WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Fes Festival of Sacred Music (Part One)

WFMU's Rob Weisberg (host of the Transpacific Sound Paradise program) recently attended the amazing Fes Festival of Sacred Music, held in the medieval city of Fes, Morocco. The festival brings together prominent musicians from the three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, for a weeklong celebration of sounds. While the visceral joys of experiencing amazing music against the backdrop of Roman ruins and Moorish gardens can't really be overstated, it should be noted that the festival has a broader agenda: It was launched in 1994 as a pro-peace response to the first Gulf War.

Here is the first installment of Rob's account of the trip. Look for more in the coming days, or check out his radio show this Saturday from 6-9 PM for more discussion of the sights, tastes, and sounds, as well as music by many of the featured artists..

I knew right away this was going to be a special trip. The Royal Air Maroc flight from JFK to Casablanca is typically packed with not only Americans and Moroccans, but also Sub-Saharans who are making connections back home. The latter tends to be an especially elegant crowd. To the left of me sat a handsomely attired young Senegalese woman and to the right an earthier and rather chatty woman with roots in Guinea and Sierra Leone. She told me that she'd actually traveled to Sierra during the fighting there, and managed to escape thanks to a very unofficial ferry service. She also told me that one of her kin had been married to none other than S.E. Rogie, the legendary Sierra Leone singer-songwriter who lived in the US for many years. She went on to dish some dirt that defied the typically cheery world-music bios of Rogie: His will had specified that he was to be buried in Sierra Leone, but when the casket arrived, it was turned away by his family--who clamed that he'd abandoned them.

Live Catch: June 22nd-28th, 2007

Welcome back to Live Catch, Beware Of The Blog's weekly guide to live music events in WFMU's New York/New Jersey broadcast area. No MP3s this week, just a handy guide to this weekend's cornucopia of great free shows plus quick mentions of a few truly iconic artists who just happen to be playing in the area over the next seven days. First, the free shows...

On Saturday, the great Ghostface Killah headlines the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park under the Brooklyn Bridge. Register here for tickets. If that's not your cup of tea, you can check out an afternoon set by spastic post-punk rockers Ex-Models over at the East River Ampitheater. Last but certainly not least, the summer concert series at McCarren Pool launches on Sunday with performances by +/-, Oakley Hall, and Superchunk. In addition to the headliners' obvious WFMU connection, our own Todd-O-Phonic Todd will be DJing all afternoon.

Somehow Greenpoint's Club Europa has managed to book two absolutely legendary bands in the same week. French prog-rock innovators Magma play on Saturday night and heavy psych kings Hawkwind will be at the venue on Monday. Finally, Glenn Mercer of the Feelies plays at Maxwell's in Hoboken on Saturday night. Glenn and his band (which features fellow ex-Feelies Dave Weckerman and Vinny DeNunzio) stopped by Joe Belock's show this week to play some Feelies classics along with tracks from his new solo album Wheels In Motion.

Listen: Glenn Mercer - Live On WFMU (RealAudio)

For comprehensive listings, check out our continually-updated Arbitrary Guide To Pop Culture.

Cassette Culture Revisited, Part VII

F/i - Meridian Channel, 1987 (.zip archive, 52MB)

Years before the proliferation of postmodern space rock bands, Milwaukee's F/i were perfecting their blend of 80s-style power electronics and chunka-chunka-chunka Krautrock-cum-Hawkwind-style rhythmic freakouts.  As with France's DDAA, highlighted earlier in this series, F/i were a band that unquestionably released some fine LPs (Why Not Now?...Alan! (RRR, 1987) and the split LP with Boy Dirt Car (RRR, 1986) come immediately to mind), but also issued some of their best work exclusively on cassette.  Meridian Channel was one such tape, an early release for SSS Productions, a Pittsburgh-based label with an impressive discography.  F/i are still at it, though if I'm not mistaken, founding member Brian Wensing now steers the ship, with founder and original guiding light Richard Franecki having moved on sometime in the early 90s (though he returned to the lineup for the 2003 release A Question for the Somnambulist.)  The CD Out of Space and Out of Time (rel. 1993) is a comprehensive collection of tracks from the above-mentioned RRR albums, and a great starting point for those unfamiliar with the band's work.  Outside of F/i, Franecki has also released some excellent material, both as a solo artist and with the band Vocokesh.

Sinister X - cassette "single," 198? (.zip archive, 17MB)

I found this tape in one of my many crates of unsorted cassettes, remembering on sight that it was something good.  If there was an insert, or a note with the tape providing more info, it has been lost to the ages, though I seem to remember that it came to me as depicted:  artist's name and titles on each side, and nothing more.  The two tracks are clunky D.I.Y. dub, in the vein of Jah Wobble's Bedroom Album.  The first piece, "Sy. Farber's Freak-Out," is there to remind us how much we miss the sound of a cassette rewinding while still in play mode.

Caltrops - 4-song cassette, 198? (.zip archive, 34MB)

Caltrops were a frequently featured artist on the Lo-Fi show, hailing from Fords, NJ.  They sent me quite a few tapes over the years, each, like this one, with only a handful of tracks.  Their style mixed melodic electric and acoustic guitar work with occasional audio snippets and pick-up percussion.  Caltrops' sound has one foot firmly planted in 70s rock, while also anticipating later work in a similar vein by artists like Andreas Martin and Jim O'Rourke.  The track "Sick Day," with its hummable Manzanera-isms, has always been a personal favorite.  Plus you have to love the mustard-colored cassette case.

365 Days #173 - Who Am I? Part II - unknown 9/11 tribute album (mp3s)

MP3:
1. Track 1 (3:00)
2. Track 2 (2:26)
3. Track 3 (1:50)
4. Track 4 (2:28)
5. Track 5 (3:38)
6. Track 6 (3:56)
7. Track 7 (6:36)
8. Track 8 (3:06)
9. Track 9 (1:52)

This is undoubtedly one of the tackiest tributes I've ever heard. It's another one from a friend of a friend, and nothing is known about it except that it was submitted to a CD duplication company, presumably somewhere in the United States. Any help identifying this guy will be rewarded handsomely.

The first track opens with the memorable lyric: "On September 11th of 2001 / When we turned on the TV it was not fun / Some terrorists attacked the Twin Towers / Then they hit the Pentagon within the hour / Now America's at war / Now what the Hell is going on?" It only gets more painful from there. There's no good reason for more than one song to mention that the events in question occurred on the morning of September 11th, or that Osama bin Laden was behind it all, or that hijacked planes were involved, or that we're America and we're damned well going to hunt down and kill everyone responsible and send them all to Hell.

The fourth track is dedicated to bin Laden, and in the first line of the first verse our singer calls him an "uncircumcised heathen infidel." He then proceeds to taunt Osama with juicy tidbits as to the manner in which his and the other terrorists' "carcasses" will be handled following their imminent deaths. It's hard for me to imagine that he was being serious about any of this, but I'm sure he was. At times, this guy really seems to hate Middle Easterners in general. "Let us all show them / This is not the Middle East / God bless America / Let's take care of the beast." Quite a lot of the lyrics border on the macabre, while others are just plain ridiculous. "The ones who ate your food / They had turned into your foe / They can tear down the towers / Of our beautiful nation." Seriously, there just aren't words to describe how bad this is. Apart perhaps from the lyrics themselves.

- Contributed by: Clayton Counts

Guess The WFMU DJ Personal Article, Part 24

When we're not busy getting free lunch at Winberries and Burger King, dosing up on cod liver oil, teasing dogs, cruising to Shea, encasing moose under glass, chatting to skulls, getting married, hiding change in dead frogs, serializing our decisions, kissing the anus of the black goat, totally rockin' our rad ax, suffocating monkey parts, rocking it old school, clashing cultures on a USB stick, wearing clothes, drinking tea, renewing our AARP membership, recording music, keeping up and taking notes, or just plain carrying it all around, we're actually a pretty erudite bunch.  This one DJ's reading a book anyway. 

Whose copy of "Illuminations" by Walter Benjamin is that?

Winner Gets "Swag", by WFMU.  For the rest of you, let me illuminate one dark corner of the Wild n'Wooly WFMU MP3 Library: [mp3 for download, 11 megs, most of them dirty]

Suzy Poling - Wonderland Of Decay

I wrote about my good friend Suzy Poling a couple years ago on Beware of the Blog and her surreal photos of abandoned amusement parks and her intimate and otherworldly portraits of the bowels of Chicago's Congress Theater. Expanding on her candy coated nightmare image vocabulary, Suzy has been traveling across the country with collaborator Julia Solis, photographing abandoned mental hospitals as part of a project called Fantastic Degradation. The series is not the mere trophy photography of amateurs who like to see how many abandoned buildings they can break into but rather a very personal documentation of the relationship they have to these places, seeking out traces of history in the ruins ravaged by nature and time. The photos are violent- piles of garbage and toys are strewn across the rooms, ceilings are caved in, and large ominous hallways lead to nowhere...yet there's an extreme dissonance from the overly saturated pastels that flood the spaces. Suzy also creates costumes and characters inspired by the spaces and photographs them blended and hidden in the rooms, acting as imaginary friends and threatening apparitions.

One of my favorite aspects of Suzy's aesthetic is her love of large colorful clumpy mossy masses. This is carried through all of her work, be it a mess on a table, a congealed clot of muck floating in foamy water, a rotting whale washed up on the shore or a decimated plaster wall of peeling paint. She also brings this sensibility to her noise project Pod Blotz where thick clusters of organ and noise spurt and sputter, creating sonic landscapes as ridiculous and creepy as her photos.

Suzy Poling currently has a solo show up at Zg Gallery in Chicago. Sioux-WIRE Annex blog recently ran a great interview with her as well.

365 Days #172 - Johnny and Charley - La Yenka (mp3s)

MP3:
La Yenka (1:58)
Eh! Nena (2:11)
Baila La Yenka (1:56)
Yenka Riketik (1:55)

Ah, the perplexing and mysterious 'Yenka'! Dance craze of the sixties, you remember. . . . No, neither do I. Have a look at the time honoured black-and-white-footprint diagram on the back cover. We tried actually doing it once, the floorboards never quite recovered. It seems to involve jumping, with both feet together, backwards and forwards a lot. Bloody weird if you ask me. Still, Johnny and Charley, Spanish men with non Hispanic names clad in tartan waistcoats, waste no time or vinyl in their efforts to convert you to this strange practice. No less than four supremely Yenkable ditties adorn this EP. Interesting line up too. Melodica, guitar and timpani feature strongly. Nice. . Anybody out there more Hispanic pop-wise than me who can tell me if this was ever a popular dance in the night clubs of Burgos or wherever. . . I have two copies of this record so there must have been significant numbers of this record in London at some point. Unless I just got lucky. There would have been a lot of spilled lager, that's all I can say.

- Contributed by: Jonathan Allen

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

Media: 45rpm 7"
Label: Hispavox (Madrid)
Catalog: HH 17-308
Date: Mid 1960s

MP3 Truffles: Where Is My Mind

First off, a video. This one features Mister Hopkinson's Computer live! I've had "his" version of "Where Is My Mind" near the top of my playlist for a while now. And here our computer friend performs with a live band for the first time.

MP3: Mister Hopkinson's Computer, "Where Is My Mind"
MP3: Mister Hopkinson's Computer with Audrey 3000, "Falling" (Theme from Twin Peaks)

Allow me to share with you my favorite MP3 finds this week:

Holy crap am I excited about the Xanadu musical on Broadway. Not since Starlight Express has such camp fit so naturally on the stage. Here's my favorite song from the movie, a hard to find soundtrack B-side.
MP3: Olivia Newton John, "Fool Country" (Found via Dartmans World of Wonder )

I'm not a huge fan of 80s cover tunes, but this German STYX cover transcends the original. It's got to be the accent.
MP3: Juliane Werding, "Niemand hat Zeit" (Too Much Time on My Hands) (Found via Copy, Right) 

Country comic star Charles Robison sings another wonderful (and somewhat insensitive) gem.
MP3: Carson Robison, "The Bum Song".  (Found via Boot Sale Sounds)

In 1978, The Walker Brothers try to channel Roxy Music. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
MP3: The Walker Brothers, "Nite Flights" (Find more at Egg City Radio)

Follow the jump for links to more MP3 finds, and some music video fun as well.

365 Days #171 - Buena Vista High Symphonic and Show Band - The Six Wives of Henry VIII (mp3)

MP3:
Buena Vista High Symphonic and Show Band - The Six Wives of Henry VIII (6:46)

The main reason I picked up this record was because I thought "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" was a Rick Wakeman cover. Nothing like high school kids tackling prog rock! It turned out NOT to be a Rick Wakeman cover, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. There's no composer credit, so I really don't know anything about the piece, but it's got some great lead synth noodling and your usual out-of-tune student orchestra. There are some other nice tracks on the records, including the theme from "Shaft" and "Up Tight."

- Contributed by: Pea Hix

Image: Front Cover

Media: LP
Album: Buena Vista High Symphonic and Show Band (Sierra Vista, AZ)
Label: QCA
Catalog: 4053
Credits: Wm. Richard Klein- Director, Mark Donnelly- Synthesizer
Date: early 1970s

Introducing Scott's 2:40 Beer Podcast

Happy hour begins early here at WFMU, thanks to a new segment on Scott Williams' program: Scott's 2:40 Beer Tasting. Now available as a podcast, you are cordially invited to imbibe Scott's weekly choice of brew along with his rotating panel of beer enthusiasts. Why there's Scott on the left, raising his (mostly-empty) glass to salute all of you new podcast listeners. Plan ahead for the coming weeks of 2:40 fellowship by visiting Scott's playlist page.

Subscribe to the 2:40 Beer Tasting podcast by hitting up WFMU's Podcast Central, or just open up iTunes, go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast, then copy and paste this link into the box.

Ok, I can't take it, that photo to the left is too hilarious. Let's have some fun: create your own caption in the comments section.

365 Days #170 - Hisao Shinagawa - More Money, More War (mp3s)

MP3:
A Hisao Shinagawa - More Money, More War (3:37)
B Hisao Shinagawa - Human Computer (Long Version) (6:02)

People who live in Southern California may be familiar with Hisao Shinagawa. He's a street performer who regularly plays at the Hollywood Farmer's Market, and has a long, grey beard. He performs solo, strumming a guitar, and singing his heart out. It would be safe to assume that he's been playing like that during his entire "career" as a musician, but I've unearthed some evidence that reveals an interesting chapter in his two or three decades performing music.

In 1984, Hisao Shinagawa walked into a recording studio to record a full-blown version of one of his formerly acoustic-only songs, called "More Money, More War". Similar to Wild Man Fischer, another far-more famous street performer, the song at first listen sounds like a novelty song, and without doubt, that's what it was pushed as. There was even a very-cheaply produced video for it, that aired at least once on MTV. Looking at the (very silly) video, it's hard to tell whether or not Hisao is in on the joke or not; whether he knows his song sounds like a novelty tune, or whether he's serious about singing some twisted anthem that calls for a war to generate money during the height of Reaganomics.

I suspect the person who orchestrated this song's major label release was none other than "Weird Al" Yankovic. With a hit single out ("Eat It"), I'm sure his record label, Rock 'n' Roll (of which Scotti Bros. was a division of), would have been willing to let Hisao into the studio and cut at least one single for release. Alas, from what I can gather, the record was always marked as "promotional".

So enjoy this very danceable and catchy tune by Hisao Shinagawa. It seems nobody who knows him knows about this song either, and looking at his website (where a mislabeled MP3 of this song running at a speed that's a bit too slow is available for download, admittedly), there doesn't seem to be any mention of it or any photos from that era. Nevertheless, give it a listen, since when was the last time you heard some "Japanese reggae"? (as Weird Al calls it)

The B-side to the single is called "Human Computer", subtitled the Long Version. It's not as catchy as the A-side, and drags on and on for nearly twice its length, at six minutes. This song is probably also available in an acoustic version, which just might be the better of the two.

The cover photo was taken from Hisao's MySpace. (Who doesn't have one these days?) It's the only picture I could find that seems to be from the era this song came out, but that "Barefoot Records" logo and catalog number mystifies me. Perhaps it was released first on this independent label? An international release? Was it the first release on Hisao's own label, since the catalogue number is "1001"? Who knows?

I dug the video out for More Money, More War and posted it on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMePPSyQJuE

- Contributed by: The Swill Man

Image: Cover

Media: 33 1/3 rpm 12" single
Label: Rock 'n' Roll Records
Catalog: 4Z9-04970
Credits: Written by Hisao Shinagawa, produced by Gen Morita
Date: 1984

Sensei Rebel's Archive Picks of the Week (June 11 - June 17, 2007)

All RealAudio links are streaming links from the WFMU archives.

Rock And Roll
Blue Ash - "Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her?)" RealAudio from Hatch's show
Richard X. Heyman - "When Giants Fall" RealAudio from Three Chord Monte with Joe Belock

International
Fire - "Jedan Divan Dan (A Wonderful Day)" RealAudio from Brian Turner's show

Experimental
Hannu - "Haapavesi" RealAudio from Maria Levitsky's show
Apparat Organ Quartet - "Romantika" RealAudio from Scott Williams' show
Pam Leeson - "The Wishing Machine" RealAudio from Put the Needle On the Record with Billy Jam

Dance
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - "Turkish Delight" RealAudio from Hatch's show
Tom Tom Club - "Wordy Rappinghood" RealAudio from Nickel and Dime Radio with $mall Change

Humor
I, Ludicrous - "We're The Support Band" RealAudio from Ken's show

Ambient
Morris Knight - "Luminescences" RealAudio from Gateway To Joy with Donna
Larry Polansky - "Horn" RealAudio from Evan Muse's show (filling in for Frank O'Toole)

Fave Songs of the Week
Electrelane - "Between The Wolf And the Dog" RealAudio from Ken's show
Bat For Lashes - "Horse And I" RealAudio from This Is the Modern World with Trouble

Things My Father Taught Me

Father’s Day got me thinking about my father, and fathers in general, and how one of the most important things a father does is to teach his children lessons he’s learned, the essential knowledge that will help them through life.

The first thing I remember my father ever teaching me was when I was 2½ and he asked if I wanted to help him paint our basement floor. We were standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, my dad holding a brush and a bucket of paint, and he said, “Okay, Scout, where should we start?” “Here!” I said, pointing down at my own feet.

My dad just smiled and said, “Let’s pretend we’re painting.” So we did. We pretend-painted all the way from the stairs to the far corner of the basement. “Uh-oh!” my dad said. “What’ll we do now? The floor’s all covered with paint!” I saw at once the fatal error in my original plan, and I couldn’t wait to run upstairs and explain Painting Yourself Into a Corner to my mom. Learning things was so exciting.

My dad worked for the telephone company and sometimes, after my sister was born, he’d take me with him while he drove around southwestern Iowa looking at phone lines. First we’d go down to the big garage to pick up a dark-green telephone company truck, and my dad would brag about me to whoever was there and I would have to demonstrate how I could read already, even thought I was only 4. Then we’d drive away and spend all day on the little county roads: Shenandoah, Creston, Glenwood, where the apple orchards were, Red Oak, with the butcher who made great dried beef, Atlantic, or Villisca, where the ax murders happened. Every once in a while we’d pull over to the side of the road and my dad would look at the telephone wires, and usually he’d try to explain the Pythagorean theorem to me. “See, Scout, if the pole is 4, and the guy wire is 5, the length of the ground between the guy and the pole is 3!” I might have been able to read, but geometry was still a little beyond me. Still, I could see what a kick he got out of math and years later, when geometry came back to haunt me in 10th grade, I found I had a real affection for right triangles.

My dad told us stories about when he was in England during the war and they used newspapers in the beds, under the sheets and between the thin blankets, to keep warm. This came in very handy when I went away to college and ended up living in an unheated attic room. When I started repairing and refinishing antique furniture to make extra money, my dad taught me that “two thin coats [of varnish or paint or shellac or wax] are better than one thick coat,” and he was definitely right about that. He taught me how to double-clutch, how to replace a faucet washer, and how to gap the sparkplugs in a car.

But as my sister got older and our mom got sicker, my dad’s lessons became less and less relevant. By the time I was 8 and my sister was 5, he was showing us how to knee someone in the groin and then, when the pain caused them to bend over, grab their ears and headbutt them—hard!—in the face. He explained to us that if we went out drinking, we should eat a stick of butter first because it would coat our stomachs and allow us to drink more without getting drunk. (The legal drinking age in Iowa at that time was 21. I was 10.) He told us that if we ever had to shoot anyone, we should shoot to kill because “then the only story told will be yours.” I didn’t even understand what that meant until a couple of years ago. In the only acknowledgment he ever made that we might, one day, begin going out with boys, he made sure to tell us never to eat spaghetti on a date. And even though he never explained how it was supposed to happen, he was adamant that we were never, ever to become pregnant. And we never did.

Ice Cream Truck Music Fan To WFMU: Get Out of the Pit

Never have I seen a musical movement guarded with such fierce purism, barring DC SxE circa 1983. Guessing this is a response of sorts to all the recent remixed ice cream truck music CD's that seem to be clogging the WFMU library's new bin lately:

From: **** ice cream <*****@sbcglobal.net>
To: Brian Turner <[email protected]>
Subject: ice cream music

your web sight sucks everytime i go online to find new music to download for  my ice cream trucks all i get is your stupid sight with the same old shitty songs!!!! no matter what i type into a search all i get is your sight back or links from another sight back to yours this is getting old real quick!!!!!!!!!!! no matter what you type in if it has the words ice cream and music i get your sight   what the hell . even when i went to ask .com to try to get new music all i get is this same dam sight!! it would be different if you had more real music downloads instead of the scratchey crap you have that cant even be used  because of the bad noise in the background etc. we need a real ice cream truck music sight not the crap you are putting all over the web and pissing off all the real ice cream truck owners get a life and some real music!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Speaking of the DC comparison, perhaps this is the same guy who was getting verbally reamed by an onstage Ian MacKaye some years ago?  (MP3)

Muriel's Treasure Podcast

Admit it, you miss Irwin. Ever since Mr. Chusid took a summer break from the WFMU air schedule, we've been without our weekly fix of rum-soaked calypso, a segment of Irwin's show known as Muriel's Treasure. And everyone knows that an absence of rum could utterly devastate the entire leisure season...

Thankfully, summer will be saved because WFMU is now podcasting Muriel's Treasure twice a week. Mash up a mojito, fire up your iTunes, and kick back to Irwin's vintage island grooves. Muriel's Treasure features calypso, soca, mento, and pan from the golden era of Caribbean music. Irwin now has so much idle time that he's started a Muriel blog!

Sign yourself up for the Muriel's Treasure podcast by visting WFMU's podcast page, or just open up iTunes, go to Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast, then copy and paste this link into the box.

If calypso ain't your thing, fear not! WFMU offers 17 other great podcasts for your listening pleasure, with more on the way...

365 Days #169 - Jimmy Swaggart with Friends - Color Me a Story (mp3s)

MP3:
Jimmy Swaggart with Friends - Color Me a Story [Side 1] (17:59)
Jimmy Swaggart with Friends - Color Me a Story [Side 2] (20:31)

Eight years before his ministry was nearly destroyed by a series of visits to a $20 hooker, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart sought to expand his congregation by releasing this album of songs and Bible stories for children.  The piano-pumping first cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis is joined here by a green-skinned, web-footed freak named Dudley Mugwump who sounds a bit like Lil Markie at 16 RPM.  You can check out what Rev. Jimmy is up to these days by visiting his official site, (and I'm not making this up) jsm.org.

- Contributed by: Perry Amberson

Images: Cover, Label, Mugwump, Jimmy

Media: LP
Album: Color Me a Story
Label: Jim Records
Catalog: JLP-138
Date: 1980

Walk The World Like A Man (MP3)

As a special treat for Father's Day, here is a song from the real West, where men are men and sheep are scared: The Three Young Men (From Montana) - Walk The World Like A Man (MP3)

This is from the 1962 Columbia LP "A Fresh New Sound!!!!" (whose title is printed 9 times on the cover, lest you forget it) by The Three Young Men (From Montana). I am sure that the four exclamation points and the parentheses in the band name have some kind of significance, but I haven't quite figured it out yet.

365 Days #168 - Mike Curb Congregation - More Than Ever (Nixon Theme Song)/Nixon Now Rally Song (mp3s)

MP3:
Mike Curb Congregation - More Than Ever (Nixon Theme Song) (1:59)
Mike Curb Congregation - Nixon Now Rally Song (2:33)

These campaign songs for the Nixon re-election effort demonstrate a political dynamic that remains effective to this day. It is not very important to appeal to young people, but it is very important to make old people feel as though you are attempting to appeal to young people - hence the modern grooves of the Mike Curb Congregation, which probably actually did entice a Christian Youth Group or two to the campaign.

- Contributed by: John Mitchell

Images: Bumper Sticker

Media: 7" Single
Label: MGM
Date: 1972

Classic Talk Show Madness

I've been far too busy (drunk) this week participating in the National College Radio Conference to be able to put together any kind of fancy, elaborate article, so for lack of something else here's just a bunch of cool old talk show footage from a bygone era. Click on the show title to find the clip.

The Joe Pyne Show (1965-67) - Joe Pyne was a legendary figure in the Los Angeles area in the nineteen sixties. He was a confrontational syndicated talk show host who hated hippies and communists and was known for having a wooden leg. You can follow the link to read about a legendary run-in Pyne had with Frank Zappa. Pyne pioneered the Fox News school of right wing sensationalism. The footage featured is from a best-of episode that aired in 1966. (The Joe Pyne clips are currently down).

The Joey Bishop Show (1967-69) - Rat Packer Joey Bishop tried his best to compete with his old buddy Johnny Carson. ABC thought that Bishop could possibly be the one to finally topple The Tonight Show in the ratings. They were wrong. He actually didn't do too bad, but Carson was a force that would never be restrained. In this episode from February 1968 the guest is Sammy Davis Jr. with a special cameo from Sammy Davis Sr. and of course, Bishop's sidekick, Regis Philbin.

From the Top Secret files of Maxwell Smart

A few years ago, there were some news stories about a ridiculous U.S. military report from 1994 which encouraged developing "Harassing, Annoying and 'Bad Guy'-Identifying" chemical weapons. These could have included everything from making the enemy a natural target for bees, to a chemical causing "severe and lasting halitosis", to, yes, a fart bomb (eventually dismissed because "people in many areas of the world do not find 'fecal odor' to be offensive.").

Berkeley watchdog group The Sunshine Project recently re-ignited the flames over one of the silliest ideas: an aphrodisiac bomb. Basically, this would involve developing a chemical to drop on enemy soldiers so that they would find each other sexually irresistible. The request for seven million dollars to research this was denied, with the final report calling the whole idea "distasteful".

The watchdog group tagged it as a "gay bomb" - which is of course how the military thought it might be most useful, and is also a stupid enough buzz phrase for the local news to jump on, igniting about a bajillion blog posts and "news of the weird" articles. But really, this would have been more of a loooove bomb, or, erm, maybe more like a rape bomb. Either way, sexuality wouldn't have to play into it. One could easily imagine it affecting everyone: male and female soldiers, civilians, grandparents, maybe even pets. 

So, old news, sort of. But it did lead me down this path: Say this had been developed. And what if, say, some militant group got their hands on one and were threatening to expose innocent people to overactive hormones. This could either be the plot to a whole new chapter in the Porky's franchise, or the best season of 24 ever.

PS - Why is no one making fun of the fact that the military actually uses the phrase "Bad Guy-Indentifying"?