WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Just Say No To Outdoor Summer Concert MC's

The summer means lots of outdoor free music events, but of course, they're never really "free" in the true sense when you examine closely. That's right, people sponsoring the event whether it be Snapple, Budweiser, or NAMBLA will always figure out a way to insert their agenda repeatedly into your experience, which of course, makes perfect sense, and is something we have pretty much accepted in our daily lives in this consumer-driven world. At the risk of going Andy Rooney, I have to say for some reason this year I find all the people MC-ing before, between, and after sets to be particularly prickly to my ears. I don't know why. Is it having absorbed all the recent SCTV box sets and realizing that Bobby Bittman (pictured) was somewhat of a harbinger of things to come, even though he was a parody of the past? Or is just that hearing a cheesy guy come out to pump everyone up and say things like "Give it up for my maaaaaaaaaan, J Mascis" in Central Park last night after Dinosaur Jr. finished is just downright annoying?. Or is it just the timing in these stressful times, where your entertainment should be a modem for escaping information-overload, thus making the usual routine of annoying interruptions amplified. I dunno, but the WFUV plug at a show involving the Magik Markers (who opened for Dinosaur Jr.) was pretty out-of-place too, one has to admit, and having Yo La Tengo's quieter moments interrupted by the buzz of the "Jack" plane overhead had me thinking of the blimp in Black Sunday crashing into the Super Bowl. These Jack people hate Matador, I know it! Anyway, I shouldn't vent, nothing could have been as bad as this guy (MP3). Says our friend Bill W.: "I'd like to 'put my hands together', with his neck intervening." I expect responses to this post from this weekend's Siren fest, especially if the US Army has that sponsorship booth there. Will Don Rickles don his CPO Sharkey garb and introduce Dungen?

This Week in Sex: Double Super Secret Edition

[not safe viewing for prudes, people who work for them, and big-government blabbermouths]

Even dj's get the blues. If you can do two things at once, you can read this and listen to Dave the Spazz rockin' it blue in a web-only special. Scott did the dirty work and put even more potty-mouth shows here. This is a full service operation, people.

The Good News. And here I thought it was the Internet, but no, it turns out it's "Masturbation: God's Great Gift to Us." God also takes a position on the wfmu beware of butt-sex debate. (Spoiler alert: He's a fan.) (Spoiler alert: God is my butt-sex co-pilot.)

It's a boy! “On the morning of the full moon day of June 21, I noticed my thing (sex organ) was not the same as before,” said Thin Sandar, a chicken seller in Myanmar. "And my breasts disappeared. So I called out and showed it all to my mom and dad. It was very strange." Thin is now Than (the male version of Thin), and is also getting out of the chicken business and into the local celebrity/monk business. Living the American dream, Myanmar-intersex style.

More chicken sex news, please. Since you asked nicely: Cocks engage in "seemingly meaningless sperm-free sex." Just like chicks, I guess. Dyke chicks. Slutty dyke chicks. 

DIY Department. Make your own menstrual pads, in assorted hippie colors.

You say it's a "little death," I say it's a big sneeze. This site is kinda pretentious and kinda fascinating. About them: "Beautiful Agony is dedicated to the beauty of human orgasm. This may be the most erotic thing you have ever seen, yet the only nudity it contains is the baring of beautiful souls." See what I mean? Plus they throw French around like that makes things extra-sexy. Give me a site with streaming video of fake chicken sex, in English.

Somebody could put an eye out. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, "the pole is no plaything." OK, I didn't say it, but the New York Times did in an article about NYC firehouses  phasing out the stripper poles they use instead of stairs. (You can check it out here without having to log in. Remember, we're a full service operation.)  Michelle O'Donnell took the "insert pole joke here" approach to this hot news story. For example: "In the firehouses of New York City, veterans have a deep affection, even a zealous sense of protection, for their poles." If I were Frenchy-pretentious, I would call that double entendre (pronounced dooble ontond and not actually used by the French, smartypants).

Sex crime blotter. In New Zealand, it's safe sex or else. In Jammu, India, the safest sex may be no sex.  And, because that last piece was so depressing, let's end in on a happy note in Spain, where same-sex can legally be married sex.

Got smut? Don't keep it to yourself where it's just gonna fester. Send it to me at amanda at wfmu dot org.

[thanks to Station Manager Ken for doing the right thing and sending smut]

Happy Birthday MP3!!

Billboard Post Play Blog reports that the MP3 turns ten today. The tiny terror was hatched ten years ago today when researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Germany ("Vee have vays of making you stream!") decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Since then, the MP3 has brought the music industry to its wobbly knees as the first modern music configuration not introduced, controlled, and marketed by the industry itself (which hasn't put a halt to the gluttonous and obsolete practice of CD packaging deductions levied on artists and other royalty recipients). Consumers have rejoiced in a drunken downloading frenzy, ditching their broken-hinged jewel cases and clunkola CD Walkmans for iPod mugging bait. And for that, young man - the stripper, the Veuve, and the cake are on us. Just don't tell your mom as she'd probably kick our aged analog ass. Hit, it Marilyn!

"Happy Birthday" by Marilyn Monroe (MP3)

Rock Dinosaurs Get Flack for Fuck

The uptight christian group (Parents Television Council, or PTC) fond of complaining to the FCC about everything from cartoon butts to 4-lettered expletives has waged war on ABC and The Who via a complaint to the FCC. The band's Live 8 performance the classic song "Who Are You", which contains the lyrics who the fuck are you, was broadcast on ABC unedited. This tune is the unofficial freebie in the world of radio; every classic rock station nowadays unabashedly airs the unedited version of "Who Are You", multiple fucks intact.

Fuck resurfaced a few months ago, but the FCC has been alarmingly quiet about indecency lately (probably because the commission chases its tail on the issue).

Fury Fest: France's Answer to Heavy Metal Parking Lot

For Diane's accompanying audio archives on Fury Fest 2005, click here: Realaudio | MP3. For the playlist, click here and for the bigass Fury Fest Foto Gallery, click here. 

After the bloodbath in Paris, see this blog entry, was I really ready to go to LeMans for Fury Fest, the best metal/punk/heavy lineup of the summer for three days of camping and partying with my horns up? Hell yeah!

June 24th, Friday, my friend Rob & I were off, leaving from Paris for an uneventful but safe drive to LeMans once we found the Peripherique (the highway that encircles Paris, and basically the "way out"). Fury Fest was right next to the LeMans raceway at Le Parc Expo du Mans, but although the two sites were next to each other, both were huge and I could not get a decent photo of the racetrack from the site, it was still too distant.

We met friends near the festival entrance & proceeded to set up camp; putting up the tents was the easy part - finding an area where we'd be able to find our tents at night while in any condition, that was a bit trickier. A spot by a light pole was perfect, and the labor was done in minutes, voila!

The festival was set up with three stages, all inside; total band count for the festival is a whopping 96, and as far as I know, the only band who did not make it was Murphy's Law. Most of the bands on earlier in the day are given half hour sets, then 45 minutes to about 25% of the performers, then the headliners get anywhere between one & 1.5 hours to play. The Velvet Stage would be the first one I hit today; Belgium's Leng Tche, featuring the vocalist from Aborted on drums was on at 12:55. The Velvet Stage is the smallest

Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists

" The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists is a veritable rout dedicated to a shared mandate to advocate the showmanship of oddities; espouse the belief in natural adaptation and mutation; and encourage the desire to create displays of curiosity."

Also try their "Beast Blender" where you too can create animal monstrosities!

Oh, Joystick

Looks like live symphonic orchestras might be re-defining "Pop" to be more than The Best of John Williams, The Moody Blues and Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber. Fast-fowarding to the end of the 20th century, a collaboration of ahem, Marketing Execs have come up with Video Games Live, a seemingly bloated spectacle that sounds like a step up from Laser Pink Floyd .

Selections from the program include: Mario™, Zelda®, Halo®, Metal Gear Solid®, Warcraft®, Myst®, Castlevania®, Medal of Honor™, God of War™, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic™, Tron, Tomb Raider®, Advent Rising, Headhunter, Beyond Good & Evil™, Tom Clancy Montage (Splinter Cell®, Ghost Recon™, Rainbow Six®) EverQuest® II and a special retro arcade segment that goes from Pong® to Donkey Kong®. The VGL tour is coming to your town soon.

Expect plenty of ™ and ®.

WFM-Blue

It's a sad but simple irony: radio DJs are uncannily drawn to the Filthy Talk.  We love nothing more than coming out of a fucking uptempo record (MP3) every time we do a goddam death dedication.

WFMU DJs, some have argued, have an even greater tendency than most toward the potty-mouthery.  Yet consider: is WFMU an acronym?  Of course it's a fucking acronym!!  With "F" and "U" built right in!  So it's in our DNA. But of course, we more than you have to curb the urge, and Good God In Heaven, don't you know that it's hard!

And really, that's what we like about The Internet, whose sewage runs so deep those regulatory tentacles up on the hill just can't reach (mmm, yet).  So we've gotcher Blue programs, right here! Innuendo! Bush-bashing!  And your meat & potatoes dirty talk - it's all below, and it's Not Safe For Work, so quit your pussyfooting, look under the fold, and roll around in some of the muck we like to hurl...

The Buttsex Conspiracy

My first tidbit of sexual misinformation came in the fourth grade, when Peter Heinz next door told me that babies were conceived in the anus.  Even at the time, this seemed confusing, but it wasn't until a whole year later that I discovered his information had been completely erroneous.  But perhaps Pete Heinz was a prophet in his way, a seer into the dark trends of the coming century in internet porn.

If modern pornography is a reflection of contemporary society, and I believe that it is, then there's an awful lot of buttsex going on.  And by this I mean straight buttsex; gays, of course, must employ buttsex as a means to express their affection - this is one of only two viable pathways in their case.  Straights, however, have no such excuse.  As a straight man, if you're fortunate enough to have a mate, or at least a woman willing to lie down with you, she comes readily equipped with a magnificent vagina, one of creation's greatest achievements, its labial folds and fleshy contours custom-designed to ensconce the penis.  So why do you wanna force your way in the back door, brother?

We have a saying in our home:  The butt is for "exegesis only."  Exposition, explanation and interpretation.  As far as our needs go, it's exclusively an exit, not an entrance.  No tongues, fingers or other appendages need traverse there for us to have a satisfying sexual experience.

Lunch Minutes for 7.13.05

Most organizations with any semblance of order keep minutes for all their meetings, both formal and informal. At WFMU, most of the meetings amongst the small office staff fall into the informal category, with proper station procedure, technical issues, programming matters, and related cultural phenomena frequently discussed at the lunch table while gobbling down inexpensive takeout food. What follows are the lunchtime minutes for today, July 13th, 2005.

Those present for this meeting were: Ken Freedman, Scott Williams, Megan Murphy, Liz Berg, myself, + volunteers Wendy, Greta, and Ed Word. Brian Turner, Moshik, and Bill Zurat were also present, but were forced to eat in the other room because of poor behavior at yesterday's meeting.

The menu: Most of us ordered from a local Asian place called Nutty Handjob's. A few non-believers either brought food from home or ordered slop from some other place that I can't necessarily endorse. In most cases, lunch was complemented by icy cold and delicious (i.e. "free") water.

The topic of today's lunch discussion was hippies. (Yesterday, we talked about Oingo Boingo, so there is a logical progression evident at work here.) Here are some of the sub-categories of the hippie subject that were tackled this afternoon:

* The DJs on staff who either shy away from the hippie music, as opposed to those who embrace it warmly and cradle it to their bosom appreciatively.

Hipsters: Buying In To Marketing

Interesting article by Jon Fine in BusinessWeek Online (heads up from CSTB) on the relative success of new-breed marketing firms like Cornerstone and others utilizing the so-called music subculture to further the agendas of its many clients. Indeed, the idea of outcry over hip songs being used in corporate ads is pointless (unless you're, say, the Brainbombs not getting paid for use of "Bleed" in Red Cross spots), though I'm still rattled (for other reasons I'll just have to learn to deal with) everytime I hear Snap's "I've got the power" hook utilized to bolster the idea of child crapping diaper=having the world in one's pocket. Fitting bands for Levis at convention events, placing strategic cases of Sparks at Vice-related concerts, networking every DJ and scenester in major cities, all somewhat easier that some would think in 2005. Above: Brigitte said to be working out exclusive Timex sponsorship so her protegee Falco can wear a clock around his neck for his 2006 SXSW comeback.

Art Robot Heaven

A robot invasion is scheduled to take over Dublin this weekend. Find out more about the Robot Talent Show, download the ArtBot Theme Song (MP3), and cruise through the links for each participant, as some are quite impressive.

There are a few video clips embedded deep within, perhaps most entertaining are the Altoid robots and the stuffed animal robots arguing in German (wmv file).

And we've got plenty more robot videos available from previous posts.

Sound Dough

Make a glorious racket that obeys the laws of an intricate visual entanglement with Le Ciel Est Bleu's La Pâte à Son:

" The Pâte à Son (Sound Dough) is a sound toy and compositional tool conceived to encourage musical experimentation. Drag instruments, switches, and transporter pipes from the conveyor belt to the checkerboard above to make music. Rotate the pieces. Choose a melody. Change pitch, tempo and volume to fine-tune your composition. "

via We Make Money Not Art

a lil' Reggae for your Jeggae

Wassup wassup.  I'm finally getting around to dusting off the laptop and posting to the almighty FMU blog.  I'll keep it short and bittersweet cos all you greedy mofos just want free mp3s anyway.  So here 'tis. a nice dubby take on the Brubeck classic 'Take 5' by lengendary reggae session man Val Bennet.  While the A-side is nice, it gets a wee bit schmaltzy, so we flip it over and give you the version on the flip, cos as Public Enemy once stated, 'B-Side Wins Again!'  Originally came out on the Roots label, and there is actually a Take 5 riddim, I have something else on this by Welton Irie. Download MP3.

Hillary's Mad Magazine Metaphor

No sooner had I vowed to ignore all American politics unless cartoon characters were directly involved, than Hillary Clinton dared to compare President Bush to Mad Magazine's cartoon mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. "I sometimes feel Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington," said the Senator during a speech in Colorado. Clinton later invoked Neuman's catch phrase, "What, Me Worry?" to great comic effect.

Republican reaction has been swift.

"If Bush is Alfred E. Neuman, your husband was Larry Flynt," roared Rush Limbaugh. (On his show, Limbaugh neglects to explain why he opts for the Larry Flynt comparison, rather than referencing the obvious cartoon character to make his point. The lascivious Pepe Le Pew or Foghorn Leghorn would have been more appropriate choices for a cartoon-based Bill Clinton metaphor.)

President Bush himself fired back, comparing Hillary to "Lucy" from Charles Schultz' Peanuts. "Much like Lucy, Senator Clinton is an annoying, bossy loudmouth," Bush said. "And she's always pulling the football away at the last second--only in her case, the football is the truth."

"Bush is Like Comic Book Idiot," read the headline in the Telegraph UK .

"At a time when President Bush and most elected officials are focused on the security of our nation, Mrs. Clinton chooses cartoon metaphors which utterly lack any cultural currency," charged Steven Stabile, chief GOP curator for the Cartoon Art Museum.

"Not only does Hillary Clinton obviously read Mag Magazine, she bathes nightly in the blood of Christian babies," alleged fellow Senator Rick Santorum.

It should be mentioned that Mad Magazine is great these days. Peter Kuper, Drew Friedman, Peter Bagge are doing art, and the writing is funny and excellent.

In order to qualify this post for our popular Cartoon Sexuality category, I am obliged to include this link as proof that there are probably people out there who are sexually attracted to Alfred E. Neuman, despite what Hillary Clinton may think.

Microchip art

Geeks with too much time on their hands etch designs into silicon wafers. View the gallery here.

A Musical Fungus Among Us

MP3s: Fungal remix excerpts of New Order, Soft Cell, The Eagles, The Beastie Boys and Gordon Taylor.

Mold and Music go way back. Remember Moldy Oldies, before they disappeared from the airwaves thanks to Jack FM? Or how about Moldy Figs, the sarcastic term applied to swing and big-band fans who snubbed post-war Jazz innovations like Be-Bop (think: the record collecting crowd from the film Ghost World). And then there was that one armed drummer for The Barbarians, Mouldy. (Listen to Mouldy's theme song from Charlie's 1/10/05 show in streaming realaudio).

The Truncated Life of a Modern, Industrialised Chicken

Doron just sent along this link to The Truncated Life of a Modern, Industrialised Chicken, from Matthew Herbert's forthcoming record Plat du Jour (song link: streaming MP3 which unfortunately opens in WMP). It was recorded using only sounds derived from chickens, chicken eggs and chicken related activities. The song takes a minute before it gets rolling, due to cheep audio foreplay.

Here's the description of where all the sounds from the song come from:

The Truncated Life of a Modern, Industrialised Chicken Field Recordings:

- 30,000 broiler chickens in one barn
- 24,000 one minute old chicks in one room of a commercial hatchery
- 40 free-range chickens in a coop
- One of those chickens being killed for a local farmers' market and its feathers      washed and plucked.
- A dozen organic eggs from tescos
- A 2.0l 21 centimeter pyrex classic bowl made in the UK

All melodies and chords are samples of eggs on pyrex bowls and played by
phil parnell, dave o'higgins, pete wraight and matthew herbert.

All live percussion is made from a dozen organic free-range eggs, egg boxes and egg cups and played with chopsticks by leo taylor.

The bassline is a 'cheep' from a minute-old chick, pitched down.

Harrowing Goddamn Airports

I've been fortunate enough to visit five countries and a bunch of far-away US cities in the last few years, mainly due to the relatively cheaper airfares that have been available (though who knows for how long). Flying has always been a love-hate affair for me; I mean it's exciting and all, but for every event like seeing the Grand Canyon at 35,000 feet in clear weather like I did two weeks ago, there's been a screaming kid who would begin shrieking the second our flight pulls back from its gate at Newark and stops the second the plane pulls up to the gate at London's Gatwick 6 hours later. It's a real test of nerves, and I can never ever sleep, let alone focus on such great epics as Starsky and Hutch (and for some reason Iberia is very fond of Simone). I have a relatively good understanding of aerodynamics, so I know that a plane isn't just going to fall out of the sky, but the cold hard reality is that you are basically sitting in an unnaturally bouyant metal can filled with bodies and luggage, breathing other peoples' recycled air, while enormous amounts of flammable liquid are gobbled into more metal cans that droop from a wing to hopefully belch air fast enough to push the whole deal fast enough to take flight and stay there. And landing is the worst part, especially when you consider some of the quirkier aspects of some of the world's airports.

Presumed Dead

Hello, Everybody—nice seeing you again.

One thing that struck me about the bombings in London was how quickly the English people got out there with their photocopied flyers with the pictures of their missing friends and family members. I remember going to work in New York after the attacks in 2001 and walking past the thousands of flyers posted everywhere. For a while it seemed as if every vertical surface in the city was papered over with hundreds of flyers, all very similar in their message and with the same seemingly inevitable design: At the top the word “Missing” in large letters, centered, then below that a photo, also centered, and a caption giving the person’s name, then some particulars: “works on the 84th floor,” “works in the North Tower,” “last seen on her way to a meeting in Windows on the World,” and a phone number to call with information--if there ever was any information.

Last February the city medical examiner’s office announced that there were over 1,200 people “known to have been killed” in the World Trade Center attacks whom they still could not identify, and so they were going to stop trying. (And by “people” they meant 9,726 bits of human remains that have now been dried and stored in “deterioration-proof” pouches.) How is it that those people are KNOWN to have been killed? There’s no body, not even a definitive piece of body, for any of them. Don’t they mean that these people are presumed dead, or have been presumed dead for a while? I think there are statutes that govern when you can have someone declared legally dead, but the presumption of death is purely personal; I guess it varies from person to person.