WFMU's Beware of the Blog

T-shirt & T-shirt & T-shirt & T-shirt.

Experimental Jetset, the designers of your basic band T-shirt, have a lovely little illustrated essay on their Website that shows not only the places where their shirts have been seen, but also some of the many knock-off designs that have shown up (I'm partial to the Spanish version).

Captain Midnight evades the FCC in low-speed chase (video)

Okay, so there was this movie called On the Air Live with Captain Midnight. Maybe you remember it. It was played a lot in the early 1980s on USA's "Night Flight" weekend program. The basic plot: high school dropout starts a pirate radio station in his van, evades "Uncle Charlie" (the FCC). That's pretty much all you need to know. It's not exactly Dostoevsky here.

So in the middle of the movie there's this really weird scene where the pirate radio guy is lying to his parents about his having a legitimate job at a real radio station. And to call his bluff, his mom asks him to play her a song the next time he's on the air. Meanwhile, an FCC agent (played with some really weird line-readings by the late great John Ireland) is roaming around town, trying to locate his transmitter to shut him down.

This leads to the following scene, where Captain Midnight is driving really slowly around a parking lot, with the FCC on his tail. (Naturally, they bugged Uncle Charlie's car, so they know exactly where he is at all times.) So here you've got a pirate radio station guy playing some easy listening music for his mom, while they're being slowly chased by the FCC, and all of this causes the pirate station's engineer to have what can only be described as a huge spazz fit. (For maximum effect, please watch this video late at night.)

The Human Tornado!!! (video + MP3)

"The Human Tornado" radio commercial (964 Kb MP3)

You can't have too much celebration of the late great Rudy Ray Moore, so here's a strange fight sequence from the 1976 film The Human Tornado and a radio commercial for same ("jumped, thumped, bumped, AND mugwumped!").

Brian Dewan campaign songs (video)

To get you in the mood for the remaining weeks of campaigning, why not take a listen to Brian Dewan's renditions of historical campaign songs, currently available on YouTube. There's "A Yankee Doodle Dandy" (the uncensored version!), "Buckle Down With Nixon", "Charlie and the MTA" (written for Walter A. O'Brien's run for mayor of Boston in 1949), "Vote for Newman" (Alfred E., that is), and one that should be familiar to WFMU listeners: "Jimmy Carter Says Yes".

One degree of separation between Baccara and Heino (video)

Exhibit A: "The Devil Sent You To Laredo" by Baccara.
Exhibit B: "Beim Alten Bill in Oklahoma" by Heino.

More Baccara here, more cheesy Euro disco here. No more Heino for you.

Sleevefood is the new Sleeveface

 

Jacket Lunch Box is the home of an ongoing attempt to reproduce album covers in different kinds of foodstuffs. It's all in Japanese, so you're on your own for ingredients and descriptions. (link found at BoingBoing)

See also: 20 Album Covers Recreated in Lego, from this month's BOHA.

Shane McGowan laughs like Ernie from Sesame Street (video)

See also: the infamous Mark E. Smith mouth maneuver.

WFMU: endorsed by El Vez

   

Hey, I just happened to be at the El Vez show last week, so I got a WFMU endorsement by the #1 Mexican Elvis impersonator. And also got a very patriotic WFMU T-shirt picture, to boot. Mr. Vez is finishing up his "El Vez For Prez 2008" tour in the next couple of weeks, and it's a real treat; you get the usual El Vez repertoire ("Blue Suede Shoes" recast as "Huaraches Azules", "Suspicious Minds" rewritten as "Immigration Time"), as well as some interesting new tunes (Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" rewritten with "Mr. Bush" replacing "Mr. Jones"; The Velvet Underground's "Run Run Run" written from the viewpoint of the current Democratic and Republican candidates). The musical references and re-worked tunes come flying faster than the samples at a Girl Talk concert, and the choreography is much better. Check the El Vez Website for tour dates.

Creepy Baby Face Tiles

Just in case you want your house to look like a portal to the Underworld, Sue Kniffin Davidson has you covered. Baby face tiles and baby head planters are available for purchase at the artist's Etsy store.

Return to Cassette Heaven

Since we last checked in on the cassette tape archival Website Project C-90, they've continued to update their catalog and add features to their site, including discussion of the tapes in Russian and English and organization of the tapes by format (cassette, mini cassette, micro cassette). Definitely worth a second look! (tip from Create Digital Music)

The Films of Richard Massingham (video)

In 2003, there was an exceptional touring program of short films that made its way across North American theaters. How To Be Eccentric: The Films of Richard Massingham was a program of short films made between the 1930s and the 1950s by Richard Massingham, a man who trained for a medical career but ended up making a better name for himself from his part-time hobby of amateur film-making.

His short films, on such subjects as the dangers of spreading germs and posting your Christmas parcels early, are surprisingly entertaining, even after 50+ years. Most of them starred Massingham himself, who usually played a not-so-bright character who had to be taught the benefits of such modern manners as sneezing into one's handkerchief.

The Massingham film collection was supposed to be released on DVD, but after 5 years we've yet to see it show up. Thankfully those 5 years have also seen vast improvements in online video-watching, and we can now see a sampling of Massingham's work online.

Here's a listing of Massingham videos on YouTube:

Pedestrian Crossing -- how to cross the street safely
Coughs and Sneezes -- how to use your handkerchief
Jet Propelled Germs -- how to not spread germs
A Warning to Travellers -- don't take too much currency out of the country!
Watch Your Meters -- a reminder to conserve energy

Enjoy this short retrospective of Massingham's work. Here's hoping that DVD release shows up sometime soon...

U S Air Force Radio Spots (MP3s)

"Take A Stand (60 sec)" - 1.18 Mb MP3
"Planes (30 sec)" - 618 Kb MP3

"I'm only a woman ... so what do *I* know about planes?" The US Air Force has the answer to that question in these old radio spots (previously featured on Gender Bias). I won't spoil the answer for you, but let's just say that the woman's boyfriend is in the Air Force.

And so you guys don't feel left out, here's a lively little radio spot just for you:

"Hey Mister (30 sec)" - 642 Kb MP3

Shreds! (MP3)

You've probably seen the YouTube videos of famous guitarists playing some meandering guitar licks. These "shred" videos (created by one St.Sanders and removed by YouTube in February, although Wired has nicely collected the videos at this page) have now inspired Shreds Volume 1, a collection of shredding instruments from kazoos to vacuum cleaners. The whole album is available at archive.org, and features at least one killer track: the opening song "Betcha Don't Know Where My Mommy Shops" (2.9 MB MP3) by WFMU favorites The Bran Flakes. The record company that put together the compilation, Happy Puppy Records, is soliciting submissions for volume 2, so all you shredders out there, start shredding!

Three-Way Phone Call from God (MP3)

Jerry Jordan -- Phone Call From God (13 MB mp3)
Ray Reeves -- A Phone Call From God (14 MB mp3)

God works in mysterious ways, and here's a pair of MP3s showing one of his strangest: a Christian comedy routine about an average Joe getting a phone call from The Man Upstairs. Although the concept sounds like it might be a Christian version of Bob Newhart stand-up, it's not exactly chock full of yuks (the high point is when the feller recalls what he said when he got his thumb caught in the linen closet, a joke which the canned laughter finds extremely amusing).

What struck me most about these two versions of the same routine is that they're almost exactly the same. The pacing is slightly different between the two, but Jerry Jordan and Ray Reeves deliver EXACTLY the same monologue, as if they're reading from the same script. To prove my point, here's a stereo mix of the two versions (13 MB mp3), with the recordings pretty much synced up throughout. It's sort of like a Christian version of Claude and Clyde, the McBeeBee twins from old Bob & Ray shows (if you remember them, and being WFMU listeners there's a good chance that you do).

Rambling Syd Rumpo (MP3)

Five bucolic yet lugubrious MP3s after the jump.....

On this week's episode of Le Show, Harry Shearer paid tribute to recently deceased radio personality Brian Clewer, who hosted the radio program "Cynic's Choice" on LA-area radio for more than 40 years. Clewer's program featured lots of British comedy, and Shearer played a few examples on his program from Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and Flanders and Swann. This got me thinking about the British comedy I was listening to when I was in grad school ages ago, when the local public radio station used to air the amazing "Round The Horne", a BBC radio comedy program that made its name in the mid-to-late 1960s by pushing the limits of the British double entendre.

For the musical portion of the comedy, they relied on the amazing Kenneth Williams and his rustic folksinger character Rambling Syd Rumpo. The joke was that Syd was supposedly singing old English folk tunes with long-forgotten archaic words, but the lyrics (written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman) were an equal combination of sly innuendo and hilarious nonsense. It's better to demonstrate rather than try to explain, so in honor of Clewer's passing here are a small selection of Rambling Syd Rumpo songs that are sure to gladden your earholes and tug at your artefacts.

Bits & Pieces remixes the Web

One of the first sites I ever found that did interesting audio collage work was bits & pieces, a project put together way back in 1999 (and still going strong) by one peter m traub as part of his studies at Dartmouth. The bits & pieces site consists of programs that automatically trawl the Web for audio files and throw together randomized mixes of those sounds based on a few general remixing templates. You're not gonna get a Jason Forrest album*, but if you have a listen long enough you will hear some fascinating remixes, somewhat reminiscent of number shortwave radio stations. I fondly recall hearing one mix long ago that juxtaposed the Scooby Doo theme song with Charlton Heston's line from Planet of the Apes: "Get your filthy paws off me, you damn dirty apes!"

* Well, not unless someone wants to make bits & pieces v2.0.

Future Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia musician? (video)

Just in case you need a drummer next year, I suggest this guy:

Betty Hutton belts out "Old Man Mose" (video)

Oh, we missed the anniversary of Betty Hutton's death earlier in the month (March 11). To add to Irwin's list of Betty Hutton videos from last year, here's one of Betty's greatest musical triumphs: "Old Man Mose". See Betty smack herself in the face, threaten the orchestra, and get pushed to the floor several times. In 1939 this was good clean family entertainment!

The return of Leoncie (video)

When last we checked in with Icelandic songstress Leoncie, she had a few albums out and a killer Website plugging her music. Well, the site's gone now, but a couple months ago she discovered the wonder of YouTube, so now we've got a load of Leoncie music videos to check out.

It's hard to pick a favorite, but I'm partial to "Killer in the Park", a terrifying story of a stalker in the park where Leoncie goes jogging. Fortunately Scotland Yard is on the case (apparently they hold jurisdiction over murder investigations in Icelandic jogging parks), and the guy is busted. All this while Leoncie sings a jaunty little song!

As one of the posters on the YouTube page of this video says, Leoncie "really captures the upbeat, happy-go-lucky lifestyle of a serial killer."

Another Canadian for Americans (MP3)

In Ken's 1991 comp The Happy Listener's Guide to Mind Control he included a rousing defense of Americans by Canadian Byron MacGregor. Recently I found another recording of the same dang essay by similarly pro-America Canuck Robert Marshall.

Robert Marshall - Americans (4.11 MB MP3)

Although MacGregor is now most closely identified with the essay (at least among WFMU listeners), neither his nor Marshall's recordings were the original version. As the Urban Legends Website documents, "Americans" was originally written and broadcast by Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair. Fortunately the History of Canadian Broadcasting Website has preserved the text of the original essay, along with Sinclair's 1973 broadcast of same. So now we have three versions of "Americans." Who'll be the next Canadian to record it? William Shatner? Sandra Oh? The cast of For Better or For Worse? I can't wait....