WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Mel Gibson Needs To Know

"Fucking Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in
the world. Are you a Jew?" - Mel Gibson

Squirrel Songs

There are days when I come up with such a fantastic idea for a post here.  I'll sit and I'll think about it and tell people about it and then make some notes and think about it some more and do some research.  Unfortunately, the longer I spend thinking about the Fantastic Idea and trying to hammer it all out, the more I start to think that it is in fact, not such a Fantastic Idea after all - or the F.I. is such a meaty bone (as Scott says), that I really need to put Some More Time into it.  And then I wonder what else I could write about.  And then, invariably, I start thinking about squirrels. 

Today, my friends, is one of those days. 

I like squirrels. When I was a child, I enjoyed climbing trees so much that I wished I could be a squirrel when I grew up.  I even wrote poems about it.  No, you can't see them.

Some people don't like squirrels.  They are afraid of their beady little eyes and their scratchy little claws, or that they will crawl up their pants leg, like what happened in this song (mp3).  Squirrel loathers would probably appreciate this song (mp3), too.

Other people, like me, don't mind the little guys.  They aren't afraid to look at life THROUGH little beady eyes, as in this song (mp3).  Sometimes they don't have the words to express their appreciation, so they write instrumental songs like this song, or this song, or this song (mp3s).  Sometimes they think that squirrels are SO great, they believe the critters are capable of solving crimes and starring in television shows (mp3), and putting out whimsical songs (mp3s).

And, of course, some people name their radio shows after them.   

Well, I'm back to hammering out the Fantastic Idea which will hopefully be revealed next week - or else I will have to resort to some more squirrel-related content.  In the meantime - please slow down on the roads, people.  The life you save could be a small fluffy one.

Cleaning Out My Inbox

I'll be on vacation for the next week so here's an inbox cleansing before I go:

Don't ask, don't tell: South Korean soldiers show their inner Village People by singing a Morning Musume song (youtube)

The Oldest Song in The World

Twenty Syphilis Posters from the Golden Age of Syphilis, via Ethan Persoff and John from Oslo

DJ Fido (youtube)

Great album a new weird vocalist for the ages: Maskull, via postpunkjunk and Mr. Science.

France's Frog Museum. Not to mention lamps and weapons.

The Dutch Circus Museum, featuring tons of great circus poster art, via hopsakee

The transluscent art stylings of Margi Geerlinks.

More good clean fun at the expense of mannequins.

Implosions, get yer red hot implosions!

The American Nazi Project of Mind Control (google video)

Photos on right from Strange Statues Around the World.

See you in ten days or so!

Primus vs Jan Pehechan-Ho Video Mashup

Listener Rob made his first video mash-up, combining the histrionics of Bollywood legend Mohammed Rafi with the Psych-Polka stylings of Primus' Les Claypool. Here is Welcome to This Jan Pehechan-Ho: [download windows video, 48 megs] The original video of Jan Pehechan-Ho, from the Bollywood movie Gumnaam can be downloaded from Brian's post here.

Along similar lines, here's an old video mashup that I missed the first time around, Hey Ya, Charlie Brown, by "Snoopy," combining Outkast's Hey Ya! with the irrestible animated choreography of Charles Schultz: download quicktime video, 9 megs. via antville

And on the heavier side, here's a video from the latest Scott Walker album The Drift. This is an appropriately bleak animation to Scott's apocalyptic nightmare song Jesse, directed by Graham Wood. This is a big download, but if your affection for Scott isn't 88 megs big, you can always see it at youtube. Download mp4 video, 88 megs. 

Nick the Bard vs. Robin Kahn

There are few things we love more at WFMU than the untrained voice, particularly when it's singing pop songs. With that in mind, it's time for a showdown between two a capella pop wonders, Nick the Bard and Robin Kahn, both of whom have been repeated offenders on Intelligent Design. Who wins: Nick or Robin? You tell us.

Nick the Bard Sings Tull's "Thick as a Brick" in its entirety: Side A | Side B (MP3)

Robin Kahn Sings Patti Smith's "Horses" (MP3): Gloria | Redondo Beach | Birdland | Free Money | Kimberly | Break It Up | Land: Horses/Land Of A Thousand Dances/La Mer (De) | Elegie | Star Spangled Spanglish (Bonus Track)

Nick the Bard Sings Joni Mitchell's "Court & Spark" (MP3): Court And Spark | Help Me | Free Man In Paris | People's Parties | The Same Situation | Car On A Hill | Down To You | Just Like This Train | Raised On Robbery | Trouble Child | Twisted

Robin Kahn Sings Carole King's "Tapestry" (MP3): I Feel the Earth Move | So Far Away | It's Too Late | Home Again | Beautiful | Way Over Yonder | You Got a Friend | Where You Lead | Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow | Smackwater Jack | Tapestry | You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman

Nick the Bard Sings Theme from the G.I. Joe Movie (MP3)

Robin Kahn Sings "Jesus Christ Superstar" in its entirety (MP3): Part 1 | Part 2

Nick the Bard Sings Midnight at the Oasis (MP3)

Harvey Matusow: The Biggest Snitch in American History (MP3s)

So how did the "most hated man in America" relax after destroying the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans, giving LSD to Robert F. Kennedy, tangling with Roy Cohn and becoming prison buddies with Wilhelm Reich? By moving to England and recording a psychedelic Jews Harp record, of course. Here's the 1969 LP by Harvey Matusow's Jews Harp Band, War Between Fats and Thins:

Wet Socks   |   War Between Fats and Thins   |   Clootch Hunt

Eighteen Nuns   |   Velvet Tooth Paste   |   Carroll   |   Afghan Red   

Poo Children on Mountain   |   Scat Rat   |     The Officials

Motherhood Is No Accident   |   Margie Swiss Cheese

As unusual as this LP is, it pales in comparison to Marshall "Harvey" Matusow's life, which intersected every major artery of post-war America. Born in the Bronx in 1926, Matusow was a Jewish street hustler who was picking pockets by age ten, and went on to work throughout his life as a Spy, DJ, Thief, Broadway Agent, Gambler, Stand Up Comic, Actor, Author, Musician, Professional Red Baiter, Filmmaker, Impresario, TV Clown and Social Activist. He was married twelve times, and palled around with Billie Holiday, Norman Mailer, Jason Robards, Steve McQueen, Emile de Antonio, Yoko Ono, Art Carney and Genovese mob boss Frank Costello. Ladybird Johnson invited him to the White House, and he invented the myth that smoking banana peels would get you high (as an ill conceived plot to extract geopolitical revenge on the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Banana).

In his later days he replaced LSD with LDS, converting to Mormonism and rechristening himself as Job Matusow. In his final years, he worked as a tireless advocate for the homeless, runaway teenagers and prostitutes while he made ends meet by establishing a successful children's theater / TV show starring himself as Cockyboo the Clown.

He tried his whole life to live down his reputation as the most hated man in America for his work with Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Affairs Committee (HUAC), fleeing to self-imposed exile in England in the Sixties, where he immersed himself in the worlds of avant garde art, music and film. While in Britain, he produced the largest festival of avant garde music ever, the ICES 72 concert. He invited his pal Yoko Ono and her husband to London for the gallery show where Yoko met John, making him partially responsible for breaking up The Beatles. (He was fully responsible for breaking up The Weavers, accusing Pete Seeger and other band members of being communists.) And of course, while in the UK, he took lots of acid and recorded his Jews Harp record.

The Sick-o-Mind's Second Coming - Mind Eraser's 'Glacial Reign'

After I graduated from Ewing High School in June of 1990, all I wanted to do was move to California and ditch my family, my roots and my lame ass central Jersey town for good. While so many of my class mates were contemplating college majors, I was ready for sun, sand and maybe actually talking to a girl. I had my flight booked by the end of June. I also wanted to go out there to see Infest perform live. They were a blinding Hardcore wrecking machine from Valencia, California who only had this one 7” they put out themselves, but I fucking loved it. It was equal parts Brit ’blastbeat’ (Napalm Death) with the most primitive of early 80s’ American Hardcore (DYS, Siege, Deep Wound, The Abused, Negative Approach, etc.) It had a shitty looking Xeroxed sleeve and had no intentions but to slay your ass. I knew it just had to be a completely mind blowing experience live. Well, to make a long story short, within three weeks of my west coast jaunt, I was already back home in Jersey kissing cable television in my parents’ living room without seeing Infest AT ALL. It seemed not one of my Straight Edge pen pals in Cali knew or cared about the band . ‘Dude, those dudes are total druggies’. One of them told a story of how he tried out to be their bass player while the band chain smoked grass in front of him the whole time. He ended off the story with a very passionate ‘Fucking losers!’ and that was that…no Infest for me.

This Week in Sex: Hillary's Bust

The Presidential Bust of Hillary Rodham Clinton: The First Woman President of the United States of America will be officially open for public viewing on August 9 for a limited six week run at the Museum of Sex.

The piece is by Daniel Edwards, who you may remember from the unavoidable Britney-giving-birth-on-a-bearskin-rug.

Edwards gets inspired by the best things. According to the press release:

Edwards’ inspiration for the piece was derived from actress Sharon Stone’s controversial quote earlier in the year about challenges that would most likely be encountered should the Junior Senator from New York run on the ’08 ticket. “I think Hillary Clinton is fantastic,” Stone said. “But I think it is too soon for her to run. This may sound odd but a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don’t think people will accept that. It’s too threatening.”

Shouldn't Hillary-inspired-by-Sharon have an icepick?

See also: penis painting of George Bush.

Thanks Dylan!

Priiiiiiiiince of Peeeeaaaace

We live for unique preaching techniques here at WFMU, so when Brazilian listener/artist Diego sent me this clip of a maniacal little girl screeching about the lord in Portuguese, the spirit within me awoke, leading me to the blog to spread the glory of her delivery.

Download video (mpeg, 9 MB), or watch it here on youtube.

And just in case you don't speak Portuguese, Diego has kindly offered translation services. Here's what he says:

in the first seconds of the video, she´s talking (talking??!?!?!) about David (of David and Goliath).

then she screams "wonderful, conselour, strong lord, father of eternity and priiiiiiiiiiiiince of peace!!!
it´s jesus of nazareth!! aleluiah! glory, lord!!
i want you all to repeat with me:
it´s wonderful!
conselour!
strong lord!
father of eternity!
and priiiiiinceeee of peeeeeaaaaaaaceeeee!!!

another time!!
wonderful!
conselour!
strong lord!
father of eternity!
and priiiiiinceeee of peeeeeaaaaaaaceeeee!!!!!

aleluiah
glory to the lord"

and then she starts to scream about people being able to defeat satan, passing over his head, fidelity to your wife / husband, fidelity to the money you give to the church, etc.

about 2:34 minutes of video - "and the last thing i´m gonna tell you to end this thing is that now god called Noemi (???) and said 'Noemi, get back home. get back to the father´s home / house. cause i´m gonna give you abundance. you won´t be hungry anymore. you won´t be thirsty anymore. cause i´m
gonna take you in my arms just like a chicken take her little baby birds'" etc...

Hot in the Airport: The Y. Bhekhirst sound (mp3)

Ten off-kilter MP3s after the jump...

Here's the musical oeuvre of one Y. Bhekhirst, a man who sings in some unidentifiable accent, backed up by a band that sounds like each instrument was recorded separately, without any regards to such things as tempo or melody. Hot in the Airport was a big hit on Incorrect Music, where the most played track from the album had to be the title song. It's just so darn catchy, and Mr. Bhekhirst made sure you picked up on that by underlining the track. (As can be seen in the picture on the right, the underlining was done on the plastic cover of the tape, not on the J-card insert or even on the shrinkwrap, which always struck me as a telling detail.)

For more information on Mr. Bhekhirst, check out the inevitable Wikipedia article, which will direct you to this Bhekhirst fan(?)site. These two sites contain all of the known information about Y. Bhekhirst, which is to say not that much.

This Week in Sex: Hump Day

Hello, Wednesday! New day, same time, same smut. Who cares? Probably only me and Megan, who gave up Hump Day and now starts her weekends off with a bang and a regular Friday post. Thanks Megan! Keep it clean.

Stripper gets a hand. Linda Kay, a Goth stripper at the Hott (sic) 22 club in Union, New Jersey, kept a hand called Freddy in a jar of formaldehyde on her dresser. She also had six human skulls. They were discovered after police responded to a report of a man threatening to kill himself with a hammer at her house in Plainfield. Speculation is that the hand came from a fan who was a med student (it appears to be roughly chopped off), but the skulls were ordered on the internet. Her mother said, "She has a flair for the dramatic." Kay was arrested and released on $100,000 bail.

Pricasso. OK, Pricasso is a dumb name, and painting with your penis is a dumb idea, but a penis painting of Bush seems so right.

Kim Jong Il has a secret wife. I am so pissed off at him! Wait until I start my obviously-fake billboard campaign accusing him of cheating on me.

Toy stories.

• There's a new toy in town, and by new I mean a hands-free pink cone-shaped thing, and by town I mean the U.K. I don't quite get The Cone commercial--everyone fondles it at a dinner party, and then grandma takes it home and puts her dentures in a cup. I guess you are not supposed to wear your dentures when you use the cone. Got it. via gizmodo
• A vibrator that hooks up to your iPod rocks your world to the beat of your personal love groove. It connects to your iPod with a "freedom cord," so it seems very patriotic.  via wired
• Penistron. An internet wanking device. It doesn't matter if whatever is on the other side of the internet is real. "You could still have sex because it's just data." (youtube account required)

DIY vagina. To get "that taste": 1 block of soft tofu, 1 can of 100 per cent pineapple juice, and salt.

Sex: "the killer app of space tourism." Space hotels better work on their brochure copy. At a recent space conference, panelists discussed the fantasy and reality of space sex, and the reality is kinda un-sexy: "Sex in zero-G is going to have to be more or less choreographed. Otherwise it's just going to be a wild flail."

Rapture Me

Much has been made of the merrymaking going on at RaptureReady in regards to the recent outbreak of war. But if you scroll through the archives you will see that bombs falling in the Middle East is always cause for celebration for these fine folks.

                                                  

Which leads us to the question of the day: are you rapture ready? (Link)  And to keep you focused while you type up your rapture letter - here is some rapture propaganda from the 1940s  (YouTube link).

ps

It seems that Liz already blogged this particular video last week - but if you want to be in the book of life, watch it again.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 22

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a week around the July 4th holiday in Michigan. And many of those evenings were spent in my brother’s backyard scanning shortwave and the AM band for this blog series. Although I’ve yet to dig into all the tapes I recorded, I must admit that I don’t recall that any particular shortwave scan I snagged there to be as compelling as most of the ones I’ve already featured here. To me, what makes a broadcast band tuning adventure memorable is ultimately a crap shoot. It's a roll of the dice under the influence of atmospheric conditions and the happenstance of coming across interesting content. The radio dice weren't so kind this trip.

That’s not to say that in twenty or so hours of recording I didn’t capture some intriguing and revealing broadcasting along the way. But I was ultimately disappointed that most of scans didn't stand out as being blogable or as significant audio artifacts. To me, there’s several factors that make a particular scan worth posting and discussing here. While it’s always exciting to come across viable signals from very far away (or from countries I’ve rarely if ever heard on shortwave), this is an English language blog and it seems imperative to present some radio English content in the mix (although foreign music programs often have a powerful charm all their own). I think it’s safe to say that just discussing the origin of multilingual chatter isn’t what I had in mind when I started this series. And I’m sure most readers would agree.

Of course, exotic non-English programming is part of what makes shortwave so interesting. But in the end radio is supposed to be a communication medium. When I turn on a shortwave set to explore I want to receive information and ideas from around the world, as well as log some far off programming I can’t understand. Actually my recent listening sessions upstate (for only two evenings) yielded more interesting scans, and I may return to those recordings in the next few weeks. Like I said, it’s always a crap shoot.

Travels with Sluggo: South

Hello, Everybody—Nice seeing you again.
A couple of months ago, Sluggo and I drove down to Washington D.C. for the big DADA show at the National Gallery. Even though it was scheduled to come to MOMA (and it’s there now), we figured it was easier to drive 500 miles roundtrip with a Boston Terrier and stay in a smelly, cheap tourist hotel than try to see art at a big MOMA show.

To get from New York to Washington, you have to drive through Maryland. They should have put a rest stop on their state quarter, because they definitely have the best highway rest stops anywhere, all clean and fancy. My favorite thing is the Maryland rest stop penny machines. I love penny machines: They’re so low-tech, and so satisfying. You put in a penny—and also two quarters—and turn a big crank, and the machine keeps your fifty cents but it gives you back your penny, all squashed with a design pressed into it. The designs are usually the state bird, or the state capital building, or something like that. But at Maryland rest stops you can get the FRANK ZAPPA PENNY.

Here it is. I guess Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore. I didn’t know that. The only famous person I ever knew of from Baltimore was John Waters. Someday I will get a squashed John Waters penny, and my life will be complete.

It was on this trip that I found another reason to hate the Patriot Act. The day before we left for Washington I came down with the worst sore throat and bad headcold that I’ve had in years. I was chugging Airborne, sucking on Cold-Ease drops, and gulping down Dayquil and Nyquill the whole way. Okay, here’s the thing about that: Because the rest of the country is addicted to crystal meth, the latest version of the Patriot Act, signed by George W. this past March, included a section called the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005  that restricts the sale of over-the-counter products that contain pseudoephedrine. I guess it’s a good idea. (I saw a TV show about how cutting the supply of pseudoephedrine directly correlates with a reduction in the rate of meth addiction, and I wish I could give you a link to it but I forget what it was called.)

Condom Therapy (video)

I have finally recovered from Black Friday, July 21st, when the station's T1 broke, an electrical panel burned and melted, the air conditioning broke on 3 out of 5 floors, the second floor started leaking into the ground floor, a thunderstorm knocked our audio off the air leaving us with nothing to broadcast for two hours but an iPod filled with surf and calliope music, my house flooded and Os Mutantes performed with the Brazilian version of Bette Midler.

Left with a a dazed demeanor and a broken spirit, I turrned to Professor Dum Dum's long lost cousin, Helmut Von Schmella, for a round of condom therapy: download mpeg video, 6 megs or youtube it. My petty concerns were quickly forgotten as I hyperventilated into an extra large lubricated Trojan with a resevoir tip. As the condom broke and left a tight band of latex around my neck, the blood flow to my brain was diminished and I was filled with a warm sense of well-being. All is well.

R.I.P. Jessie Mae Hemphill

Another great disciple of the Fred McDowell blues lineage has passed on, Jessie Mae Hemphill has died in Memphis at age 71 from complications of an infection that may have been related to an ulcer. Born in North Mississippi as granddaughter to Lomax fixture Sid Hemphill, Jessie Mae evolved the power of the fife-and-drum sound of the hills into self-stylized rhythmic qualities of electric guitar and had been flooring crowds since the 1960's up until a debilitating stroke in 1993. Besides her hypnotic, fevered approach to anything with strings (including at points a bottleneck style approach to a diddley bow, a long broom wire attached to an outside of a house wall played with metal or by hand), Hemphill also would add to the show with foot and leg operated tambourines, bells, etc. and generally shake up anything not bolted down in the room (attendees includes). Despite the fact that she was largely regarded as a major purveyor of the real blues (one famous tale recounts her all-woman trio taking over a BB King show while his band took a break, and blowing him away), she lived in relative obscurity to the mainstream, being increasingly discovered late in her life along similar lines as Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside (both of whom she was close to, and have also passed in recent years). Tales filtered in of Jessie living somewhat in a state of squalor through her last decade, fueled with some bits of monetary support for rent and living by fans, and this week's news of her death after checking in to a hospital a week ago is more dismal considering the increasing amount of loss in true keepers of the flame. Some real audio clips to remember Jessie: "Streamlined Train", "Shake It Baby". And three of her CDs are available via Hightone/HMG.

Billy Jam Joins WFMU's Podcast All-Stars

WFMU's International Man of Mystery Award goes to DJ Billy Jam, an Irishman-turned-New-Yorker-by-way-of-California. In addition to his copious travels, basement record-scratching parties with West Coast DJ illuminati, and genre-bending compilation releases on the Hip Hop Slam label, Mr. Jam is also the host of Saturday night's Put the Needle on the Record program, which features hip-hop and beat-happy sounds along with political soundbytes and the occasional noise or punk rock interlude.

If you're not yet a fan of Billy's sonic artistry, trust us, the man has some serious skills. He's been known to reappropriate other WFMU DJs' micbreaks (real audio) and mix together the opening tracks from every WFMU program (real audio) that aired during an entire week.

Now there is yet one more reason to dig Billy Jam: he's created a short, weekly, scratchtastic podcast mix for your enjoyment. Get on board and hook yourself up with Billy's podcast complement to Put the Needle on the Record (or any of WFMU's 18 podcasts) by visiting WFMU's Podcast Central. All you need is iTunes, baby.

Singing Dog (video)

We all love singing dogs, no matter whether they sing Beatles tunes, Jingle Bells, or grindcore. However, teaching dogs how to sing can be a rather tough undertaking, as this clip (2.9 meg MP4) from the movie Gates of Heaven shows. Obviously, the teacher here is not quite up to the task, the dog suffers, and Werner Herzog had to eat his shoe (YouTube link). Did this all have to happen? Where did this lady go wrong?