WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Radio News You Can't Use

I apologize, it's been far too long since I've used this blog to geek out on radio news. A few recent happenings have drawn me out of this whole "working in radio" thing and into talking smack about it on the internet for a few minutes!

First up: Webcasting Royalties
In case you haven't heard, webcasters and SoundExchange (the web streaming arm of the RIAA) have renegotiated terms for webcasting royalties. Instead of accepting SoundExchange's initial offer of web performance royalty rates that would surely put webcasters out of business, webcasters threw a fit (we were part of the fit), held rounds and rounds of negotiations, and over a year later accepted a new rate scheme that would only nearly put them out of business. These new terms, which for large webcasters is a minimum of 25% of annual revenue, have been lauded by some. However, if you look at typical performance royalty rates for satellite radio (6.5% in 2009), or ASCAP/BMI royalties for terrestrial radio (roughly 1 - 3%), that 25% figure starts to look bloated. Luckily for WFMU, NFCB and CPB made separate negotiations with SoundExhange including more affordable rates, and we are covered under these terms.

New FCC Chair
The Obama administration's nominee for FCC Chair, Julius Genachowski, was recently confirmed by the Senate. After outgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin thoroughly angered congress and the public with scandalous antics like that Details magazine spread, relaxing media consolidation rules, and "losing" an important study on media ownership (and all the while leading the fight against broadcast indecency) Genachowski has some mopping up to do. The good news is, Genachowski has heard of the internet: he believes in net neutrality and might actually re-do the FCC's website to make it a little less 1996ish (more on the Genachowski team here). The bad news is, Genachowski leans towards the gestapistic view of broadcast indecency (he supports enforcing fines for fleeting profanity), and the FCC's main proponent of 1st Amendment protections, Jonathan Adelstein, will be leaving the commission soon.

July 4th pin-up: hot fox diplomacy

Current occupation: Governor of Alaska
Age: 45
Residence: Wasilla, Alaska

Little-known public official interviewed in the August 2009 issue of Runner's World magazine:

"I feel so crappy if I go more than a few days without running. I have to run. No matter how rotten I feel before or during a run, it's always worth it to me afterwards. Sweat is my sanity. A great frustration I had during the campaign was when the McCain staff wouldn't carve out time for me to go for a run. The days never went as well if I couldn't get out there and sweat. ...

"I went for a run at John McCain's ranch a couple of days before the debate with Joe Biden. My favorite thing in the world is to run on hot, dusty roads. I don't get enough of that in Alaska. So I was in heaven and there were plenty of hills so I knew my thighs were going to just throb and my lungs were going to burn and that's what I crave."

Palin intends to continue running because she feels a commitment.

Climax Golden Twins - Tues July 7th

Coming up on The Antique Phonograph Music Program on Tues July 7 will be Rob Millis and Jeffery Taylor aka Climax Golden Twins.

They will discuss their musical output, their Dust to Digital rare international 78 series "Victrola Favorites," and current release "Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950."

Mac and Climax Golden Twins will play records and talk about the dogged pursuit of 78s. Tune in, turn on and listen to them drop steel needles.

Also be sure to check out this recent live set by Climax Golden Twins (via Issue Project Room & Free Music Archive).

Click here to subscribe to the Antique Phonograph Music Program's podcast via iTunes.

Karaoke Tribute To Michael Jackson

In July of 1987, when we were 5 years old, my twin brother and I recorded this karaoke music video version of "Bad." That's me on the right. Clearly we did not know the words... we only knew it was a great song!

Kurt Gottschalk's Brother Lucy Podshow

Kurt Gottschalk, the esteemed host of WFMU's The Brother Lucy Show, is taking a break from his Thursday morning web-only slot and will instead deliver the goods directly to your MP3 player.

The Brother Lucy Podshow premieres today with what might be seen as a desperate bid for popularity. But the Fiery Furnaces aren't just really, really hip. For the first of a summer of free concerts delivered to your computer or MP3 player, The Brother Lucy Podshow with Kurt Gottschalk presents The Fiery Furnaces, recorded live at Socrates Sculpture Park on August 26, 2007.

Click here to subscribe to the Brother Lucy Podshow in iTunes or hit WFMU's podcast page for more options.

A Jolly Quiz

You may have seen the news story a few weeks ago about Chen Fuchao and Lai Jiansheng. It happened in Guangdong Province, on a bridge that's become fairly well known as a place to jump from if you'd like to commit suicide, which Chen Fuchao did because he was really in debt. So Chen climbs way up on the bridge, but he can't bring himself to jump and he can't go back, either, because he owes everybody money and his life totally sucks. Pretty soon he's holding up traffic, sitting up there, and everything's backed up for 5 hours before the emergency service guys finally show up and start inflating the big air cushion for Chen to land on when he jumps.

Meanwhile, here comes retired soldier Lai Jiansheng, who's 66 years old and not putting up with any of this crap. He climbs up the scaffolding of the bridge—pretty spry, for an old guy—and leans over and says something to Chen, and Chen says something back, and Lai puts his hand out and he and Chen shake hands, and Lai claps Chen on the shoulder—and then he pushes him off. Chen falls, and lands on the partially inflated emergency air cushion, and injures his spine and his elbow but doesn't die. So now he's in the hospital, and he's charged with "disturbing public order," and he still owes everybody money.

Lai claims he was just fed up with Chen's "selfish activity," not to mention all those other stupid jerks who've been climbing up on the bridge and backing up traffic. "They do not really dare to kill themselves," Lai says. "Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals." So he's charged with "causing intentional injury," but I doubt he really cares.

 When I used to do a show on WFMU, I had a semi-regular feature called "Douche of the Week," and that's why I keep thinking about this story: Which one was the bigger douche? Chen, for being a whiny little attention-seeking fuck-up, or Lai for being a crabby old asshole? And that is my question for you, oh happy Listener.

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

WFMU Archives: a Real Audio-free Future

Beginning July 12th, WFMU's new archives will no longer be available in 20k Real Audio, and this change will affect archive listeners on a dial-up connection. Going forward, all new archives will be available in the higher quality 64k AAC+ format, which sounds fantastic with our new Pop-Up Player. If you listen to our 128k MP3 archives, fear not, no changes are being made in that dept.

How will the change affect your archive listening? (Read more)

If you have DSL, cable, or a T1 internet connection:
For Pop-Up AAC+ archives to work, Javascript must be enabled (info here) and you need Flash Player plugin 9 or higher. Pop-Up archives can only be played inside your web browser (they load in a pop-up window, try one out here). You can still listen to our 128k MP3 archives using external programs like iTunes or Winamp (although these archives expire after 4 weeks, as they have done in the past).

If you have a dial-up connection:
Due to the higher quality and higher bit-rate of our new archive format, your internet connection speed will not be able to accomodate archive listening going forward. Rest assured that we will continue to offer our live streams in Real Audio and Windows Media, at bit-rates appropriate for dial-up connections. All of WFMU's Real Audio archives prior to July 12, 2009 will remain available on our website for your listening pleasure, but new archives going forward will no longer be offered in Real Audio.

Eating Paste

 I have a dayjob as a magazine editor, which is quaint, I know. It's like being a beekeeper or a radio DJ or something, and I just hope I can get some kind of retraining (underwater welding?) before all the magazines close down.

Traditionally, magazines have made their money in two basic ways--sales (newsstand or subscription) or advertising. But now comes a letter (snail mail!) from Paste, a magazine of fairly mainstream music and pop culture, asking for donations. It's the "Campaign to Save Paste." In the last few months they've discontinued their monthly CD inserts (just as well), and they've dropped to 72 pages (with the dreaded saddle-stitch staples), and they've gone bimonthly (although they deny that they have), and they're still running at a loss. So they would just like someone to send them some money. Hey, it can't hurt to ask.

At a time when those kids in Williamsburg are making news because their parents won't bankroll their co-ops any more, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to be emptying the piggybank to support the vital cause of alt-music reviews. (Although the original W-burg story was in the New York Times, so  possibly does not qualify as "news" per se, or even as "true.") Besides, we need you to start saving now for the next WFMU fund-raising Marathon, just 9 months away. Someone's gotta play those CDs that no one's gonna review.

Thanks for reading my second blogpost this week, and may God bless.

Mourning the Death of President Bongo

Lately I have been pretty upset about my gullibility problem, which is second only to my little hoarding problem in the list of My Upsetting Oddities. (Not being able to touch doorknobs is third and, rather surprisingly, being unable to recognize human faces has recently fallen to fourth.) But then I was looking at the news today, and saw that some camera crew found a middle-aged Korean man wandering around Macao  and decided he was Kim Jong Nam (“the Small General”), eldest son of Kim Jong Il. So maybe I’m not the only one.

The Local (“Sweden’s News in English,” which for some reason I cannot stop calling “The State”) had an entertaining story today, too. Supporters of those Pirate Bay file-sharing guys who were convicted of copyright violations in Sweden last month have won election to a seat in the European Parliament. Candidates of the Pirate Party campaigned on the issue of reforming copyright and patent law, and won 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, putting them into the EU government.
Huzzah! I mean, Arrrrrh!

Another One Bites the Dust

Good-bye, Nickelodeon Magazine! Home in print of many fine Cartoonist-Listeners, and former employer of little freelance writer Bronwyn C.  Goodbye, too, to Radio and Records mag, dead and dead as of yesterday.

Why Do You Think They Call It Twit?

 There's no denying it: I've always been gullible. Really, really gullible. I don't know why. I'm not stupid, technically, but I am a very literal person. I take everything really literally, so maybe that has something to do with it. Anyway, I was totally thrilled when I heard that Kim Jong Il was on Twitter. I mean, of course I figured it could be a prank, but I read that one of his tweets said, "National defense is the sacred duty of the young and all other people," and I thought, you know, it could really be him. So I signed up for Twitter just so I could follow Kim Jong Il. And then some of his other tweets said, like, "I'm restarting my nuclear reactor and there is nothing you can do about it," and--my favorite one--"Bitches need to stop spreading lies. My satellite launch was successful," which reminded me of that guy Herbert Kornfeld who used to write the column in the Onion, and made me laugh, but also made me feel pretty dumb. 'Cause, you know, now I kinda doubt that it's really Kim Jong Il.

WFMU's Fatburger Takeover

If you missed out on Joe Belock and Todd-o-phonic Todd's hilarious and artery-clogging remote broadcast from Fatburger in Jersey City, you can regorge on the magic by checking out the archive, a short video of the event from NJ.com, and a greasy slideshow of visual highlights (thanks Cynthia).

Special guest appearances by Mark Moran of Weird NJ, Georgia and Ira of Yo La Tengo, the Longo brothers, Robert Piersanti, and Jersey City youth rockers!

Belly bombs away!

Drew Friedman launches new website

Expert illustrator and longtime WFMU art contributor Drew Friedman recently launched a new website featuring his fine art prints (with the help of Irwin Chusid and Barbara Economon).

For those of you who may not be familiar with Drew's work, he was the creator of WFMU's semi-grotesque mascot, the Old Codger, contributed illustrations for our Crackpots & Visionaries cards, and designed a WFMU t-shirt and bumper sticker. Drew and his brother Josh Alan once guest-hosted for Kaz on WFMU in the 1980s, as well.

Dave the Spazz calls Drew "one of the funniest stipple cartoonists of the '80's and '90's is now one of the funniest illustrators of the 21st century. His work is as hypnotizing as Basil Wolverton's at his best. Drew Friedman is the Albrecht Dürer of liver spots."

More WFMU DJ Off-Mic Activities

Not only can you catch Dave the Spazz rubbing shoulders with Mick Collins and the Paul Green School of Rock kids tonight at BB King Blues Club in Manhattan... a few other DJs have some upcoming off-mic events this week that are worth checking out.

HotRod DJs tonight @ the Lamp Post in Jersey City (352 2nd St), 9pm-2am... Free!
 
Maria Levitsky celebrates the opening of her photography show, "Building Photographs," at Deborah Berke & Partners Architecture Gallery (220 5th Ave, 7th Floor) in Manhattan tomorrow evening (Thurs 5/21), 6:30 - 8:30pm.

Small Change DJs at the Down & Derby roller disco party at Studio B in Brooklyn (259 Banker St) this Saturday with DJ Ayres and Rok One, 10pm onward (RSVP here for discounted admission).

  

Mick Collins to appear at School of Rock Benefit tonight!

Rock hero Mick Collins (from the Dirtbombs!!!!) will be joining Dave the Spazz and the Paul Green School of Rock kids for the WFMU Benefit tonight at the BB King Blues Club in Manhattan!

Tonight marks the second and final night of performances hosted by Dave the Spazz, who has handpicked music to be performed by local branches of the Paul Green School of Rock and the SCHOOL OF ROCK ALLSTARS.

The kids will compete for rock glory, as Dave selects the winning school. Expect a chimpified, sonic soiree of overmodulated, toe-stubbing rock and roll music as performed by junior high and high school kids! Plus a special guest appearance by Mick Collins! Don't miss it!

Wednesday May 20th - 8pm
BB King Blues Club
New York, NY
$15 advance and door

I Hate Spring (video)

A seasonal classic by Beatrice Lillie, with a modern video.

Thanks to good friend Arwulf Arwulf at WCBN for introducing me to this song many years ago.

Crate Update - Apologies to Gagosian

UPDATE: The mysterious crate that appeared in our parking lot Tuesday morning (believe or not) was entirely related to a WFMU activity and not the Gagosian Gallery, Jeff Koons, or any other named parties. The confusion surrounding its presence was in all cases a result of an internal communications error on our end.

We extend our deepest apologies to Gagosian Gallery and retract all statements made on this blog regarding their involvement with the art crate that was left in our parking lot, as they are in no context responsible for this matter.

Thanks, and sorry,
Trent

ISSUE Project Room's 6th Anniversary Party

On May 19th, Brooklyn's excellent non-profit performance space, ISSUE Project Room, will be celebrating their 6th year of kicking ass and taking names in the experimental music, film, literature, and art scenes (and also on the Free Music Archive).

The 6th birthday party/benefit for ISSUE Project Room takes place at Galapagos in Dumbo Brooklyn (16 Main St), and WFMU's own Fabio will be representing on the ones and twos. Other notable highlights on the bill include:

- The Pinch of the Baboon (JG Thirlwell, Ed Pastorini, Oren Bloedow and Ben Perowsky)
- Elysian Fields
- Mountains
- members of Excepter
- “Straight and Narrow” (1970), Film screening by Tony Conrad with soundtrack by John Cale and Terry Riley
- Robot Movie by Jim Sharpe with Soundtrack by Lary Seven

On top of this, IPR will reward a prize to the person who shows up in the best Holy Mountain-inspired costume, so you know there's potential for this party to be way better than Halloween. Purchase tickets here, and you'll get $10 off if you use the promotional code fidelio - have fun!

Bang on a Jam 2009, hosted by Billy Jam

In case you missed the crazy-fun Bang on a Jam noisefest on Billy Jam's show last week, you can download the whole segment here:

Bang on a Jam - 2009 (MP3) | Playlist

Who made all that racket? Billy Jam, Station Manager Ken, Jason Sigal, Doron, Scott Williams, Jeff Mullan, Mike, Nick The Bard, and Bill Bowen, that's who.

Bang on a Jam began in 2008 after Billy was underwhelmed by the annual Bang on a Can festival in NYC. Clearly the Can has been upstaged by the Jam!

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String

Observe and Report. Dr. Colby has a way of rating movies on a scale of 0 to 12.5 dollars (because that's how much a movie ticket costs in Manhattan), and on that scale I give Observe and Report $25 because I liked it so much I saw it twice. The first time I went with DJ Kelly, and the nice ticket lady gave us tickets to Obsessed by mistake because she just could not believe that a couple of dames like us, out by ourselves on a Friday night, were there to see a dark, violent, completely incorrect comedy. (Which might describe Obsessed too, I guess, except that in that case it wouldn't be intentional.) On our way out of the theater, DJ Kelly stopped, considered carefully, and then said, "That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen." And she liked O&R.
So then I went to see it again with Sluggo, and he liked it too.

I'm not recommending this movie to anyone, though, because I can see how other people might not like it. Dr. Colby herself went to see it because I said it was good, and at first she gave it $2, but then she started adding a a little more here and there, like an extra $1 for the portrayal of the alcoholic mother, and she ended up giving it about $8 in the end. Still not a ringing endorsement. And if you're the sort of person who bursts into tears when someone says, like, "hospital clown" or something, you should not see it at all. But if you're curious about how a typical summer raunch-fest movie could strip away all the cliches and get down to the brutal rock-bottom awfulness of people's lives--and still be hilarious--this is the film for you. It's definitely the film for me--it might be my new favorite film ever.

The Nytpicker. It's not Lies of Our Times, but it's short and funny and free. And a couple of days ago they figured out that New York Times is an anagram for Write, Monkey. (I put the comma in because it bothers me too much to leave it out.) It's at www.nytpick.com.

The Local—Sweden's News in English. I check out The Local whenever I can remember not to keep calling it The State. (I don't know why I do that.) I finally bookmarked it so it doesn't matter what I think it's called. Swedish news is pretty warped. Last year there was a happy article about all the shop-window Christmas displays that featured penises. And without their sports reporting, I would have been completely unaware of the fact that Sweden had a fantastic come-from-behind, sudden-death OT  6-5 victory over the U.S. in the World Ice Hockey Championships last week. In fact, I wouldn't have even known the World Ice Hockey Championships were happening, unless the U.S. had won, in which case it would have been on the front page of, like, the New York Times. And then Nytpicker would have found something wrong with it.  www.thelocal.se

Numismaticism Update: The Guam quarter is out! Although I haven't seen one yet. But it features both the latte and the flying proa! And the Martin Van Buren gold-colored dollar is out, too, but, um ... you know. No flying proa there.

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