WFMU's Beware of the Blog

My RadioVision of the Great Icelandic DJ

Back in 2010 I posted the video for the Best Party's campaign song here on Beware of the Blog. The Party—which was started as a satire of regular Icelandic politics—actually won a majority in their local election, and their founder and chairman, Jon Gnarr, became mayor of Reykjavik. Now, through the magic of Benjamin Walker, and due to some mistake that no one can explain, I am to meet His Honorableness, Mayor Gnarr, and his chief strategist and campaign manager, Heida K. Helgadottir, when I introduce their keynote address on Saturday at the WFMU Radiovision Festival.

I became an Icelandophile when I worked at the dog magazine, whose offices were two blocks from Scandinavia House. I often went there for lunch at the AQ Café, and would check out their art exhibits and excellent film series. It was at Scandinavia House a few years ago that I saw the documentary Kurekar Nordursins, and became a huge fan of the great Icelandic radio DJ, the Cowboy of the North, Hallbjorn Hjartarson. The film records (in what feels like real time) the 1984 Icelandic Cowboy Festival, which took place in a tiny northern fishing village and seemed to consist of a lot of drinking, some music, and occasional attempts to ride shaggy little Icelandic ponies while drinking or singing, but mostly drinking. I was so inspired by it that I tracked down Cowboy DJ Hallbjorn and wrote to him, hoping I could get him as a guest on WFMU. I imagined gathering up donations of moldy country vinyl at the Record Fair and shipping it off to Skagastrond, Iceland, and becoming radio friends with this international superstar.

But then months passed, and I had given up before I finally got a reply. DJ Hallbjorn had to go to a great deal of trouble to find someone who could translate my email into Icelandic and then translate his reply into English to send to me. Of course, I had no idea he didn’t speak English. He plays all these American country-western songs on his radio station, so I just assumed … Plus, I’m American, which is also why I just assumed… Anyway, I felt bad for putting him to so much trouble, so I didn’t write again. But now, every year when the Record Fair comes around, I think of Hallbjorn Hjartarson and wish I could send him some Little Jimmy Dickens records.

And this year, tomorrow, I will get to meet real Icelandic People and ask them if they know Cowboy DJ Hallbjorn—it’s a very small country, plus he is extremely famous, so they might! I just hope Jon Gnarr and Heida K. Helgadottir speak English.

 

WFMU Record Fair & RadioVision Festival - This Weekend!

 Don't miss out on the best record shopping weekend of the year! Luxuriate in the presence of hundreds of thousands of records and CDs, great films and live music, plus tons of live WFMU broadcasts!

WFMU Record Fair

Oct 28th - 30th (Fri - Sun)
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W. 18th St, Manhattan

Early admission ($25): Fri 4-7pm (includes unlimited re-entry all weekend)
Regular admission ($7): Fri 7-10pm, Sat/Sun 10am-7pm

Bring in your Record Fair postcard or this coupon for $2 off admission!

Live Music:
- Prince Rama: Sat, 12:45pm
- Sediment Club: Sat, 3:30pm
- Black Hollies: Sat 4:30pm
- CSC Funk Band: Sun, 1pm
- John Fahey tribute w/ Glenn Jones, Charlie Schmidt, and Ragtime Ralph: Sun, 3pm

Downtown Soulville voted Best Radio Show by Village Voice

Congrats to WFMU's Mr. Fine Wine, whose Downtown Soulville radio show made it to the Village Voice's Best of 2011 list! Read all about it here.

You can catch Downtown Soulville every Friday, 8-9pm on WFMU, or subscribe to the podcast here. Mr. Fine Wine also DJs at Botanica in Manhattan every Wednesday night.

In other good press news, Tom Scharpling, host of the Best Show on WFMU, was profiled by Spin magazine, along with his partner in crime Jon Wurster. Tom will be on a panel at WFMU's RadioVision Festival on Saturday, Oct 29th, along with Ira Glass and Marc Maron (ticket info here).

And of course, let us not forget about DJ/Rupture, who landed on the cover of Wire magazine...

I must say this is a damned good week for your freeform radio pals!

Wisconsin Grave Robbing In The News

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comes the news of the arrest of a grave robber who plundered a mausoleum to steal a treasured Fender Telecaster that was interred along with its recently deceased owner.  Take that Ed Gein!

Image borrowed from the Flickr stream of vintageguitarz.

Radiovision Festival: How To Pay For It

As much as the word "monetize" makes me reach for my revolver - artists, musicians, writers, and radio stations are now competing for fewer and fewer dollars, as dinosaurs like the music industry and the publishing industry shuffle off the world stage. There is plenty of great work being made right now, but until new funding models emerge its difficult to imagine how creative types can sustain the output.

October 28th - 30th, WFMU is holding its first ever Radiovision festival. On Saturday the 29th (Symposium Saturday) we will examine three possible funding models of the future:

There are plenty of crowd-funding websites and platforms but there is only one Kickstarter. This month the company announced that they just hit one million backers, that's one million backers of comics, albums, books, video games, urban farms, documentaries, exhibits, performances, and thousands of other creative works. Yancey Strickler is one of the co-founders of Kickstarter and he will be on stage to talk about why Kickstarter campaigns are so successful, and what the future of crowdfunding will be.

While most foundations have long lists of requirements you need to meet before they will consider writing you a check, The Awesome Foundation has only one prerequisite: that you be awesome. Christina Xu is one of the founders of The Awesome Foundation and she is going to talk about how her organization is regularly passing out no-strings-attached $1,000 grants to people doing awesome things like documentaries, public art projects, even interactive community notice boards. Awesome Foundation does not have a very complicated formula - every month a group of trustees get together and award a grant to a project they like best. New chapters are opening in cities all over the world, and they were just awarded a Knight News Challenge grant, this is a model with a future.

The music and publishing industries may be in free-fall but the advertising indusry is doing great. Jeff Tammes is the EVP, Creative & Strategy at Cornerstone of Cornerstone a marketing agency that pairs artists with lifestyle brands.  Cornerstone also helped set up Converse's recording studio, Rubber Tracks, in Williamsburg. Jeff's message for creators is that lifestyle brands can help artists and musicians realize their dreams.

Our moderator for this panel is Rebecca Gates. who as a member of The Spinanes can remember both the bad and the good of the old model, as a working musician has awareness of the complexity of the current scene and as a member of the Future of Music Coalition wonders: “How are all these shifts affecting working musicians? What are the implications for a musician’s practice? And what do these new models mean for the shape of arts culture in the future?

Tickets are on sale, but they are going fast. We already sold out the Radiovision Opening Night performance with Joe Frank! Don't miss out.

Radiovision Festival: Internet Culture and Community (Anonymous, Makers, and Memes)

What can Internet Communities teach us about the future of Radio audiences?

On October 28th - 30th, WFMU is holding its first ever Radiovision festival. And on Saturday the 29th (Symposium Saturday) we have a session focusing on three of the fastest growing online epicenters of community activity: Anonymous, Makers and Meme culture. we've lined up four amazing individuals to help us better understand the values of these communities and to learn how they are driving the evolution of the internet:

Bre Pettis doesn't just make things, he can make things that make things. He is a founder of Makerbot (a company that produces robots that make things), and NYC Resistor (a Brooklyn hacker collective).

Kenyatta Cheese may be famous for playing a Meme scientist on the internet (Know Your Meme), but he is one in real life as well.  Kenyatta is one of the leading experts of online media, culture and technology. He advises NGOs and is also on the board of the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology.

Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist and the author of the forthcoming book "Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking." She is currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism.

Tim Hwang is one of the co-founders of ROFLcon (a conference dedicated to Internet Culture). Tim not only helped us program this panel but he will be leading the discussion as well.

Tickets are on sale, and they are going fast. We already sold out the Radiovision Opening Night performance with Joe Frank! Get yours now.

WFMU's DJ Rupture: Wire Cover DJ

Congrats to WFMU's DJ/Rupture, who recently landed on the Wire magazine's front cover! Be sure to check out Rupture's Negrophonic site and subscribe to his Mudd Up podcast. DJ/Rupture will also be giving a short talk at WFMU's RadioVision Festival on 10/29 (tickets here).

RadioVision: Free Music Archive Melds w/ Echo Nest's Musical Brain

The Echo Nest has indexed the Free Music Archive catalog, integrating the most incredible music intelligence platform with the finest collection of free music.

The Echo Nest has been called "the most important music company on Earth" for good reason: 12 years of research at UC Berkeley, Columbia and MIT factored into the development of their "musical brain." The platform combines large-scale data mining, natural language processing, acoustic analysis and machine learning to automatically understand how the online world describes every artist, extract musical attributes like tempo and time signature, learn about music trends (see: "hotttnesss"), and a whole lot more. Echo Nest then shares all of this data through a free and open API. [read more here]

FMA's library of 40,000 free & legal music files have now been analyzed by the Echo Nest and made easily accessible to the developer community through a common Artist, Track, and Album ID system. Licensing information is included as part of the API, and so developers working in the Creative Commons sphere now have an incredible pool of curated audio to draw from for their noncommercial music applications.

Combining The Echo Nest's music intelligence tools with the FMA's curated approach opens up exciting possibilities for interactive music applications and new music discovery. For example, the Echo Nest's sandbox documentation describes how to query for artists who share music via the FMA and are similar to Radiohead

>> Read More About FMA + Echo Nest

The Echo Nest presents as part of WFMU's RadioVision Festival NYC, as part of the October 30th "Reinventing Radio" Hack Day along with the FMA and Zeega, an open-source html5 platform for digital storytellers -- RSVP here

RADIOVISION: Tom Scharpling, Marc Maron, and Ira Glass

The best comic book superheroes all have great origin stories. In fact you could make the case that characters like Batman, Spiderman, and Wolverine are great because they have origin stories that go beyond a lab accident or a secret formula (although this certainly works for Bouncing Boy).

On October 28th - 30th, WFMU is holding its first ever Radiovision festival. And on Saturday the 29th (Symposium Saturday) we are kicking things off with a discussion about Origin Stories with three radio superheroes: Ira Glass, Marc Maron and Tom Scharpling.

If you are a regular listener of these three you might be familiar with bits and pieces of their stories. Before Ira Glass founded This American Life, the show that forever changed the face of public radio (a show NPR actually passed on!) he was Joe Frank's intern, Marc Maron was one of Air America's founding hosts and after his show was cancelled he started using their studios at night to make WTF (today one of the most popular podcasts). And while Tom Scharpling's callers now line up to get banned (or unbanned) during his weekly three hour standard-setting comedy program, in the beginning they would call in to complain about the mayhem and the mirth!

Maybe we should be pitching this as "the League of Superheroes" because these three have never shared a stage before. It's going to be an amazing hour-long conversation with three of radio's best storytellers. You don't want to miss this one - plus WFMU's Therese Mahler is moderating this panel discussion.  Tickets are on sale, and they are going fast.

We already sold out the Radiovision Opening Night performance with Joe Frank! Don't wait till the last minute.

Shock & Awetober Listener Meet-Ups

Shock & Awetober continues on WFMU! Tune in for amazing special programs this month and don't miss out on our many social activities. We've got tons of listener meet-ups lined up, and hope you'll join us for some extracirricular fun:

Tuesday, Oct 11th - Jersey City Barcade Night
Get your beer on at Barcade in Jersey City (163 Newark Ave) with Beer Hear! hosts Bob W. and B.R. (4-9pm). Make new friends (or enemies) over Frogger or Asteroids! Barcade is generously donating all tips from the evening to WFMU, so drink up! info/RSVP

Tuesday, Oct 18th - Aerial View Beer Pull
Join Chris T. and WFMU's resident Beer Baron Scott Williams (6 PM) at Pilsener Haus & Biergarten in Hoboken (1422 Grand Street) for a LIVE Aerial View Beer Pull and WFMU listener meet-up. Use the secret word LIEBERSTRAUM during the broadcast to buy one beer and get one free! Auf wiedersehn! info/RSVP

ALSO Tuesday, Oct 18th - Shut Up, Weirdo! Meet-Up
Come have an awkward drink with Andy, Frangry, and the rest of the weirdos at the first ever Shut Up, Weirdo Meet-Up (Luca Lounge, 222 Ave B, Manhattan)! There won't be any games or cotton candy, just some booze and a whole lot of regret. info/RSVP

Thursday, Oct 20th - WFMU Rock Jock Listener Meet-Up
Come down to Maxwell's in Hoboken to celebrate WFMU's Rocktober festivities (7-9 PM)! WFMU DJs Terre T, Joe Belock, Evan "Funk" Davies, Gaylord Fields, Mike Sin and the one and only Todd-O-Phonic Todd will be in the house, and you can expect free food and drink specials! info/RSVP

Friday, Oct 21st - Underwater Theme Park Happy Hour
Join Underwater Theme Park host Meghan at Full Circle Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (318 Grand St), for free skee ball, extensive happy hour specials, and good times (7-9pm). info/RSVP

Tuesday, Oct 25th - Thunk Tank Trick-or-Treat Meet-Up
Join Bronwyn, Jay, and Thunkers galore at Jo's, 264 Elizabeth St., NYC  for a live remote broadcast and scary story hour featuring readings by DJ's Amanda Nazario, Kurt Gottschalk, Bronwyn C., and Jay B. (6–9 PM, live broadcast from 7–8). There'll be treat bags o' swag for all, and Jo's will introduce the Thunk Tank Signature Cocktail! Costumes, masks, and furry outfits encouraged, because you gotta dress up to be on the radio! info/RSVP

ALSO Tuesday, Oct 25th - Antique Phonograph Music Program Live Broadcast
The Antique Phonograph Music Program will be hosting a listener meet-up and broadcasting LIVE from 7-9pm at The City Reliquary Museum in Brooklyn (370 Metropolitan Ave). Join MAC, his phonographs, and cheap beer for this gathering including records highlighting New York and other disc delights. info/RSVP

 

Shock & Awetober on WFMU!

Shock & Awetober is in effect on WFMU!

We've got tons of live guests and listener meet-ups, plus Singles Going Steady Week, our annual Record Fair, and WFMU's first-ever RadioVision Festival all happening in October (full event listing here).

It's 31 days of raucous fun on top of a month of stealth fundraising (online/mail-only): make a pledge and snag our new "Radio Es Amor" T-shirt (below) or our Sun Ra remix CD (left).

This Fall, we're experimenting with silent fundraising, with hopes that it will be successful enough to prevent us from needing to fundraise over the air more than once a year.

We encourage you to pledge to specific radio shows on WFMU to help your favorite DJs reach their individual goals by Oct 31st.

We hope to hear from you!

 

 

WFMU at the Atlantic Antic this Sunday

Hello Brooklyn! WFMU will be holding court at the Atlantic Antic street fair this Sunday, October 2nd, Noon-6pm.

Your favorite freeform station will be parked between Clinton and Henry Streets on the south side of Atlantic Avenue (closer to Henry) in Brooklyn, where we'll be hawking swag, exchanging high-fives with listeners, and stocking up on mozzarepa tubesocks.

Stop by the WFMU tent to say hi!

Off-Mic DJ News: October 2011

Fri Oct 7: Sinner's Crossroad's Kevin Nutt will be DJing a set or two of gospel / soul / rocksteady 45s at El Rey Burrito Lounge in Montgomery, Alabama (1031 East Fairview Ave) for the El Rey Burrito Lounge's Oktoberfest 2011. Kevin will personally spring for one of El Rey's famous, deadly margaritas to any WFMU-sters in the area who show up.

Sat Oct 15: Music Director Brian Turner DJ's on Saturday, October 15th at NEON MARSHMALLOW, an experimental/electronic 3-day fest happening at Public Assembly 70 N. 6th Street in Williamsburg.Info and lineup (which includes over the three days Rhys Chatham, Phill Niblock, Grouper, Tim Hecker and more) here.

Sat Oct 15: Mr. Fine Wine DJs at the Commodore (366 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg)

Thurs Oct 20: Merging her love of art and music DJ Trouble will be spinning for the after party for Steven Harvey fine art projects at a new show called The Gap, about the relationship of what we see to what we know. There will be an opening at the gallery (208 Forsyth Street) from 6-8 and then a second opening starting at 9pm upstairs at 2A, (25 Avenue A at 2nd Street). Artists opening at the gallery include Sangram Majumdar, Stuart Shils and Kurt Knobesldorf.

Every Sunday, Dave the Spazz spins rock & roll records at Union Pool starting at 10pm (484 Union Ave at Meeker in Williamsburg Brooklyn) FREE.

Every Wednesday, Mr. Fine Wine spins soul 45s at Botanica (47 East Houston St.) 10 till late, free.

Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker was featured in a post on Rhizome on the topic of pseudonyms.

About.com interviewed former WFMU DJ and Wreck This Mess host Bart Plantegna about pirate radio.

Dave Mandl, who in one of his lives is a member of the writers' collective the Unbearables, has a piece about topless bars in the new anthology "The Unbearables Big Book of Sex." Dave encourages you to buy the book, but you can read his essay here for free, A Boob Stamping on a Human Face Forever. Dave also did a long interview with conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith (otherwise known as WFMU's Kenny G.) for the current issue of The Believer magazine. You can read it online here.

Currently on-WFMU-hiatus DJ Trent has gathered a bunch of mixtapes in one place for your free downloading pleasure at http://djtrent.com/mixtapes. The latest one came out this week and it's called Had to Make the Song Cry. Enjoy!

Noah teamed up with Get On Down to produce his latest re-issue. The Definitive Arthur Russell Sleeping Bag Recordings vinyl box set (also available on CD). The collection contains the Dinosaur L "24 -> 24 Music", Felix, Indian Ocean, Bonzo Goes To Washington and Sounds Of JHS 126 Brooklyn. Unpublished photos from Janette Beckman with liner notes, additional artwork, testimonials all housed in a screen printed box! Here's more information. Check out a video of the silk screening process for the box.

Fabio is included in an exhibition in Philadelphia called The Big Idea: An Exhibition of Work Concerning Failure, October 1 to October 29 at Little Berlin, 2430 Coral Street, Saturdays 12 to 5 and by appointment.

Bob Brainen celebrated his 34th anniversary on the air at WFMU last month by playing his first show from on September 8th, 1977. Hear it here.

DJ/Rupture (Jace Clayton) from Mudd Up interviewed Paul Octavian Nasca, the guy who wrote the 'Bieber stretch' software, for this article in Frieze (on slow music).

Vimeo's new service connects videomakers w/ video-safe Creative Commons music from Free Music Archive

The classy video-hosting site Vimeo launched a new service to connect their noncommerical community of creative independent video producers with quality legal music options. The Music Store utilizes the Free Music Archive API to index the portion of the FMA library that can be used in video projects under the Creative Commons framework (i.e. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike; about 11,000 tracks) and offers these curated jams as its free options. This is an exciting moment for those of us who share our music under open licenses to inspire new collaborations and expand our reach.

From Vimeo's announcement:

As many of you know, finding music for your videos can be somewhat... well, painful. Licensing music on your own can be confusing and finding good free music can take forever. Many of us here at Vimeo are video creators or filmmakers as well and we experience these frustrations on a regular basis. So, we decided to do something about it.

The majority of FMA's library is pre-cleared for noncommercial use only, so it might seem strange at first that free music is included in something called a Music "Store" alongside paid music from a company called Audiosocket. But for many artists, allowing for hands-on engagement with their work in the noncommercial sphere plays into a broader promotional strategy, and even leads to lucrative commercial licensing opportunities. We always love to hear about the collaborations that result when producers who actually have a budget discover one of the many great artists who share their work via the Free Music Archive, about artists being commissioned to score new documentary films, mobile app soundtracks, and viral videos that reach 2 million views.

Vimeo introduced Creative Commons licensing for video last summer, and we've already seen a flurry of videos powered by CC music from the FMA -- everything from educational projects, travelogues, time lapses, recipe-sharing, and science videos to the immensely popular cute animal videos (although I guess that's more a YouTube thing). I'm including one example after the jump, along with the latest in FMA's series of mixes curated with the online video producer in mind. Vimeo's Music Store seems is totally new, so it's sure to be refined over the course of time. If you have feedback you can leave a comment here, and we look forward to the new collaborations that this bridge between the CC Music Community and the CC Video Community will inspire!

Try to Remember the Days of September

  

I skipped all the coverage of the 9/11 commemorations today. The message seems to be “Never forget,” but what is it that we’re supposed to remember?

I remember 9/11 very well: the immediate realization, when the second plane hit, that this was no accident, the WTF moment when we heard the Pentagon was burning. I remember trying to get to WFMU to do my first show afterwards, and being turned back by NJ State Patrol officers until I figured out an alternate way into Jersey City. I remember insisting that Sluggo and Dog Baxter go with me to the station, because I did not want to be separated from them again … just in case. I don’t remember exactly what I said on that first show, but I know that one longtime Listener was so upset by it that I had the archive deleted. So now I never will know for sure, but I can’t imagine I expressed anything except bewilderment and deep anxiety. 

I remember seeing TV news reports—with video—of the small plane coming from the west, hitting the west side of the second tower, the man with the British accent describing it to the female reporter as a small plane, like a Piper Cherokee or Dakota. I haven’t looked for that footage on the 9/11 Television News Archive because I suspect it’s not there.

Like the TV archive, lots of information is suddenly appearing on this 10th Anniversary: the Marine Major who was in the command bunker under the White House when Robotic Lord Vice-President Cheney gave the order to shoot down Flight 93. (But then the passengers crashed the plane, so they didn’t have to shoot it down after all. >Whew!<) The “eyewitness video of the Flight 93 crash site,” released only now that the anonymous videographer has died—shot from a hilltop 15 miles away and showing some smoke on the other side of faraway trees. The audio of all but a big missing 30-minute chunk of FAA and NORAD recordings made that morning. The FBI explaining that they simply forgot to tell anyone about the wealthy Saudi family who, shortly before 9/11, disappeared without a trace, leaving their luxury home and all their luxury belongings—except for a computer and the contents of a safe— after meetings with Mohammad Atta. Do you remember how no airplanes were allowed to fly for days after the attacks? Do you remember reports that President Bush made an exception for a planeload of wealthy Saudis who wanted to return home? Because I do. I remember that.

We are supposed to Never Forget, but there are also things we are never supposed to remember. The former “Freedom Tower” is now “One World Trade Center” because, says Chris Ward, director of the Port Authority, the name Freedom Tower would be likely to recall “painful memories of the 9/11 attacks.” So, never forget that we were attacked, but just make sure you remember those events in a way that’s not, you know, in any way uncomfortable for you. The Port Authority and Mayor Bloomberg are working hard to “rebrand” Ground Zero. It’s the World Trade Center now—and don’t you forget it. 

The Cerberus of September from David Zung on Vimeo.

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

 

Off-Mic DJ News: August 2011

Thanks to Rebecca for editing.

Kurt Gottschalk is behind the launching of a new music blog, with posts already up about Derek Bailey, John Cage, Nels Cline, Michael Mantler, Marc Ribot and others. 

Clay Pigeon will be seen in an upcoming Rachel Shuman documentary called The Fall. In the film, Clay interviews people in New York City prior to the Presidential Election of 2008.  The Pidge also makes an appearance in Bending All the Rules made in 2001 (avail on Netflix). The cast includes Bradley Cooper (Hangover II) and Colleen Porch (Transformers), and in the film Clay reprises a character he played in Tampa Clubs called DJ Super K, a superhero DJ (image, right). You can see a clip, sadly without Clay, here.

Fri Aug 5th: My Castle of Quiet Movie Night #2 with William Berger, Don Sigal of Opposite Records, and Richard of NVT at the Nyack Village Theater, 94 Main Street, Nyack, NY. The films will be Bug, William (Exorcist) Friedkin's last film. It's a brilliant treatise on the horrors of the mind. And Haute Tension (directed by Alexandre AJa), a brutal and merciless killer is roaming the French countryside - or is he? The original better French version (subtitled).

Benjamen Walker is doing a new podcast series for The Guardian. In the first episode, Walker and guests discuss the communication theorist Marshall McLuhan and his most famous line. Hear it here.

Sat Aug 13th: Diane Kamikaze's original works and custom light switch/electrical plates will be available for show and sale at the Kearny Art Show and Flea Market which will be held at the Kearny Irish Club, 95 Kearny Avenue, Kearny, NJ. The show features several local artists and the admission is free. Starts at 9pm.

More WFMU Listener Meet-Ups!

Hopefully, you are already locked in to join us for fun, sun, rides, freaks, and fireworks tomorrow night, when WFMU invades Coney Island. Mr. Fine Wine will be spinning soul 45s, as we broadcast "Downtown Soulville" live from the boardwalk, 8-9pm. More details about the meet-up here.

WFMU has two more listener meet-ups in the works:

Saturday, July 30th (3-5pm) - Ichiban Listener Meet-Up in Manhattan
Pre-Party for Lincoln Center's Girl Group Extravaganza

Join WFMU's Ichiban Rock 'n Soul stream Empress Debbie D. for a drink or two at P.J. Clarke's Lincoln Square (44 W. 63rd St, Manhattan), then head over to Lincoln Center to check out She's Got the Power!: A Girl Group Extravaganza -- the most stunning and comprehensive array of female vocalists ever assembled on one stage (and it's free)! Details and RSVP here.

 

Saturday, August 27th (9pm-2am) - Comedy, Horror, and Sci-Fi in Clifton, NJ

Come on down to the Clash Bar (39 Harding Ave) in Clifton, NJ for a night of stand-up comedy, live music, and a horror/sci-fi movie featuring WFMU's Professor Dum Dum! Toss back a drink with Wm Berger! Details and RSVP here.

 

Silent Barn Robbed / Party Lab Lives On (mp3)

Terrible news this weekend, as Silent Barn -- the one-of-a-kind venue/laboratory/gallery/space/place in Ridgewood, Queens -- was robbed of $15k-worth of gear/equipment (read the note here or after the jump | UPDATE THERE IS NOW A KICKSTARTER).

Among the many amazing components of Silent Barn -- the Baby Castles video game installations + hacker meetups, murals and art everywhere, live performances booked by some of the city's best curators -- here's one of my favorites:

http://partylab.swillchildren.org/

Party Lab hosts straight-to-cassette mixes of not just the live performances, but everything that's going on in and around the entire space at that moment in time. Just look at the diagram -- there were microphones everywhere, even outside! It's all part of G Lucas Crane's vision of a "Center For Non-Amoral Surveillance," which he explains with this manifesto. I remember this one show, being so stunned by Grasshopper's set, I went over to the Party Lab booth to ask James (who'd been doing some mixing while hanging by the door) how he thought the recording turned out. "Great!" he said, "An ambulance came by, got some of that in the mix, plus a fight broke out so that's in there too..."

These tapes survive to document an environment which is sure to be reincarnated before long. We're all eager for an opportunity to show support for Silent Barn, because we need a space like this now more than ever, what with the shutdown of CoCo66 and this rumor of a gigantic Whole Foods coming to bulldoze some of Williamsburg's finest venues... So, stay tuned to Silent Barn (fbook/twitter/email) and read their note after the jump:

Listener Meet-Up: July 22nd WFMU Invades Coney Island

Announcing another Listener Meet-Up: Friday, July 22nd (6-11pm) WFMU invades Coney Island!

Join WFMU for fun, sun, rides, freaks, fireworks, and a live broadcast of "Downtown Soulville" with Mr. Fine Wine on the boardwalk at Wonder Wheel Park!

The plan:

6-7pm - Meet fellow FMUers at the Coney Island USA Freak Bar (Sideshows by the Seashore - 1208 Surf Ave. at W. 12th St, Brooklyn) for a drink and to pick up discount passes for the Wonder Wheel (click here for a WW MP3).

7-8pm - Run wild: check out the Sideshow, ride the Wonder Wheel or Cyclone, swim in the ocean, eat a hot dog or 10!

8-9pm - Soul dance party on the boardwalk at Wonder Wheel Park (Boardwalk & Denos D. Vourderis Pl - W. 12th St)! Live broadcast of "Downtown Soulville" with Mr. Fine Wine on the decks.

9:30pm - Fireworks show on the boardwalk.

10pm onward - Check out the burlesque show, belt out some tunes during boardwalk karaoke, toss a few back with the locals at Ruby's Bar, get in on more rides.

Hope to see you there.

Alternative 3: The Hoax Behind The Conspiracy

By Tom Keiser

Watch More on Network Awesome

“It makes no sense. I mean, how can people just vanish off the face of the Earth in this day and age?”

In 1977, a conspiracy was hatched involving writers, actors, politicians, scientists, and Brian Eno. The British television series Science Report was about to be cancelled, and its scheduled April 1 finale gave the creators an opportunity to prank those who believed everything they saw on television, and those so skeptical of everything as to see conspiracies all over the place. The resulting program, Alternative 3, is a classic in fake news programming; The War Of The Worlds by way of the BBC’s 1957 spaghetti harvest hoax.

Alternative 3 is presented as an investigation, with an aborted episode of Science Report as the frame. Twenty-four people interviewed for a Science Report episode on Britain’s “brain drain” have gone missing, including three profiled before the introduction.  Over the next hour, further pieces of the puzzle are put into place, connecting the disappearances to the death of a prestigious astronomer, the drunk ravings of a former astronaut, and the theories of an early proponent of the climate change hypothesis, Dr. Carl Gerstein. Contemporary news events, such as the Tangshan earthquake and United Kingdom heatwave and drought in 1976, and the North American mega-blizzard of early 1977, hint at a more destructive event than even the producers of The Day After Tomorrow could have imagined.