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Tune in to The Best Show On WFMU tonight (8-11pm) to hear the one and only TED LEO and JON WURSTER live!
Ted is coming by to play some songs and have some fun, and he's got some awesome surprises up his sleeve. Jon will be doing some hilarious stuff, and again - he's got a sleeve as well, and there are also surprises up his too! It's gonna be a great time, so tune in and be entertained while making your pledges!
So plans are under way for WFMU’s annual two-week Marathon
fundraiser, and people are already laying odds on which DJ’s show Kelly will be
co-hosting when she first says “chocolate whizzway” or “man-hungry poon trap”
or some other completely inappropriate Kellyism on the air. (Plus,
“laying odds.”) The Marathon is a non-stop party, with all the Listener
Volunteers and random DJ Co-hosts showing up at the station, and communal food
and completely legal beverages, and crazy money-raising stunts. It’s a lot of
fun, and we love sharing it with the Listeners, and we love it when the
Listeners come through and support our totally Listener-supported radio station
for another year. Except, you know, last year the economy was really, really bad, and for the first time ever
we didn’t quite make our extremely modest fund-raising goal. So I have been
thinking about other ways we can make money, and here is another one: 21st-Century
Energy Resources!
This is a really exciting and totally Green thing we can
do. Scientists and Experts—and Hippies—are all aflutter over the awesome new
urine-based hydrogen fuel cell. Here is some sciencey info about it: “Because urea's four hydrogen atoms are less tightly
bound to nitrogen than the hydrogen bound to oxygen in water molecules, it
takes less energy to break them apart: just 0.37 volts applied across the cell,
against the 1.23 volts required to break down water. Thus the energy balance of
urea-derived hydrogen could be considerably better from start to finish than
projections for other methods of obtaining the combustible gas.” And, also, you
can get methane gas from feces, and that is a source of energy, too! All we
need is to get some DJs who can pee and poo on command, like Roger Ebert’s
dominatrix, and we will be sitting on a literal pot full of gold! And there’ll
be the added benefit of finally
ending the problems with the second-floor toilet just outside Studio A! And
Kelly can say “chocolate whizzway” whenever she wants to! It’s a wee-wee-wee,
win-win-win, all the way to the bank. Although there are people who drink their own urine—I used to work with one, at the Village Voice—but I don't think anyone at WFMU would be that selfish, I think it'll be one more way we can all contribute.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and thanks for supporting WFMU. And thanks to Listener See Wolf for the fine photo of Marathon 2008, above.
Blind people are just like us: they have needs. Plus they
are NOT just like us: They have no porno! There is already
an amazing website that provides spoken-word
descriptions of online porn for blind people, but it seems to be done by volunteers,
some of whom are better—a lot better—than others. Here are some tips:
1. Don’t bother telling blind people what color things are, they haven’t ever seen colors so it’s not that helpful. More helpful is the nice young lady who points out that the woman in the video has natural breasts and a belly-button piercing (“so that’s kind of fancy”). 2. Do not crack up as you describe the sexxxy scenes. As one guy’s friend angrily points out, “They don’t wanna hear laughin’ when they’re jackin’ it!” So true.
The other thing that is maybe not so good about
the free website is that they just use free teaser videos, so the scenes they
describe are all only about 20 seconds long. [A digression: In the mid-’80s
there were free phone numbers you could call to hear tape recordings of sexy
ladies describing naughty things. I think they were supposed to encourage you
to call for pay-for-it phone sex, but they were pretty awesome on their own,
and they were all definitely longer than 30 seconds. More like a couple
minutes, I think.]
A randomly timed visit to Odyssey and Oracle records in Portsmouth, NH, led to my meeting with the one-man musical über-project that is Enslaved by Owls. Here's how it went.... My friend Claudia herded me to the shop, a bit off Portsmouth's beaten path. O and O is a small store, with a lot of vinyl, and no particular genre slant. We walked in, and the clerk at the register was playing Satanic Warmaster clips on YouTube—a very good start, I thought. It seemed only sensible to present him with one of my business cards (yes, there are My Castle of Quiet business cards) and we talked black metal for a bit. Then, he said, "you should give one of your cards to my friend; he was in here a minute ago." The friend turned out to be Timothy Lang-Grannan, who walked up to me moments later with his CD in hand. "People tell me my music sounds like a combination of Vangelis and Burzum," he said. Timothy had no way of knowing who he was talking to, or that these were essentially the magic words. My attention commanded, I snapped up the first Enslaved by Owls CD (which I later learned was EBO IV), and it turned out to be by far the finest purchase of my mini-tour of New England.
Enslaved by Owls' music is a cinematic brooding of analog synths, eerie melodies, doom-laden rhythms and black metal vibes. These are horror soundtracks for films that don't exist yet, masterfully rendered in a home studio, and most certainly a perfect fit for my personal broadcasting niche. You can check out and buy the Enslaved by Owls CD at Timothy's Earth Human Records, as well as the forthcoming split release with Bad Life (Charles Hawkins of Memphis, TN.) You can also check out the EBO MySpace page, where the music is self-described as "scifi loner doom." There are four other EBO albums (I, II, III, and ITI), which were previously available for free as mp3 downloads (I am especially fond of EBO I - a perfect soundtrack vision, on a par with the works of Goblin and the aforementioned Vangelis.) All the EBO albums are excellent, and will be released in full or partial form in the near future by Earth Human. The Bad Life/Enslaved by Owls split will be available 1.2.2010.
Below are a few tracks on mp3 from EBO's cache of unreleased material.
Before the Ocean from EBO I
The Mold Standard from EBO III
The Future Is Looking Grim in F Major from ITI
Enslaved by Owls have also committed to contribute an exclusive track to the My Castle of Quiet WFMU 2010 Marathon premium, I Will Live Only Within the Fraction of a Second That Is This Moment.
WFMU's 24-Hour Marathon began last night at 7pm and runs until 7pm tonight!
Other ways to help WFMU this Fall:
WFMU prides itself on holding only one on-air fundraiser per year: our annual Marathon, which is a 2-week-long frenzy of great prize giveaways, hilarious co-host banter, surprise guests, and more caffeine than a case of Sparks (RIP). The listener support we bring in during the Marathon is normally enough to fuel our fire for a full year. While WFMU came very close to making our goal during the Marathon this March, we still fell short (I smell recession).
Because it's tough to operate with an empty bank account and there's an entire winter to get through until our next Marathon, WFMU needs to break with tradition by holding a brief on-air fundraiser next week.
This will be our first and hopefully last ever 24-Hour Marathon, and we will do our best to make sure it is chock-full of fun-loving antics and amazing giveaways. We hope you can help us out with a year-end donation, and be sure to tune in next Tues-Wed! The deets:
WFMU's 24-Hour MarathonWe've got a new t-shirt up for grabs (pictured above), as well as a fresh batch of DJ Premiums by Tom Scharpling, Terre T, Evan "Funk" Davies, Marty McSorley, Ken, Maria Levitsky, and Seven Second Delay. Check out our pledge page for details.
Motor/Mouth is a bi-weekly series featuring WFMU staff and their rides. This week we focus on that Number One Hit-maker, Michael Shelley, heard Saturdays, 10 AM - 1 PM... and we remind you this is the last day of Marathon 2009 - so PLEDGE! Don't forget the big Hoof & Mouth Finale begins tonight around 7 PM and you can join us in person at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ (yes, the public is welcome!).
Main form of transportation: 2007 Honda Fit.
Mileage: about 30,000
Where did you get it? Dealership in Caldwell, NJ
What made you pick it? had the proper ratio of reliability/cost and the salesman at the Toyota dealership across the street was rude to us.
How long have you owned it? Since Oct 2006.
How much longer will you keep it? Not sure - but probably till at least Oct 2011.
Favorite thing about it: It has not broken or needed any service besides the regular oil changes etc.
Least favorite thing about it: Impossible to lock/unlock all doors from anywhere but drivers side AND no aux plug for my iPod.
What is your dream form of transportation? Fly like a bird.
Anything else you’d like to mention: About a dozen strangers have stopped me on the street, in parking lots etc, to ask me about it. CD player has an interesting feature: as you accelerate the volume automatically goes up. While Driving on the Garden State Parkway someone dropped a brick on the windshield.
Only four days remain in WFMU's annual fundraising Marathon and we're just about two thirds of the way to our goal.
Another great way to help WFMU's 2009 Marathon is to post WFMU marathon notices on your page.
Facebookers can join our WFMU Marathon event here, and add the marathon badge/app here.
Bloggers and MySpacers can put an insta-pledge box on your site. We have two versions - the horizontal insta-pledge box, or the vertically oriented model designed for the side columns of blogs. Just cut and paste the code for the boxes into the html section of your webpage and include a heartfelt plea about how great WFMU is.
Tweeters, spread the word and use our hashtag of #wfmuthon.
Thanks, and pass it on!
One late autumn afternoon in 1987 I walked into the basement of Upsala College’s Froeberg Hall, where TKF was doing his radio show on WFMU. He was positively giddy with schadenfraude: the stock market was down, was crashing, was destroyed! It struck me as curious, like, why should we care? Nobody we knew had enough money to invest in stock. In fact, a lot of FMU’s DJs in those days had to carefully consider whether or not they could afford the $10 or so that it cost each week to go round-trip to the station in East Orange. Like, could they really afford to do a show? Plus, this was in the days before the Internet, so I’m not sure how TKF was even following the story. Was someone phoning him with updates? Did he have a little radio in the studio so he could listen to the news? Was he just making it up, and somehow projecting his thoughts into reality via mystical DJ powers?
Today the entire economy is collapsing again, but this time we have the Internet so there’s the happy prospect of watching rich people blog about how dreadful it is to be forced to give up their vacation homes and chauffeured Rolls Royce autos. And I am not making that up. Good old Gawker has been documenting the trend under the general heading THE POORS. My favorite so far has been formerly rich magazine editor Alexandra Penney, who is now writing on Daily Beast about the terrible, terrible trials of adjusting to her new economic status. And she has a book deal to tell you all about it, too!
Now, as in 1987, as in forever, the underemployed show-offs who present their shows on WFMU do not get paid by the station. The station itself doesn’t get paid by anyone—it’s completely Listener-supported. And now, as always, WFMU runs one annual on-air fund-raising marathon to raise the money it needs to stagger through another year. But this year there are some extra problems—we need to move our transmitter, the tenant in our building has quit paying rent, and so on. (Station Manager Ken explained it all on a show last Saturday that you can hear archived here.) And of course this year’s economy isn’t making it any easier for us. But I like to look on the bright side: Our beloved Listeners, our Poors, mostly still have their crappy, underpaid jobs. They didn’t have that much to lose, so that means they can give just as much as they always managed to scrape together to keep FMU around. Some formerly rich guy may have to sacrifice membership in his private club, but YOU don’t have to give up a thing: You can have just as much WFMU as ever. All you gotta do is pledge.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless WFMU.
While people like Harvey Levin have made the art of hosting a program a mere reduction of eye-rolling and clutching an overgrown child's sippy-cup, some of us in the contemporary media want to work for your respect, and entertain, dammit. So it's a serious thing when the Hoboken's Yo La Tengo (joined by their pal and sometimes-WFMU Speakeasy sidekick Bruce Bennett) go live with mistress and master of ceremonies Pseu Braun and Gaylord Fields to create some of the best and most spontaneous radio of WFMU's annual marathon this Friday night, March 13th from 8-11 PM. It's an annual ritual (and one documented in the past on CD here): YLT come to WFMU's aid yearly by taking your requests for cover songs, any cover songs at all, in exchange for your pledge to the station. It's the last week of the fundraiser, so if you've missed out, get in. It's all to support the greatest independent radio station in the land, who vow to never interrupt Jerry Bruckheimer's dinner to ask him on mic what he thought of the Chimpanzee lady. Though WFMU's Kenny G did plop himself down with Asha Bhosle when she was chowing once to ask her what she thought of Robert Ashley operas.
Last night's star-studded fundraising marathon edition of The Best Show On WFMU was a tremendous success. Tom Scharpling, AP Mike, and celebrity guests Ted Leo, Aimee Mann, Paul F. Tompkins, and John Hodgman pulled in a whopping $61,000 to help keep the world's best radio show and best radio station on the air for another year. But we're still far, far away from our goal of $1.2 million! We need to raise another $450,000 by the end of Sunday night, so please KEEP PLEDGING and keep reminding your friends to pledge, too!
Tom Scharpling
More photos of last night's Best Show after the jump...
The
important question about Ian Curtis is not so much "why?" as "who?" What bizarre
concoction of humanity led to that pale glare through sad eyes, that earnest
intensity, that rigor-mortis twist, those haunting, opaque lyrics? I didn't get the answer from Anton Corbijn's otherwise gorgeously filmed and
serviceable 2007 bio-feature Control.
Samantha Morton, a wonderful actor to watch, played a full-blooded
Deborah Curtis, complex, touchable and sympathetic. Conversely, Sam Riley's Ian
Curtis is almost completely bloodless, empty—except for the fact that the actor
perfectly animated Curtis' look and physicality as a masterful mimic. Since the film was based on Deborah Curtis'
book about her life with the singer, perhaps this hollowness is somehow to the
point of the narrative. Curtis may just
have been a cracked actor, like the creation of his beloved Bowie. I've got the spirit, but lose the feeling. Feeling-feeling-feeling...feel-ing!
In
my own ridiculous way, I have sought the soul of Ian Curtis, through
contemplative hours of listening to Joy Division's music, the Warsaw tapes
etc. So when WFMU got the Factory flexi
disc of "Incubation" (back in the middle 80s), I was inspired to
allow my Curtis worship to take the form of parody, since
"Incubation" is an instrumental that just begs for some lyrics,
crying out for a treatment by way of the Closer LP. Apologies in advance...
Bonus
track: "Means to an End" WFMU
Marathon Promo
And before you mock, remember that I was about 23 when I did this, the same age Ian Curtis was when he hung himself. We all make some unfortunate choices at that age.
If you enjoy my bi-weekly posts here on Beware of the Blog, you can also check in with me daily at My Castle of Quiet.
All hands on deck: WFMU is approaching our once-a-year fundraising Marathon!
Unlike many other droll and dour public radio beg-a-thons, your pals here at Freeform Headquarters make sure our Marathon is spastic, exciting, and a little bit dangerous. Be sure to tune in to WFMU March 2nd - 15th for some very special programming including DJ tag teams, on-air stunts, prize giveaways, and on March 13th (8-11pm) Yo La Tengo will play cover song requests for your pledges. Marathon time is also an excuse for DJs to play their favorite hits, so the tunes are sure to be choice.
We've got a new line of swag including t-shirts, a coupon pack, a locked-groove LP, hoodies, and tons of great DJ Premiums for the taking! Check out the mountains of goodies and make your pledge right here.
Early pledges help us a lot, and for those who can make a paid pledge of $180 or more by March 8th can claim naming rights to an item or person at WFMU. Check out our virtual adoption gallery to view the fixtures and DJs in need of your generous attention.
You may have noticed that this blog, WFMU's programming, website, podcasts, playlists, archives, and live streams never contain any advertisements, sponsors, or underwriting (a complete anomaly these days even among non-commercial outlets). This is because we are supported entirely by listeners, freeing us from money with strings attached, and allowing us to provide you with all of the crazy fun and magic you see here. We hope you can help us keep it that way!
The current issue (#50) of the excellent experimental and improvised music magazine Signal To Noise prominently features a terrific article on your favorite Freeform Radio avatars (that's us). Writer Jesse Jarnow spent some quality time with us during our 2008 fundraising Marathon back in March, earned our trust, and got some choice quotes to accompany his keen observations (and largely accurate historical details). A few of us even got our pictures in the paper, thanks to the very pleasing photographic efforts of Caroline Bell. Not Station Manager Ken though - he got cut out of the group shot, probably because of the ridiculous slogan on his "funny" t-shirt.
The entire article, as jpgs:
Table of Contents | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8
And here's the whole thing as a single pdf (thanks Doron!)
Here we wrap it up: the final batch of videos from the last night of the Marathon, back on March 9th at Maxwell's. All 36 videos shall live here forevermore.
These vids were shot by Phil Catalano, Taso Stefanidis, and Evan Savitt and lovingly edited by Bryce.
The Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia is our inhouse karaoke band, lead by yours truly, and starring the following major gents:
Drums: Evan "Funk" Davies, Bryce Kretschmann, Irwin Chusid
Bass: Mac, Matt Fiveash
Guitar: Brian Turner, Scott Williams
Fiddle / Theremin: PGB
Keyboard: David Goldman
Sax: Chris Stubbs
Engineers: Gil Shuster, Irene Trudel, Carson Kopp
Images by notladj
The videos:
31 Todd-o-phonic Todd, "I'm a No-Count" by Ty Wagner
Continue reading "Hoof and Mouth Videos 2008 (Part 5 of 5)" »
OK, we're almost there!
Here's another batch of videos from the 8th annual Marathon Finale featuring our very own in-house karaoke band, the Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia. These were shot back on March 9th, live at Maxwell's, and this here's the fourth set, out of five. Tomorrow we wrap this up, and all the vids shall live forever together, with props to all the beautiful people who made it happen, right here.
23 PGB, "Supreme Evil" (Supremes / ELO mashup) by Go Home Productions
Continue reading "Hoof and Mouth Videos 2008 (Part 4 of 5)" »
Here's another batch of videos from the 8th annual Marathon Finale featuring our very own in-house karaoke band, the Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia. These were shot back on March 9th, live at Maxwell's, and this here's the third set. All the vids, featuring tech & band credits, shall be stashed in perpetuity here. Over the next several days, we'll be posting videos from all the evening's performances, so keep checking this space.
16 Maria Levitsky, "King's Lead Hat" by The Dirtbombs (covering Eno)
Continue reading "Hoof and Mouth Videos 2008 (Part 3 of 5)" »
Here's 9 more videos from our annual Night Of A Thousand DJs, the Marathon Finale. These were shot back on March 9th, live at Maxwell's. This here's the second set - witness the entire first set, featuring tech & band credits, here. Over the next several days, we'll be posting videos from all the evening's performances, so keep checking this space.
7 Woody, "When You Come Around" by Charlie Feathers
Continue reading "Hoof and Mouth Videos 2008 (Part 2 of 5)" »
