WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Scene; A Number of Names

The Scene was a television show aired in Detroit on WGPR, the first black-owned TV station in America. From 1975 to 1987 the show served as black culture's reinvention of the "dance show" format - and looking back on these amazing tapes now it hurts to understand why it remained a purely local phenomenon.

While white America was up to god knows what on American Bandstand aired Saturday mornings across America, The Scene was publicizing and helping give birth to Detroit Techno, a moment in American music that was so brililantly cross-pollinated, strange and compelling that it keeps presenting itself as safe material to bite on every like 4 years or so. (Lately it's more a matter of biting on Italians biting on Detroit who were of course biting upon ectomorphs in Germany but even that's working out pretty well.)

This clip from The Scene is choice. It features a track called Sharevari, a now-classic single by a group called A Number of Names. The song's title derives from an intentional misspelling of Charivari, a collective of young local promoters who were at the time making and flashing big bucks throwing parties in Detroit.

Can we bring back roller skates on the dance floor? Please? Here's the track; practice at home.

Revisionism Revisited (MP3s)

With the task of assembling a weekly radio show no longer a regular part of my life, my relationship with music has definitely shifted in some unexpected ways. I've been (happily) languishing in temporary-retirement mode from the WFMU airwaves since last summer, so instead of the constant off-air worries regarding which of a record's tracks could be used in a particular set of songs for the radio, I'm back to listening to albums in their entirety and digesting them as more singular works. Since signing off from my weekly airslot, I've enjoyed being able to listen more carefully through the zillions of sub- and counter- cultural artifacts I've acquired over the last twenty five years of adult life. I suspected there would be a lot of tracks I'd missed the first time around, and my suspicions seem to have been validated by the many great sounds I've blundered into lately. Most of them have been splendid reminders of why I ever sought reward in the realms of music and art in the first place, so for the purposes of supporting this rather ambitious claim, I'm including several MP3s at the end of this post.

First of all, I should warn everyone reading that I might have the crappiest record collection of any WFMU DJ in recent memory. And by "crappy", what I really mean is "most devoid of things that are very rare or cost me a lot of money." Perhaps shockingly, this is due more to my constant discarding of things I haven't listened to in a while than it is my arguably pedestrian musical tastes. As anyone who lives in a city will tell you, finding affordable apartments with enough room for an ample music collection isn't easy, and won't earn you any sympathy down at the Realtor's office or in the hinterlands of Craigslist. In my case, this ongoing dilemma resulted in the first of several materialist freakouts of my 30s in which I skimmed through thousands of records and applied the following criteria:

If-I-haven't-listened-to-it-or-played-it-on-the-radio-in-two-years-I'm-getting-rid-of-it.

Granted, this practice had been primed much earlier in my life. As a kid, I would routinely save money for new records, bring them home and tape them, and then return to the record store the next day to trade them in for still more new records. This was fairly common practice for people of my generation, and plenty of us still have boxes of rapidly decomposing cassettes in our closets right now to prove it. So before you get all bent out of shape and critical, let me assure you that I've regretted ever falling into this practice since my highly-coveted 7 Seconds / Prong cassette got eaten by the tape deck in my '81 VW Rabbit many years ago. Suffice it to say, malfunctioning equipment isn't the sole culprit in my long road towards a music collection that's almost completely devoid of nuance. Plenty of other good records that I did keep original copies of were lost along the way simply out of lapses in judgment, passing indifference, or during periods of financial duress. (The one and only time I resorted to selling records on eBay was to finance the purchase of a Hugo Boss suit for my wedding, and I would like to publicly thank Johnny Thunders, the 13th Floor Elevators, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the many other diamonds in the rough that I hawked on that particular occasion. I haven't looked back once, and the suit has repeatedly come in handy in ways that I'm pretty sure the first Pop Group LP never would have.)

Baltimore: "The Greatest City in America" (mp3s)

It's a city with 1000 slogans, but no defining song. Baltimore's bred and acted as a magnet for untraditional instrument builders, Wham City's Fort-Thunder-inspired transplants, and the Baltimore Club stylings of DJ Technics, Rod Lee and many more, as heard on television's The Wire.

What follows is an audio sampling of some of the many Baltimore artists who will be making their music available for free non-commercial use on WFMU's Free Music Archive. Afternoon Penis, The Agrarians, Arc and Sender, Dan Deacon, Double Dagger, Food for Animals, Fuzz Unlimited, Human Host, Lexie Mountain Boys, LO MOdA / Low Moda, Nautical Almanac, Newagehillbilly, Ponytail, Sejayno, Teeth Mountain, Jason Willett, and WZT Hearts. There are many more who we're hoping to get in touch with, and we welcome your ideas by email or comment.

Melt Banana does Monkey Man (MP3s)

Feeling sluggish? Need some energy? Then I got what you need, Melt-Banana covering Toots & The Maytals' 1969 ska classic "Monkey Man". Set the volume to 11 and put it on repeat. You'll feel better in no time.

Here is the MP3: Melt-Banana - Monkey Man

This appeared a few years ago on a split 7" with ska punk band Big D and the Kids Table on Fork in Hand Records. Good luck in finding the original vinyl...

How to Build and Design Microtonal and Electric Guitars (mp3s)

Uncle Woody Sullender checks in with this preview of his May 12th special, which airs Noon to 3pm:

Artist Paul Rubenstein has been teaching a class called "Building Music" at Franklin K. Lane and Wingate High Schools in Brooklyn.  Students learn to build their own guitars, from winding their own electric pickups to designing the guitar body to fretting the fingerboard (Paul has students utilizing a microtonal seven-tone equal temperament scale). After building the guitars, the class then creates original music with these instruments through amplifiers also of their own construction.   The students bring a sense of improvisational fun that would be expected from a class armed with homemade amplified electric instruments. 

Check out these MP3s to hear their music, vaguely reminiscent of early no wave:

Track 1 (Nick on square wave oscillator, Ayonde on guitar, Hector on electric saron, Rashid on claves, Vishal on guitar and Mr. R (Paul Rubenstein) on shaker)

Track 2 (Tyrone and Nick on the guitars they made, Ayonde on electric saron, Hector on claves, Angel on doumbek, Rashid on shaker and Mr. R (Paul Rubenstein)  on tambourine)

More tracks, photos, and videos are available on their website. This Monday, May 12th, some of Paul's students from Franklin K. Lane and Wingate High Schools will be showing off their amazing instruments on my show, noon-3pm on WFMU.

That Funky Tramp!

Continuing in a loosely defined series that has included explorations in the "Adults Only" party record genre spanning from Fax Records to the Laff label and the incomparable Rudy Ray Moore, we present a man who was a close friend of Dolemite (and had a role as a James Brown-esque nightclub singer in The Human Tornado - watch that here) named Jimmy Lynch. Lynch had some of the best cover art of any on the eccentric Laff Records roster in the nineteen seventies. This LP was released prior to his being signed to Laff, recorded in the nineteen sixties, and Lynch claims it is the first piece of vinyl to feature the word fuck. That last point is definitely disputable, but the undeniable intrigue that is this comedy record is not. Listen now to Jimmy Lynch - That Funky Tramp!

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.

WFMU's Myspace Band Buddies - vote for your favorites, FINAL ROUND!

Good morning people! 

This is it!  The last round of voting for your favorite randomly selected bands from WFMU's hefty list o' buddies at a certain social networking site of which you may have heard.  Thanks to everyone who's listened and voted so far.

Here's the deal, in case you missed earlier installments:  the band or bands who get the most "Pump it" votes each week will be forever exalted on my FIRST EVER MARATHON PREMIUM called "In MySpace, No One Can Hear You Scream" (you can still pledge to this year's marathon here). Last round's favorites were Satanicpornocultshop, Porest, Paid in Puke, For Esme, and Bonbomb! Congratulations, band buddies!! 

Who will be next? It's up to you!!!

It's Incredibly Depressing Being Green

He made news about this same time last year with an incendiary video for "Hurt", and this week the mad genius behind Sad Kermit dropped a new video, a cover of Elliot Smith's "Needle In The Hay", with a recreation of the Richie Tenenbaum suicide scene from The Royal Tenenbaums.

Here are some mp3s of Sad Kermit singing some other sad songs. See and hear more at SadKermit.com.

Creep (Radiohead)   Hallelujah (Leornard Cohen/Jeff Buckley)   Hurt (Nine Inch Nails/Johnny Cash)

Also on Beware of the Blog: Derek and Clive meet the Muppets - Is the most influential musician of all time Animal or Cookie Monster? - the Yip Yip Martians - Martin Scorcese's Sesame Streets - Welcome to the Muppet Show Fan Club - meet the real life Kermit (in voice anyway) - Jim Henson gets freaky
 

Unbelievable Believers: Christian Song Demos

A few weeks ago, the always reliable Music For Maniacs posted a few tracks of demos from hopeful Christian artists. After the "Safe Sex Is Just a Fantasy Rap" quickly shot up to the top of my current favorites list, I decided to delve a little further and so headed over to the site where they were originally found, Those Unbelievable Believers: The Blessed Sounds of Incredible Christian Song Demos.

Within this site lay a treasure trove of religious amateur recordings (or B.S. - blessed sounds), from earnest country croonings, to Eagles songs reinterpreted, to professors proclaiming their faith, to kiddie Jesus raps, to some absolutely completely insane ramblings. All of these were lovingly compiled with hilariously sacrilegious commentary by one "Doc" (aka Deuce of Clubs). As an example of what to expect, here is Doc's handy chart of gospel demo song structure:

A) Beginning
    B) Middle
    B) Some more middle
        C) Conclusion
A) And . . . back to the beginning
    B) Middle, middle, middle
    B) More middle until you almost can't believe it, then:
        C) Conclusion . . . or:
    B) More middle—it gets hard to tell
    B) Definitely more middle stuff here, finally shading to either
A) A New Beginning . . . or:
        C) [Missing conclusion].

Follow the jump for 22 tracks of Christian demo madness!

More Customusic! (MP3s)

1. Gigi (2:55)
2. One Night of Love (2:14)
3. Time Was (2:10)
4. Misty (2:42)
5. I'm In the Mood for Love (2:27)
6. It's Over, It's Over, It's Over (2:02)
7. Love Is Here to Stay (2:26)

By popular demand, another installment of Customusic for your background audio needs. These selections come from the "Atmospheres" portion of the sampler and are meant for use in better restaurants and boutiques. This is pure supper music, a bit slower and more relaxing than the entries from the Production side.

Lively song selection too. There's a song about a lost love, another song about a lost love, and a song about a one-night stand. Perfect accompaniment for an era when people met for dinner before checking in to the motel. At least it ends with the promise of true love.

Fine Records on Fine Records (MP3s)

As the moribund recording industry marginalizes itself into utter irrelevance, it warms the cockles to hark back to the heyday of the great independent labels across the country whose legendary bossmen cast their nets across all genres in search of hits. Syd Nathan in Cincinnati (King), Art Rupe in L.A. (Specialty), and Sam Phillips in Memphis (Sun), among others, were recording r&b, blues, country, gospel—whatever sounds they could reel into their studios that had a chance of making a buck or, better yet, catching a wave of national popularity. While these powerhouse labels were churning out legendary sides by the crateful, a number of smaller-time outfits in the boonies were following the same business plan, though with minimal chances of achieving more than just the occasional regional score.

One such enterprise that hummed along under the radar was Fine Records based in Rochester, New York, which produced spirited releases over the course of 30 years beginning in the late 1940s. The label was owned and operated by Vincent Giancursio, a dance-band saxophonist who began playing professionally in 1932 at the age of 12. After a frustrating 15-year run traveling the dead-end nightclub circuit in upstate New York, Vince Jan (his preferred music-biz moniker) decided that if he couldn't hit the big time making music, maybe he'd record someone else who could. After the War, Giancursio studied audio engineering for a year, then opened Fine Recording Studio. He started off cutting mostly custom recordings, but then began to release 45 rpm discs on his own label, which he did up until his death, at the age of 58, in 1977.

During his three decades in the record business, Giancursio supported the music passionately, producing over 3,500 sessions single-handedly, most resulting in limited pressings of rarely more than a thousand copies, though usually a lot less. The sessions he engineered were wide ranging and eclectic, mostly one-offs by an assortment of jazz bands, garage rock combos, Elvis wannabes and even a few country & western acts. In addition, for a fertile stretch in the '60s and '70s, Fine Records captured on tape a string of electrifying performances of soulful gospel as good as any from the era.

(25 righteous MP3s are posted after jump)

Country Tangos and Hillbilly Rhumbas (mp3s)

Not too long ago, we examined the bizarre but enjoyable world of the country mambo.  Today we shift gears only slightly and check out two other microscopically small sub-genres of the Nashville recording industry: the country tango and rhumba scenes. 

Well, mostly these were Nashville efforts.  The Lucky Stars represent an exception as their version of Tennesee Tango was recorded in California, if I'm not mistaken.  If you think the intersection of country music and Latin dance crazes represents an unlikely collision of cultures, you may wish to brace yourself for the knuckle-headed collection of country twist records we've got stashed away for a future post.

Pee Wee King  -  Tennessee Tango  (2:00)

York Brothers  -  Tennessee Tango  (2:41)

Sheb Wooley  -  Texas Tango  (2:11)

Pee Wee King  -  I Can't Tell A Waltz From A Tango  (2:11)

Sunshine Ruby  -  Too Young To Tango  (2:29)

Ernest Tubb & Red Foley  -  Too Old To Tango  (2:16)

Lucky Stars  -  Tennessee Tango  (3:00)

Hank Snow  -  The Rhumba Boogie  (2:48)

Mallie Ann & Slim  -  Hillbilly Rhumba  (1:50)

Rusty Draper  -  The Train With The Rhumba Beat  (2:19)

Jimmie Rodgers  -  The Rhumba Boogie  (2:20)

Trumpet Love, Part 2

A continuation of last week's post, here's Part 2 of a celebration of spit, brass and air: solo trumpet music.

One of my favorite new labels is Off, a spinoff of the Stilll label out of Belgium.  So far Off has given us several excellent genre-defying albums of top quality.  I liked the Don Shtone record, Beware of the Cat, a snappy groove-based jazz recontextualization, and am really digging the current WFMU New Bin denizen Colorlist.  Off also released a fabulous solo trumpet excursion from Toshinori Kondo, who may be best known for his work with the Die Like a Dog quartet featuring Peter Brotzmann, Hamid Drake and William Parker.  (Check out their scorching albums, Little Birds Have Fast Hearts 1 & 2)  Kondo is known for electrifying and treating his trumpet sounds with heavy delay, reverb and other effects reminiscent of Miles's electric experiments of the early '70s.  The songs on the album could almost be classic analog synth compositions from the Ohm box set, slowly building in ethereal atmosphere with a minimal and otherworldly vibe.   While some solo trumpet albums tend to seem like recorded practice sessions, Kondo's plays like an album in the classic sense.  And unlike some examples herein, you can actually tell he's playing a trumpet!  Toshinori Kondo - Clear Water (from Silent Melodies)

Speaking of WFMU's New Bin, we've seen two older Tom Djll albums appear there of late, both getting quite a bit of airplay.  Bellerophone sees Djll working with untreated trumpet and offering a clinic on what the instrument can do in the right hands, from staccato bursts, to moans and groans, to soft spatial passages.  Smudge is Djll's digital album, the trumpet being only the basis for an array of electronic/digital manipulations.  In both cases, however post-everything he may sound, I can't help but envision Djll as the latest in a line of trumpeters that starts with Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams and includes the Art Ensemble's Lester Bowie.  His version of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime", not totally indicative of what the rest of the album is like, reminds me of Lester's take on "Hello Dolly" and it's a fine example of Tom Djll the trumpet player.  Tom Djll - Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (from Bellerophone)

Fake Beatles No. 9: The Kaisers vs. Wilhelm Wimbledom

Of all the Fake Beatles to come down the pike in recent years, one of the most remarkable was the Kaisers. From 1993 to 2002, this Edinburgh quartet released five studio and one live LP of the purest beat-group sounds this side of Hamburg's Star-Club. Clad in skintight trousers and sporting mile-high quiffs, they were essentially the Fab Four before that group started combing their hair over their foreheads in emulation of German art students.

The band applied its verisimilitude to the 1962-63 aesthetic not just to appearance but to song selection -- a mixture of note-perfect originals and the prevailing R&B cover tunes (recorded in glorious mono) that were in the repertoire of every beat combo of the era, from the Big Three to the Swingin' Blue Jeans. The Kaisers' exactitude also extended to the painstakingly created artwork: from the type style to the period-evoking black-and-white photos -- and especially to the liner notes, the main focus of this post.

Those of you who are fans of rock 'n' roll of the British early-to-mid-'60s variety may be familiar with the condescending sleeve notes on the back of those LPs. Seemingly written under duress by some put-upon NME or Melody Maker scribe who makes no bones about the fact that he would much rather be listening to George Shearing than the caterwauling claptrap before him, the term "faint praise" would be too generous. There's something very stiff-upper-lip about carrying a negative review on your band's own album that is utterly charming in this hagiographic age.

As stated earlier, the Kaisers were sticklers, and that's where the esteemed critic Wilhelm Wimbledon enters the picture, for he is the personage trusted to explain the group to the record-buying public. Take the concluding passage from the boys' debut long-player, Squarehead Stomp: "What more can I say about this disc? If unintelligible shouting over a cretinous off-key back beat apparently recorded in five minutes with the minimum of rehearsal is your 'scene,' I dare say this record will be a treasured addition to your popular music collection."

Here are some choice lines from the back of the Kaisers' second album, In Step With the Kaisers: "[I]t was back to work for the tight trousered quartet as they threw themselves blindly into another melody free rhythm and blues workout." Wimbledon's notes reach a particularly frustrated tone on the third LP, Beat It Up!: "I suppose you'd like to read some teen rave type comment on the 'music' lurking within this typically garish sleeve, but it seems that space is at a premium due to the somewhat overlarge photographc study of your favorite foursome below."

The poor fellow clearly must have been driven beat-mad by the time of the Kaisers' fourth album, Wishing Street, as a new, more sympathetic liner-note writer, one Joseph Budge, offers up an almost positive statement: "[It] features a clutch of brand new numbers...recorded with an unprecedented clarity of sound that facilitates almost complete audibility of both words and music." Not standing for such mollycoddling of rich, pampered pop stars like the Kaisers, Wimbledon gives that softie Budge the sack and reclaims his position behind the Underwood for the band's fifth release, Shake Me! After expending a paragraph or four comparing them unfavorably to Elvis and Cliff, he terms the group lazy and spoiled by success, finally getting around to summing up the entire 14-song album with these words: "They call this the 'new sound.' I thought someone had stepped on the cat's tail for a moment." Reminder: All these words appear on the Kaisers various albums and singles.

You can keep your Lester Bangs and his so-called iconoclastic ilk. True gonzo rock journalism begins and ends with Wilhelm Wimbledon!

Mach Schau: A Kaisers Bouquet (all songs MP3)

Hipshake Shimmy Kitten (an uptempo shaker from Squarehead Stomp)

Like I Do (a tender ballad from Beat It Up!)

Time to Go (a harmonica-propelled rocker from Wishing Street)

No Other Guy (any title similarity between this Shake Me! song and the beat-group standard "Some Other Guy" is surely happenstance)

What You Gonna Say (the lower-fi 45 version)

Shake and Scream (this live version of the Kenny Lynch tune is Fake Beatles twice removed)

Cry for a Shadow (this B-side is technically not Fake Beatles, as this is originally a Real Beatles song, but it qualifies, being Real Beatles doing Fake Shadows)

Vinyl Finds: Merzbow - Dradomel LP 1992 (Hannover Interruption)

Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) is one of my heroes.  Not only is he one of the innovators of noise-as-music, with an incredible range of stylistic applications in his repertoire, he also shames most creative artists in terms of sheer productivity.  The amount of Merzbow/Masami Akita solo releases and collaborations on LP, 7" vinyl, cassette tape and CD is absolutely staggering, approximately 400 since 1980; that's an average of 14 releases per year, making him something like the Fassbinder of Noise.  The thing about his catalog, at least from this fan's perspective, is that so much of it is really very good, the constant experimentation and variation of his approach, and the collaborations with other artists bearing proof of an extremely bountiful creative spirit. 

This LP, apparently titled Hannover Interruption (at least according to Wikipedia and Discogs, though no such information appears anywhere on the package, not in English characters anyway) was a joint release of Dom Elchklang and the short-lived Dragnet Records label.  Almost everything both labels have touched is pure gold to me, and Dradomel in particular also released one of my all-time favorite LPs, Rowenta/Khan's Tiefpunkte Moderner Tonkompositionen (also 1992, now on CD.)

This album finds Merzbow in full-on, harsh-noise mode, at least at first listen.  The more one becomes acclimated to the sound, the more layers of activity emerge:  electric groans and roars, bird-call-like feedback, moog sirens, percussive analog static, thousands of pots and pans falling down a hill, even the occasional vocal.  It's this artful layering of sound (among other things) that separates Merzbow from some jag-off that just turns on a noise generator and walks away.  To my knowledge, these recordings are not included in the massive 50-CD Merzbox (Extreme, 2000) though the Merzbox does include a disc called Hannover Cloud dated 1990.

Merzbow continues his prolific tide, with some notable recent releases being Electric Dress (with Carlos Giffoni and Jim O'Rourke), Merzbuddha, and Merzbear (the latter two being part of his mostly animal-devoted Merz series on the Important label.)  In the past several years, Masami has also become an activist for animal rights, including the PETA url alongside his own merzbow.net on CD sleeves.  (Just imagining the Noise-God rubbing shoulders at a charity event with Pamela Anderson gives me a big fat grin for uncountable reasons.)

Side A Untitled
Side B Untitled

Next time:  My Merzbow singles!

The Phi Mu Washboard Band - "...Just Because"

When I originally supplied The Phi Mu Washboard Band's rendition of "Love Hurts" to the original 365 Days Project in 2003, there were several requests for the rest of the album. I didn't have the resources or ability to provide that sort of thing at the time, and eventually forgot about it.

But out of the blue last month came an e-mail request for the entire album, and this seems like the perfect venue for it. A few notes about the album, which I bought at the very last Mammoth Music Mart, which used to be an annual event in Skokie, Illinois, to raise money for ALS research, can be found at the original 365 days post.

Many of the songs are quite brief - some under one minute - and the entire album, which is a 12 incher, is over in barely 24 minutes. I have supplied the titles just as they appear on the jacket and the label, even though at least a few of them are incorrect (for example, track 14, listed as "I Can Smile" is actually a 1960 pop hit called "Happy Go Lucky Me", originally sung by Paul Evans).

And so, by special request, "...Just Because", by The Phi Mu Washboard Band:

Bob Purse

1.) Just Because (MP3)

2.) Love Hurts (MP3)

3.) Side By Side (MP3)

4.) Seven Daffodils (MP3)

5.) Whale of a Tale (MP3)

6.) Saints (MP3)

7.) Chilly Winds (MP3)

8.) Mamma Don't Allow (MP3)

9.) This Land (MP3)

10.) Take Me Back (MP3)

11.) You Are My Sunshine (MP3)

12.) Wanderer (MP3)

13.) Chinatown (MP3)

14.) I Can Smile (MP3)

15.) Today (MP3)

16.) Phi Mu Suwannee (MP3)

Front Cover (JPG)

Back Cover (JPG)

Music to be a Rat Soup Eatin' Honky Ass Motherfucker by...

Not much to say here really, other than I've posted two typically funky, offensive, crazy and profane Rudy Ray Moore comedy albums from his Dolemite/Human Tornado heyday. Listen to all of The Cockpit here and the entire Sweet Peter Jeeter here.

Economus Stimulis

What are you guys doing with your extra check from Uncle Sam?  I will be spending a frivolous night in The Shagadellic (Room #1) <<<--- at the Roxbury Hotel "nestled amongst the picturesque Catskill Mountains in the historic village of Roxbury".  I'm a sucker for a good theme motel. 

Here's Ol' Dirty Bastard to tell you all about it.

Money (mp3)

The Death Of Little Kathy Fiscus (and Walter Patrick Ireland) - MP3

Retired Pasadena firefighter Walter Patrick Ireland, aged 94, died earlier this week after a short illness.  In 1949, Ireland was involved in the two-day effort to rescue 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus from an abandoned well in San Marino, California.  Kathy had been playing in an open field with friends when she disappeared underground after falling into the 14" opening of the uncapped well.  Kathy was already dead by the time she was pulled up from a depth of nearly 100-feet.  Accounts differ as to who pulled her up.  The Pasadena Star-News article linked above credits Ireland, while the TIME magazine article (also linked above) indicates that it was firefighter Bill Yancey.  In any case, Ireland joined the Pasadena Fire Department in 1940 and retired as a captain after 34 years of service.

For 27 hours, Los Angeles TV station KTLA pre-empted its regularly-scheduled programming to broadcast live news coverage of the event to its viewers, instantaneously bringing them each new wrinkle in the horrifying story.  Media historians generally agree that KTLA's coverage of the event set the standard for the kind of live on-the-scene reporting that we still see today.

Within weeks, Kentucky singer Jimmie Osborne had recorded The Death Of Little Kathy Fiscus for the King label, which became a top ten hit.  In 1964, Starday released the Howard Vokes version of the song, which can be heard below.

Howard Vokes  -  The Death Of Little Kathy Fiscus  (2:26)

Trumpet Love, Part 1

In the last ten years or so the trumpet has been enjoying a renaissance.  There are a number of gifted and innovative trumpet players the world over deconstructing, reinventing and rethinking the instrument in myriad ways.  In the '80s when John Zorn was doing mouthpiece-only duck calls and blowing his sax into a bucket of water, the trumpeters were still playing somewhat straight.  I suppose it was only a matter of time.  What follows is a sample of the breadth of solo trumpet sounds percolating away.  (And if you're interested in delving even further, the astonishingly knowledgeable community over at Bagatellen has accumulated a lot more info such as this.)

First up, Mazen Kerbaj, everyone's favorite Lebanese avant garde/improv trumpet-playing cartoonist.  Aside from doing his very cool blog, Mazen is active in improv in his native Lebanon where he runs the Al Maslakh label, as well as in Europe where he often plays with avant-jazz and improv luminaries.  You may remember his duet with the Israeli army a few summers ago, when he played along with the bombs dropping around his home (Brian Turner's Trumpet vs. Bomb Beware of the Blog post here).  His solo record, Brt Vrt Zrt Krt, is worth checking out as it has a more rhythmic sensibility than many others we'll hear.  And, yes, the title is onomatopoeic. Mazen Kerbaj - Tagadagadaga (from Brt Vrt Zrt Krt) 

Greg Kelley is active in the noise scene both alone and with Bhob Rainey as the inimitable duo Nmperign.  He is a veteran of several No Fun Fests and has done "jazz" records with Flaherty/Corsano as part of Cold Bleak Heat.  While many of the artists profiled herein tend to have a disdain for the traditional, Greg Kelley may be my favorite of the bunch due to his punk aesthetic and general fuck-you attitude when it comes to genre.  Ostensibly borne from jazz, Greg's playing is nothing if not singular.  I am especially enamored of a little record he put out called, If I Never Meet You in This Life, Let Me Feel the Lack on Rossbin, as well as his duo with Alex Nielsen from a few years back on the always messed up Ultra Eczema label, entitled Graveside Doles.  He's put out a ton of stuff worth exploring.  This track comes from a statement-of-purpose record simply called Trumpet.  Greg Kelley - (02.30) (from Trumpet)

Ben Franklin Airbath: Philadelphia FMA sampler (mp3s)

Philadelphia's got a lot to be proud of. According to Philly Boy Roy, well there's hoagies, Rocky, Frank's Soda, them Eagles, Dead Milkmen, them Hooters, and laser GG Allin. With Mr. Ziegler's endorsements duly noted, what follows is a sampling - by no means comprehensive - of some of the other Philadelphia artists you'll be able to hear on WFMU's Free Music Archive.

Mp3s from Bad News Bats, Boogie Witch, Clockcleaner, Fursaxa, King Kong Ding Dong, Mincemeat or Tenspeed, Mountain High, The Original Sins, Phil Moore Browne, Sonic Liberation Front, The Strapping Fieldhands and Kurt Vile after the jump. Feel free to suggest more by email or in the comments.

Yodel! (MP3s)

[ There are 18 MP3s in this post. All but one feature gratuitous yodeling. Some even include bird impersonations. Don't say you weren't warned. ]

Applied chaos theory in the information age? Whatever you want to call it, it happens to me quite frequently. Stuff somehow makes its way onto my hard drive, and I have no clue where it came from. So I had this MP3 compilation called "Yodel!" lying around for a while, and the title and artist information all seemed very suspicious. (Like a song called "oooooooooo" by "That DUDE" or such.) It doesn't seem to be ripped from one of the countless commercially available yodeling compilations, which makes it a bit harder (at least for me) to figure out what these songs are actually called and who performed them. I was not 100% successful, but I am confident that you can help me fill in the blanks. In exchange you get lots of free yodeling. Here it is, with all the (hopefully correct) info I could gather:

01 Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) - Alpine Milkman
02 Cackle Sisters - Arizona Yodeler
03 Cackle Sisters - I Left Her Standing There
04 Cackle Sisters - Go To Sleep My Darling Baby
05 Unknown - Yoodling (?)
06 Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) - Swiss Moonlight Lullaby
07 Sons of the Pioneers - Devil's Great Grandson
08 The Louvin Brothers - Satan is Real
09 J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers - Yodeling Mountaineer
10 Tex Williams - Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)
11 Unknown - The Drunkard's Hell
12 Unknown - Springtime in the Rockies
13 Eddy Arnold - Cattle Call
14 Patsy Montana - I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart
15 Unknown - Unknown
16 Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) - When The Ice Worms Nest Again
17 Tex Williams - Never Trust A Woman
18 Erika Eigen - I Wanna Marry A Lighthouse Keeper (Honestly, I have no clue why this was included, but I didn't want to destroy the artistic integrity of the original compilation...)

Standouts are definitely the three songs by the Cackle (DeZurik) Sisters. You can get much more music by them at the 365 Days Project. And please, if you know any of the missing artists/titles, leave a comment.

Fxxk The Humans!

This week, animator/comic genius Brad Neely dropped a new short musical animated piece. I wrote a bit about Neely in a previous post, and he is popping up on screen as one of the subjects of the new film We Are Wizards, which examines the subculture around the Harry Potter books (the film played at the NY Underground Film Festival earlier this month, as is in the Independent Film Festival of Boston this weekend).

His new cartoon is musical ditty in which "all of the woodland elves, satyrs and hobgoblins are finally coming together for a ragtime protest ditty against us Homo sapiens." They have a rather impressive list of all the things we get wrong.

Dirty, crude, juvenile, and completely reprehensible. And catchy as hell...

NSFW video after the jump.

WFMU's Myspace Band Friends, Vote for yer faves, Round 7!!!

Good morning people! Got some more music goodies this week for you to vote yay or nay to, courtesy of WFMU's hefty list o' buddies at a certain social networking site of which you may have heard. We've got Japanese collagists recycling Missy Eliot, The Ramones recycled by Christians, North American musicians named after recycled French Existentialism 101 exam terms, a track from the guy who put together the Sublime Frequencies "Choubi Choubi" compilation of folk and pop from Iraq, a song named after the capital of Iran, a New Jersey collagist named after a line from one of the greatest teen comedies ever, an atmospheric piece from Germany, and a straight out rocker, just for good measure. Consider it the Earth Day Special... or not....!!!

The band or bands who get the most "Pump it" votes each week will be forever exalted on my FIRST EVER MARATHON PREMIUM called "In MySpace, No One Can Hear You Scream" (you can still pledge to this year's marathon here). Last round's favorites were The Bran Flakes, Slasher Risk, and The Little League! Congratulations, band buddies!!

Who will be next? It's up to you!!!