WFMU's Beware of the Blog

By any means necessary...

"Shakin'-shakin'-shakin'" YouTube footage of David Thompson of Charlotte, NC, speaking his peace at a local city council meeting - conveniently captured on tape and broadcast live on the local community access channel. I hope the rogue pilot who flew the white helicopter over David's house on Sunday afternoon was watching, so he could learn that the reason there's no ice in the arena is because somebody had their hand in the pie. But rest assured, if John Walsh and his FOX-TV program "F.B.I.'s Most Wanted" [sic] doesn't start the nationwide manhunt to flush Mr. Helicopter Pilot out of his hole, David Thompson will be ready to explode like Mount St. Helen's all over that chameleon, lemon-headed, coward, terrorist pussy ...even if it means frightening all the boy scouts in the room (oh, and you better believe they have a right to be scared!) GOOD-NIGHT!!!

Kip Winger vs. The Goo

[Download 3 MB WMV file]

[Watch it on YouTube]

The Army's Hapless Hacker

It's not just body armor that the Army is scrimping on; it's also the software and know-how needed to remove undesirable websites. From hackcanada.com comes this transcription of an Army Sergeant looking for help in removing an Army Chaplain's travelogue webpage. Excerpt from the Sergeant's plea:

Ok here is the scoop, The Person that posted the page is an Army Chaplain, now we have a way of taking the site down but if we do that in means contacting a department that is higher up and will result in him getting in a lot of trouble over something he has done unintentional. Some of the information on the page that is not allowed includes talking about flight schedules, the runway the planes landed on and any information about the base itself. To the enemy that base does not officialy exist. So you can see that if this gets reported higher to be taken care of, He could be in real trouble and possibly loose his commission and be kicked out.

My imidiate command, i.e. my supervisor, his sup., and his sup. all had come to me to see if I was able to take it down to keep him out of trouble. Now I know this is usually concidered a crime however if it had been me doing it or someone like me in the miliitary for security reasons then no, we would not get in trouble for it.

This reminds me of the e-mail one of our DJs received a few years ago, looking for MP3s of the band Happy Flowers so he could use it as an interrogation aid against prisoners. I blogged about that here.

via del.icio.us

Ovo

As spasticated duos go, the Milanese m/f duo Ovo scramble up a blasted universe of weirdness to rival the output of kindred sprits Afrirampo, Captain/Tennille, Holmes/Yoyo. There's playful elements of Deerhoof that give way to blurred hyperdrive guitar/cello/drums workouts that remind one of a chambery version of Melt Banana. But then there's an unmistakable doom element that's gotten them mentioned in the same breath as the Melvins, though any serious preconceptions about operating within the confining parameters of that get thrown out the window as soon as vocalist Stefania Pedretti lets it fly. In other words, Ovo are clearly about freedom, while retaining a heaviosity factor amidst the confusion. Apparently she's played her braided hair with a bow as well. They've had a slew of recordings (some of which are on drummer Bruno's great Bar La Muerte label which gave us FMU fave Daniele Brusaschetto), have toured the USA (returning again in September) and have landed their latest disc Miastenia on a higher profile US label, Load Records. Here's an MP3 of "Mammut".

World Cup Death Watch - Update 3

Sadly, there have been eleven eighteen more World Cup related fatalities. The World Cup Death Watch increases to 36 43 as we head into the second round of play.

Happily, my own death is not included in the tally, notwithstanding the many death threats that this series has inspired. But should I die at the hands of football hooligans, let it be known that this was how I wanted to perish.

That would make me the first to die of standard football hooliganism. Of the 36 World Cup fatalities we've seen so far, not a single one has been due to rioting or classic hooliganism. In Kenya, a man died after being stabbed during a fight over the Iran-Portugal game. The stabbing took place in the Feel Good Bar in Nyaribo. China leads the way with World Cup deaths. A South African website reported that six Chinese people have died of heart attacks or stress related to the beloved game. Since one of these death could have been the over-drinking death in Hunan I reported earlier, I'll count this report as five, not six. Another two Chinese fans were killed in a car crash after a night of World  Cup festivities. Why so many deaths in China (nine so far) when they don't even have a team in play? The prevailing theory lays the blame on time zones. It is late at night in China while the games are played in Germany, a perfect recipe for drinking the night away. The same theory is being blamed on the recent spate of Chinese Facial Paralysis.

Other Asian countries are checking in as well. A man in Thailand died of soccer-related drinking injuries, only the drinks in question were coffee and an  unspecified energy beverage. In Vietnam, a 45 year old man suffered a fatal heart attack while watching the Germany-Costa Rica game. And finally, Nigeria was home to the first 2006 World Cup related strangling, where a man was murdered by three boys while all four of them watched the opening match.

Colorado Calling - The Fluid! Live!

Any blog post celebrating the miracle that was the Fluid has to begin with a major nod in the direction of Dave Clifford's previous ruminations on that most hallowed of Denver rock combos. He ably handled the group's history (how they formed through a collision of that region's best hardcore bands like The Frantix and Urban Waste), the material they recorded and released on various labels (Sub Pop, most notably), and most important of all, he paid due reverence to the utterly blistering live shows they were known for delivering from shore to shore.

To call the Fluid responsible for some of the most monstrous stage performances of the late 80s and early 90s isn't the irresponsible verbage of someone with a limited frame of reference, but a commonly held opinion that'll tumble from the mouth of pretty much anyone who saw them during that time period. They were carelessly lumped in with the grunge phenom, but rather than toiling away with sludgy riffs stuck in first gear, the Fluid tapped heavily into the explosive presence of bands like Black Flag or The MC5 and propelled that energy into lurching rock anthems that summoned absloute hammer-pulsed desperation amongst show-goers. They had the hooks, they had the looks, and they drove the crowd absolutely mental on every occasion I was fortunate enough to see them. If anyone deserves a DVD career retrospective, it's the Fluid. Here are two videos from either end of their all-too-short lifespan that act as suitable evidence to that fact.

The Fluid - "Cold Outside" - Live at Bogart's (Los Angeles), 1989 [Download WMV Video] (10.2M)

The Fluid - "Cop a Plea" - Live at the Gothic Theater (Denver), 1993 [Download WMV Video] (11.5M)

Real Audio links to songs from the WFMU archives: On My Feet || Change || Don't Wanna Play || Tin Top Toy || Madhouse || Hooked

External Fluid links: Flickr || Sub Pop || Trouser Press || Friction Interview || Amazon || Noise for Heroes

Fluid gig flyer archive: 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8

Thanks to Listener Susan for her assistance with this post!

This Week in Sex: Big Wad of Intersmut

Size isn't everything, but it is always best expressed in terms of football fields. Microscopic fruit fly sperm may look like a Q-tip, but if it were untangled, it would be 2 inches long.

One of the guys who studied the fly sperm said, "To put that into perspective, if humans made sperm that long and you took a six-foot man and stood him on the goal line of a football field, his sperm would stretch out to the 40-yard line." Which is a very manly way of saying it would be 40 yards long. See how that works?

Killer queen. Ant queens mate only once in a lifetime, and they store the sperm they collect from multiple partners to fertilize the kajillions of eggs that make the ant colony. I don't know how to express this in terms of football fields, because when women are having kajillions of kids we don't think of it like that, but it would definitely get you past the 40 yard line.

Donate to the arts. Specifically, donate semen to the Sperm Cube to help create a one ton frozen block of sperm. Frozen art sperm: "international, open to all, universal." You could jack off into an ice cube tray, but that would not be so international, open to all, or universal. But it would be cubey.

Penis slide show.  At first I thought this was just a slide show of a guy and his penis enjoying the great outdoors, or a guy enjoying his penis in the great outdoors, but then there was that business with the stuffed tiger and the rubber witch and the long-stemmed roses and I didn't know what to think. But I pretty much knew I didn't want to think about it any more. NSFW

I don't have anything to say about The New York Observer's Bridal Blog. Five brides-to-be obsess about wedding crap, which is so stressful! OMG!!!

I do know where all the hot guys in New York are: Lighting by Gregory, early afternoons. You may meet them, you may marry them, but you may not blog about menus, hair and makeup, or any other pre-marital nonsense without my permission. (P.S. Permission denied.)

Like you haven't tried. Chinese orchid has sex with itself. And complains about its performance to itself. The system has its drawbacks.

Cleaning Out My Inbox

It's the first Thursday of the WFMU summer schedule. You know what that means! The return of...

And just in time for me taking the summer off and not being able to play it on the air, another Linda Laurie "Ambrose" song has surfaced. This one's called Jose, He Say: [download mp3] Thanks Al!

Our own Irwin is posting on the Today's Inspiration blog each day this week about his latest obsession, the art of James Flora.

A mighty fine collection of blotter acid art from blotterbarn.

Check out these two fun music toys: the Pianolina and the Whitney Music Box (flash pages).

Listener Chris has hacked up his touring band e-mail alert site Tourfilter with WFMU realaudio archives. For example, typing in "Calexico" brings up their next date in the area as well as numerous WFMU realaudio links to their songs. So far, it's set up for New York City, Boston and Western Massachusetts.

Here's a video of the French Turntable Quartet Birdy Nam Nam winning 2002's DMC World Scratch-Off with their song Absesses: [download video, 26 megs, mpeg format, or stream it via youtube]

Now that the Federal Government has deemed it worth $325,000 a pop, here's a legal history of the word Fuck.

Trailer for the upcoming Os Mutantes documentary, via Sharpeworld.

Pay tribute to the bygone era of boomboxes and ribbon microphones.

I wanted to edit this down to the best parts, but the software didn't cooperate. Get past the intro and the  "America's Funniest Home Videos" production style and you'll get a  an 8-year old dressed up as Hitler making jokes that any adult comic would be vilified for: [download video, 12 megs, mpeg format, or youtube it]

For any designer who's ever wrestled software to the ground, Animator Vs Animation, flash page by Alan Becker.

Up With Proggy People (Youtube, via Brian)

Photographs of Alexandre Vitkine, from the incredible Hacklebury Image Gallery:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Hemaworstje, Sound Scavengers, Robot Wisdom, Fazed, Listeners Tom, Mike and Nick the Bard. Wanna stuff my inbox? Send links to ken at wfmu dot org.

Chicago No-Wave Part 3: Scissor Girls

MP3s below the fold - No-Wave P1/P2

The first show I saw in Chicago was the Scissor Girls. I was living in the miserable Roosevelt University dorms…and art school life wasn’t matching what I envisioned in my head. I was surrounded by hacky-sack playing douche bags and preening rich kids in a downtown that closed up at 6 pm.  The art being produced at the school wasn’t anything too inspiring either- it was all very safe, very mundane. I wondered what the fuck I was doing…flushing thousands of dollars down the toilet for an essentially worthless degree. When I saw the strange and mysterious Dada/punk rock flyer hanging on a school bulletin board for a show on the near west side- I knew I had to go…especially when one of the bands was called “Scissor Girls”, a name which conjured up fantastic violent imagery for me.

The show took place at the Hub Theatre…an old atmospheric style theatre that had run into disrepair and was coated with a thick layer of black paint to seal in the crumbling plaster. The show was thinly attended and everyone lounged around in the theatre seats sipping on their beers. I had come with a couple kids from the dorm- a Grateful Dead/Pink Floyd/Beatles fanatic from New Hampshire and a Christian kid from Idaho…they were instantly dubious as soon as the first act played their first note, they absolutely hated it by the second note. This was The Scissor Girls.  (3 meg mp4 video)

As the other ladies grinded away on stage, the elfish singer/bass player was frantically running to join them, donned in a red vintage dress and a ghoulish mask.. When she plugged in and pounded out heavy wooden spidery bass lines and started singing in a harsh declamation- I realized I had found my new favorite band.

I had recently found a love for jagged dissonant music through The Fall, Captain Beefheart and God Is My Co-Pilot. Scissor Girls took all of this and transformed it into something I had never heard or seen before but which I had always been pining for. They overamplified all these artists- from the cryptic misanthropic ramblings of Mark E. Smith to the musical cubism of Trout Mask era Magic Band to the ambiguous gender politics of God Is My- Co Pilot. This was all wrapped in a highly unique aesthetic and attitude based on mystery and obscurity…a secret society donned in matching uniforms performing a ritualistic catharsis, flinging themselves to the dance of death.

AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

{mp3s and links herein}

Sometimes I just want to scream.  Every once in a while, I MUST scream.  Not a Wes Craven type of scream—more like a John Lennon "Mama don't go, Daddy come home" type of scream.

Poor Munch's Scream was stolen, never to scream again—not in public anyway.
("Who's that kid in the back of the room?")

Screaming can be a good thing, a release.

Vincent Price has no scream, not anymore; but he did "star" in this.>>>>>>>

Your screams have, and can be digitally detected and facilitated .

And where is my scream?  Buried By Time and Dust.  [check the drummer]
Time and Dust and Tymon Dogg.

Tomata DuPlenty can no longer scream, but here's what it sounded like.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - scream temporarily silenced (bleeding stopped), but waiting for Phase Three.
But see Phase IV if you can.

Syd Barrett screamed inside, perhaps still.

And everyone likes a dish of I Scream.

Here is the best thing I've seen all week; watch it long, watch it loud:

!

Scream and scream again.

Presenting the The Godlike Genius of Rancid Hell Spawn

MP3s below the fold.

In the age of on-demand everything, I've got to say that sometimes the Internet can really disappoint, as has been the case with all of my attempted Googlings of the British band Rancid Hell Spawn. My searches have turned up little more than a dreadfully outdated homepage run by the primary band member, some old fanzine reviews that made it to the digital realm, and links to playlist pages from Dominic Trix at KFJC, Daniel DiMaggio at WPRB, and my own radio show as well. But that's pretty much it -- talk about staring into the void and having the void stare right back at you with its finger firmly planted in its own nose. As my man Scott Williams has taught me, if you can't find what you're looking for on the Internet, it's up to you to make it happen -- not just for your own damn satisfaction, but for all the other hamster people out there who are presumably kicking and crying for lack of the same information you've been searching for. That said, this post seeks dually to smear some Spackle into the gaping hole in the Internet where a lengthy Rancid Hell Spawn entry should have already been, and to satisfy what all sources report is a widespread jones for coffee-crazed noise of the highest order.

Two Extremely Weird Exercise Videos

Which is stranger, a Japanese exercise video in which three women do jumping jacks while happily reciting such useful phrases as "Take anything you want, spare me my life," or a workout regime for poodles led by a woman who has just recovered from her own makeover at The Island of Dr. Moreau's Poodle Weight Loss Clinic?

Check them out them and let me know: [download Zuiikin' English video, 13 megs, mpeg format, or youtube it, and download Marika Takahashi's Poodle People, 17 megs, mpeg format, or youtube it].

Personally, I'd be more comfortable among the poodles.

Zuiikan English is a weekly TV show in Japan where each week's lessons are reviewed at the end of the episode. This particular episode dealt with the dangers of traveling abroad. youtube user SkillfullAbbot has more Zuikkan episodes here. Thanks Tom!

The Poodle Fitness video was supposedly made by Marika Takahashi for Panasonic for their 2006 Winter Olympics promotion (who says the Winter Olympics are worthless?). Takahashi felt that the poodles are inherently buff, thereby breaking down all cultural boundaries. More info here. Thanks Mark Allen and Brian!

WFMU in the News: Bits and Pieces

This week, Stochastic Hit Parade hostess Bethany Ryker gets a mention in Howard Mandel's article "Who Needs Radio?" in the June 14-20 edition of New York Press.

Also, writers love our Tom Scharpling.  This week's evidence comes in the form of an interview with Ben Karakh on Gothamist. 

Lastly, this very blarg* was tapped by the folks over at TelevisionWithoutPity.com as one of the top 100 entertainment websites for an article in Entertainment Weekly entitled "Bookmark This!".  As they say in the little blurb: "New Jersey's cult free-form radio station kicks it."

I appreciate the kudos, as do all the blargers on board here, although one wonders exactly what it is that we kick over here.  Ass? The bucket?  Old school?   

It kind of makes me feel like I did when I was in Florida this past winter and saw this in the sky:

and waited for about 5 minutes for them to finish the last word - Unicorns?  Ukelele music?  Umbrellas?  Urban legends?

Then I realized that they had just run out of smoke. 

*the proper pronunciation, according to an independent survey of 3 WFMU staff members.

Drive It Like You Were Second in Command Of The Third Reich!

Note - Does not come with swastika fender flags: Field Marshall Herman Goering's Mercedes on eBay.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 20

This post returns to a band scan I started to post last week from a listening session I recorded June 2, 2006 near Albany, New York. It's a slow cruise through the 31 meter band (9400 to 10000kHz). As with all the posts in this blog series, there’s MP3 audio you can download so you can listen along. And each frequency is listed (or my best guess), along with a brief description of each broadcast.

This was the first chance I had to play with a new shortwave portable (a Degen 1103) away from the radio interference of city life. And in this one long sweep of this band (in just a few hundred kilohertz) I picked up nearly fifty stations. I was impressed.

A good shortwave radio is truly a world receiver, and the Degen is just that. Although the fidelity of signals coming from thousands of miles away is never quite as crisp and steady as a local AM or FM station, many are quite listenable. And certainly some are difficult to hear or understand, but just knowing that they are coming through the air from so far away can make you curious to linger and try to figure out where they’re coming from, and perhaps what they're saying as well. This is DXing.

So, here’s some casual DXing from the East Coast. I’m not using as extra external antenna, and I haven’t researched any particular station or country to hunt out. However, I do plan to print out some pages from websites like this one and try to track down some far-flung English language broadcasts when I get a chance.

As far this scan recording, I skipped a few weak and relatively insignificant signals I happened across, and the first MP3 (or two in this post) picks up where the 31 meter band started to get interesting again.

Sensei Rebel's Archive Picks of the Week (6/12/06 - 6/18/06)

All MP3 and RealAudio links are streaming links from the WFMU Archives.

Rock And Roll
The Tammys - "Egyptian Shumba" RealAudio from Greasy Kid Stuff, June 17, 2006

International
Attwenger - "Sex" RealAudio from Pseu Braun's show, June 16, 2006

Experimental
Robert Marcel Lepage - "Pee Wee Fait Des Archaismes" RealAudio from Ken's show, June 14, 2006

Dance
Banco De Gaia - "Kara Kum" RealAudio from Pseu Braun's show, June 16, 2006

Ambient
Oren Ambarchi & Scott Horschoft - "19 Guitars" RealAudio from Acapulco Dance Party with Acapulco Rodriguez, June 15, 2006

Hip-Hop
The CMA (Grouch & Luckyiam) - "Windows" RealAudio from Bring That Beat Back with Billy Jam, June 14, 2006

Fave Song of the Week
Joel Pickard - "Ages/Bucket Dance" RealAudio from Monica's show, June 16, 2006

Life Is A Cabaret, Ol' Chung...

News personality and Jersey Shore resident Connie "Con" Chung's campy turn, or should I say tumble, as a lounge singer bidding adieu to her and husband Maury "Po" Povich's cancelled MSNBC program this past weekend created a sensation. A burning, prickling sensation. Re-live what has already become "audio gold" (on video) here.

Rockin' the Chainsaw

Scott Soriano and Crud Crud do it again, unleashing another MP3 masterpiece on the unsuspecting public. This time it's a 7" of "Krosskut Sawwwwww", an inexplicable little slab on Northern California wax that one-ups your basic primitive punk rock anthem by creating the whole song around a chain saw. For everyone impressed by the band Jackyl's "The Lumberjack", (and believe me, where I came from everyone talked about that shit the whole summer it was out. I think they even played a stadium in my town), I fear they must hand the belt over. I mean, that song just used the saw as an enhancing gimmick, whereas it is the soul of "Krosskut Sawwwwww". Even without it a band called the Sierra Altoids gets my attention regardless. Wow, you can almost sniff the exhaust. Fire it up. (MP3) Addendum: Our pal Patrick at WMBR reports that the wedding of chainsaws and rock continues, well represented by the new vocation of ex-Runaways singer Cherie Currie.

More Russian Anthems Than You Can Shake a Stick At (MP3s)

What better way to escape the international soccer brawl I seem to have started than by celebrating a song of international unity and peace. My love for the last two Soviet/Russian national anthems was reignited when I found these two pages (by Vadim Makarov)  dedicated to the Soviet National Anthem and it's one-time anthem, The Internationale. The first link chronicles the history of the Russian /  Soviet anthem from the days of Peter The Great on to the days of God Save The Czar, then on to The Internationale, and then "The Hymn" of the Soviet Union, the same beautiful melody that is currently used as Russia's national anthem.

I previously posted about The Hymn here, and I did a radio show on The Internationale a few years ago. On the two pages linked above, there are a few interesting videos as well, including The Pet Shop Boys cover of a Village People song, Go West [download video, 49 megs, mpg format]. The melody to Go West is almost note for note identical to The Hymn, and the video is also laden with nationalistic Soviet imagery, yet The Pet Shop Boys pleaded ignorance when they discovered the melodic and ideological similarities to The Hymn.

Stranger still is this music video by Igor Ugolnikov of The Hymn: download video, 57 megs, mpg format]. The video features many popular Russian singers from the period, and although it is billed as a "parody," it comes off as a heartfelt nugget of Soviet patriotism, produced as the Soviet Union was crumbling. It comes off almost as a Bolshevik version of the Up With People Orchestra, right down to the 70's era fashion and haircuts.

For MP3s of The Hymn, The Internationale and all of the offshoots, check the linked pages. There are too many versions to choose a favorite, but here are ten wide-ranging or memorable versions of The Internationale:

Gypsy Swing version by Coco Briaval Quartet   |   Chinese Metal version

Hans Eisler   |   Tagalog version   |   1929 German version

Electronic version by Maxx Klaxon   |   German(?) Rap version

Vietnamese version   |   Japanese version   |   Greek version

Luxuriant, flowing, silky locks

Inspired upon discovering the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, I present you with some good hair videos:

Big, luscious '80s manhair + quadruple-necked guitar = Nitro! (wmv, 19 MB)

Smooth, elegant Japanese hippie locks from Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster (wmv, 8 MB). I'll bet you want a 100% post-consumer bodysuit now, don't you?

Various forms of flashy, glammy, bombastically good hair (and helmets) from a most righteous version of 1994, the way 1980 intended it to be. Download the opening scene from The Apple (mpg, 17 MB).

All good hair videos courtesy of Brian Turner, good hair science provided by Andy.