WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Appropriating Forms: Violence and Godspeed You! Black Emperor

By Robert Ham

Doc - Mitsuo Yanagimachi: Godspeed You! Black Emperor (1976)

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In his book Retromania, peerless cultural critic Simon Reynolds spends an entire chapter talking about a particularly "Japanese sensibility": "the way that [they] would curate, assimilate and reprocess Western popular culture.

"According [journalist W. David] Marx, in Japan style is not personal, a matter of cultivated quirks and differences, but impersonal, an external standard to which you have to measure up."

While Reynolds was used the above points to frame his discussion of Japanese music and its tendency to reflect back on sounds and ideas from the American and European counterparts, they just as easily port over to another facet of Japanese youth culture: bosozoku motorcycle gangs.

These teenage bike enthusiasts first sprung up within the country during the 1950s, the same time that

FOOD (1972) – Gordon Matta-Clark's Restaurant – Directed by Robert Frank

FOOD is a short film directed by aritst/photographer Robert Frank about Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden's conceptual restaurant. Founded in 1972 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, FOOD brought together many factors of the local community, artists and otherwise, becoming a space for dialogue and conversation as well as a living piece in it of itself. 

The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman (MP3s)

     

Ronnie Hawkins  -  The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman (Let Him Live, Let Him Live, Let Him Live)

Hoyle Miller  -  Twelve Years On Death Row

Country Johnny Mathis  -  Caryl Chessman

In July 1948, Caryl Chessman, also known as "The Red Light Bandit," was sentenced to die in the California gas chamber after being convicted on 17 charges of robbery, kidnapping and rape.  Chessman's residence on death row was somewhat anomalous in that his crimes did not involve the taking of a life.  However, the fact that he was convicted of kidnapping with bodily harm enabled the state of California to charge him with the violation of the Federal Kidnapping Act (sometimes referred to as the Little Lindbergh Law), which was regarded as a capital offense.

Strange Bedfellows: A Rockabilly Session and a Voice of Reason on Anti-Communism (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 25)

"One never know, do one?" - Fats Waller

Today's tape was intriguing enough when I heard the first six minutes of it. When I heard the remainder of the tape (which also indicated what that six minutes had been recorded over, I was even more fascinated.

Recorded over the initial third of the tape, at 15 IPS (the speed often used at recording studios), in whole track mono, after some initial setting up sounds, were versions of two Rockabilly classics, the first being "Heartless Woman" (most often associated with Terry Noland) and the second being "The Fool" (Sanford Clark's huge hit from 1956). There is no indication anywhere on the tape or box as to who is performing on these tracks, or even that they exist on the tape.

1.) Unknown - Set Up (MP3)   |  2.) Unknown - Heartless Woman (MP3)  |  3.) Unknown - The Fool (MP3)

Well, as soon as these recordings end, the rest of what they were erasing shows up, at 7 1/2 IPS and again in whole track mono. And it is just as fascinating as that Rockabilly session, and yet couldn't be more different than it. What remains are three full episodes (and a fragment of a fourth) of a show hosted by Edwin Randall, short radio shows he hosted for The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, and on which he was joined by Harry P. Cain.

A quick internet search - and I don't for a moment claim to be an expert on any of this - shows that Harry P. Cain was a senator from Washington, and that he served in that position just long enough to develop strong ties to Joseph McCarthy, and join him in the legendary crusade against Communists. This has tended to paint him with the same brush with which history has painted McCarthy. However, once relieved of his seat in Congress, Cain was appointed to the Subversive Activities Control Board, where he began to question some of decisions being made in the name of protecting the nation from Communists, particularly in the area of violations of civil liberties. After making a point of raising these concerns in a variety of ways, he alienated those with whom he had previously worked, including President Eisenhower, and he resigned from the Control Board.

It would appear that these radio shows date from near the end of Cain's time on the Subversive Activities Control Board. They mention his three years on the Board, a time frame he never actually reached - he resigned after 2 1/2 years! The interviews are primarily focused on his concerns about civil liberties, and he brings up several examples of questionable use of Government power, as well as how difficult it was for the little guy to fight back. With one of ideals of The American Friends Service Committee being social justice, a radio show produced by that organization would have been a good fit for Cain to express his views, as they were near the end of his tenure on the Control Board.

(The very last bit is a very brief fragment of yet another show hosted by Edwin Randell, which itself was mostly erased by the show featuring Harry P. Cain. It was on the tape, so I included it.)

4.) Edwin Randall and Harry P Cain (For the American Friends Service Committee) - Fragment and Full Episode 1 (MP3)  |  5.) Edwin Randall and Harry P Cain (For the American Friends Service Committee) - Full Episode 2 (MP3)  |  6.) Edwin Randall and Harry P Cain (For the American Friends Service Committee) - Full Episode 3 (MP3)  |  7.) Edwin Randall and Bill Hoisel - Fragment (MP3)  | Tape (JPG)

A Joy Division in Nazi Disneyland

Last week the web was wriggling with outrage over The Disney Store Corporation offering for sale a Mickey Mouse™ T-shirt in the graphic style of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures albumcover -- not that the iconic white-on-black waveform image (plucked from the Cambidge Encyclopedia of Astronomy by drummer Stephen Morris) was any stranger to absurd marketing schemes.

 

Glenn Beck / The Invisible Committee

Oldie but Goodie

Collaboration between Glenn Beck and The Invisible Committee

- - -

Glenn Beck lives and works in Dallas, TX

You can purchase The Coming Insurrection here

The Tale Of Floyd Collins (MP3)

The Tale Of Floyd Collins come to us from Arkansas native Ronnie Hawkins, who found success and fame after following Conway Twitty's advice and relocating to Canada.

In 1960, Hawkins, a cousin of rockabilly pioneer Dale Hawkins, released this long-after-the fact topical song about the 1925 death of cave explorer Floyd Collins who became trapped 55 feet underground in what is now part of Mammoth Cave National Park just outside of Cave City, Kentucky.  Collins got stuck while exploring and though rescue teams worked around the clock to try to save him, they were ulimately unsuccessful and after 14 hellish days Collins succumbed to exposure, thirst and starvation.

Ronnie Hawkins  -  The Tale Of Floyd Collins  (3:03)

The Curse of Brando Island

The ghastly Spectres which were doomed at last
To tell as true a tale of dangers past, 
As ever the dark annals of the deep
Disclosed for man to dread or woman weep. 

-- The Island, Lord Byron

In 1960, while on a scouting journey for locations for Mutiny On The Bounty, Marlon Brando visits the atoll Tetiaroa and falls in love with the former home of Tahitian royalty. Two years later, Brando marries his second Mutiny co-star, Tarita Teriipia, who played his Polynesian wife in the film and purchases Tetiaroa for $200,000 with the intention of making it his home. Little did Brando know what his island paradise would bring he and his visitors, for in acting, one not only brings himself to a role, but the role can transform the actor's real personality, permenantly -- a most dangerous game for friends and family of the 'Godfather' and 'Colonel Kurtz'.

Hear 10 Secs from Every Hit Song of the '90s

1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999

I watched part of The Crow last night (yeah, just part...we had to turn it off it was so bad) and was struck by how much of a solidified, historical aesthetic the '90s already has, just as much as the '80s or the '70s are a static time capsule of cultural silliness.  Yes, it was when I saw the faux-wet goth haircut of that "Craven" guy (real subtle name there, excellent foreshadowing) that I experienced the Proustian recollection and realized that I'm no longer "becoming a man", I'm just "a man".  The time of Jnco jeans and Darias is over.  And it was a simpler time, was it not?  No 9/11, no three simultaneous wars, no economic disaster and no Snooki.  Listen to these mp3s and pine for these more pastoral days of yore.  Read along with the clips here.

Find the rest of my "Ten Secs of _0s" column here, and listen to my radio show here.  Next up is the exciting conclusion...Every Top 100 song ever!  Plus I'll release the software I used to produce these chartsweeps along with a contest to showcase your supercut on my upcoming FMU marathon premium!

Entr’acte: The Rodeo Clown

 

So: Bullriding. You get on the bull in a chute, and the gate opens, and the bull comes out and bucks, and you stay on as long as you can, and then you fall off. Or, if you manage to stay on for eight (8!) seconds, then they blow a horn and you can jump off. And then what happens? You’re on the ground, in an enclosed area, with a pissed-off 2200-pound animal with big testicles, big horns, and also possibly ’roid rage. (There was a bull-doping steroids scandal in 2007.)  For your protection, they bring in the clowns.

TV Is the Government: The Underground Vaudeville of TV Party

By Gabriella Arrigoni - Collection: TV Party

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Not always, actually quite seldom, is the distinction between art and absurdity a relevant one. And it certainly doesn’t matter when in a TV show you combine live music, in-studio party, fancy dress, videotapes, punk, disco, anarchism, new wave, visual arts, rap, interviews, phone-in sessions, shaky camera angles, crude advertising and live drug taking. All this featuring guests such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Lurie, David Byrne, George Clinton, Fab Five Freddy, Tuxedo Moon, Debbie Harry, Maripol, Iggy Pop, Chris Burden, John Feckner just to name a few. The uniqueness of TV Party, however, was not as a celebration of the apotheosis of the underground, but that this played out on the mass media it rebelled against.

Elvis To KLF: The Train I Ride Is Sixteen Coaches Long

Life with a three-year-old can find you focusing on on forms and representations of transportation you wouldn't otherwise. Trains, for example, hold a particular resonance with the developing mind that challenge their relative rarity compared to cars and airplanes. We've found ourselves meeting constant demands for all things trains by discovering the online world of obsessive documentarians of all things locomotive. Watching this narration-and-music-free modern footage of old-fashioned steam engines has caused us to consider the sensual impact the advent of train travel would have on the rural blues men who would incorporate the sound of trains into their music and use the eeire whistle of the coming train as a metaphor for all great changes in life, love and death.

Burgess Meredith, Singer / part four of four

Recently I tracked down Burgess Meredith's delightful autobiography, So Far, So Good, and was finally able to get a tidbit of information about his 1960 lp that I'm so fond of: Songs and Stories of the Gold Rush.  I've previously covered this album and parts of another one where he recites and sings at this blog, and now let's listen to the last four cuts of the batch and hear what Meredith himself had to say about the project.

Chuck-a-Luck      Here to See the Diggin's      My Government Claim      Burgess lp Outro

 

FUN Go! America! Celebrates New Jersey, on My Castle of Quiet, 12.18.2011

FUN—as I've come to know the Philadelphia-based combo, its sounds and membership, I realize how truly appropriate the name is for what they do. FUN are able to apply clever, inventive, fresh ideas to their improvised music-making, minus all the beard-stroking and pretentious, high-minded, music-conservatory-based conceptualization and back-patting that often accompanies similar activities.

For their FUN Go! America! tour, a 50-year project that involves one performance a year, each in a different state, on the very date that that state was inducted into the Union, FUN came to New Jersey on December 18th, to WFMU's Studio B, to render two unique, smartly conceived and individually distinct long-form improvisations. The concept of the tour alone is staggering, and relies upon FUN's members having access to interstate transportation, and living long enough, to execute the mass concept in its entirety.

 

There's A Super Genius In All Of Us

In February of 1990, I xeroxed 2 pages of the New Yorker magazine, to hold onto what I considered one of the funniest pieces of writing ever. It was titled Coyote V. Acme and was penned by regular New Yorker writer and NJ resident, Ian Frazier. In a nutshell, and I'll post part of it after the jump, Wile E. Coyote, plaintiff sues the Acme Company for product liability and the injuries he sustained over his career at Warner Brothers Entertainment. It's written in legalese and describes so well some of the cartoons and shenanigans involved, that you'll be able to be there with Mr. Coyote when he endures a violent feet-first collision with a boulder. Frazier published a book bearing the same name in 1996; a collection of his short humorous pieces, and has other books to his name, some humor collections like Coyote V. Acme, others full length adventures. I was reminded of the original piece the other day and wanted to share some of it, since it's been sitting xeroxed in my file cabinet in the FUN folder for decades. Ian's books are available through several online retailers. This time of year can be one of reflection and I'd like to look at the attempts of Mr. Coyote to capture his prey over the years, and the purity of his actions. Wile E. Coyote; Genius, and at some point in the Roadrunner cartoons, upgraded to Super Genius, was dedicated and single minded. He'd have made a great employee at the time of his upswing into the public eye. He was inventive beyond belief, and even when the same item would malfunction three radically different ways, he would remain a loyal customer of the Acme Company. Brick and mortars would die for a shopper like him! He is a reminder to all of us that perseverance and hard work pays off, or at least keeps you gainfully employed, and that there's a super genius lying in wait inside all of us. Perhaps it just takes an anvil to the head!  There was a response to the article published in 1995, I'm not certain of the source, which more or less takes the stand that since our beloved Mr. Coyote quite often looked directly at the camera before sustaining injuries that the Acme Company's products caused, that he was faking the extent of his physical damage. Imagine that!

"Where Rock Lived": What Corporate Radio Looked Like

Doc - Airplay

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A day in the life of New York's WNEW-FM, Airplay follows DJ's, administrators and other employees as they go about the business of keeping America's most populous city entertained. Known for years by the slogan "Where Rock Lives", the station came into its own in 1967, when 102.7 FM switched formats from middle-of-the-road pop to a more daring progressive rock sound.

A Germs Whisky Christmas: Cruising For Oki-Dogs

December 23, 1979, Germs play the Masque Christmas Ball at Whisky-Au-Go-Go, performing what would be dubbed on-stage "art" by singer Darby Crash, self-proclaimed "Manimal" and possessor of "television and supervision," who read "every Bible story," and was educated in mind-control by public school Scientologists, an A+ hustler whose world-famous catchphrase was "buy me a beer" and whose demands for "beer and damage" do not go unheeded this night. Watch as Darby, spolight directly in his eyes, eats a lit book of matches, transforms into a panther, demands each audience member "hit the person next to you," sets fire to his (A+) lyrics (balls-on-fire-great teenage Blake) all before guitarist Pat Smear kicks a bouncer in the head (several times+) for crossing number one invisible line in rock n roll: the artists own the stage.

Hear 10 Seconds from Every Hit Song of the '80s

1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989

I love the '80s because pop music culture was uniformly co-opted by capitalism throughout this decade.  In the '70s, you may have ended with wonderfully vapid concepts like disco, but you started with those pesky hippies trying to "change the world" with their "ideals".  In the 80s, we start with disco and end with dance music that has a slightly different groove, slightly different synth presets and slightly different haircuts.  The '80s is the decade that really proved American culture has nothing new to offer after the tremendous cultural explosions of the mid-century.  Now we're ready for our utopian future where music and culture need not change outside of acceptable parameters.  Enjoy the slow transition of dance music into grooves accentuating 16th notes and hairstyles accentuating a culture which had fully become out-of-touch with political realities.

Follow a song list along with the clips here.

Boris Karloff and Aesopus

Today some more of Karloff's Caedmon Records oeuvre with a visit to Aesop, "...who created an independent class of stories about animals, so that in a few generations his name and person had become typical of that entire class of literature. In course of time, thanks to his plain, popular manner, the story of his own life was enveloped in an almost inextricable tissue of tales and traditions, which represented him as an ugly hunchback and a buffoon. In the Middle Ages these were woven together into a kind of romance."

Storytelling In Japanese Art at the MET

Up through May 6th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an exhibit entitled "Storytelling In Japanese Art" with a main focus on the Emaki, or Emakimono hand scrolls; some dating as far back as the 12th century. What's interesting about these pieces is that they are physically lengthy, so only certain portions of the scrolls are available for viewing at a time. The scrolls will be advanced during the length of the exhibition, so if you visit more than once, chances are you'll see different sections of the scrolls, which contain illustrations as well as japanese character text. Some are faded and reflective of their age, and some are in phenomenal shape considering the fragility of the medium. The exhibition also includes full views of some of the handscrolls on iPad displays in the beautifully crafted reading room. The current of the presentation of the pieces is very fluid - literally, with a fountain by Isamu Noguchi in the center of the route and a study/bamboo mat room.

When visiting the exhibition, we learn narrative was not only told on the medium of the scroll; visitors will see illustrations on screens, fans, cards, hanging banners, books, kimonos and porcelain as well. Some are showing one or two ideas as a story, and other pieces have multiple scenes and many utilize the stylized cloud formations to separate panels or sections of the stories that is present in Japanese art through the years. Take a look at some of the details of this show in the photos after the jump and see if it doesn't pique your interest!