WFMU's Beware of the Blog

MP3 Truffles: Essentials Vol 2

Welcome to part two of my list of favorite sites that share MP3 files. The key here isn't just that they increase my digital music whatchamawhosit, but that they also drop the musical knowledge in a way that is fun to read, with sites that are easy to use and completely worth expoloring. This isn't every music blog I visit, or even every one of my favorites, but they are always at the top of my list, and perhaps have the greatest percentage of tracks that I not only download - but keep.

Check out last week's post for my first six selections. And now join me as we delve into more, making this list an even dozen.

But wait... In order to also to expand my own knowledge of good music sites out there, I thought it would be fun to have these great bloggers share their favorites as well. And so, there also follows links to more great sites where you can spend some ear and eye time, all as recommended by great music bloggers themselves. Read on - and download away!

ESSENTIAL PLACES TO DIG FOR MP3 TRUFFLES, Part Two

7. Garage Hangover
8. Last Days of Man on Earth
9. Music For Maniacs
10. Record Robot
11. Said the Gramophone
12. Spread the Good Word

Follow the jump for descriptions and links. 

Great Moments in WFMU History #4

Station Break-In (by Lou D'Antonio and Liz Berg)

A frantic SOS call came in to a party that DJ Lou D'Antonio and other assorted WFMU staffers were attending. Fellow DJ Dave Myers was on the air and under attack by an irate pro-Vietnam War ex-Marine, who had barged into the station like a crazed lunatic. Even though Myers was well over 6 ft tall, his fellow DJs knew that he weighed no more than a Snickers wrapper. In a rash display of heroism, the party attedees rushed to the station armed with D’Antonio’s Dunlop Maxply tennis racquet (expertly strung with top-of-the-line imitation gut). Fortunately, DJ Vin Scelsa had already phoned the police, who were at the scene when the FMU rescue crew arrived. Engineer George Black sustained an injury to the forehead, and D’Antonio had to be restrained from executing a backhand half-volley to the assailant's testicles. 1968.

Illustration by Lyman Dally

The Derobed Face Of Doom: Rigor Sardonicus

I always assumed the vocals were pitch shifted, but I just read on Rigor Sardonicus’ site that Fogarrazo’s guttervox are for real and can be reproduced live.  At any rate, the unglamourized doomers age gracefully with a crushing new album, Vallis Ex Umbra De Mortuus, not to mention a recent split with black grinders Dimentianon.  No corpsepaint or any other gimmicks.  Just some fucked up Long Island metal nerds with righteous axes and a DR-660.  Who needs corpsepaint when you look this sick sitting with your friends on a swingset? RS are the two dudes furthest right, by the way.  And speaking of the DR-660, may I just state my opinion that I prefer it to an ensouled skin beater?  I’ve read complaints, but for me it adds a nice kind of outsider/naive spin – sometimes weird little awkward things get programmed that any human drummer would play much more fluidly.  Below are two mp3s from the new album.  If you head over to the RS website, you’ll find a track or two off each CD - which basically adds up to a free best of album (although they didn’t include my favorite RS track, Soulless Extinction, from the classic Principia Sardonica album).

Incompertus Quod Anon

Rex Regis Fortuna

Oh, and on a somewhat related and much more gimmick oriented note, FMU friend Jared sent me Finntroll's hillarious music video for Trollhammeren.  Celtic Metalcore by trolls, for trolls.  Fine use of the Jew's harp, I must say.

At The Movies with Sidney and Richard (part 1 of 3)

Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier made three movies together. No Way Out (1950) was their first, and was Sidney Poitier's feature film debut. Widmark plays a baddie named Biddle who's twin dies early on when they are brought in to the hospital where Poitier's Brooks is - Doctor Brooks. Even though you would never guess it from the poster (or the trailer for that matter) this is a race film. Biddle blames Brooks for his brother's death, even though it is just an excuse to fire up his hatred for the Black man. At the movie's climax Biddle gets the drop on Brooks - its not only one of Widmark's best bad guy scenes but it's also a damn fine debut for Poitier's calm cool self as well. The movie was actually supposed to end with Widmark shooting Poitier after making him dig his own grave, but the film makers couldn't go through with it. Instead the movie ends with probably the most amazing line of 1950.

My Favorite Mandrake the Magician Strip

Mandrake the Magician not only gestured hypnotically, he also dreamt hypnotically.

Mandrake creator Lee Falk spent his early World War Two years dispensing disinformation as Propaganda Director for radio station KMOX in Illinois. Aside from creating The Phantom and Mandrake, he was apparently nuts about theatre--he owned five of them. Falk wrote a couple of plays, produced more than three hundred and even filled the directing chair when he felt like it. His dedicated ensemble included Basil Rathbone, Shelly Winters, Victor Jory, Marlon Brando, Ethel Waters, Chico Marx, James Mason, Paul Robeson, Paul Newman, and Eva Gabor.

Falk wrote the script for Mandrake from 1934 until his last days hospital-bound in New York City in the spring of 1999. Tearing off his oxygen mask, Lee would dictate Mandrake's latest adventures to an attentive assistant.

One time Falk remarked:

"Each artist, out of his own interests and imagination, creates his own world in his strip - this is true of Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, Popeye, all good strips. And you accomplish this not by imitating others - you come up with your own idea. To me, The Phantom and Mandrake are very real - much more than the people walking around whom I don't see very much. You have to believe in your own characters."

This is my favorite Mandrake strip. It was one of the last strips that Falk wrote. I remember the rest of the week as being pretty stellar as well.

Fancy Old Ladies on Foto Decadent

This glamorous photo-spread by Matt Erwin is featured in the January 2008 edition of British style magazine Dazed & Confused.  The avant-fashion blog Foto Decadent has posted large versions of these magnificent ladies here.

I'm not even going to say anything about the Gene Simmons sex tape

I can't. I just can't. It's too easy. Instead, I'll leave it to Anjali, who posted on Yahoo! Answers:

Gene simmons sex tape? my heart is broken :(?
i guess a sex tape with him and another chick (not shannon tweed) has been leaked onto the net. i'm totally heartbroken. they seemed like the cutest couple on their show 'family jewels'... i'm so confused.. why go on a show and act like a family man (apart from announcing that he's unmarried), raise those two smart hilarious children but have the reputation of having slept with thousands of woman? your opinion? has he slept with that many women whilst shannon's all happy with their relationship?? i'm such a geek i know!

Such a sweet kid.

And I'm not even gonna give a link to watch it. You can find it, if you feel the need. Instead, here's Apollo Zero's KISS/Human League mash.

Apollo Zero - Don't You Want the X in Sex (MP3)

EDIT: The demon has posted a statement on his website.

February 20th -

Hi everyone,

You may have heard or seen garbage that has sprung up from my past.

Rest assured the proper legal team is looking at all ramifications and options.

And us?  Shannon, Nick and Soph are happy and healthy.

All is well.

And thank you all for the kind words of support.

Dr. Love is calling his lawyers...

What’s happening in Jazz?

With a hundred or so years of recorded music, it’s sometimes easy to forget that new jazz bands and approaches are popping up all the time.  Right now, in 2008, it feels like something’s happening.

I remember when my fresh ears stumbled into a Gold Sparkle Band gig some ten years ago. I’m not sure who they were playing with and it may or may not have been at a loft somewhere in DUMBO or at Avenue B Social Club (which is now that bar run by Handsome Dick Manitoba, or maybe some condos for all know, I live in Jersey).  At any rate, I thought something was happening then as well; the punk/psychedelic energy of these jazz kids was exhilarating.  It seemed to me noise/punk/whatever bands were making their music in the spirit of the loft jazz scene of the ‘70s.  Gold Sparkle Band was an example of jazz musicians drawing on that kind of energy.  I figured a cadre of new jazz dorks would start coming at it from a younger, post-everything perspective, expand the idiom, right?  There were some examples (TEST, Tenor Rising, Drums Expanding, Chicago Underground Duo/Trio, Mishegas featuring the future Kid Millions from Oneida) For the most part, though, younger musicians were folding jazz in as an element, one of a thousand, for modern noise/rock bands to draw on.

So is something happening?  I can’t remember the last time I was more excited for a new release date than Tyshawn Sorey’s double-disc debut album on Firehouse 12, That/Not (Tyshawn Sorey - "Seven Pieces for Trombone Quartet" from That/Not).   This was to be a special record. For starters, Tyshawn himself, known as one of the finest young jazz drummers around, stated that he had nothing to prove and would not feature drums as a main compositional component on the record.  Beyond that, much of That/Not’s double-disc length would be made up of a solo piano composition.  Nice.  One late night at WFMU I was screening a pile of CDs and unexpectedly encountered That/Not along with a self-titled record by the Peter Evans Quartet, also on Firehouse 12, and scanned through both.  To my surprise, That/Not was expansive and slow and confusing, a ship abandoned at sea and left to drift. The Peter Evans Quartet on the other hand, was a fine-tuned scorcher (Peter Evans Quartet - "Bodies and Souls" from The Peter Evans Quartet).

Cows and Beer, Best Before:

This photo recently came to the attention of myself and partner-in-crime DJ Diane Kamikaze via Dan Kubinski from Milwaukee's finest hardcore group ever, Die Kreuzen. It's a crowd shot from the stage at CBGB, taken by Dan just before he told us of Cliff Burton's death after this show, September 27th, 1986. Take a look a this motley bunch of glumsters and doofuses. That's me and Diane up front to the right anticipating the time of our lives, like every time we went to see Die Kreuzen. It's odd to calculate that this was 22 years ago and to imagine what everyone else in this picture is up to now. Steve Albini encapsulated that very year, himself and this band in this article from Forced Exposure. Here's a couple of musical clips courtesy of Mike Lupica's show to enjoy as you read here and here.                                                                                    

National Guitar-Rifle Association

Nuff said...   via Vintage ads

The Awakening

The Awakening is a huge, multi-part sculpture that was installed in Washington DC's East Potomac Park by artist J. Seward Johnson in 1980. No doubt, it was one of the most ambitious works featured in that years' International Sculpture Conference Exhibition. Observed from a modest distance, it creates the visual impression of a partially buried giant, struggling to free itself from the Earth. I took this photo (left) of the giant's face during a 1993 roadtrip to our nation's capital and have had it stuck to my refrigerator with a magnet for many of the ensuing years.

You need to see the piece's other components in order to get the proper perspective, but since all of my other pictures taken on that day include me with the dreaded "90s hair", other people's shots on Flickr will have to suffice. And there are a lot to choose from. The Awakening's entry on Wikipedia has more info, including the amusing fact that the sculpture "proved so popular... that 27 years after the event, it still remains, even though the National Park Service admits that the "temporary permit" has long since expired".

Sadly, it seems that the work's long and glorious run at Hains Point is coming to a close: The Park Service recently announced that the immense statue is being relocated to Prince George's County (Maryland), beginning tomorrow, February 20th. No word on whether or not there will be a candlelight vigil this evening, but if you happen to be in DC today, be sure to seize upon your last chance to see this truly arresting work as the artist intended.

Megachurch Media

I went to CHURCH this weekend. No shit. In Spokane, a once-was industrial mining and logging powerhouse in eastern Washington state that has given way to suburban sprawl, methamphetamines, and yeah, HUGE CHURCHES.

Go ahead, laugh. But let me tell you something: if we are engaged in a culture war, these folks are kicking our ass. The Life Center church that I attended was one of four in the city, which qualifies it as a religious franchise on the make.  Capacity 2500+, which places it as one of rough 1338 megachurches in America. They conducted a full-on TV-quality broadcast of the sermon and bookended every section with a live Christian rock band. People cried and waved their hands in the air. The WB-friendly compositions were  licensed from a commercial firm.

They interspersed the even-toned vanilla moralizing with hallmark-specialesque videos played on dual jumbrons, and a little digging leads me to think that these pieces may have been farmed out from a company like this one (dig the Die Hard respect!).

Browse GodTube.com for a spell and one realizes that this culture must be experiencing a (gross) mass media renaissance of its own.

I know it's funny, but dudes, IT'S NOT FUNNY. Measured in brute numbers, this culture is outmaneuvering the left on a daily basis. The army of god is on the march, and they're already geared to mobilize en masse against whichever candidate our superdelegates (near arbitrarily) choose.

Y'know, sitting there under the influence of one or two of their 16 oz. Christuccinos, I came to the conclusion that the form they've chosen for mass communication may really have legs. Put people in a room and talk to them about what goes on. Deary me, I think we need a new weird church of our own to galvanize all our stray lefty sheep. (No Ted, not that weird.)

Amen. Anyone else up for Sunday service?

Sensei Rebel's Archive Picks of the Week (Feb. 11 - Feb. 17, 2008)

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

Rock And Roll
Hackensack - "River Boat" RealAudio from Brian Turner's show

International
Queen Ifrica - "Below the Waist" RealAudio from Reggae Schoolroom with Jeff Sarge

Experimental
Thomas Brinkmann - "Spiral" RealAudio from Brian Turner's show

Dance
Kid Cudi - "Day N' Nite" RealAudio from Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture

Instrumental
Korla Pandit - "Procession of the Grand Moghul" RealAudio from Woody's show

Fave Songs of the Week
Like A Team - "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" RealAudio from Scott Williams' show
Eagles of Death Metal - "Love Your Monkey" RealAudio from Maria Levitsky's show

DJ Nightmare by Proxy

About a year ago, Evan Funk Davies posted a shocking expose of the WFMU DJs' terrifying shared nightmare. Since then, the nightmare's continued. One of my worst involved DJ Dave the Spazz trying to "help" me by giving me a Grateful Dead LP to play. But something strange has happened: The nightmare is growing, expanding, turning into something else--MUTATING. First, we heard about Listeners who are beginning to have the DJ Nightmare themselves. Here's Listener-Volunteer Rudy describing his DJ nightmare on my show--EVEN THOUGH HE'S NOT A DJ. Then this week I suddenly had a DJ nightmare by proxy. In MY dream, it was DJ Mr. Finewine of the Downtown Soulville show who was the one who was late getting to the station, didn't have any records, couldn't run the equipment, etc. Quelle terroir! I'm not saying this is Evan Davies fault, but he IS the one who first went public with this dreadful curse.

StupidBowl IV

For five or six years beginning in 1996, the StupidBowl reared its ugly head on the airwaves of WFMU. The idea was simple: watch their SuperBowl video, listen to our StupidBowl audio. If memory serves, StupidBowl IV featured myself, Bob Rixon and John Hajeski helping with the mix. Here's an excerpt:

27 photographs of a T-shirt with Albert Einstein's face on it, shifted slightly each time

I have an old T-shirt with a black and white photo of Albert Einstein's face silkscreened on the front. This shirt is almost a quarter of a century old—I got it when I worked at Bill's Records in Dallas, Texas (from 1985-87). For the last several months this T-shirt has been neatly folded and placed on the top of a stack of shirts in my studio. The stack gets moved around repeatedly. I am amazed that every time I looked over at that stack of shirts with Einstein's face on the top, a completely different person is staring back at me. Sometimes it's downright eerie. Obviously, whenever the shirt gets moved, its creases and ripples shift ever so slightly, which affects the "expression" of the silkscreened face photo. The face on the T-shirt is always of Einstein, but isn't Einstein necessarily. Sometimes the face looks funny, and sometimes it looks menacing. I have recreated the effect for you here: these are 27 photos of the same shirt, shifted slightly each time...

Great Moments in WFMU History #3

Freeform is Born (by Lou D'Antonio, Amy Foerster, and Liz Berg)

Under the influence of engineer George Black, DJs Lou “The Duck” D’Antonio and Vin Scelsa, and a motley collection of volunteers, WFMU shifts from block programming to a less restrictive format. This loosely-defined approach to programming was given a name by the visiting, muttonchop-sporting West coast radio guru, Larry Yurdin: “freeform.” A variety of Upsala students and local talent are recruited to man the airwaves -- Danny Fields and Kokaine Karma's Rudnick and Frawley among them -- which promptly alarms Upsala alumni and board of trustees. Fall, 1967.

 

Illustration by Brian Musikoff

Pink Section (MP3s)

I can't tell you much about Pink Section, a San Francisco art punk band existing from 1979 to 1980. Pretty much the only thing about them I knew was that they were playing shows with the Inflatable Boy Clams back in the day. However, that was good enough reason for me to try and track down all their recorded output, and I was not disappointed by the 10 tracks I found. Since their recordings do not seem to be available commercially, I thought I'd share them with you. Enjoy.

MP3s: Shopping | Tour of China | | Wine World | Midsummer NY | Flat Dog | Part Time | Francine's List | Jane Blank (live) | Francine's List (live) | Been in the Basement 30 Years (live)

There is also a YouTube video of Pink Section playing in Portland in 1980. And if you like this stuff, you should definitely check out Fatty Jubbo's post on Silver Abuse.

Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want More New Wave

If you're life hasn't been illuminated with neon light enough this weekend, Last Days of Man on Earth offers this little slice of Joachim Witt (and the days of when Defender was humanity's greatest threat). Be aware that this video doesn't really start "happening" for a bit.

Television of Temporary Interest

I'll be back in this space next week with a huge sprawl about forgotten comedian Tubby Boots, but in the mean time... a lazy man's post.

Dinah! with guests Henry Winkler and David Bowie - This 1976 episode of Dinah Shore's daytime talk show has Bowie exulting his love for The Fonz - and plenty more.

The Tonight Show with guest The Backwards Talker - Johnny Carson interviews a man who can speak backwards with the greatest of ease.

The Tonight Show with Jack Paar on Vinyl - I'm always interested in old episodes of The Tonight Show, so naturally I would be interested in an LP devoted to Jack Paar's opening monologues. I posted the whole album on Classic Television Showbiz this week.

Post's Cereals Non-Vinyl - What could possibly be a cheaper form of recording than the old Evatone Soundsheet, y'know, those ol' flexi-records you used to pull out of magazines? How about a record made out of a cereal box? Featuring The Archies no less.

The Forgotten Looney Tunes - The final days of Termite Terrace produced some truly strange cartoons. Here's a sampling of three late sixties Looney Tunes that you probably don't remember. The third one, Norman Normal is of particular note.