WFMU's Beware of the Blog

J.T. IV's Cosmic Lightning

The goofy VU-sendup "Waiting for the CTA" (Real Audio) has popped up a lot on WFMU's airwaves since the arrival of JT IV's Cosmic Lightning LP (Drag City/Galactic Zoo Disk), but this collection of the songs and sounds of Chicagoan loner-psychpunk John Henry Timmins is no mere novelty but a document of some headscratching diversity, depth, and weirdness. Medallion-wearing, twin-neck-guitar-sporting JT IV served himself up as a lightning rod of glam-punk eccentricity, seesawing in these archived recordings between ugly basement rock and lost-mind cosmic acoustic wanderings. Discharged from an institution in the mid 1970's and releasing his first single in 1980, Timmins had an unlimited well to draw from in terms of reflections of the seedy underworld of the Chicago streets, fighting heavy demons, and the fantasy of rock salvation. You can see it in his eyes in the (amazing) DVD that accompanies this limited LP, so snap it up now, and check out the trailer clip below.

It's good to know that archivists are out there in assorted locales keeping track of the local luminaries who haven't gotten their dues. Discovering music in the last few years by the likes of Little Howlin' Wolf, Todd Tamanend Clark etc. make you wonder what other treasures remain waiting for a wider cache of ears.

Mambo Kurt, Organ Wrecker (MP3, videos)

Over the last 10 years or so, Mambo Kurt, the King of Heimorgel, has brought us organ cover versions of songs by Rammstein, Slayer, Nirvana, Kiss, Britney Spears and many more giants of rock music. Just as a sample, here is how the Sex Pistols sound like on a Heimorgel, from the 2004 live album Sun Of A Beach: Mambo Kurt feat. Heidi Schulz - Anarchy In The UK [MP3, vocals by Mambo Kurt's former organ teacher Heidi Schulz, supposedly nearly 80 years old]

Since 2004, Mambo Kurt has been a regular at the Wacken Open Air music festival in Germany, alongside a whole bunch of heavy metal acts. You can find several low-quality videos of his performances on YouTube. Here is the encore from 2007, organ destruction in two parts:

YouTube links: Part 1 | Part 2

The Young And Elderly Bascom Lamar Lunsford With Other Old Timey Videos

I forget just how I stumbled upon David Hoffman's 1962 film Bluegrass Roots, which was the first authoritative documentary on the subject. Top left is a segment of the doc, which features plenty of clogging (really! this style was called clogging!) and old timey playin'. The documentary gives a lot of weight to the elderly "Appalachian Minstrel", Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom you'll see dancing with his wife about four and half minutes in. Lunsford had already been filmed about 30 years earlier, however, in a scene featured in The Times Ain't Like They Used To Be, a too-good-to-be-true folk video compilation with performances from 1928 to 1935. The DVD is in print but if, as with these depression era performers, hard times have got you in a squeeze, all the contents are on youtube. Top right is that clip of Lunsford's band with a cool introduction in which Lunsford hilariously obsesses about gettin' first prize in some music contest.

It's so hard to choose another clip to showcase from The Times Ain't Like They Used To Be, but bottom left is inspired footage of Uncle John Scruggs performing the song Little Log Cabin In The Lane while his kids do the cutest dance you've ever seen! I'd also highly recommend watching Whistler's Jug Band, Bela Lamb, Estudiantina Invencibal and a version of Mary, Don't You Weep by some "Georgia Field Hands". At bottom right, I'm using this post as an excuse to show a great performance of Bayou Pon Pon from an episode of Sesame Street. Anybody know what band this is? P.S. Guess who just got Photoshop...

KFJC Presents Live from the Japanese Music Underground

California's KFJC is nestled atop Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, about a 40 minute ride down from San Francisco and has been eminating freeform radio waves in a brotherly/sisterly fashion to WFMU for years (and on one occasion swapping identities with WFMU in a motherly/daughterly Freaky Friday fashion). They've always been keen purveyors of the well-known and lesser-known lights of underground of Japan's rock scene, so it was a perfect idea for them to travel over to the Land of the Rising Sun this past August where they camped out to broadcast/netcast and video stream two nights of some stellar performances. Results have now been issued onto a CD/DVD set. As of publishing time, the station is in the midst of their annual fundraiser (like WFMU they are listener-supported), and the set is one of the several new cool offerings in their swag vault, so get ye over to kfjc.org and lend some coin. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from the DVD, six minutes of frazzled electronic mayhem from Hiroshi Hasegawa who performs and records under the name Astro (thanks Grawer for post permish):

Also included in the compilation: Sax Ruins (Tatsuya Yoshida drumming with saxophonist Ryoko Ono), Majutsu No Niwa, Reiko A. + Sachiko, Keiichi Miyashita, Kuurucrew, Katsurei, Up-Tight, Oninko, Tabata Mitsuru, Kawaguchi Masami (of Miminokoto) with his New Rock Syndicate, and Amazon Saliva.

Los Llamarada live at WFMU

(pic: Trent Wolbe) While Los Llamarada might be one of the most exciting bands to come out of Mexico in years, they haven't won tons of fans in their hometown of Monterrey. In fact, it's reported they've been asked at one point in a frat bar to play Cranberries covers (they didn't). That's too bad, because the Yams (as some of us love to call 'em), have something special; they're harnessing the same molten energy of the Dead C, early Germs (and to some extent early Magik Markers) and laying down sheets of unpredictable, loose-n-woozy rock. Not exactly the "well-balanced" stuff of frat bar popularity. After hearing their debut LP The Exploding Now on S-S Records, WFMU was psyched to get the band to our 2008 SXSW showcase in Austin after they had to bail from Siltbreeze night (most of the band works as psychologists, and work kept them getting into Texas early). Their set knocked out all FMUers in attendance, and began with a sputtering Una Baines-era Fall keyboard line throwing odd shapes around Johnny Noise's deformed Cramps guitar figure; then the drums kicked in and vocalist Sagan stalked around the stage like a lunatic. As it all lurched forward, it spiralled into a volcanic noiserock blowout formed from ugly, malevolent and very alien sentiments. Johnny continued the set shaking his fist menacingly looking up at the sky, Sagan eventually handed the mic off to female vocalist Estrella who also stomped around like Darby Crash while everything blurred into chaos and confusion. They finally made it up to New York in November for three shows with the Hank IV, and performed live on Brian Turner's show. Video from the WFMU studio of "Atanareska" (shot by Dylan Going, edited by George Sinfield and Matt Kuglinski) and MP3 downloads below. Don't miss the killer finale either, a cover of Wire's "Pink Flag"! Los Llamarada have a new 7" single out on Italy's Avant label, and their latest LP on S-S is called Take the Sky.

Los Llamarada - Live at WFMU 11/18/08 Part One (Sagan vocals) (MP3)
Los Llamarada - Live at WFMU 11/18/08 Part Two (Estrella vocals) (MP3)

Antique Phonograph Music Program Documentary

Check out this swank three-part documentary about our own Mac and his Antique Phonograph Music Program!

Thrash Videos of Varying Levels of Stupidity

I can't top that incredible Confessor video Brian posted a few weeks back.  But at least I can post something stupider.  Madness Reign (top left) is definitely the dumbest thing I've seen in a while and the finest example of bedroom metalhead parody I've heard.  From muttered "sound effects" and cheesy graphics to pointless chugging guitar and malinformed vocals, Madness Reign is like the road trip that Bruce Dickinson, Weird Al and Jandek took together last spring break.  I'm also a fan of this guy's dadaist stand up comedy bits - below is a sample.  I'd strongly recommend checking out the webpage - he's got 14 (!) albums out and a ton of music videos, all in the same vein and pretty hilarious.  Top right is Axemaster's "Slave To The Blade."  No explanation necessary.

Madness Reign - Les 26 Caracteres from "Les Divines Jokes Du Diable"

I mentioned this Dum Dum Bullet (bottom left) video before, but it's really hit me how awesome it is.  The guitarist is totally great, they've actually got a pretty unique sound and the singer keeps on showing up in different guises throughout the video!  The song title is "Hey Mum, Who's The Junk?"  Who indeed!  Purgatory (bottom right) is the sort of band that makes me wish I owned a car, just so I could blast this shit while driving over the speed limit.  Heavy midtempo thrash via Slayer with Iron Maideney fist pumping action.  Add a healthy amount of progressive time changes, a bit of falsetto vocals, occasional shredding guitar solo-age and you're JUST under the level of smartness required to be ACTUALLY good.  But this was only the beginning of a bright future: vocalist Jeff Hatrix went on to sing for seminal nu-metal giants Mushroomhead.  Now that's smarts.

Some Things to See

I hate the New York Times, (aka the Big Grey Pack o' Lies) so when some guy tried to hand me a free copy of a “special edition” last Tuesday, I almost refused to take it. Usually the free ones are sponsored copies, with a big ad wrapping the outside. But this one just had a headline that said, “Iraq War Ends.” So I took it, and walked away reading it, and every story was about how Condoleezza Rice was apologizing for lying about the weapons of mass destruction, and President Bush had been indicted for high treason. The whole thing was a brilliant, 14-page parody. I turned around and went back. “Who are you guys?” I asked.

“We’re the New York Times Special Edition,” one guy said. Well, I knew they weren’t from the real NYTimes because even though they spelled Condoleezza wrong, the rest of the writing was really good. Then some guys with a video camera stopped me and asked what I thought of the paper, and I told them how fantastic I thought it was. It wasn’t until a few hours later that it occurred to me that I didn’t know who the video guys were either.

Today I finally got around to trolling Youtube for footage of me holding the Special Edition, and I didn’t find any, but I did find a pretty funny video called “Killing Time with Bronwyn C.”  by Listener Devtrash. I watched a bunch of Listener Devtrash’s videos and really liked them, and not just because of the Bronwyn C. one.

Listeners still send me notices about their upcoming events and shows, although all I can do is pass them on to the station’s “Upcoming” list or tell you about some of them here. Listener Bill K. let me in on the Kim Deitch retrospective at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), and Sluggo and I went to see it on Saturday. (It costs $5 and is there until Dec. 5.) We’re old fans of Kim’s and it was nice to see work from various points in his career all on display in one place. But the real revelation, for us, was “Dial M for Monster,” the silent monster movie he and his brother and friends made when they were kids. Mummies! Aliens! Vampires! Giant rubber lizards! The H-bomb! It was pretty great.

Then, as long as we were having Art Day, we stopped by Spencer Brownstone Gallery on Wooster Street to see the new Tessa Farmer show. Farmer’s sculptural installations, made up of dead things and crap she’s found lying around, hover on the rusty tin-can edge of kitsch. We were looking at the skeleton of a Whippet dog with a dried-out wasp nest inside it and an upside-down roadkill frog sticking out of a hole in the side of its skull. “Like a turducken!” Sluggo said. But then there are all the insects, and the itty-bitty skeleton “fairies” made of bladderwort fiber and termite wings, incredibly tiny, and some with horse-skull heads. In 2007 Farmer had a residency at the Natural History Museum in London, and the best of her work is like the specimen’s revenge. At least it makes you look, and think. We liked it a lot, and I recommend you see it if you get the chance. The show will be up until December 13.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Go Flemish!, Part 2: Ex Drummer

I'd been waiting anxiously to see director Koen Mortier's Ex Drummer, ever since this tantalizing review appeared in the pages of Film Comment earlier this year.  The film is nothing short of an inescapable rush of insanity and brilliance, setting a new high bar for nasty, cutting-edge cinema.  Part Gummo, part Romper Stomper, part Trainspotting, with more than a hint of Gaspar Noé's influence, Ex Drummer brings to mind nothing so much as a contemporary, punk-rock Ubu Roi, where graphic brutality, absurd flights of comedic fantasy, and social criticism form a gruesomely entertaining triumvirate.  Blind rage, domestic horror, gross sex, punk energy and the class struggle all feature prominently in the whirling narrative.

The story centers on Dries, a former tough guy turned celebrity author, who is approached by three brutish, self-proclaimed "handicapped" lowlifes (nonetheless talented, vigorous musicians) who ask him to be the drummer for their fledgling garage band.  Dries decides to take the gig, mostly because he's fascinated by the three maniacs and imagines that somehow the experience will help him garner material for a new book (it does.)  Almost inevitably, Dries begins to act out reprehensibly, all the more power-mad because he's well aware of the one foot he still has in his comfortable existence with his posh flat and beautiful girlfriend; his bandmates lash out, destructively and self-destructively, simply because they're incurably fucked up and it's the only life they've ever known.

The film is also loaded with striking camera work and a wealth of postmodern trickery worthy of Michael Haneke or Danny Boyle.  Bicycles ride backward, scenes play in reverse, and one character is forced by some unseen, punishing gravity to live upside down on the ceiling of his flat. 

With the overwhelming bulk of my movie viewing coming up mediocre these days (cable series like Mad Men and The Wire having surpassed most films in my estimation), Ex Drummer is a much-needed, bloody head-butt of fresh air and enthralling creativity.  Ex Drummer has screened at Lincoln Center's Film Comment Selects and other festivals, but has yet to be slated for a region 1 DVD release.

Three Really Bad Obama Videos For Three Really Bad Obama Songs (videos)

I have some good news and I have some bad news.  The good news is the people have spoken.  Bad news?  They've also sung. 

Love givin' for our new President-Elect may not have come as hard or as fast from here as it did from those far reaches of Earth kids in school here still can't locate on a map.  But it came worse.  And there would have been far more from whence below vids came if time and work constraints hadn't kept me from the unmitigated joy of posting them.  These three vids are insidiously bad.  In other words, pure sweet gold. 

Inhale (and he actually DID) to the Chief-Elect!!!

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.)

Studs Terkel 1912-2008

Studs Terkel interviews Lord Buckley (Click on Speak the Jive)
Studs Terkel cameo in 1950s Mental Hygiene film - clip
The full Mental Hygiene flick
Studs Terkel interviewed for the final time
Studs Terkel on Charlie Rose - 1995
Studs Terkel 75 minute interview from Archive of American Television
Studs Terkel on Democracy Now - 2003
Studs Terkel on Democracy Now - 2005
Studs Terkel on Democracy Now - 2007
Studs Terkel speaks at UofC - 2003
Studs Terkel at the University of Chicago - 2004
Studs Terkel interviewed by Don Swaim - 1988
Studs Terkel's five part interview with the mother of Emmett Till - 1955
Studs Terkel interviews Blind John Davis - 1985
Studs Terkel interviews Michael Moore - 1997
Studs Terkel vs. William F. Buckley Jr - 1998
Studs Terkel and Rita Moreno on American Playhouse - 1982
Studs Terkel documentary on street theater - 1970

Night Gallery: The World Beyond the Twilight Zone

Night Gallery Taking a cue from the Halloween season and my upcoming Goth special, we've been watching Rod Serling's early 70's TV chiller, Night Gallery. In a matter of two-and-a-half seasons, the show alternates between 70's sitcom camp "Love, American Style" and an examination of American society. Night Gallery combines the intelligence and absurdity of the sinister O. Henry story structure and the Post-World War II existential middle-class crisis initiated by the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Many of these episodes hint at future films which extend a similar plot.

Halloween Truffles: WOWE-E!

Bloggers just love Halloween.

It's that one time of year when we get to engage in all our of favorite childish pastimes. Unlike, of course, the rest of the year, when bloggers are, erm, engaging in their favorite childish pastimes.

In honor of the scariest, harriest, creepiest, crawliest night of the year, here is a bevy of links, mp3s and video clips, including costume tips, pumpkins, candy, literature, weirdo clowns, and the Hardy Boys all helping you to get in the spirit.

But first, here is the most terrifying thing I've seen this month - and it's not even Halloween themed.

Complicated Horse Emergency and Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu

Drew Ziegler is a local Chicago weirdo who has been staging absurdist puppet shows and performances in basements and underground galleries for years. An expert garbage collector, Drew assembles his props, sets and puppets out of trash. Sometimes he aims for the delicate and beautiful- such as his meditative shadow puppet plays and mechanical puppet machines...and then turns 360 degrees to create crude and overwhelming messy masses of junk and shit. But Drew's Dada aesthetic is always apparent throughout every project as he creates post-apocalyptic nonsense worlds where trash rains down from the heavens to crush its malformed inhabitants that squirt viscous discharge at each other.

For the past couple years Drew has been traveling from Chicago to LA, Oakland and New Orleans collaborating with different people. Originally concieved in Oakland, Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu is a performance of a supposed sitcom where the actors lip-sync their Dada-babble dialogue from a pre-recorded soundtrack. The characters are repulsive and idiotic, like an updated pop culture Ubu Roi. Everything is random: business men enter, a baby is birthed, food is dumped on a disembodied head in the middle of a table...yet it is all scripted within the soundtrack, working off of sound cues of car horns and goat bleating.

This is a video of Episode 2 of Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu entitled "Roaches for Nerf Pubes in Soccer Mom Tom-Tom Bomb!". It was performed in Chicago at Reversible Eye Gallery. I was recruited last minute to play the baby, which required me to flail around a bit and hump a garbage bag for the duration of the show. Don't play the video if a grown man in a diaper humping a garbage bag upsets your co-workers. The entire performance can be viewed here.

Complicated Horse Emergency is Drew's collaboration with Randall Christopher Bailey where they expand on Egg Boloney... and transform an entire space into their absurdist fevered dreams of garbage that is accumulated into giant ornate piles. Characters appear and recite random nonsense monologues related to dog testicles and hot dogs. The action is more open ended and the audience usually tumbles into the set in drunken revelry.

Here is the Complicated Horse Emergency soundtrack.  Chicago analog synth and Der Plan enthusiast Beau Wanzer writes the boing-splat-fart jams while Drew and Randall lay down the dog testicle testimonials.

part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Unfortunately, there isn't any great visual documentation of these events...only this youtube video.

Drew Ziegler is now in New Orleans working on his Scary Toesies puppet shows with longtime collaborator Jamie Kalel. They will be performing on Halloween and at the New Orleans' Fringe Festival in November.

The Saints on TV 1976

One of Australia's (and the world's) finest punk bands perform on local Brisbane TV (from Sham64andahalf's page). Dig those guitar chord figures.

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!").

My Weekend With Dolemite

As you have no doubt heard, Rudy Ray "Dolemite" Moore passed away this week. I had a chance a couple of years ago to hang out with Rudy over the course of a weekend when he came to Boston for an in-person appearance at my theatre. I was excited not only because I am a huge fan of his films, but because thanks to the Norton Records anthology "Hully Gully Fever", I had become a fan of his music as well. Before his comedy career, Rudy really wanted to be a successful R&B crooner. Sometimes known as Prince Dumar, he was recording and independently releasing a slew of rather good but never chart topping ditties in the 50's and 60s.

Listen To: Rudy Ray Moore, "Hully Gully Papa"

His R&B career was artistically rewarding, but didn't pay the bills. As Rudy himself told me, one day he was sitting in front of the barber shop and was listening to some of the men tell hilariously dirty stories in exchange for tips. Never one to pass up a cash cow, Rudy recorded some of these stories in a bragging, rhythmic, rhyming style of his own and a new career was born. One of the first proudly x-rated comedians, Rudy produced a string of self-distributed albums featuring luscious nude black ladies posing with Rudy on the cover and lascivious titles like: Let's Come Together, Eat Out More Often, This Pussy Belongs To Me, Cockpit, The Sensuous Black Man, I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing, Close Encounter of the Sex Kind, and This Ain't No White Christmas. Most of these gloriously rude comedy albums have been rereleased on CD, and Amazon has a slew of them for download.

One of Rudy's best albums is Dolemite For President, which is finally getting the CD reissue just after Election Day (hmmm....). Especially notable is the title skit, wherein Dolemite lays out his plan for a better America. Just last week while flipping through Brooklyn public access, I heard a DJ mistakenly play this bit of Rudy's mantra over the top of the community bulletin board notice for Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Yes, it did make me spit milk out my nose.

Sonic Youth's July 4th Concert Now Archived and Streaming at WFMU

(Pic: Jason Bergman) UPDATE: Sorry about the premature post, we've fixed the player problem after taking this post down yesterday, and it should be working AOK now. If you missed the live broadcast or couldn't attend Sonic Youth's big Battery Park show this past July 4th (carried on our airwaves live, and put on by River To River with special support from WFMU's Free Music Concert series) you've got a chance to check it out now; we're archiving and streaming to show here (and below). Many thanks to the band and their management, and to the fabulous Feelies for playing this event too (they're going to be at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ New Years Eve with Yo La Tengo and Vivian Girls on the bill). It's been a great 50th Anniversary year for free concerts/broadcasts related to WFMU, with this Battery bill as well as our Lincoln Center co-presentation with the Ex, Getatchew Mekuria, Alemayehu Eshete, Mahmoud Ahmed, Either/Orchestra and Extra Golden, plus this month's Wire/Times New Viking event the station produced at Irving Plaza. Our New York State Music Fund grant which helped make these shows happen is unfortunately done for the year, but we're hoping to have more events like these in the future.

Setlist for Sonic Youth:
WFMU Intro / She Is Not Alone / Bull in the Heather / Silver Rocket / Skip Tracer / The Sprawl / The World Looks Red / Jams Run Free / Hey Joni / Cross the Breeze / The Wonder / Hypertstation / Drunken Butterfly / Making the Nature Scene / Pink Steam / Schizophrenia / 100%.

Guitars are sounding particularly great/gnarly, and sound kudos goes to SY Mixman guru Aaron Mullan who passed it on to WFMU engineers Irene Trudel, Scott Williams, Diane Farris and Bill Bowen. Also, River To River posted a partial clip from "Silver Rocket" (which, also, by the way, appears on our new Volume 2 of our Free Music Archive CD samplers we were giving away at the Wire/Times New Viking WFMU show).

Kesäkatu (video)

In Finland there are always shadows, even in the middle of summer, and I don't think hot sidewalks are a problem either. However, all of this did not stop a Finnish singer named "Danny" to take on the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City". A great music video, complete with gigantic letters, tambourines, go-go dancers, and Finnish street scenes.

YouTube: [link]