The Volunteer's Collective (VC) was initiated in Baltimore in 1989 by "no one in particular." The idea was to form a utopian-minded, open-ended, conceptually generic enfeeble that would take on projects which were outside of the value-system or perceptual/social regimentation of the prevailing culture that required or benefited from a large group. In principle, anyone could take up this collective banner and use it as a context for their activities or for organizing a large group without restriction, for whatever that was worth. The value of having a repeated generic context was to build a history and sense of decentralized continuity in the dark, as it were. Also, to simply encourage people to feel their power in relation to this kind of activity, and to encourage it.

Although music groups like The Scratch Orchestra, MEV, The Portsmith Symphonia, The London Musicians Collective (as well as nonmusical sources like "The Happenings," Situationism, & like events) were an inspiration, the initial idea was that the the VC would be an ensemble taking on improvisation-heavy "scores" for actions that were not music per se, but were more "out of compartment experiments." For instance the first score that was conceived right along with the idea of the VC involved organizing a large group to perform a score for switching on and off all the lights in a very visible house at night according to precise rhythmic notation. The second piece, "Above Below Zero" was to involve players working with differences in temperature in subzero climates. The third piece, conceived years later (and dedicated to Brian Wollee) was to have involved a percussion concert subsumed within an omni-directional sound field of white noise, loud enough to almost completely obscure the players.

As it turned out, NONE of these pieces were ever realized, for no particularly good reason. I would still like to see all of them realized, and have some partially developed scores.

Instead, beginning in 1989 a few months after it was conceived, The Volunteer's Collective immediately was used as a generic context used for what were essentially large group music improvisation performances, semi-structured sound/music pieces, and other borderline music events that involved performances in unexpected locations. The primary sites of these events were in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, mainly organized by myself in Baltimore and very vigorously by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (AKA Anonymous) in Pittsburgh. Of these ongoing VC events, there have been probably in excess of 30 large scale events. Particularly in Pittsburgh, these got into many interesting site-specific areas. Many of the people involved in these events were probably only tangentially aware of the history and exact dimensions of the VC context. A very large and varied group of people have been involved. The context has existed as a kind of shadow in the experimental/improvised music underground, providing some amazing experiences, but largely being very low-profile.