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This is the second and final week of WFMU's fundraising Marathon and we are still less than halfway to our goal, which must be met by Sunday, March 17th! Make a pledge now!
Special highlights this week:
TONIGHT - Tuesday, March 12 (9pm-mid)
A.C. Newman and John Hodgman join Tom Scharpling on the Best Show on WFMU for 3 hours of mirth, music, and mayhem! Tune in to win killer prizes, and watch it all go down on our live video feed at wfmu.org. Pledge to the Best Show using this link.
Thursday, March 14 (9am-noon)
Yo La Tengo play your cover song requests in exchange for pledges of $100 or more on Hello Children with Faye and co-host Gaylord Fields! Pledge to the Yo La Tengo request-a-thon NOW fromthis page, or tune in to pledge live.
Hello, dear eyeballs — Tony Coulter here. For this year's marathon, I've compiled a collection of great unreleased tracks, dubbed Out Demos Out!
One of the contributors, Doyle Dean of Utility Project, whipped up a video to go with his track and I thought I'd share it with you today. Out Demos Out! will automatically be yours for a donation of $75 to my show, which airs on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio stream, Tuesdays, 12 – 3pm (ET).
Artists on the comp include the following musical
greats: Anode, Bene Gesserit, Sebastian Bradt, Charlene Darling,
Dymaxion, Fantastic Palace (Alexander Ross), Larry Mondello Band, K.
Leimer, Look de Bouk, People Like Us, Rascal Reporters, Tom Recchion,
Toupidek Limonade, Utility Project, Walls of Genius, and Yximalloo.
Congressional Republican economy terrorists have been
holding the country hostage for a while now—Sequester! Fiscal Cliff! Debt
Ceiling! Meet All Our Crazypants Demands or We’ll Blame Obama!—and people who
don’t enjoy negotiating with terrorists have been looking for a way around
dealing with them. How can we keep paying our bills if there’s no money in the
bank? Well, one obvious way would be to print some more money.
Technically, the Government can’t print more money, but the Federal Reserve can. (They are not the same thing
and if you don’t know this, that is because you are not a nutbucket conspiracy
theorist like me. Most normal people do not know how the Fed works.) BUT: Back
in 2011, a Constitutional law professor at Yale started talking about an idea
to take advantage of the one way in which the Government can mint more money: commemorative coins! The Secretary of the
Treasury is allowed (31 USC § 5112!) to strike platinum
coins in any denomination. So all the Secretary of the Treasury has to do is to
mint two one-trillion-dollar platinum coins, deposit them with the Federal
Reserve, and hey presto! It’s all good. (And go to hell, Repubican
economy terrorists.)
The trillion-dollar-coin idea started being talked up again
a couple months ago, as the Sequester approached, and it was even endorsed by
some Celebrity Economists, but in the end Jacob Lew was confirmed as the new
Secretary of the Treasury and even if he tried to issue The Coin, no one can
read his handwriting and the Treasury would probably just issue a couple of
platinum Slinkys instead.
Still, I do believe we could apply the trillion-dollar-coin principle
to raising money to support WFMU.
When Former Cohost Jay and I decided to
produce our own Thunk Tank currency (the Bieb, the official currency of
Iceland!) we discovered that it is illegal for anyone but the Government to
issue specie (coins), but anyone can issue paper money. (So we did.)
Why should we continue with the annual Marathon and the Record Fair and the
Secret Off-Air October fundraiser and the Superstorm Sandy Wrecked the Station
Special Appeal and Station Manager Ken in a Lawn Chair Attached to Weather Balloons, going back to the Listeners for their support again and again, just because
we’re a Listener-Supported station? (And God bless the Listeners, they have been
fantastic!)
All Station Manager Ken has to do is issue a 1-milion Bieb
note (which trades at a rate of 1 Bieb to 1 US dollar), deposit the note in the
WFMU bank account, and then pay all our bills! (Or just deposit 10,000 100-Bieb
notes, because I think there are plenty of them lying around the station from Thunk
Tank’s overproduced Marathon premiums.) Assuming the bank that has the WFMU
bank account will accept it for deposit, which maybe they will not.
Alas, the one- trillion-dollar coin is not to be. The main
problem seems to have been that it would have called attention to the fact that
our entire economy is based on the fiction of fiat currency and debt. So I will
never be able to add the Biden Commemorative $1 trillion dubloon to my
collection, and I also still have never got a Guam quarter, either, so what’s
up with that? You can still use your Federal Reserve-issued currency to support WFMU, though, so go to wfmu.org and make your pledge now.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and thanks for supporting WFMU.
All new and current Swag for Life members are eligible to receive our new messenger bag, and early pledgers get first dibs on adopting a WFMU DJ or fixture!
Yo La Tengo will be playing cover song requests in exchange for pledges on Thursday, March 14th (9am-noon) on Hello Children with Faye and co-host Gaylord Fields, and WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia
close out the Marathon on Sunday March 17th with drunken live band
karaoke.
Don't miss out on our biggest on-air bash of the year!
It feels like we are livin' a dream. Unfortunately, it's not a very good one here in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Our thoughts go out to everyone who was affected by the disaster, and we are seeking your input as we compile a list of ways to help (map for NYC | Nonsense List Resources | OccupySandy).
The super storm hit WFMU at full force, knocking out both of our transmitters (91.1 is still down), taking out our phones lines and kocking out electricity at our studios, including our live stream.
The water levels and lack of public transportation made it impossible to get to WFMU's blacked-out building for much of the week. Even with the stream down and Clay Pigeon & Therese trapped stranded at the station, WFMU's commenters continued to chat on our playlist. By mid-day Tuesday, a network of DJs revived our live stream from undisclosed locations like Doug Schulkind's Studio P, Dan Bodah's living room and Irwin's bunker (pictured L with Station Manager Ken, photo by John Dalton).
Fortunately, everybody from the WFMU staff is safe, and miraculously WFMU's basement did not flood, despite the Hudson River coming within 50 feet of our front door. But we are just beginning to unravel significant water & electrical damage to our facilities and equipment, forcing us into Disaster Marathon Mode.
Meanwhile, you may have seen what happened at the ConEd plant that powers lower Manhattan...
Record Fair is Cancelled and it's All Sandy's Fault
Due to the havoc, chaos, lack of electricity in NYC and general sludge based misery (who knew there was so much sludge in the world?) following Hurricane Sandy, we've had no choice but to call off the Record Fair. We're very sorry about this, but the Metropolitan Pavilion has no power, mass transit in NYC is still not working and there are no estimates as to when electric or transit will return to normal and we don't want a whole Mad Max thing on our hands. All dealers will be refunded their payments, and the Fair will return in the Fall of 2013. And this new 'Future Fair' will be even better, with flowing white robes, a teleportation booth and floating symetrical rings adorning everything. And a bonus performance from the recently cloned John Denver! All kidding aside, the cancellation of the record fair is a financial disaster for us: it turns an event that would've raised $70,000 into an event that loses almost that much.
Silent Fundraiser Extended
Thank you to everyone who has already given to our silent fundraiser which comes up during this time of year that our coffers run low. It is your support that helps us overcome ridiculous obstacles like the ones we are now facing.
Unfortunately, with all the damaged gear we're now discovering, and with the cancellation of the Record Fair, WFMU needs your supportnow more than ever to keep us afloat. Our silent fundraiser will be extended a few extra weeks, giving us more time to raise the funds we need to get through the next few months and to hopefully make up for lost income due to the Record Fair going kaput. Pledge now and please help spread the word because we need your help to get through this very difficult time. Money can't buy you love, but it can buy transmitter codecs, computer servers, and all the other stuff a radio station needs to regain (ab)normalcy.
October is getting really scary for us here at WFMU... The month is nearly over and we have yet to hit the 50% mark for our silent fundraising goal! Help save the station from insolvency with your pledge.
Snag our new turntable t-shirt (designed by Nick Dewar) for a pledge of $50 or more.
Better yet, grab the shirt AND our incredible holiday music compilation, "WFMU's War on Christmas" for a pledge of $100. The holiday comp has an exclusive, unreleased version of "Jesus Christ" by Big Star, plus tracks by James Pants, Klaus Nomi, the Reigning Sound, and more!
This week, WFMU launched into silent fundraiser mode with our 31 Days of October campaign, and it is going strong! In an effort to pay our bills without resorting to a second pledge drive, we decided it was better to come up with a month of incredible on-air specials, listener meet-ups, and events (while taking pledges online and through the mail).
This fall, we are offering some great new swag: our Turntable T-shirt designed by Nick Dewar, and a compilation of holiday music called "WFMU's War on Christmas" (CD + MP3 disc) with cover artwork by Mayuko Fujino.
Do not miss out on the holiday compilation, it contains an exclusive unreleased mix of "Jesus Christ" by Big Star, plus tracks by James Pants, Klaus Nomi, the Reigning Sound, and more!
It's an annual WFMU Marathon tradition! Yo La Tengo plays requests in exchange for pledges live on WFMU TONIGHT, Friday March 2nd, (9pm - midnight, EST) on Pseu's Thing with a Hook, hosted by Pseu Braun and Gaylord Fields.
Pledge $100 and have your request ready to fire! You can use this link to submit your pledge and song request in advance.
We'll be hosting a live video stream of the performance at wfmu.org, but the show won't be archived, so don't miss out!
WFMU's 2012 Fundraising Marathon continues through March 4th!
Hey folks! It's last call to send in your submissions to be a part of the marathon premium for my radio show, "Supercuts Supercut". Here's what you do - download this new and improved software, the "Supercut-O-Matic Plus" and let it automatically cut a music playlist of your choice into Gysin-sized amounts. Send me the results (contact info's in the software) and my favorite submissions will be published and distributed to FMU's generous donors. For a sample of what you can make with this software, check out 10 seconds from every top 100 hit ever.
The first release of Supercut-O-Matic limited users to 10 second clips, but this version has many more options for customizing your cut-up - you can control how long each clip is, the crossfade length, and control several features of the song analysis mechanism. It's really easy to use and works its magic in a few minutes.
Supercut-O-Matic Plus for Windows(note: This only works if your file path has no spaces in it - ie, "c:\myfolder\myfile.mp3" rather than "c:\my folder\my file.mp3". I'll fix that bug asap...)
But wait! There's more! I've already received a bunch of amazing submissions. This is a great CD and it's getting better every day. But for you to hear 'em, you have to pledge to my show. Help me reach my goal before the marathon ends Sunday! Hit pledge below. Hit it!
FMU is full of luddites, but Mac tops them all. As usual, tonight he'll be playing songs only on wax cylinder and other playback devices from the earliest era of recorded sound. But tonight's special, because he's raising money for our marathon! Listen in and support tonight at 8. Thanks to Yvonne for filming.
Seriously, I was trying to think of what I wanted to say this week, but this animated gif is more eloquent than I could ever be. We're halfway through the WFMU marathon now and I felt I should take this opportunity to talk about how great FMU is, and how lucky I feel to play my small role in this cultural pirate utopia, but, you know...this guy is flying through the air riding a goddamn alligator. An alligator of all things!
It's true, pledgers to 7 Second Delay raised enough money last Wednesday to win an enviable prize - Andy will be crucified on a vinyl cross that's been kicking around the station, largely unused for years. More info here. Video by Yvonne.
In 1959, Billboard began releasing their annual charts of the top 100 songs of each year. Here are mp3s with 10 seconds of every single top 100 song ever. Follow the lists along with the music on this site. There are some errors here, so bear with me and do point out major imperfections in the comments. If you've been following my column in the past, all of these mp3s are improved versions, with crossfades in between tracks and smarter choices of clips.
I produced these supercuts with a software that Frederic Cornu and I developed together. Fred is a genius and I'm eternally grateful to him. This software is VERY SIMPLE to use and 100% FREE. It simply takes a music playlist of your choice (from iTunes or a similar program), finds the loudest point of each song and stitches all the songs together. These supercuts are useful to condense information and I think they're totally beautiful too.
In a few minutes, you can easily make supercuts of your music collection, even if you are a luddite. Download the file below, unzip the folder and click "Run Supercut-O-Matic"...there'll be a button to press in the program to give you further instructions.
UPDATE! You can get improved versions of the Supercut-O-Matic at this link. The new version gives you more options, such as changing the size of each clip, the crossfade, and more!
Once you've made your files, send them to me (contact info is provided in the program's helpme file) and I will release YOUR MUSIC on a CD! Do you have a completist collection of yodeling music, blues singers, minimal-synth, presidential speeches or tuba solos? Use Supercut-O-Matic and SEND ME THE RESULTS! Please do contact me with any feedback.
"Supercuts Supercut", a CD with the best submissions I get, is available to anybody who pledges $75 or more to my radio show in the current WFMU fundraising marathon! Use the widget below to pledge to the greatest radio station on the planet and help us broadcast for another year. Also, if you pledge $30 or more to my show, I will remix a top 100 song of your choice LIVE on the air.
WFMU's 2012 Marathon is officially underway! Tune in now through March 4th to hear all your favorite DJs doing their thing to the utmost with special co-hosts, swag, and prizes galore.
We've also put together a fine batch of DJ Premiums. Any of these handcrafted CDs are available for a pledge of $75 or more.
Unlike in previous years, we won't be posting DJ Premium samples to this blog.
Instead, you can sip on daily mp3 teasers at the shiny new WFMU Marathon Tumblr. There, you'll also find a freeform mix of music, animated gifs, hyperlinks and mixed up media from throughout WFMU's extended universe. We're using this fluid format to highlight the many layers of WFMU's annual radio party without overwhelming our regular blog readers.
As you probably are aware, the WFMU Annual Fundraising Marathon starts next Monday, Feb 20th (well, you know now, don'tcha?). As the staff goes into this undertaking, the word PLEDGE gets repeated over and over again in a relatively short period of time. After awhile, the word goes unnoticed, yet it's an odd word just the same. We pledge allegiance to the flag, or at least sometime in our lives we Americans have been asked to do so. Our country is certainly enjoying watching the disorderly process the Republicans have been undertaking to determine who might lead the USA in that important pledge of allegiance next January 20th. It's not a leap year word per se, but the word pledge certainly seems to have something to do with leaping, jumping, dancing or urging in some way. And I know you're all dying to go and spray your furniture at the moment..
The Pledge Music site has been garnering attention; it's tag line is: "the new business of making music." Yes; it's that word again. Poking through the site, I found some familiar faces who are in the midst of putting together new recording projects, and asking (with rewards attached) the public for a little push of their own. Friend of WFMU, Hugh Cornwell's Pledge Music campaign for his new record "Totem and Taboo" ends in 45 days; Richard Barone's putting out a reissue on the 25th anniversary of his "Cool Blue Halo" release, and there are 26 days left in the campaign Ian McCulloch has on the same site for his next solo record. It's a busy time in pledge-land!
I will leave you with a lovely duet: Art-Brut and Hugh Cornwell with a great version of the Stranglers' Dutchess, posted yesterday on Soundcloud.com; eagle-eyed by WFMU's own Evan "Funk" Davies! Feast your ears, and yes, of course, sorry to mention it, please don't forget to pledge!
WFMU's 2012 Marathon is approaching! Our annual on-air party throws down Feb 20th - Mar 4th.
Check out the new 2012 swag, featuring our Biker T-shirt designed by Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale (left), a truckload of new DJ Premiums, and more!
Yo La Tengo will be playing cover song requests in exchange for pledges on Friday, March 2nd (9pm-mid) on Pseu Braun's show with co-host Gaylord Fields, and WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia close out the Marathon on Sunday March 4th with drunken live band karaoke. Don't miss out on our biggest on-air bash of the year!
Shock & Awetobercontinues on WFMU! Tune in for amazing special programs this month and don't miss out on our many social activities. We've got tons of listener meet-ups lined up, and hope you'll join us for some extracirricular fun:
Tuesday, Oct 11th - Jersey City Barcade Night Get your beer on at Barcade in Jersey City (163 Newark Ave) with Beer Hear! hosts Bob W. and B.R. (4-9pm). Make new friends (or enemies) over Frogger or Asteroids! Barcade is generously donating all tips from the evening to WFMU, so drink up! info/RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 18th - Aerial View Beer Pull Join Chris T. and WFMU's resident Beer Baron Scott Williams (6 PM) at Pilsener Haus & Biergarten in Hoboken (1422 Grand Street) for a LIVE Aerial View Beer Pull and WFMU listener meet-up. Use the secret word LIEBERSTRAUM during the broadcast to buy one beer and get one free! Auf wiedersehn! info/RSVP
ALSO Tuesday, Oct 18th - Shut Up, Weirdo! Meet-Up Come have an awkward drink with Andy, Frangry, and the rest of the weirdos at the first ever Shut Up, Weirdo Meet-Up (Luca Lounge, 222 Ave B, Manhattan)! There won't be any games or cotton candy, just some booze and a whole lot of regret. info/RSVP
Thursday, Oct 20th - WFMU Rock Jock Listener Meet-Up Come down to Maxwell's in Hoboken to celebrate WFMU's Rocktober festivities (7-9 PM)! WFMU DJs Terre T, Joe Belock, Evan "Funk" Davies, Gaylord Fields, Mike Sin and the one and only Todd-O-Phonic Todd will be in the house, and you can expect free food and drink specials! info/RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 25th - Thunk Tank Trick-or-Treat Meet-Up Join Bronwyn, Jay, and Thunkers galore at Jo's, 264 Elizabeth St., NYC for a live remote broadcast and scary story hour featuring readings by DJ's Amanda Nazario, Kurt Gottschalk, Bronwyn C., and Jay B. (6–9 PM, live broadcast from 7–8). There'll be treat bags o' swag for all, and Jo's will introduce the Thunk Tank Signature Cocktail! Costumes, masks, and furry outfits encouraged, because you gotta dress up to be on the radio! info/RSVP
This Fall, we're experimenting with silent fundraising, with hopes that it will be successful enough to prevent us from needing to fundraise over the air more than once a year.
We encourage you to pledge to specific radio shows on WFMU to help your favorite DJs reach their individual goals by Oct 31st.
Now that WFMU's 2011 Marathon is but a happy speck in our rearview mirror, it's time to start mailing out mountains of swag to everyone who supported us. If you've pledged, thanks so much for your patience... it usually takes us a few months to get all the swag out in the mail. We've already begun sending out T-shirts and stickers, while other items continue to roll in.
One item I was particularly excited about producing this year was a glow-in-the-dark map of New Jersey. And I just can't help but show off the "daytime" version of the glow map, which was designed by Wolfy of Kayrock Screenprinting (and the band Red Dawn II). Much more NJ lore lurks when the lights go out...
If you missed out on the Marathon, but MUST get your hands on this poster, do not fret, you can still make a pledge (of $180 or $15/mo) to receive the map along with other great WFMU goodies.
And if swag is a motivator for you, don't even get me started on how incredible the WFMU bottle opener keychain turned out... Our sample was already swiped! Pledge $365 (or $30.42/mo) to get one for yourself.
