WFMU's Beware of the Blog

William Bendix Sings and Tells Famous Pirate Stories / KUSF leaves the airwaves

Yes, that wicked ol' audio pirate and lovable movie and TV guy William Bendix was a terror of the high seas. Perhaps it's because I just watched him in 'Lifeboat' the other night that I pulled this out this week to play it, or something in the connection of sea salt and being snowed-in for days at a time lately that brought this on. In any case, it's a very enjoyable kid's record from 1959, which was sealed when I bought it and it was years before I even had the heart to open it up and play it.

From the liner notes: "Here's the man you know and love, William Bendix. You've seen him on television in 'The Life of Riley' and 'Overland Trail' as well as on many other programs.

Singing and telling you these wonderful pirate stories is easy for Mr. Bendix ... he knows them well and enjoys telling you about them.

Bill Bendix started as a bat boy for the New York Giants. Bill was born and raised on Third Avenue in New York City. Having finally decided he wasn't a baseball player, he went to work as a grocery store clerk on his beloved Third Avenue. When he became store-manager he married his childhood sweetheart. The store he was managing had to close, and that's when Bill became a singing waiter and finally an actor.

This long playing record was made both for yourself and his grandchild who is just your age."

Well, that's sweet. I didn't know that he and I shared the exact same life story. Uncanny. Anyhoo, the script is by Sid and Helen Frank, words and music: Sid Frank and Judy Stein, arranged and produced by Ralph Stein, "audio-mixologist": Gene Sayet, with the Cricketone Chorus and Orchestra and (an enormous amount of) sound effects by Myst-A-Rama!

Blackbeard     Captain Kidd     Jean La Fitte     Henry Morgan

 

LAST-MINUTE  RADIO STATION NEWS UPDATES DEPARTMENT:

Breaking news from San Francisco- KUSF, the only non-commercial radio station actually based in SF (there are several others still operating in the listening area, thank goodness) has been pulled off of the air, and converted to an online-only station. The University of San Francisco decided to sell off the far-left-of-the-dial airspace for a reported $3.7 million. Sad news to someone who has played and DJ'd there many times, not to mention listening in.

Insider Stephen Abbate says, "...Talk in some news reports about the alleged 'new improved online' KUSF having the same content and/or programming is misinformation and deception: the truth being we were completely shut down, no one at USF has a clue how or when the future digital station will be functional, and a shuffling ipod belonging to someone in the business office is what you hear on the internet stream now."

Details so far (as of Jan. 21st) are here, here, and here.

Vic Mizzy and "The Night Walker"

  Horror Movie Dept:  Today some excerpts from Mr. Vic Mizzy's first feature film score, snipped from the actual film and not from the soundtrack CD release. Directed by William Castle in 1964 and starring the always-terrific Barbara Stanwyck, with Robert Taylor and Lloyd Bochner, and a screenplay by Robert Bloch. Quite a lineup! Joe Gershenson, head of music at Universal Studios decided to use as much of Mizzy as they could for film work, on the basis of his fine work on this score. I'm still unclear on Mizzy's timeline as to whether he worked on this piece first or the Addams Family TV show theme, but they certainly would have been composed very near each other.

There's an interesting 'lightness' and 'goofiness' about the tone of this score for a 'serious' (as serious as William Castle could be anyway- this film isn't nearly as wacky as, say, 'The Tingler') horror picture; although it's rather an unfair assessment, as his work is well-known for its rather 'fanciful' air, being much less experimental or ponderous than many of his contemporaries. Mizzy was certainly known for his unique style and this piece shows it in spades. The picture also has many bizarre elements typical of Castle: peculiar dialogue and script, outrageous visuals, some over-the-top acting, and a good title sequence. Presented here are six selections from the soundtrack exhibiting some nice music cues, weird vocals, and sound effects.

  Beware of the 'Screaming Dream', though- Babs really ramps up the 'screaming in utter terror' in this flick and she generates waves of them; we hear Stanwyck rattle the rafters numerous times in here and she could sure let loose with them!  I hope you enjoy this fun collision of these unusual talents, from way back in 1964.

The MP3s:     Main Theme     'Your Dreams' intro sequence     Bab's First Dream     "I record everything"     Screaming Dream     Wedding Dream

Mel Blanc Anti-Drug PSA's / as himself and five WB characters

Despite heavy snow and internet problems, I'm here to bring on my little pile of Holiday Goodies for ya. Perhaps you caught some of my multi-part Celebrity Anti-Drug PSA series here at BOTB, well these last six entries are some of the crown jewels of my spoken-word files and I've been enjoying them a great deal ever since I taped the 'Get Off volume 2' radio-only lp at KZSC Santa Cruz in 1982.

Today's focus is on the legendary Mel Blanc and his fantastic and unforgettable anti-narcotics PSA's, as 'Mel Blanc' and five of his most famous Warner Brothers cartoon characters. As it's a holiday, we won't go into what a cranky fellow he allegedly was, and how so few of his collegues have much good to say of him, aside from acknowledging what a funny actor and how professional he was. Thrill to Porky at a smoky, scary drug party and being offered animal tranquilizers, Yosemite searching for tough guys not softened up by hard drugs to duel with, and so much more. I promised these last Christmas, and now I'm finally giving them up. Including a tiny bonus track from George Harrison, just because.

Rather than a blast of Holiday Audio, and I've certainly got That too, I thought that some files you can enjoy ALL year would be nice. Hope you like 'em. Happy Holidays!

Bugs Bunny      Daffy Duck      Foghorn Leghorn      Mel Blanc himself      Porky Pig      Yosemite Sam      and      George Harrison Drive Safely PSA 

 

 

Flo and Eddie by the Fireside / with Harry Nilsson / and also Eddie Lawrence

As the days turn rather crispy and cold here on the mountain, the title of the Phlorescent Leech and Eddie's radio show "By the Fireside" has an even more pleasant ring than ever.  I love experimental free-form radio shows from the 1970's and was tickled to recently find this two-hour gem, complete with many of the PSA's and bits of commercials intact at the lovely Harry Nilsson-centric page For the Love of Harry. I knew of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, alias Flo and Eddie mainly from my Frank Zappa-collecting days in the 1970's and from their work as two-fifths of The Turtles, but I hadn't realized what an extensive and varied singing career they had in the last 40 years, aside from their own records, vocally backing everyone from the likes of T Rex,  David Cassidy, and John Lennon, to Blondie, the Ramones, Bruce Springstein and the Psychedelic Furs among many others.

I love the DJing style they used on their shows- playing rarely more than the A and B part of a song, usually amounting to less than 50 seconds, before wildly segueing off into spoken word records (at the wrong speed) or more obscure and unpredictable musical fare; within the first 20 minutes of the show I was an immediate and huge fan of their style - I had thought that I was eclectic and bizarre in my playlist construction, but this was truly madcap and smart- very challenging for 1974!  All of this and a weekly guest-star, too. Which brings me to the reason I found this document at all- this episode's guest on this August afternoon in 1974 was Harry Nilsson, who had asked them to bring special records and singles to play while he was there. His album Pussycats, produced by John Lennon, was just about to come out and it turns out that Harry had a soft spot for comedian Eddie Lawrence, who it was good for me to find out more about, as I had only the vaguest idea of his work, and it turned out that his 'Old Philosopher' character had been parodied on the TV show Fractured Flickers, itself an obscure  production of Jay Ward studios in 1963 and 64. There was a recurring gag on the show that is totally ripped off from Lawrence, and it's nice to know what was really going on there. A REVISION FROM 2011: Just found- an interview with Mr. Lawrence by our own Kliph Nesteroff on his blog HERE.

  So, we hear Nilsson spin some rare goodies, including some singles that he wrote for others, and cassette tapes are even played live over microhones, presumably from hand-held players (I love alternative formats on the air); and the show gets more and more wild and sloppy as it goes on, but considering the partying nature of an LA radio station in 1974 I'm not surprised. Mark Volman comments more than once, when the din of everyone talking at once reaches a peak, that "you're not really hearing two stations at the same time- this is just how we do our show". To make the whole thing more bittersweet- at the end we hear that next week's guests were Becker and Fagan from Steely Dan, who the hosts promised would be revealed as just as funny and nutty as the usual gang. Ooof-- I want more episodes!    Enjoy this slice of radio history.

The Stanley Brothers

For me they are bigger than the individual camps of vernacular North American music such as bluegrass and country, more of a bridge to a more old time form of communication and song traveling, what they used to call 'folk' in the 1940's, before it became 'country'. Carter and Ralph Stanley always stuck with a clean, simple, not so testosterone-driven style as what became bluegrass, partly because they were less an intrumental band than a storytelling one. As I delve deeper and deeper into the past recorded history of 'country' music forms, their work seems more and more to be a perfect concoction of what A. P. Carter began to do when he streamlined and smoothed-out the bumpy and briar-y stuff of deep woods and mountain musics.

Not that I necessarily think that that is the 'correct' way forward for the bumpy and briar-y bits- I love the more old time songs that have unusual timings and idiosyncratic flow which might make them seem more distant or hard to play or get a modern head around. But something about the purity of Carter Stanley's songcrafting has attached itself rather deeply to me.

Since it was through some links on WFMU that I really began to dredge a huge, monolithic amount of old-time folk idioms from off of the internet, I wanted to put up a link today that brings this full circle again. I've always been a collector and scholar of vernacular American musics, and as we know, sometimes when you find a site online that presents a load of albums and 78's that cater directly to your whims, they can disappear overnight, leaving you wishing you'd heard that elusive rare vinyl that you hadn't downloaded and absorbed yet. Because so much of it is rarther obscure and seemingly 'not in copyright' this area of websites is really popping right now, with a lot of unusual and rare old albums and 78's (yay!) being put up at a rate faster than I can even hope to hear. This is all great- it helps my personal songwriting and performing tremendously to hear wild and different versions of 'familiar' songbook pieces (Wildwood Flower alone is available in a bizarre number of renditions, of course, many of them completely removed from the Carter Family's source inspiration), and amazing 'new' old pieces that move me a great deal keep turning up. As one who doesn't read music, being able to hear the records, along with my old songbook and hymnal studies helps me understand these a lot better.

So, today I want to pass along a newish site that is being moderated by some madman that puts up incredible amounts of stuff daily, some sort of cornpone country robot with an itchy clicking finger and way too many records! Seriously, if you dig this stuff, check it out here. Here are two mp3s recently culled from some rather rare old Stanley Brothers lps I found there; a rather perky rendition of a house favorite, Angel Band, and their 1960's version of Keep on the Sunny Side. Enjoy.

Angel Band              Keep on the Sunny Side

 

The Cannibal Song / and Other Cheery Things

As usual, this season brings on the urge to wallow in monster movies and suchlike media, and a bit of a dredge through the record pile to play those once-every-year-or-two discs that are mainly pulled on holidays. Not much I wanna say about these three giants today, we have Vincent Price reading an old Navaho legend, Boris Karloff with a story from 'Tales of the Frightened' volume two, as written by Michael Avallone and featuring the terrific electronic noise stylings of (uncredited) Tom Dissvelt, and last but by no means least, 'The Cannibal Song' from an old Disney arithmetic lp, as wonderfully performed by Thurl Ravenscroft and Cliff Edwards (gosh, he's another favorite of mine).  Enjoy.

  "I sat in my car, listening. I couldn't see the lighthouse or the light standing out in Lonesome Bay. I could only hear the Horn, the Horn, the Horn. It sounded like the monster calling.

  I sat there wishing there was something I could say."

-----Ray Bradbury, The Fog Horn

Boris Karloff / The Ladder               Vincent Price / The Lonely Grave              The Cannibal Song / Thurl Ravenscroft and Cliff Edwards (with Rica Moore)

 

The Song of the Mouth Organ / with Burgess Meredith

A bit of harp lore today, in honor of my taking up harmonici last year, and also just 'cuz love these Burgess Meredith albums, specifically 'Songs and Stories of the Gold Rush'; and the mouth organ cut from, I believe, a 'How the West Was Won' tie-in lp. Not the greatest of singers, that Meredith, but what a neat personailty, and how cute is he in this old still?!  So instead of my planned continued assault of Hallowe'en-y audio, a little break for buddy Burgess. Back in two weeks with something spooky, yessir.

No Night in Creed

The Ballad of Dan McGrew

The Song of the Mouth Organ

 

The Masque of the Red Death / with Basil Rathbone

"But Eeyore," said Pooh, "was it a Joke, or an Accident? I mean----"

  "I didn't stop to ask, Pooh. Even at the very bottom of the river I didn't stop to say to myself, 'Is this a Hearty Joke, or is it the Merest Accident?' I just floated to the surface, and said to myself, 'It's wet.' If you know what I mean."

Kicking off a month of scary bedtime stories, today we find Basil Rathbone bringing his usual focus and gusto to the entire Masque of the Red Death by that cheerfullest of authors, Edgar Allan Poe.

The Masque of the Red Death

Percy Bysshe Shelly vs. Vincent Price / pt 2 of 2

"Oh Wind / If Winter comes / Can Spring be far behind?" 

The nights are getting chilly here in the mountains and the wind a-whistlin' through the pines and them whip-poor-wills a callin' brings to mind these here two old pals of mine, and here we find them a-kickin' up a mighty good wind of poetry that blows hot and cold alike just the same. If this grabs ya, there are two other posts with more of this record here and in my Sept. 4th post.

Ode to the West Wind

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Vincent Price

  'If I die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have lived to be older than my father.'

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

While I'm out of town on a trip, here's a favorite lp with two yummy flavors that go great together: Vinnie and Percy. More of the same will follow two weeks from now.

My Soul is an Enchanted Boat

John Mark Byers / Scene-Stealer of 'Paradise Lost'

Ahhh, I liked him best as a villain. Even though he later changed his position on the West Memphis Three's guilt, it was his terrific maniacal rants as the (most dynamic) 'star' of Paradise Lost and Revelations that I used to DJ and sample lots many years ago. This unedited chunk (2:12) of prime Byers is a delicious piece of dialogue, and if it whets your appetite, and you haven't yet seen the documentary it's stolen from then this is your prompt to pick it up and give it a look (and its sequel).  "To me, this place as I stand, is like Hell on Earth."

Enjoy.

John Mark Byers in Paradise Lost

Pompous Sci-Fi Movie Intros

   Once upon a summer day, before humanity crawled awkwardly off of their dirt clod and into the spaceways, they dreamed of heroism and poetry and a state of grace somehow to be found out there beyond the envelope of earthly dreams. As they stumbled wildly on they sang a song to boast of their confidence, wisdom and sincerity in this terrifying endeavor.  Are we smaller or larger in relation to our desire to be one with the vast black spaces?

Before we touched the outer stars and planets, there were words and images of fearful and mysterious dreams to be entered into at our peril. Some offered words of hope but mainly they lied about the sky, which was yet to envelope us in a blanket of shame at our ignorance.

Today for your DJing pleasure, we present a few old outer-space motion picture introductions, of the sort that we heard again and again, blending into a mantra of our future 'command' of the outer vastnesses.

I hope you enjoy these snippets of innocent science scheming and dreaming.

The four MP3s:

The Angry Red Planet intro          Earth vs. the Flying Saucers intro            Forbidden Planet intro        Tobor the Great intro

Darryl C and Crash Crew live in 1984 / part two of two

 Time again to climb into the comfy bucket seat of our WFMU time machine and wrap your ears around some celestial sounds still echoing and bouncing about the cosmos. Today we'll be concluding the transmission from my last post,  which presented the first half of this swell gig. This recording comes to us courtesy of Rob Wortman and his handy tape recorder, thanks again.

Now lets re-join Darryl C and the fantastic Crash Crew:

Darryl C and Crash Crew live at the Stone, SF CA, May 25th, 1984

Darryl C and Crash Crew live in 1984 / part one of two

For a coupla years now I've been after my pal Rob Wortman to digitize his priceless cassette collection of self-recorded events and other oxide oddities. While out in Cali this past January I was able to paw over some of his archive and I insisted he help me find some of the very early Bay Area hip hop shows that he had told me about back when I began blogging for WFMU, and which had whet my appetite considerably.
   Today I'll start with part one of my favorite of the things I transferred: A very tasty Darryl C and the Crash Crew show at the Stone in San Francisco on May 25th, 1984. In order to keep the files at full quality, I decided to create a point in the middle to break the show into two portions, but there'll be a tiny overlap section at the top of the next part, two weeks from now.
  I had a ball listening to this gig, the show is so theatrical and elaborate; I think this document gives a nice idea of the flavor of a rap show in those earlier days. Not being an expert on Darryl C and Crash Crew I did run across a nice interview with a member of the Crew here. Without further ado, here's part one. Word.

Darryl C and Crash Crew live at The Stone SF CA May 25th, 1984 / part one of two

Walter Brennan Reading Mark Twain

"It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner."
-Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Alongside the sound of James Mason reading Edgar Allan Poe, I also particularly enjoy hearing Walter Brennan reading the works of Mark Twain. So, to get even with those noisy blue jays over these ever-longer spring days I bring you this story by Mark Twain as read by that actor possessed of the very large discography: Mr. Brennan.

Blue Jay Yarn

How the First Letter Was Written / read by boris Karloff

"Brothers shall fight and fell each other,
And sisters' sons shall kinship stain;
Hard is it on earth, with mighty whoredom;
Ax-time, sword-time, shields are sundered,
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;
Nor ever shall men each other spare."
   -the Poetic Edda

Celebrating the ongoing collapse and composting of language(s) here is a Just So Story from Rudyard Kipling, as read by Boris Karloff, who for years had a recording nook at his house with his mic and reel-to-reel all set up to roll, where he would fulfill the endless requests for his readings of all sorts of subjects. (I love to picture him being served tea with his typewritten scripts on their stand and Boris in his Bermuda shorts and glasses) Karloff did many lps of Kipling readings for Caedmon records from the 1950's onward.
Enjoys Kipling's fanciful take on the origins of the written word.
Word up.

How the First Letter Was Written

Audio Letter From Europe / Part Two

"...Nay, these were the most beautiful women of the world; the whole world, not just the world of today, but the world since time began and the world as long as time shall run.
  Nor were the wild animals on display at the circus any less sensational than were the girls. Not elephants or tigers of hyenas or monkeys or polar bears or hippopotami, anyone and everyone had seen such as these time after time. The sight of an African lion was as banal today as that of an airplane. But here were animals no man had ever seen before; beasts fierce beyond all dreams of ferocity; serpents cunning beyond all comprehension of guile; hybrids strange beyond all nightmare of fantasy."
Charles G. Finney / The Circus of Dr. Lao

"Wind, flag, mind moves,
The same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong."
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Well, those two California native ladies are still traveling abroad in 1983, and I'm back with the sequel to last week's posting -  side two of the 90 minute letter we were working on; a scatalogical, sarcastic, sexy and swinging romp across foreign shores.I believe they're still in their pensione in Greece with the British girls when we rejoin them...

Tape One Side Two / part one

Tape One Side Two / part two

Cassette Letters From Europe, 1983 / Part One

"In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream-
Lingering in the golden gleam-
Life, what is it but a dream?"
      Lewis Carroll / Through the Looking Glass

Picture two young California girls on holiday in Europe in 1983, recording and sending tapes full of their thoughts and experiences back home to their boyfriends, and also with an ear to the fact that said boys had wacky radio shows and intended to play the best bits on the air or cut them up as audio collage fodder. 
   Here we present side one of the first of two of these surviving tapes by these very clever and opinionated ladies. Sadly, the missing one had a lot of verite sound as they walked around London and commented saucily about what they saw, so now we'll pick the story up as they've moved south on their trip.
  By the way, these letters are quite randy, raunchy and filthy, so I'd rate this a NSFW audio experience.
  Since I'm presenting the unedited tapes, some of it will get a bit tedious, but there are some hilarious stories and bits of dialogue for those who can wade through the whole document.

Side one part one
Side one part two
Side one part three   

Burgess Meredith / Songs and Stories of the Gold Rush, pt 1

"Ladder of success contain splinters, but not realized until sliding down!"
-Confucius
The breakup of this long, hard winter brings thoughts of Robert Service, and that naturally leads me to one of my favorite lefty intellectual actors Burgess Meredith and this lovely lp from which today we'll drop a song and a story to warm your bones. 
The mp3s:
Miner's Ball
The Cremation of Sam McGee

Tom Glazer, As Played by Vic Flick

Some months back when I wrote about Vic Flick's little-known children's records recorded in London and released on Golden Records I mentioned an lp I was trying to track down on which he 'collaborated' with Tom Glazer, another in a long line of cool artists that Victor has been associated with. My friend 3,800 miles away who owns a copy laughed when I mentioned it a while back, "You had that record in house on loan and you hated it!" which may have dampened my enthusiasm for the search a bit.

Nevertheless, on a recent visit out to California I was able to rummage through his collection and among other gems I found the album in question: Golden Records LP 267, On Top of Spaghetti and Other Songs That Tickle Your Funnybone. Ahhh- here was a whole lp of Tom Glazer songs conducted and arranged in the manner of his Sesame Street lp that I love so much. My friend mentioned again upon seeing it that it was one of his very favorite records as a little kid and he had no doubt played the hell out of it. 

Having finally watched the recent film version of Casino Royale, the first (and excellent) James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, and enjoyed the very faithful re-recording (right down to a very Vic Flick-sounding lead guitar) of the John Barry/Monty Norman theme music (used under the end credits), Victor was on my mind and so I'll jump into this music this week. Glazer has a long and rich inventory of projects, and I've always been a particular fan of his science records with Dottie Evans, my gosh but I've DJ'd those things a lot in 25 years. My previous Vic Flick post, linked above, gives what background I have about these sessions, and I've since read that The Rita Williams Singers worked on these records as part of the 'Golden Orchestra and Chorus', which seems highly probable. I will also mention one of my favorite Tom Glazer credits, that of co-writing the songs and creating the score for the Elia Kazan film A Face in the Crowd, if for no other reason than to get more people to watch it, as it's a very fine film, and Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith throw off some serious sexual heat in it. Love that Patricia! 

Anyhoo- indeed, I didn't after all find the whole lp strong enough to place it all up here, but instead picked four tracks to represent it, and perhaps in the future I'll uncover more Vic Flick records in this series to tickle your earbuds; in the meantime, here's four mp3s from this fun album.

A Boy's Best Friend is His Mother      Great Green Gobs     Ain't it Great to be Kookie     From the Halls of Montezuma (to the Shores of PTA)