WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Codpaste with People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz download time! (mp3)

This just in from Vicki Bennett, the people in People Like Us:

Our "Codpaste" podcast series is now drawing to an end, and as a celebration this we're following what is almost a tradition for Vicki and Ergo - to put the Finale show, a 96 minute MEGAMIX of the Best of Codpaste, as a download on the WFMU blog!  Do not play while operating machinery or trying to count.

Codpaste Megamix (MP3)

If you enjoy this great slab of joy, maybe you'd like to listen to the other shows, which are archived below.

Episode 1 - Cartoon Music: Archive / Playlist Page
Vicki and Ergo ride their little bicycles with square wheels and honky hooters and tell you about their love of this funny music. Features, amongst others, the music of Carl Stalling, Roger Roger and BBC Radiophonic Workshop, all collaged with conversation and ridiculously pointless repetitions.

Episode 2 - The Chase: Archive / Playlist Page
Ergo and Vicki show you how fast they can juggle without dropping everything, or at least make very fast music. They play you some of their very favourite speedy rhythms, generally all at the same time, then when it's finished they start it all over again. Features amongst others, different versions of William Tell Overture and Hungarian Rhapsody, and also the misc of Spike Jones, The Comedian Harmonists and Offenbach.

Episode 3 - Hooked On Classics: Archive / Playlist Page
In which Vicki and Ergo revisit the 1970's phenomenon of Hooked On Classics, classical cover versions as well as all things light, orchestral and popular. Features a medley of the best of this fine mulch of classical music with a disco beat, as well as some tangential visits to the world of amateur orchestras. Features Portsmouth Sinfonia, The Swingle Singers, John Oswald and Wendy Carlos, amongst others.

DJ/Rupture now has a podcast!

WFMU is pleased to have added a new podcast to our ever-expanding roster: we're now podcasting DJ/Rupture's weekly show, Mudd Up!

Head over to our podcast page to sign yourself up for a weekly dose of Cumbia, Dubstep, Maghrebi, sound collage, expert turntablism, and a smattering of fun guest DJs.

For a quick fix, open up iTunes, go to the Advanced menu, and select Subscribe to Podcast. Paste in this URL and hit OK:
http://wfmu.org/podcast/DR.xml

Be sure to also check out DJ/Rupture's blog, record label Soot, and his latest collaborations with Andy Moor (of The Ex).

Bowed Radio

If about a zillion hours of WFMU podcasts aren't enough to keep your gigs filled, check out Bowed Radio. Ohioan Mark Allender's sometimes weekly, 45-minute podcast is dedicated to stringed instruments of the bowed variety, and ranges from new music to pretty pop to jazz and stranger things. He's up to 53 episodes now, and past shows have been hosted by the lovely likes of Carla Kihlstedt, Jon Rose, Kristen Hersch and Darol Anger (Although it looks like he might have retired the guest host idea). A quick scan of the 'artists played' list shows he hasn't yet included Charlie Daniels or the Electric Light Orchestra, but there's still time.

Brand New Podcast from Ergo Phizmiz & People Like Us

WFMU is pleased to announce Codpaste - a new weekly podcast series brought to you by our own People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz, who will be teaming up and trying to compose collage music for you... with emphasis on the word "trying." It's reasonably rare that music is broadcast to you when it's not all finished, polished and dusted, but we're going to spew out the guts and gore to you, dear listener, so do bring a spoon.

From Monday 3rd December 2007, WFMU will be hosting the podcasts of:

(i) audio sources, the tracks used as the basis for the collage in the episode
(ii) sketches, mixes, and collages combining track elements with added instrumentation, electronics, vocals, etc.
(iii) fragments, layers, and multitracks of the collage compositions

These elements will be tied together by snippets of light-hearted, tangential conversations and introductions and occasional mental overload and verbal meltdown.

Subscribe to this free weekly podcast (and receive an introductory welcome into your iTunes) by visiting WFMU's Podcast page.

Further program information can be found here.

Murray Roman: Reflections of his Contemporaries - Pt. 1: Tom Smothers

The Forgotten Murray Roman was the name of an article posted a few weeks ago about a counterculture stand-up comic who is none-too-famous today. Perhaps the one living person who can tell us the most about Murray Roman is the man who hired him as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Tom Smothers. Here is the transcript of a conversation I had with Tom a few days ago.
Tom Smothers: You Can't Beat People Up and Have Them Say I Love You? lt's relevant now, isn't it?
Kliph Nesteroff:  Yeah, it's a very interesting record and I feel that Murray Roman... is a neglected sorta person in comedy history, y'know.
TS: Yeah, I agree. I agree, man. Okay.
KN: He actually released four records in his career, but I guess that one is the most famous.
TS: And that was the best one, isn't it?
KN: Well, I actually haven't heard any of the others - they're quite scarce.
TS: And really old.
KN: So ... where did you first meet Murray Roman and when was the first time you saw him perform?
TS: I saw him perform back in the sixties... nineteen... sixty-one... in Aspen, Colorado and he did ski jokes. Y'know, skiing jokes and cold... snow jokes. And I met him there... and in L.A. later on... in sixty-five and sixty-six, I'd run into him and see him work a little here and there. When we got The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which was nineteen sixty-six... I hired him as a writer on the show... and I always considered... good comedians were always pretty good writers, I always thought. And he was a pretty good writer. Most of his gift was sitting in the writer meetings and throwing one-liners out against the material. That's how he'd find his stuff. He didn't write so well - he talked his writing. We had a couple little pieces where he's on stage on the show... he didn't perform that much on the show... but the reason I hired him was because of that album.

Spooky and Kooky: The Career of Gene Moss

Eugene Harold Mashontz was a funny comedy writer and performer who seemed to specialize in playing vampires, mad scientists and silly characters with a classic-monster bent. Monsters were big from 1957-1967, especially with children fascinated by all things Frankenstein, Dracula or Wolfman. Famous Monsters was a best-selling magazine (it even spawned an LP), Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Monster Mash was a number one single, Milton the Monster was a popular cartoon, The Munsters and The Addams Family were sitcoms that debuted in the same week, and every city seemed to have a Late Late Show of classic horror movies hosted by a local personality draped in make-up, surrounded by coffins and cobwebs.

Into the mix came Gene Moss. The market was flooded with novelty recordings sung by the living dead after the success of Monster Mash. The list of monster related novelty music is too huge to tackle today, but one of the greats was a full length LP that featured the masterful vocal talents of Gene Moss. It was called Dracula's Greatest Hits. Get your Halloween party started right by listening to the entire, very scratchy, LP here.

Moms Mabley - Agitation in Moderation

"Moms Mabley ... She was fabulous." - Rudy Ray Moore

Moms Mabley was one of the greatest comedians of all time. She is widely regarded as one of the most important African-American entertainers that ever lived and as the first bonafide female stand-up comedy superstar. At her peak, she was making ten thousand dollars a week for stage appearances alone. It's ridiculous that a book has yet to be written* about this comedy legend, one of the first to use the stage to advocate civil rights for both her race and gender. The social issues that boiled over in the late sixties were something Mabley had been addressing for decades. When the struggle against war, racism and varied discrimination became the focus of a new generation, Mabley suddenly found herself a bigger star than before, her message embraced by those involved in the fight. Television programming geared to the new youth market regularly booked Mabley and white viewers discovered the joy that the Black community had known about for years. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour booked Mabley several times. So did ABC's Music Scene, a program that featured musicians on the Billboard Top Ten, which in turn meant plenty of counterculture performers whose smelly clothes and pacifist postures would normally have had them escorted off the lot.

From Wall of Sound to Huckleberry Hound: The Vinyl Side of Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera will always be synonymous with their "Saturday morning assembly line" as 60 Minutes once described it. Although their cartoons were never synonymous with quality, the endless stream of licensed merchandise that was churned out to cash in on the popular HB characters was even more dubious. From their weird line of cigarette smoking figurines to the incorrectly colored comic book adaptations, Hanna-Barbera products rarely achieved even the marginal quality of the cartoons they were based on.

There is an exception to this rule. In 1965, after six years of licensing their characters to the Colpix and Golden record companies, they founded their own label, Hanna-Barbera Records. The company put out, as you might expect, albums based on The Flintstones, Atom Ant, Touché Turtle et al. However, they were also responsible for some of the most impressive (and now sought after) garage rock, psychedelia and rugged soul music of the era - and indirectly spawned a band called Three Dog Night.

2:40 Distractions: Great Beer Songs

Carl Smith "The Bottle Is Just Fooling You"
Hank Williams "There's a Tear in My Beer"
Mr Swing "Beer Bottle Boogie"
Webb Pierce "There Stands the Glass"
ZZ Top  "Beer Drinkers and Hell-Raisers"
Hank Thompson / Bob Wills  "Bubbles In My Beer"
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 "Cup of Dreams"
A.C. Ducey  "Beer Beer Bottla Beer"
Cat Stevens  "Bring Another Bottle Baby"
Matching Mole "Starting In The Middle of the Day We Can Drink Our Politics Away"
Bob & Doug McKenzie "Beer Hunter"
The Tiger Lillies "Lager Lout"
Space Needle "Beers In Heaven"
Bessie Smith / Billie Holiday "Give Me A Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer"
George Jones
Homer Simpson "It Was A Very Good Beer"
Johnny Russell "Red Necks, White Socks, & Blue Ribbon Beer"
Joe Belock "Daddy Wants A Cold Beer"
Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby "You can't be a man without a beer in your hand"
Frank Zappa "Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink"
Claude King "51 Beers" / "Beers & Pinball"
Dee Mullins "Beers"
Light Crust Doughboys "Beer Drinking Mama"
Replacements "Beer For Breakfast"
Rocky Bill Ford "Blowing Suds Off My Beer"
Scotsmen "Beer Bust Blues"
Smiley Maxedon "Give Me A Red Hot Mama and An Ice Cold Beer"
Goatmen "Beer Bitch" (external link)
Kris Kristofferson "To Beat the Devil"
Pink Floyd "Paint Box"
King Missile "Happy Hour"
Ill Ease "One Hell of a Bender"
Z-Rock Hawaii "Chuggin'"
2 Nice Girls "I Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer"
Captain Beefheart "Long Neck Bottles"
Mario Lanza "Drink, Drink, Drink"

(All links are internal WFMU realaudio samples unless otherwise noted)

Meanwhile, at 2:40 this afternoon (and every Friday throughout the Summer 2007 WFMU air schedule), I'll be drinking and talking about beer on the air with a bunch of pals. Today we'll be sampling suds provided by WFMU Computer God Doron.  I'm podcasting this weekly 20 minute debauch (and even occasionally the after party), feel free to subscribe here.  There's even a flickr set devoted to the after party.  Past beer posts here, here and here.  Past beer-obsessed radio shows via all this

2:40 Distractions: Some fave Beer Videos

Been drinking a lot of beer this summer.  Most of it on the radio.  Mmm mm mm, that's so nice I want to watch beer movies.  Let's see what youtube can contribute.

Viv Stanshall's ad for Ruddles Real Ale
The legendary Bonzo Dogger swallows the worm and dives down his own peculiar rabbit hole in order to shill for swill.

Yellow Magic Orchestra's ad for Kirin Lager
Or is it Kirin Lager's ad for Yellow Magic Orchestra?  The tables turn when they start flashing snapshots of the Band As Young Men.

Gilberto Gil Approves of FREE BEER
The co-cap'n of Tropicalia and Brazil's current Minister of Culture shouts out not just free beer, but GOOD beer!

Live! Nude! Fermentation!
Like it says.

(Thanks Brian Turner for the YMO and Jeff Moore for the flickr set!)

Next week, more zymurgological ephemera -- Beer songs!!  I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comment section of this post. 

Meanwhile, at 2:40 this afternoon (and every Friday thoughout the Summer 2007 WFMU air schedule), I'll be drinking and talking about beer on the air with a bunch of pals. Today we'll be sampling suds provided by Listener / Volunteers Therese and Colleen.  I'm podcasting this weekly 20 minute debauch (and even  occasionally the after party), feel free to subscribe here.  There's even a flickr set devoted to the afterparty.  Past beer posts here and here.  Past beer-obsessed radio shows via all this.

Introducing Scott's 2:40 Beer Podcast

Happy hour begins early here at WFMU, thanks to a new segment on Scott Williams' program: Scott's 2:40 Beer Tasting. Now available as a podcast, you are cordially invited to imbibe Scott's weekly choice of brew along with his rotating panel of beer enthusiasts. Why there's Scott on the left, raising his (mostly-empty) glass to salute all of you new podcast listeners. Plan ahead for the coming weeks of 2:40 fellowship by visiting Scott's playlist page.

Subscribe to the 2:40 Beer Tasting podcast by hitting up WFMU's Podcast Central, or just open up iTunes, go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast, then copy and paste this link into the box.

Ok, I can't take it, that photo to the left is too hilarious. Let's have some fun: create your own caption in the comments section.

Muriel's Treasure Podcast

Admit it, you miss Irwin. Ever since Mr. Chusid took a summer break from the WFMU air schedule, we've been without our weekly fix of rum-soaked calypso, a segment of Irwin's show known as Muriel's Treasure. And everyone knows that an absence of rum could utterly devastate the entire leisure season...

Thankfully, summer will be saved because WFMU is now podcasting Muriel's Treasure twice a week. Mash up a mojito, fire up your iTunes, and kick back to Irwin's vintage island grooves. Muriel's Treasure features calypso, soca, mento, and pan from the golden era of Caribbean music. Irwin now has so much idle time that he's started a Muriel blog!

Sign yourself up for the Muriel's Treasure podcast by visting WFMU's podcast page, or just open up iTunes, go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast, then copy and paste this link into the box.

If calypso ain't your thing, fear not! WFMU offers 17 other great podcasts for your listening pleasure, with more on the way...

Would You Believe Don Adams was a Joke Thief?

When stand-up comedian Joe Rogan confronted notorious joke stealer Carols Mencia in the middle of "his" routine last February it spawned an internet phenomenon. Rogan suddenly had legions of fans and Mencia was quickly discredited. Video footage of Mencia performing material that belonged to other comedians flooded video-sharing sites. The incident spawned several blog entries, print magazine articles and news channel stories about famous joke thieves through history. There were the standard references to Milton Berle and Robin Williams and the occasional mention of Dane Cook. One story from comedy history fell by the sidelines. Don Adams was a joke thief.

Most people don't even realize that Adams was a stand-up comic. Everyone knows him as the star of Get Smart, but the character of Maxwell Smart was in fact based on Don Adams' nightclub persona. Adams was never really one to produce his own material, but then again, neither were most nightclub comedians of his era. Almost everyone solicited material from writers and Adams was no different. His childhood friend, Bill Dana, grew up to be an accomplished comedy writer having been hired by Steve Allen to work on the original Tonight Show. With Dana's help, Adams was able to enjoy a successful stand-up career - but not a particularly honest one.

Bill Thompson: King of Wimps

Bill Thompson had one of the funniest voices in history but his larynges are more famous than his name. The voice of the henpecked husband or meek little pushover in hundreds of cartoons and radio shows, Thompson's characters always seemed to be on the verge of being clobbered with a rolling pin. His most famous voice creation was the mush-mouthed cartoon hound, Droopy. He lent this well-known voice to several characters over the course of four decades, never ceasing to be amusing (incidentally, the picture on the left was harder to obtain than I would have figured - typing "droopy" into Google Image search serves up many undesirable, if not altogether stomach churning, results).

The voice that we now associate with Droopy was in use for years before Thompson first lent it to the MGM cartoon star. The Breakfast Club with Don McNeill, an extremely popular radio variety show during the thirties and forties, featured Thompson as a drooping character named Mister Wimple during the 1934-35 season. He was also called on to provide various animal noises when the script needed it (many of the networks would have an "animal mimic" on the payroll for just this specific service - jumping from show to show). Each day The Breakfast Club featured a popular(!) segment titled Prayer Time that was just as it stated - a minute of dead air while the cast and audience prayed. According to the book Don McNeill and His Breakfast Club by John Doolittle (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) the show was a favorite of J. Edgar Hoover.

Digital Techonology and IP Policy

Ok, now that 90% of you have tuned out of this post based on the title alone, I would now like to let the radio, webcasting, tech, and copyright geeks in on the dirt from a conference I attended in Washington, D.C. on May 2.

The Future of Music Coalition magically planned a meeting of the minds at exactly the right time in history, setting aside a day for webcasters, musicians, copyright lawyers, legislators, and performance rights organizations to engage in a civil discussion about contentious topics like net neutrality and the Copyright Royalty Board's webcasting rate hike. I observed some meaningful conversations between groups who have been at odds with each other, but I also witnessed the old guard struggling to come to terms with technologies that are at least a decade old. I came away from the meeting half hopeful about open lines of comminication between previously warring parties, and half convinced that current attempts to create meaningful laws for music technology and intellectual property are futile and doomed to failure in our rapidly morphing media environment.

But you can form your own conclusions. FMC has generously posted streaming video of their entire Technology and IP Policy Day, broken down into individual talks (click here for the schedule and video links). Below I've reposted direct video links to each talk:

Intro and Welcome by FMC's Kristin Thompson        
  Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Congressman Mike Doyle's (D-PA) Keynote
Refreshingly well-informed speech touching on net neutrality, webcasting royalties, and artist compensation.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Radio Waves
Webcasting royalties discussed by a panel including the CEO of Pandora, the Executive Director of Sound Exchange, an independent musician, and others, expertly moderated by FMC's Brian Zisk. This was the hot button session for me: the VP of XM shoots down Sound Exchange for claiming that airplay has no promotional value, the indie musician says that Pandora helps him sell music, and the CEO of Live 365 begs Sound Exchange to return his calls... How much sexier can it get?   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association's Address
The CEA sticks it to the RIAA for alienating customers and independent musicians.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Jenny Toomey Explains FMC's Rock the Net Campaign
   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

The Net Effect
Panel on net neutrality and how a tiered internet would hurt independent musicians.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

David Carson of the U.S. Copyright Office
Learn what a digital phonorecord delivery is, and where downloads and audio streams fall under this definition. Kind of. Maybe. Ok, so I was kidding. But it is amusing (and sad) to know that the copyright office is well aware of the blunders and logistical roadblocks built into the DMCA.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

Stocking the Celestial Jukebox
Licensing and artist compensation in the digital world, the effects of new tech products on musicians, and the need for copyright reform.   Video: Windows Media  |  Real

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat (1968) is a strange, psychedelic and convoluted film as incoherent as its hippy brethren 200 Motels (1971) and Rainbow Bridge (1972). It belongs with that small collection of movies in which more people own the soundtrack than have actually seen the film. The soundtrack is phenomenal. The bright yellow cover is as eccentric as the vinyl itself that features audio cut-ups, squealing Moog synthesizers, relentless psychedelic improvisations, lounge music, Tiny Tim oddities, and the final appearance of The Hawks before they changed their name to The Band.

The list of those involved with the film is an incredible roster of counter culture heroes and weirdos. Tiny Tim, The Electric Flag, Frank Zappa, Peter Yarrow, Paul Butterfield, Super Spade, David Crosby, Hamsa El Din, Barry McGuire, the radio personality Rosko and several others. And despite the talent involved the film is incredibly difficult to track down in any format other than a blurry, seventh-generation, chopped up version that most likely will get trapped in your VCR. I have posted the sounds of the the soundtrack LP for your listening leisure over here.

Greetings From the Stars: A Mystery ... SOLVED

Last week I wrote about some strange audio oddities titled Greetings From the Stars that tend to surface in downtrodden Canadian neighborhoods. If you haven't yet had a chance to read that piece, please do so before proceeding.

As mentioned in the previous article, this series of cassettes featured old show business legends on their down curve, reduced to providing one-take birthday greetings and other such pablum. The who, what, where, and why of the project is not apparent by looking at them. A listen to the Greetings From the Stars series spawns more questions than it answers. I've been struggling to piece it all together ever since I found a box of them, covered in soot, at a ghetto pharmacy. The packaging provides some minor clues to the story such as company names like Pezamerica Resources Corp and Pezzaz Productions, a nineteen eighty-four copyright and a Vancouver, British Columbia address. Finding the worn down building at the edge of that city's ghetto did not, as I might have hoped, lead me to an office filled with autographed Foster Brooks headshots or relatives of Don Adams trying to claim his residuals. My assumption that the series was a confectionary by-product of the Pez dispenser people also could not have been more wrong.

After several failed Google searches I came upon a very promising clue. A Vancouver based recording engineer's online resumé casually mentioned working for a Pezzaz Productions for one year... 1984. Of course, it could have been a coincidence, especially since the resumé mentioned all kinds of interesting gigs, but working with Milton Berle wasn't one of them. Lord knows if I even just delivered room service to Milton Berle it'd be at the top of my resumé - written in bold. A phone number and e-mail address were provided for the recording engineer, and before I knew it I was having coffee with one of the key men responsible for the gaudy looking piece of work you see pictured on the left.

Greetings From the Stars: A Mystery

A couple years ago I was strolling through the poorest neighborhood in Canada and wandered into an old drug store called The Garlane. It had certainly seen better days. No longer was it the local stop for toilet paper and cigarettes, but instead remained open primarily to dispense methadone. Since this paradigm shift in priorities, much of the store's old stock has remained on the shelves untouched. 1970s board games still shrink-wrapped, greeting cards from the early sixties, and all-manner of forgotten product just sitting there, waiting to be discovered by greedy ebay dealers. It was at this store that I came across a box filled with cassette tapes in flamboyant packaging covered in gritty soot an inch thick. Staring back at me were the faces of several fading celebrities; Ed McMahon, Dom DeLuise, Don Adams, Danny Thomas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Scatman Crothers just to name a few.

What I had discovered was a case of tapes titled Greetings From the Stars, packaged in flimsy cardboard and decorated with airbrushed renderings of celebrity heads all sporting bow ties. The covers each shouted a different theme like Happy Birthday, Cheer Up, Getting Married, Happy Anniversary or What is Love? As described on the packaging, these cassettes were "HUMOROUS RECORDED GREETINGS JUST FOR YOU - reverse side blank for your personal message." With three stars assigned to each tape, and a 1984 price of a dollar each, I naturally lugged a dirty box of these home with me that day.

Time Travel Musical Bazaar Podcast

WFMU is pleased to welcome yet another fabulous podcast to our illustrious roster. Enter Ergo Phizmiz!

Wait... doesn't that chap already have a podcast? An audio overachiever by nature, one podcast just isn't enough for Mr. Phizmiz. That's why he's teamed up with The Travelling Mongoose to produce a weekly podcast-only show called The Time Travel Musical Bazaar. And there's even a blog to go with it! Put that in your buzzword pipe and smoke it.

Here's what Ergo says:
The Time Travel Musical Bazaar (TTMB) is a 30 minute slab of improvised junkshop turntablism. Using found, discarded and forgotten vinyl, three or four portable turntables, and no headphones or form of pre-monitoring, Ergo & the Mongoose take you on a weekly trip back and forward through time with chance, spontaneous collages. Each podcast will be accompanied by text, images, and occasional extra audio features on the TTMB blog.

Subscribe to Time Travel Musical Bazaar or any WFMU podcast by visiting Podcast Central (now with an improved Help page for the uninitiated).

Muhammad Ali UPDATE

A few months back I put together this piece about all the crusty things that Muhammad Ali lent his name to. At the time of writing I lamented about what a shame it was for me to talk about Ali's 1977 Saturday morning cartoon, I Am the Greatest, without being able to provide footage of the notorious stinker. Well, wait no longer. A nice ten minute chunk of the show has appeared on the internet for all of us to enjoy. And while we're at it, why not watch Muhammad Ali lose all available patience when seated beside ever-crazy Sly Stone.

Do or DIY Podcast returns!

'Tis the season for podcast resurrection! Sound masher extraordinairre People Like Us returns to the WFMU podcast roster this week with brand new episodes of her ultra-fab show, Do or DIY (currently on hiatus from WFMU's on-air schedule, but periodically popping up as a web-only show).

Glitch out on a weekly basis with PLU's surrealist sound collagery by visiting WFMU's podcast page. Go on... git!

Coffee 2 Go Podcast Returns

Noah Zark's incredible underground hip-hop podcast, Coffee 2 Go, went on hiatus for a few months, but is now back due to popular demand! Hop on board and hook yourself up to WFMU's audio feeding tube by visiting our podcast page, where you can subscribe to Coffee 2 Go or any of our 18 other podcast shows.

From Subculture to Major Industry: Mike Warnke and The Roots of Christian Stand-Up Comedy

Mike Warnke is one of the most famous figures in American Christianity. However, unless you're a Christian, a Satanist, a scandal fiend, obsessive internet troll, or a vinyl collector, there is still a good chance you don't know his tale. Mike Warnke is a stand-up comedian. A Christian stand-up comedian. And despite a scandal-ridden career that would put Jim Bakker to shame, Warnke alone is responsible for what has turned into an enormous multi-million dollar industry - Christian stand-up comedy. Kinda nutty, ain't it?

In reality the Mike Warnke story has been recounted several times over the past decade and, yes, we're about to go through it again. This piece is more than that, however. It is a history of Christian stand-up comedy, from its roots in ventriloquism to its modern day standing as perhaps the wealthiest of all weirdo subcultures.

Old Bug Eyes, Jerry Colonna.

In 1954, Decca Records released a fascinating ten-inch relic titled Music For Screaming!? Jerry Colonna at his Best.* - the majority of which I have posted for your listening pleasure here (podcast number twenty). Bob Hope's sidekick was not as some might assume Bing Crosby, nor was his closest ally in show business simply constant US military intervention. Although there is little question that those were among his most dependable associates, his real right hand partner was the unmistakably bug-eyed, and with each passing year increasingly forgotten, Jerry Colonna - one of the most strangely compelling figures of American radio and film in the thirties, forties, and fifties.

Colonna's persona could have easily been described as an "ethnic character" back in the day, if it were not for the fact that his odd accent wasn't exactly an Italian stereotype, that of the hackneyed European emigre, or anything else particularly specific. Instead his accent was vague, a put-on of undetermined origin, for the most part void of any Italian references - thank goodness - as many of those Vito Scotti type characters can be cringe inducing today. In almost all the films in which the beloved moustachioed comedian appeared, his vocal gymnastics were on display.

You're a Long Way From Fame, Whitey! The Dick Davy Story

When the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, passed away last Christmas his memory was honored with multiple funeral services. During the time of his death it was mentioned many times over that there was no way to fully articulate the sheer importance, breadth, influence, and status that James Brown held within American Black society. This will have probably been, however, the only time in history that a man so famous, so revered, so incredibly big, will have had a funeral procession in a building that is equally as great in terms of sheer importance, breadth, and status.

Now open for ninety-four years, The Apollo Theater has catered, shaped, and determined African-American cultural trends for seventy two of the ninety-four. It might seem absurd, and perhaps on the other hand hardly surprising, that from 1904 to 1934 the Apollo was a whites-only establishment. In the past year it has been in the process of refurbishment at an absolutely incredible financial cost. It is hard to tell whether this has anything to do with a devotion to preserving history and culture or is merely another phase in the corporatization of ... everything. The three key note speakers at the launch event announcing the project were Mayor Bloomberg, Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons, and sometime Harlem resident Bill Clinton - three outrageously wealthy men - two of which are white - and by most accounts - all slimy. Now then, why all this talk of the Apollo - this beacon for the greatest performers of the 20th Century? What with all the legendary Apollo stories (it is said that Ella Fitzgerald was one of the first ever African-American performers to perform on the club's legendary amateur night after the Apollo finally opened its doors in '34 to those who made up the majority of Harlem's population), one fascinating event hasn't been told in thirty years and is pretty much forgotten.

Google the name Dick Davy and the only information you're likely to find is the article you're currently reading. Davy was a New York born East Village folk singer in the early nineteen sixties. Self-described as "much more soulful and quiet [than the average folk singer] ... intimate ... and I wasn't making it. But I'd be talking in between and people would laugh at things I said. So I'd start out like very traditional ... Barbara Allen ... about forty seven verses of that. And people weren't listening for a while. And because nobody was paying attention, I'd just start talking and they'd laugh. And eventually whatever I'd say, they laughed at. And I really felt bad that I didn't have more things to say because I really had 'em with the first few things I said and they were ready ... and then I'd go back to singing another song, and they'd go back to bedlam. So I started writing down whatever they were laughing at ... "