WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Another Canadian for Americans (MP3)

In Ken's 1991 comp The Happy Listener's Guide to Mind Control he included a rousing defense of Americans by Canadian Byron MacGregor. Recently I found another recording of the same dang essay by similarly pro-America Canuck Robert Marshall.

Robert Marshall - Americans (4.11 MB MP3)

Although MacGregor is now most closely identified with the essay (at least among WFMU listeners), neither his nor Marshall's recordings were the original version. As the Urban Legends Website documents, "Americans" was originally written and broadcast by Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair. Fortunately the History of Canadian Broadcasting Website has preserved the text of the original essay, along with Sinclair's 1973 broadcast of same. So now we have three versions of "Americans." Who'll be the next Canadian to record it? William Shatner? Sandra Oh? The cast of For Better or For Worse? I can't wait....

WFMU's MySpace Band Friends, Pick Your Favorites, Round 4!!!

Good morning everybody!  We're back with another healthy helping of mp3 treats courtesy of WFMU's lengthy myspace friends list!  The gist, in case you've missed the earlier installments:  listen to the song, check the profile if you want, and then vote!    

The band or bands who get the most "Pump it" votes each week will be forever exalted in the form of my FIRST EVER MARATHON PREMIUM called "In MySpace, No One Can Hear You Scream",   offered for pledges of $75 or more during WFMU's 50th Anniversary fundraising Marathon (going on now!!!).  With the artists' gracious permission, the winning tracks from the 1st portion of this year will be compiled onto one CD, packaged lovingly, and mailed to your home in exchange for some dosh for the station's perilously emaciated coffers.   Last week's faves included the Wobblies and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Congratulations, band buddies!  Who will be next?  It's up to you!!

A couple of notes to all you commenters out there:  first, this is a nice friendly contest!!! Last week, I had to take down an mp3 because a couple of people's not-so-nice comments made an 8-year-old girl cry her eyes out.  If you must criticize, please be constructive!  I can't take any more tears.  Secondly:  pledge! pledge! pledge!

Enough lecture!!! On to Music!! 

Music To Spazz By

Don't forget to support WFMU while you do the Monkey!

Gino Washington-Come Monkey With Me (MP3)

Five Du Tones- Monkee See Monkee Do

Flares-The Monkey Walk

Jerry Warren-Monkey Walk 

The Pygmies-Don't Monkey With Tarzan

The Golden Catalinas-Can Your Monkey Do The Dog?

The Persians-Let's Monkey Again 

The Tempos-Monkey Doo

Sonny Day And The Rare Breed-Tarzan

Major Lance-Monkey Time 

Yo La Tengo Take Your Requests

This Sunday from 5 to 8 PM, Gaylord Fields and Bob Brainen will mark the halfway point of the WFMU fundraising Marathon by once again enlisting Yo La Tengo to take your calls, pledges and cover song requests, which will then be brought to life over the air. Where else but on WFMU can you the mighty listener take the reins of a legendary band's set list and make them play "Cruel Summer" by Bananarama?

The Yo La Tengo request-a-thon has been a staple here at the station since 1996 and those looking to relive the magic of years past can also pick up "Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics" which contains highlights from the first seven years. Lovely cover artwork for this release courtesy of Adrian Tomine.

Yo La Tengo - Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

The Bleeding Absurdity of George Tourlas

From blobby gelatinized creatures to an obsession with cuts and gaping wounds, Greek artist George Tourlas has developed a beguiling visual vocabulary.

Unfortunately, Tourlas only has a MySpace page for his work. I had befriended him a while back and his work has been burned into my mind through this very haunting yet understated video.

Static shot. Breathing. Mashed up Face. Trickles of blood.

Help Us Keep This Blog Up

One of the strange things about WFMU's online presence is that there are lots of people out there who remain happily oblivious to the fact that this blog is actually part of a live, working radio station. In addition to those who only read the blog are people who gladly scoop up our podcasts via itunes or podcast directories and others who grab the mp3s we post here via aggregators like Hype Machine. Every bit of that is wonderful. One of the goals of the station is to be a venue for getting interesting music out to people hungry for content that isnt served to them on the blander shores of commercial radio, increasingly talk-laden NPR and more strictly indie-rock oriented blogs.

For those of you who read the blog but do not listen to the station, you might be aware from some of the posts lately that we're having our annual fundraising marathon. There are a few reasons you should consider making a donation.

One thing you might notice about our blog is that there is no advertising and nobody is trying to sell you anything. Contrary to what Courtney T. Edison says this is not because we are hippies or communists. For an organization that is perennially broke you may think its been difficult for us to literally turn down thousands of dollars to run ads on this site, but the decision has actually been pretty simple. Part of the station's raison d'etre is to remain one of the last places left on earth where the focus is completely on the content instead of serving as a platform for others to sell things to our audience. 

Another thing you might notice is that unlike other blogs we keep links to mp3s up for a very long time. In fact the first mp3 post on this blog from January 2005 (an entry by Mike Lupica about punk rock and New Jersey) still has the audio linked and online. How many other blogs do this, even when they are monetizing the mp3s they post by running ads?  Keeping content like this online along with putting projects like the 365 day project online costs an extraordinary amount of money for bandwidth and server hardware.

For those of you who like the station's programming, we also have roughly 8 years of shows archived and available on demand, something that even very well funded operations like the BBC and NPR stations don't have going. This year we even introduced the first (and possibly still only) live iphone stream. Keeping all this all running is not cheap and we've somehow managed to make this all work on a shoestring budget.

If you take advantage of any of our online resources, you should consider making a modest pledge to help us keep our online operations going.

Airing programs that consist of nothing but 78 rpm records in a major US radio market and putting Kenny G (the DJ not the sax guy) on air have never been wise money making decisions. The same can be said of spending thousands on bandwidth for blog posts documenting anthropological audio oddities. But if we don't do it nobody else will so consider helping us stay online.

Image above is by Andy Rementer. Psuedo valuation on top bears not much relation to reality.

My Favorite Movies I Won't Ever Watch

The cinematography in this music video reminds me of those weird interludes between Kids In The Hall sketches.  Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet did to the latter what fellow Canadians Fifth Column do to the former.  By vaguer association, I can't help thinking of a newish Blank Dogs video I recently saw.  At any rate, here's Fifth Column's video for "Like This".

I dig the yo-yo cut up stuff two minutes into the video.  Does anybody have 1985's out of print Fifth Column At The Funnel movie?  Post clips on youtube or contact me or something please!  Drawing in large part from the above music video's director, Bruce LaBruce, Fifth Column drummer, guitarist and vocalist GB Jones went on to direct a couple of movies herself.  Below you'll find trailers from Jones' films and the trailer to Bruce LaBruce's new "melancholy gay zombie" film...

Garfield As a Real Cat / Garfield Removed

As if the daily Marmaduke Explained wasn't enough postmodernism for your morning coffee, now another cartoon animal icon seems to be getting tamper treatment with unusual frequency these days. First I saw this take on Garfield which actually casts him as a real cat (top, via Cynical C Blog). Then, Magpie offered Exhibit B (bottom) in which he is wiped from the strip completely. In full disclosure though, this is just another excuse to post a link to Meatus Murder's  "El Garfield" (MP3), possibly the only time you'll ever hear Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song altered to cast a spotlight on an overweight lasagna-eating feline. Though with Blixa Bargeld's culinary talents, there may indeed be many more of those kinds of songs in their catalogue.

the big pink

Not to be outdone, by Ken and Kenny G's swanky dress-up outfits yesterday, Liz Berg and Trouble have pulled in the big gun(s) for this morning's Fundraising Marathon show...

Great Moments in WFMU History #7

Post-Strike Negotiations (by Lou D’Antonio, Amy Foerster, and Liz Berg)

“Professional” Station Manager Alan Fritch fires long-haired production manager David Selvin and long-haired DJ Peter Tonks, sparking a staff walk-out and subsequent strike. During negotiations held in Upsala's chapel, staffers, faculty, and Fritch debate whether the station is "a faculty-run public relations enterprise or a student-centered activity." The Upsala Gazette reports that "more than fifty interested persons attended, some wearing costumes or painted faces." WFMU's radio board is dissolved and Fritch leaves the station shortly thereafter. George Fenwick, Jr. is largely responsible for bringing the station back to life after this upset. February-March, 1971.

Illustration by Edward Lasala

I Got You Babe

They say our love won't pay the rent
Before it's earned, our money's all been spent
I guess that's so, we don't have a pot*
But at least I'm sure of all the things we got

Doesn't the marathon just make you want to sing a beautiful donation duet? I got FMU, babe!

Genius: Tiny Tim & Eleanor Barooshian (of Cake) with The Band    |    David Bowie & Marianne Faithful

Creepy: Animatronic dog puppets    |    Poorly-animated cats

Classic:  Sonny and Cher (on the Barbara McNair show)

Many more IGYB videos after the jump. Can your heart take it?

WFMU / SXSW update: The Homosexuals + Los Llamarada added

Just added to WFMU's huge soiree on March 14th in Austin: legends of British DIY The Homosexuals (pic left taken by Joly) who these days are Bruno Wizard and assorted compadres, and Los Llamarada (right, pic from Mi Abela blog), four amazing young art-punk upstarts from Mexico (and the highlight of last year's SXSW for many). If you haven't heard yet, we've got a 14 band extravaganza happening at Spiro's, 611 Red River, right in the heart of downtown Austin; it's WFMU's first ever visit to the SXSW music fest. Showtime for both indoor and outdoor stages is 7PM, and the show is 18 and over, $10 at the door, or free with your SXSW badge/wristband. Other bands on the bill: Harvey Milk, Kelley Stoltz, Hank IV, Evangelista (Carla Bozulich's ensemble), Half Japanese (with Ira Kaplan on guest sax), Citay, the Bad Trips (Grady from Monoshock's new band), Gary Higgins, Paul Metzger, Cheveu, the Lexie Mountain Boys, and Psychedelic Horseshit! WFMU will be broadcasting, and staffers including Irene, Diane Kamikaze, Liz Berg, and myself will be in the house. How much entertainment can you stand?

Johan Pa Snippen (mp3s)

The Nordic Rhythm Boys - Johan Pa Snippen (The Jazz Farmer) (MP3)

Sigge Furst - Bonn Jazz (Johan Pa Snippen) (Live) (MP3)

Ann Kristin "Grynet" Molvig - Johan Pa Snippen Twist (MP3)

Britt Damberg - Johan Pa Snippen Twist (MP3)

The Adventures - Johan Pa Snippen (MP3)

Sigge Furst - Samling Vid Pumpen (MP3)

In the mid 1980's, I developed a taste for traditional Nordic music that has never really gone away since. Anytime I came across a record that looked like it might contain this type of music (usually a 45 or a 78), I snapped it up. So it was that I found a 78 by the Nordic Rhythm Boys, around 1992.

I was unusually taken with this particular song, "Johan Pa Snippen", with it lilting melody and (in this version) rapid keyboard runs, but I was also intrigued by what the record label indicated was the English translation of the title: "The Jazz Farmer", a combination of two terms that did not seem to have anything in common.

Several months later, while listening to a used, home recorded reel-to-reel tape I'd bought, I came across a recording of a TV program called "International Cafe" from circa 1958. At one point, the band struck up a catchy tune and a man with a wonderful voice and infectious energy sang, in Swedish, a melody that seemed familiar to me - I quickly realized it was the same tune I'd learned to love a few months earlier. The singer's name, as introduced, sounded like Ziggy Ferst.

Funeral for a Friend

Last summer more than a hundred people attended the funeral of a young man from Dokkum in the Dutch province of Friesland and now you can too. His parents have posted a highlight video online. That this most private of moments from a far-off stranger's life could be put on display in such a manner may seem perverse, but for hundreds, maybe thousands of people around the world, watching this footage is a sweet and tearful conclusion to an odd sort of friendship made possible by the Internet and a shared love of music.

Dirk Sietse Gjaltema died last August 1 before reaching his 20th birthday. On a Thursday in late March 2006, he started a blog called Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll on which he posted downloads of his favorite albums paired with charming and impassioned descriptions of them. Though the majority of his posts presented Japanese music—in June '06, he added a download of Anthology of Japanese New Folk, a terrific marathon premium from WFMU's Janitor From Mars—his adventuresome taste led readers through the acid folk, garage rock and psychedelia of Turkey, Korea, Brazil, his native Holland and many other wide-ranging outposts of progressive sounds. In early September, Dirk promised to put up a download of the rarity Zeer Oude Klanken En Heel Nieuwe Geluiden by the Dutch three-string guitar masher Eddy van der Meer, but the following post instead contained this stunner:

dear music friends i wont be posting new music for at least two weeks because i am in the hospital , i need a operation for my legg , becauce it is very bad with my legg a car hit me, and hurt my legg very badly, it would be very nice iff you send me a postcard.

Back home a few days later, Dirk dutifully posted the album while also happening to mention that an MRI on his damaged leg revealed a tumor and he was due back in hospital for tests since "they don't know yet if its a good one or a bad one." Well, the tumor turned out to be Ewing's sarcoma, an aggressive form of bone cancer.

Ken + Kenny G - Marathon 2008

A little visual accompaniment for Station Manager Ken's show today with Kenny G. For those that missed  the show you can relive the magic by clicking here. More images and video (thanks to Ben W.)  after the jump.

Who Is He And What Is He To You? Part 2 (mp3s)

A couple of weeks back, Debbie blogged on the topic of the "jody grind" phenomenon, wherein a military soldier (or sometimes a prisoner) is the victim of a cheating mate back home.  The term originated as informal shorthand for "Joe The Grinder," a mythical character in jazz and blues tunes who was known for making time with the wives or girlfriends of far away military men.  Though most jody songs may well have their roots in jazz, blues, and soul music, there are also quite a few country jody songs.  In my ceaseless efforts to heed the advice of the legendary Ernest Tubb ("keep it country"), here are a few examples.

MP3's:

Bonnie Owens (with Fuzzy Owen)  -  A Dear John Letter   

Dick Bruce  -  A Letter From Home

Dave Dudley  -  At Mail Call Today

Red Sovine  -  Go Hide John

Johnny Wright  -  I'm Doing This For Daddy

Charlie Walker  -  Daddy's Coming Home (Next Week)

HONORABLE MENTION
Johnny Darrell  -  Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town    

Get Down With $mall ¢hange

For those of you still trying to get your Future Shock moves down, here's a handy instructional video to watch after you pledge.

The End Is Near!

According to Nostradamus, the first sign of the apocalypse is all of the Starbucks shops closing at the same time.

The second sign, if we're translating his writings correctly, is a presidential campaign pitting Michael Bloomberg against Ralph Nader.

What can you do to help save the world? Well for starters, how about donating to WFMU? Who knows? It might just stem the tide of overpriced coffee and millionaire candidates.

"Underground" Computer Movie About CERN

National Geographic just published an amazing article about CERN, a particle accelerator research laboratory in France.

It's a (pretty) good pop-science read but props to our own Brian Turner for highlighting what should have been the big pull quote,

"The people running the LHC aren't in a rush to talk about all the things that can go wrong, perhaps because the public has a way of worrying that mad scientists will accidentally create a black hole that devours the Earth."

I don't know, I feel like they're probably fighting for the forces of good. More than the article, I'm persuaded by this "underground" documentary about the facility from 1974, just some few years before the the internet was birthed there by an English computer scientist by the name of Tim Berners-Lee. 

Fake Beatles No. 4: Deception on 45

As we've learned from the previous two Fake Beatles posts in this series, it's very easy to design an album cover calculated to hoodwink consumers into purchasing what they think is a genuine Fab Four long-player but is in actuality a Beatles deception disc. Here's what you need to feature in your artwork:

• The word Beetle or Beat in top-of-the-eyechart-size type, or
• A prominent display of bowl haircuts (can be disembodied), or
• Three to five guys photographed in half-shadow or leaping joyously, or
• The songs "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" prominently billed, or
• Any combination of the above (the more, the deceptive-ier).

But what can a  label exec do if he has flim-flam on his mind but has to set his sights a bit more modestly, say, in the 45 rpm sphere, and thus doesn't have the luxury of a picture sleeve to perpetrate his Beatle bamboozle? The answer lies in the three i's: imply, infer and insinuate. Take the following misleading Moptop tactics employed on the following three singles as a lesson in how to circumvent the limitations of the 7-inch format:

Guess Who? Yes, that Guess Who: Later appending an initial The and dumping the question mark, Canada's finest rock combo of the late '60s and early '70s got its interrogative name by attempting to fool folks into believing its admittedly fine 1965 version of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates' "Shakin' All Over" was secretly perpetrated by a disguised Beatles. In actuality, Chad Allan and the Expressions, as they were known at the time, tried to drum up a little publicity by intimating that their beat-style wax offering was Liverpool-spawned rather than Winnipeg-crafted. To add to the confusion, the B-side of that release by the hosing hosers is a Beatled-up version of Fab fave artist Arthur Alexander's "Where Have You Been All My Life." But in for a penny, in for a Canadian Tire dollar, they figured, as they retitled the song "Till We Kissed" and swapped its Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil songwriting credit for then–Guess Who frontman Chad Allan's defrauding little name.

The "You Know Who" Group! During the height of Beatlemania, New York producer Bob Gallo wanted a piece of that sweet Beatle dosh, so he released several 45 (as well as a full LP on which four musicians appear on the cover sporting Zorro masks) under the name The "You Know Who" Group! [exclamation theirs] Once again, you were supposed to surmise that the band's conundrum of a moniker pointed to a certain Merseybeat combo traveling incognito — and you'd be wrong, of course. But wait just a mop-headed minute: The twist is that The "You Know Who" Group! was a certain Liverpool beat band famous for its later releases on Apple Records: The Undertakers were a Merseyside group that relocated stateside in 1965, and whom Gallo employed to record several "You Know Who" Group! sessions. To further connect Fake Fabs to Actual Beatles, 'Takers lead singer Jackie Lomax was one of the first signings on Apple, recording the George Harrison composition "Sour Milk Sea" and the LP Is This What You Want? on the Beatles' imprint in 1968.

John & Paul: The artists' names on this 45 illustrate a more unsubtle form of hornswoggle, which the cigar chompers at Hollywood-based Tip Records foisted on a seemingly gullible record-buying public in that magic year of the Beatles Deception Single known as 1965. If anyone thought the sides "People Say" (not the Chiffons hit), backed with "I'm Walkin'" (not the Fats Domino/Ricky Nelson smash), were actually by the John & Paul, well, what's the harm? Nothing is known about the two fellas who perhaps not so coincidentally share their given names with the dominant duo of the Fab Four, yet while a quick listen loudly screams Not The Beatles, it's a catchy couple of tunes nonetheless. Accordingly, we salute John Fonebone and Paul Cowznofski, wherever they are, for their lasting contribution to the field of Beatles deception.

Guess Who?: Till We Kissed (MP3)

The "You Know Who" Group!: (Roses Are Red) My Love (MP3)

John & Paul: People Say (MP3)