WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Barenaked Ladies, Baitcars and Crystal Meth (video)

Canada's Bait Car program (in which thieves steal remote controllable vehicles with hidden cameras) has been so successful that it's spawned its own TV show, and the Canadian government has released all the Bait Car videos into the public domain to further publicize the program and reduce car theft.

Here's a Bait Car video (download video, 16 meg wmv file) in which a speed freak steals a car, transfers to a Bait Truck, breaks into three cars to steal various items, hits three cars during a high speed chase, screams ONCOMING! as he runs red lights and stop signs, and... most disturbing of all, listens briefly to The Barenaked Ladies on the Bait Truck's radio. After the video ends, he drove through a few backyards before ramming his way into a parking garage and  into the arms of the waiting police. Not safe for work, by the way.

All in all, the operation was a total success. Except for the three cars that the guy hit, the other three cars that got broken into, the parking garage gate and that unfortunate business with The Barenaked Ladies. But when making videos like this, there's bound to be some collateral damage. More info and defensive handwringing from the makers of this video here. Alas, the identity of the man who made "oncoming" a popular catch phrase throughout Canada will never be released. via screenhead

Introducing the WFMU Mobile Page!

You can finally hear WFMU, live or archived from a web-enabled cellphone or mobile device. If your phone or PDA is web-enabled, you can access our mobile offerings from wfmu.org/mobile, but bear in mind that this page only looks right on a very small screen. Our mobile FAQ page holds up better on the big screen and might also answer more of your questions.

Right now, we're only dipping our toes in the field of cellphone streaming, and our streams, archives and mobile pages are only compatible if your phone or PDA uses the Palm OS or the windows-based Pocket PC operating system.

So what good is this, you're asking? If you work for a company that blocks our streams and archives, as more and more do these days, you can listen to WFMU, live or archived from your phone. Of course, it's going to sound a lot better if you plug headphones into it. Over Christmas, I was listening to the station live while driving around the midwest, running a wire from my Pocket PC into my car's cassette deck. I've also listened to our new web-only morning slot while driving to work in the morning. Right now, the only archives that are accessible are our MP3 archives, and then only if you've ponied up for broadband wireless access.

I've long been a skeptic about cellphone streaming. My thinking was: streaming is a fragile technology, and cellphones are a fragile technology - if you put them together, then you'll get a service that will really stink! But I was completely wrong. While driving around Hudson County, New Jersey, I've found that my Pocket PC can get a solid streaming signal from WFMU (on the EVDO network) in spots where I can't get a regular cellphone signal at all. And the whole idea of audio streaming lends itself better to deadspots than a live, real-time telephone conversation: with a stream, the phone just uses audio it's already buffered when it hits a dead spot, but with a real-time telephone conversation, the line has no choice but to go dead.

There's been a lot of talk about a new cellphone streaming format called 3GP, and we might start streaming with 3GP in the future as well. Stay tuned.

Kurt Cobain Doing Karaoke (video)

You could almost add this to the annals of great moments in televised lipsynching, but no, this is a video clip of Kurt Cobain doing what can only be described as karaoke (download video, 28 meg, mpeg file). The only catch is that he's doing karaoke to one of his own songs, Smells Like Teen Spirit. This is from Nirvana's Top of the Pops appearance from November of 1991. For reasons still unclear to me, the BBC asked the band to perform the song with a live vocal, using the instrumental backing track from Nevermind. Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic make no effort to appear to be playing, and Cobain turns in a magnificent performance, swallowing the microphone, singing lyrics like "load up on drugs, kill your friends" with a sarcastic lounge-like baritone. A little more info here. And if you enjoyed this, you're sure to enjoy Public Image, Ltd. or Prince on American Bandstand. via fulminatia

Choose Your Own... State of the Union

Dubya MP3s: Osymyso & Chris Morris "Bushwhacked 2" | Scott Williams "My Message Today" | Carole Coleman "Interview with GWB"

If you're too impatient to wait another few hours before our Commander in Chief delivers his state of the union address this evening, why not make one up on the fly? You know Dubya certainly will. Lurking in the sites below are countless juicy audio clips and remixes, direct from the mouth of Bush Jr. himself: malapropisms and dubya-speak aplenty! How can the presidential speechwriters still manage to trip up this innovative linguist so often? It's time to show them up, people, get to work.

W Audio Clips: Weekly Radio Addresses | C-Span State of the Union Archives (video and transcripts) | Samples and Speeches courtesy of The Bots (going back to the 2000 debate with Al Gore)

W Song Remixes: RX (Georgie sings pop songs) | WFMU's RNC Remix archive (including the creepily realistic interactive Dubya segment, streaming MP3)

W Speech Remix Generators: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (with video)

More Fun with W on Beware of the Blog: "Cowboy Up" takes on a new meaning | Timeshifted Bush | Dubya shakes it and breaks it | GWB Ringtones

Special thanks to our resident Dubya scholars, Ken and Scott

 

Voice Over (mp3)

"Voice Over" is the latest project of artist Brian Joseph Davis, who also did the Ten Banned Albums, Burned, Then Played project. in Voice Over, Davis created a text based on lines from 500 different film trailers, then gave the cut-and-pasted text to professional voiceover artist Scott Taylor to read. It sounds really great if you play it more than once at the same time, which I hereby claim dibs on for my Wednesday show. You can stream Voice Over from this page, or download the MP3 here.

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 7

This post resumes where the last one left off, scanning the AM broadcast band in northern Michigan late at night August 23, 2001. I  recorded this dial scan at a campsite located on a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan. Far from urban and residential radio interference and situated in the midst of a giant body of uninhabited water, it was a promising location for receiving distant stations.

For those who are interested in such things, my equipment was an adequate workman-like setup, using a Radio Shack ripoff of the GE SuperRadio and the Terk AM loop antenna. I’m not a fan of Radio Shack by the way. However, for many years their stores WERE practical dealers of relatively inexpensive radio gear-- especially if you had the patience to wait until certain items went on sale. But as I mentioned in the last post, this has changed.

Located just 740 miles shy of the exact center of the continent, my picnic table was a good location geographically to scan AM broadcasts at night. And the time placement was significant too. This session of radio monitoring occurred at the late end of the summer news lull preceding the onslaught of the endless media storm of fear and terror that we still can't get enough of.

On the hot seat that evening-- Gary Condit. The spooky centrist Democrat from California suspected of murder had just faced the television scrutiny of Connie Chung that evening on ABC. You may recall, there was no issue more worthy of our attention at that time. You heard some of the talk radio discussion of that TV incident in the audio presented with the last post.

But before I get into this radio reception of that evening, I wanted to say something about the practice and appeal of DXing itself, and perhaps about the art of it as well.

In writing this series of blog posts (with audio) concerning a relatively obscure hobby, like DXing, I guess I’m hoping these will primarily be read by people who would never do such a thing, but are still interested in lo-fi old fashioned mass media. But I'm trying to make sure I have an idea of what I'm talking about because these will also be read by folks who also search out distant radio stations (Many who probably know about DXing than I do). As I stated in my first post, I’m a casual DXer at best and it’s my amateur enthusiasm for the avocation that I hope to pass on to readers here, more than any claim of expertise or knowledge. And in writing about a little known and possibly dying craft, I’d hope that a few readers might expand their radio diet, and that others might renew their interest in fooling around this way.

Ukrainian Underground (mp3s)

(MP3s: 21 files below the jump.)

Ask the average American which famous Ukrainians he knows, and you will always get the same response. He will list Vladimir Horowitz, Milla Jovovich, Anatole Litvak, Mikhail Bulgakov, Misha Mengelberg, Ilya Ehrenburg, the Klitschko Brothers, Golda Meir, Maya Deren, Kazimir Malevich, Igor Olshansky, Nikolai Gogol, Leon Trotsky, Eugene Hutz, Natan Sharansky, Isaac Stern, Oleg Antonov, Planeteer Linka, Nathan Milstein, The Color Orange, Sviatoslav Richter, Anna Akhmatova, Leonid Brezhnev, Ruslana Lyzhychko, Israel Ben Eliezer, Philip Glass', Jack Palance's and Leonard Nimoy's parents, William Shatner's grandfather, and the mandolin player of The Ukrainians. After that he will start giving you lessons about decorating pysanky. Absolutely ridiculous, and it only goes to show that Americans are totally ignorant about other countries. Thankfully the WFMU blog is here to expand your knowledge about Ukrainian culture.

Sensei Rebel's Archive Picks of the Week (1/23/06 - 1/29/06)

All MP3 and RealAudio links are streaming links from the WFMU Archives.

Rock And Roll
Association - "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies" RealAudio
from Tony Coulter's show, January 23, 2006

International
Mohammed Rafi - "Jan Pehechan ho" RealAudio
from Maria Levitsky's show (filling in for Ken), January 25, 2006

Experimental
Haruomi Hosono - "Mabui Dance" RealAudio
from Janitor From Mars with R. Lim, January 23, 2006

Dance
Wagon Christ - "Lovely" RealAudio
from This Is the Modern World with Trouble, January 26, 2006

Jungle
Amazon II - "Booyaa!" RealAudio
from Bring That Beat Back with Billy Jam, January 25, 2006

Hip-Hop
Junk Science - "House Wigger" RealAudio
from Bring That Beat Back with Billy Jam, January 25, 2006

Fave Song of the Week
Robert Ashley - "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" RealAudio
from Acapulco Dance Party with Acapulco Rodriguez, January 26, 2006

Cleaning Out My Inbox

Tracking The Threat provides a flash-based graphic interface for exploring the relationships between various international terrorists, places and events. You can have fun for hours. Did you know that North Korea has Acoustic Mines? via Information Aesthetics.

Even Senator Ted Stevens now has an iPod . And last week his Commerce Committee gave the RIAA the cold shoulder when Ted realized that they didn't want to let him load radio shows onto it. Link, via EFF.

Bez, the drug-dealing, maracca shaking cheerleader for Happy Mondays, is slated to play one of Jesus' disciples in a Manchester-based BBC version of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Jesus himself hasn't been cast yet, but whoever plays him will get to sing Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, while Mary Magdalene gets The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love. Guardian UK story, via Hatch.

The Bigfoot Resurgence continues - here's a page of the audio recordings of the big guy howling, sneezing, stomping and making a racket in general. Thanks Dale!

Short video of a street singer with one hell of a voice. (download video, 9meg wmv file) via youtube

Donald Rumsfeld's plan for taking the war to the web. via del.icio.us

From the days when Osama was our man in Afghanistan, Mujahadeen comics. via fulminatia

It's like mushrooms, without the dry heaves: Click in the center to get it started, stare into the pinwheel for 20 seconds, and then look away at any large stationary object.

Lots of cool shockwave visual sound toys at storynest. My faves: rain |  smashing chairs  |  butterfly's dream  |  Stuck  |  Number

Why did Bernard-Henry Levy and the French Poop Machine hit our shores at the same time? via fazed

Chin rap (download video, 4 meg quicktime). It's been done before, but the braces and the showercap make it. via del.icio.us

Ever been surrounded by a mob of menacing farm animals? OK, they're not so menacing.

Art links from the amazing cabinodd site:

The Six String Sonics Destroy Guitar Based Tyranny (video)

People! Join us! Become martyrs in the overthrow of the dated paradigm of the guitar based rock combo! Guitar has six strings but unfortunately we must possess merely five fingers. Rise up and smash the tyrannical rule of the corrupt six string guitar, the core of all evil!

One band sees the truth and dares to take a stand - The Six String Sonics! (download video, 18 meg quicktime). One band, with esteemed members of DMBQ, The Volume Dealers, Wiggle, Kirihito Group, Hellchild and Boryoku Onsen Geisha, climbs jungle gym-like structure to break up imperial hegemony of guitar based rock. Six guitarists, each playing single string guitar celebrating the freedom and throwing off shackles of uncreative insect-like power pop twelve string jangle strum jangle bend the string la la la. No more~!

Long live the indissoluble union of the working class, drum-based peasantry, and national intelligentsia!

A Whack of Serge Gainsbourg Videos

A Whack of Serge Gainsbourg Videos and
A Whack of Captain Beefheart Videos

... and that's just the beginning...

Thanks ILX!

This Week in Sex: Go Outside and Play

The Outsider Art Fair is this weekend, and you are welcome to pick me up a piece by reclusive obsessive little-girl-lovin' Henry Darger. A big piece, please.

Your next road trip or your next DIY project: Madison Heights Doll Garden of Frights.

My favorite freemartin. For some reason, the word freemartin is considered difficult, but the picture of a freemartin is fucking adorable.

Got MILF? Milk I'd Like to Fuck commercial by PETA. I can't understand why this isn't airing during the Super Bowl. Do they have a problem with nipples or something? NSFW

Got meat? Pro-meat ads are prettier than the PETA kind. [via boingboing]

Do try this at home. Can art: why is so much of it so phallic?

Size is everything. Scientists show that buying condoms in bulk online is cheaper than buying just a few at RiteAid when you think you are going to get lucky.

I want to ride my bicycle. via graphis [thanks Michael!]

The Fall: The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E Smith

Documentary - The Fall: The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E Smith (2005)

Download (.torrent)
Format: avi | Size: 353mb

I agree with Tony Wilson when he says, "To this day, I'm not sure I like The Fall's music, but I like The Fall."

Thanks Grey Lodge!

Grizzly Man Parody

Great parody (Download video, 37MB mov file) of Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, retitled Grizzly Bear Man, done up by these lunatics. Old Wern gets a bit decimated himself as whomever plays him reminds the Oscar committee that it's about time for him to win one: "I dragged a boat over a mountain for chrissakes." Passed on to me by our own Little Mister Chocolate of Saturday nights, Mark Allen.

The Party's Over, For Me At Least

Are you in your teens, twenties, thirties or even older, still riding the wave of immoderation that we Americans call "partying"?  G_d bless you, you savage, but know this:  respect and observe that "all things in moderation" rule, choose day-to-day mental stability over that delicious buzz, or you're liable to end up like me:  too old and too crazy for any kind of substance abuse, period.

You think I'm joking?  Despite my flip tone, I'm actually dead serious.  I find myself, just past the crossroads of my forties, unable to engage in any kind of mind-altering consumption of any type.  Sad, right?  Or is this what they call "maturity"?  Not that it matters what my personal philosophical opinions on the situation are, as it's hard physical realities that have brought me to this sober (and sobering) state.

The fact that I don't really drink alcohol or coffee anymore separates me tremendously from my fellow humans.  "Have a drink," they say, "it's legal and everyone's doing it.  Besides, one little drink won't hurt. It'll loosen you up."  One little drink, of beer, tequila or champagne (I hate the moldy, rotten stench of wine, and haven't touched the "hard stuff" in years) gives me an immediate sour ache in my stomach, and the next day I'm so depressed that I'm suicidal, ready to hang myself from the tree in the backyard.  So much for booze.

What about coffee?  It's fun, it's tasty, gives you that little lift, and is sold in endless varieties on literally every street corner in America.  One-half cup of non-decaf coffee turns me into the madman that the media had people convinced Howard Dean was after the 2004 Iowa Caucuses; a whole cup, and the slightest aberration in my routine can and does provoke homicidal feelings of anger, spraying death like the Luftwaffe.

I used to smoke cigarettes, never heavily, but a little bit in high school, and then off-and-on throughout the 90s.  Now, 30 minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke leaves me with a 24-hour sore throat.  If I forget myself and actually take a drag, a defibrillator may be required.

Chris T.'s New Dream

The dream began in a deli/luncheonette, dilapidated, in a suburban setting. I was there with faceless friends. An elderly black man came in selling wind-up toys unlike any I'd seen. They lit up in soft neon, shuffled slowly and moved their arms up and down. The hawker was desperate to sell something but couldn't get anyone in my group to buy. I was very intrigued by the toys and wanted to hear the price. He left before I could ask him to elaborate.

Somehow I followed him and came to an industrial area near a railroad station. He had set up a kind of flea-market where many interesting things were available, mostly toys. I liked what I saw and was planning to make a purchase when a constable of some sort came along and starting running the hawker out of town.

The photo is of me and my brother (left to right) with a fiberglas ape at South Of The Border, 1973. Note the red Chrysler Newport and cream Ford Galaxie. We bought fireworks and shot them off in the woods next to a motel in Florida.

Yann Tomita's Doopee Time (MP3s)

Here's a strange and wonderful record called Doopee Time by the Japanese composer and experimentalist Yann Tomita. Trying to describe this record (or Tomita) is difficult - part muzak, part dada comedy, part I Dream of Jeannie, with a running commentary by The Doopees, two Japanese doll women named Suzie and Caroline. There's a few other tracks from a Yann Tomita mini album as well. Enjoy. Thanks Vicki!

What's The Time?   |   Doopee Time   |   How Does It Feel?

Reprise - How Does It Feel?   |   Caroline Cries to Chopin Opus 28 No 4

Love   |   Medical Services   |   Dr. Domestic's Physical A   |   Dr. Domestic's Physical B

Time and Space   |   Air By Bus   |   Auntie Kim Sings   |   Astro Age Steel Orchestra

Now That You've Gone   |   Through My Window   |   Some Day That Place   |   Dooits

Track 18   |   Introduction To The LP

36 Hours of Roland Barthes

Smarten up yer iPod with a Wad of French Theory

Roland Barthes: "Comment vivre ensemble" (1977) and "Le Neutre" (1978) [MP3]: Over 36 hours worth of lectures by Roland Barthes (1915-1980). The audio material available here represents the complete lectures given by Barthes during his first 2 years' teaching at the Collège de France in 1977 and 1978, and also his inaugural lecture about the question of power (and the way it is inscribed in the core of the language). [MP3s are in French] (via UbuWeb)

From the WFMU News Vault: America's Pun Laureate Guests on 1970 WFMU Show

Listener Ed K. recently sent in this article from the  October 11, 1970 Newark Star Ledger.  The article announces some of the programming changes enacted at WFMU under the station management of Alan Fritch. As part of the campaign to run the station with "a more professional effort" following the staff walkout and closure of the station in late 1969, WFMU operated on a limited schedule, pre-recorded educational programming as part of a three-college consortium, and ran 5 minute news broadcasts every hour as part of a deal with the commercial Mutual Broadcasting Network.  One of the programs from this "new era" of WFMU was "World of Words" which on October 29th of that year ran a program on  "the history of the pun" with special guest expert Louis Ginsberg of Paterson, NJ, who was also known as "America's Pun Laureate".  As far as I know, no audio record exists of this broadcast, but you can hear recordings by Louis Ginsberg's son, Allen, on many WFMU shows:

Hear "Complaint of the Skeleton to Time" by Allen Ginsberg. (Streaming Realaudio, from Charlie's 1/2/06 show)

Hear "America" by Allen Ginsberg. (Streaming Realaudio, from David's 7/27/05 show)

Or, try out WFMU's Playlist Search Tool to look for all shows (since approximately January 2002) which have played tracks by Allen Ginsberg (or Jack Kerouac, or William Burroughs, or if Beat Poets aren't your thing and you want to hear something (sort of) in honor of America's Pun Laureate, here are some shows which have played Big Pun).

Milk'n'Cookies Live At CBGB - MP3s

Last year, England's RPM record label reissued a great album by a little-known American bubblegum glam band called Milk'n'Cookies. Upon reading a review that I'd written when the disc came out, a friend of mine told me that as a teenager he'd owned a cassette of the band playing live at CBGB. Recently, he found the tape and passed it along to me.

Milk'n'Cookies formed in Woodmere, Long Island, in 1973. They were discovered by Sparks producer John Hewlet, who recruited ex-Roxy Music bass player Sal Maida. The band went to England in 1974 to record an album for Island with Muff Winwood, who had produced Kimono My House for Sparks. After their first single "Little, Lost And Innocent" was released in February of 1975, Island shelved the full-length. The album remained unreleased for over a year, then Sire signed the band and finally put it out. They recorded demos of three more songs, but they never finished another album. Guitarist and songwriter Ian North went on to form a new wave band called Radio. Their video for "Only Love Is Left Alive" was played a few times in the early days of MTV. Sal Maida went on to play with Sparks and the Runaways, as well as other Kim Fowley projects.