WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Vintage Jeans Commercials: Fit For All

BY KRISTEN BIALIK

 

WATCH VIDEO: Collection - Vintage Jeans Commercials

 

“Once in a great while, a natural phenomenon occurs that is so beautiful, so dramatic, it overshadows everything else. Sergio Valente has created a phenomenon the whole world will be watching: Sergio Valente black denim jeans. They’re more than beautiful. They’re out of sight.” This is the narration for a Sergio Valente denim ad in the jeans collection. The voiceover is so deeply impassioned. The slowly-revolving pan shots around a backlit, denim-clad behind are so intensified. The tight shots of tight asses are so all encompassing. The ad is dramatic to the point that it must be hyperbole. But you can tell that it’s actually in earnest. And the funny thing is that behind the inflated language, there’s a grain of truth to the ad. Jeans have become an unstoppable phenomenon in the world of fashion and apparel. The ubiquity of jeans has become so universal that they are almost hidden in plain view. The phenomenon really is "out of sight."

Anthropologists Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward of the Global Denim Project consider the global denim phenomenon a perfect example of the “blindingly obvious.” The sheer scale of denim’s presence has made us take that presence for granted. In Miller and Woodward’s estimation, in the majority of countries in the world, the majority of people on any given day are wearing jeans. With the exception of rural areas in China and South Asia, Miller found that when he stopped and counted the first 100 people to walk by, about 50 percent of the population wore jeans everywhere from Brazil to India, from Turkey to the

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 207

Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere

The universe of music-sharing blogs just keeps expanding. My latest obsession is Lola Vandaag, which began posting in October 2011. Describing itself as ongeregelde verzameling geluid ("unregulated collection of sound"), this wonderful blog leaves no continent unappreciated.

Some of the delights you'll encounter: Enchanting radio broadcasts from the world over, street organ sounds, international religious oddities, smoldering dance bands, cantorial superstars, rantings of shamans and mushroom enthusiasts, sizzling accordionists, music that will make you cry—and that's just hoeing the topsoil. Dig in and get your ears dirty.

To whet your appetite, check out our lead-off item, below.

 

    
Various  ~  'Are 'Are: Flutes de Pan Mélanésiennes
(Blog: Lola Vandaag)

The Wisdom of Solomon Islanders
"The society in question is that of the 'Are'are, whose 8,000 members live in the southern part of Malaita....The 'Are'are call instrumental music 'au ("bamboo"), for, with the exception of the slit drum 'o'o, all instrumental music is played with instruments made of bamboo. The most gifted musicians, the true mane ni 'au ("men of music") continue even today to compose new mani 'au ("pieces of music"). Instrumental music is "programme" music (in the broadest sense, or in the narrower sense, one could call it "descriptive" music). Each piece, composed according to strict rules, carries a title which is a general résumé of the "programme." Bird calls, frog croaks, buzzing of insects and the cries of other animals, the patter of rain drops on a leaf, the murmur of a river or the roaring of the ocean, the crackle of branches in the wind; all the sounds of nature can furnish the theme for a composition. Man-made sounds can as well: children crying, the groaning of the sick or wounded, the snoring of sleepers, words, work noises, etc. Certain compositions are inspired by melodies coming from songs or from other types of instrumental ensembles. Certain pieces translate a visual theme such as the swaying of a spider or the come and go of people."  (Description by Hugo Zemp, taken from the liner notes to Volume 3 in this same series.) 

A Desperate Masterpiece: Lars Von Trier's Riget (AKA The Kingdom)

BY THOMAS MICHALSKI

Watch the first episode of Riget (The Kingdom) here.

Watch the whole series here.

By the earlier 1990s, Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier was already an internationally well-known art-house auteur, fresh from winning a slew of awards, including the Palm d’Or at Cannes, with Europa, the final film in a trilogy of the same name. His increasing notoriety and the end of Europa had brought his career to a crossroads, but figuring out what he would do next was complicated by the fact that his personal life was falling apart all around him. There was the divorce from his first wife, the death of his father, or at least the man he thought to be his father until his mother, who passed away soon afterward, informed him otherwise, and if that wasn’t enough, he had his cash-strapped production company, Zentropa, to worry about. In an attempt to raise some money, while also keeping things low impact, Von Trier agreed to co-write and direct a miniseries, the supernatural hospital drama Riget (The Kingdom), for Danish TV in 1994. From the outside, it must have looked like a step backward, career-wise, but if it had inauspicious beginnings, Riget would turn out to be some of Von Trier’s best remembered work and have a profound effect on what came after it.

Riget borrows its title from the nickname of the real life Danish hospital where it takes place, Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, though if it’s anything like on the show, you probably wouldn’t want to be a patient there. For one thing, it’s haunted as fuck, with the ghastly cries of a young girl emanating from an

Key Records Presents: The Fearless American (MP3's)

Last fall, Listener Mindwrecker wrote a fabulous post exploring the wonders of the 1960's far-right record label known as Key Records. I read it with great interest, because I've always picked up records on the Key label when they've crossed my past. They never fail to entertain, and can often inspire both a laugh and a touch of horror, within a few moments of each other. 

I bet I have close to a dozen Key releases down in my "spoken word" section, in the basement, of which my favorite, and yet also the most depressing, may well be the one Mindwrecker already shared, by Walter Brennan.

But here another prime example, an album featuring a speech by Dan Smoot, publisher of The Smoot Report, in which he extols the virtues of Mr. D. B. Lewis, who was a manufacturer of pet foods. (Smoot, it would seem, was a true believer. Not only was he associated with the Birchers, I learn from Wikipedia that he later went on to oppose George H.W. Bush's candidacy for the U.S. Senate on the grounds that Bush's positions were essentially those of a Democrat!)

It's amazing to hear, in this speech, which took place at some point during the run-up to the 1964 election, the same rhetoric, the same ideas, and in places, close to the same slogans, as those espoused in recent years by members of the tea party and its offshoots. Time, it's sad to say, doesn't do away with all bad ideas - "those who cannot remember the past..." and all that, I guess.

If anyone is interested, there could certainly be more Key Records mayhem to come!

Dan Smoot: The Fearless American, Part One (MP3)

Dan Smoot: The Fearless American, Part Two (MP3) 

Record Label (JPG)

(album cover to come soon - I'm having issues with my scanner)

"Harmony of Horror"

"Did you ever hear a melody of murder, a dirge of doom, a tune of terror?  Heh-heh!    Sharpen you ears and they will catch that strain right now!  Many things are possible in this strange world.  I should know ... I'm one of those things myself!  So harken closely and get the wits scared out of you!"

Thus goes the cheerful introduction to another happy little WFMU comics supplement, courtesy our host The Thing, coming from his very own comic book "The Thing" number five, from the October/November 1952 issue.

It appears that mayhem of every nasty kind has been perpetrated in the comics world by music and musicians, so let's look in on another poor soul done in by one of nature's most deadly forces -- right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 58

Earcandy for your eyes

Deafheaven playing live at Saint Vitus on February 22, 2013
After the break: Nails at Saint Vitus.

WHO’S GOING TO BELIEVE A TALKING HEAD?” 1985’S UNDEAD CLASSIC RE-ANIMATOR

BY ANTHONY GALLI

Watch the whole film + more HP Lovecraft related video on Network Awesome

Okay, so maybe there’s something to be said for not raising the dead. History seems to show that nothing good ever comes from it. Exhibit A: 1985’s Re-Animator.

Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 short story “Herbert West: Reanimator,” Re-Animator tells the story of a mad, young scientist who kills his mentor, an old mad scientist,while trying to bring him back to life. Dr. Herbert West is then, unsurprisingly, exiled from the University of Zurich to the now infamous Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts.

And yes, Lovecraft’s Arkham is the namesake of Batman’s notorious Arkham Asylum, home to such notorious reprobates as The Joker, The Riddler, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Bane. Small world.

Herbert West was convinced that animal life could be reanimated successfully after death because life is no more than merely a cellular reflex function; animals are nothing more than electrical machines. Dr. West was convinced that “the so-called ‘soul’ is a myth.”

West’s Promethean hubris will prove to have dire and fatal consequences. Or, as one famous margarine commercial from the 1970’s reminded us, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”

“Herbert West: Reanimator” is a modern-day re-telling (or, re-animation, if you will) of Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Gothic novel Frankenstein. Mary Shelley, 21-years-old when Frankenstein was originally

New Version of 1911's Revenge Anthem, "The Spaniard Who Blighted My Life" Winner of Free Music Archive's Latest Contest

For this month's Revitalize Music Contest, artists from Lisbon to Austin dug through public domain songs, got inspired, and submitted their creations to our contest repository. Our talented judges from the music, radio, and public domain worlds loved hearing the wide range of incredible entries, but eventually had to select a winning song.

OUR WINNER IS CROWN THE INVISIBLE

Crown the Invisible created an incredible power pop rendition of the 1911 revenge anthem "The Spaniard That Blighted My Life" by Billy Merson. The song tells the story of a man whose girl is charmed away by a Spanish bullfighter.

'Twas at the bull fight where we met him
We'd been watching his daring display
And while I went out for some nuts and a programme
The dirty dog stole her away

The winning band's been around for about a year, and are a blend between a studio compositional project and a raucous psychedelic act. They are all young, grizzled rock dudes who live and work in East Williamsburg warehouses, where they've been cultivating their space/stoner rock sound. They describe their band as "if Rick Wakeman played with Ride, but the songs were written by The Pretty Things while they watched Planet of the Apes and listened to Hawkwind." That is to say, they all grew up on early '90s and '60s British stuff.

The Face You Made; Arvo Zylo LIVE on My Castle of Quiet, 2.8.2013

Arvo Zylo's recordings / talents run the range from truly overwhelming, confrontational / chilling harsh noise, to thought-provoking experimental sounds rooted in the 1980s Raplh/LAFMS/post-TG international "noise boom." Over many releases and collaborations, he has maintained a character of the unexpected, though one always wants to hear what that next sonic mask will be. In the projects Blood Rhythms, Saint Street, and Mister Fuckhead, and simply under his own name, Arvo guarantees provocative listening, and the "catchy" or more-easily-palatable nature of the work will naturally come and go, giving way to the horror.

The cassette-and-CDr album 333, his recent split with Death Factory, and some of the solo / live work he's done recently under his own name and as Blood Rhythms, all stand out to me as experimental music of the highest order from an original talent.

These two live sets represent that Arvo eclecticism, with the first challenging T.O.M.B.'s My Castle of Quiet performance for sheer terror points (T.O.M.B. and Blood Rhythms have a terrific split tape out on Land of Decay, btw), and set two, a sonic/conceptual collaboration with Dolores Dewberry, plays with the mind like some seminal, edgy Krautrock album side, with melody and post-Popol Vuh elements aplenty amongst the rubble. Both sets tickle the pineal, and make for some visceral listening.

Huge thanks as always to engineer Juan, for his versatility and many talents in shaping the sound for broadcast. Thanks to Arvo for making the trip out from Chicago, and for being a truly amiable houseguest!

Arvo Zylo blog

Arvo on bandcamp

Audio Letters From An Army Doctor in Korea, 1954, Part Two (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 38) (MP3's)

With North Korea in the news almost every day recently, I thought it was high time to revisit the box of tapes I first wrote about in September of 2011, the tapes from a Lieutenant Colonel stationed at an Army hospital in Korea, in 1954, to a family member in New Jersey. You can read the brief introduction to the tapes in that post, here. 

And now that my beloved reel to reel machine has returned from several weeks in the electronic hospital, I can continue the Reel-to-Reel catacombs series, and this seemed like a natural place to resume. Today's two offerings are both from a short time before the July, 1954 tapes offered up in the previous episode, specifically from March 20th and May 25th (the latter starts with a moment of music, which ends quickly).

I suspect that his machine was running slow as he recorded the tape on March 20th, as his voice sounds much higher upon playback during that tape than it does on any of the other tapes.

These tapes don't offer any great insight into the Korean conflict, which had ended its "hot" phase the previous year, but there are a few references to current events - most interestingly, perhaps, a story about a sudden change in the currency being used where he is stationed, and the likely reason for it - in the midst of more everyday comments such as movie nights and references to friends and family. But all the while, the speaker, who calls himself "your Bill", remains a fascinating and entertaining man to listen to. 

Almost undoubtedly, there are other tapes from before, after and in between the dates of these tapes, as well - until I have listened to all of them, I won't know for sure what time period they cover, and there are a bunch more to go. As I said before, if there is interest, I'll be happy to share more of these tapes in the future. 

 Audio Letter From Korea, 3/20/54, Part One (MP3)

Audio Letter From Korea, 3/20/54, Part Two (MP3)

Audio Letter From Korea, 5/25/54, Part One (MP3)

Audio Letter From Korea, 5/25/54, Part Two (MP3)

"Favorite Fiddler!" (May 1947)

In todays Comics Supplement we'll learn a bit about the early years of synchronized film sound and we'll find out about the USA's favorite fiddler (in 1947 at least).

About all that we know about the featured TRUE Comics is that they were produced as a subsidiary to Parents' Magazine, which was edited at the time by Clara Savage Littledale (about whom there is more information here, and also over here). The books themselves were edited by Harold C. Field, and art-directed by Ralph O. Ellsworth. Artists and writers were not credited (although a frequent writer for the series was Louis Wolfe, so he may well have scribed these two stories). They are fun books, and well-produced, though.

Let's check out excerpts from two issues of the 1940s right after the jump-!

KANETO SHINDO AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (KIND OF): ONIBABA

BY KOLLIN HOLTZ

Watch the whole film on Network Awesome

One word you should know when watching “Onibaba” is “bukufu.” The word is Japanese, but I promise if you search it you won’t have to clear your history. I’ll save you the trouble though (in case you’re afraid to look it up), and tell you that “bukufu” originally referred to the tent or housing of a military General or Shogunate. Later, during the Kamakura, very brief Kenmu and longer Muromachi period (the film takes place at the beginning of this period) “…it came to mean the seat of the Shogunal Military Government; later, all forms of military government.”

Hachi, one of the three main characters, returns as a warrior deserter. He references the two warring sides in the battle for land and power. Kusunoki Masahige fought for Emperor Go-Daigo and his Court against Shogunate Ashikaga, who fought for the (as he felt, “marginalized”) warrior class. Both sides seemed to be hard up for fighters as Hachi says he was offered the opportunity to live after capture as long as he

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 206

Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere

Most excellent news! One of the preeminent music bloggers out there—Reza, who not long ago shuttered his site, El Reza, after nearly six years of stellar sharing—has resurfaced as a contributor to another blog!

Earlier this year, it appeared that Reza had returned after taking some time off, but his return was agonizingly short-lived. Now, once again, it appears that our man with big ears is back in action, this time as a partner in sublime with Boogieman from the wonderful blog The Boogieman Will Get Ya! And if Reza's debut contribution is any indication (see our lead item, below), the sonic thrill ride is back on track. Welcome back, Reza!

 

    
Georg Riedel  ~  Riedaiglia
(Blog: The Boogieman Will Get Ya!)

How Swede It Is
"Superb Nordic jazz with shades of Sun Ra / Art Ensemble Of Chicago / Palle Mikkelborg Mysterious Corona / Marion Brown's Le Temps Fou funky free jazz and groovy psychedelic sounds of the period. Experimental mood music recorded in the studios of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation for the TV ballet, Riedaiglia (an avant garde dance production by Lars Egler with choreography by Alvin Ailey). Features the psychedelic club tune Gluttony, Strange, spacey and addictive atmospheres with lots more improvised jazz horns / scat voices / sophisticated rhythms and solos throughout the whole LP."  (Description by Reza)

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 57

Earcandy for your eyes

 

Bain Wolfkind playing live in New York City at Nothing Changes at Home Sweet Home.

After the break: Slobber Pub and Gerald Fletcher Memorial Grindcore Explosion at The Stone

Irma Serrano AKA "La Tigresa"

I first read about Irma Serrano within the pages of The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.  Better known as "La Tigresa", Serrano was an actor (in theater, soaps, and movies of the 60s), as well as a singer, and to some extent she was involved in politics.  She was a senator, I'm not sure what her exact role was, except that it was certainly to the extent that she was involved in political scandals.  She was arrested for publicly flirting with The President of Mexico, and they are rumored to have had an affair.  Her first film role was alongside a Mexican wrestler named Santo, in the pulp film Santo Contra los Zombies.  According to Jodorowsky, Serrano engaged in one conniving PR stunt after another, and practiced animal voodoo with the best of them.  She had a refridgerator full of animal parts and supposedly a goat buried underneath her living room floor. Serrano is considered to be an icon of the golden age of entertainment in Mexico. Below, the song title appropriately translates to "Calling The Devil", from Serrano's first self titled LP, and I'm also including a clip of the aforementioned Santo Zombie movie's ending.