WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Victor Flick, and the British Invasion of Sesame Street

Today's posting deals with two subjects dear to me heart: The ersatz, fake-o, bogus, unlicensed 'cover' album' (for kid's, in this case) on a 'knock-off' or low-budget label; and the work of legendary guitar specialist, composer, conductor Vic Flick.
  Mr. Flick's guitar artistry on dozens of hit singles and lps is well documented, but his work as a composer and conductor somewhat less so.
I discovered Flick's foray into the world of Sesame Street in 2002 whilst compiling Muppet/Sesame material for a music project. A collector pal brought over his latest Sesame record score and not only was it obviously unlicensed but credited Vic on the cover--a must-listen!

Nouvelle Vague Live at WFMU - hot vidz!

Oh my gawd, y'all, when these people were in Love Room, it was all I could do to keep myself from reaching through the glass and gently stroking their faces as they sang.

The two sexiest voices in English-speaking Frenchpop, covering Sex Pistols, Violent Femmes, Depeche Mode, and Talking Heads....DANG!

Listen to the whole show here.

Thanks a zillion to Aldona Watts and Raymond Park for doing the video.

2 MORE VIDEOS AFTER THE JUMP!

Nouvelle Vague's new album "NV3" will be out in September.  It features guest performances from Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), Terry Hall (The Specials), Ian MacCullough (Echo and the Bunnymen), and Barry Adamson (Magazine).

prunella scales

Prunella Scales.  What more do I have to say?  The stage name alone offers up  a certain oddity and eccentricity that her physical appearance continues to suggest.  I fell in love with her portrayal of Sybil Fawlty, the off color and regal proprietress of the most ill-managed guest house in the history of England.  Her economy of manner, so precise and suggestive, was a wonderful foil to the physical stammerings and mishaps of Basil Fawlty.
     Sunday night I watched Prunella in a remarkably un-Sybil role in a new Masterpiece Mystery: Miss Marple.  The Jane Marple stories have a fair dose of stereotypes, quite purposely placed by Agatha Christie to illustrate her views on the universalness of evil.  Prunella Scales played a widow, Mrs Mackenzie, whose husband was purportedly killed by the rival family patriarch, many years ago.  Now in a sanatorium, Mrs. Mackenzie recounts how she had schooled her children in a nightly prayer to seek revenge on this robber baron, and pledge their filial devotion to this adult quest. 
     The first Miss Marple story was written in 1930 England, where conventional villages dotted the green landscape, city life offering a sharp contrast to these country ways.  A small town aging spinster was invisible and powerless, a stereotype that Agatha Christie used as an asset to the stealth-like powers that amateur sleuth Jane Marple possessed.  Like Hercule Poirot, her fantastically odd Belgian detective, Jane Marple was an outsider whose abilities to observe without seeming important gave almost philosophical weight to her crime solving puzzles.  Unlike legendary minds like Poirot or Sherlock Holmes who constantly remind you of their inner crime solving genius, Miss Marple does not proselytize from the book of Jane.   She offers up idiosyncratic stories from the day to day life of her local villagers in St Mary Mead as proof of the inevitability of wrong doing.  Decades before a shift in feminist sensibilities would demand scrutiny of the multiple unpaid roles that women perform, the zing of an old lady solving a dastardly crime before the local constable could fathom its' dark belly was quite the satisfying finale.  Agatha Christie would go on to write 12 Miss Marple novels, making her one of the most beloved detectives.

     Masterpiece Mystery is running four new productions of Miss Marple stories this summer.  And of course the many fabulous Joan Hickson versions are available on DVD.  Caution: there will be graphic scenes of knitting.

Wild Oates: A Conversation With Warren Oates' Biographer

          

Writer Susan Compo recently authored an enormously entertaining Warren Oates biography and Oates fans who have not yet read the book can look forward to it with great anticipation.  For my money, Warren Oates: A Wild Life is the finest biography since 1998 when Ronnie Pugh's Ernest Tubb biography hit the shelves.  The book offers a richly-detailed and definitive portrait of Oates' intriguing life and career and upon finishing it, I decided it might be interesting to talk to the author about Warren Oates and how she came to write the story of his life.  I'd like to thank Susan for sharing several unpublished Oates photos (including above right, showing Oates in makeup for The Brink's Job) and for indulging me while I fumbled through my Brian Lamb impersonation.

Oates died of a heart attack in 1982, but if he were still with us he'd celebrate his 81st birthday on July 5.

Greg:  Let's start things off with a question about the title of your book, Warren Oates: A Wild Life.  Who chose that title?

Susan Compo:  The publisher, as happens sometimes in the book world.  I had Wild Oates, but they just didn't go for that.

(NOTE: I didn't want to see a good title go to waste, so I borrowed it for this post).

Worst of the Worst of the Worst... of the Worst

In my ongoing mission to torture Beware of the Blog readers with insufferable nineteen seventies kitsch I have sunk to a new low. I would have sunk to this earlier but this did not hit the internet until this week. I thought it could get no worse than The Brady Kids - Wonder Woman crossover. I was wrong. Roy Clark, jonesing for even more stomach-churning hokum than Hee-Haw could offer, called up the chick from One Day at a Time to help host a roast and celebration of Fred Flintstone. Not the real Fred Flintstone but one in a giant foam outfit. Along for the ride, defying all stone-age continuity, are other Hanna-Barbera characters in oversized cloth forms : Jabberjaw, The Banana Splits, Snagglepuss, Hong Kong Phooey, The Hair Bear Bunch and on down the line. The laugh track seems to be enjoying itself immensely (although if you listen closely you might hear a bit of a retch track). This is truly the worst thing I have ever seen - and although I appreciate the absolute awfulness of it all - even I can't bring myself to watch ALL FIVE PARTS that are on YouTube. Oh - one minor detail I forgot about. It is, of course, ON ICE.

This Just In... Breaking News

from pictures for sad children

Kramer

Ever scratch your head and wonder if Kramer was a Gomer Pyle fan? 

Yes, he was.

The World's Worst in Animation - Once Again

In my ongoing quest to make Beware of the Blog readers hostile and nauseas, here is another thirty seconds of "animation" destined for the trash heap.

W*A*L*T*E*R (videos)

About that third M*A*S*H spinoff CBS decided not to pick up because the Pacific and Mountain time zones were broadcasting the '84 Democratic National Convention and Radar wasn't a stooge anymore?  Endure:

(Apologies for the distractions in the form of the Cyprus Corners DVD logo and explanation leading off part one, which starts at :27 in).

Crap of the Highest Order

People seem to understand the appeal I find in nineteen fifties drive-in movies. It's all about the camp aspect. The same people, however, tend to be miffed about my obsession with nineteen seventies television animation. How can I stand it? How can I sit through multiple episodes of this shit? Don't I know it's horrible? It's bad, of course, but the camp aspect is entertaining as hell. Getting drunk along with it helps too. This 1972 ditty features a very unlikely cross over. Wonder Woman meets The Brady Kids. It just don't get any worse, folks.

A CAMP (f/ Nina Persson of the Cardigans) LIVE tonight - with HD Video!

Wow, you know, every once in a while, things really just turn out pretty awesome, like this performance from A Camp that will air tonight on Sound and Safe.  Four perfectly-rendered pop songs - including a cover of Eddie Noack's weird and wonderful "Psycho" - done by my favorite singer in the world, Nina Persson, with husband Nathan Larson (of Shudder to Think) on bass, and Niclas Frisk (of Atomic Swing) on guitar.

We got some really nice HD video of the songs - check out a preview here, for the song "Love Has Left the Room." 

Thanks very much to Tim Smith and Jacqueline Castel for shooting the video.

Tune in tonight to hear all four songs and to see all four videos.  Also keep an eye on the Free Music Archive for MP3s of the set.

A Camp kicks off a North American tour at Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night.  Their new album Colonia is out now.

Alf as rendered by David Lynch

These have been making the ol' internet rounds for a few days now. Funny or disturbing or dumb? I *think* I like them. Here's an Alf - Blue Velvet hybrid.

Look Around You - Music (video)

More Info | More Videos

Sainkho on Russian TV (videos)

Digging around on YouTube recently, I found several videos of amazing Tuvan avant-throat singer Sainkho Namtchylak. Here are two beautiful songs she performed on Russian TV, and I have no clue when this was recorded, who the other musicians are, and what kind of TV show this was. Maybe one of our readers knows?

The second song follows after the jump.

Samuel Pottle / Unforgetable Fur

Department of Puppet Audio / Part 1
Today let's visit the tasteful and clever arrangements of Sam Pottle along with his various songwriting partners, during his tenure as music director on Sesame Street from seasons six through nine.
My two selections are from the Grammy-nominated lp The Sesame Street MONSTERS! (1975).

FUR features the full Broadway blitz of Pottle styling and fantastic lyrics by David Axelrod. As well as this lp appearance, it came out as a single in 1976. The words are included herein in full for your furbulous edification:

Fur! I am covered with fur / From my snoot to my spur / I'm a furry fella./ Fur! When you stroke it I purr / When you poke it I grrr / It's maroon and yella. / Fur! Keeps you warm when it's brrr / Don't you wish that you were / Fairly bursting with fur, fur fur ! / Yes, fur is beautiful / fur is clever / furthermore I'll love it forever / Fur! Unforgettable fur. // Now you may find fur too frightful but / I'd never switch / I find my fur delightful but / boy, does it itch./ You may see fur as horrible / I say no sir / To me my fur's adorable / and I'm covered with FUR! (I kinda grow it) ...(repeat second verse)

And one of my favorite slow, bluesy ballads from Sesame Street (more in upcoming posts): I Can't Help It, written with Joseph A. Bailey and David Axelrod. This one has a lovely melody that sounds so familiar that I can't figure out if it's copped from some tin pan alley song from the 'teens or not. If so- I want to know what it is. This lp has a terrific cover and is full of great material. A good place to start a Sesame Street album collection. Actually I could virtually throw out all of my others, if only this one had Bert and Ern.  Many of the lps in the SS series have only a handful of songs I want to hear more than once but this one is paced so well I always tend to leave it on until it's done. In a future post we'll explore the Vic Flick/Sesame Street connection. In the meantime, enjoy these gems.

FUR

I CAN'T HELP IT

Fluxus Vids and Rocksteady Tracks

The great thing about freeform is when you don't have a cohesive post, you can just stick completely unrelated things together and if anyone calls you out on it, you can accuse them of being a colonialist fascist.  Today I've got two very different mines for you to trench through.  The first is the fluxus oriented youtube channel called Art Classic News. Posted below is one of their gems, footage of a 1968 Wolf Vostell installation called E.D.H.R.  From a musical perspective, this clip is striking for it's protoindustrial clangor.  From a multimedia perspective, this particular work was influential as one of the first appropriations of TVs in an installation setting. 

I've also been spending a lot of time lately checking out classic rocksteady sounds from the You and Me on a Jamboree blog.  Tons of full albums downloads from out of print roots reggae, ska and dub, mostly from the 60s and 70s.  Posted below are two of mp3s from albums I've been enjoying the past few weeks.  I'd especially recommend checking out the Ethiopians. Happy hunting.

The Ethiopians - Hong Kong Flu

Clancy Eccles - Fatty Fatty (X-rated version)

A Tummy Tickler from The Soul Clowns : Skillet & Leroy

Department of Less-Than-Hilarious Comedy Albums/ Today's offering:  The Okra Eaters.
A scandalous, shocking, nasty damned dish.
They really need little introduction, just pour a libation, settle down and get ready to laugh until some okra comes up.
This is the complete 1974 adults-only lp, with ripping incidental music by the Johnny Otis Show, and another lovely (?) Laff Records cover designed by Howard Goldstein with Bud Fraker photography. Oh, and I fixed the tracklist- the original lp had the cuts listed wrong on the cover and the label. But who would care or notice? Tracklist schmacklist.
Again--if you didn't glean this already--This is NOT work-safe or even safe for pets or children, for that matter- just very down and dirty.  It hovers somewhere just short of 'foul' and nearby to 'cute'.

70's Culture Quiz: The concept "Karate Jaws" is a send-up of an ad campaign related to what 1970's icon?

Here is the link to the corrected cover art, and here are the 13 tracks:
01  Bazooms     02  House of Pleasure     03  Miscarriage     04  Eat My Okra     05  Chocolate Ice Cream     06  Proud     07  Hold That Tiger     08  Son in Law     09  To Be Sure     10  Bad Weather     11  Blowin' Mule     12  Big Mary     13  Dr. Weightoff

Slap Chop remix

Everyone's favorite TV gadget huckster Vince Offer got a bad rap after that bloody tongue-biting incident with a prostitute a few weeks back. But even after that circus came and went, some in the FMU office had never heard of Vince's pet products, Sham Wow and Slap Chop.

And because sophomoric jokes about nuts never get old, here's a slap chop musical remix for you by the Working Mothers (MP3). Thanks Dennis!

BBC Documentary on History of Rough Trade

80+ minutes of great footage documenting the rise, fall, and return of a label that brought some of the greatest and most inventive sounds into the post-punk world. Interviews with Geoff Travis, Daniel Miller, Mayo Thompson, Raincoats, Robert Wyatt and other key players.

Dull Television We Can Believe In (1991)