WFMU's Beware of the Blog

I Believe That (Stoned) Children Are Our Future

While Dr. Seuss may have quietly but most assuredly extolled the virtues of LSD, some kids' authors are being a little less subtle when it comes to the Sweet Leaf. Follow the pictoral excerpts from the new publication It's Just A Plant and get involved in your kids' choices. Bryce thinks maybe this kid has already made her choice. However, I think what really should be outlawed is taking your kid bike riding wearing Sgt. Pepper garb, but who am I to judge. (Thanks for link, Tom Lax.)

Diasporic Stradivarius

For my money, there's no better validation of life's futility, beauty, desperation, grief and surreality as the analogy of a lost violin.
We hear about these stories in seemingly increasing numbers over the years. Just how many rare 17th century violins can there be and exactly how are they managing to flee from their owners? Like sweaty defectors at the airport these sensuous instruments are obviously yearning for something better, hoping to rewrite their centuries-old history and escape the enslavement of their destiny. Perhaps there exists a Shangri-La, a Violin Isle-a-Land where piles of violins bake off their oppressive veneers in a tropical paradise.

As I ponder this possibly preposturous premise, let me direct you to a spooky Strad story  by J.Meade Falkner.

Youtube for G&T English Class

featuring "Hoffman Estates High School Extreme Ninja Kazoo TKAM!!!"

Man, when I think back to being 15, there's so much shit I'm glad only I've got the evidence of.  Tapes can be baked, pictures can be burnt, home movies only happened around rich kids with a Betamax at home; you & me, the normal kids, could hide our histories with nothing more than the removal of a rock down at the local quarry, ravine, or sewer system.  Kids these days, um... how can I say this??  They fuk'd.

What follows is a sampling of my current fave youtube subgenre: the AP English class's rendition of the AP English class literary classics.  They're all here!  Salinger, Flannery O'Connor, Hemingway, Shirley Jackson, Metamorphosis, Lord of the Flies, even some James Joyce!  I'm sure I'm forgetting a thousand worthy contenders, so your input is quite welcome here. 

all my worlds are melting together in a chocolately mess: how do we measure artistic success?

It's not often that I talk about The Bad Brains.  I suppose I could talk about the legendary, whacked out, ferocious uber-hard core band to whomever I choose.  Whether said conversationalist would really care, or appreciate the many threads that this timely band knotted the rock world up into, is the issue.  Apparently Andrew Wagner, new editor of American Craft magazine, cares.  Recently he spoke at a craft conference and opened his talk with a video viewing of the Bad Brains performing "Pay to Cum", drawing parallels between the punk rock world of yore and the DIY alt-craft world of today.  "Of course", you say, "the links are apparent."  BUT to an editor of a national magazine?  This is not the market-driven, editorial stance of a man burning with desire to climb a Conde Nast-style stairway to success.  Andrew Wagner would not be interested in that kind of a fuddy duddy staircase, as he was one of the founding fathers of DWELL magazine, a forward marching interior design mag that knows a thing or two about innovative stairs.   Wagner's commentary left many attendees feeling cut out of the craft loop.  I suppose artisans who have trained for years, studied at prestigious schools and labored through the assigned career tracks do no take well to untraditional upstarts trying to change the way the world is viewed.  My question is, where does this lead us?
     I am positively overtaken with glee at Wagner's cross-pollinating the world of craft with American Hardcore.  Too often, the standard of measurement used to assess the artistic worth, value, achievement, and place of something is in the dollars of the original idea.  That is to say, everything made today is compared to what has already been made in the said sub-division and therefore the limits of how to read this "thing" have already been established, and then mildly modernized.  So we rarely get to look at an heirloom potato through the lens of 16th century Venetian glass, or talk about quilts made by share croppers in the same breath as Sun Ra.  I suppose we can if we are in a French art film, but it is usually assumed you have smoked an awful large heap of ganja to seriously compare or contrast different mediums, methods and constructs, never mind, varied time periods and ideas.
     In last week's New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote a piece on magic  that I wouldn't have given a second glance at, except I truly enjoy Gopnik's writing.   On top of the colorful characters and hidden worlds he exposed, Gopnik described an analogy about the making of magic that  opened up the imaginary debate that was raging in my head about the art of how we evaluate.  "The better it is done the harder it is to see that anything has happened."  Eureka!  Often when we look at art, watch dance, or tune in to the Tour de France we see a hidden expertise that, when truly profound, makes the hours of repetition, study and exertion melt away.  When we listen to a band that picked up their instruments for the first time last week, or receive a hand made valentine from a child, we see the labor and oddity.  The space between their achievement and accepted excellence is noticeable and assumed to be a problem.  What if it wasn't?  Is the problem that rules haven't been met?
     So much of what is evaluated when we judge heavy metal guitar, painting, or knitting is technique, which is a result of rules of order that need to be met before the public feels safe being invited in to assess.  Is it because we all then know the rules and won't be taken off guard by some breach of security?  What if I don't like the rules or perhaps the boring dialog?  How then does this discussion grow to include more varied responses to the world?  How do we move beyond technique?  Or mere good looks?
     There is a "new" rock station on the New York City FM dial.  I can't even tell you it's name or where it is, because it isn't really new in the sense of offering you anything you haven't already heard.  But I did hear an ad that sounded more like a tutorial, about how today's new rock station is all about variety, and that's good.   But of course I didn't truly understand that phrase because the music they then played was rather just like the canon of rock that we all know and...know.  I was bemused by their idea of variety.  How do we make variety look like something you already know...isn't that what the modern marketplace is based on?
     I am reading a fascinating book right now, very overdue at my local library, called "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb.  I started this book because of an interest in France, but kept on reading because it is a gorgeous weaving on how modernity shapes, splits apart, unites, and rids humans of simplicity, and individuality, in favor of progress. Robb spins truly intriguing tales of villages across France that had never looked much beyond their borders until the French Revolution ushered in a government that looked to tax and describe these varied peoples as one.   France's borders had coupled disparate groups, posing as a country, but the industrialization of the late nineteenth century started to lessen the unique groups and homogenize some of their standards of living.  Not just historical, it is a sociological tale of how humans from small idiosyncratic tribes grew into a systematic nation.  Talk about marketing.

The Cassette Mythos (MP3s)

The Cassette Mythos is an anthology on homemade cassette culture, curated by Robin James, published in book form in 1990 by Autonomedia, now available for free on the Internet. I urge you to go to the website, read Robin's account of the history of the Cassette Mythos project, and check out the articles. Contributors include Eugene Chadbourne, John Trubee, Amy Denio, John Oswald, Chris Cutler, WFMU's own Dave Mandl, and many more people who were actually involved in the making of cassettes at the time.

Accompanying the release of the book was a CD Audio Alchemy: The Cassette Mythos Compilation, which (in the words of Robin James) "started off as a comprehensive, democratic, and historical survey of the international cassette swapping underground scene, but wound up being what it is, twenty-one innovative sonic-arts geniuses that could be your neighbors". Is the hype justified? I'd say yes, but listen for yourself. Here it is, the whole album in MP3 format:

1. Heather Perkins - What you want to happen, will
2. Ric E. Braden - Columbus Ave. 10PM
3. Jim Steele - Splatter Experience of the Green Gods
4. Daniel Johnston - Grievances
5. John Wiggins - Timbre=Melody
6. YXIMALLOO - China-Pong
7. Qubais Ghazala - Delphian Oracle
8. Fredrick Lonberg-Holm - The Second Minuet
9. Costes - Oh Fortuna
10. Kitchen Table Ensemble - Exploded Views
11. Solomonoff & Von Hoffmanstahl - Banzai Noir
12. Vosch - Tunnel at Dawn
13. Philip Perkins - Remoting (excerpt from Berkeley Remote)
14. Minoy - Sspress
15. Triptic of a Pastel Fern - Shiny Things
16. Gregory Whitehead - It makes me blush...
17. Mystery Laboratory - Excerpt from V. T.
18. Bat Lenny - Delphi [Delta Phi]
    
19. Collapse/Relapse - Webs
20. Hope Organ - Sneaky
21. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Drying clothes made entirely of zippers (partial cycle)
    

I Owe My Life To Hugh Cornwell

No - he's not my dad or anything, jeez - that's my dad on the right. Hugh Cornwell was the lead vocalist & guitar player for The Stranglers for about 15 years; he now plays on his own or with bandmates he's more recently organized. The Stranglers was the band that really blew me away and prompted me to focus on music in my life from that point on. He played at the Blender Gramercy Theater last Saturday night, and I got the chance to tell him that I was glad he was alive. Don't start shedding any tears, kiddies..it just ain't like that...

A Personal Struggle (with Parenthetical Phrases and Italics)

A Buddhist and a Satanist walk into a bar (let's call it a juice bar, as serious Buddhists avoid all intoxicants, and both characters in this non-joke represent me, a non-drinker.)  They would both very much like a drink (though the Buddhist has eliminated all desire, he is nonetheless very thirsty; the Satanist, for his own, believes only in savoring the enjoyment of the here and now, the material life—the only one he knows exists for sure.)  The line at the juice bar, however, is impossibly long, the service is slow, and actually getting a drink might take a half hour or longer.

The Satanist says, "with the force of my will, I will my make my desire manifest; the drink shall come unto me, for I will it to be so."  Of course, nothing happens.  The Buddhist, seeing* the interconnectedness of all things, and being possessed of great compassion for all beings, resolves to wait patiently (though he knows he must soon leave to go to his Right Occupation.)

Still, the wait is long and ultimately both the Satanist and the Buddhist must leave empty-handed and dry of throat.  The Satanist curses the herd, and years later dies embittered and penniless.  The Buddhist, in time, loses everyone that he loves, grieves appropriately, but does not suffer deeply as he has long ago eliminated attachment from his mind and understands the impermanence of all things.  He too eventually dies, knowing that a drink perhaps awaits him upon rebirth into the causal continuum.

----------------------------------------------------------

*Author Steve Hagen must own all italicized variations of the word "see," as they appear in his book Buddhism Plain and Simple over 205 times.  (This is not to say that I didn't benefit from reading it; I've only failed thus far to "see.")

In The Bleak Midwinter: Movies to Itch By

In the deepest darkest winter, viruses and disease are bound to find temporary accomodations at your house and mine.  We encourage these weary travelers as best we can by stumbling around sick and refusing to stay in bed, even when the tissue box attached to our sinus cavity obscures our vision.  But there are microbes that defy socialization and sniffling over the office water cooler:  Chicken Pox.  The common Poxis Uponus rears its ugly head even in the direction of adult males of the species who should have been there and done that when they were in short britches.  Alas, DVD rental to the rescue.
Once the intensive "remain in bed until at least one part of your body doesn't hurt" stage is over, patient is free to roam to the couch and find a way to make bearable the next 10 days of waiting for the euphoric scabbing-over.  In our house, this includes lots of hallucinogenic drugs in televised format.

It is always best to start with a walk down memory lane.  "H.R. Pufnstuf" is not a gateway drug, it is it's own final destination freak out.  Aside from the lovely Puppet land country roads of a back lot in Hollywood, one watches H.R. for the character depth.  A giant, southern accented, roly-poly, cloth covered mayor saves our scampy human friend Jimmy from the big bad witch, and all sorts of adventure follows as she pursues Jimmy and his magic flute.  If you were raised by leftist librarians, like my husband was, or are new to the world of TV, like my 7 year old is, H.R. will either make it plain to you why Hard Core Punk was inevitable for a generation of wild childs nursed on said Saturday morning TV, or offer you the golden key to incredible silliness and laughter.  Either way I say "go there, go".  Apparently, HR of the Bad Brains agrees with me.

Just Keep Adding: Diary of a Pumpkin Stone Soup

      
     I finally finished reading the wonderful Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and am slightly dedicated to the idea of trying to eat seasonally and locally. The slightly part was due to the fact that here it was January and I hadn't put up any vegetables or fruits from a massive summer of gardening like Barbara and her family had done, and I was unfortunately living in Hudson County, NJ, where the only locally grown crop is new housing construction and graft.
     But high on the idea that I could at least eat seasonally, I spied a 5 Lb. pumpkin that has been sitting on my kitchen window ledge since late August.  It was just starting to show signs of fatigue as I sliced it open and began the long journey towards a delicious soup (whereas DJ Icepack was convinced I had promised pumpkin pie for dinner...).  I bake my pumpkins with apple juice or cider, cinnamon, and honey to give a little sweet flavor,  but that does add to the prep time.  Cook a larger pumpkin and the extra can be packed up into smaller servings and frozen, to make the next soup or pie a lot faster.
     I found a gorgeous looking recipe in The Greens Cookbook for Basque pumpkin and white bean soup, so I quick soaked some beans (cover dry beans in water and bring to a boil, shut off and soak for at least an hour), and popped the pumpkin in the oven to cook.  We wanted to roast the pumpkin seeds to eat later, so instead of making a soup stock from the seeds and stringy bits of the pumpkin (!!!-and not the band...), as Deborah Madison asked us to do, I shortcut to a box of vegetable stock.  So at this point I am making far too many dishes for a girl with no dishwasher, as the pumpkin is cooking in the oven, beans are simmering on the stove and stock is gurgling in the back.
     Once the pumpkin is tender I add the required one pound to the stock  and half an hour later, the beans.  I taste this 3 hour DJ mix and I am horrified that the pumpkin tastes so very untasty.  Not one to give up, I retire this soup for the night and hope that tomorrow it will be flavor-flav and dinner will go on.  But just in case, I grab a 2Lb. bag of roasted pumpkin from the freezer, for a potential pumpkin emergency the following day.
     Day 2: AAACK!  no way is this soup edible, seasonal or not. I quickly mash up the defrosted 2 Lbs of Pumpkin and throw it in.  The magical blender stick makes a delightful puree of the previously forsaken orange-ish mash, I sautee some mustard greens, cook a cup of red quinoa and add all of this with a few cranks of dried red pepper and NOW we are talking soup.  Grab some chunky bread and a chunky red.
     Motto of this story:  Don't let a dull meal beat you down.  Show that pot who is boss, and never leave home without your magical blender stick. 

Soundtrack, played over and over, while stumbling down this pumpkin strewn road: Bearded Ladies, various artists compilation of gothy-folky ladies on B Music, put together by Jane Weaver.

On Karlheinz Stockhausen: Mindful Listening, Eschewing Duality, 9/11 etc.

[One mp3 album below the fold]

In his book on David Bowie's Low album, Hugo Wilcken refers to Karlheinz Stockhausen's work as "dryly cerebral" and the composer himself as "more admired than listened to."  A bit harsh to this fan, though my guess is that the latter statement is basically accurate, i.e., the name-drops and influential tags far outnumber the instances of mindful, attentive listening to Stockhausen's recorded works.  As a part of my lifelong quest for new musical forms and languages to explore and assimilate, I have spent the past 20+ years trying to counterbalance this unfortunate statistic.

When he passed away on December 5, 2007, at the age of 79, Stockhausen left behind a monumental body of work that includes compositions for electronics (Telemusik, Gesang der Junglinge); pianos (the Klavierstücke, Mantra); vocal ensembles (Stimmung, Chöre für Doris); small ensembles (Aus den Sieben Tagen, Mikrophonie I); and large orchestras or multiple ensembles (Gruppen, Sternklang, Hymnen (Third Region).)

To the diligent and focused listener, Stockhausen's music reveals an unpredictable, organic universe, packed with arresting dynamics and subtleties of timbre, wild rhythmic exchanges, bursts of soul-shaking noise, as well as surprising innovations of melodic and meditative envelopment; endurance tests (Mikrophonie I) and warming spiritual journeys (Sternklang) present themselves in equal measure.  It's my belief that a full and enduring appreciation of Stockhausen's work must go beyond mere listening, beyond what is immediately pleasing to the ear, into an understanding and embracing of the concepts and processes that were the life's blood of every one of his compositions.

Many of Stockhausen's 1960s works were scored with non-specific instructions for the performers which allowed for individual "intuitive" expression and improvisation within a pre-prescribed environment.  Here is where, for me at least, things start to get really interesting.  This approach is at play in works like Prozession, Kurzwellen and Aus den Sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days), the latter being a series of 15 "text" compositions for smaller ensembles, wherein the composer-prescribed settings sometimes included actual physical conditions imposed upon the players themselves.  This is perhaps best exemplified by the piece Goldstaub (Gold Dust), and it's worth quoting the score, if only to provide a window into the composer's mind and the new levels of composition and performance he was continually striving at in his work, often eschewing the standard duality between art and its environment, between the composer/performer and the universal:

live completely alone for four days
without food
in complete silence, without much movement
sleep as little as necessary
think as little as possible

after four days, late at night
without conversation beforehand
play single sounds

WITHOUT THINKING which you are playing

close your eyes
just listen

© 1973 Karlheinz Stockhausen

Good News from the FCC

Hello, Everybody—Nice Seeing You Again.

The Federal Communications Commission recently announced a new ruling that will allow cross-ownership of both a newspaper and a radio station in the same top-20 market, because obviously there are no more conflicts of interest now that there’s no more free speech. This is good news for us, because now WFMU can buy the New York Times (aka the Big Grey Pack o’ Lies) and fix it. As far as I know, the Times is the only newspaper ever to inspire an almost-monthly magazine (“Lies of Our Times”) just to correct its blatant inaccuracies and distortions, although that was before the Times decided to run their own 2-page mea culpas for everything they print. (My favorite correction was the one where they apologized for misidentifying Mickey Mouse as Minnie Mouse .) I figure we’ll put DJ Kenny G in charge of plagiarism, and Program Director Brian will edit the Style section (I’ve read some of his fashion reports and they are really scary), and DJ Mr. Billy Jam can write the Home and Gardening stuff because I think he must know a lot about hydroponics and growing things indoors under lights. Station Manager Ken can be in charge of the Sports section and write all about water skiing, and we’ll start a new section called “Chimps of the Times” that DJ Dave the Spazz will edit. I’ll handle Obituaries and the Book Review, of course, and soon everybody will be reading “Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm.” This is going to be a really, really good thing, and the only way it could be better would be if we pay for it with Ron Paul dollars
—the second-most popular currency in the United States!

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God Bless.

New Landmark Herodotus Edition

First off, I’d better warn you that unless geography sometimes gives you a boner, you shouldn’t read this article.  The new Landmark Herodotus is out.  Thucydides’ readers might know Landmark for their big ol’ annotated edition of the History Of The Peloponnesian War.  I’ve always preferred Herodotus’ Histories on the 5th century’s Persian War because it speaks less about who battled whom where and speaks more about the religious, psychological and sexual issues surrounding kings.

It wasn’t until I returned to Herodotus about a month ago that I got excited about deltas, rivers and seas.  Herodotus calls the river Halys the neck of Asia.  It “divides nearly all of Asia between those regions in the South, facing the sea toward Cyprus, and those northern regions facing the Euxine [Black] Sea.  It is here that the neck of the whole continent lies; it can be crossed by a man traveling without heavy baggage in five days.” Cyrus the Great, the half-Median/half-Persian “mule” whose reign was prophesied by oracles, spread his empire from the Mediterranean to modern day Iran, where he was defeated by the savage Massagetae.  Early in Cyrus’ conquest, the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales had divided the river Halys into two channels so that it would be shallow enough for Cyrus’ army to cross.  Later on, before Cyrus sacked Babylon by diverting the river that ran through that city, Cyrus’ horse fell into the Gyndes river.  This made Cyrus angry, so he punished the Gyndes Cyrus by dividing it into 180 channels.  Beautiful stuff, all of it.

Am I holding your attention?  “There’s dick jokes on the way.  Please Relax.”  Every edition of Herodotus will have stories about a blind dude getting a golden shower, a girl having sex with a goat in public and an Egyptian Pharaoh who whores out his daughter to build a pyramid.  Landmark editions are great because they give you lots of helpful maps, contemporary art and photos of modern remains, all embedded in the text!  It’s nice to have some visual help in a book with so many words.  A great, smart read to hole yourself up with this winter.

who is brooklyn?

You don't need me to point out that if you stay inside your apartment for a week, in this greater metropolitan area, when you emerge you might not recognize your nabe.  Depending on the real estate vibe your block has, the sound of tear downs and rebuilds could be your daily, not-so-ambient, soundtrack.  Bottomless private pockets eradicate historical landmarks in our towns and cities in the name of  economic growth, taking away major memories like Asbury Park and Coney Island along with the incidental but gorgeous drugstore from the 1960's that had continually illuminated your corner with a blinking glow.  (This is my I am fed-up with over development
rant, don't worry it's almost over)  And unfortunately corporate concerns frequently don't include public day to day activities:  food shops, schools, gas stations and neighborhood niceties like home-made mozzarella or brick-oven baked bread.
     Downtown Brooklyn has lately been embattled in a private vs. public real estate war, that creates a new use of "public" government as the ruler of all it surveys.  Local groups such as Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn have created a community presence providing information and lobbying power to offer an alternative voice to that of corporate concerns.    
     Samara Smith responded to this battle, compiling two years of documentary sound recording, interviews, and research to create Anyplace, Brooklyn, an audio walking tour that critically examines this struggle, while providing guided observations on the visually changing downtown landscape.  Every Saturday in November, you can get a more personalized lowdown on the eminent domain and re-organizing of city streets around Fulton Mall.  Anyplace, Brooklyn asks that you bring a cd player or downloads on an MP3 player.  Noon-2pm; free and open to the public.

Good reads that give a glimpse into our greater urban metropolis in long days gone by:
Low Life by Luc Sante
Five Finger Discount by Helene Stapinski

The Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge, in Red Hook, offers this reading list on Brooklyn.

Tips On Rationalizing Your Internet Porn Addiction

We’re all pretty vicious and disgusting and it’s good to try to better ourselves.  You can try to eliminate vice through strict discipline, by trying to completely wipe bad thoughts from your mind.  This works a lot of the time but sometimes it backfires, since the forbidden vice becomes much more delicious.  You know, like how your fifteen-year-old daughter wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if you didn’t send her to catholic school.

And so you might take another approach: glut yourself completely with vice until you’re so disgustingly full that you puke it all up.  I wouldn’t advise this method if you’re trying to get off heroin but it might work for, say, popping pimples.  And if it doesn’t work its still ok since you had a good excuse to load your trunk with Mexican fireworks and blow past the border patrol on your way to burning man spring break style.

I imagine Michael Joseph Phillips had something like fireworks in mind as he wrote Superbeuts, a wonderful collection of short poems about one of your favorite vices, checking out hot girls.

Alice

Goddess N.Y.C doll,
36” x 24” x 34” dynamite,
Supreme poetess !

Beut

Rosed golden lace-ace,
Action-sucker d’ Hammond’s bistros,
Space age tit fucker !

Empress

Flower powered queen,
Hot hip hit op-pop-mod doll -
T R A N S F I G U R A T I O N !!!!!!!

Alice’s a moderate one, somewhere between the “hot street fuck” and the “commendable queen”.  But even at his most wholesome Phillips lacks fidelity; his pop art haikus momentarily deify the girl in the grocery store, the film professor, the runway model, the 15 year old teeny bopper, roller-skate-queen and even the imagined “powderpuffed rockette” with equal devotion.

Moondog Rising

"The human race is going to die in 4/4 time," Moondog reportedly told fellow rhythm-seeker Sam Ulano in the 1950s. The quote comes from the new Moondog biography by Robert Scotto, about which I posted three weeks ago. I then learned it is a forthcoming biography, since publication was postponed a month or two.

Meanwhile, if you prefer rhythms in "snaketime," you can hear Moondog's music in two evening concerts in New York City, November 2 and 3. Scotto will talk about Moondog's life (1916-1999) and legacy on Saturday evening, and the Eupraxia Music and Arts Collective will perform both nights. Oh, and there's something called the Moondog Madrigal Mini Puppet Show.

I'm halfway thru the fascinating book and it's well-researched and beautifully written. During a cross-country jaunt in 1949, the blind musician, who dressed in hand-made Viking garb and performed on street corners, turned heads coast to coast. Though he encountered little harassment, he was asked to leave Willow Springs, California, by a cop who diplomatically informed the visitor, "You're too rich for our blood."

For the latest Moondog info and activity, check out Managarm.com.

“Hear and see, O Zeus! Let your decrees be straight and fair!

And I will speak to Perses the naked truth:
there was never one kind of strife.  Indeed on this earth
two kinds exist.  The one is praised by her friends,
the other found blameworthy.  These two are not of one mind.
The one - so harsh – fosters evil war and the fray of battle.
No man loves this oppressive Strife, but compulsion
and divine will grant her a share of honor.
The other one is black Night’s elder daughter;
the son of Kronos, who dwells on ethereal heights,
planted her in the roots of the earth and among men.
She is much better, and she stirs even the shiftless on to work.
A man will long for work when he sees a man of wealth
who rushes with zeal to plow and plant
and husband his homestead.  One neighbor envies another
Who hastens to his riches.  This strife is good for mortals.”

(If you read the rest of my article, I promise I’ll give you a full record’s worth of 60s psych from New Zealand!)

The Viking of 6th Avenue

No, I haven't read it yet — it arrived in the mail yesterday — but Robert Scotto's long-awaited biography of the idiosyncratic music visionary Louis Hardin (1916-1999), better known as "Moondog," is now officially between covers. Subtitled The Viking of 6th Avenue, the book includes a 28-track CD. Publisher Process Media's site says the book's coming out in October, but Amazon.com, which lists the book with a November pub date, has it in stock.

Scotto appeared on my program twice in commemoration of Moondog's birthday. Hear the interviews and music, and view the playlists:

May 23, 2007

May 24, 2006

WFMU Free Music Series returns to Brooklyn!

In our perhaps ill-advised effort to continuously one-up ourselves until our heads explode, all of us here at the Magic Factory are floored to announce the next concert in WFMU's Free Music Series. On October 13th, please join us at Brooklyn's fashionable Southpaw nightclub for an evening of live music with Oneida, Simply Saucer, Alan Vega, and Old Time Relijun! Admission will be FREE!

We'll be spotlighting each of these performers right here in the coming weeks, but as our first free live music show ably demonstrated, this event is sure to pack out the house from floorboard to rafter. It'll be a veritable who's that of the WFMU community, and we hope all of you within baseball chucking distance from Southpaw will make an appearance.

In addition to the utterly heart-stopping lineup of performers, this event will be doubling as a book release party for Dave the Spazz's similarly blazin' new FMU-centric book entitled The Best of LCD: the Art and Writing of WFMU. For newcomers to the party, LCD was WFMU's fabled program guide which for years gave the station a much-lauded representation in the print realm and featured content from not just DJs and listeners, but also noted cultural icons like Nick Tosches, Daniel Clowes, Luc Sante, Chris Ware, Daniel Johnston, and more. The Best of LCD... collects the best of these contributions and offers a fluid portrait of WFMU's relevance in the age before everything went packing for the promised land of the internet. The book will be available for sale at the show, and Dave the Spazz might even step out of his monkey suit long enough to sign a few copies, so saddle up and get ready!

The Free Music Series was made possible through a grant from the New York State Music Fund. The fund's goal is to help creatively-minded artists who are not afforded the same opportunities for exposure that bands with the backing of commercial radio and major record labels are. In fact, it's some of those same major labels who were found to be engaging in payola to drum up airplay for their various flavor-of-the-moment acts. The subsequent fines paid by said labels were collected by the NYSMF, and have been deployed to non-profit arts organizations like WFMU to promote the kind of independent musicians that we feel a special artistic kinship with. If you're a fan of what this radio station does, you'll want to make attendance your weekend's top priority.

Although admission to this event will be free, there are no advanced tickets available. Admission will be first come, first served on the evening of the show. Southpaw is located at 125 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. 18+ to enter, 8 PM doors.

You Can Pay $645 to see Diamond Dave Rehash Old News

Or you can watch someone else rehash old news for much less. As far as we're concerned, the only tour this year that matters, hitting New York September 25th.

Guess The WFMU DJ Personal Article, Part 24

When we're not busy getting free lunch at Winberries and Burger King, dosing up on cod liver oil, teasing dogs, cruising to Shea, encasing moose under glass, chatting to skulls, getting married, hiding change in dead frogs, serializing our decisions, kissing the anus of the black goat, totally rockin' our rad ax, suffocating monkey parts, rocking it old school, clashing cultures on a USB stick, wearing clothes, drinking tea, renewing our AARP membership, recording music, keeping up and taking notes, or just plain carrying it all around, we're actually a pretty erudite bunch.  This one DJ's reading a book anyway. 

Whose copy of "Illuminations" by Walter Benjamin is that?

Winner Gets "Swag", by WFMU.  For the rest of you, let me illuminate one dark corner of the Wild n'Wooly WFMU MP3 Library: [mp3 for download, 11 megs, most of them dirty]

Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book

Seriously. How many words can you make using the letters in "Yngwie Malmsteen"?

Summer Reading

This summer I really hope to take a crack at the steadily rising pile of unread books in my apartment. It doesn’t help that you can now take your laptop to the park (free wireless in Tompkins – who woulda thunk) – but for those of us determined to hold on to old fashioned technology I offer up a start to a great summer reading list, please make your adds in the comments section.

Alias the Cat - Kim Deitch 
This graphic novel adds another twist to Deitch's Waldo the Cat world, but Kim and his wife Pam personally guide old and new readers alike through this investigation into the forgotten comics and film figure Alias. His research leads him to believe that the movies and comics detail real events, and as he hunts down the mystery behind Alias' alter ego Malek Janochek, fantasy and reality merge. And the whole thing comes together in the town of Midgetville, New Jersey.

Ode To Kirihito my second recommendation is also a graphic novel, a gripping tale from the godfather of manga - Osamu Tezuka. At the core of this book is a mysterious disease that transforms humans into beasts – the monmow disease. Dr. Kirihito works for an eminent Japanese scientist who is convinced that the condition is viral and to ensure that his view is taken as fact he sets up our hero to contract the disease. The book has a rich cast of characters – Kirihito’s schizophrenic fellow doctor, his determined fiancé, and a sex addict contortionist who ‘deep fries’ herself. All of these characters go through transformations over the course of this gripping 300+ page thriller. You will too.

My third recommendation is The Engagement, the 7th novel by Georges Simenon released by the New York Review of Books, and according to their website - the 200th book in their incredible classics series. Nobody in this book may be likable – but not every one is guilty. The odious Mr. Hire is a scam artist, a peeping Tom, and a bowler but is he the killer of the prostitute found murdered in a vacant lot? I am seeing Simenon’s name pop up more and more – often with well deserved comparisons to greats like Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler.

Zotz! Tom Poston's Starring Role!

When beloved comedy actor Tom Poston passed away last week, obituaries focused on his Bob Newhart Show appearances or his role as the befuddled custodian, George, on the sitcom Newhart. Most made mention of his membership in the great collection of comedy players on The Steve Allen Show (in which he was joined by Don Knotts, Dayton Allen, Louis Nye, Bill Dana and Pat Harrington Jr) and his frequency as a game show panelist. But while all the newspaper and web homages honed in on his talents as a great character actor and supporting player, few mentioned one of his only turns as a leading man. In 1962, cult icon William Castle cast Poston as the star of his newest fantasy/horror/comedy ... Zotz!

Unlike House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler (1959), 13 Ghosts (1960) or Strait-Jacket (1964), Zotz! is one Castle film that rarely gets a mention... perhaps because it isn't that memorable. Well, that's what general film scholarship would have you believe. The curious film is filled with strange special effects and fantastic character actors. I can't help but disagree with the general consensus. For starters, check out the film's trailer (this clip features three Castle trailers, Zotz! is the second one and appears around the three minute mark). How can it not get you all riled up? Here's what the critics have to say about Zotz!

Video Hound: "The holder of a magic ring can will people dead by uttering Zotz; spies pursue the mild mannered professor who possesses the talisman. Adapted from a Walter Karig novel. Typical William Castle fare; his gimic in the theatrical release ... was to distribute plastic 'Zotz' coins to the theatre patrons."

The $5 Cracker Box Amp

The new issue of MAKE is out. MAKE, the magazine that costs like a book: $14.99 for 192 pages. Luckily it only comes out once in a while, or maybe it’s just that it’s hard to find so sometimes I miss it entirely. But whenever I come across it, I gotta have it. It fuels my fantasies of actually creating something, and this issue, MAKE vol. 09, features “fringe” projects (a Hieronymus machine?), a panoramic pinhole camera, and a guitar amp you can make for just $5 worth of parts, depending, I guess, on how much an LM386N audio amplifier costs where you live. Plus you need an empty cracker box. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but a box of plain Ritz costs, like, over $3 upstate where we are. I got all fired up about building this cool little amp, until I bought the magazine and actually read the instructions, which say things like “Install the 0.01uF capacitor so one leg connects to pin 2 of the chip and one leg is in a 'proto row.' Flip it over and solder it.” I almost understand what that means. Kind of. They have other projects that look simpler, until you find out they’re assuming you already own your own cement mixer or something. But it’s still a pretty fine magazine, and at least they advocate making things, instead of just buying them at the store.

MAKE reminds me of Popular Mechanics, which my Uncle Bikey subscribed to. When I was little, whenever we visited our cousins, I’d always check out the Popular Mechanics collection. I don’t remember if Uncle Bikey ever made any of the featured projects, but he could have. My dad and my uncles could do all that stuff, which is something I’ve always admired. My great and abiding love of pinball comes from watching my dad restore an old Gottlieb Flying High  machine that we played with for years afterwards. My dad could’ve made a $5 cracker box amp, for sure.

MAKE also has a sister publication, CRAFT. I’m a sucker for that one as well. I do like knitting—I even started a little knitting club at my dayjob, and we made felted squeaky dog toys as a group project and I finally had to learn how to use double-pointed needles, and now all I want to do is knit felted tams in blinding colors because I really like little hats. So I’m actually more likely to make some of the stuff in CRAFT, even though lots of times they show you photos of cool things and then don’t include patterns. But when I saw Liz McGrath’s faux taxidermy in CRAFT vol. 02, I thought, “That’s for me!” I already have a collection of appalling real taxidermy, but the idea of making my own specimens opens up many new possibilities.

If you’re really gung-ho to make the $5 amp, the instructions are here. And If you want to check out back issues of MAKE and CRAFT, you can order them—and many other cool things—here.
As for me, I guess it’s time I broke down and actually got subscriptions to both of those fine magazines.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

I was thrilled to receive two copies of Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm in my mail at the station a couple of weeks ago. Although there wasn’t any return address on the package, or note inside, I suspect it was sent by Mr. Michael Horatio Kelly, who is a close personal friend of Herr Haarburste. Mr. Kelly is himself a writer, and was a guest on the book-club show I did a few years ago.

Because Mr. Kelly is in England, I asked Station Manager Ken if it would be okay to phone him from the studio and do a live interview, and because Mr. Kelly is in England, Station Manager Ken said no. So naturally I decided to email my questions to Mr. Kelly, and take Mr. Kelly’s emailed replies, and perform the interview on-air by reading my questions and having Jack Dinsmore, the scary disembodied ventriloquist’s dummy head, read Mr. Kelly’s answers. So I did that for a bit until I got tired about a third of the way through, and then Sluggo took over reading Mr. Kelly’s answers, and meanwhile Mr. Kelly was in England, furiously typing “I had nothing to do with this!” on his Web site.

I think it was my finest moment as a WFMU DJ.

When the station put together the “Great Moments in WFMU History” trading card set, I proposed my interview with Mr. Kelly as a Great Moment. Maybe it was too hard to explain on a trading card, though, or maybe they were concerned that the sight of Jack Dinsmore’s disembodied head would be too shocking for the more sensitive Listeners, because they went with the story of me and Kenny G’s penis, which Sluggo didn’t know about until he finally saw the cards last month and now Kenny G had better stay in Switzerland if he knows what’s good for him.

Anyway, I believe it’s because of my longstanding interest in Mr. Kelly’s work that I was the lucky recipient of Herr Haarburste’s book, and I have just finished reading it, and here’s where the review starts:
Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm is the greatest novel of the 21st Century (so far). It begins with five short stories about wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm (a.k.a. plastic wrap in the US), and just when you’re thinking, “Well, these are amusing, but no one could possibly stretch this premise any further,” Herr Haarbuste launches into a novella that is a true tour de force. Not since Tristram Shandy has an author so skillfully—and amusingly—maintained such a shaggy-dog premise. The complex, self-reflexive repetition and reconfiguration of certain elements is reminiscent of a Bach fugue.

When I read Ian McEwan’s Atonement, I felt like there was no sense in anyone ever writing a novel again. I’m glad to say I was wrong. The world would be a poorer place without Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm.

The book concludes with three more short stories written in ostensible German. In the way that Spanglish relates to Spanish, so the language in these stories relates to German; I guess they’re in Deutschlish. But they’re just as funny as anything else in the book. Das besitzensuchenzugenmachenubergruppenschnurpenplastische indeed.