WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Saints Preserve Us From Peter Frampton

The Saints came all the way from Australia to play live on Terre T's Cherry Blossom Clinic yesterday. You can hear their set here in streaming MP3, or here in streaming Realaudio. And here is a short video clip of them performing in WFMU's Love Room (avi video file, right-click to download).

As they were loading in, Chris Bailey from the band informed me that, if it werent for The Saints, we'd still be playing Peter Frampton. Taken aback, I informed him that we never stopped playing Peter Frampton (realaudio). He then gave me a big bear hug and licked me all over my face. OK,  that didnt actually happen. Except for the Peter Frampton part. And the licking.

I know a secret about Goo and you

Apparently I'm not the only one who secretly wishes Stanley Kubrick had concluded his 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove" with the originally scripted ending (an apocalyptically messy food fight between the characters in the war room). "Gunge" is a movement born of outward lust for slapstick, and inward love of the womb. Do I dare make a graph showing the rise of the gunge phenomenon in proportion to plummeting rentals of "Three Stooges" DVDs (which was obviously a secret front for gunge during the prohibition years). But even more daring, do I make the claim that slime is chauvinist?

Cookie Monster Karaoke

And speaking of Cookie Monster Vocals, follow the bouncing ball with Growl Karaoke. (flash animation, via del.icio.us)

Electronic Musical Toys of the 60's and 70's

Here's a great collection of electronic musical toys from 1954 to the late 80's, including the Shaun Cassidy Electronic Organ, the Bee Gees Rhythm Machine and Mattel's Magical Musical Thing. For a more grownup version of the same thing, visit the Synthmuseum, where you can find the old WFMU favorite, the Optigan.

Taking toys like this and hacking away at their innards is now known as circuit bending, and there's no circuit bender quite like the Norweigan musical outsider Tore Honoré Bøe, who is also the king of aliases. His homemade musical laptops are things of beauty, and also earned him a place on tour with Einsturzende Neubauten. Thanks, listener Bas!

The Fifty Worst Hairstyles of All Time

And they missed choppa-style! Link, via Cynical C-Blog.

Chamber Muzak MP3s from Real Fish

In 1990, our Program Director picked up a batch of dollar LPs from the local Tower Records annex. Amid the dross were three albums from a Japanese band called Real Fish. Little is known about the band - they were somehow related to the great Japanese producer Haruomi Hosono (of Yellow Magic Orchestra), and all three of their records came out on the Invitation label. But the music was unique and fascinating - it has elements of Japanese muzak and allusions to the "new chamber" stuff that was floating around Europe at the time (Belgian bands like Julverne - realaudio clip). But it's on the undescribeable side, which is why I love it so much. If only all muzak were half this intelligent. Here are mp3s of seven tracks from their two albums - the aply titled A Very Big Band in Heaven (1984) and When the World Was Young (1987).

1. White Gloves  2. Rendezvous  3. When The World Was Young  4. Monday  5. Beach Parasol  6. Parade   7. Size of Love

Cleaning Out My Inbox

It's time once again to purge these items out of my inbox before they start to grow fuzz all over them. Then I can get back to preparing some new MP3 posts.

* Why did someone leave this video clip of Kenny G and Irwin doing karaoke to The Carpenters in my Studio C folder? Dont they know how dangerous leaving stuff like this laying around is? (avi video file)

* Virtual mumblypeg. The screaming is the best part.

* My beloved Latvia is a 33 to 1 longshot in the Eurovision betting pool. And how in the world can Wigwam generate 4 to 1 odds?!

* Vinyl as a visual medium.

* The amazing real-time World-O-Meter.

* Keep the Freesound project handy for the day the MP3 police show up at your front door.

* Captain Tolerance says: Change Your Race!

* Buy My Fucking Ringtone (nsfw)

* Break out the sunscreen!

* Everything you need to pass a piss test, including the prosthetic penis. (nsfw)

* Another way to postpone aging. (streaming wmv file)

* The endless Zoom Quilt.

* The musical preferences of British politicians.

* Finally, a site dedicated to Brainfreeze.

Thanks Erella, Bill, Bryce, John from Oslo, b3ta, eyebeam, fazed, del.icio.us

Draaiorgel!

These beautifully ornate Dutch street organs, or "Draaiogels" populate Holland streets.  Some beefy thick-neck turns a crank and the mechanical organ churns out a tune.

I once conversed with a Holland native on Soulseek about these organs:

"I hate them.  They're operated by drunkards, usually with their retarded brother, always smoking a cigar.  Then they get very belligerent when you don't give them money.  I hate them"

I would rather have these beauties on the street  than your average busker bleating out bland renditions of Billy Joel songs!

Dutch Street Organ - De Vijf Beelden (mp3)
Dutch Street Organ - De Arabier (mp3)
Dutch Street Organ - De Vijf Beelden (mp3)

Draaiorgel website - complete with info on collections, events and CDs.

Fuck fest

After an inexplicable absence from the headlines, fuck has resurfaced...

Just today, a news reporter on WCBS in NYC let "What the fuck is your problem, man?!" slip during a live broadcast, after being punk'd by a few XM satellite radio shock jocks. Oh video footage, where art thou? Alas, it must be too soon for the mighty google to retrieve that nugget.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (their version of the FCC) recently ruled against fuck on the radio. FM station CHOM was slapped on the wrist for airing the song “Locked in the Trunk of a Car” by the Tragically Hip during the daytime, which contains the following objectionable lyrics:

Morning broke out the backside of a truck-stop
the end of a line a real, rainbow-likening, luck stop  
where you could say I became chronologically fucked up.

Sociopaths - they're gonna make it after all!

Having long suspected sociopathic tendencies within myself, and realizing that the pot calling the kettle black is sometimes the only way towards true enlightenment, join me below, as I look in the mirror and offer a confession, suspicious rant, public service announcement on the nature of the sociopath, followed by a link to two fantastic articles (by Texas writer Glenna Whittle) from the Dallas Observer about a particularly noteworthy specimen (left) named Sandra Bridewell.

Testicles + Truth = Hope

On Tuesday, British MP George Galloway came before the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to deny his alleged involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. Instead of meekly defending his honor to the big bad senators, in his opening statement Galloway delivered perhaps the most powerful, eloquent and concise condemnation of the Iraq War that any group of war lovin’ American politicians has ever had to sit through. (Excluding the floor speeches of Robert Byrd, who may be eloquent and powerful but is rarely concise)

One Dull Memo

From the National Archives in D.C., this just might be the coolest and the dullest memo ever written.

Jim Hawthorne - The First Freeform Radio DJ Ever

For many years, I subscribed to the conventional wisdom that freeform radio got its start on KPFA in Berkely, the first non-commercial radio station in the country, and the cornerstone of the Pacifica Radio anti-empire. In the mid-Fifites, story has it, some late night DJs at KPFA began to experiment with formats, techniques and illicit substances, even going so far as to do the occasional audio collage!

Then I heard Jim Hawthorne, and I had to rewrite the history of freeform radio, at least in my own head.

Let Them Sing It For You

Yes, it knows the F word. Thank you Radio Sweden.

Stop Me Before I Euro-Disco Again

Question: What do you call a batch of Danish hippies cavorting in a field with a trio of gyrating Indian maidens?

Answer: I dont know, but watch it here and don't avert your eyes.  (right click to download mpg)

More importantly, does this mean I have to create a separate category for cheesy Euro-Disco even before my Baccara video arrives in the mail? Actually this is a video of Danish singer Tommy Seebach covering The Shadows song Apache. And if you liked Tommy, you're sure to enjoy Vitalic and Dschinghis Khan. Thanks Carrie from Stay Free for the link.

The Simpsons as Described by WGBH

MP3: Simpsons episode with "DVS" audio captioning for blind people.

The other night, I turned on The Simpsons, only to find that the program's audio had a weird narrator describing almost everything that was happening. At first I thought that The Simpsons were parodying the voice-over approach from another Fox show, Arrested Development. It turns out that my broken VCR was picking up an additional audio channel instead of the main one, and in the case of The Simpsons, I was hearing the DVS, or blind captioned version of the show. DVS stands for Descriptive Video Services, and it's the audio equivalent of closed captioning for the deaf. Here's a large MP3 of the DVS version of The Simpsons "Rapture" episode from May 8th (right click to download).

Prom-a-rama

MP3 download: The Fugs "Nothing"

WFMU volunteer extraordinnaire Jared shares this story with us:

As my own high school prom approaches, I recall what my dad passed along to me about his senior prom in suburban Long Island in 1967. At his prom, along with the usual assortment of non alcoholic refreshments, dresses, tuxes, corsages, and dance music provided by a local band, there was an additional attraction. After the last slow dance, a special guest performer -- The Fugs took the stage and rocked the gymnasium for the graduating class of 1967.

Take a listen to a few of these Fugs tunes captured from the WFMU archives, and imagine how quickly the carnation boutonnieres wilted on that fateful night...

“Wet Dream” (Real Audio)
“Government Surveillance Yodel” (Real Audio) from Pseu Braun's show
"Ah, Sunflower Weary of Time" (Real Audio) from World of Echo with Dave Mandl 

Stay tuned to WFMU for the latest updates and trends sweeping the nation's high school dances.

Wartime Lionel

Lionel is funny. And in talk radio these days, funny is hard to come by.

Sure, if you get your jollies hearing jokes about environmentalists, the poor, and the disenfranchised you probably can’t stop slapping your knee during the Rush Limbaugh program. But in general there’s not a lot of wit on talk radio lately. For the most part, the talk radio format has become a humorless void of political grandstanding and smearcasting. Blame the right wing morons for turning an entertainment medium into a barren kiosk of propaganda.

Lionel’s show originates from WOR-AM here in New York City, but it’s syndicated nationwide. In fact, the radio mega-corporation Clear Channel has been gradually creating new “progressive talk” stations, which feature Air America programming, and Lionel’s show is often tucked into the schedule. Which is strange in a way, because Lionel isn’t really a political talk show host at all.

He makes it clear on his show, he is NOT a liberal. However, he is most certainly a lawyer and an eccentric raconteur with a wacky vocabulary and an acid wit. On the side, he takes on a few stand-up comedy gigs too.

I’ve listened to Lionel for a long time, and traditionally he focuses his quirky intellectual laser beam on legal issues in the news, as well as sex and “news of the weird" kind of stuff. Actually, almost any topic is fair game. If it’s strange, titillating, or pisses him off, he’ll talk about it. But lately, Lionel is a little less lighthearted than he used to be. The war in Iraq and the war-promoting lockstep rightward march of talk radio has REALLY pissed him off. Yet, it seems to have made his show a little better. He may have the perfect temperament for relaying really bad news and trying to make sense of it.

Rocky Horror -- Norsk Version

Ain't ya just been dying to get yer paws on these?

MP3s:
Science Fiction/Dobbeltforestilling, , Bryllupsangen, Alltid Lys Hos Frankenstein, En Hip Transvestitt, Tiden Blir Skrudd, Damoklessverdet, Muskelmann-Sangen, Eddies Sang, Muskelmann-Sangen (Reprise), Ta Meg, Ta Meg, Det Hender Iblant, Eddies Teddy, Planet-Manet, Fra Forst Av Kunne Alt Ga An, Jeg Vil Hjem,  Super-Helter, Science Fiction (Reprise)

Cookie Monster: The Real Most Influential Musician of All Time

MP3s: Ted Shred's Michael Jackson vs Cookie Monster and Daniel's Death Metal Warmup Exercises (right-click to download, plus streaming Realaudio samples below).

I have to take issue with Program Director Brian's characterization of "Animal" from the Muppets as the most influential musician of all time. I didnt think I would have to explain this to you Brian and I hate to publicy correct you, but "Animal" is a puppet. Made of cloth and wire. He doesn't really play the drums at all. When you watch "Animal" during a drum workout, the drums you hear are played by a session musician working for Sesame Workshop. That Buddy Rich clip was done with puppets and trick photography.

Just because the term "Animal From The Muppets" brings up an impressive 807 google citations doesnt mean that any drummers out there actually want to sound like Animal. So how can he be an influential musician?

I grant you that Animal may be a convenient lynchpin for current drummers and rock writers. But he is far from the most influential musician of all time. He's not even the most influential Muppet. If we seek to honor one musician who has been extraordinarily influential, a lone artist who has singlehandedly influenced world wide musical markets and scenes for over a decade, from the deepest underground to the most mainstream, we need look no further than Cookie Monster.