WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Yay!

I can't tell you how delighted I was to come back from vacation to find that the thermonuclear device I ordered had arrived.  The ultimate weapon will certainly come in handy around here.  For instance, to convince certain tardy DJs to hand in their premium masters.  Ahem.

That reminds me - to all the listeners out there who have sent in thermonuclear devices (and 2006 Marathon pledge payments) -- your swag is coming soon!  If you haven't received yours yet, you should be receiving it by the end of June.  Mouse of Today pledgers will be getting their premiums a bit later this summer, most likely starting in July.  I hope we will wrap up the majority of swag mailing for 2006 by late summer.  If you have questions about your stuff in particular, please drop me a line.  And big thanks to everyone who came through for WFMU this year.  Your support is the fuel that keeps the Freeform Furnace burning hotter than a hundred Thermonuclear Devices.

Adventures in Amplitude Modulation - Part 18

After doing almost twenty posts in this series, my impulse is to assume that by now readers who are interested in shortwave and AM DXing are following this blog thread, and others are passing it by for less geeky content on the WFMU blog. But in case you've just come across one of these posts for the first time and you're curious, I'll quickly mention again what's going on here.

Listening to the old broadcast bands for information, sport or adventure isn't so popular in this U.S. these days, for many reasons. And since I’ve started writing these posts, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve talked to about DXing who can more than feign an interest in listening to lo-fi audio signals from faraway places. I mean, if you experience your media from cable TV and/or through a speedy multimedia computer with a broadband connection, why should you care about complicated radios that offer sputtering static, strange noises, and people speaking in all sorts of languages you don’t understand?

For better or worse, some of us still have fun with this old technology. While it’s easy to be overwhelmed by so MUCH radio content available today– besides AM & FM, there’s internet and satellite radio and many thousands of podcasts flooding the mediasphere every week. However, there's a minority out here who continue to listen to radio the hard way and test the capabilities of our receivers. And with shortwave, it’s remains the only way to hear direct communications from distant countries without somehow going through some corporate communication infrastructure. And you throw in the entertainment value of Christian kooks who have infested the U.S. shortwave frequencies, and a few clandestine operators and shortwave pirates lurking about, you’ve got an eclectic, and often exotic, mix of programming to sample that you'd probably never hear any other way. And it’s important to mention that what has become a fringe medium in America, is still a very popular and important way to hear news, information and music in the developing world.

During the cold war, back in the days before the world wide web, there was no way to hear the OTHER side, except on shortwave. Now we have other strange political and economic forces that are again dividing up our world, and creating many “others” who have disagreements with the west, especially the U.S. (For example, the English language programming on Radio Habana Cuba is NOT available on the internet.) If you REALLY want to balance your news and information intake these days, shortwave is STILL a good way to go. And your listening habits will not be logged or noticed by John Poindexter, or any of his friends. Something to think about.

Voluntary Domestic Surveillance

Domestic spying is getting a bad rap these days. Sure the NSA might be listening to all of your booty calls and coded conversations with your pot dealer, but they're not really hearing you, man. I mean, to get to the core of you, they need to connect with your music, right?

Thankfully Arbitron, a radio ratings company that collects consumer research data (and sells it to ad firms, commercial radio stations, etc), has come up with a voluntary domestic surveillance device that monitors all of the music you hear throughout the day. This big-brotherly contraption is called a Portable People Meter (or PPM).

Instead of relying on folks keeping diaries of their radio listening habits (a-la Nielsen TV ratings), Arbitron created a cell phone-sized hunk of plastic (to be worn by the test subject all day long) that registers inaudible (unless played backwards, perhaps? more on satanic backmasking here and here) ID codes embedded in TV and radio satellite and broadcast signals, department store sound systems, internet radio audio, and MP3s you listen to, beaming the data back to their mothership at the end of the day when the user plugs the device into its base/charger. Equipped with a motion detector, the PPM even knows whether or not it's being worn by the user (although, I suppose you could clip the thing to a ceiling fan or set it on your turntable, and play a loop of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" all day long if you really wanted to fuck with them). Click on the flowchart above to view the PPM's musical spying scheme in detail.

But before you get your panties in a bunch about this nefarious market research methodology, remember that it requires voluntary participation on both the user end and the content provider end (and no, WFMU has no plans to embed secret ID codes into our broadcast or internet signals... we prefer audible forms of mind control, thank you very much).

Perhaps scarier than the PPM mounting on our horizon is existing song recognition technology, employed by companies like Media Guide. Station Manager Ken recently acquired a copy of a song-tracking log this company had generated (without WFMU's knowledge, duh), presumably by hooking up a song-recognition computer to one of our internet streams. Interestingly enough, about 80% of the music we played during the period surveyed did not appear on their song list, suggesting that they've got a pretty narrow musical radar.

So do they hear what we hear? Almost.

Bryce meets Irene: A Serendipitous Mashup

I like playing things together.
I like when things surprisingly fit together perfectly.
I don't have a lot of free time.
I like listening to Bryce's show.
I like listening to Irene's show.

So, it was only natural that I'd find myself listening to them both at the same time. Perfection!

Try it yourself (before the MP3's start expiring on June 12th!):

• Skip ahead 12:48 into Bryce's 5/26/06 MP3 archive
• Start up Irene's 5/22/06 MP3 archive

Can't do it? Here's a 15-minute audio taste (128k MP3).

Butthole Surfers on the Scott and Gary Show (video)

Forget Bono's profanities, Janet's nipple, and the CBS teenage sex orgy. The real fun takes place on public access cable TV, free from FCC censorship, commercial pressures, unencumbered by professionalism and decorum. After bringing you the cursing preacher from LA, today it is time for tripped-out Texans with musical instruments.

In 1984, the Butthole Surfers visited New York for the first time, and among others they appeared on the now legendary Scott and Gary Show. On their cable access show, Scott Lewis and Gary Winter featured lots of great then-unknown musicians like the Beastie Boys (when they were still a punk band, with drummer Kate Schellenbach), Half Japanese, R. Stevie Moore, and many more. The Butthole Surfers had just released their first EP, now commonly known as Brown Reason To Live, and they turned up in the TV studio well-prepared, i.e. they had loaded up on acid and brought some rolls of toilet paper.

Enjoy the madness, admire the mad skills of guitarist Paul Leary, especially during the interview: Part 1 (38 meg MP4, Too Parter and Tornadoes) | Interview (37 meg MP4) | Part 2 (27 meg Quicktime, Mexican Caravan)

These clips were taken from The Scott and Gary Show Tribute VHS, and with some luck you might be able to obtain a copy. (When Amazon says "usually ships within 4 to 6 weeks", it means they don't have it, and they'll unsuccessfully try to get it.)

By the way, Butthole Surfers singer Gibby Haynes joined a band of aging rock stars (Al Jourgensen of Ministry, Jello Biafra, some guys from ZZ Top and Cheap Trick) on the new Revolting Cocks CD. It isn't even that bad. However, for the really great stuff, get all Butthole Surfers albums up to and including Hairway to Steven. But you knew that anyway, didn't you?

Name That Tune!

More Here in Scott's Guitar Face Gallery.

When Reggae was King

Desmond Dekker was the first.  The very first Gold record in Jamaica.  The first reggae song to be a #1 radio hit in the UK.  The first official Jamaican reggae song to gain prominence in the US radio charts. As a welding apprentice in his teens, Dekker met co-worker Bob Marley who had also sought the attentions of Beverley's label head and producer Leslie Kong. The first of the two to get a record put out by Kong, Dekker then hooked Bob Marley up with Kong and his first record deal.  For the bulk of the 1960's Desmond Dekker was one of the premier voices of rock steady music.  With his first single "Honour your Father and your Mother" he showed his more traditional side.  "It Mek" shouted down his rebellious younger sister and her antics, a popular theme that would rise again as he chastised upstart young Jamaican women with more mid 60's singles.  But as the beautiful island of future tourism commercials swelled with disfunctional rage following its independence swipe from England in 1962, politics entered the musical fray and in 1967 "007 (shanty town)" became a rude boy anthem.  When the growing violence in mid-century Jamaica was directed at colonial power, the rude boy was a hero.  But as this violence entered day to day life in the ghettos and shanty towns the tolerance for bad men waned.  Duke Reid, head of Treasure Isle studios, an ex-policeman and undeniable tough guy, ignored the rude boy trend entirely.  On the other hand, Leslie Kong followed the sales charts and continued on with rude boyisms until the late 60's.  All of these recordings would become truly popular once again with the Two-Tone set in early 1980's England, and cool college enclaves beyond.

1968, a seismic shaking year for much of the western world in one way or another, saw the release of "Israelites" by Desmond Dekker and the Aces. "Israelites" muses on the continued political strife in Jamaican day to day life; perhaps many listeners outside of the island understood little of the song's political character, but followed the irresistible shakin' beats all the way to #1 on the UK charts.

Born July 16, 1942, and orphaned as a teen, Desmond Dekker is one of the best known ambassadors for Jamaican music, introducing the world to the rich music that is far larger than its geographical footprint.

The Return of Wheezer: Pump Organ MP3s

(12 Pump Organ MP3s beneath the jump)

The Old Pump Organ (LP)
Played by Naomi Barfield
Forum Records 7GS 2510 (no date, ca. 1950s)

The old pump organ, as its codgery modifier implies, wheezes and snorts like a village elder, sauntering unsteadily as if fueled by demon whiskey. There's something quaintly sinister about this creaky musical relic: the spooky undercurrents, the musty parlor aura, the summoning of poltergeists. It's out of date and out of joint, emitting a charming silliness that betrays not a hint of self-consciousness, nor a note of embarrassment.

It casts a spell. Who wouldn't want one of these eerie anachronisms in their living room? And Naomi Barfield on call to play it.

Peek Freans are a Very Nonexistent Cookie

Hi Bronwyn,

Thank you for visiting http://www.kraftfoods.com/ and for your interest in PEEK FREANS Biscuits.

It's great to hear from consumers who are looking for our products because it lets us know how much you enjoy them.  The tough part comes when we have to share the news that the product you're trying to find has been discontinued.  If products don't seem to be popular with our consumers, and demand starts to drop, a decision is made to discontinue the item.  Once this decision is made, we stop making the product and the remaining supply is shipped from our warehouse to the grocery stores.

If you haven't done so already, please add our site to your favorites and visit us again soon!

Kim McMiller
Assoc Director, GCR Consumer Services

Zarah Leander, The Shortest Distance from Hitler to The Velvet Underground

(20 MP3s and two videos in this post, most MP3s are beyond the jump)

When Joseph Goebbels set out to create a Nazi movie studio to rival Hollywood's dream machine, he tried to recruit Germany and Europe's most glamorous stars, most notably Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Since both Garbo and Dietrich had already fled war-torn Europe for Hollywood, Goebbels attention drifted to the singer and actress Zarah Leander. In 1936, Goebbels signed Leander to the recently nationalized film studio UFA, and the Swedish Leander became the highest paid Nazi film star (much to Goebbels consternation), and one of the most popular actresses and singers in Germany and Europe. She starred in ten propaganda films for the Reich and was a particular favorite of Hitler, who reportedly found the icy, husky-voiced Leander irresistible.(Leander was a featured subject in the documentary Hitler's Women, along with Eva Braun, Leni Riefenstahl and Magda Goebbels.)

Among Leander's other fans were a young German girl from Cologne named Christa Paffgen, later  to record under the name Nico. Nico modeled her singing style after Leander, and the Leander style influenced dozens of other singers as well. Nina Hagen recorded a version of Leander's biggest German hit, Ich Weiss, Es Wird Einmal Ein Wunder Gescheh'n [download Zarah's MP3, and download Nina Hagen's video of the same song, 12 megs, mpeg format, in which Hagen dresses up as Zarah Leander for the beginning]. And here is a video of Nico singing Femme Fatale with the Velvet Underground live in 1972: [download video, 13 megs, mpeg format] Both videos can also be streamed via youtube.

Dee Snider, Fred Durst, and Brian Turner

 
 
 
 

Our own Music and Program Director, Brian Turner, had his 15 seconds of fame last night on VH1, providing commentary for a metal special entitled "Heavy: The Story of Metal." The episode that features Brian will re-air this Sat. May 27 at 10pm EDT.

Click here to download a clip of Brian's cameo (mpg, 9 MB).

This Week in Sex: Fibs

Off to see the Wizmark. Wizmark is a gizmo used for toilet bowl advertising--make that "interactive urinal communications," which we sure as shit need more of. Wizmark claims to be based on "the unwritten rule" of men's room etiquette: never stare at the dude next to you. But it really seems to be based on some other unwritten rule, like the desire to pee on talking advertisements. Where can you check out this pee-activated back-talker? Long Island, of course. What's next, a toilet bowl theme restaurant?

(Above, a sample of the lenticular Wizmark. Lenticular means that when you move the image flickers. Should you really be moving around while spraying urine? I'll never understand guys.)

Hot diggity. Get your dog on at Schnack's hot dog eating contest on Memorial Day. Or be the biggest dick at your bbq with this novelty wiener cooker. Do us all a favor and don't give your dog beer and donuts or she'll end up morbidly obese and on the last five minutes of the 11 o'clock news.

Dress code = no dresses. For guys, that is. Kevin Logan wasn't allowed to attend his senior prom in a dress.

Teenagers having sex these days are drunk and dumb. And I was so sober and smart.

I know it when I see it. "It" in Indonesia may soon be kissing. Ten thousand people, many of them women, demonstrated in favor of an anti-pornography bill that would punish public kissing with five years in prison.

You're glowing! Are you pregnant? Radium brand condoms weren't radioactive. Other hot brand names.

Fairly Freaky Animals site "contains some pictures that may not be suitable for some people." People such as monster pigs, two-headed cows, and multi-legged frogs.

How to make shrunken heads. Or you can just buy them: XS, S, M. (Why no L or XL heads?)

MUM's the word. The museum of underpants is my favorite thing at the rickety online Museum of Menstruation. (Elsewhere, panties in a bottle come new or pre-worn. Or you could just BYOB and drink while you look at the underpants museum, put your used panties in the bottle, and sell it on the internet. Except that would be gross.) I also like the tampon directory, which has the story of the Fibs tampon of the 1930's. Let's make up slogans for Fibs. How about, "Fibs, your little white lie. Shhh." Your turn.

Tamponhenge.

Guilty!

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! (mp3s)

Enron Voicemail (thanks Bob B!)

More Than Just the Glasses?

Eh?

Ok, perhaps it's not as uncanny as this... or this.

Audio Hoaxes and Urban Legends, Part 3: Jud Jud

(18 MP3s of pure, uncompromised Jud beyond the jump.)

Jud Jud was the band that was too straight edge for instruments. Every song (including their "tuning") on their 1989 seven Inch The Demos consists of Steve Heritage (in the left stereo channel) and "B" (in the right channel) chanting their manifesto, which consists mostly of the word Jud, as well as occasional feedback and explosion noises. But mostly the word Jud. Repeated over and over again. The Demos contains pictures of fake flyers for Jud Jud headlining over bands like Minor Threat, which never happened. But the hoax/parody worked remarkably well. As one online review gushed:

JUD JUD managed to strip everything away and find the purist of centers. Using only there mouths JUD JUD leave you standing drop jawed with the speed and insensity of a train (sic). A quote from The Demos 7 inch "Our lyrics have always been the most important part of JUD JUD. We write them separately and feel that is it necessary to print what each of us has to say. These words represent values, ideals, friendships and motivation. They define who we are. Thanxxx to everyone who has supported us over the years. You have made our dreams a reality. Go!"

And a quick inspection of their "important" lyrics is indeed impressive insofar as hoax or not, these boys did come up with a cool new form of musical notation. Each song shows two columns of nonsense words, representing what is being chanted in each stereo channel, as shown for their song X Dive Bomb Song X, at right (click it for a larger image).

WFMU received The Demos in 1999, and although the single says it was recorded from 1987 to 1989, who knows for sure. I couldn't find any evidence of their existence prior to the late 90's, but maybe someone out there has more info. Likewise, with their No Tolerance for Instruments collection - it was released to archive.org in 2003, with claims that it was recorded in 1988, but it sure doesn't sound like it was recorded at the same time as The Demos.

Arizona Sheep No Longer Nervous

Livestock in Arizona can rest easy again; Governor Janet Napolitano signed a law today making bestiality a crime in the state. The bill was proposed after the arrest of a Mesa, Arizona deputy fire chief who enjoyed the occasional conjugal visit with his next door neighbor's lamb. The new law replaces an old ban on "infamous crimes against nature" which had previously been amended to specifically allow sex with animals.

Life is just a fantasy, so why don't you turn me loose, cause tonight I'm on the loose.

It's growing increasingly common that my perfectly sincere and banal utterances inspire derisive milk out the noses of my colleagues.  For instance, yesterday at lunch I said "I was watching Aldo Nova videos last night".  What?  Well I was. 

Let's set the scene! 1982, night, in an abandoned part of the city.  A Nerd jealously guards a Les Paul guitar as a pair of sub-machine gun-toting preppies in sunglasses-at-night look around with an exaggerated sense of urgency.  It's like 24 in '82.  A helicopter alights, safely guarded by these Canadian uzi-preppies.  A Man steps out of the chopper - he is about 5'4", 115 lbs, dressed in a skintight jaguar-suit.  He is ALDO NOVA (nee Caporuscio), and someone's GONNA PAY!  ...just as soon as ALDO and pals can bust into that abandoned rock-arena right over there.  When his toadies fail to bust the door down, it falls to ALDO to demand the Les Paul from The Keeper of The Axe.  ALDO takes aim... and shoots a guitar laser at the door -- all this before the song has even begun!

Aldo Nova, "Fantasy" (youtube video link)
Aldo Nova today. (pic link, unsuitable for this space)

So yeah, I was watching Aldo Nova videos last night... then I cranked up Red Rider's** "Lunatic Fringe", rocked the tennis-racket guitar to Triumph's** "Fight The Good Fight", and did a few pushups to Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose", before going totally "On The Loose", with Saga.  And if you've got a problem with any of this, then Mister, you've got a problem with Canada.

** these bands have never been played on WFMU

Travels with Sluggo: North

A while back Sluggo and I drove up to Boston for the weekend. I’d always wanted to go there, but now I don’t know why. It’s a pokey little place, full of college kids and Red Sox fans. The best thing about it is a place called Mike’s Pastry that has the best cannoli in the world. Do not write to me and say you know where there’s better cannoli until you taste Mike’s. Then you will know for sure. Overall, the food in Boston is very good and fairly inexpensive, which is lucky because there’s not much to do there except eat. The most fun thing we did was to see a performance by Dheem, a classical Indian dance troupe, that was really outstanding. But we weren’t in Boston to have fun, exactly—we were there so I could be filmed meeting another faceblind person.

When I was still on air at FMU, I mentioned a few times in passing that I have prosopagnosia, also known as faceblindness. For some reason, my fusiform gyrus isn’t hooked up properly and I can’t recognize human faces. This is a very rare neurological disability, and I’ve been participating in a documentary that’s being filmed about it. I’d never met another faceblind person (there are only about 200 of us in the whole world), although I’ve corresponded with some via an e-list. The guy who administers the list is named Glenn. He lives in Boston, and the filmmakers were in Boston, so we decided I’d go up there and meet Glenn in person, on camera.

I was really nervous about it, but it turned out to be okay. Whether it’s because he’s the list admin, or because he lives in Boston where prosopagnosiacs go to get studied by Scientists and Experts at Harvard, Glenn has met plenty of other faceblind folks, so it wasn’t a big deal for him and that helped me calm down a little. Mostly I just wanted to thank Glenn in person for running the faceblind list, because I like knowing there are some other people out there who see the world a little bit the way I do. I like knowing they have the same problems I do at parties, and they don’t see any point in having photos of their loved ones around, and they call people who aren’t faceblind NTs (for Neuro Typicals). I like getting recommendations for movies based on the fact that they have characters I’ll be able to identify all the way through the story. (“Chronicles of Narnia” got good marks for that.)

Billy Jam: WFMU 4ADD

I can't imagine what goes on around here in the dead of night, so one night last week I snuck in with my spelunker's headlamp to find out.

Billy Jam of The Hip Hop Slam was on the radio, hosting Bring That Beat Back, and he was curious to find out what the rest of us had been up to all week.  So he went into WFMU's Most Recent Archives page, and he played back the first few seconds of everybody's show.  Mind you, Billy was on the air at the time. Here's the playlist evidence, and here's the mp3.

Turns out this wasn't the first time Billy had used his unwitting compatriots in the service of the radio arts.  Several weeks prior, he didn't feel like back-announcing his sets -- so he grabbed a bunch of mic breaks that had already been accomplished, by others, concerning entirely other things.  That evidence is here.  God knows what else lives inside those archives, go find out for yourself.

One of these men is the mysterious Billy Jam; the other one is even more mysterious.  -->-->-->

I can't readily recall many other instances of WFMU DJs using other WFMU DJs for their own (radio) ends, though surely Kenny G has been present in some experiments, either as victim or perp.  His show has been hijacked more times than I can count, some of which he still doesn't know about!  For now, you want to get your WFMU DJ Manipulations on the radio, you gotta stick with Billy Jam.

Stay up real late and listen to Billy Jam live on the radio every Tuesday into Wednesday, overnite from 2-6am, or check out his archives any old time.

Terrytoons For The Deaf

As a companion piece to Simpsons For The Blind, Kenzo has found an old Terrytoons episode for the deaf, with American Sign Language cutaways needlessly describing the self-evident (and dialogue-free) Mouse- and Duck-on- Bird violence: [download video, 23 megs, mpeg format, or stream it via youtube here]