Special Ed: "The Story of the Naivete"
MP3s: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
When the history of turntablism is written, alongside the likes of Steinski, John Oswald and Milan Knizak, will be the great Ed Special whose been doing a radical freeform show on Ann Arbor's WCBN, well, as long as Ken Freedman can remember from his days at the station in the early 80s. Ken sez: "He's a longtime fill-in DJ at WCBN who is known for marathon collage sessions lasting twelve hours or more, often with multiple DJs joining in from different rooms. I recall back in the 80s, he had people in three studios, with digital delay units (pre-computer era) and people using rubber bands on tonearms to make LPs skip, etc." I remember a few times at WFMU when DJs failed to show up for their slots, we ran 3-hour Special Ed mixes on tape; they blew my mind.
Once in a while Ed makes available a full-length workout such as "The Story of the Naivete," clocking in at about 1 hour 15 minutes. I've been playing bits and pieces of it over the past few weeks and the response has been overwhelming. While it's sorta based around Chrismas, it's really not.
You can read more about Ed Special here.
From the Special Ed Department Of Corrections:
Regarding the Metro Times article:
WCBN-FM is 88.3, not 89.3.
Jon Moshier's name is spelled Jon Moshier.
I never said (or would I ever say) "What keeps me going is pissing people off all the time"
Posted by: Ed Special | January 09, 2006 at 01:31 PM
I'm a huge fan of Ed's: I grew up listening to him, and he was a huge influence on my own DJ'ing in Ann Arbor and Chicago. I'm pretty sure I put up the very first web page containing his work (now located here).
Posted by: Kim Scarborough | January 09, 2006 at 03:26 PM
By the way, there is artwork for The Story Of The Naivete, so that you can make your very own CD. You can get it from my blog. I was at WCBN myself for a while, and one of my brightest moments there was when the next DJ came in after I had done an overnight collage fill-in, and told me that he thought I was Ed Special when he had turned on his car radio.
Posted by: Lukas | January 09, 2006 at 04:24 PM
Could someone tell me what is the album Special Ed is using with the Googler and Gaggler material?
Posted by: MYork | January 09, 2006 at 10:48 PM
Googler and Gagler and the two Christmas babies
by Carl Sandburg
Posted by: Ed Special | January 10, 2006 at 04:10 PM
Always grateful when Ed gets media exposure, thanks Ken.
People might like to know that the way we did bits of this show involved Ed and I trading random phrases back and forth from various LPs in two different studios, hard to do when you haven't heard what you're going to be playing and you're laughing the entire time. Ed's Christmas shows are an indelible and memorable part of my teenage years.
One Christmas show I helped host in homage to Ed featured a 12-hour loop of the Chipmunks' 'Christmas, Christmas time is here' song, which was alternately hellish and hilarious in two-hour increments.
Posted by: Listener Colin | January 13, 2006 at 02:59 PM
Listener Colin is former fellow radio artist Colin and also Yax Haxley on "The Story Of The Naivete" CD.
Colin, Kim Scarborough and I had done several shows together at WCBN as "The Sultans Of Segue" and I will try to post some of them to this comments section soon. Or contact me at [email protected] if nothing shows up by Monday.
Hear is an updated Julia Child recipe
http://www.sensoryresearch.com/~special/mp3/julia1.mp3
And the link to a 33 minute sample of Special Ed Xmas Chipmunk torturial is http://www.sensoryresearch.com/~special/mp3/11Xmas03Edit1-13-06.mp3
And speaking of the chipmunks song, there is a rather excellent remix, Chipmunks Mash-Up by Patton Oswalt.
Posted by: Ed Special | January 13, 2006 at 09:29 PM
"And a merry Xmas to you and yours"
This always sounded perversely suggestive to me as a child.
Was Santa genuinely concerned with the gratificational well-being of my privates?
Did he really see everything I did? If so, why did I still get presents?
And how did he get into our house? We had no chimney.
I'm still suspicious of the guy.
Anyway, here is an update of sorts for you. Because if you are reading this, then you certainly have been a bad boy or girl ... or whatever.
1. The link to the 33 minute Chipmunks Xmas torturial is
http://stupid.sensoryresearch.net/mp3/11Xmas03Edit1-13-06.mp3
2. The Story Of The Naivete (tracks and CD art) is still available (FREE) on Lukas' BOTH KINDS OF MUSIC blog http://both-kinds.com/2005/12/22/the-story-of-the-naivete/
3. Special Ed Xmas 2005 (6 hours/5 discs)
tracklist http://tinyurl.com/37n6dy
Special Ed Xmas 2005 DISC 1 parts 1-6.zip http://tinyurl.com/3y9lh2
Special Ed Xmas 2005 DISC 2 parts 7-11.zip http://tinyurl.com/2pdyhr
Special Ed Xmas 2005 DISC 3 parts 12-17.zip http://tinyurl.com/38orqt
Special Ed Xmas 2005 DISC 4 parts 18-24.zip http://tinyurl.com/2p9d5v
Special Ed Xmas 2005 DISC 5 parts 25-27.zip http://tinyurl.com/33b45r
Thank you
Posted by: Ed Special | December 04, 2007 at 02:05 AM
Ed did a magnificent six hour Jingle Bells marathon on WCBN Christmas morning (12am-6am) 2007 - though not archived I'm afraid. But you can grab those xmas 2005 discs (see below) - thanks Ed!
Posted by: Rob Weisberg | December 25, 2007 at 05:15 AM