Live At The Stork Club: Quintron, The Frogs and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

For a brief but delirious spell way back in the 1990s, The Stork haunted our halls.  That's him on the left.  Stork hosted a must-listen program called Live At The Stork Club, mostly on Sunday nights, if memory serves.  As the name might imply, mostly Stork hosted live musical guests, in his own impeccably gracious manner. 

I bet somewhere on The Internet there exists a full list of all the bands who served time in Stork's "Moose Room".  Unfortunately, most of this stuff happened during the last Stone Age, just before we began archiving all our programming.  Happily, many of these shows do exist, someplace, in some form or another; and where time, technology and endurance permit, we'll make the archives available to you.  Here's three vintage shows to get you started:

• Christmas With Quintron - Mr. Quintron, Miss Pussycat and Flossie & The Unicorns joined Stork on Xmas Eve, 1995 for a uniquely warped evening of organs, drum buddies & puppet shows.  Listen here (mp3 stream).
• The Frogs - Wisconsin's legendary Flemion brothers celebrate their newfound 90s celebrity among the era's alt-rock elite; spin records by Wesley Willis, Beck and Jewel; and perform an acoustic set of music positively guaranteed to get us some major FCC finery were this show to be aired today.  From July 20, 1997.  Listen here (mp3 stream)
• Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - On July 16, 1998, WFMU consummated its love affair with these Welsh psych-folk imps.   And Stork was there.  Gorky's would visit us three more times over the years, visiting Irene's show and my own show (twice, in fact).  Listen here for their first appearance, with Stork.

I was fortunate enough to attend these last 2 sessions - jump the flip if you're interested in my fuzzy recollections.

The Frogs.  Wow, I got to control the amp feedback during a Satie-esque version of "I've Done Drugs".  Jimmy, the tall one with green angel wings, sort of lurched around 580 Springdale Avenue all afternoon fingerpicking his acoustic guitar and looking blankly yet benignly at the people he'd encounter.   Dennis, the sort of mean but funny one, was sort of mean but funny all day.  I used to have his home phone number.  One time I called him, and a little girl answered.  I said "hello, is Dennis there?"  She said "hold on. DADDYYYY!!!"  I haven't heard "Which One of You Guys Gave My Daughter the Dope?" (mp3) the same way since.

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.  This was eye-opening -- GZM at the time was best known to us for outrageous Canterbury-ish Gong hits; stuff like The Game of Eyes, and Merched yn neud Gwallt eu Gilydd (both RM links).  Today, they brought acoustic guitars and covered Richard Thompson.  I remember them eating Hershey's chocolate and spitting it out as though it were poison.  Hey, look at that bumper sticker on that guitar Richard James is playing!!

Comments

[scott in tokyo]

I just finished listening to that gorkeys zycotic minkey from Storks show again. The 6th time in a row.

What an amazing band.

[Krys O.]

R. Shteevie Moore played on the Stork Club back in 1997.

http://wfmu.org/playlists/ST

[Brian Turner]

I put on a Frogs instore once, the AC was busted and it was like 105 degrees. Dennis still wore his giant fur suit. One of the greatest American bands.

So, was it ever made clear whether indeed one of the Frogs dumped all that extremo porn onto the desktop of a staffer while they were hanging out here?

[Jeff T]

In What About Me: The Rise Of The Nihilist Spasm Band I'm pretty sure the WFMU scene is on Stork's show.

[Jean Smith]

2 Foot Flame played Live at the Stork Club in 1997 (I think). That was our Austin to Boston tour -- Peter Jefferies played drums and keyboard at the same time and I (Jean Smith) sang and played guitar (ya, at the same time). Irene engineered the show and one of the songs went on a WFMU comp. That song is up on myspace.com/2footflame