WFMU's Beware of the Blog

$mall ¢hange's omewhat tardy top 11...

$¢ presents some classics that got heavy rotation for 007.  Yes we're a little on island time.  Yes all this shit is mad old.  So Ffffing what?  Mofos still wile e coyote out to 'em.  Go easy on me kid, I'm just an old man playing old rekkids.

Love Unlimited Orchestra  'Strange Games and Things'  20th Century
those strings always kill me, esp on the beginning.  When you have the full power of an orchestra with a groove that killer, hmmmm mmmm.  (Ex-squeeze all my mindless chatter over the link)

Ike and Tina Turner  'You Got What You Wanted'  Pompeii
heavy ballad type ish.  Super badass.  RIP Mr. Turner.  Lyrics are right on right on.  Something to be learned here children.

Beatfanatic  'Jogando Capoeira'  Raw Fusion
The raw fusion / gamm / etc record family outta stockholm has been KILLING shit for a while now, and this track is the creme of the creme, like the top of a properly served espresso.  A modern stone cold classic no doubt.  Played it at midnight of 08 to boot.

Beenie Man and Barrington Levy  'Murderer Remix'  Yaga Yaga
As if the OG Berrington Levy's Murderer wasn't badass enough (one of my favorite riddims), this remix with the 'to all the geto yuths' intro always slams mofos.  But lots on this, love the Simple Simon, Spragga Benz, its hard to go wrong with murderer.

Frankie Paul  'Pass the Tu-Seng-Peng'  Volcano
pass it over!  Dunno why I've slept on this old school classic for so long.  Happy but hard hitting reggae, the best.  Heard Mr. Scruff drop this recently in a set and made my night.

Sleezy D  'I've Lost Control'  Trax
classic tres-demented acid haus from the Trax label.  For the stepchildren.  Shouts to my man Ron Morelli for schooling me on this.  The sound of a trip gone bad.

Ogyatanaa Show Band  'Disco Africa'  Sound Way
an afrobeat heater for the dance floor.  Been comped a few times, good a great organ and chorus.  Kinda prefer the OG but nuff respeck to Quantic's edit that came out on Sound Way.

Four Tet  'A Joy' (feat. Percee P) (Part 2)  Domino
Part 1 ain't bad but part two es muy stupido.  Uptempo funky baseline hip hop joint that's shorter then some rockabilly instros played on fool's paradise.  So make sure you have another selection cued when dropping this or you'll be scramblin', never a good look.

Fred Williams  'Tell Her'  Solo (or Jazzman via Midwest Funk comp)
Again we go deep people.  Life is short, go for the jugular.  Subtle but crazy good guitar riffs with a slow solid backbeat and homeslice wailing about his heart being broken.  One of the tastiest people, and big shouts to Josh Davis for giving me a good deal on this at the last FMU rekkid fair.  I try not to stamp collect too much but this one is essential.

Marion Black  'Who Knows?'  Capsoul (or Numero via the Eccentrc Soul: Capsoul label comp)
who knows anything at all...another slow and steady soul grinder with killer lyrics/music.  And not just for the 5am set, I've dropped this in the middle of open minded dancefloors and people jam.  Try it you'll like it like like Mikey from Life (cereal).

Prinza feat. the Demolition Man  'Fire'  Labello Blanco
crazy fresh 94 ragga jungle biz.  As the years go on some things get dates while others retain that freshness.  I'll be the 1st to admit there's a lot of boring DnB out there, but do your homework and look around, plenty of jams like this.

and many many others.  Even some from this year, really!

This Week On Foxton Realtors®: Television Sets

Foxtons Realtors® list over 10,000 homes for sale each year across New Jersey and New York. These are but a few....

Girls Who Loved Beatles and the Beatles Who Hated Them, "Them" Being "Beatles".

I'm sweating in anticipation of the Pseu Braun / Gaylord Fields Wack McCartney solo Beatles special tonight (January 25th 2008).  To celebrate their 3-hour "quizzical journey through highly questionable solo Beatles filler tracks", I'm using today's post to offer you some music (& stuff): here's 3 lovestruck ladies singing their odes to John, Paul, and Ringo; and one piece of luscious noise with George's name on it.

Rainbo "John, You Went Too Far This Time" mp3 4.9 megs (1969) "Rainbo" is Sissy Spacek, and this is her first recording - an expression of her shock over the "Two Virgins" cover.

Marianne Rosenberg "Mr. Paul McCartney" mp3, 5 megs (1970) Marianne won a talent contest in her native Germany at age 14 with this, her first song.  Some exceedingly charming, yet brief, youtube here.

Bonnie Jo Mason "Ringo, I Love You" (youtube link, audio only) (1964) That's 16-yr old Cher's first solo recording, made under the direction of her boyfriend Sonny's boss Phil.

Azusa Plane "George Harrison Plays Sitar" mp3 5.3 megs (1995) the late great Philly psychster ponders those ponderous Wonderwall sessions, from the cassette "Resonating Subtleties"

And, to prepare you for the lashing Pseu & Gaylord have in store, here's the Beatles doing it themselves:

Paul on John's death: "Drag, innit? Cheers!"
John on Paul: "We got tired of being Paul's sidemen"
George attempts to sell Paul's underpants: "Only $60,000!"
Paul makes up for Paul on John's death on George's death

And as always, Ringo's nose stays clean.  We're not mentioning "Caveman".

(Thanks Joe McGasko for invaluable assistance!)

Viewers Digest

Incredibly, everything you see in this image can be found in the kitchen. Photographer Carl Warner has painstakingly incorporated all kinds of food into a series of still lifes.

 

 

 

 

He says his 'Foodscapes' were partly inspired by healthy eating campaigns. But they have not persuaded his own children to step up to the recommended five-a-day allowance.

The Forest of Dean or the Forest of Greens? The road is paved with cumin, bread mountain off in the distance, peas hang from broccoli trees and cauliflower clouds adorn the heavens.

Panda Guts

Eats Shoots and Leaves Carefully Labeled Organs

After a long day at work, who doesn't want to come home to a mail-order box with a see-through panda? With its internal organs labeled in Japanese? Eating bamboo? That's a talented panda.

Gotochi Dissection Animals are available at Giant Robot. There are more--I also got a fearsome bear eating a fish and a spectacular rooster flapping its wings, but the almost-entirely-flayed cow really committed to the project. The pictures don't do them justice. They're an inch and a half tall and amazingly detailed.

David Lee Roth Vocals and NWA in high school

The folks over at Chunklet Magazine (prior guests on Tom Scharpling's Best Show on WFMU - real audio link) have uncovered this highly entertaining isolated vocal track of David Lee Roth singing Running with the Devil. (via Coudal)

David Lee Roth - Running with the Devil Isolated Vocal Track

Also of possible interest: The C.I.A 12" over at BAF in the event that you want to hear sketchy quality recordings of  NWA  back when they were RUN-DMC-loving high school students.

If only I had some Oingo Boingo tracks to share this could have been a "Los Angeles adolesence in the 80s" trifecta...

Album Art Extended

We've had some pretty good looks at album art here on the blog, including album covers that are inexplicably nude, Turkish, and even "on the attack". Heck, we even encourage more than a little artistic modification of album covers at the record fair.

But over on B3TA last month, they had one of those wonderful time-killing photoshop contests that I sure wish we'd thought of: Extending Album Art. It is a classic idea, but unfortunately the competition is closed, and there are a lot of cruddy entries (a bit too many hand drawn penises for my taste). I think we could offer some fine additions to this new art form.

And so, let's announce a contest for you, our own WFMU loyalists, to create and submit your own extended covers.

The rules (via the original competition) are simple: "Using any tools available - you, your record collection, a camera, photoshop, a scanner, whatever works - show us what happens beyond the borders of classic album sleeves, how the artwork continues."

Plop your entry on Flickr or whatnot, and post a link in the comments of this post. We'll grab the best ones and include them in a future post. Perhaps we'll be able to eek out some sort of prize for the "winning" entry (which will be arbitrarily selected based on our whims).

Here are my favorites from the original competition. Click to open full size in a separate window:

Lo-Fi (ie, not so fancy with the photo editing) entries are also encouraged. Such as these:

Go crazy! Oh, and you get bonus points if you can manage to extend Brian Turner's copy of the Addrisi Brothers album cover and make it even creepier.

Mark Schubert - Jagged and Bloated Assemblages

Mark Schubert's sculptures are teetering monuments of garbage. Shards of plastic lawn furniture are melted down into jagged forms that bulge and balloon out at the tips recalling bulbous cartoon characters crossed with the most violent Willem de Kooning painting. His assemblages are crusted over with hardened pastel glop that resembles botched cake frosting, adding a playful element to the implied violence and failure of his ramshackle piles. But I find Schubert's work essentially sexual- bloated ridiculous figures with sac-like organs full of pus waiting to be popped.

Mark Schubert current show Bungleblown runs through February 9th at Mark Moore gallery in Los Angeles. There are more pictures of the exhibit at The Flog. More work can be seen at Monya Rowe gallery.

The New English

There is an ethnic derivation of English mysteriously absent from the SIL International Ethnologue database: Schizophasia.  Mysterious because it is no longer only spoken by "Schizophrenics".  We have, among others, Paula Abdul and Shirley Phelps-Roper upon whom to heap eternal gratitude for that.  Each, upon returning from her own (ahem) "inward sabbatical", had been rigorously taught this hitherto non-indigenous language (by Walter Skinner, of course) and now wish to indoctrinate us in hopes of fostering deeper rapport and understanding between mainstream schizophrenics and the rest of us--who will become schizophrenics very soon if January 20th of next year doesn't hurry the fuck up and get here.

So, until the SIL International Ethnologue database at long last recognizes the legitimacy of Schizophasia as English's triumphant replacement, you can study up on common Schizophasic phrases for "Don't eat the chicken" or "Has anybody ever told you you look just like Amanda Plummer in "Freeway""? by these other native speakers:

Gerald (Pts. 1 & 2) / Heather / The real James Bond / Henry Wallace, artist (Pts. 1 & 2) / Unknown

Here are two speakers of a sub-IAL dialect first discovered in the 70's called Disassociative Pidgin English (formerly known by the peculiar designations "Multiple Personality Disorder" and "Disassociative Identity Disorder"):

Jaid / Some woman who calls herself "RainbowsBubble"

15 Sons and Daughters of Country Western Stars Who Were Named After Radio and TV Personalities And Died Tragically

1. Steve Allen Lewis - Drowned in pool
2. Jack Benny Lynn - Fell off horse and drowned
3. Groucho Marx Twitty - Stillborn
4. Bocephus Williams - Braindead
5. Fibber McGee Parton - Jumped off cliff
6. Fred Allen Wynette Jones - Drowned in cereal bowl
7. Eve Arden Cash - Impaled on miniature golf windmill
8. William Bendix Sovine - Electrocuted
9. Joe Besser Haggard - Imploded
10. Richard Deacon Acuff - Drank Strychnine
11. Imogene Cocoa Tillis - Autoerotic asphyxiation
12. Liberace Scruggs - Helicopter mishap
13. Klondike Kat Judd - Microwaved
14. Red Buttons Whitman - Stepped on third rail at Space Mountain
15. William Shatner Jennings - Died of Embarrassment

BILLY JAM PRESENTS: Finding Sweet Music In The Jackhammer Construction Noises Of WTC

If you checked out Irene Trudel's engrossing Jan 21 show show , you would have had the pleasure of hearing her guest David Hykes not only perform his beautiful tonal music but also talk with Irene about such things as the healing power of tones and various other sounds in music.  Something that is so true. Music heals. Music moves. But these sounds don't always have to be sweet and soft. They can be loud bombastic noises that, at first, appear offensive to the senses but soon become hypnotically seductive.  Case in point; one of Mike Lupica's favorite places - the PATH station at WTC (World Trade Center) downtown Manhattan as in the scene of  "ground zero" as in 9/11 - where some form of construction has been dragging on, it seems, ever since that infamous September date back in 2001.

In recent weeks however as I traipsed through the large open space that links the MTA subway side of WTC with PATH side, en route to WFMU, I noticed a new construction sound - the sound of jackhammers pounding away at all hours right below as you come up the steps on the PATH side. "Wow that is like some good industrial music!" was the first thought that popped into my head, with "I gotta record that sound" being the second so I whipped out my small digital audio device and hit "Record." (mp3, 3.4 megs) several times over the past couple of weeks.

This Friday on WFMU, in a totally unrehearsed session, along with Bryce and Scott Williams I will be playing back a variety of these sounds recorded exclusively at WTC - some repeated and/or layered with occasional in-studio effects added into the improvised mix.  Meanwhile Bryce will add sounds generated by hand from "found percussion items" (all found in the WFMU kitchen) while Scott will play various guitars.  Also thrown into some part of this improv mix will be bits of an interview I conducted with Danny Hoch about the sad state of gentrification in New York City - the  theme of his new play "Taking Over" - which just opened, not in New York City, but in Berkeley California.

Lou Reed vs. Pavarotti

As if the JB duet wasn't out there enough.

Killin' Me Softly With His Song

My favorite new product at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was the iTaser. It's just what it sounds like--an mp3 player combined with a Taser. So the next time I'm on the train, sitting across from some idiot who has his iPod TURNED UP SO LOUD I CAN HEAR IT CLEAR ACROSS THE AISLE EVEN THOUGH HE'S GOT THE EARPHONES IN, I'm for sure gonna think twice before I ask him to turn it down, 'cause I really don't need a 50,000-volt electric charge to spice up my day. If I did, I'd just go walk my dog around the Lower East Side and let Con-Ed electrocute us with some stray voltage.

The spokesman for the iTaser company says their product is aimed at women who want personal protection but usually choose to take a music player instead of a weapon with them when they go out. Now they can have both! "Personal protection can be both fashionable and functionable," he says. I'm not sure whether the leopard-print-design iTaser is supposed to be the functionable one, and I thought "personal protection" was a code word for tampons, but as far as I know they haven't come out with the iTampax yet. No way am I putting an iTaser up there, either.

Anyway, I'm all for combining weapons with traditionally nonviolent pursuits. My favorite Olympic sport is the biathlon, which combines skiing with shooting great big guns. I think it would be fun to combine shooting with other sports, too--like rhythmic gymnastics.
Just imagine some little girl running merrily across an exercise mat with a long ribbon, picking up a hoop and throwing it high over the judges' heads, and then whipping out a semi-automatic assault rifle and firing a few rounds through the center of the hoop as it spins in mid-air. THAT'S a perfect 10, for sure!

We had a guy in Brooklyn just this weekend who tried to add some explosive excitement to a sometimes tedious sport. When police arrested Ivaylo Ivanov in his Brooklyn Heights apartment, they found a pistol, a shotgun, a crossbow, a bullet-proof vest, some drilling equipment, and seven live pipebombs. Ivanov said the pipebombs were for fishing. Okay!  Maybe by this time next year we'll have the Popeil Pocket iBomb. 

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

Billy Jam's Top 10 of 2007 (belated)

Somehow Billy Jam's top 10 list for 2007 fell through the cracks here at WFMU Centralia, and we apologize for the tardiness of its presentation. If you missed out on 2007 listmania, click here.

Billy Jam's Top Ten of 2007

1) The number best thing of the last year for me was getting to do a show on WFMU every Friday afternoon and having the fortune to be on before Bronwyn C's great show and to follow the two wonderfully creative FMU DJs Bryce and Scott Williams.

2)  OCDJ "Hooray" (Wildfire Wildfire)
Speaking of cool ass WFMU DJs to follow on the radio, my old on-air partner OCDJ who I had the pleasure of following on the air but who sadly left WFMU about a year ago to sail the Atlantic, make music (among other things), and relocate to Baltimore where he hooked up Wildfire Wildfire to drop one of the best fuckin albums of the year with this lil puppy (Hooray indeed) that is underground cool with the potential of being global pop - if it were given the right push with a proper budget behind him. Fuckin brilliant!

3)  V/A "Soul Jazz Singles 2006/2007" set (Soul Jazz)
Wow! What an amazing 3-CD compilation this one is. And near every damn track included is on hit. How do they do it? I don't know but I do know that Soul Jazz is one of those few  rare labels these days that you can almost blindly bank on being good just by the label name. Remember when Def Jam was like that? Ah, I miss the old days.

4)  Emcee T's Bay Area version of the Sopranos intro (watch on YouTube).
Since leaving the Yay Area I miss it but I love the State that WFMU dwells in - New Jersey - home of the Sopranos - so when I first saw this Bay Area version of the Sopranos intro by Emcee T, it was love at first sight, since it brought together NJ and da Bay. Yay!

The Field Guide to Staying Inside: The Viola

The viola, sometimes called the violet, possesses the unusual capacity to mask it's scent. It releases a ketone component known as ionone which desensitizes nasal receptors, effectively making it nose-invisible.

The little flower shares its name with a stringed instrument of the same name, namely the viola, an instrument that many wish would also learn to mask its odor. The stringed viola is, sadly, oft scorned and ridiculed; If Satan plays the violin, it is presumably some short, ugly and mentally challenged step-demon who plays the viola. Orchestra members routinely swap occasionally slightly humorous jokes behind the violists' backs, and then get all quiet and awkward once the violist turns around. Why this should be struck the crack team at TFGTSI as something of a mysterious, so we assigned several interns to interview prominent violists and quiz them about their instrument's troubled reputation. Their findings, along with some audio samples, follow.

Carla Kihlstedt has been known not only to play real pretty in her Tin Hat, but has also applied the viola to the proggy arty gothy deathy rock band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. She explained to us that "things of a truer and more humble beauty make people nervous. People tend to make jokes when they get nervous." This track comes from her 2005 Tzadik album Two Foot Yard.

Carla Kihlstedt - No One Nicer  (MP3)

Tony Rettman on Detroit Hardcore

I was recently checking out Elisa Ambrogio’s ‘best of’ list at the Arthur blog and was pleasantly reminded of “Why Be Something You’re Not: The Detroit Hardcore Scene 1979-1985” a comprehensive Detroit hardcore overview by WFMU’s own Tony Rettman.  The piece ran in Issue 12 of Swindle Magazine and, though it was plugged here in a past Off-Mic section of BOHA, it really deserves a Beware of the Blog link of its own.  Tony's piece is dedicated to the memory of Larissa Strickland from L-Seven and the Laughing Hyenas, who sadly passed away in 2006, and who was by all accounts a remarkable woman/guitar goddess.  In the spirit of the thing, here's a track from the excellent L-Seven who released one 3-song 7" on Touch & Go in the early '80s before splintering off into a few other bands.  L-Seven Insanity

And, after educating yourself on the impressive history of Touch and Go Magazine, the Necros and Negative Approach, be sure to peep Elisa’s list for yourself.  Not only does the Magik Markers guitarist-vocalist give mention to one of my favorite novels (the gleaming tale of suburban disquiet, Revolutionary Road), she rustles up a fine collection of personal and cultural touchstones for your mind before you peace-out ‘07 for good.

Captain Kleenex and The Green Sputum Cowboy

Granted, I'm no health care professional, nor do I even resemble one of those gratingly cutesy actresses that pass for one on television, but I'm calling the last 30 or so days as I see it: a pandemic! More to the point: a feverish puke, sweat and shit filled phlegm fest. I gratefully managed to avoid the norovirus which struck about 70% of the people I know who either live or work in New York City. Victims were vomiting curbside while hailing a taxicab only to shit their pants on the way home due to the total absence of free public restrooms in the greatest city on earth. Meanwhile in the outer 'burbs, strange sweaty outbreaks were randomly occurring in the population accompanied by dizziness, a slight cough and general fatigue. The symptoms would seem to dissapear, in reality only going into remission gathering steam for the big kahuna -- an ass-over-teakettle upper respiratory smackdown with complementary bronchitis and a suffocation of the sinus cavities making one ponder the possibility of having been quiescently teabagged by an epileptic bricklayer. After see-sawing in and out of illness for three weeks, I was finally prescribed Levaquin and promethazine with dextromethorphan syrup. Then I really got sick. Unbeknownst to this humble host organism, a detrimental colonization was ON...

Weird World pt. 1

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There are lots of live childbirth videos on YouTube.  (Must be signed into your YT account.  Thanks, Mike.)

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Goodiepal and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation Conspiracy

Before we arrive at the moment's entertainment, I have been instructed to ask you to play this audio file in your browser.

Goodiepal Maved Soundtrack

And here is the video that our friend Goodipal has just asked you to play at the proper moment, as cued by the audio recording.

I'll assume you're well on your public Danish television voyage by now. You're witnessing a televised lecture presented by Goodiepal, a Danish electronic musician that enjoys some airplay on WFMU and is probably most widely know for blowing minds with his mechanical bird invention, and composing tones and melodies for consumer electronics companies.

You'll see him keep his studio audience stupefied with a near hour-long discourse on: The Eurobot (as demonstrated by cardboard scenery cutouts and handmade balls of yarn), the assertion that Europeans don't understand time, the idea of mirror points in music, the future of electronic music, and how to keep music scores hidden from artificial intelligence.

At first blush it all seems very whimsical but discursively sound but at about the twenty minute mark when he's still playing with his little robot set and whistling the Eurobot score to himself, one can't help but wonder if he's putting us on. And yeah, you've got the simul-soundtrack cranked, so you're on media-fuckery watch anyway.

What's going on here, you ask? Thankfully, a mysterious poster to a web forum has left a few clues.

Here I Come To Save The Dazed

Bruce Wayne...owner of a private technology firm, philanthropist, Episcopalian, halfwit millionaire, uppity faux playboy, Caped Crusader, Dark Kni...

Episcopalian?

Hey, fictional average Joes with secret alter-egos--or, in Batman's case, fictional secret alter-egos with secret average Joes--have the right to worthily magnify, too.  Superheroes can make negligibly impetuous decisions from time to time ("Bruce Wayne, Dick...pleased to make your acquaintance") or might need a little hand to revive a dead guy (The Thing evoking the Godhead in Yiddish to attempt saving the life of Yancy Street's resident pawnbroker, Mr. Sheckenberg).  Nothing's ever dictated they can't summon the lean, mean Lamb and the Heavenly Host Posse when confronted with an ethical or spiritual quandary they can't seem to lick on their own. 

Let's face it; batarangs, lassoes or forms of a methyl trichloride-soaked towel or 5th Avenue bar laced with a gentle laxative don't lend much credence if, in some of the more heavily devout cases, they're not backed up by the messianic seal of approval courtesy of--dare I say--The Backhand.  The Big Black Bat, Zatanna (eclectic Pentecostal Dianic Wiccan--hoooo), The Man of Steel (Kryptonian religion AND Methodist) and many more are humbly belting out rousing flourishes of "Kumbaya" around the ecumenical campfire in this canonical compendium of superpower sectarianism.  Don't ask me how these creeps found their way into the circle.  Yeah...not warmly invited.

Anyway, praise the Lord--and pass the Holy Bat-Drinking Water Dispenser!!