It's been almost a week since I posted this CDr to the WFMU blog, and since then I have been ransacked by e-mails and comments crying "hoax" or "bubble boy," from everyone from random passers-by to the higher-ups at WFMU. Rather than address all the theories being espoused by readers from around the globe, I simply want to aver that this is indeed a true story, and is in no way meant to be a self-promotion tactic. Any alterations to the WFMU blog entry post-publication -- or my own personal blog -- were done in an attempt to quell the uprising of cynics. Had I known that my actions would only add fuel to the fire, I would have simply let things stand as they were. Clearly I've learned a valuable lesson in controversy control.
Usually when I find CD-rs out in the world, they've been tossed out of car windows or left on the counters of stupid hipster coffeeshops. The last place I ever expected to find an unlabeled CD-r filled with music would be in the middle of the fucking desert. But nearly two years ago I was hiking in Joshua Tree and I came across a completely surreal sight: an old-school 5 1/4" computer floppy disk. It appeared to have been tossed casually near the side of the trail I was on, housed in a simple plastic baggie. I reached into the bag and pulled out the floppy disc. I noticed that the magnetic tape inside the plastic case had been replaced by a recordable compact disc. The disc had a creepy message scrawled on it which read, "A silvery female voice breaking through onto the airband sang in German, 'We are from another world, but you have cut us out". I don't believe in ghosts or extraterrestrials or anything, but standing in the middle of nowhere reading that line was enough to send me into a miniature freak out. What's more, a folded-up piece of paper was also buried inside the plastic cover. A treasure map. Browned edges and everything. It featured a pirate ship (?), a series of footsteps through mountains and palm trees (?), one red X, and ten blue X's. One of of the X's appeard to be floating in the middle of a body of water.
Whoa.
I listened to the recording on my drive back to LA that night. It was indescribably weird. The dedication to the floppy disk case, chicken scratch message, and treasure map implied that someone with way too much time on his or her hands crafted it. The insanity of the recording -- with one or two kind of pretty moments -- mirrored the obsessively constructed feel of the package. I didn't know if I was listening to the work of a mad genius or a deranged psychopath. The sounds are a combination of heavily processed human voices and schizophrenic space music. The 11 tracks are very short, with only four "tunes" lasting longer than three minutes. Most are in the thirty-second to two-minute range in length. I wouldn't call it "rock," but it's guitar-centric. I also wouldn't say that it is very good, but it made for an interesting listen.
When I got home I popped the CD into my computer. I thought that maybe in this age of iTunes and CDDB maybe my computer would recognize the content of the disk. All that came up in iTunes was a series of songs names. In place of artist and title was "???". The song titles made no sense to me at all. The final track is a 14-minute long jam in E called "Matthew 24:14". Google tells me that that bible verse says: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come"
I have played this CD for record scum collector friends and pop culture junkies in the hopes that someone might recognize something about it, from a riff to a clip from some television show or movie. The only constant is that no one knows what to make of it. I've spent a lot of time needlessly wondering what the fuck this is. What the fuck was that treasure map for? Has anyone else ever found something like this? SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?!
The most frustrating part of this whole thing is that the only identifying mark was a tiny, hand-scrawled e-mail address at the bottom of the back cover for the floppy disk: [email protected]. I could have gotten all CSI on this shit and tried to figure out how to find who registers a Gmail address or taken fingerprints from the package. I didn't. In the end I figured contact information wouldn't have been included if it wasn't meant to be found. I tried to send an e-mail saying that I enjoyed the album -- just to maybe receive some kind of response -- but I never got one. That's annoying. The only rationale I can think of is that a bizarre work of art conceived and executed such as this wouldn't have the same impact if the creator(s) wanted to be discovered. Or maybe someone responsible lost his or her mind (or maybe the Gmail password) in the time it took me to find it. The only thing I can say is: What. The. Fuck. ???
Artist: ???
Title: ???
Tracklist:
01. Breath (MP3)
02. Wound Midnight (MP3)
03. Long Stem Road (MP3)
04. Noah's Dork (MP3)
05. Used (MP3)
06. Iranbow (MP3)
07. Monied vs. Landed (MP3)
08. The Seventh (Clubbed) Seal (MP3)
09. Gloomsday (MP3)
10. Shooting Scars (MP3)
11. Matthew 24:14 (MP3)
that email doesn't show up in a spokeo search or facebook or google. the only google result is this blog..ha ha
so either that person has never actually used or registered that address, or they simply don't ever blog, register for anything, or get any mail from friends. if they did, spokeo would ping it.
to further mystify you, it was AIRWOLF that ernest borgnine played Dominiic, a helicopter pilot in.
truly a strange find. maybe you have the dead seas scrolls of modern times... ;)
Posted by: zom-bot.com | November 19, 2009 at 09:23 PM
That was an interesting listen. I'm glad you spent the time to write about your experience.
In fact I would like to counter request those who try to shame you from your musings here.
I have thoroughly enjoyed a lot of your entries, here whether they have anything to do with music or not.
Posted by: trifocal | November 19, 2009 at 10:31 PM
could it be your own music that you dropped and forgotten about during your peyote trip at Joshua Tree? ha ha just teasing, nice find!
Posted by: owltopus | November 19, 2009 at 10:31 PM
Likewise about your posts. I almost don't listen to FMU these days, just read the blog.
Posted by: decrepticon | November 19, 2009 at 11:28 PM
You ought to send info about it to Donna Kossey, curator of Portland's Kook Museum and the author of Kooks.
Who knows? Maybe she already has a piece of the puzzle?
Posted by: DJ ManRich | November 20, 2009 at 01:00 AM
The writing on the disk sounds like a reference to Raudive voices or something.
Posted by: Sibyl Bear | November 20, 2009 at 07:47 AM
a potential candidate, based on a quick google search for "the seventh (clubbed) seal"
lassemarhaug DOT no
there's a pretty huge archive to search through, but the music on the site seems to be along the same lines and there's a lot of CD-R releases listed (some that were releases of 10 or less!)
Posted by: Campbell | November 20, 2009 at 08:38 AM
Curious thing, friends: some of the text from above on the CD-R ("A silvery female voice breaking through onto the airband sang in German, 'We are from another world, but you have cut us out") was on a Swan Fungus blog entry from 2006. Nice poetic stuff, really. But after someone made a comment here last night mentioning this fact, the comment and the very blog entry itself was gone this morning. Has the plot thickened? Are alien forces at work?
Posted by: Skip | November 20, 2009 at 03:02 PM
in shadows lurk dead guys
Posted by: paul | November 20, 2009 at 11:26 PM
Why are the photographs of the CD-R different on this page than on this one: http://www.roostmusic.com/News/question-mark-question-mark-question-mark/
I don't understand.
Posted by: folksnake | November 21, 2009 at 03:50 PM
@folksnake I don't get it either. Google this: cache:http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/11/question-mark-question-mark-question-mark.html The CD-R image and title seem to be different; some textual content changed too.
Posted by: Tommo | November 21, 2009 at 09:51 PM
Three things of interest like you guys have said. 1) the picture of the cdr has changed since this was first posted to a different cdr altogether. 2)As Tommo said the text has been changed...actually text has been omitted. The omitted text was the "a silvery female voice..." line which also happened to be the text written on the first cd that was photographed. 3) as Skip said the "silvery female voice" line "was on a Swan Fungus blog entry from 2006" that is now missing. Looks to me as the creator wanted to remain anonymous...:)
Posted by: Taco Wilson | November 22, 2009 at 07:08 AM
hmmmmm... shameless self promotion under the guise of a mystery? yeah i think we all need an explanation of why this post has changed so much...
you could have just said 'hey, download and listen to my/my friend's stuff' without trying to make it seem like something out of LOST
:P
Posted by: zom-bot.com | November 22, 2009 at 10:31 AM
Another Mike Patton side project gets left in the desert...
Posted by: kage | November 25, 2009 at 10:32 PM
The original of the last track has been spotted on Swan Fungus' own blog circa 2006.
http://www.metafilter.com/86940/The-Crazy-World-of-andernestborgnineasdominic#2837246
Posted by: Shii | November 25, 2009 at 11:07 PM
Awesome, here is a CD I found in the middle of the desert in Nevada. Blank with no writing, but with a strange mixtape recorded on it. More info & download here: http://drop.io/fromthedustcd
Posted by: Dillon M | November 25, 2009 at 11:51 PM
ha ha.
Posted by: Name is required | November 26, 2009 at 01:09 AM
Bogus. Then republish the comments and blog material.
Posted by: Name is equ | November 26, 2009 at 03:48 PM
Love it!
Posted by: LLs | November 26, 2009 at 09:45 PM
Don't know what all the hoopla is about. Tracks stand up pretty well on their own. A Nice sound, SF.
Posted by: K. | November 28, 2009 at 12:41 AM
Put it all together and we realize, we've been had.
It's not a mystery at all.
Look, this WFMU mystery CD article was posted by user Swan Fungus.
When we did a google search on the song titles, we found a post on the Swan Fungus blog from 2006 (now, as mentioned, its been removed)
The obvious result:
"Swan Fungus" posted this attempting some self promotion. He didn't realize/forgot that on his own blog 3 years ago he posted about the music. When the ruthless internet dwellers put their collective minds together to solve this, he realized he'd been caught and thus attempted to remove the original post.
This was a poor poor attempt at self promotion, nothing more.
Nothing else to see here, move along.
Posted by: Blech | November 28, 2009 at 11:41 AM
Open any song in RealPlayer. This is what you get:
artist: さくら (Sakura)
album: 花びら (Hanabira)
Posted by: Shallow Throat | November 28, 2009 at 08:18 PM
a quick 'i forgot my password' on the gmail account gives the secret question, "who are you??"
niether 'dominic' nor 'ernest borgnine' are the correct answer. im going to stop messing with it since it would potentially reset their password, and is probably somehow illegal anyways, but take that as you will. it IS a registered email address, though.
Posted by: nutbastard | December 03, 2009 at 12:59 PM
If any of it sounds "commercial," the iPhone app Shazam might be able to identify some of it.
Posted by: Senor Itchy | December 03, 2009 at 01:16 PM
Hoax! What a waste of 15 minutes researching this. Stupid music too.
Posted by: DigsRetro | December 03, 2009 at 01:20 PM