WFMU's Beware of the Blog

A Night in NYC

I didn't move to the Big Apple until 1995, but as a kid growing up watched all the city's TV channels that got exported to Pennsylvania, and formulated a distinct picture of what living there was like. In my mind everybody there made their own independent swinger ads on Al Goldstein's show, had kids who competed for Dynamite magazine and Lenders' Bagelettes on Wonderama, had weird telephone numbers that started with "Murray Hill", and lived in apartments like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. This 25 minute Jools Holland/Leslie Ash-hosted special for The Tube is a nice drift of early 80's NYC sights and sounds, focused on the Danceteria scene, Arthur Baker, Paradise Garage etc. Check it out (via Skratchworx).

Transpacific Sound Paradise live from Lincoln Center this Friday

Transpacific Sound Paradise host Rob Weisberg has been pretty busy lately, and will be bringing some more live sounds from NYC to the WFMU air/netwaves this Friday, July 10th as he does a special fill-in show from 7-11PM from Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing Series! First we'll hear from the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, a Chicago-based collaboration between American jazz players and two former members of the highly regarded Ghanaian highlife band Western Diamonds.The Occidentals, who just released their first CD, are building a following playing shimmering old-school West African and Congolese electric dance music. Then at 9 pm, we'll be treated to a performance by one of the all-time great singers of Congolese style electric dance music, Samba Mapangala with Orchestra Virunga. While based in Kenya in the early 80s, Samba and Virunga recorded one of the all time African classics, Malako. And Samba's still going strong today: his 2008 election song "Obama Ubarikiwe (Obama Be Blessed)" was a YouTube sensation.

Last summer WFMU first found itself outdoors working with the fine folks at Lincoln Center when we held one of our 50th Anniversary free NYC concerts with the Ex, Getatchew Mekuria, Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete, Either/Orchestra and Extra Golden under a beautiful sky in Damrosch Park with 10,000 enthusiastic attendees and a night of music we won't soon forget. While we won't be co-producing these shows this time around, we're kindly being allowed to broadcast some more of LC's great outdoor upcoming events, including two nights of Ponderosa Stomp to be aired on Dave the Spazz's show (July 16th airing live and July 17th airing later on Dave's July 30th show). It's an amazing place to see music in the city if you've never been, but if you can't make it out, be sure to catch these special broadcasts.

Video: Occidental Brothers "Grupo OK" (live at the Old Town School of Folk Music)

Video: Samba Mapangala "Nyama Choma" clip from 2006

More on Attack Attack: Crabcore Explained

Posted the vid clip above for "Stick Stickley" by the musical group Attack Attack! a few days ago (which is now gone from You Tube and replaced by an alternate version), which led to some sleuthery as to what exactly is going on with this band. Whitey Sterling checks in, pointing to an explanation Glorious Noise discovered on (and now has been wiped from) Wikipedia. Even fleeting tremors in cultural development do not get by here, ladies and gentlemen:

Crabcore is a contemporary offshoot from the emocore/screamo sub-genre of hard rock music. Unlike almost all other genres and sub-genres of music, crabcore is defined not by aural motifs, tones, lyrical content, or specific instrument ensembles; but rather by physical gesticulations and contortions of the arms and legs of individual band members during live performances of their music.

Crabcore moves
Chiefly among the crabcore musician's repertoire of stylistic gestures is the crabwalk itself, from which the genre's title is derived. The crabwalk is identified by the player's extremely low stance, wherein both feet are set apart from one another as far as possible, while still allowing the player to maintain at least a 90 degree bend in his knees. While in the crab stance, the player then purposefully transfers the weight of his upper body between each leg, achieving a swaying motion intended to have a hypnotic effect among audience members.
Other moves available to crabcore players include;

The 'Richardson Richardson'.
'Krinking'
The 'Beaver Bounce'
The 'Dirty Hamper'
The 'Pestal Press'

Another, somewhat controversial move has gained a foothold in crabcore circles recently, which sees the player simply standing in one spot and running in place. No one understands this move. No one.

The most instantly recognizable signifier of a band within the crabcore oeuvre is the presence of an Arch Cancerped (literally translated; 'chief crabwalker'). The Arch Cancerped (or ACP) is an individual member of the band whose duty it is to set the speed, intensity, and depth of the crabwalk in a given piece of music. Much like the conductor of a symphony orchestra. Typically the ACP wears a black t-shirt and has a dyed-black sideways haircut.

Crabcore bands
For the moment, only the band Attack Attack! is currently playing crabcore, and is at its origin.
But, whereas this style of music has just appeared, we are discovering that actually, a lot of famous bands had already used or use some Crabcore moves. The most known must be Metallica, as you can see it in some live representations. See the references for an example of Metallica's Crabcore. This version of Crabcore is known as "proto-Crabcore".

Attack Attack! "Stick Stickley"

Sunn o))) live at Primavera (MP3)

(photo from Oscar Garcia's Flickr) Live on the ATP stage at Primavera Sound, Barcelona, Spain May 29th, 2009, 10:30-11:15PM, during WFMU's three day broadcast of performances. Recorded by Brian Turner on Sony D-50 PCM wav recorder; Sunn o))) that night was the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, performing their Grimmrobe Demos (originally from 1999) in entirety. 21 sets from WFMU's stand at the fest are archived for streaming here (including Wooden Shjips, Vivian Girls, th' Faith Healers, Spectrum, St. Etienne and more), while some of those have been approved for MP3 download here (including the Vaselines, Bats, Dan Deacon and more).

Sunn o))) WFMU broadcast at Primavera 5/29/09 (MP3)

The Bats : Live at Primavera (MP3's)

Christchurch, New Zealand's Bats were a perfect hour's accompaniment to a sunny afternoon Primavera Sound fest in Barcelona (where WFMU broadcast for three days from May 28-30). Since 1983, the steady lineup of Kaye Woodward, Paul Kean, Malcolm Grant and Robert Scott (who was also a founding member of the Clean) have specialized in a distinct brand of delicate and surging electric folk-pop which sometimes got them tagged as the Kiwi answer to early 80's R.E.M. However, the Bats drew from a much more varied well (influenced by everything from the Troggs to Stereolab and onward), and kept their recording and touring lives relatively simple yet steady (with breaks for having kids, solo projects, and the occassional Clean reunion). They've been long regarded a seminal core band of the Flying Nun label universe, with critics and fans alike continually heralding them throughout their long history. We've been longtime fans and friends here at the station, the band even put out a Live at WFMU 7" single on Merge back in 1994. Their latest, the Guilty Ones, is out now on Hidden Agenda, and we're happy they've agreed to let us archive their great Primavera set for download. 20 of the Primavera sets WFMU carried are archived for streaming here, by the way, and a few of those bands have OK'd downloads, which you can check out on the Free Music Archive site.

The Bats - live on WFMU at Primavera Sound, Barcelona, May 28, 2009

Boogie Man (MP3)

Supernova (MP3)

Later On That Night (MP3)

Up To the Sky (MP3)

Horizon (MP3)

Castle Lights (MP3)

Mir (MP3)

North By North (MP3)

Afternoon In Bed (MP3)

Crimson Enemy (MP3)

Countersign (MP3)

Flowers and Trees (MP3)

Bishop Perry Tillis and friends rock down to Electric Avenue, and take it higher

A few years ago WFMU's Sinners Crossroads host Kevin Nutt sent me the gift of a DVD with footage shot by Steve Grauberger of late electric gospel guitar great Bishop Perry Tillis, performing live in 1995 at the Savior Lord Jesus Pentacostal Lord Jesus Church down in Samson, Alabama. Assuming Kevin sent it knowing my penchant for raucous noise, I found it safe to say viewing this thing possibly holds its own up against your basic Throbbing Gristle/Whitehouse/SPK clips out there in terms of documenting some heavy and somewhat disorienting electric testifying. Where to even begin: the distortion, the broken snare, Tillis' steadfast choogle blending in to the vocal sheets of noise. Maybe it's just a case of the audio gain being high on the camera itself, but I'd like to think that in the room itself, this was one hell of a holy racket. See for yourself below as I've edited together and uploaded a few chunks to share. Supposedly a Tillis documentary by Tyler Bell is in the works, and we should also mention that Mississippi Records has recently put out an LP collection called In Times Like These culled from 72 hours of very raw cassette tapes, which also, as they say, is not for the faint of heart.

The Vaselines live at Primavera (MP3's)

Some more fruits of our late May visit to Barcelona's Primavera Sound fest, where WFMU set up camp (like, in a tent and all) for three sunkissed days and breezy Mediterranean nights. We've got archives of 20 of the sets we recorded and aired, and some of the artists were even generous enough to allow downloads via WFMU and the Free Music Archive sites. One of these groups, Scotland's legendary Vaselines, put in one of the most fun sets of the entire weekend, definitely with some of the best stage banter to boot. For the uninitiated, the group existed from 1986-1990 fronted by Francis McKee and Eugene Kelly (the latter going on to form Eugenius and Captain America) and had a big booster via the Northwestern USA underground axis of K/Sub Pop records (Sub Pop put out an anthology of the Vaselines on the tail of some major Kurt Cobain fandom, in fact Nirvana covered three Vaselines tunes). They reunited in 2006, toured the USA in 2009 and finished their recent tour at this Barcelona show. We unfortunately didn't get the first tune of the set, but dig in to the MP3's below, and if you like, check out some pics of the Fest from WFMU's Flickr group. (Photo left: BT)

The Vaselines - Live on WFMU at Primavera, 5/28/09

Monsterpussy (MP3)

The Day I Was a Horse (MP3)

Molly's Lips (MP3)

Oliver Twisted (MP3)

Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam (MP3)

Lovecraft (MP3)

Slushy (MP3)

No Hope (MP3)

Sex Sux (MP3)

Dying For It (MP3)

Rory Rides Me Raw (MP3)

You Think You're a Man (Divine cover) (MP3)

Dum-Dum (MP3)

WFMU Streaming 19 Sets from Primavera Sound, Some Downloads

WFMU's three day stand at Barcelona's Primavera festival is now a memory, but we've just put up 19 streaming/archived sets here! So far, we're archiving Spectrum, the Vaselines, Magik Markers, Jesus Lizard, Dead Meadow, Wooden Shjips, Ponytail, the Bats, Throwing Muses, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Saint Etienne, Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls, Dan Deacon Ensemble, Deerhunter, th' Faith Healers, Jeremy Jay, Oneida, Fucked Up, with more to come. A few of these sets are also available as downloads via the Free Music Archive. Check WFMU for future updates, and if you want to scope out some glamorous pictures from the station's European (working) Vacation, check out our Flickr page.We had an amazing time (and saw more sunrises over consecutive nights than many of us have since who knows when); severe thanks to Jaime Casas, and also to Florence Thiébaud and everyone at Primavera, the bands and production people for being so gracious and accomodating, the labels who helped a hand, and the 5AM ravers who passed out at our tent and didn't break any of our broadcast gear. Was great to meet many of our overseas friends and listeners too!

Pulse Emitter Live at WFMU (MP3)

(photo Rodney Bender) Pulse Emitter is the project of Portland, Oregon programming master Daryl Groetsch, and over the years has produced a fantastic variety of modular mayhem both turbulent and soothing, utilizing a bank of home-made synths and electronics. Deep space explorations worthy of Hawkwind, precise, controlled soundbombing akin to the most broken Throbbing Gristle moments and more. Pulse Emitter performed a live set on my show on May 18th while in town for the big No Fun Festival at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. More info at Pulse Emitter's site, and also more music has been uploaded to the Free Music Archive, so go get some free stuff. Daryl tell us that a tidal wave of Pulse Emitter releases is forthcoming in the near future as well (and some dates at the Olympia Experimental Fest June 19-21 up in Washington state).

Pulse Emitter - Live on Brian Turner's show (MP3)

Prince Rama of Ayodhya live at WFMU (MP3's)

The trio of Michael Collins, Taraka Larson, and Nimai Larson met in the summer of 2007 on a Florida Hare Krishna farm, relocating to Boston and immersing themselves deep into the creation of ritualistic, holistic, and cinematic psychedelic sound. Having played shows in the US and UK with the likes of Teeth Mountain, Magik Markers, Indian Jewelry and others, their live sets have garnered a reputation for incorporating its audiences into the instrumental fold, and drawing musically from a rich variety of multicultural sources. They brought their live set to Brian Turner's show on May 12th and kindly let us put up these MP3s. Prince Rama of Ayodhya have a pile of self-released (and lovely looking) CDRs that you can check out and order via their My Space page.

Om Mane Padme Hum (MP3)
Dawn of Astronomy (MP3)
Haunted Aquarius (MP3)
Panoptic Yes (MP3)
Gouinda Har-Gopala Hare (MP3)
Suns of Bees (MP3)
Mothlight (MP3)
Aeolian Divine (MP3)

Christian Marclay on NBC's Night Music

A performance by Christian Marclay, from the October 29, 1989 episode of the short-lived music television show Night Music. Other guests that night included Todd Rundgren, Taj Mahal, Pat Metheny, and Nanci Griffith. The NBC show series was hosted by David Sanborn, and in its run I recalled seeing Sun Ra, Nick Cave, Pere Ubu, Diamanda Galas among others appear, but quite often the highlight was the assortment of collaborations that were created for the sheer kick of seeing musicians together on TV you wouldn't normally see on a stage let alone on a network show. Sonic Youth doing the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" backed by the Indigo Girls, Sanborn and Hiram Bullock, and there was also once an appearance by Conway Twitty performing with the Residents behind him. Of course any show like this was too good to last, I don't know the certainty of the rumor that a scheduling of the Butthole Surfers finally made the beer sponsor draw the line. But would be nice to see this on DVD. (Thanks Kristin Anderson)

Thursday, Friday, Saturday: WFMU Live from Primavera Sound

From an April post:
Festival time for WFMU once again and this time a little further than a jaunt into the autumnal Catskills. Thanks to kind invitation and plane tickets courtesy of Primavera Sound, WFMU is hopping the pond over to Barcelona, Spain for live broadcasts from the prestigious festival at the Parc del Fòrum on May 28th, 29th, and 30th! We'll be packing our remote gear (and 3D glasses for Gaudi building viewing) and parking it alongside the Mediterranean for three days of multiple-stage broadcasts of some sure-to-be stellar FMU-friendly live sets. The schedule exact set-time broadcasts for us have not been finalized, but take a gander at some of the fest's heavy participants here. We're unbelievably stoked to be invited as American radio ambassadors for these shows; the lineup is dizzying, and again, totally perfect for WFMU and its freeform-lovin' listenership. Super thanks to our pal Jaime Casas for helping to get the ball rolling, and all the cool peops at the fest we're looking forward to working with!

Updates!
WFMU is here, the weather is ridiculously incredible. We survived the post-Barcelona victory over Manchester United street carnage last night, and we're starting our broadcast from Spain today around 4:30 PM Eastern time, going until 7:00, then reconvening 8:00 PM through 11:00PM. During that time we''ll be shuttling between the ATP, Rayban, Estrella, Pitchfork, and Rockdelux stages (yeah, it's a big ass festival) and you're likely to hear the Magik Markers, Bats, Spectrum, Vaselines, the Jesus Lizard, Jay Reatard, and Wooden Shjips! Maybe more as permissions are still being finalized. Some of these may spill into our Day 2 broadcast if time doesn't allow. WFMU will be on its Facebook and Twitter pages too to try to give you a rundown of exact start times and what you can expect during the evenings.

Friday, the 29th: the festivities commence on air at 3:00 PM Eastern, going until 7 and then again from 8-11PM, where we'll try to squeeze in some full sets and excerpts from Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls, Spiritualized, Sunn o))), Throwing Muses, Fucked Up, and possibly more.

Saturday, the 30th: Day three from 3:00 PM Eastern until midnight. Perhaps airing some of the sets we were unable to get to from Thursday or Friday? But playing on assorted stages that day are Jeremy Jay, Th' Faith Healers, Oneida, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Deerhunter. Once again, this is all subject to change, but to the best of our knowledge you'll be hearing these sets on these particular days, and we'll do our gosh darndest to keep you up to date online. As usual, we'll also be looking into archiving as much of this as we can ala our ATP and SXSW shows, and get some up on the Free Music Archive too (artist-approval-pending)! Tune in, send us good vibes to keep us fueled for our all-nighters in Barcelona!

Mark Flood NYC Exhibit

Few bands revelled in the seedy underbelly of the American stripmall like Houston's Culturcide, a band fueled by the Boss' 80s bluejeans back pocket lint and grizzle from the bottom of a Burger King deep-fry tray; they were also purveyors of possibly the greatest holiday single ever, "Depressed Christmas" (MP3). Chelsea Whores is an exhibition by Mark Flood, an artist well-involved in that band's general orbit, running here in New York at the Zach Feuer Gallery (520 West 24th Street), from May 22 through July 10th and features his collage works and what he's termed "broken paintings" from 1979-2002 (though one recent review from Los Angeles states that all of the materials claiming to be decades old were actually made in the last two years). The refuse of American consciousness Flood chooses to deal with has included literal debris from Hurricane Ike, modified road or food service signs, and as we see left, lots of mutated iconography (one of my fave images he has made in the past has Annie Lennox on the Eurythmics' Touch LP cover being rearranged into garish Elephant Man-style paste-up). Great quote on Germany in NYC about the Chelsea Whores exhibit that makes me even more down with it: "His influence is comparable to that of the American artist Andy Warhol, but whereas Warhol's work features talent, Flood unintentionally devises a tedious formal vocabulary, layered with meaning and metaphor."

The Gods Are Here, and Maybe the Channelled Spirit of Sam Kinison

via Greg Baise/Stephen O'Malley

So When Is the Benny Tudino's Show Already?

Haven't seen them on a Maxwells marquee yet, but Personal and the Pizzas assure everyone that they are indeed New Jersey's finest rock and roll band. As a radio station in the central orbit of many Jersey bands (some of whom utilize weaponry), we issue our standard "who are we to argue?" response.

Prizehog: MP3s from WFMU/AQ SXSW 09

Back on March 20th, WFMU did its second SXSW show down in Austin, this time joined in the hand-picking and presentation of the bill by our friends at Aquarius Records in San Francisco. It was a pretty massive event, 14 bands in all, and the outdoor stage kicked off that evening with one of AQ's picks from their hometown, Prizehog. Like the band Harvey Milk (who coincidentally opened WFMU's SXSW show the previous year), this trio specializes in downtuned, sludged-out epic psychedelic metal, though for my money these guys take it into a more spaced-out realm. Their great studio CDR had a somewhat primitive vibe of lo-fi basement doom done on bareboned recording equipment, but live in the outdoor concrete pit of Spiro's I thought they sounded no less destructive, and even more expansive. Worked totally great on the radio as well, check out these MP3s below. And also check out an assortment of 2008/2009 live MP3s from our SXSW shows up on the Free Music Archive (with more to come). Thanks again to Prizehog, AQ, and all the bands and Austin attendees!

Prizehog live at Spiro's, March 20, 2009:
Part 1 (MP3)
Part 2 (MP3)
Part 3 (MP3)

Never to Take a Burt Reynolds Bitchslap Again

Dom DeLuise has left us at 75.

Los Maurauders Live

Iowa rockabilly kings had a record on Teenbeat back in the early 1990's called "Every Song We Fuckin' Know" that featured such classics as "Wigglin' Couch", "Martians From Mars" and "Bake That Brisket." There's now 28 minutes of them on Public Access TV on their My Space page. The singer's name is Nobody, and Teenbeat boss Mark Robinson once told me that when he visited, the guy kept a refrigerator full of nothing but canned peaches.

via Potomac River

Yanka / Янка

Upon hosting a live set on my show from Pink Reason (which was at that particular time just a solo Kevin Failure) back in 2006, I learned about the years Kevin spent with his relocated American parents in 1990's Siberia, and also learned some history of what was surely a rich but uber-contained underground punk and psychedelic rock scene going on. A couple years earlier, Igor from Kim's record store in NYC had already floated me a CD of Opizdenevshie which I really dug, couldn't quite assimilate to anything else in contempo psych-punk, and wanted to know more. I later found out that this band had done music with Egor Letov, an Omsk-born avant-protest-punk who had laid a pretty intensive foundation for mid-to-late 80's Soviet underground music, particularly in the band Grazhdanskaya Oborona. A few months ago after Kevin had settled down in Brooklyn, I jumped at the opportunity when he offered to bring out some of his collected sounds from the then-Soviet (and especially Siberian) underground; the three hour show's archived here. Pretty much everything he brought down blew me away, especially the LP Stid I Sram by a Novosibirsk-born woman named Yanka (AKA Yana Stanislavovna Dyagileva). During her 1988-91 presence on what was a super tight-knit scene, she was the significant other of Letov playing in assorted combos as well, and he played on her records in turn. Yanka was found dead in 1991, drowned in a river with the official tag of suicide, though apparently that's been somewhat debated. That particular debate can surely be fueled by the track "Pridyot Voda" which Kevin played, an epic, 9 minute fiery folk-punk anthem with Yanka spitting out angry verse after verse, literally referring to the act of drowning before the song leaps into a devastating, swirling organ solo that wouldn't sound out of place on a noise record. It's really incredible, but apologies for the short skip within the MP3 due to the vinyl not being in optimal shape. Letov, by the way, passed away from heart failure in 2008, and Kevin did a tribute performance in tribute to him, which you can check out some of on You Tube.

Yanka "Pridyot Voda" (MP3)