WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Textile Orchestra

The new disc For the Boss (Beta-Lactam Ring Records) from the Textile Orchestra is almost a musical equivalent of Katamari: the ball starts rolling, picking up chunks of random textures, sounds, stumbling around an arena of collected percussion, mangled musique concrète, turntables, squawks, David Attenborough blurts, who knows what else, and finally turns into a complete shitstorm monster of thinly-spliced chaos hitting the windshield like a million metallic bugs. This lengthy MP3 was recorded in Paris in 2004 and features Alexandre Bellenger (turntables), Arnaud Rivière (mixing board/electrophone), Dan Warburton (violin) and Aaron Moore (drums/percussion). Moore is also of legendary soundshapers Volcano the Bear, and appears as a guest on Daniel Blumin's WFMU program this Sunday night at midnight. Thanks to Aaron and Chris from BLR.

Textile Orchestra "The Beginning of the End" (MP3)

New Jim Flora Book

WFMU's Irwin Chusid has been up to no good.

In addition to playing Fountains of Wayne twice on his radio program this week, he's been consorting with other dark forces. Irwin has just co-written (with Barbara Economon) and released his 3rd book on the artwork of Jim Flora, an illustrator from the '40s and '50s who is known for his great album covers, childrens' books, the occasional (posthumous) piece of WFMU swag, and generally creepy undertones beneath a cheery facade. This third volume of Flora visual treats includes newly-discovered artwork that Irwin himself dug out of a time capsule that was buried in a top-secret location. Or maybe I made up that last part.

The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora is published by Fantagraphics, and is available here.

The 31st Annual Gilroy Garlic Festival

I'm not a food person. I never have been. As a child my mother had a cache of maybe five recipes she could cook that I would eat. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that's not nearly enough dishes to justify use of the word "cache." As a teenager, I managed to somehow become even more picky about food. Peanut butter and jelly was cut from my diet. I became a hamburger, eggs, pizza, bagels guy. As in, that's literally all I ate. I stayed that way until maybe eighteen months ago, when I started dating a girl who considers herself a foodie. She is a food person. She also has never questioned her love for me, even after discovering I had survived for 25 years without ever trying such trivial food items as an avocado, cream cheese, or a pear. The list of foods I've tried since New Year's 2008 would shock most of you. Maybe that will be fodder for a future blog entry, but today I'm still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that I took some vacation days last week to attend a food festival in Northern California. It's so unlike me, I think I need to work through my thought process in a public setting, and writing to a handful of people over the Internet is about as public as I get.

Free Music Archive recent adds: Lucky Dragons, Thomas Mapfumo, Michael Stasis, Pre

A few of my recent favorites from the Free Music Archive (had a long list for this that I'll have to get to at a later date, but feel free to share your favorites!)

The FMA loves Lucky Dragons (Lukey Dargons and Sara Rara) for two simple reasons: 1. Their music and visual art taps into Earth's eternal hot spring of positive energy, and remixes its best elements, and 2. They return the favor by feeding it all back out into the world under Creative Commons. Lucky Dragons have a new 12'' out on the Teenage Teardrops label called Open Power (pictured R), here's Power Melody (mp3, one more on the FMA)

Among the recent adds from KEXP (who, as I type, are uploading more tracks by Obits, Ladytron, The Lights and NOMO), I'm particularly excited to hear from Idle Times. Based out of KEXP's homebase of Seattle, whose HoZac and Woodsist 7''s were played a bunch on WFMU. And it's incredible to hear new music from Thomas Mapfumo, the influential "Lion of Zimbabwe". In the late 1960s, he combined traditional mbira-based music with western instrumentation to create a powerful (and political) new musical style called Chimurenga. Tsuro Magena (mp3) is a track that'll appear on Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited's forthoming album Exile (titled as such because Mapfumo has been living in exile in Eugene, OR).

I first heard about Michael Stasis from Nadav of Phoning It In who, knowing my fondness for Ariel Pink and GBV, thought I might dig these mysterious home-recorded psychedlic folk-pop sounds. He was right! Take a listen to Air of Happiness (mp3, + one more on the FMA) from his self-titled cassette (pic L) on the Natural Resources imprint. It's on-sale at a few local record shops. I got mine at Other Music where it's hidden behind the counter and you have to ask for it by name as if it's made with pseudoephedrine.

New Jersey's own Pre has a new album of instrumental hip-hop beats called The Woodgrain Sessions. Here's one called Lampion (mp3), available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License so if you wanna do something with this beat, please go ahead and share it!

We're building an embeddable player for the FMA, but in the meantime, you can follow the links to freemusicarchive.org for more free mp3s from these artists (and thousands more), plus ways to donate/purchase their music if you like what you hear.

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Vol. 26 (MP3s)

Give the Drummer Some's
5 Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere

Here's another vacation edition of Mining the Audio Motherlode. At this hour the Miner is communing with a black bear or two in the Maine woods. But don't fret—five more platters of honey will be on tap next week.

 

Bob Graettinger's Bracing Tone Poem
Stan Kenton  ~  "City of Glass"
(Blog: What's in My iPod?)

Earnest and Enchanting
Marc Brierley  ~  "Marc Brierley"
(Blog: Peppermint Store)




Strumming in the Shadows of Motown
Various  ~  "Detroit Ghetto Blues 1948-1954"
(Blog: On muddy Sava riverbank)

Free and Funky
Robin Kenyatta  ~  "Free State Band"
(Blog: The Growing Bin)




Gospel Blog Posts Captured!
Various tracks from Just Moving On
(Blog: Pathway to Unknown Worlds)
[The fine site Just Moving On posts amazing gospel tracks, but the links don't last that long.]

Listen for music from these and other incredible finds on
Give the Drummer Some, Fridays on WFMU, 9 to Noon (ET).

Check out every installment of Mining the Audio Motherlode

These Songs Have Words???

Here are a few vocal renditions of songs that are usually delivered instrumentally.

Margie Singleton  -  Magic Star (Tel-Star)  (1:47)  -  Believe it or not, Bobby Rydell also cut a vocal version of this one.

Sonny James  -  Apache  (2:37)  -  For the unadulterated story of Apache and all its cultural implications go check out the amazing write-up posted on Soul Sides a couple of years back.  The one Apache wrinkle that goes unexplored there, though, is the lyrical approach taken by Sonny James on this 1961 RCA release.

Bill Doggett  (with vocal by Tommy Brown)  -  Honky Tonk  (2:25)  -  Tommy Brown was a major player on the R&B scene in Atlanta in the early 1950s, right alongside legends like Little Richard and Billy Wright.  Angel Baby and Dick Blackburn did a mighty fine interview with vocalist Brown for a Lost In Paradise podcast, which you can listen to over here.

                   

Telecult Powers live set, 22nd July 2009

To say that Telecult Powers are a band after my own heart is to wallow in understatement. These guys brought me a double DVD of Asian horror, a red skull candle, and a copy of their latest tape. (Let it be known that I respond very favorably to such thoughtful tribute.) Then, they proceeded to carefully set up their home-built gear (which, by the way, made it into the building in one trip—no double-parking of car required!) Then, we rolled, and Telecult Powers proceeded to open a fissure in reality.

Telecult Powers are Mister Matthews and Witchbeam, synthesists extraordinaire, who very unassumingly make some of the best electronic music I've heard since MB or Con. Their sound pulls together so many things I like—soft noise, harsh noise, Krautrock, and occult electronics to name only a few—that their visit to My Castle of Quiet really just amounted to destiny fulfilled. I was gratified to have Mister Matthews write me the next morning and refer to the radio session as "some of our finest work yet," as their tapes are pretty fuckin' swell too (and packaged in Witchbeam's colorful, digital/occult/LSD illustrations.) These guys are just beginning to hit their stride...and they tell me there's some new vinyl coming soon.

Here is the entire Telecult Powers / My Castle of Quiet session, to download and enjoy, ideally by oscillating candlelight:

The Tushita Heaven
The Golden Shrine of Michael Aquarius

Live audio covered by a creative commons attribution-non commercial-no derivatives license.

A Spot of Bother

Last Friday I was completely surprised when the dayjob I've worked at for 6 years was eliminated. That's what the bosses said had happened, anyway--that my position was eliminated. It's not me who's being fired, it's the job. But since it was MY job, I'm not to go there anymore, and I won't be getting paid.

It was interesting to stand outside myself and watch as I went through pretty much the same stages of grief as when my sister died. First I just couldn't believe it, and then I was quite distressed, and then my brain sort of shut off and I couldn't speak in complete sentences or remember what it was I was trying to do. But of course it's not as bad as all that, really. I will never have another sister, but I'm sure I'll have another job. After all, I'm a balls-out excellent editor, and I write just as good as I walk. So now I am ready, ready to accept my new great job, and I wonder what it will be.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this week, and may God bless.

Farewell to a Dear Friend: Citizen Kafka (MP3's)

Last week, a friend let me know that he'd come across the news of the death of a friend of mine, Richard Shulberg, aka Citizen Kafka (CK). I was very late to this news - four months late. While I wasn't exactly surprised - I knew he'd been ill for several years, and his e-mails had grown more and more sporadic - I was still shocked, as the most recent of those e-mails (the first in at least two years) had arrived just three weeks before his death. In that e-mail, he had written excitedly about an upcoming project that he knew would be of great interest to me. It was therefore off my radar that he could have so little time left.

I had very little clue as to the degree to which CK was well known, or the vastness of his skills, interests and activities - these things only came up (in conversation)  in passing in the brief time we spent together - but in the last few days I've had the chance to catch up, and have found information here, here and here, among other places. And of course he worked for many years on WFMU.

I got to know CK after reading about a compilation CD he had produced in the late, great Cool and Strange Music Magazine. After receiving the CD, "Americana: Vox Populi", and being blown away by the slices of life contained in its recordings, I contacted him by e-mail, and began a friendship online. I sent him segments of my collection that seemed to be in keeping with those things he compiled on the CD, and was happily astonished when I received an e-mail telling me that, although he hadn't listened to the collection yet, the notes I wrote about its contents made him more excited to hear it than anything he'd received in ten years. (Most of the material I sent him has made its way into this forum over the last few years, including Merigail Moreland, Star Ads and Camp Bryn Afon.)

I only had the chance to spend two days with CK, during a visit to the East Coast in early 2001, but I was blown away by his knowledge, his stories and his wondrous record collection. One of the CD's he gave me is pictured above. I was taken with the photo on the CD: When I was a child, the tape recorder was my favorite "toy", so I told him, "that could be me in that picture". He corrected me, telling me that, in fact the picture WAS him.

Pneumershonic - The Mark of the Beast (video)

This is a shortened web version of Mark Jasper's documentary The Mark of the Beast about outsider musician Pneumershonic, grabbed from YouTube.

You can read more about Pneumershonic and download his album Frequencies of the Beast, in this earlier post of mine. If you want to obtain the DVD with the whole documentary, your best bet would be to contact Matt Jasper via the MySpace page.

So, I Guess Attack Attack Are the New Sex Pistols

Forwarded via Nick Sakes.

The Stupidest Person Alive

Sorry to tell you this New Jersey, but you still use slaves. This woman at a Santa Cruz City Council meeting has the answers.

Via Huffington Post

You may have seen a bit of this gem before in this collection of Santa Cruz crazies.

Salvador Dali: Game Show Ham

Salvador Dali loved television and he loved attention. Evidence of this are his appearances on several Goodson-Todman game shows. Dali clips on What's My Line and I've Got a Secret have previously been YouTube sensations (by classic TV clip standards). Here's a new clip to the internets, Dali on the far less successful The Name's the Same hosted by the charming and underrated Robert Q. Lewis.

Celebrity Anti-Drug PSA's, Part Two

I'm back with more 1970's music celebrity Anti-Drug PSA's, to keep you on the right track, and away from the hard stuff.
Again, we have a wide variety of styles of presentation, as well as opinions and 'information' about 'hard drugs' and pharma abuse.
In this installment we begin to hear a few of the more 'informally' recorded PSA's, some of which appear to have been recorded while actually at work in a studio (such as the upcoming Curtis Mayfield PSA) and others that sound as if they were caught on the artist's home demo setup, such as this week's Seals & Crofts announcement.
There are so many favorites here, so many moods and colors of 'warning' and 'caution'. I'm always tickled by the light tone of the Linda Ronstadt piece,  the heaviness of James Taylor's (no wonder),  and the cold, hard logical approach of Mary Travers.
As I look ahead to the NEXT seven files in the series, my gosh, they get even better! Part three has some of my very favorite-est PSA's of all, so be sure to stay tuned for that next installment.
And remember:
"If you get high, be sure you don't die."
....................................................................

Linda Ronstadt

Seals & Crofts

Carly Simon

James Taylor

Cory Wells

Mary Travers

Robin Trower

The Sediment Club: All-Ages NYC No Wave (mp3s)

<-- Amina and Austin from The Sediment Club (pic cc by Janel Guerrini)

Earlier this year, Kurt Gottschalk described seeing 4 young people -- who looked like they were born in 1990 -- playing music in the vein of No New York 1978. Could these teenagers even know about Teenage Jesus & The Jerks? he might have wondered. The group was opening for Brown Wing Overdrive at Cake Shop, and they called themselves The Sediment Club.

Oh! I realized that was WFMU / Free Music Archive volunteer Austin's band, and -- to answer Kurt's question (which I get the sense had already been answered by the end of the Sediment Club's Cake Shop set) -- Yes, they know their shit from James Chance to James Brown, everything under the Sun Ra. I found this out first-hand because Austin spent much of last summer digitizing WFMU live sessions for the FMA by the likes of The Magic Carpathians, Hat City Intuitive, and Alan Vega. On top of that, his parents played in groups like the Bush Tetras and the Voidoids, so they probably have some of the coolest record collections around. And the entire Sediment Club was excited to perform in the same WFMU live room that had recently played host to The Damned and Chrome Cranks (who Sediment Club member Amina cited as one of her favorite bands of all time!).

The Sediment Club meld their wide-raning influences into something original and great in its own right. The group features Austin on guitar and vocals, Lazar on bass and accompanying vox, Jack on drums, and Amina on synth. They played ten originals plus covers of Pere Ubu/Rocket From The Tombs (Life Stinks mp3) and The Residents (Hello Skinny mp3). Download 'em here or listen in-context from the WFMU streaming archive.

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz Live in London, Aug 1

London listeners, take note: WFMU DJs (and artists in their own right) People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will play a joint set at Cafe Oto, London, Saturday August 1st (Doors 8pm, Tickets £7).

You can expect an evening full of sampling delights, electronic sound collage weirdness, reimagined pop, and visual candy.

There will be two 25 minute sets preceded by a number of short films by the PLU & Ergo, starting shortly after 8pm. The first 15 people arriving at Oto for this performance will receive a People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz CD.

This Week In Crossdressing: Manbras, Drug Addict Aliens and Pickle Surprise!

For a minute there I thought Japanese culture was odd.  Mostly because of facial saline implants.  Now I know they are visionaries, all of them - man bras have become a very hot (and hotly debated) item in Japan.  The Reuters report on the top left covers the emerging trand (you like that pun?).  On the top right is the trailer from a cult classic, 1982's Liquid Sky, about aliens who get high off of the endorphins in the brains of of heroin addicted models.  Anne Carlisle stars as both a male and female junkie models.  Fans of cinematic camp will be equally pleased by the film as fans of minimal synth - watch this scene and you'll understand.

Tom Rubnitz was known in the 1980s as a central artistic figure in NYC Village's drag queen scene.  His short on the bottom left, Pickle Surprise, features none other than RuPaul.  A whole bunch of his other videos are up on Youtube.  Bottom left are some highlights of an episode of Ring My Bell, a transexually themed internet call in show that tends to get pretty wild.  Is it too late in the post to say these videos aren't safe for work?

3puen: "Secret Hot Dog Party"

3puen (pronounced "Pyoon"), a DIY-electronic pop combo, might be the closest thing NYC's had to Sparks for the last seven years or so, plumbing pipes no less Warholian, though excelling with focus on personal psychodramas, sometimes tied in to food or movies/television (things the band knows exceptionally well). However, unlike Sparks, there are no brothers, and 3puen only sold their CD's in a deli on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. They started out on an acid trip, played live and did some Fad Gadget covers, developed a repertoire of originals and performed once on Michael Goodstein's Choking on Cufflinks. "Secret Hot Dog Party" is part of a three-song "Self Hatred Suite" from a few years back, this video is brand new. One of the composers resides in Austin these days and is getting back on the wagon making music. While WFMU never really played this tune on air for FCC reasons, their tune "Sugar Cookie" continues to be somewhat of a hit staple among the staffers. Fun stuff.

Lux and Ivy's Favorites Volume Thirteen (mp3s)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lux and Ivy's Favorites!!!

Welcome to Volume 13.

Lux_and_Ivys_Favorites_-_Volume_13.zip

Visit Volumes 1-11 here and Volume 12 here.

This is the first Lux and Ivy's Favorites to include artwork. I worked closely with a friend of mine to come up with some cool artwork that would fit in with the theme of the series.

At some point, all of the other volumes will have artwork as well.

This one was a tough one to put together. It just took a lot out of me for some reason. As time goes on, there are less and less L and I interviews, etc to take from.

Total Abuse live on WFMU (MP3's)

After a night of two NYC area shows (including one at 3:30 AM), going to Coney Island and seeing two girls get into a sunrise fight (one got her weave hooked and ripped out by nail on a Boardwalk plank) and not a second to nap, Austin's Total Abuse arrived at the WFMU studios for some H & H bagel breakfast and a couple minutes to sit down before plugging in and lighting the fuse up once again for Brian Turner's show. 15 minutes of Black Flag/Void inspired ugliness, captured in our walls by engineer Trent Wolbe, and then they were off to play another gig in Far Rockaway. I've uploaded it as one solid file, but you can get individual tracks over at the Free Music Archive (if not now, soonish). Set list: I Can See the Dark / Peace and Quiet / Secrets / Discipline / Fluid Exchange / Pure / Mutt. Recorded July 13th, aired July 14th.

Total Abuse - Live in the WFMU Studios (MP3)