artists. ‘Tectonics’ is one of fourteen songs he wrote for The Earth Chronicles, and performed, on guitar, accompanied by veteran Hamilton-area percussionist (and CFMU jazz host) Paul Panchezak. Shawn O’Halloran passed away in 2019, way before his time.

Listen to Earth in Motion. Click on the play button above, or go here.