WFMU's Beware of the Blog

America's Most Wanted Art

While the Department of Homeland Security is busy protecting miniature golf courses, another federal agency is doing the hard work of democracy - tracking down stolen artworks. The FBI recently identified its "Top Ten Art Crimes," and amazingly enough, Kenny G's three-hour broadcast of weather forecasts was not on the list. But if you happen to see Munch's The Scream, Caravaggio's Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco or any of those 10,000 Iraqi antiquities that went missing, be sure to give the FBI's Art Crime Team a call.

"You Shouldn't Have!" Pt. 2

With the clock ticking and Christmas only twelve days away, some of you may be in an panic as to what to give that special A/V Geek in your life. Pay a visit to the online shop of "The Internet's #1 Audio/Visual Archive", EarthStation 1, and you'll find CDs and DVDs covering the following topics, among others:

Movie & TV / Old Time Radio / TV & Radio Commercials /  Educational/Guidance / Strange / Unusual & Bizarre! / Propaganda / Driver Education / Axis Sally / Lord Haw Haw / Nuclear War / The 1960s / Outer Space Programs / Sex Education / Juvenile Delinquency / Bloopers / Drug Abuse / Marriage Counseling / Parenting / Teen Guidance / Scholastic Guidance / Business & Industrial

The prices are very reasonable with most CDs & DVDs right around $9.99. EarthStation 1 also makes available TONS of free MP3s in all the above categories and more - including LOTS of Shooby Taylor! And I think you can still have stuff shipped in time for Christmas! (Which DVD do I wish Santa would drop down MY chimney? That would have to be "This Is A Recording".)

Transpacific Sound Paradise remote broadcast this weekend

Being a homebody doesn't fly in New York (or New Jersey, for that matter, given that it's right next door to Gotham) and it especially won't fly this weekend because WFMU's Rob Weisberg is bringing his always-stupendous Transpacific Sound Paradise program to Barbes in Brooklyn for an evening of live music accompanied by genuine seat-of-the-pants live radio from 6-8 PM! This Saturday (12/17), grab your honey, hop on the F train, and head out to Barbes (376 9th Street at 6th Ave, Brooklyn) for this special live broadcast which will feature performances from virtuoso mandolinist and Klezmer-revival kingpin Andy Statman, the Venezuelan-bred cumbias crossed with psychedelic surf guitar of Chicha Libre, and the traditional Greek music of Mavrothis Kontanis. Rob and co-host Irene Trudel will be MC-ing all night, and passing out ungodly amounts of free WFMU swag to anyone who stops by the broadcast booth to say hi. If you can't be there in person, you can of course check it out over the air or on any of our webstreams. Check out WFMU's Upcoming Special Programs Page for more details, or email Rob for the lowdown.

With You Always

Jesus is with YOU always!

Germany To Employ Sonic Mind Control at World Cup

7 Seconds' hopes for "We're Gonna Fight" as official World Cup Anthem down the toilet. From Oddsnark by way of CSTB:

World Cup organizers in Germany today unveiled their secret weapon to ward off disturbances by soccer hooligans. Organizers announced that techno-ambient composer Brian Eno and artsy-fartsy singer Peter Gabriel will perform a 26-hour-long concert at the tournament’s opening ceremony. In addition, Eno’s trance-inducing Ambient 1: Music for Airports would be played on an infinite loop during the games, while an extended version of Gabriel’s mind-numbing “Biko” would be used to lull would-be vandals into a state of compliance at other times during the month-long championship competition. When asked what officials might do if the double-dose of soporiferous artists didn’t assuage violence at the games, Wolfgang Niersbach, executive vice president of the organizing committee, held up a copy of OK Computer and said, “Don’t make me play it, because I will.”

Mutant Animal Mania

Presenting freaks of nature, human intervention, and urban legend:

- Green puppy
- Green kitty
- 2-headed tortoise
- 2-tongued cat
- 2-faced kitty
- Mutant feline HQ
- Eyeless turtles
- Fish that glow in the dark: a biomarker in the lab, a conversation-starter at parties
- Variegated mutant lamb
- Fainting goats
- Dancing mice
- Asexual worms get randy with radioactivity
- Deformed frogs
- Hermaphrodite frogs: caused by a weed killer
- Mail order clear-skinned frogs
- Fistulated cow: sounds dirty, huh? Imagine the poor fool who has to feed the hole...
- Of course, NJ is not to be upstaged... WFMU's homestate has its own windowed cow
- Hairless mice: a fave of research biologists far and wide
- Albino fruit fly: another reason you shouldn't trust whitey
- Cat-fox or coati?
- Male fishies grow eggs in CA... thanks to the magic of sewage! Same thing happened on a larger scale in the Thames estuary during the late 70s/early 80s. Back then, the amount of synthetic estrogen in the birth control pill was much higher, leading to uber-femme sewage.
- El Chupacabra: ok, so this is unconfirmed, but check out the gnarly photo!
- Jersey Devil: often spotted at WFMU
- Cyclops kitty
- Glow-in-the-dark bacon

Click the link below for some choice photos...

One Of The Famous Bands

During this past Friday's Communication Breakdown, I used a Skype feature - Skype Me - to contact people in China who like to practice their English and ask those I reached - Jesse and Jacky (MP3s) - how they felt when they heard John Lennon died.

Richard Pryor Fronting "Black Death" (Video)

Relatively tame by today's TV standards, 1977's Richard Pryor Show on NBC-TV was still a landmark freakfest that set out to forcefully challenge censors, and only lasted four episodes before the plug was pulled. We remember one of the greatest American comedians with this clip of the band Black Death [68 MB mpeg], somewhat of a cross between Sabbath, Sunn o))) and Funkadelic where frontman Pryor basically leads the crowd of Whiteys into a frenzy like lemmings before wiping them out. Pretty dark stuff for 1977 primetime without a doubt (and stick around for the segue to commercial!) Watch out for extra Sandra Bernhard in the crowd, she was a writer for the short-lived show (along with Robert Altman).

Cleaning Out My Inbox

Here's a video for Chinese Rocks by Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, featuring some actual footage of the band performing the song, although the footage isn't necessarily in sync.. whaddya expect from a bunch of junkies singing about junk? Download Video [28 MB, mpg]

WFMU's full of vinyl fetishists. But not like this.

Mira Craig of The Fugees answers the philosophical question, if a performer jumps into a crowd, and nobody is around to catch her, does she hit the ground? Download Video [1 MB, WindowsMedia], via Compfused. For some successful (even genre-defining) crowd surfing from 1970, see this Iggy Pop post.

Project 15 is a video blog that's been making one fifteen second video every day of 2005. They're haven't linked all the videos yet, but let's hope they do, if more of them are like this post from May 1st. Download Video [Half a MB, Quicktime]

All the Beatles Christmas records - original artwork and mp3s. And here's a page of Beatles' anomolies.

The cigarette smoke art photography of Thomas Herbrich. via Hemaworstje

BZ Gas, the super-hallucinogen developed here in Nutley, New Jersey by Hoffman LaRoche (and actually used in Vietnam, as imagined in the movie Jacob's Ladder) has reportedly been self-administered in Iraq by insurgents. This isn't exactly the application the CIA had in mind when they developed it. Link (via boingboing)

Beware of the Blog's own Fatty Jubbo in a very not-safe-for-work Bobby Conn video, Angels. Link. (No hints on which one is Fatty.)

Will this site put an end to Andy Breckman's endless Albino jokes?

Don't end 2005 without getting your Drunken Russians 2006 calendar!

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 2

It was heartening and reassuring to get so many favorable comments (and emails) after my last post (which was part one of this series and can be found here). The topic at hand is the avocation of DXing-- taking advantage of the extended range of AM & shortwave broadcasts at night and listening to discover what can be heard over the radio  from your location. For better or worse, it's one of those habits most people dabble in when they're alone at night. And most of us who participate in this habit have close friends and/or partners who would probably be bored to tears or just openly annoyed if subjected to the challenging listen of trying to read a far off radio signal.

Once in my room I was sitting with a friend having a beer and just for the hell of it I switched on my old Trans-Oceanic and quickly zoomed into a faint English broadcast from Albania. For some reason I thought he would be half as curious about the discovery as I was, and for a couple of minutes I was hanging on to every word trying to hear the news from the Balkans over the noise floor in my apartment. Then I saw the pain in his face, and shut it down and put the music back on. He thanked me.

While there’s no shame in it, scanning the AM and shortwave dial for sport and recreation is an acquired taste. You have to be willing to put up lots of static, whistles, buzzes and some really stupid and boring radio. But it’s an offbeat way to sample some free (and sometimes fringe) media from around the country and around the world. And when you power up that receiver you never really know exactly who, what or WHERE you’re going to hear.

Winter is better in general for DXing the broadcast bands, and lately I’ve been getting better than usual reception. Since I recorded this scan of the NY upstate AM dial in late November, I’ve gotten strong readable broadcasts in New York City from several stations that eluded me that evening. But the reality is that every night is different That’s part of what makes it interesting.

Germs in NYC Live, Actor From E.R. on Vocals! Don't Have a Cow!

It's just about 25 years to the day since they last played, as well as the anniversary week of Darby Crash's OD, but lo and behold, news hit last week that LA's legendary Germs were reuniting for two sets at Continental on December 10th (with appropriate openers the Magik Markers, whom we've extolled about in the past). Almost everyone I mentioned this to bristled in horror when it was revealed that joining Lorna Doom, Don Bolles and Pat Smear would be actor Shane West, of ER TV show fame, and also the guy who happens to be playing Darby in the forthcoming Germs biopic What We Do Is Secret. West, who looks like a young, even more All-American version of Tim Robbins, had his hands full to be sure, I mean, considering Darby was a speed-times-heroin-times-alcohol-drenched trainwreck on stage, barely coherent through the band's chaotic assault, and, needless to say, an extremely huge reason the Germs were the Germs. Live, West threw himself into the role and had a fairly good invocation of Darby, though a somewhat straight Darby. Smear's guitar (which had been keeping busy in the 90's with Nirvana and Foo Fighters) sounded awesome, slicing, buzzing and riffing his way through a big chunk of the Germs' catalog, Bolles pounded away on twin kick in his SS hat and platform shoes, and Lorna (who, by the way, was SO incredibly nice when I met her!) held down the steady, yet weird and woozy basslines that were a huge trademark of their songs. Throughout, Smear, Bolles and Doom were smiling incessantly like lunatics; this was the first time they had played as the Germs in New York, and they couldn't have looked happier.

WFMU Homepage Image Gallery

WFMU webhamster Henry Lowengard has taken all the images that have ever appeared on our homepage and has made a gallery out of them. They're all there - all the sloths, chimps, Old Codgers, dubyas, DJs, radio images - even the images that I was shamed into removing after ten minutes by our own internal Parent's Radio Council. Here's the gallery.

And let me now take a moment to thank and acknowledge Henry for founding the WFMU website back before there even was a world wide web! Henry set up a WFMU gopherspace (old-timers may remember that term...) on Echo NYC. That was the site that evolved into wfmu.org, which launched in October, 1993. Thanks Henry!

Laura Veirs on WFMU

The ecclectic singer/songwriter Laura Veirs made a pitstop here at WFMU during her recent tour in order to perform a quick live set on Irene Trudel's show. Here's a short video (AVI, 19m) of Laura's performance featuring songs from her recent "Year of Meteors" album on Nonesuch records.

You can hear more of her work on Laura's page on the Nonesuch Records website, and check tourdates on this page.

Battle of the Rubber Bands (mp3s)

The Christmas records were recently forklifted out of the WFMU pit and put into the record library. Well, not that recently - they've actually been out since last July. (Program Director Brian is on the Committee to Reclaim Ownership of Christmas.) Fortunately, most of our DJs are able to resist the powerfull pull of Christmas music until the blessed day is a little closer. But there's one Xmas CD that's become close to my heart, if ony because I love office supplies so damn much - A Rubber Band Christmas. Perhaps by posting these here, I'll be better able to resist the urge to play them on the air.

Rubber Bells  |  Rudolph The Rubber Nosed Reindeer  |  Ring Rubber Bells
Little Rubber Boy  |  Deck The Halls With Rubber  |  Feliz Rubberdad 
Rubber  |  Oh Rubber Tree  |  God Rest Ye Merry Rubbermen  |  Rubber Ride
Rubber Clause is Coming To Town  |  Rubber To the World  |  Rubber Bell Rock  |  Rubber Night

This Week in Sex: Cut and Paste

I just got home from my company non-denominational winter holiday you-have-to-go-unless-you're-dead-or-dying party. Here's the dirt:

• The fiance of someone I work with was just circumcised so they can have a good old-fashioned Jewish wedding (complete with panty check--I didn't know that was part of it, but I'm Catholic). I wouldn't tell the whole world about his penis, except I also found out it will be covered in our local paper, so you can read all about it yourself in the wedding section in March. At the party, a friend and I realized that this fiance could answer the question we were debating: who has more sexual pleasure, the cut guy or the uncut guy? Also, I admire the fiance, but if someone said "let's get married, but before we do that, let's cut the tips of your tits off," well, I don't know if I have the capacity to love that much.
• A guy I work with was circumcised at age 11. His parents said, "Hey, let's go to the doctor's office and just talk to him about it." When they got there, they said, "Hey, while we're here, let's have the doctor have a look." When the kid's pants were down, they said, "Hey, let's chop off the top of your penis." Then they injected his little boy penis with two needles full of anesthetic, pulled the foreskin out, clamped it, and sliced it off while he watched. He hollered during that last part.
• The parents of a guy I work with want him to try to convince his younger brother to get circumcised. The brother is sixteen.
• I think circumcision is barbaric. Don't tell me it's hygienic, like your thingy is gonna fester and fall off because you can't wash under a little flap of skin. Lady junk is all flaps of skin and we do ok.
• It's not so easy to enjoy your meal while talking about genital mutilation. But great party!

Turns out getting a vasectomy looks like a worm being yanked out of the ground by a bird, if that bird had a long, pointy, silver tweezer-beak.

Jewelry made of bits of Barbies means a Barbie butt bracelet.

Furniture made like body parts means fugly-ass furniture. via metafilter.com/tags/sex

Statue with business end exposed in shop window is means bad art with lots of talk about it. P.S. Statue is a table pedestal. Please stop doing that with the naked bodies and the furniture and all.

Ed Shepp Podcast In Effect

Just added to our growing roster of podcasts: The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment! Have the podcast version of Ed's weekly thematic misadventures, glitched-out interviews, and A.D.D.-ridden pop euphoria automatically zapped to your MP3 player by visiting our recently revamped podcast page.

Special thanks to Volunteer Ed Word for p-castifizing the show!

All the Presidents' Words

Since my edit of Dubya's "Night Before Christmas" got included in this month's Download Dinner Bell, I thought I'd point out a site where listeners can download plenty more political edit pieces: the "Truthful Translations" section of DIYmedia.net, which has collected more than 400 audio collages of not just the current occupant of the White House, but of plenty of other politicians. You'll find corrections of the speeches of Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Nixon, Tony Blair, and of course Ronald Reagan, who is the subject of two of the best cut-up pieces you can find on the site: Doug Kahn's "Reagan Speaks For Himself" and Cliff Roth's "The Reagans Speak Out on Drugs" (an excerpt of the video is available for downloading). Kenny G linked to the Reagan MP3s back in February, but there's so many more politicians to explore.

Don't neglect the other areas of the DIYmedia site, though. They've been keeping tabs on the FCC's crackdowns on unlicensed radio broadcasters and the struggles of low-powered FM stations. Check out the site's homepage for their news archives, as well as links to the other collage-laden sections of the site.

My personal favorite political cut-up of the moment, not currently on the DIYmedia site, would be Jonathan Coulton's "W's Duty", which I first heard on Irwin's program. An MP3 of the song is downloadable from Jonathan's site. Also of note for Reaganologists: Ken's Reagan memorial broadcast from last year, which featured more Reagan-themed songs than you can shake a can of poisoned meat at.

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.

WFMU Listener Art

A few months ago, WFMU was lost in a dark wooded forest of creative blockage, with nary a flashlight or compass to guide us back to the path of artistic awareness. We sent out a desperate cry for help, beseeching listners to submit their t-shirt and sticker designs for us to have our way with, and o, were we led back to the light!

This year's Logo-Rama contest elicited the largest number of artistic submissions on record, and they were all so good that we can't help but share them with you. Take a gander at the myriad of listener art submissions right here.

The decision was tough, but we could only select 2 winners: Gregory Jacobsen's "Creepy Meatball" design (left) is featured on our December t-shirt giveaway (snag one for yourself by donating $45 or more to the freeform cause), and Nick Dewar's "Dancette" design (mock-up on the right) will be featured on a sticker to be given out during WFMU's 2006 on-air fundraising Marathon.

A big thanks to all of our artistically-endowed listeners who participated!

NYC Radio The Night John Lennon Died (mp3)

Here's a dial scan of New York City's FM band from 25 years ago (MP3). It was recorded shortly after the news of John Lennon's murder broke. The recording was made by an unknown listener, and it was included on our CD compilation, Radio Archival Oddities, Vol. 2.