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I collect comedy records and I have no standards. Good or bad I like them all. Here's a pile for your home listening - get the backstory on most of them here.
Godfrey Cambridge: at The Hotel Aladdin
Allen & Rossi at The Sands
George Gobel at The Sands
Orson Bean at The Hungry i
Moms Mabley at The Playboy Club & Breaks Up the Network
Here's Milt Kamen!
Jack Paar: The Best of What's His Name
Robert Klein: Child of the Fifties
The Humor of Rowan and Martin
Minnie Pearl: Howdee!
Are You Ready for Phyllis Diller?
Murray Roman: A Blind Man's Movie
Jimmy Lynch: That Funky Tramp in a Nightclub
I thought it was San Francisco where the spirit of the Residents might have loomed largest over the years, but it looks like L.A.'s been getting a trickling of it as well more than usual. Edan Serge Gillen's CDR a few years ago caused a few head-swivels around WFMU, and now in 2008 Blk Thndr Rkrds has finally committed his five strange songs to 7" wax: panicked rock-a-boogie via turntable surface noise, atonal car horn-honk keyboards and toxic dayglo flank both sides of this one. I don't know if it's a windup or not, but his label claims all straightfaced that Edan hooked up with Tracii Guns and his kid in 2006 to play 20 shows in a revamped L.A. Guns around the world (including a somewhat heralded-on-the-press-release 20th Anniversary show for Rickki Rachtman's Cathouse on Sunset. Real Audio: "My Love Is a Fire."
In 1977 four New Englanders of varying musical goals convened for a private press LP under the name Orange, that by all accounts, was born under stressful circumstances (sneaking into studios, band members at odds), and upon release got no love from friends or family of all members involved (one of which being modern free-blowing stalwart Paul Flaherty). Now reissued on DeStijl, In the Midst of Chaos is an interesting peek at a short-lived combo at odds with itself: Flaherty obviously pushed for the freedom aspect while the others were split between trad leanings, fusion/bloozy needs, McCoy Tyner fixations, but all willing to go into freak-form mode after they got all of that outta the way. The result of the recording is a very cool LP of some basic mic'd interplay with some almost MX-80 moments of electric guitar flurry from Barry Greika, tranquil soundscapes with a few electronic flourishes and of course some hippo-charging sax action from Flaherty. MP3: "And Then She Appeared In the Midst of Chaos" (MP3).
Varghkoghargasmal online discussions seem to attract metal-purist hatred akin to the kind that the late Anton Maiden received. "Retarded" seems to be the key phrase uttered, in fact. This stuff, however, is brilliant and completely original. Label tUMULt has been calling it "Wooden metal", maybe due to the fact the evocations of forests are clear in the sounds of the music. It definitely is Black Metal in essence, though there's no distortion on the instruments (all played by a fellow named Avenger) despite them being electric. Drum beats are struggling, guitar pluckings run into a few stutters, keyboard lines amble around, and even weirder, I can hear bits of stuff like the Norton Records King Usniewicz vibe drifting through this thing. That is, stumbling, amateurish American roots-rock! Buggy surf-guitar runs etc. Drowned In Lakes is an amazingly atmospheric and mood-setting record despite the bizarre descriptions above, enjoy "Tanz der Walteufel" (Real Audio) from an earlier EP, and check out "Far Away From Earth" (Real Audio) from Lakes.
On a somewhat more direct but still unconventional angle of darkness, I've been waiting for a solo release from Norway's Runhild Gammelsæter and I'm happy to say it's been worth the wait. Runhild first joined a pre-Sunn o))) Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley in the band Thorr's Hammer when she was a 17-year old exchange student, and two years ago did a great collaboration called Khlyst with James Plotkin. Her new Utech release Amplicon swings between darkly beautiful passages and jarring, Diamanda-esque explosions of vocal mayhem, both soundtrack-like and extreme within short timeframe. Challenging listening, but painting an intriguing tapestry of sounds. "Love" (Real Audio)
Since we last checked in on the cassette tape archival Website Project C-90, they've continued to update their catalog and add features to their site, including discussion of the tapes in Russian and English and organization of the tapes by format (cassette, mini cassette, micro cassette). Definitely worth a second look! (tip from Create Digital Music)
Broadcasting historians and one-hit-wonder enthusiasts may want to take note of the death of Les Crane this past Sunday, aged 74.
Considered a pioneer of the talk-show format, Crane got his start on the radio in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio. After a stint at WPEN in in Philadelphia, he went on to KGO in San Francisco, where, according to his wikipedia profile, "he delighted and irritated callers and listeners with his forthright style and unwillingness to suffer fools quietly, often hanging up on callers in contravention of the polite ethos of the time."
In September 1963, he debuted on ABC-TV, where he hosted a couple of late night talk shows through the end of 1965. Crane, considered rather hip and edgy, was known as "the bad boy of late night television" according to the New York Times of his times. He conducted the first televised interview of the Rolling Stones in the United States in June 1964, and also hosted Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan, George Wallace, and Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, among others. He later worked as an actor on television shows such as "The Virginian" and "Love, American Style".
In 1971, Les Crane's reading of the poem "Desiderata" reached number 8 on the Billboard Charts, and earned him a Grammy for best spoken word recording. Its inspirational tone hit a chord in the popular sentiments of the times, but Crane disavowed the recording in 1987, saying "I can't listen to it without gagging", and even expressed his preference for the National Lampoon's parody version of the hit called "Deteriorata", released in 1972. (Station Manager Ken played both songs (the Crane version first) on his radio program back in on September 26, 2001 (streaming real audio))
Les Crane ended his working days as the chairman of a software company in northern California. He is survived by his daughter (whom he had with actress and ex-wife Tina Louise) and his wife of 20 years.
"Desiderata" by Les Crane followed by "Deteriorata" by National Lampoon on Ken's 9/26/01 show
Les Crane's wikipedia entry
Les Crane's obituary in the New York Times
Living in New York has made me very suspicious of giant, looming cranes. Sure, it's partly because they have a tendency to fall down, but it's also because the presence of a crane signifies a new high-rise billion-dollar piece of crap is about block out the sky. But then along comes something like Dinner In The Sky, a "what won't the rich spend money on" idea wherein the crane helps celebrate the sky by hoisting a table full of diners up into the air and serving them a luxury meal. What dinner wouldn't taste better while dangling 500 feet above the ground? What says "I Love You" more than suspending your family and friends over a treasured monument? And what screams "our company has more disposable income than yours" quite like an evening floating in the air with the Board of Directors and a bunch of Star Wars characters?
And what is the perfect food to eat in this situation? I say there's a certain yin and yang purity to eating foods up high that were dredged from the depths. Yes, sushi!
This odd photo comes from the Monkeyabout image blog. It's almost a Henry Darger drawing come to life.
Here are some strange Flickr sets and image blogs that I have had bookmarked for a while.
Modern Fred's Flickr Photosets - 60s pop, fashion, illustration, pulp covers and Kaiju Eiga.
Craft of Lady Hairdressing - hair sculptures attached to lady heads!
Dr, Odio's Flickr Photosets - comics, sexploitation, Munsters and covers of an odd Spanish comic called "Killing".
Agence Eureka's Flickr Photosets - quirky French magazine illustration from the 40s, anatomy illustration from the 30s and way too much more
N A S D A Q F O R E V E R (NSFW) - random assortment of weirdness
Vintage Girly Mags (NSFW) - grandpa's entire porn stash of curvy ladies is presented in high resolution JPG!
1. Side 1 (18:41)
2. Side 2 (19:05)
For years you've been tempted by snippets of this album on various Web sites, including Frank's Vinyl Museum and the original 365 Days Project. Now, here at last for your full enjoyment, is Muhammad Ali, Frank Sinatra, Richie Havens, Jayne Kennedy, Ossie Davis, producer Arther Morrison, and Ali's Gang in the fight of their lives against the sinister Mr. Tooth Decay and his sidekick, Sugar Cuba. If you grabbed The Dope King's Last Stand from last year's 365 Days Project, this will complete your set.
"Dope King" is the better of the two albums. This one has a slightly weaker script and some questionable audio mixing, particularly of the kids, but it's also got Howard Cosell, the immortal Muhammad Ali historical fight song, in which we learn that Ali's alway's getting blamed for stuff he didn't do, and perhaps one of the earliest discussions of biodynamic farming on a children's record. Come to think of it, this may be the only discussion of biodynamic farming on a children's record.
Enjoy the full album. And remember, "The information on dental health contained in this children's record is considered by The American Dental Association to be in accord with current scientific knowledge - 1976."
Update 8/8/08 -- Monotonix live at wfmu mashup video by Michael R of videothing.com
Tel Aviv's Monotonix (pictured above spitting at a good-natured
crowd) stopped by Liz B's show on Monday for a shirtless, sweaty,
loud-as-hell set of garage punk. At their live shows, the Israeli trio
has been known to set fire to their equipment
and pour beer on themselves, but Monotonix kept WFMU's studios free of
destruction, with the exception of a broken guitar string two songs
into the set. The band will be back in the area soon: first at the Bowery Ballroom on July 25th, and then at Bodega on August 2nd for an all-ages show. For more tour dates (catch them live if you can!), visit their myspace page. Video of the performance will be posted soon via Michael of videothing.com. Thanks to Gil Shuster for engineering!
Monotonix live on WFMU July 14th, 2008 [playlist] [Full set] (mp3)
1. Monotonix - Set Me Free (mp3)
2. Monotonix - Black Knife Body Language (mp3)
3. Monotonix - Drum Solo (mp3) *the drummer played a solo while the other two band members fixed the guitar string
4. Monotonix - Ride (mp3)
5. Monotonix - Body and Soul (mp3)
6. Monotonix - No Metal (mp3)
Liz B. had another international sensation stop by and record a set: the Mexican psych-punk band, Los Fancy Free. The five-piece played ten songs worth of sometimes bright, sometimes dark, always dizzying psychedelia. With songs like "Bona's Psychedelic Breakfast" and "Beatle Suit and Purple Boots," the band paid fuzzy, blissful tribute to mods and kraut-rockers alike. Be sure to check out their most recent album, Nevergreens: Vol. 1, released on their label, Silicon Carne, which has also put out albums by Stereo Total and Dungen. There's a video of their single, "Ja Ja Ja," up on their myspace page. Thanks to Richard Rusincovitch for engineering!
Los Fancy Free live on WFMU as broadcast on July 14, 2008 [playlist] [Full set] (mp3)
1. Los Fancy Free - Mother (mp3) 2. Los Fancy Free - High Society (mp3) 3. Los Fancy Free - Hope
4. Los Fancy Free - Fear (mp3) 5. Los Fancy Free - Bona's Psychedelic Breakfast (mp3) 6. Los Fancy Free - Beatle Suit and Purple Boots (mp3) 7. Los Fancy Free - Naive Heat (mp3) 8. Los Fancy Free - Dinosaurs (mp3) 9. Los Fancy Free - Money Money Money (mp3) 10. Los Fancy Free - Ja Ja Ja (mp3)
Live audio licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.
Last month marked the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's famous "A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand" speech made during his acceptance of the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from the state of Illinois. (Blessedly, he lost the election.) Toward the end of his oratory, Lincoln summed up the complexion of the Republican party, as constituted in 1858, as being made up of "strange, discordant, and even hostile elements."
Lincoln's evergreen assessment of the GOP was cited in another speech, made just over a century later by Barry Goldwater, who was accepting his party's nomination for president before the Republican national convention. During his address, a minute or so after quoting Lincoln, Goldwater delivered one of the scariest statements ever uttered by a nominated candidate for the presidency. Today, July 16, is the 44th anniversary of those still shocking words: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice..." Listen (mp3). [To read or hear the entire speech, go here.] The terrifying threat at the heart of Goldwater's declaration was nuked less than two months later by Lyndon Johnson's crack advertising team. See the video atop my blog post last month. In an odd coincidence, today also just happens to be the 63rd anniversary of the first successful A-Bomb test, near Los Alamos, New Mexico.
(For an example of fascistic blather from a more recent presidential candidate, look no further than Rudolph Giuliani. Three months into his first term as New York's mayor, he made this statement: "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.")
On March 12, a compulsively dedicated and immensely talented Raymond Scott devotee named Adam O'Callaghan directed and performed in a monumental cross-genre Scott centenary concert at Concordia University, Montreal. O'Callaghan recruited 50 or so acoustic and electronic musicians — students and professionals — in various ensemble settings.
The program offered repertoire from Scott's 1937-39 cartoon-jazz and 1948-49 chamber-jazz Quintets; orchestral works; the composer's elegant but rarely heard 1950 Suite for Violin & Piano; tunes from the idiosyncratic 1960 Secret Seven album; and pioneering proto-electronica from Manhattan Research Inc. and Soothing Sounds for Baby. The proceedings included re-enactments of Scott's 1950s electronic TV commercials and a rhapsodic replica of a Space Age Scott invention, The Fascination Machine. The concert was a mind-boggler, never likely to be duplicated. Dozens of performance videos from the concert are on YouTube.
One performance (just posted) was particularly stunning and unexpected — a surprise collaborator accompanying the trio Unireverse on Scott's electronic lullaby, "Sleepytime" (from Soothing Sounds). The guest arrives onstage three minutes into the performance.
Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 11
mission, which blasted off on July 16, 1969. The Apollo 11 was the first manned flight to land on the moon. Among those on board the rocket ship were astronauts Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who stepped out of their spacecraft and onto the surface of the moon four days later on July 20. At the time, I was a five-year-old with a mild case of Space Fever and I still remember getting special permission from my parents to stay up late to watch the television coverage. I also recall being bitterly disappointed after gazing moonward from the front yard and finding the whole affair completely invisible to the naked eye on the ground.
The Space Fever virus was not necessarily confined to impressionable five-year-olds, however, and I submit the following MP3s as evidence. Oh, and as for the main event touted above featuring a bare-knuckled moon brawl between Country and Bluegrass? Well, it really wasn't much of a contest. Country kicked the butt of Bluegrass, just like it always does.
MP3s
Jack Broadwell - Country Music On The Moon (2:12)
Poteet Brothers - Bluegrass On The Moon (3:02)
*
BONUS LUNAR EXCURSION TUNES
Art Pettibone - Moon Rocket (2:45)
Eddie Dee & The Sputnicks - Journey To The Moon (1:48)
Ginny Millay - Jukebox On The Moon (2:54)
Ginny Millay - Jukebox On The Moon #2 (2:17)
Joey Dixon - Moon Buggy (1:13)
Rocky Porter - I Talked To The Man In The Moon (2:30)
Norm Burns - God Is On The Moon (2:31)
Ole Moon Daddy - Moon Daddy (2:52)
My thanks to reader John M. for his contribution of the "other" Ginny Millay version of Jukebox On The Moon, which is discussed in the comments.
For those of you in the 91.1/90.1 listening area, a chance to see two masters at work today through Sunday at the Village Vanguard, two sets each night. It is sort of amazing to realize that Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley began their fruitful collaboration twenty years ago and have played as a duo, as well as in fairly established bands with William Parker (the Feel Trio) and Bill Dixon among others, sporadically since then. I first heard the duo on record from what I think is their first meeting, in Berlin in 1988, collected among the colossal, essential 11-CD FMP box set (scroll down at that link) documenting a month-long run of Cecil (mostly duo) collaborations in that city, and released as a single disc as Leaf Palm Hand. (The box is long out of print, but the discs in the set have been released separately, and Leaf Palm Hand has been reissued on the JazzWerkstatt label.) Gary Giddins claimed in his review of the box, that CT is responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall having "loosened bricks and mortar and wrested the barbed wire" with the sheer force of his whirlwind activity in Berlin in 1988.
Leaf Palm Hand might have been the album that pushed me over the edge to full-on screaming obsession with Taylor's music. I do remember listening to it the first time on headphones and being pretty much riveted for the full hour plus, and feeling dizzy, yet energized, when it finally ended. Listening again now, as with much of Taylor's music, one is impressed by the stamina of the players, however, the overarching vibe is a cliff-walking sensitivity, a spider-sense, of bursting compacted lyricism. It's hard to fathom that Oxley is playing "just" drums and Taylor "just" piano, since they both seem to occupy bigger sonic realms. Taylor does most of the goading, but the improvisational give and take is so quick and deliberate and forceful and instinctual. The AllMusic.com review aptly calls the performance "soulful": for anyone who suggests avant jazz or improv or whatever lacks "soul", here is all the evidence needed. The thing is dripping with the stuff, soaked like a rag in gasoline.
To warm you up for the Vanguard gig, here's an excerpt of a radio recording of Taylor/Oxley doing their thing, from Teatro Comunale, Modena, Italy, October 11th, 2007. Many thanks to the excellent blog Inconstant Sol for posting this (the complete recording can be found over there).
Cecil Taylor/Tony Oxley - Part 2 (from Live in Teatro Comunale, Modena 11th October 2007)
St. Louis teenager Tom Hartman really, really worshiped the Beatles. Why, he loved them so much that when his own band, the goofily named Aerovons, desired to secure a recording deal, he boldly insisted that no record company was good enough for his band but his idols' own U.K. label, Parlophone (he even spurned an offer by the Fabs' American label, Capitol, his Anglophilia being that intense).
Befitting a teenage boy's outsize pluck, not only did Hartman get his way, securing a contract with the EMI imprint, in 1969 the Aerovons also were ensconced in London for sessions at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, with the 17-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist-keyboardist himself installed as producer. Suffice to say, the Aerovons had several encounters with the Beatles themselves in the hallowed halls, as the older group was in the midst of recording its swan song, Abbey Road.
The results of their eavesdropping on the Beatles' sessions are abundantly clear in the songs the Aerovons recorded at the time, a couple of which bear uncanny similarities to their role models. The feel of "Resurrection," and especially its chorus hook, are straight from "Across the Universe," and if you place the Aerovons' "Say Georgia" facing "Oh! Darling" like a couple of mirrors, they would refract into infinity.
Strangely and anachronistically, the Aerovons' 1969 sessions plumbed all eras of Beatledom: Ballads such as "With Her" and "The Years" could have appeared on A Hard Day's Night and Help! respectively, abetted by Hartman's McCartneyesque pipes. Mid-period Beatles pop-sike such as "She's Not Dead" and especially the resplendent "World of You" (one of the group's few tunes to be issued in its lifetime, as a Parlophone single in 1969) cover the Fake Beatles gamut. The only other 45 issued, also in '69, was a bit of bogus Bee Gees called "The Train."
An entire album of 12 songs, to be called Resurrection, was prepared and even sequenced by Parlophone but was canned when the group fell apart upon return to the States, with only the two singles as evidence of their command of the idiom. Fortunately for Fake Beatles hunters such as this writer, the entire LP was issued (with singles and a couple of bonus tracks) in 2003, with the name Resurrection taking on even more import upon its release almost 35 years late.
Please go to the Aerovons' official site at www.aerovons.com to stream several of their songs, including many discussed in this post.
UPDATE: As BT reports in the comments section, this show is no longer happening due to immigration/visa hassles. Original post follows after the line break.
__________________
I. Can't. Wait.
This will be the only NYC appearance on this short hop (here and Boston) through the States, but a proper tour is alleged to be taking place this Fall.
The Bug's new album, London Zoo, is on Ninja Tune and seems pre-destined to make my eventual best of '08 list. If you like a lot of what I like, maybe that means something to you.
Looky here for Kode 9's blazin' remix of said album.
Via Mad Decent and The Push Bin.
[one mp3 below]
Tommy N. was a friend of mine in junior high school. I say "friend," though in my weakness and ignorance I picked on Tom, at least verbally, as the pecking order in our school dictated that I was a dork, though somewhat less of one than Tom was. His hair was greasy, he had acne, and he shambled up the hallways like a cross between the living dead and the tin man from The Wizard of Oz. Tom had a glimmer about him, though, an apparent knowledge of self that seemed to cause the physical and verbal taunts to glance off of him, such that I don't believe the abuse ever affected him as much as it did me. (To this day, I have fantasies about running into Joey R., Tony P. or Jimmy T. on a lonely country road, where I would proceed to run over them with my car, backing over them and then running over them again to make sure that they were thoroughly pulverized. I would kill without remorse or conscience. Someday schools and communities will learn to truly reward academic and artistic achievement as much or more than athletic achievement, and perhaps there will be fewer socially "damaged" people like myself.)
Getting back to Tommy, he was the son of older parents, and this speaks to his awkwardness at the time as much as anything else. Entering their home was like walking into the 1950s; their mannerisms, dress and décor were a time capsule that denied 1977 was happening right outside. Tom also viciously mocked his parents, perhaps because of how he was treated at school, perhaps because he was showing off for his guest. Either way they allowed it, through obliviousness or quiet license.
So Tom was my friend, and a person I'll never forget for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was his band, who, in my eyes at least, swept the 9th grade talent show with arresting original songs that combined pop, punk and hard rock—I remember their set vividly; Tom, one of the school's biggest outcasts, was their SINGER, so perhaps I was the bigger dork after all, as at that time I would never have had his courage. Another reason I'll never forget Tom is because we discovered UFO Update together.
UFO Update ran on local New Jersey UHF channel WTVG-68 (which also broadcast Uncle Floyd, and later became video-music channel WWHT/U68), usually on the weekends at or after 2 a.m. A dark-haired, leisure-suited man hosted the show (I forget his name), and he seemed to often be intoxicated or at least rattled by extreme stress. The man sat in a chair, facing the camera head on, and with a unique combination of earnestness and banality would read off a list of the latest extra-terrestrial news: the sightings, abductions and livestock mutilations. I remember that there were a lot of livestock mutilations. The latter half of the show was the whizz-bang payoff of the broadcast, where the host would open up the phones (with no delay on the signal) seeking thoughtful and informed discourse on his topic. He would occasionally get it too, though more often than not this already beleaguered gentleman was beset by calls from obscenity-spewing teenage viewers, some of whom were cruel enough to start off their call by feigning a sincere interest in UFOs, before blasting him with fucks and shits. I can't recall whether Tom and I ever called in ourselves, though I'd like to think that we were at least sensitive enough at the time to just watch the spectacle in awe.
Despite occasional searches on Google, YouTube and elsewhere online, I've never found any information on the show, much less archived clips. UFO Update ran for only a few years in the mid-to-late 70s, and as far as I know, only on WTVG-68. I have a quart of plasma ready for anyone who could provide VHS or DVD dubs of the episodes, or even some more historical information. As for Tommy, I know he's still out there, though we're almost 30 years out of touch, and I know that he too still remembers those nights we spent watching UFO Update.
Thematically concurrent mp3 selection:
The Cramps - Mystery Plane (from Ohio Demos, 1979; prod. by Alex Chilton)
Painting by Lisa Santaniello
