WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Baby's getting anxious; the hour's getting late

It was just another night doing my show at WFMU, but something was wrong. Horribly wrong. The song that I was playing was getting perilously close to ending, and I hadn't cued up my next song yet. I knew exactly what I wanted to play, but for some reason the CD itself was eluding me.

My heart was pounding. I was in a panic. WHERE WAS THAT CD?!?! I KNOW that I pulled it before I went into the studio to start my show. I'd stake my life on it -- and, in the moment, it feels like that is in fact what's at stake. Looming in the corner of the studio, and getting closer with every second counting down on the CD player, is every DJ's mortal enemy: the Grim Reaper of dead air.

Evan "Funk" Davies's Best of 2006

Based on painstaking analysis of my 2006 playlists, along with some good old-fashioned gut-based truthiness, I present my favorites from this year broken down into four handy categories: New full-length releases, new singles/EPs (7", 12", CD, MP3, etc.), various artists compilations and reissues/collections.

(All listen links are streaming Real Audio from the WFMU Archives. Check out all the Best of 2006 lists!)

Evan "Funk" Davies's Top 10 Plus 6 of 2006

	1. The Leather Uppers Bright Lights (Goner) Listen to "Bigger Than A Breadbox"		2. Hank IV Third Person Shooter (Hook or Crook) Listen to "Got Got"
	3. Curse Ov Dialect Wooden Tongues (Mush) Listen to "Sticks and Stones"		4. Witch Witch (TeePee) Listen to "Witch"
	5. Pharaoh Overlord 4 (Ektro) Listen to "Dark Side"		6. Marked Men Fix My Brain (Swami) Listen to "Fix My Brain"
	7. Major Stars Synoptikon (Important) Listen to "Collapsing"		The Cuts From Here On Out (Birdman) Listen to "I'm Not Down"
	9. McFadden's Parachute Hammerdown (self-released) Listen to "Sugar 1970"		10. T. Raumschmiere Random Noize Sessions (Shitkatapult) Listen to "Die Alte Leier"

(the +6 are after the jump, along with singles/EPs, collections and re-issues)

Tonight on a Very Special Episode of "The Stonesy Bunch..."

Excerpts from two recent news items:

Mick Jagger Joins a New ABC Sitcom - By far the most unlikely star of a prospective fall situation comedy is that still-active lead singer of the Rolling Stones, who has signed on to an ABC pilot for its fall schedule. Just to increase the degree of unlikelihood, Mr. Jagger shot his scenes for the New York-based pilot in a hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand, last week.

That was the culmination of a saga at least as whimsical as the premise of the show, which, for now, anyway, is titled "Let's Rob Mick Jagger."
(The New York Times, April 26 2006)

Keith Richards Falls Out Of Palm Tree - Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was hospitalized for a mild concussion he suffered while vacationing in Fiji, reportedly after falling out of a palm tree.
[...]
Richards, 62, was injured earlier this week and flown to a New Zealand hospital for treatment, band spokeswoman Fran Curtis said in a statement Saturday.
[...]
The statement did not elaborate on Richards' condition or explain how he was injured.
(Associated Press, April 29 2006)

Anyone else think ABC picked the wrong Stone?

Air America No Longer on WLIB After August 31

Mediaweek reports that Air America Radio will lose its New York flagship station, WLIB-AM, when its lease runs out on Aug. 31. According to the report, the lease originally ended on March 31, but the network got an extension that lasts only until the end of August. The story suggests that progressive talk programming will continue on WLIB, but with more local programming. The station will be operated as a joint venture betweeen current owner Inner City Broadcasting Corporation and P1, a company run by veteran radio executive Randy Michaels. P1 will handle the programming side of the business, and will likely launch their syndicated talk program The Ed Schultz Show, which they acquired last year from Democracy Radio.

This doesn't necessarily mean the end of Air America programming in the New York market; a spokesman is quoted as saying “to be clear, Air America will not go silent on the New York City airwaves.” Perhaps they can find a new home further to the left... lord knows there's not much happening on 570AM these days.

For more about Air America Radio, check out this post and this post from WFMU staffer and Beware Of The Blog correspondent The Professor .

Besides, there were four of them

A correction from yesterday's New York Times [free registration required]:

Because of an editing error, a Fashion Diary article on Feb. 9 about grunge and garage-rock influences on fall fashions misstated the name of a band that included the singer Holly Golightly. It is Thee Headcoatees, not Three Headcoatees.

If The Kids Are United, or, Anarchy At The Embassy

Egad! Seventies punk icons Jimmy Pursey and Johnny Rotten got into a bit of a row Wednesday outside the U.S. Embassy in London, BBC 6 Music news reports.

Pursey was on line queued up to collect a visa prior to his trip to New York City for the upcoming Sham 69 benefit shows for CBGB this coming Sunday and Monday; Rotten was there for reasons that were not disclosed (a reality tv show casting call in the States, perhaps?). A long-smoldering feud was re-kindled when Rotten spurned Pursey's offer of a handshake and threw coffee over the Hersham Boy instead. Pursey landed a retaliatory kick before armed Embassy guards stepped in, at least one of whom was a fan of the combatants. As Pursey explained: "It's not every day you get a guy with a submachine gun round your head telling you he's a Sham 69 fan."

Improbably -- especially considering that it was 7:30am! -- the kafuffle was witnessed by 80s has-beens The Proclaimers, who were also at the Embassy. No doubt their overly large mouths were agape.

Suggested soundtrack for this post (all RealAudio):

"If The Kids Are United" by Sham 69, from Hova's show
"Anarchy In The UK" by the Sex Pistols, from Ken's show
Sham 69's "Hurry Up Harry" as performed by Terre T and the Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia, from the 2003 Marathon Finale

My PD Upped The Spins On Celine And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

For radio geeks, this summer's hottest reading material isn't the latest Harry Potter book. No, it's the press release and accompanying e-mail correspondence [PDF] issued this week by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announcing the agreement reached with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to "stop making payments and providing expensive gifts to radio stations and their employees in return for 'airplay' for the company's songs."

Presumably, the reason "airplay" is in quotes is that in some cases, no actual airplay was given in exchange for the laptops, DVD players and "flyaways" that the Sony radio promo people were doling out. Sometimes, it seems, simply reporting airplay was sufficient even if the airplay itself never took place. But that's not even close to the most interesting aspects of this story.

For openers, one wonders why Spitzer decided to target the historically murky relationship between record companies and radio stations in the first place. There must be other nefarious practices taking place around the great state of New York that are having a more direct impact on residents' quality of life. Could it be that he thought that dropping names like Celine Dion and Don Henley would attract publicity that would help his 2006 gubernatorial campaign? Surely that can't be it.

The Golden Age of Mix Tapes

A new book by Thurston Moore, "Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture," recalls the heyday of mix tape making through a variety of essays (and actual mix tape playlists) from the likes of Mike Watt, Dean Wareham, Jim O'Rourke, Kate Spade(!), and dozens more. Please note that this book concerns itself with mix tapes, not the arguably inferior mix CDs or MP3 playlists. Salon recently wrote about the book (free, but you need to watch an ad first), but maybe you're more interested in checking out some non-celebrity mix tapes (and CDs, and playlists).