Here at WFMU, we disregard the notion that summer ought to be eased into with the attributes of a
gentle breeze or a refreshing wine spritzer. We prefer something more along the lines of the opening scenes of Meatballs, and that whole "Are You Ready for the Summer?" song. If you will, summon up the imagery of a ceremonial gong bash, and then picture the entire WFMU staff desperately tearing across a big field towards an elusive 7" single of German art-synth-twang-shoegazer-electro-psych-avant-noise-a-billy-doom-folk-bip-core riddims and you'll have the right idea. If that doesn't do it for you, try imagining us all scarfing down a huge plate of gooey nachos. We all love nachos here at the Magic Factory, but we do take time out from stuffing them in our faces to tread fiercely about the streets of Gotham, infiltrating the lives of the average urban cellar dwellars and spreading the WFMU style via more calculated means and with greater precision than you are perhaps accustomed. To wit, you are hereby invited to click on the WFMU gong to officially begin the summer and find out what's on deck this month.
Topping the bill this month is WFMU's Music and Program Director Brian Turner. Just last week he appeared as a talking head on VH-1's "Heavy: The Story of Metal" -- a four-part documentary which lovingly captured the spirit of everything from Black Sabbath up through and including the most dubiously namechecked nu-metal bands of the modern age. It was wonderful to see Brian holding forth (sporting a stylish WFMU Monkey Brain t-shirt) alongside noted kingpins of the genre such as Lars Ulrich, Dee Snider, Sebastian Bach, and the puffy-faced guy from Warrant who seems to be suffering some guilty effects of having penned that "Cherry Pie" song so many years ago. If you missed it, VH-1's horribly designed website gives few clues as to when it might re-air, but there's a short clip you can download in this post.
Across the puddle in the UK (or "WFMU Heights", as we've taken to calling it), our own Vicki Bennett (aka People
Like Us) will be participating with Ergo Phizmiz in a project called "BOOTS". This program invites you to surrender your laptopian prejudices and consider the fact that both artists will be working solely with vintage gramophones and will produce a live set based around mixed and mashed dance music specially pressed onto vinyl dub plates for the event. BOOTS will be presented at the Quay Arts Centre in Newport, Isle of Wight. The show takes place at 8pm on June 23rd -- £5 admission, and that also gets you a complimentary CD just for walking through the door and being your own stylish self. You can download samples of Vicki and Ergo's contributions by right clicking here and here.
Here in town, our busiest off-mic offenders continue to be Downtown Soulville's Mr. Fine Wine and Dave the Spazz. In addition to Fine Wine's ongoing Wednesday night gig at Botanica (47 E. Houston, NYC, 10 PM), he's also helping to light the flame on a new weekly party at Black Betty (386 Metropolitan, Wmsbrg-Brooklyn). The Kings County 
Soul Party will feature, on alternating Thursdays, the stylish funk and soul spinnings of MonkOne, Emskee, and Mr. Fine Wine, but all three of them will be throwing down together this Thursday, June 1st. Saddle up and get ready to wag your ass until the small hours beckon you back to
that lonely L train platform.
Across town, you can still catch Dave the Spazz at Union Pool (484 Union, Wmsbrg-Brooklyn) every Sunday night, spinning the toe-stubbing rock and roll in varying attractive shades of perfection. And true thrill-seekers will want to mark their calendars, PDAs, and perhaps make crude carvings into their own flesh as a reminder to check out Dave's band, The Yams, when they perform at the opening of Pass Out Records on June 3rd (Saturday) at 4 PM! It's a free show, and a
bunch of other bands will be making noise too, all starting around high noon. Pass Out Records is located at 131 Grand St., also in Williamsburg.
WFMU historian types will no doubt be falling over themselves and crowding out the doorway and bandwidth of the great Something I Learned Today punk MP3 blog, which recently featured downloadable music and backstory from the legendary New Jersey's Got It? compilation, replete with the formidable talents of Children in Adult Jails (who featured current WFMU on-air personalities Pseu Braun and Diane Kamikaze, and former on-air talent Laurie Es.) And if that's not enough CIAJ for you, there's more to position your right-clicking finger above right here, and hours of contextualization to sift through here. Dig in, and bring a week's worth of rations, rain slickers, and a good sturdy walking stick.
That does it for this month. Lest you forget, the WFMU summer schedule will be announced the week of June 5th, so make sure you keep your ear bent to our myriad webstreams, the FM signal ("'Ol Bluey", we call her -- with the same sort of reverence normally ascribed to an '78 Cutlass), or just bookmark this blog or our homepage to be among the first to consider that most mighty of announcements.
metal up your ass.
Posted by: Steve PMX | June 02, 2006 at 09:35 AM