WFMU's Beware of the Blog

365 Days #49 - Tabby Andriello - Tabby 'n Things: The World's Greatest Mediocrity (mp3s)

MP3:
01 China Boy (1:41)
02 I Don't Know Why (2:19)
03 Spring Song (3:22)
04 Chinatown, My Chinatown (1:39)
05 Mama (1:47)
06 Alpine Melody (2:03)
07 Limehouse Blues (1:44)
08 Mozart's Flute Quartet (4:48)
09 Still Wie Die Nacht (2:51)
10 The World's Greatest Music (3:34)
11 Traditional Sicilian Melody (2:11)
12 Bye Bye Blues (1:32)

I've had this album forever, and I have absolutely no recollection of where or when I picked it up. I'm sure the cover and the liner notes intrigued me, and once I played it, I know I wasn't let down, as I've played it dozens of times since. I love the variety to the instrumentation, the off-kilter vocals, and the general feel of the whole production.

Personal favorites are the first and last tracks. A bit of satire, "The World's Greatest Music" thrown into side two, seems out of place to me, but otherwise, this is just about as perfectly peculiar as an album can get. I encourage you to read the original liner notes to the album, as they add a further level of enjoyment to the listening experience.

As to who Tabby is or was, I have absolutely no idea, despite years of searching. Even web searches only tend to find one consistent hit, for someone by the same name who contributed "Special Effects" to a Bob James album in the early 1980's. Anyone who knows anything about this album is strongly encouraged to fill me in, as well as educating the rest of the 365 listening audience.

- Contributed by: Bob Purse

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

Media: 12" LP
Album: Tabby 'n Things: The World's Greatest Mediocrity

Musical Radio Theater Version of Dante's Divine Comedy (MP3s)

In 1993, German artist Andreas Ammer teamed up with members of Einstürzende Neubauten and legendary DJ John Peel to produce a radio play of Dante's Divine Comedy. The result was Radio Inferno, with music by Einstürzende's F.M. Einheit, and starring Blixa Bargeld as Dante, Phil Minton as Virgil, and John Peel as "The Radio" (the narrator). Caspar Brotzmann played guitar, and the work includes gues appearance from Bootsy Collins and many others.

The fate of Limbo may still be in limbo, but 33 other of Dante's cantos await you, with John Peel, Blixa Bargeld and FM Enheit as your guides. Here are all 34 acts of Radio Inferno:

Canto I   |   Canto II   |   Canto III   |   Canto IV   |   Canto V   |   Canto VI   |   Canto VII

Canto VIII   |   Canto IX   |   Canto X   |   Canto XI   |   Canto XII   |   Canto XIII

Canto XIV   |   Canto XV   |   Canto XVI   |   Canto XVII   |   Canto XVIII   |   Canto XIX

Canto XX   |   Canto XXI   |   Canto XXII   |   Canto XXIII   |   Canto XXIV   |   Canto XXV   |   Canto XXVI

Canto XXVII   |   Canto XXVIII   |   Canto XXIX   |   Canto XXX   |   Canto XXXI   |   Canto XXXII

Canto XXXIII   |   Canto XXXIV

david bowie is a boar

Britney Again Flashing Skin In All The Wrong Places

Following a tongue-in-cheek faith healing session with President Bush aboard Air Force One Friday night, Britney Spears emerged in public sporting her new clean and sober do.

This Week on eBay: Ink and Death

Now that St. Valentine's Day is over, and your teeth are rotten and your blood sugar is totally screwed up from all that candy - wait, was this Valentine's Day or Hallowe'en? - now it's time to come down off the sugar high with a heavy dose of pain, in the form of needles filled with ink, piercing your pretty skin.  Yes, tattoos!

We have not one, but TWO tattoo-related publications up for auction on eBay this week, and both feature Don Ed Hardy, one of the most recognizable names in the tattoo world.  And we've got death, too, in handy coffee-table book size.

Tattoo Time #1: New Tribalism, Edited by Don Ed Hardy
Rare and out-of-print, this is the second printing of the first of Hardy's influential series of tattoo journals, published by Hardy Marks, the company he started with his wife.  "New Tribalism" features the history of tattooing from many cultures; an interview with Paul Rogers, one of the greats of the Western Hemisphere's tattoo society; and MANY beautiful photos, both black-and-white, and color.  This is super-high-quality stuff, printed on thick paper, with in-depth writing and fine photography.  Students of American cultural studies, anthropology, and photography should check it out.

Forever Yes: Art Of The New Tattoo, forward by Don Ed Hardy
Another gorgeous book of photographed tattoos, nearly all in color, printed on thick paper.  This book is the companion to the eponymous art exhibit that appeared at Santa Monica's Bryce Bannatyne Gallery in 1992, featuring photographs, taken by the likes of Bobby Neel Adams, Vicki Berndt, Cat Gwynn, Masato Sudo, Shuzo Uemoto, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mari Kono and more, of tattoo art by Fip Buchanan, Fred Corbin, Don Ed Hardy, Horijin, Horiyoshi III, Davy Jones, Michael Malone, Kevin Quinn, Laura Vida, Hideo Uchiyama, and more.   This is some hot stuff.

Evidence, by Luc Sante
Okay maybe you had no candy on Valentine's Day.  Maybe you have no sweetheart.  And you spent that treacly holiday alone, buried in a snowbank.  Salve your psychic wounds and bring back your youthful glow by flipping through a book filled with nostalgia-inducing, sepia-toned (well, okay, black-and-white) photographs of corpses.  Lots of corpses. Dead people always make the broken-hearted feel better!  Here's what happened: when Luc Sante was going through the NYPD's archives, researching "Low Life," he discovered a cache of New York City crime-scene photographs (murders and suicides) taken between 1914 and 1918.  There were no stories attached to these pictures, as the NYPD trashed most of the accompanying archives, supposedly by dumping them in the East River.  So, Sante tries to piece together who these dead people were, what happened to them, and where.  Fascinating stuff, and sadly, this book is OUT-OF-PRINT.  Get 'em while they're, um, cold.

a stolen record should sound better than the one you paid for

365 Days #48 - Happy Monsters - Clap Your Tentacles (mp3)

MP3:
Happy Monsters - Clap Your Tentacles (2:46)

This record intrigued me from the moment I heard it used as an intro to a mix by DJ and producer Mark Pritchard (also known as Harmonic 33). Though Mark had helpfully given the shortened LP title, the record slipped my mind until a few months ago when I was rummaging for a basement bargain in the Music and Video Exchange (well-known chain of second-hand shops in London). As soon as I saw ‘Oooog’ written on the front cover, I knew this was the record I’d heard on the mix. Bargain found.

‘Happy Monsters’ is split into two parts. Side A is a children’s story: Bobby and Betty’s adventures in the land of Oooog. The most interesting parts are when the monsters talk to the children, producing some top musique concrète sounds as well as horrible klaxons and squeaks.

Despite the possible samples, it’s Side B that really attracts. There are cover versions of the classic tunes Kiss me goodnight, Papa’s got a brand new bag and CC Rider, amongst others. Papa has become Clap your tentacles and in my opinion is the best thing about this record. A faithful cover version of the Godfather himself, nice and raw with decent production. However, the Happy Monsters appear to be on lead vocals: Klaxons, bells, squeaks and parps are strewn all over the top of the final mix, making the whole thing rather comical. The same technique has been applied to the same version of the track on Bobby and Betty go to the moon (another release on the Happy House label) but with spacey sounds instead. Indeed, the actors on Side A are the same as on Bobby and Betty.

With a little bit of research, mainly from the excellent Vinyl Vulture forum, we find that the music on this record comes from The Soul Symphony’s Symphony of Soul LP on the Stereo Gold label. The musicians who added the crazy extras on Happy Monsters thankfully remain anonymous. Stereo Gold was the brainchild of Leo Muller (also known as David Miller), an easy listening entrepreneur. He formed a company called Damil in the early 70s and it was this company that was behind Happy House records.

It seems that Leo Muller was a bit of a scammer, a fact reinforced by the same tracks featuring on two different children’s records and these tracks having been taken from an earlier release. I wonder what the outcome might have been if Happy House had put a bit more effort into writing some original pieces in line with the Happy Monsters theme. Actually, let’s not dwell on that too long – it would probably have been horrible. At least we have Papa’s got a brand new tentacle as Otis put it.

- Contributed by: Tom Miller

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

Media: 12" LP
Album: Happy Monsters, Funny songs, sounds and stories about a pleasant adventure into the impossible land of Ooog!
Label: Happy House Records
Catalog: HH-502 C-36-A/B
Credits: Copyright Damil Productions

The New York Times: Not Just For Young Trendies Anymore!

The New York Times has again published the heart-wrenching tale of a five year old boy forced against his will to use the phrase "why, oh why?" in 21st Century New York City.

Admittedly, the report came in an error-riddled "Editor's Note" published in today's paper. The unnamed editor defensively noted:

A report in the Metropolitan Diary column on Monday related a conversation that a contributor, Andrea Silenzi, said she had had with a neighbor on the Upper East Side. The neighbor's 5-year-old son had overheard his father, a stock trader, on the phone with a client, and had said to his mother, "I know Daddy sells things at his job, but why oh why did he say he would sell my shorts?"

An editor called Ms. Silenzi to verify the authenticity of that anecdote. a step in the editing process that all submissions undergo before being published. Ms. Silenzi said the incident had indeed happened as she described it.

After a Web log for a Jersey City radio station reported that the anecdote was part of a prank, The Times learned that Ms. Silenzi runs that blog, and that she had invited readers to fabricate an entry for the column. When questioned again, she admitted that she had lied to the editor.

Alas, the editor's note got a few things wrong. Andrea Silenzi does not in fact run this blog, she has nothing to do with WFMU's Beware of the Blog. Second, Andrea never invited readers on her own blog to fabricate entries for the column. (Andrea's Seven Second Delay blog is here.)

But all this pales when listening to Michael Pollak interviewed on Seven Second Delay last Wednesday night: download MP3. Mr. Pollak stated that Andrea felt she had struck "some great blow for coolness."  He testily informed Andy and I (aged 50 and 48 respectively) that the New York Times is a "smorgasbord" which does not publish exclusively for "young trendies." He lauded the Web 2.0 nature of The Metropolitan Diary, a column with an audience of elderly people "who look on it as a kind of one bright spot in a week of otherwise gloomy news." He referenced the immense popularity of the column, a claim which is now at odds with Gawker's report that the Met Diary may now go the way of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. When Andy and I played Mr. Pollak a recording of an actual five-year-old boy speaking the infamous phrase highlighted above, he implied that we had searched for the exact phrase we needed on the internet (singular), a claim reminiscent of his description of Andrea as "arrogant "because she had an extraordinarily high google hit count of four when he checked.

At least he didn't repeat his earlier vindictive reference to Andrea's application for a Fulbright scholarship.

More on this sordid tale here, here, here, here and here.

The W-F-M-U Guy Part II

Here's another batch of W-F-M-U Guy station IDs (all small MP3s):

• Boring
• Dr. Strangelove
• Creepy Eyepatch
• It's not my bag
• Jersey City
• Jim Morrison
• Kinda Freeform
• Lou Reed Loving It
• Lou Reed ROCK
• Network
• OPE or POE
• Peace & Love
• Prisoner of 2nd Avenue
• Robert Plant
• What do you want?
• Your favorite station

i do know what a chipmunk looks like

365 Days #47 - Little Markie - It's A Whole New World (mp3s)

MP3:
01 Big House (3:14)
02 Be Strong (2:26)
03 Holy, Holy, Holy (3:11)
04 I Forgive You (2:44)
05 Shalom (4:47)
06 King Of The Jungle (2:27)
07 John 3:16 (2:36)
08 The Lord's Prayer (3:23)
09 I Am So Small (5:26)
10 Fire Of Unity (4:21)

Here's a manchild who should need no introduction to WFMU listeners. I first heard Li'l Markie on the Incorrect Music program in 2001, and he's been played and discussed here several times since then. So when I found this unassuming CD-R rip in a thrift store, I knew what I was getting into. The title scrawled on in purple Sharpie - I have no idea what the actual cover looked like. I'm guessing this album is from the late 1990s, and compared to his earlier stuff, it's fairly tame. No harrowing tales of abortion, alcoholism or crucifixion here, but it's got Markie singing away in his trademark shrill falsetto, this time backed with a full Christian allterna-pop band. I shared the first track in the 2003, but I really think the whole album is worth a listen.

For the uninitiated, you can learn more about Li'l Markie here (February 23). Also here.

- Contributed by: Suzanne Baumann

Images: Front Cover

Media: CDR
Album: It's A Whole New World

Nora the piano-playing cat

Video of Nora performing can be found here. Nora's owner says; "Nora began playing the piano on her own. She plays even when she is alone in the room. She really enjoys playing duets with a student playing on the second piano. Some of her solo concerts have gone on for a minute or more." Main site here. (found on BoingBoing)

Guess The WFMU DJ Personal Article: Part 10

These are days for indoor games, so keep warm playing WFMU's 10th edition of Who On Earth Would Keep A Bag of Monkey Parts Handy??

Who indeed?  Well, I'll tell you this: one of our esteemed DJs would; and the big fun for you is to guess which one.  After you've offered your guess, have a mystery mp3 on the side:

[download mp3] (2.7M, NSFW, but fuckin' hilarious)

OK, so... whose bag of monkey parts is that? I've said it before, but it merits repeating: winner gets a bumper sticker.  See here and here for fine print, and a partial list of DJs who definitely do not own this bag of monkey parts.

round wormwood truffle, please

365 Days #46 - Goddard High School Stage Band (mp3s)

MP3:
1 Goddard High School Stage Band - Fire (1:25)
2 Goddard High School Stage Band - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (3:03)

Years ago, I privately released a slapped-together, cheesy, homemade CD titled Poly High: School Bands Play the Classics, which was filled with cheesy, homemade recordings of high school bands playing hard rock hits of the 60s and 70s. One of those bands, the Goddard High School Stage Band of Roswell, New Mexico, I had a particular penchant for. I don't know if it was their wall-of-muddy-sound, or their vocalist's strains, but their 1970 LP, The Goddard High School Stage Band Goes Underground, got a lot of plays at my house.

Lo and behold, I later heard from an original member of the band who gave me a copy of their first and better LP from 1969, where they performed under the name "The Wild Ones." These two tracks stem from that piece of genius.

And while you're listening: who among us can step up to the plate and tell the hidden history of the roving recorders involved with those no-name record labels which traveled the country recording high school bands? Labels like Century, Silver Crest, Custom Recording Specialists, American Record Company, Band 'N Vocal Mobile Recording Service, Russ Enloe Custom Records etc., etc. Most likely, their unique history will remain unwritten.

- Contributed by: Jonathan Ward

Image: This album manufactured by Century Records

Media: 12" LP
Album: The Goddard High School Stage Band Goes Underground
Date: 1969

MP3 Truffles: Rest In Peace, dear friends

I am still sad about Anna Nicole and hanging on all the details: the riveting 9-1-1 call ("She's, um, actually Anna Nicole Smith" "Oh...OK."), the contents of her death fridge (methadone, sure, but what about that mysterious bottle of spray butter?), and her status as our one and only National Courtesan. I'm not so interested in the baby thing, because that poor kid is just fucked no matter what what happens next. So, now that the news has hit and the media is still reeling (conversation in the newsroom: "Iraq closes its borders? Whatever. We need to scoop that Barbi Twins interview!"), let the tribute songs begin. First out of the gate is the poignant The Hole in the Soul (of Anna Nicole) from Dr. BLT (aka Dr. Bruce L. Thiessen, Songwriter, Singer, Psychologist).

But Anna isn't the only thing that passed away this week. There was also the untimely demise of one of my favorite blogs, Post-Punk Junk. First came the declarative statement of "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!  IT’S THE END!!!!", followed by the virtual *poof* of a blog deleted by it's overzealous server. In tribute to a fallen brother, I'm reposting some tastes of their recent selections that remained in my music library. Of course, now I'm wishing I downloaded a lot more... 

PPJ MP3s and more Truffles for this week after the jump.

You Gotta Have Heart

My weekly MP3 Truffles post will be up later tonight. But for now I needed to celebrate this fine, fine holiday. You know, the one that keeps all those Hallmark stores and street corner flower stands in business.

L.A. comedy duo Hard 'N Phirm last brought us the spot-on Zoom video parody "Pi", and are poised to steal the thunder that used to be around Tenacious D (who f-ed up their cred by making a crappy movie). Just in time for Valentine's Day, Hard 'N Phirm have a new video, a moving latin ballad celebrating the heart - literally. Beautiful, educational, and of course dropping a little love to the Wilson sisters. (Found via The Morning News) 
Watch the video for "El Corazon":  You Tube    Quicktime File

If you're in the mood for something a little less sweet (ie - you are single and bitter), then curl up with one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski. Or just enjoy a random Lebowski quote. Or best of all, tell this whole day how your really feel and just let the dirty bird fly with the Big Lebowski Fucking Short Version (NSFW, unless you work where the f-ball falls constantly).    You Tube     Quicktime File

To Coin a Term—YouHole!

YouHole /yu; unstressed yʊ, yə/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[yoo-hohl] - Help!  I've fallen into YouTube and can't get out.  Not as bad as a K-hole, but an equal or greater amount of time is wasted.

Since both Rachael Ray and Stephen Colbert have recently been bestowed the honor of having self-invented words cemented into the popular vernacular via mainstream dictionaries, I thought that as a Z-grade celebrity (read: aging underground music personality and sporadic blogger) I should put one out there myself.

Most of us with a broadband connection have been there by now—a friend sends you one clip that's mildly amusing, and you can't resist clicking away a little more, then a little more, in your search for video gold, while you and your family starve, myriad disasters befall the world outside and you grow a long, Methuselah-like beard (well not the ladies, most of you anyway.)

With 'nuff respect to Brian Turner's juicy Desk Potato posts, here's what I found in the depths of my last YouHole:  Nurse With Wound — Kaoru Abe 1 — Kaoru Abe 2   (Much to my chagrin, a clip from the rarely seen Kaoru Abe biopic Endless Waltz (featuring Keiji Haino) was posted and then disappeared due to copyright violation.) — Klaus Schulze — X-Ray Spex — The Monochrome Set - "Eine Symphonie des Grauens" — Suicide — Ton Steine Scherben — The Kipper Kids — DDAA — Conrad Schnitzler 1 — Conrad Schnitzler 2 — Kluster — the mysterious Bosco Brothers — and a hilarious clip of Norwegian Black Metal legends Immortal.

Okay, so that's probably the fruit borne of two or three YouHoles, but you get the idea.

WFMU alumnus and D.I.Y.-music pioneer R. Stevie Moore has been fastly creating his own YouHole for the rest of us to fall into, maybe up to several hundred clips by now, many of them featuring other familiar faces from the station's past and present, as well as some of Stevie's great Uncle Floyd show appearances.

A final word of caution—young children are not immune to the YouHole epidemic.  Just last night, my 4-year-old son was perusing vintage clips of The Letter People (Mr. H has Klezmer flair!) and Sesame Street (the latter of which are quickly disappearing.)  I left the room for five minutes, came back, and he was watching this over and over (definitely NSFW!)

I've already made arrangements to open my first YouHole-deprogramming clinic.  I'll be accepting applications soon, depending on your insurance provider.  You've been warned.

Let Sweat Be Your Valentine

Singer/songwriter Sweat Talley, proud owner of the ultimate Valentine's Day song (MP3). Everyone else can chuck it in, maybe even Gary Wilson too. Thank you Roland Woodbe for throwing this in his 7" singles bag last week when he visited and cooked us an impala for lunch.

this is number 14 out of I don't know how many tries