WFMU's Beware of the Blog

365 Days #304 - Spooky Sound Effects (mp3s)

MP3:
Side One (15:37)
(Storm, Dog Howling, Footsteps With Chains, Goblins Laughing, Chinese Gong, Moaning Cats, Cats, Laughing Witches, Screaming, Storm, Wind, Cats, Dogs, Squeaking Door)
Side Two (18:36)
(Ghouls Glide, Skeleton Dance, Banshee Love Call, The Dracula Drag, Dinner Music For A Monster, Outer Space Sounds, Diesel Slow Frieght, Diesel Fast Passenger, Fog Horn, Siren)

Talk about a budget label classic! I was first introduced to this LP by Jack Diamond. Side 1 is pretty standard horror sounds, but Side 2 is where the magic is found! I love these remarks by a friend which pretty much sums it up:

"Side 2 of this album is unlike other Halloween sound effect records floating around in that it is all theremin! And get a load of those track titles?! It sounds as if someone let a 5 year old kid noodle around for a while. It's super scary!"

- Contributed by: B.C. Sterrett (The Lost Media Archive)

Images: Front, Back, Label A, Label B

$1 Records Ahoy!

Here are a few shots of the thousands of dollar records that WFMU will be hauling to the Record & CD Fair this weekend.

Kinda makes the pulse jump, doesn't it?

Countdown to Halloween #1

This Halloween, the American Dental Association would like to remind you that there is indeed a creepy invisible man living inside your mouth.

Stay tuned to the end to discover the identity of our celebrity guest narrator...and to hear his haunting refrain. "Will you....will you....will you...."

365 Days #303 - Dick Jacobs and his Orchestra - Themes From Horror Movies (mp3s)

MP3:
01 Main Title from "THE SON OF DRACULA" (1:39)
02 Theme from "THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN" (3:16)
03 Shooting Stars from "THIS ISLAND EARTH" (2:20)
04 Treacherous Trek from "THE MOLE PEOPLE" (3:42)
05 Main Title from "THE HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN" (3:11)
06 Dracula's Feast Of Blood from "THE HORROR OF DRACULA" (2:12)
07 The Monster Attacks from "THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON" (2:29)
08 Visitors From Space from "IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE" (2:11)
09 Stalking The Creature from "THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US" (2:23)
10 Winged Death from "THE DEADLY MANTIS" (3:21)
11 Theme from "TARANTULA" (2:21)
12 Main Title from "THE HORROR OF DRACULA" (1:46)
13 Main Title from "THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE" (1:55)
14 Main Title from "THIS ISLAND EARTH" (2:33)

A great record to play on Halloween. Every song is introduced by Bob McFadden (I'm a mummy, I dig you baby} fame. Nice and cheezy!

- Contributed by: Evil Pain Clown

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

Media: LP
Album: Themes From Horror Movies in Ghoulish High Fidelity
Label: Coral
Catalog: CRL 757240
Date: 1959

Cutty Ranks Bring da Riddim!

Cutty Ranks in 1986. Thanks to YouTube user Fgeiges. More on Cutty here.

Countdown to Halloween #2

Casper the Friendly Ghost in "There's Good Boos Tonight", 1948. Probably the darkest and most depressing of these usually too-cute cartoons.

Which reminds me of a Simpson's quote:

Bart: I think Casper's the ghost of Richie Rich.
Lisa: Hey! They do look alike.
Bart: I wonder how Richie died?
Lisa: Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money is and took his own life.

Sensei Rebel's Archive Picks of the Week (Oct. 22 - Oct. 28, 2007)

All MP3 and RealAudio links are streaming links from the WFMU archives. No right clicking allowed.

Rock And Roll
RealAudio from Put the Needle On the Record with Billy Jam (filling in for Scott McDowell)

International
Moussa Doumbia - "Keleya" RealAudio from Woody's show

Experimental
Alirieza Mashayekhi & Ata Elrekar/Sote - various RealAudio from Put the Needle On the Record with Billy Jam (filling in for Scott McDowell)
Modified Toy Orchestra - "Black Star (edit)" RealAudio from This Is the Modern World with Trouble
Nifty - "Bells Bowls Hats Lids" RealAudio from Pseu's show

Dance
LC Andersen Vs. Psycho Radio Vs. Klein & M. Bo. - "The Right Stuff" RealAudio from Choking On Cufflinks with Michael Goodstein

Instrumental
Lukas Ligeti - "Pattern Transformation" RealAudio from Woody's show

Hip-Hop
Common - "The People" RealAudio from (More Than A Few) Exciting Moments with Frank O'Toole (Web-only show)

Fave Songs of the Week
Muzsikas - "Csardas de Szatmar" RealAudio from Maria Levitsky's show
Fernando Arrabal - "Ekkoleg" RealAudio from Scott Williams' show

365 Days #302 - Postojnska Jama - Diaphon Souvenir (mp3s)

MP3:
The Postojna Cave (Postojnska Jama) (5:29)

Wanna go exploring caves in Yugoslavia? Someone did in the 1970s and came back with this neat set of 12 transparencies and flexi-record (with commentary), housed in a card folder. This 'Dia-Phon Souvenir' celebrates the beautiful Postojnska Caves (now located in Slovenia) and does it's best to recreate the experience of being there in person. In the caves visitors can walk on foot or descend into the cavern on a small electric train and witness the extensive rock formations as well as seeing the Proteus Anguinus, or 'Human fish', native only to subterranean waters.

I love the spooky, slightly distorted, haunting background music with piano, woodwind, harp, strings, celesta and a gong, which sounds almost oriental, especially in conjunction with the narrator who reminds me of Mr Sulu from Star Trek (George Takei). I love the way he says 'stalag-mites and stalag-tites'. I also like the fact that there is a cave called simply 'The Lovely Cave. How cute is that?

I wonder if they still use the same music today? It would be very effective also if they piped this into the caves as the tourists walk round. It would certainly make me want to visit.

While it seems that the record was recorded in several languages, to save money on printing costs the sleeve is multilingual, thus the instructions are in mousetype. They are also very precise, use out-of-date language and are clearly designed for idiots telling users that they will need a projector to show the slides and a gramophone to play the record.

If anyone's interested to find out more there's a page on The Postojnska Caves at Wikipedia.

- Contributed by: David Noades

Image: Cover

Media: Flexidisc
Label: None
Catalogue: None
Date: 1970s

Dan Warburton Is Not Sitting In A Room With Reynols (MP3)

Inspired by Alvin Lucier's 1969 smash hit "I Am Sitting in a Room", musician and music critic Dan Warburton took an interview he did with Argentinian avant-garde legends Reynols in 2003, played it back and re-recorded it on a "decidedly dodgy portable cassette player" 12 times, capturing all kinds of sounds inside and outside of his apartment in the process. In the end he mixed the resulting sonic sludge with a recording of a Reynols concert. You should definitely read Warburton's own account of the recording and editing process. Unfortunately, the original limited edition of 166 CD-Rs is long sold out, so here is an MP3 rip of this great recording.

MP3: Dan Warburton & Reynols - I Am Not Sitting In A Room With Reynols

Dracula, Dirty Old Man

Out of synch, overdubbed (and seemingly improvised) dialogue with a Count Dracula who sounds like both a horny and lethargic Jackie Mason, grumbling over some guy playing Z-grade Gabor Szabo licks on the soundtrack. Dracula, Dirty Old Man was written and directed by William Edwards in 1969, mostly shot in caves at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. The sound clearly was not recorded there. Happy Halloween.

Countdown to Halloween #3

Kiss get their first television exposure in 1976 on The Paul Lynde Halloween Special - now on DVD. Stay tuned for some scarrrry disco dancing action with Pinkie Tuscadero (Roz Kelly) as well as such variety show icons as Billy Barty, Tim Conway, Florence Henderson, Betty White, and of course very special co-hosts The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) and Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes).

What Makes Ralph Nader Great?

I'll tell you what makes Ralph Nader great. Not his enormous brains. Not his acting skills. Not his singing ability. No, what makes Ralph Nader great is that he does what all of us wish we could do to Bob McGrath. Yes, I'm intentionally leaving things ambiguous. You just need to follow this link immediately.

Spooky and Kooky: The Career of Gene Moss

Eugene Harold Mashontz was a funny comedy writer and performer who seemed to specialize in playing vampires, mad scientists and silly characters with a classic-monster bent. Monsters were big from 1957-1967, especially with children fascinated by all things Frankenstein, Dracula or Wolfman. Famous Monsters was a best-selling magazine (it even spawned an LP), Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Monster Mash was a number one single, Milton the Monster was a popular cartoon, The Munsters and The Addams Family were sitcoms that debuted in the same week, and every city seemed to have a Late Late Show of classic horror movies hosted by a local personality draped in make-up, surrounded by coffins and cobwebs.

Into the mix came Gene Moss. The market was flooded with novelty recordings sung by the living dead after the success of Monster Mash. The list of monster related novelty music is too huge to tackle today, but one of the greats was a full length LP that featured the masterful vocal talents of Gene Moss. It was called Dracula's Greatest Hits. Get your Halloween party started right by listening to the entire, very scratchy, LP here.

365 Days #301 - Uncle Bob's Storybook Room - Barn Owl - Your Kidney - Antarctic (mp3s)

MP3:
01 Barn Owl (8:48)
02 Your Kidney (7:55)
03 Sing-A-Long Time (0:48)
04 Suffering (5:44)
05 Storybook Room (4:46)
06 Antarctic (9:55)
07 Cleaner Wrasse (7:39)
08 Sing-A-Long Time (0:52)
09 Penny Appendix (8:06)
10 Immorality (6:35)
11 Your Fat (10:11)

If you saw a cassette labeled "Barn Owl — Your Kidney — Antarctic" at a thrift store, could YOU resist? I couldn't, and I was rewarded with 10 episodes of Uncle Bob"s Nature Corner and Storybook Room.

In the Nature Corner segments, Uncle Bob conducts educational interviews with various wonders of science (including Bruce the Barn Owl, Mr. Kidney and Aunt Arctica), all of whom sound suspiciously like Bob disguising his voice.

In 2003 on the 365 Days Project (see track #10, Immorality), Tim asked "What is God"s will for our lives?'  Heavy stuff for a kids' show, and the good Uncle makes the most of it by lecturing his young listeners about sexual morality. The exchange fills me with such perverse joy that I must take issue with Bob"s conclusion: dirty jokes can"t possibly be against the will of God. How can anyone hear this and still believe otherwise?

The Storybook Room series features Bob and his son Tim pondering age-old theological questions, aided by song and scriptural dramatization.

A quick web search tipped me off to Uncle Bob"s identity: Bob Devine, author of such titles as "Uncle Bob Talks With My Digestive System" and "Uncle Bob"s Kangaroo and Squirrel Book". His radio programs were produced by the Moody Broadcasting Network (Chicago, IL) and still appear to be airing in a few markets.

- Contributed by: Suzanne Baumann

Image: Cassette

Countdown to Halloween #4

Siouxsie & the Banshees, live, 1981.

365 Days #300 - Arch Oboler - Drop Dead! (mp3s)

MP3: [removed April 2010]
1 Introduction To Horror (2:34)
2 I'm Hungry (2:21)
3 Taking Papa Home (3:35)
4 The Dark (8:09)
5 A Day At The Dentist's (3:52)
6 The Posse (2:06)
7 Chicken Heart (7:16)
8 The Laughing Man (6:39)

I don't remember where I first saw this album cover (it must have been online), but it's one of my all-time favorites. What an expertly executed composition of imagery, color and font! Not more than a couple of months ago I was sifting through the many albums in the used section and...there it was! Do you know that feeling? Your heart starts beating fast. You calmly and quickly set the record aside so as not to attract attention. You are well on your way to becoming a vinyl junkie!

So I get this home, clean it up and here it is. I must confess, the content is not nearly as dark and sinister as I was hoping for but it still entertains in a spook-tacular way! Upon "Googling" Arch Oboler, it turns out that he enjoyed a successful career in radio as well as writing for stage and screen. One of broadcasting's top talents, he is regarded today as one of the innovators of old time radio.

Technical Notes: This record was cleaned with a Nitty Gritty and transferred directly through a Radial J-33 phono pre-amp to an M-Audio Firewire 410 soundcard. A sensible amount of noise reduction was used to eliminate, erradicate and exfoliate those pesky crackles and pops, greatly improving the overall sound. 192kbps.

Happy Halloween Everybody!

- Contributed by: Spaceboy

Images: Front Cover, Back Cover

WFMU 2007 Record Fair--November 2nd, 3rd, 4th!

New York City is just about the worst town in the world for buying used records. I know that my own music-acquisition jones took a steep nosedive when I moved here, not because there was a shortage of record stores, but because the rents in this town don't really free up much in the way of disposable income. My desire for Jah Wobble EPs, the Sun City Girls' "Three Fake Female Orgasms" single, and the first Pink Holes LP remain locally unanswered because as with used record hunting in most cities, too many people here are also looking for stuff like that. In order to have a successful day of record shopping here, you either have to have really pedestrian musical taste ("Nitzer Ebb CD for a dollar!!? Score!!") or limit yourself to only buying new releases.

I figured out that I was a musical cheapskate a long time ago. And no, I don't lurk on Soulseek or any other P2P networks, wasting precious bandwidth by pulling down thousands of MP3s. Like a lot of other people, I find no reward in an overstuffed hard drive with no memories of the hunt to match it. But on the other hand, if you present me with rows upon rows of used LPs or cheap CDs to plow into, you'll be sorry you ever asked me to marry you. As such, I now save the lion's share of my used record hunting for weekend retreats to remote college towns which almost universally have one good record store and one good bar at which to drink away whatever cash is left after unloading your wallet on the first three Nikki Sudden solo records. While putting away the booze, it's good to pour some on the curb for the knowledge that there's no way you'd ever have such good musical fortune in NYC. The amount it costs to fatten the record collection in Princeton or New Paltz won't pay for much more than crappy East Village sushi and a sleeveless promo copy of the new Aesop Rock album back home. Yep, where matters of record collecting are concerned, I say to hell with New York City and the whore she rode in on.

But next weekend, November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, all of that will change...

Countdown to Halloween #5

Lawrence Welk show stars The Lennon Sisters (minus one, but with two extra little Lennons) get you in the spirit with some "Dry Bones", 1965.

Stay tuned for the end...when the masks come off it really starts to feel weird.

Thanks to Boston burlesque and choreography master Mary Widow for passing this one on.

365 Days #299 - Paul Weston & Jeffrey Berman - The Dialect of the Black American (mp3s)

MP3:
Side 1 (19:00)
Side 2 (19:35)

One of my favorite spoken word records is this 1970 public service disc produced by Western Electric for libraries and schools (an excerpt was featured on the 2003 run of 365 Days). Essentially a long essay on how American society deals with Ebonics, The Dialect of the Black American is fairly radical in its message...and very entertaining in its presentation. That one of America's biggest companies produced such a document is testament to how liberal the country had become. Decades of agitation from Labor, the Civil Rights Movement, and the New Left had brought the country to its most enlightened state since anarchists, socialists, Wobblies, and labor forced FDR into the New Deal. Two years after this record's release, the Conservative Rollback, ushered in by the election of Richard Nixon, had begun, bringing us to the mess we are in today. The thought of Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, or Walmart-Stores producing anything like The Dialect... - either in style or content - is nothing less than absurd.

Message aside, The Dialect of the Black American would be just another spoken word record if not for the presentation. Narrator (I assume) Paul K. Winston has the right voice for this record. His rich tone dashes from Standard American English to Ebonics without pause. The writing is good. And the record is funny. Some of the humor is unintended, I'm sure; however, listen to the end of the last track and you know that the writers were laughing as they came up with it. Top a great record off with a fantastic sleeve and here is one of the best spoken word records ever released.

- Contributed by: Scott Soriano

Media: LP
Album: The Dialect of the Black American
Label: Western Electric
Date: 1970

I Got You, Mr. President (video)

John Schnall, WFMU's former animator-in-residence (and the creator of the Telephone Jam and the Midnight Matinee) has been busy with his youtube channel lately and he just cranked out a political love paean that even Sonny Bono would've been proud of:

 

Check out John's other videos on his youtube channel.