WFMU's Beware of the Blog

WFMU/Barbes Cumbia night TONIGHT at The Bell House w/ DJ Rob W

<--Los Destellos, featured on the Barbés Records compilation The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru

The worldwide cumbia resurgence is overflowing the WFMU bin, with records focusing on old and new. Check out Soundway's Panama! 2: Latin Sounds, Cumbia Tropical & Calypso Funk On The Isthmus 1967-77 (pop-up), Lucas Luisao's "Bounty Caderas" (pop-up) off Vibration Sound's Nuevacumbia - Le Nouveau Son De Buenos Aires, and Uproot Andy vs. ODB (pop-up) from DJ/Rupture's Mudd Up podcast. More Chicha from Beware of the Blog here.

So it seems fitting that WFMU is joining forces with Barbés Records tonight for an evening of Cumbia at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Rob Weisberg of Transpacific Sound Paradise will be DJ-ing in between sets by Very Be Careful (Los Angeles) and Chicha Libre (Brooklyn). The event won't be broadcast live, so make your way out to The Bell House!

More info about the music from WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Listen to Very Be Careful spinning records and chatting live with DJ/Rupture on Mudd Up last year.

Listen to Chicha Libre's "Six_Pieds Sous Terre" (mp3) from ¡Sonido Amazonico! (Barbés Records 2008)

Listen to DJ Rob W's spotlight on Zizek, an Argentinian collective who just released ZZK Vol: 2, a killer follow-up to last year's Cumbia Digital vol. 1. (This show also featured a great live set from Cordero!).

If you like what you hear, hope to see you tonight!

Cumbia! Cumbia! With VERY BE CAREFUL & CHICHA LIBRE
Sunday July 5th, 8:00pm
@ The Bell House [149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY (map)]
Adv. Tickets:  www.thebellhouseny.com

Pipe Dreams (1938)

No matter who you are, you just have to appreciate old cartoons that either endorse smoking or at least present it in what today would be considered the most irresponsible light possible. The drawings get especially funny in this one around 2:12. Hey bub, you got an irresponsible light? A small handful of other smoking cartoons after the jump.

After the Rain

It rained on Thursday night.

The temperature had been in the high 80s to low 90s all week, which to a Brit is rather like standing in a satanic sauna fuelled by hot mildew. We don’t do dry heat.

Work was slow yet steady up at Dave interspersed with lashing of Hibiscus tea and gallons of Evian. I was tired, hot and grumpy.

I kept having these weird dreams about my former job. These were confused, unfathomable images and although my life is good, I felt flat and restless.

Little Pixies Barked

Here comes your kid.

July 4th pin-up: hot fox diplomacy

Current occupation: Governor of Alaska
Age: 45
Residence: Wasilla, Alaska

Little-known public official interviewed in the August 2009 issue of Runner's World magazine:

"I feel so crappy if I go more than a few days without running. I have to run. No matter how rotten I feel before or during a run, it's always worth it to me afterwards. Sweat is my sanity. A great frustration I had during the campaign was when the McCain staff wouldn't carve out time for me to go for a run. The days never went as well if I couldn't get out there and sweat. ...

"I went for a run at John McCain's ranch a couple of days before the debate with Joe Biden. My favorite thing in the world is to run on hot, dusty roads. I don't get enough of that in Alaska. So I was in heaven and there were plenty of hills so I knew my thighs were going to just throb and my lungs were going to burn and that's what I crave."

Palin intends to continue running because she feels a commitment.

Papa's Got a Brand New Patriotic Bag (MP3s)

Happy Independence Day.

James Brown & The Famous Flames  -  America Is My Home Pt. 1  (3:20)

James Brown & The Famous Flames  -  America Is My Home Pt. 2  (3:28)

"You all know me. You know what I do for a living."

Hello, Chris T. here. I'll be filing in tonight for Shut Up, Weirdo in the old Aerial View time-slot, 6 - 7 PM. What's the topic? "Chris T'.s Bargain Bin". With our current economic crisis on everyone's mind, my wife Janet and I will help you save a few bucks while having a few yucks...

Man, how often in life do you get to use the word "yucks"?

I'd also like to get just one person to re-enact the greatest scene from the greatest Summer movie of all, the Indianapolis speech from JAWS. I'll provide the music and sound effects, you channel your inner Captain Quint. Here's the speech:

Aboard the Orca:

Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) - "You were on the Indianapolis?"

Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) - "What happened?"

Quint (Robert Shaw) - "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We'd just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn't see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that shark he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and... they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

Climax Golden Twins - Tues July 7th

Coming up on The Antique Phonograph Music Program on Tues July 7 will be Rob Millis and Jeffery Taylor aka Climax Golden Twins.

They will discuss their musical output, their Dust to Digital rare international 78 series "Victrola Favorites," and current release "Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950."

Mac and Climax Golden Twins will play records and talk about the dogged pursuit of 78s. Tune in, turn on and listen to them drop steel needles.

Also be sure to check out this recent live set by Climax Golden Twins (via Issue Project Room & Free Music Archive).

Click here to subscribe to the Antique Phonograph Music Program's podcast via iTunes.

Exploring America's Indigenous Internment/Concentration Camps

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I've spent countless posts on my blog laughing at "believers" and pointing out flaws in the arguments of those who are deeply involved in the notion of shadow governments, cover-ups, and general issues of seemingly unexplainable events. But I do love to get in my car and drive to weird places, so when I heard about the plethora of potential internment/concentration camps within Los Angeles county, I decided I would go scope them out to see if any of the claims made by theorists were valid.

A little background information: According to a website called Freedom Files (URL), "There are over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States." Apparently these camps are part of a plan called Rex 84 (short for Readiness Exercise 1984), under which the government's ability to detain large numbers of American citizens can be tested. According to Wikipedia, "The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law." In other words, if a disaster were to strike, or massive rioting, or an huge and sudden influx of illegal aliens, FEMA has the capacity and the ability to detain up to hundreds of thousands of individuals at a time and hold them indefinitely without trial.

So, I figured...why not see if these places even exist! Most conspiracy theory websites, I imagine, operate under the premise that people reading conspiracy theory/shadow government websites are lazy pieces of shit who won't actually get up off their asses and check the validity of what they're reading. Sure, that's a gross stereotype I'm making about the types of people I think buy into such theories, but as a born skeptic I felt it was my duty to get out of the apartment and see firsthand just what these "internment camps" looked like.

Highlights from Wildwood, N.J. - 1994

A Bunch Of Bleeping Nonsense

"Bleeping" as in "I've got a bunch of new bands for you today that use lots of insane bleepy sounds", not "bleeping" as in "fucking".  This isn't the fucking radio, why would I censor the headline?

All the same, I oughtta warn ya that the video on the right is a bit NSFW.  Both are from Computer Jesus Refrigerator, a San Antonio based duo of grind/noise/gore/bleeping nonsense.  I've been enjoying their songs for months now, but recently noticed that the band has posted a whole slew of awesome music videos on their Myspace.

Kania Tieffer was brought to my attention by her new CD in the FMU new bin, alongside a few other releases from the very nutty French label Le Vilain Chien.  Hyper, ADDified, amateurish ditties reminiscent of Felix Kubin, OCDJ, and a cat walking across a keyboard.

Kania Tieffer - Parc à Thèmes

El G has released approximately 9999,999,999 tapes and CDRs over the years.  Often noisy but with definite pop sensibilities.  The below MP3 is from the "Armelle" 7", also out on Le Vilain Chien.  Really beautiful song, worthy of Radiohead.  Check the official website.

El G - Armelle

Rainbow Arabia sounds pretty exotic and possibly foreign, but it's just some hyper-musically-educated white folk from Cali.  Not that there's anything wrong with white folk.  Check the live set with Trent.  I think they're touring with Gang Gang Dance soon.  Apparently they're big or something.

Rainbow Arabia - Holiday In Congo

Patent Quiz

After the unfortunate passing of Michael, everything from His favorite pill combos, to His child custody problems, to His music publishing issues, to His preferred brand of toothpaste have been dismembered, torn, and tossed into the final press to eek out any remaining dregs of data for the (us?) media vultures.

During this whole circus, you may have discovered that the guy from Toto actually wrote "Human Nature" (thanks Doron). Or perhaps you came across Michael's patent for "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion" (thanks Listener Colin & Ron) - PDF here, diagram below.

My buddy Dennis also sent along a few other patent documents filed by notable folks: images are below the jump, see if you can put a name to the images.

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bobb Trimble and the Flying Spiders live at WFMU (mp3's)

<-- Bobb Trimble (r) with Gary War on guitar and Nick Branigan on drums. Along with Kris Thompson on bass and Karina DaCosta on vox, you've got The Flying Spiders, photographed here in the WFMU live room (by Tiffany Camhi)

In his early 20s, Bobb Trimble self-released two surreal psychedelic folk albums: "Iron Curtain Innocence" (1980) and "Harvest of Dreams" (1982). He played a handful of shows around the local Worcester, MA area with teenage backing bands The Kidds and The Crippled Dog Band, then disappeared. Meanwhile, his recordings lived on as sought-after collector's items, and inspired countless contemporary artists like Ariel Pink and Gary War. In 2007, Secretly Canadian reissued both Bobb Trimble albums, inspiring Bobb Trimble's Flying Spiders to come together for a series of special shows, including the Homegrown psychedelic music festival taking place this July in Boston. Backed by the Flying Spiders, Bobb Trimble made his NYC-area debut last Thursday at the Rose Live Bar, and it was quite an event (you can read more about it at Vanity Fair). The next day, they stopped by WFMU to pre-tape a live set that aired on yesterday's episode of Talk's Cheap.

The set included a bunch of classic songs from Bobb's two official albums, but it also included four songs that had never been released stateside. We're psyched to be able to share live versions of "Live Wire, Live Wire", "The Camel Song", "Angel Eyes," and "Undercovers Man" (mp3's all of 'em) here on the Free Music Archive.

Wild Oates: A Conversation With Warren Oates' Biographer

          

Writer Susan Compo recently authored an enormously entertaining Warren Oates biography and Oates fans who have not yet read the book can look forward to it with great anticipation.  For my money, Warren Oates: A Wild Life is the finest biography since 1998 when Ronnie Pugh's Ernest Tubb biography hit the shelves.  The book offers a richly-detailed and definitive portrait of Oates' intriguing life and career and upon finishing it, I decided it might be interesting to talk to the author about Warren Oates and how she came to write the story of his life.  I'd like to thank Susan for sharing several unpublished Oates photos (including above right, showing Oates in makeup for The Brink's Job) and for indulging me while I fumbled through my Brian Lamb impersonation.

Oates died of a heart attack in 1982, but if he were still with us he'd celebrate his 81st birthday on July 5.

Greg:  Let's start things off with a question about the title of your book, Warren Oates: A Wild Life.  Who chose that title?

Susan Compo:  The publisher, as happens sometimes in the book world.  I had Wild Oates, but they just didn't go for that.

(NOTE: I didn't want to see a good title go to waste, so I borrowed it for this post).

Don Dohler Double Feature – The Alien Factor and Fiend

The Alien Factor (1978) is so archetypal of 70s ultra-low-budget sci-fi/horror that it almost seems like a SCTV parody of the genre. Loaded with awkward blocking and long snatches of blandly delivered expositional dialogue, its strength is in its simple charms: a few good ideas, some amusing characters, and enough money-shot visuals to inspire 100 great screen captures. These folks clearly worked hard on the monsters—one of which has anatomically built-in platform heels—and in general, your entertainment will come from the earnest and colorful visual effects and primitive, in-camera and stop-motion techniques. Make no mistake, The Alien Factor is eyeball-pleasin'; the title sequence alone should be canonized as some kind of holy representation of 70s goodness. If I seem to disparage The Alien Factor, it's only because Dohler's next feature goes straight to the heart of my aesthetic nerve centre. 

Everything that The Alien Factor may lack in sophistication is more than made up for by director Don Dohler's next movie, Fiend (aka Deadly Neighbor, 1980), a genuinely creepy, witty and highly original living-dead scenario. In the film, a mysterious alien force, an ethereal red-glowing flying thing, for reasons unknown to us, reanimates (or possesses) a buried corpse, and the combo adds up to one nasty character, an intense sadist named Mr. Longfellow. The trajectory is quite unpredictable, as our zombie pal takes over an empty house, opens a music school (!), and generally irritates his neighbors (whose somewhat banal interactions also provide their own amusing little subplot, especially as the length of the wife's hair keeps changing from scene to scene.) And oh yes, there's Longfellow's murder/sustenance rituals, which also consist of shouting and stabbing at photographs of his victims (and a lot of black candles.)

After Alien Factor, Dohler must have learned a lot about shot framing, suspenseful editing, and economy of dialogue, such that Fiend is elevated from being merely a visually charming, colorful oddity like its predecessor, to being an aggressively weird and disquieting horror tale. I'd also be remiss not to mention that both of these films feature a melodic, burbling synthesizer score (The Alien Factor by Kenneth Walker; Fiend by Paul Woznicki), so well done and so evocative of the time as to give me a super-warm fuzzy. See the My Castle of Quiet blog for a downloadable cinelogue audio excerpt from Fiend.

It's obvious that despite challenges of budget, Dohler and his crew worked hard to try and make good, entertaining movies, and, at least with Fiend, came pretty close to some metaphysical horror fan's ideal. Dohler is something of a legend, especially in his native Baltimore, and now I see why. Many thanks to James for the loan of the two-in-one DVD (released 2005), and for insisting that we give these bent pictures an eyeball.

Another Don Dohler film, Galaxy Invader, can be viewed or downloaded for free here via archive.org. There's also a well-reviewed and relatively new Dohler documentary, released on DVD earlier this year.

The Fairbanks, Morse Song (MP3)

 Here's a little red 45 which I've always gotten a kick out of, not only because, like so many other bits of advertising, it uses America as a way to sell the company name - in this case, Fairbanks Morse Engine, which is still in business today - but also because of the focus on the phrase "free enterprise" which is a particularly unmusical phrase to use in a song.

Bob

Jerry Coyle and the Nelsonics - America...Land of Free Enterprise - The Fairbanks, Morse Song (MP3)

45 Label (JPG)

Full Dedication Alvaro (video, mp3)

I first stumbled across Alvaro Peña-Rojas (probably better known as ALVARO - The Chilean with the singing nose, and former collaborator of Joe Strummer in The 101ers) on the Nurse With Wound list and finally managed to get ahold of a CD copy of his mind-blowing 1977 solo debut album Drinkin My Own Sperm. Now some German filmmakers (Hans Kotter, Jochen Hägle and Christian Zschammer) made a documentary about Alvaro, who is living in Konstanz, Germany, and still going strong. Here is the trailer for Full Dedication ALVARO, with English subtitles.

There is no DVD available yet, and all the screenings are taking place in Germany, but I am sure it will make its way around the world eventually. For now, here is one of the tracks from Drinkin My Own Sperm as MP3.

MP3: Alvaro - Palido Sol (MP3, featuring Cathy Williams)

Also, don't forget to check out the live set Alvaro did on Brian Turner's show in 2003: [ Playlist | Real Audio link ]

Worst of the Worst of the Worst... of the Worst

In my ongoing mission to torture Beware of the Blog readers with insufferable nineteen seventies kitsch I have sunk to a new low. I would have sunk to this earlier but this did not hit the internet until this week. I thought it could get no worse than The Brady Kids - Wonder Woman crossover. I was wrong. Roy Clark, jonesing for even more stomach-churning hokum than Hee-Haw could offer, called up the chick from One Day at a Time to help host a roast and celebration of Fred Flintstone. Not the real Fred Flintstone but one in a giant foam outfit. Along for the ride, defying all stone-age continuity, are other Hanna-Barbera characters in oversized cloth forms : Jabberjaw, The Banana Splits, Snagglepuss, Hong Kong Phooey, The Hair Bear Bunch and on down the line. The laugh track seems to be enjoying itself immensely (although if you listen closely you might hear a bit of a retch track). This is truly the worst thing I have ever seen - and although I appreciate the absolute awfulness of it all - even I can't bring myself to watch ALL FIVE PARTS that are on YouTube. Oh - one minor detail I forgot about. It is, of course, ON ICE.

70's Celebrity Anti-Drug PSA's pt 1

With 'celebrities' of sorts on the mind, and perhaps muddled somewhat by extreme Heartland-style heat, I'll present the first seven of many Anti-Drug PSAs that I enjoy. There are 29 more of these mainly music-industry celebs that I'll get to later on, as well as the Mel Blanc ones, which I've been saving for some special occasion. Whatever that'll be. These files are from a cassette I made of the lp of radio-only PSAs, one of many interesting albums lying around KZSC in 1982. Upon basking in many of these at a time, one is always impressed at how carefully the 'bad/troublesome' drugs are segregated by the various personalities involved, as well as the ones recorded while apparently high, which kinda dulls the message a bit. I think actually many of these folks sounded loaded whether they were or not. The Peter Yarrow psa in particular is an old favorite. His seething anger and the final death threat are such a treat. Jon Anderson also steps up in this set with a nice little rambling and almost incoherent 'warning'.

Paul Williams     Jackie Wilson     Johhny Winter     Bill Withers     Peter Yarrow     Jon Anderson     Jesse Colin Young

What Am I Doing Hanging 'Round?

There are a number of upside-down tomato planters on the market. The principle is sound: tomatoes are vine plants and a combination of gravity and weight stops their natural inclination to grow up towards the sun. This gives you a hanging arrangement which is excellent for limited space such as balconies and lets the tomatoes get maximum sunlight.

Unfortunately, they're not cheap, but this is where our junk gardening comes into play using only a wooden hatstand scored from Freecycle and an old soda bottle.