WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Off-Mic DJ News for June

Though it may be unadvisable for most haggard DJs to appear in the visual realm and remain in the ideal realm of radiowaves, some WFMU DJs have plans to emerge from their LP crammed dungeons to appear publicly.  Here are some special events we're involved with this month!

Friday, June 3rd, Laura Cantrell will perform at Tin Angel, 20 South 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA, 7:30 pm, $12. On June 4th, Laura will be play at Jammin Java, 227 Maple Ave E, Vienna, Va. 7pm. $14.

Friday, June 3rd, The New Pornographers "Moves" video plays at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto The video was written and directed by Tom Scharpling and produced by Robert Hatch-Miller (aka WFMU DJ “Hatch”). 9:30 pm. Information here.

Saturday, June 4th, Henry Lowengard's band, Mamalama, will be playing at the Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY. They will be at the June 8th, Woodstock Farm Festival, Woodstock, NY and at the Grand Central Greybar on June 10th, 6-9 as part of the “Music Under New York” program. Mamalama can also be occasionally found playing the subways of New York City.

Sunday, June 5th, Mr Finewine DJs at a "Slow Soul" ballad night at Huckleberry, 588 Grand St. (at Lorimer), Williamsburg.

Sunday, June 5th, Steinski will be performing in Los Angeles in the show “TJ Miller (Makes Mayhem)” at Largo At The Coronet. He'll be performing a short set combining stand-up comedy records with hip hop breaks. More info.

Tuesday, June 7th, Meghan McKee will be DJing at LITM, 140 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, for the WHO? WHAT? WHERE? art opening from 7pm to midnight

Thursday, June 9th, The Secret Science Club with host Dorian Devins presents Sensory Neuroscientist, Jim Hudspeth 8pm at The Bell House, 149 7th Street, Brooklyn. Find out what happens when sound reaches your ears.

Friday, June 10th, Robert Hatch-Miller's new short documentary A Man Named Magick is playing in NYC at Rooftop Films' New York Non-Fiction night. 350 Grand Street, NYC. Greg Garing will perform live at 8pm followed by the films at 9pm. More information here.

Saturday, June 11th, Nat Roe will be DJing at Shea Stadium along with C Spencer Yeh/Greg Fox (Liturgy) duo, DJ Dog Dick and the Dreebs.  Full info is here.

Tuesday, June 14 after the 7:00pm performance of the musical biography, The Shaggs at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, NYC, Irwin Chusid, one of the driving forces behind the 1990s digital reissue of Philosophy of the World, will discuss his connection to The Shaggs and provides insight into the true story of the girl-group that inspired the musical.

Saturday, June 18 at 2 PM the 2011 Mermaid Parade takes to Surf Avenue in Coney Island and marches right past our own Chris T. (Aerial View), who will serve as M.C. for his 22nd year. Chris says, “Prime viewing spots always go early, so bring a folding chair, some water and a nosh and plan to be in place by 11 am – 12 Noon.”

Saturday, June 18th and Monday, June 20th. The Ted Leo "Bottled In Cork" video plays at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Written and directed by Tom Scharpling and produced by Robert Hatch-Miller and Paloma Basu. Find out more here.

Saturday, June 18, Mr Finewine will DJ at the Commodore, 366 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg.

Monday, June 20th, Meghan McKee will be DJing at LITM, 140 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, for her monthly DETENTION! A Flashback to the 80's from 6:30 to midnight.

Thursday, June 23rd, 9pm, Kenzo's likely last live lately NYC performance of Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, weaving whole-sounding fragments, a specific environment of ambiguity, a live improvised sound collage experiment, in a cosy cellar space beneath a flower shop. Diane Cluck follows playing many songs new and some older. At Sycamore, Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, 1118 Cortelyou Road. More info.

Tuesday, July 5th, Keili Hamilton will be DJing at Tandem Bar's Selective Tuesday Dance Party. 236 Troutman Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Every Sunday, Dave the Spazz plays rock & roll records at Union Pool. 10pm (484 Union Ave at Meeker in Williamsburg Brooklyn) Free.

Every Wednesday, except June 15th, Mr Finewine spins soul 45s at Botanica (47 East Houston St.) 10 till late, free.

recommended music: (((MICROWAVES)))

If you're into hard, weird, smart rock music, you will want to check out Microwaves. (sometimes written as (((microwaves))) in case you need to differentiate them from other similarly named groups).

Hailing from Pittsburgh, PA, these guys have been making edgy No Wave/sci-fi rock for about the last decade. Microwaves have similarities to contemporaries like Six Finger Satellite, Flying Luttenbachers' brutal prog material, or Holy Molar, but seem to be less well-known - though no less skilled, challenging, or innovative - than any of those groups. They recently started playing without their bassist, who had always played through effects turning the bass into an analog synthesizer sound. Instead they've added a variety of triggers and synth pads to drummer/vocalist John Roman's already demanding responsibilities.

Today these guys seem to be operating on the Shellac M.O., avoiding the rat race of any "scene" and taking the time necessary to make their music sound exactly the way they want it to. These days, however, things are more difficult for bands which don't release a steady stream of material and constantly try to shout over the incessant internet noise. And that's exactly why I'm trying to make a little noise on their behalf. These guys are absolutely on the same level with any band I've name-checked here and will definitely appeal to fans of any of the above.

They have a new 7" record out on Thunderhaus Ltd featuring an excellent Big Black cover. Video, music, and links below.

Wars and Movies of Wars

Memorial Day brings cable channels full of war-movie marathons, but mostly these are not movies about war. War is the wholesale slaughter of those Other people you’ve come to believe are not even human, and is very tedious to watch. If the Viewer wants entertainment, then torture porn, where people are killed off one by one, is far superior. But of course Hollywood “war movies” are just character dramas in a war setting, so, you know, Pearl Harbor.

I have seen a couple of genuine war movies lately, though. The first, City of Life and Death, directed by Lu Chen, depicts the massacre of 300,000 unarmed people and the rape of between 20,000 and 80,000 women by Japanese soldiers in the six weeks after the Chinese capital of Nanking was captured by the Japanese in 1937. I read Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, a few months ago, and it is truly shocking. The Japanese atrocities against the people of Nanking were so extreme that a Nazi party leader based in China petitioned Hitler to ask the Japanese government to stop the massacre. The Japanese atrocities against the people of Nanking were so extreme that after researching and writing their history, Iris Chang committed suicide.

City of Life and Death is an extremely beautiful black-and-white film of extremely ugly scenes. The film introduces specific historical characters, such as the Nazi German businessman John Rabe, who established a “safety zone” for Chinese civilians trapped in Nanking when the city fell. Chen tries to show the events from many points of view, including a rather sympathetic portrayal of a fictional Japanese soldier named Kadokawa. But that character gets mired in a clichéd love story involving a Japanese comfort woman that is unnecessary and detracts from the film. Still, in the depiction of unrelenting horror and tragedy bludgeoning helpless people into numb despair, City of Life and Death seems like a pretty accurate war movie.

Restrepo, which I saw last week at a screening that featured a Q-and-A with the film’s editor, is a documentary shot and directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington over the course of a year they spent with an American platoon in northeast Afghanistan. Juan “Doc” Restrepo is the likable platoon medic who’s introduced in the first scenes of home video of him goofing around with the other guys being deployed. A few minutes into the film, after the platoon’s reached Afghanistan, one of the soldiers makes a remark in passing about “when Restrepo got killed,” and I was like, What? But yeah, he was one of the first two soldiers killed, and the others ended up naming the outpost they built after him: Operating Post (O.P.) Restrepo. (It reminded me of Forward Operating Base Tillman, named after Pat Tillman, who I learned about in the excellent book Where Men Win Glory.)

Restrepo is a 93-minute film constructed from 180 hours of raw footage brought back by Junger and Hetherington, who shot all of it themselves—no helmet-cam footage, they were really there. In one of the first scenes, Junger is riding in an armored vehicle that’s attacked—pretty harrowing. The Korengal Valley, where the platoon establishes O.P. Restrepo, was known as “the most dangerous place on earth” while they were there. Knowing that the U.S. has now pulled out of the valley, in spite of everything these soldiers went through, increases the sense of futility—for me, and for other viewers in the audience that night. But editor Michael Levine assured us that the Army loved the film, so who knows. Watching Restrepo, you can see that the soldiers are there because they believe they’re doing the right thing and fighting for their country (USA!), but Junger and Hetherington are there … to make a movie? Plus the soldiers have guns, but the only thing J&H are shooting is a video cam. Restrepo was nominated this year for a best-documentary Academy Award; Tim Hetherington went to Misrata to cover the Libyan civil war, and was killed there on April 20.

Today I saw Went the Day Well? an Ealing Studio “unofficial propaganda” film by a one-named Brazilian director, made from a Graham Greene story, filmed in 1942 but set in a near-future England where the war is finally over, and it was pretty crazypants so probably not really a “war movie,” but I recommend it, especially for the performance of Muriel George as Mrs. Collins, my new hero.

 

 

 

Kyle Knodell

 

 

Primavera Sound sets archived for streaming at WFMU

In case you missed the 18 hours of amazing sounds WFMU brought you from Barcelona's Primavera Sound festival, you can relive the magic via the archives, where many of the sets are streaming in part and full. Broadcasts included Suicide, Grinderman, Battles, Fresh & Onlys, Interpol, Prince Rama, Animal Collective, Pissed Jeans, Ducktails, Oneohtrix Point Never, Monochrome Set, Einsturzende Neubauten (pictured left), Moon Duo, Ty Segall, Half Japanese, Aias, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, Glenn Branca Ensemble Sonny & the Sunsets, No Joy, Julian Lynch, Deerhunter, Kurt Vile and the Violators, Soft Moon, Za!, Davila 666, and you can listen to the entire sets of Dean Wareham (performing Galaxie 500), Pere Ubu (performing the Modern Dance plus early singles), and a totally crushing Swans set (complete with WFMU shoutout!). From the point of view of one of the FMU team out here for these shows and broadcasts, it was a total dream and despite a few technical glitches, dropouts, and harried moments of getting through security for recordings, plus dodging political and soccer carnage in the streets of Barcelona, we had an incredible array of great sounds and recordings, some of which we hope will get up on the Free Music Archive (where some of the 2009 and 2010 artists kindly allowed some MP3s to be available) in the near future. Let's hope the Sting banter David Thomas from Pere Ubu let loose on Saturday's broadcast is included.

Tony Randall: Warm and Wavery (MP3's)

Back near the end of the second 365 Days project, we were all treated to an album recorded by Tony Randall, titled "Vo Vo De Oh Doe". 

Recently, while at a huge fundraising music sale, I was directed (by a like-minded friend) to a booth where they were selling a copy of another Tony Randall album, "Warm & Wavery", containing more of the same type of music.

Amazingly, the entire album runs just over 22 minutes. On the other hand, it was being offered for sale for one big dollar! Just four quarters! Quite the bargain - the last note on "I Came Here to Talk for Joe" alone is worth more than that!

1.) Tony Randall - The Debutante’s Ball (MP3)

2.) Tony Randall - Me and My Shadow (MP3)

3.) Tony Randall - You Remind Me So Much of My Mother That You Stole My Heart Away (MP3)

4.) Tony Randall - I Came Here to Talk for Joe (MP3)

5.) Tony Randall - China Town My China Town (MP3)

6.) Tony Randall - When Banana Skins Are Falling (I’ll Come Sliding Back to You) (MP3)

7.) Tony Randall - Red Sails in the Sunset (MP3)

8.) Tony Randall - The Glory of Love (MP3)

9.) Tony Randall - You Oughta Be in Pictures (MP3)

10.) Tony Randall – You’re Blase (MP3)

Front Cover (JPG) - Back Cover (JPG)

 

Vincent Price / "Odyssey" Radio Spots

Firm as ever in my belief that one can't have too much Vincent Price in your mp3 player/computer, here's another installment in the series:  a radio-only lp of one minute thirty-second radio spots originally sponsored by Best Western Motels. As such, it has gotten a heck of a lot of airplay on my various radio programs over the years, and continues to amuse. As a former long-time San Francisco resident, it also has numerous California and Bay Area references as well, which made it eminently playable on my Cali shows. I'm not sure of it's original 'release' date, but some references, such as the "Woodstock" cut - which is a hoot, by the way, date it to 1969 - 1970-ish.

  Produced by "Blanc Communications Corp." which which I would imagine to be one of Mel Blanc's several production outfits, this is a slick and entertaining piece of work and actually imparts some real information, along with some total hokum. Settle back and enjoy these 19 tiny tales and find out why indeed Vinnie the art and food lover "Really fears Pot Roast!"

01 The Music Man     02 U - 405     03 Woodstock     04 Santa Barbara Mission     05 Big Horn Sheep     06 William S. Hart     07 The Seventh Step     08 The Western Gladiator     09 The Kite     10 Pot Roast     11 Carrolton     12 Alcatraz     13 David Lang     14 Harrow House     15 Golden Gate Bridge     16 Hershey, Penn.     17 Crazy Horse     18 Captain Colby     19 Circus Museum

WFMU's Primavera Sound coverage continues Saturday 3 PM

WFMU's first day of coverage at its third year visit to Barcelona's awesome Primavera Sound gave y'all a chance to hear what Glenn Branca's guitar army (pictured left visiting the WFMU tent and handing us their drink tickets for cryin' out loud, pic Jason Sigal), full volume over 4,000 seaside attendees, did to one's central nervous system (i.e. rocked like nobody's bizness), plus gave worldwide listeners a chance to hear sonic mayhem from Suicide, Grinderman, the Fresh & Onlys, Ducktails, Oneohtrix Point Never, Moon Duo, Interpol, Ty Segall, Aias, Half Japanese, Sonny & the Sunsets, No Joy, and Julian Lynch. Check out the streamed archive and playlist right here. It's been amazing, and an honor to bring everyone the sounds of one of the best forward-thinking large scale rock fests out there, and should the WFMU crew (Liz Berg, Jason Sigal, Scott Williams, Brian Turner, Scott Konzelmann, and David Van Dokkum) survive the impending football/election riots in town, another stellar 9 hours to be had on WFMU today starting 3:00 pm Eastern through midnight. On tap: Battles (3PM ET, newly added), the Monochrome Set (3:30), Pere Ubu (4:00 PM, playing their Modern Dance LP + early singles!), Deerhunter (5:15), Kurt Vile and the Violators (5:45, we can't stop following these guys around), the Soft Moon (6:15), Za! (6:30), Einsturzende Neubauten (6:50), Davila 666 (7:30), Prince Rama (7:45, newly added), Dean Wareham (8:00, playing Galaxie 500), Swans (9:15, yes, FULL set), Pissed Jeans (10:30), and Animal Collective (11:00). Sets will vary between excerpted and complete, and will be archived on our Live Specials page for your post-Prima pleasure. Several of the highly anticipated sets airing today were taped last night, and it's safe to say that we don't think anyone will be disappointed in 'em. We were bowled over by so much yesterday and Thursday, especially some of the newer faces to festival stages (Barcelona's Aias and Montreal's No Joy, the latter pictured right by Scott W. yesterday) were real eye-openers for us all to boot. Follow the play by play live with WFMU!

EMS: Electro Before There Was a Scene

By Brian Correia

Moog gets all the credit. The iconic American company is pretty much synonymous with the synthesizer and the genesis of electronic music as we know it today (despite the fact that few people even know how to pronounce “Moog” correctly). The name pops up fifteen times in the Wikipedia article for "electronic music". But Moog is not the only synthesizer game in town. In fact, all over the Western world, scores of composers and inventors had begun experimenting with electronic music even before the production of the first computer-generated sound in 1957. Perhaps the most important of these composers and inventors were three Englishmen; three unsung heroes whose names pop up exactly zero times in the aforementioned Wikipedia article but whose influence on music, electronic or otherwise, cannot be understated: Dr. Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell, the founders of the London-based Electronic Music Studios (EMS) and inventors of the VCS3 synthesizer.

What the Future Sounded Like is the first of several documentary shorts directed by Matthew Bate. Today, when electronic flourishes from auto-tune to synthesized beats grace the majority of popular music, he has done us a great service by sharing his look at the groundbreaking work of EMS. The engaging interviews are complemented by impressive archival footage, photographs, trippy video montages, and the fascinating electronic musical selections.

After World War II, Britain, along with the rest of the world, was ready for a change -- and a young man named Tristram Cary was no exception. Cary entered the war with dreams of being a classical composer. While serving as a radar operator, Cary had his first experiences with German tape recording equipment and became infatuated. He began to experiment with the alteration of tape in his compositions. This young style of composition was known as musique concrète and is an important precursor to electronic musicⁱ. Despite the fact that musique concrète was largely avant-garde, Cary's career as a composer began to take off as he began to incorporate more and more electronic elements into his compositions. Cary's score for the Doctor Who series provided many households' first exposure to electronic music.

Cary teamed up with fellow electronic music enthusiasts Cockerell, a brilliant engineer, and Zinovieff, a who had built his own studio in a shed behind his house. Zinovieff is the real star of the show. It is a mystery as to why he is rarely mentioned in the same breath as other electronic music pioneers. The hardware that Zinovieff and company used was probably the most powerful in the country outside of an academic or military settingⁱⁱ. In fact, one of his primary goals in founding EMS in 1969 was to find a way to pay for it all. One interviewee credits him with “using computers in a way that would become commonplace in the mid-eighties, and he was doing it twenty years earlier with equipment that was large, unwieldy, and not designed for the purpose.” Entire genres of music owe a huge debt to his ambition and vision. In crediting him with creating the first sampler, Cockerell unwittingly points out that even hip-hop owes a great deal to Zinovieff.

What EMS accomplished is all the more impressive considering the musical environment of the time. The sounds they were interested in producing were completely at odds with popular and classical music. There was, of course, no corner of the Internet in which they could hide and build a cult following, as they might today. Rock and roll was king, and the music that their equipment was capable of producing was very far from rock and roll. Despite Cary's success as a composer, the odds seemed to be stacked against them. As you watch the footage of Zinovieff's 1967 computer concert, it is useful to keep in mind that Beatlemania was rampant and Woodstock was only two years away -- that'll help you recognize just how unconventional that performance must have been.

Luckily, EMS struck gold with its design of the first portable synthesizer. It became extremely popular with rock and roll artists, especially those of the progressive persuasion. Known as the VCS3 (short for Voltage Controlled Studio with 3 oscillators), it was employed to great and famous effect on songs such as The Who's “Won't Get Fooled Again” and Pink Floyd's “On the Run.” Among the other artists who used the VCS3 are Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, and Hawkwind (that's Lemmy's first band, metal fans). Lord knows, if Kraftwerk is using your stuff, you've had quite an impact on the world of electronic music. EMS would go on to create many different synthesizer models in its ten year run. However, the VCS3 would remain its most popular model (and still goes for many thousands of dollars on ebayⁱⁱⁱ.)

From their post-war experimentation to the full-on embrace of synthesizers as musical instruments in the sixties and beyond, the three men of EMS have been able to watch electronic music grow from bleeps and bloops to a full-blown scene, complete with obsessive fans, designer drugs, and a seemingly infinite number of sub-genres. More often than not, EMS is unfairly reduced to a footnote along the lines of “See: Dark Side of the Moon.” Perhaps the short life of the company is to blame for this. Maybe it's just because some other filmmakers got around to making the Moog documentary three years earlier. But make no mistake: Without the three men behind EMS, their unusual ideas, and innovative equipment, electronic music would not be the same.

i http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/tristram_cary.shtml

ii http://brownswood.5.forumer.com/a/peter-zinovieff-amp-ems_post1958.html

iii http://bit.ly/lAiuIj

 

WATCH MORE ON NETWORK AWESOME

READ MORE IN NETWORK AWESOME MAGAZINE

DJ Handi's Archive Picks: I'm Still Here. You're Still Here. The Music's Still Here.

Doomsday was supposed to be on Saturday, May 21 at 6pm. By 6:01, Rob Weisberg started Transpacific Sound Paradise with "Just as the Rainbow / The Constant Pageant / Honest Jons" by Trembling Bells.

Since we've been pre-occupied with religious themes all week, let's hear a Kevin Nutt, Sinner's Crossroads archive. Kevin played The Birmingham Jubilee Singers performing "Way Down In Egyptland." Later, he played "Pray On" from 1959 by the Staple Singers. Did you know they recorded gospel before becoming one of Stax Records' best soul bands? Compare "Pray On" to the secular "If It Ain't One Thing It's Another" from 100% Whatever With Mary Wing.

Here are more archives for the doomsday that never came: On Underwater Theme Park, Meghan played "New Born Soul" by Bill Cox. Monica played "New Dawn" by Shackleton. On the Fro Show, Jesse played an Eric Idle version of "Here Comes The Sun" from a 1976 Saturday Night Live. Sue P. played "Midnight Sun"  by Human Insect on, no pun intended, Solid Gold Hell. On Shrunken Planet, Jeffrey Davidson played "Walking Into The Sun" by The Brazda Brothers. Just to end another day, "To Sleep I Go" by Gaslight was played by Joe Mcgasko on Surface Noise.

Let's end this armageddon business where we began last week, with Scott Williams. He did last week's show on the premise it could be his last. Two days after the end never came, he continued joyfully hosting free form radio. His first set included his mix of one of Phil Spector's last singles productions, 1969's "Black Pearl" by Sonny Charles And The Checkmates, and "Occupation Of Prussia" by Black Helicopter from the album Don't Fuck With The Apocalypse. WFMU did so all of last week--and won. To celebrate, a bonus archive. Bill Kelly on Teenage Wasteland playing "Black Pearl" in full. 

Now TV preacher Harold Camping moved the end date back to October. I guess we'll have to fuck with the apocalypse, at least one more time.

 .

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 9

May recap.

Haselore Kohl interviews Monarch.

Pere Ubu, Interpol, Grinderman, Einsturzende Neubauten and more! WFMU Live at Primavera Sound Friday and Saturday: Broadcast times

WFMU returns a third time to Barcelona's amazing Primavera Sound Festival on Friday, May 27 and Saturday, May 28th! The festival's official USA radio partner has been carrying full on live sets live from sunny Spain that in the past have included Pavement, Sonic Youth, Liquid Liquid, Marc Almond, Mission of Burma, Yo La Tengo, Sunn o))), the Vaselines and many more, with some of the archives available online and the FMA! This year's broadcasts happen from 3pm to Midnight ET both days, and we've scored a pretty healthy slab of broadcast permissions from this year's incredible lineup. If you are doing up a rockcation at Prima, please stop by the WFMU tent in the n fairway to the stages, say hello to Liz Berg, Scott Williams, Brian Turner, and Jason Sigal and Pseu Braun who will be manning the broadcast and recording the sets throughout the stages (there was a chokehold or two applied on the beach at Barcelonetta last night to see who gets to record Einsturzende Neubauten, engineer Scott Konzelmann won as he's stronger than us all).

These times, as always, are TENTATIVE, and it's likely some shuffling may have to be done for one reason or another. Your best bet, look at the WFMU Home page news, our Twitter, and Facebook for the very latest from Barcelona.

FRIDAY (ET)
3:00 Suicide
3:50 Grinderman
4:15 Fresh and Onlys
4:30 Ducktails
5:00 Glenn Branca Ensemble
6:00 Oneohtrix Point Never
6:30 Moon Duo
7:00 Interpol
8:00 Ty Segall
8:20 Aias
9:00 Half Japanese
9:45 Dan Melchior und Das Menace
10:15 Sonny and the Sunsets
10:45 No Joy
11:30 Julian Lynch

SATURDAY

3:00  Battles
3:30 The Monochrome Set
4:00 Pere Ubu (plays the Modern Dance)
5:15 Deerhunter
5:45 Kurt Vile & the Violators
6:15 Soft Moon
6:30 Za!
6:50 Einsturzende Neubauten
7:30 Davila 666

7:45 Prince Rama

8:00 Dean Wareham (playing Galaxie 500)

9:15 Swans
10:30 Pissed Jeans
11:00 Animal Collective

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 118

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

Remember the legendary NYC record emporium SoHo Music Gallery? Located at the corner of Wooster and Grand, for a while it was next-door neighbor to a kosher sushi restaurant called Shalom Japan. (I kid you not.) The list of ex-record clerks at SoHo Music Gallery could fill a music who's who. Jesus, who didn't work there? Future downtown stars John Zorn, Tim Berne, Anthony Coleman; future Luaka Bop headman Yale Evelev; future WFMU royalty Ken Freedman and Ray Franks—just to name-drop a few. Music lovers like me made frequent pilgrimages to the joint just to shuffle around and attempt to look cool while thumbing through the bins. If you were lucky and happened to be around while new boxes of LPs were being opened, you'd crane your neck as undorkily as possible to try to see the latest arrivals.

During one particular visit to the store in 1987, I remember stumbling upon a box of records containing many dozens of copies of a single album—John Cage Meets Sun Ra. Wow! It wasn't easy remaining nonchalant when confronted with such a dense concentration of holy vinyl. I must have been stunned, because for some stupid-ass reason I didn't buy a copy. I must've made the genius calculation that there were so many, I'd just swing back in a few days and snag one then. Of course, the box and its contents were gone upon my return. Cementing the ignominy, SoHo Music Gallery itself disappeared not too long after that.

I lived with the nagging lament of that missed opportunity until last year when I stumbled on a page at the magnificent UbuWeb that, miraculously, has MP3s of John Cage Meets Sun Ra. Then recently, the newish Sun Ra-related blog Adventure Equation posted both sides of the record as two lossless FLAC files, along with dust-jacket artwork. (See the lead-off item, below.)

Sponsored by Coney Island's Sideshows by the Seashore, John Cage and Sun Ra were presented as a double bill almost exactly 25 years ago—June 8, 1986. Despite the album's misleading title, most accounts of the concert state that the two alternated sets and never actually shared the stage. Nevertheless, "Blue" Gene Tyranny in a review of the disc asserts that Messrs. Cage and Ra did in fact perform together toward the end of the evening, though there is no audible evidence of this on the recording.

 

 Holy grail, Batman...

 

John Cage & Sun Ra  ~  "John Cage Meets Sun Ra"
(Blog: .   Adventure-Equation   .)

Nice Double Bill
"Knowing the stories and ideas of these two men, the performance of this album is almost the sonic equivalent of their lives. Sun Ra shows off his zany, spaced out mind. His music sounds like it’s from another planet, a royal proclamation from Saturn. Conversely, John Cage shows his independent, introspective self with his Empty Words IV literature and extended periods of silence. The two together form a compilation of some of the strangest, weirdest, and somehow profound music of all time. Both men being under appreciated and extremely important 20th century innovators, they never worry about fans or appeal like so many other artists. The two men show a love for music, ideas, and the profound relationship between them."  (Tyler Fisher, at Sputnik Music )

 

Keni Okulolo  ~  "Talkin' Bass Experience"
(Blogs: San Pasquale Ent.)

Need to Know Bassist
Take good care with this one people, it's a killer LP, and even if it sounds really crispy you should love it…Simply one of the best Nigerian bassist, playing with men like Victor Olaiya or even the great Fela Kuti, he's also, with Joni Hasstrupp, an original founder of Monomono, well known Nigerian band, who released two killer lps "Give the Beggar a Chance" and "Dawn of Awareness.""  (xensma, at San Pasquale Ent. )

"Hillbilly: Bop, Boogie & Honky Tonk Blues"  ~  Volume 1  |  Volume 2  |  Volume 3
(Blog: Western & Bop)

Boogie Days, Nights, Weekends
Brother Drop Dead (Boogie), Diddy Wah Boogie, Mountain Boogie, Georgia Boogie, Grandpa's Boogie, Jug Band Boogie, Spookie Boogie, Big Chief Boogie, Sugarfoot Boogie, Hadacol Boogie, Hillbilly Boogie, Boogie Man Boogie, Choo Choo Ch'boogie, The Haunted House Boogie, Tamburitza Boogie, Hi De Ho Boogie, Motor City Boogie, Byrd's Boogie, Hoe Down Boogie, Ball and Chain Boogie, Bomb Bosh Boogie, I Love You Boogie, Beatin' Out the Boogie, Tight Shoe Boogie, Boogie Woogie Baby, Bullfrog Boogie, Country Style Boogie, Steeling the Boogie, Wine-O Boogie, Help Me Lose the Boogie Woogie Blues and 113 other tracks on six discs. Go git 'em.

 

31st of February  ~  "31st of February"
(Blog: Old Melodies… Dream's Mirror)

Wouldn't That Be March 3rd?
"Co-produced by Steve Alaimo and Mike Shapiro, 1969's "The 31st of February" has always struck me as an undiscovered gem. Performed with considerable enthusiasm, the collection was varied and energetic. [Scott] Boyer had a great voice, that occasionally reminded me of a more commercial Greg Allman, perfectly suited for the band's excursions into Byrds-styled folk-rock ("Porcelain Mirrors" and "A Different Kind of Head"), progressive ("Treason") and psyche ("A Nickel's Worth of Benny's Help"). Elsewhere, the standout tracks may have been [David] Brown's stomping "Wrong" and the trio's ghostly cover of Buffy Sainte Marie's "Co'dine." Among the few missteps; Brown's "Broken Day" was a little too sensitive singer/songwriter, while the band's cover of Jackie DeShannon's "The Greener Isle" (good taste in outside material), came off as MOR (blame Shelby Singleton's overwhelming string arrangement). Unfortunately, the set generated little in the way of sales."  (Scott Blackerby, at BadCat Records)

Coon-Sanders Nighthawks  ~  "Radio Aces"
(Blog: Lonesome Lefty's Scratchy Attic)

"Howdja Do, Howdja Do, Howdja Do—You Big 'Ol Raddio Pooblic"
"Arranger [Joe] Sanders was among the first to spread saxophone-section voicing: he inserted a vocal into almost every selection, and every instrument was given a chance to be heard. Coon-Sanders played jazz—original and unique; their music was happy and peppy, invitational to dancers or foot-tappers. Joe's boyhood training as choir vocalist and concert pianist enabled him to provide the Nighthawks with material bordering on what may be called "concert jazz." He wrote numerous and delightful "breaks" into numbers, pyramided chord structures, punctuated his music with stops. Hymns and spirituals were often played in syncopation!" (Paul F. Karberg, from the liner notes) 

Listen to my radio show Give the Drummer Some—Tuesdays 6-7pm, on WFMU and Fridays 9 to noon—on WFMU's web stream Give the Drummer Radio.
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Week in WFMU: 5/23 - 5/30

This weekend, WFMU heads to Barcelona, Spain for our third appearance at the Primavera Sound Festival! We will be broadcasting live from the fest on both Saturday 5/28 and Sunday 5/29 from 3 PM to midnight. The full and precise lineup of broadcast bands is still forthcoming, but we expect to carry live sets from Pere Ubu, Einsturzende Neubaten, Animal Collective, Ty Segall, Glenn Branca, Half Japanese, Dean Wareham (performing Galaxie 500), Interpol, Davila 666, and others. Go to primaverasound.com for the full lineup.

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Monday afternoon, Scott Williams presents Blue Sausage Infant and Violet, two bands on the Zeromoon label who represent the Washington, DC electro/experimental/noise scene. Hear Violet's cold, distant textures (made with zither, toy robot bugs, and not much else) and Blue Sausage Infant's warmer beats, lapsteel loops and vocals -- today, 5/23, from 3 to 6 PM.

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On Marty McSorley's show, Arrington de Dionyso returns to WFMU with his project Malaikat Dan Singa -- his personal brand of Indonesian shaman rock. There will be throat singing, heavy bass, trashy guitars, intoxicating beats and hell dragons -- Tuesday 5/24 from 6 to 9 AM (web-only). Don't miss!

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Playwright Joy Gregory, the force behind the new play "The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World," visits Kurt Gottschalk on Wednesday. She and Kurt will talk about the notorious Shaggs, the group of sisters from New Hampshire often termed the worst band in the world -- and celebrated as such. The off-broadway production about their career is in previews now. Hear more on Miniature Minotaurs, 5/25 from noon to 3 PM.

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Meghan of Underwater Theme Park will be talking to one of her high-school idols, Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance. Perry discusses his current solo album, for which he's touring now -- he will be at Irving Plaza on the 31st with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. He and Lisa Gerrard have also announced a new Dead Can Dance album and world tour. Find out a lot more on Thursday, 5/26, from 6 to 9 AM (web-only).

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Garage/mod rockers The Booze, from Atlanta, play live on Three Chord Monte Thursday afternoon. It is possible to hear their set, hosted by Joe Belock, and then go see them live at Maxwell's in Hoboken later that night. Radio part is on 5/26, from noon to 3 PM.

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Finally, Paul Haney will visit My Castle of Quiet to talk with Wm. Berger and perform a live, in-the-moment set as Rust Worship. Rust Worship uses and abuses a variety of sonic sources, including cassettes, turntables, guitars, and glass, to create a polyrhythmic assault. In Wm.'s words, it can sound "like someone trying desperately to fight their way out of a bad dream." This happens Friday, May 27th, from midnight to 3 AM.

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I'm listening to Michael Shelley and the World's Greatest Music Experts -- Gaylord Fields, Dennis Diken, Mr. Finewine, and Scott Schinder -- as they eruditely discuss Rebecca Black, music journalism, the notion of "selling out," and the end of the world, in a broadcast from last Saturday. Many music-expert listeners chimed in too, as you can see on the playlist of that show... 

4AD: Ghosts In The Closet

By Jason Forrest

 

 

As much a work of art as any record label could ever be, 4AD was a collaboration between two dudes with arty names: Ivo Watts-Russell and Vaughn Oliver. The label was started in 1980 when Watts-Russell was given the opportunity to start a label with a small budget dolled out from his bosses at Beggars Banquet - then a successful chain of record shops in London. [1] He and co-worker Peter Kent together released their first 7” and named the label “Axis”. But there was a problem: there was already a label called Axis. In one of those fateful snap judgments, they changed the name of the label to 4AD and much to everyone’s surprise it caught on almost immediately. Ivo Watts-Russell quickly showed a penchant for savvy A&R work, releasing singles that year by a host of up and comers including Modern Lovers and this other band, some skinny guys called Bauhaus.

Whatever it is that drives a scene - or even a whole subculture – quite a few of the bands that Ivo signed had it.  He seemed to have a knack for working with a diverse roster of bands to develop some of the best material regardless of genre.  In 1983 4AD released albums ranging from the bombast of The Birthday Party, the  ephemeral Cocteau Twins, and emerging pop-stars Modern English.[1]  Despite it all though, the label began to develop an overall sound. Of course, Watts-Russell never really had any of that in mind but we humans love to classify stuff.

That same year Watts Russell hired an aquantience of his named Vaughn Oliver to work on some design for the label, and also do a bit of the heavy lifting.  Oliver recounts, “I ended up saying to him that he needed some consistency, a logo, label designs and he said ‘Fabulous.’ He at that time, and for a long time afterwards, was truly philanthropic. He just wanted to put out music that he liked. He wanted other people to share in this. He had no commercial aspirations if you like. He just wanted to put stuff out and to put it out in a nice sleeve, that people would want. He had really old fashioned ethics about care and quality and stuff like that. It was about three years before he got a studio that he invited me in to and said ‘Work with me.’ And I was his first employee. And I think he expected me to do more than just sleeves so there was warehouse work and stuff like that and we went from there really.” [2]

Oliver’s aethetic fit perfectly to the 4AD sound (or maybe it was the other-way around. Who wouldn’t want to make music that sounded like a 23envelope cover?). His unique approach mixed photography with design and typography in ways that were at once immediately recognizable and embodied with a rare ability to match image to sound, the label had an impact that spread like wildfire. Oliver and 23envelope were ultimately employees of 4AD as they never worked exclusively for the label -- which did result in some tension [3] -- but the work they made together will forever set the standard by which each will be measured.

So this is the period we’re looking at, the first golden era of 4AD, and for you art students and non-conformists out there, the year was 1987.

That’s the year 4AD released Lonely Is An Eyesore. Back then labels had a bit of money and it wasn’t uncommon for an extravagantly packaged compilation to hit the market. But nobody did it like Lonely Is an Eyesore.  A collection of specially commissioned short films (music videos you say? No way- this is art!) and Vaughan Oliver-designed wooden box that held a deluxe gatefold LP, a cassette, a CD, a home video and two specially-commissioned etchings. The Victoria & Albert Museum acquired one for their permanent collection.[1]

It was a manifesto in design and sound. The music ranged from the medieval tribalism of Dead Can Dance to the cold synth-pop of Clan Of Xymox. The biggest band on the label at this time was Cocteau Twins who easily wore the “Ethereal” banner proudly. Their shimmering guitars and otherworldly vocals were perfectly foiled by the guttural punch of The Wolfgang Press. The label itself emerged as the star and the potent combo proved greater than the sum of its parts. But there was another story too -the label itself was an artist on the label. Sort of.

This Mortal Coil was a project started by Watts-Russell a few years prior in 1984, when the idea popped up to get the Cocteau Twins to make a cover version of a few Modern English songs. “It instilled immense confidence in me that we would be able to create, primarily through others, interesting and worthwhile interpretations of some music that had inspired me for years and was pretty much unknown to the world at large.” [3] But it was more than that. This Mortal Coil was an attempt to elaborate on the 4AD brand from the inside. Many of the artists on the label were involved in recording, but the control of the project resided in Watts-Russell’s grip. “I was accused of being a bit of a taskmaster more than once.” Never before had a “non-artist” so masterfully and artistically delivered on the promises that the same person was making from the label side. It was amazing to watch and to listen too. Watts-Russell promised that This Mortal Coil was a 3-album project and that’s what it was, ending effectively on the release date of Blood in 1990.

But they were 3 great albums filled with gripping performances made with the same iconoclasm he ran the label with -- probably best represented by 1986’s Filigree And Shadow. An over-flowing double album full of haunting reverb drenched vocal covers of songs by Van Morrison, Talking Heads and Tim Buckley among others. The songs were held together by an underpinning of liquid ambience evocative of Eno, but wholly different and unexpected. These 3 albums were a gargantuan undertaking but lovingly so. Even if the lyrics and overall tone are a bit melodramatic, you can hear the pride just leaping from the speakers.  Of course Vaughn Oliver was also at the top of his game and the dreamy ladies photographed for the covers of the albums even held a resemblance to acts on the label. It was a total package.

But 4AD never seemed to bask unnecessarily in it’s own glow and new acts continued to expand the possibilities. His Name Is Alive was an unlikely group made of a visionary guitar player, Warren Defever, and a loose group of people in his orbit, their first album, Livonia, is still a rather unusual release with drums, guitars, and vocals never really cohabitating in the same space. The group released a string of adventurous albums in fairly rapid secession that kept squirming around any musical barriers.  Yep, you guessed it; Vaughn Oliver was here once again to captured the experimental fragility of these albums and rendered them into bizarre jewels that just jumped off the shelf. 

There were other great acts too - The Pale Saints and Lush were brilliant shoegaze groups that proved unique and delivered a few great albums each. Dead Can Dance became a cultural force in their own right, with 7 albums full of arcane curiosities built around the mind-blowing voice of Lisa Gerrard. (She went on to do a ton of film soundtrack work and won a Golden Globe for her work on Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.) There were also more conventional rock bands including Throwing Muses and Unrest – and oh yeah, this little known band called The Pixies. Each and every album completed with the incredible artwork of Vaughn Oliver.

But the collaboration between 4AD and 23envelope didn't stop at cover-art. Ivo fully understood what was going on and commsiioned 23envelope to make poster-sets, calendars, compilations some promo-only, limited editions, collector only vinyls, and even a few art prints.   Watts-Russell understood the power of a brand – especially one that represented suffering suburban arty types with ready cash at hand. Luckily for Watts-Russell, Warner Bros. Records came calling in 1992 with a cash injection, but by then beast got too big. These things only can last for so long and in 1999 he sold 4AD back to The Beggers Group and left the label.  He currently lives in New Mexico. Vaughn Oliver is still working as a designer and pretty much everything he touches (like the £400 Pixies box set/book Minotaur) immediately becomes a collectors item. [5]

Surprisingly, 4AD hasn't been re-explored by the larger media yet. It was a rare label that skirted so many trends while fully satisfying them. They were above being merely fashionable. From the Indy rock kids to the Goths, almost every sub-genre had a major band release on 4AD at the time. Plus the only track by M/A/R/R/S, the sample-classic dance floor smash “Pump Up The Volume”, went to #1 in the UK charts. They were everywhere.

Take a look at Pitchfork and you’ll probably be surprised that many in the coveted Best New Music category artists are either currently on 4AD or are steeped in 4AD history, and yet they don't even really fully realize it themselves. Indeed 4AD is still rolling strong with a roster that gets a lot of press action. I’m hard-pressed to think of a label that has such a strong legacy. Seems like it might be time to put a bid on that Lonely Is An Eyesore VHS tape on EBay.

[1] http://www.4ad.com/year

[2] http://thequietus.com/articles/03454-vaughan-oliver-a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-jung-man

[3] http://www.fedge.net/ftww/interviews-ivo_02.html

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gerrard

[5] http://www.vaughanoliver.co.uk/

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RIP Randy "Macho Man" Savage

The 58-year old American legend passed away this morning from injuries related to a heart-attacked induced car crash in Florida, survived by his wife of one year, Lynn, who was in the passenger seat.

Cruel Calculus

There's been some coverage here on B of The B about the corporate takeover of station KUSF, in San Francisco. While that battle still rages, WFMU has come up with a brilliant, incredibly generous solution: hosting the "KUSF in Exile" stream. Your favorite KUSF deejays are still on the air, still putting out the freeform mixes you love out there on the West Coast. Tune in here. 

Brick & mortar containers for out-music are doing just as poorly in the Bay Area. It's a story that cycles and re-cycles through everyplace that is home to a music "scene" of whatever stripe you care to paint. What's left to say about the latest venue closing? Well, this one's more impactful than the average. 21 Grand, after ten+ years of art and music, closed in January, and local musicians are still wondering what the hell happened. This time it wasn't an evil landlord that done the deed, but an indifferent city council, aided and abetted by buncha nimrods in big rubber boots and slickers. Ironically, while the City of Oakland Fire Department was making it impossible for the gallery to keep its doors open through fire-code upgrade ransoms, the City Arts Council was tossing money at them, to fund programs. Eventually, burnout took its toll. The calculus ceased to add up to a future. But what a history!

DJ Handi's Archive Picks: The Left Album Knows What The Right Album Is Doing-- Even On Doomsday!

Frank O'Toole often opens More Exciting Moments with a mix of Brian Wilson's  "Let's Go Away For Awhile" and the Mr. Lucky theme by Henry Mancini. Both represent elegant orchestration: In the 1960s, such composers could draw a razor thin but razor sharp line between easy listening swill and rich art. On Shrunken Planet with Jeffery Davidson, The Beach Boys track was played in full next to The Soft Hills, followed by Aborea.

If you like the sixties work of  Wilson and Mancini, check out Gary McFarland's "80 M.P.H. Through Beer Can Country" used as talk over music by Mr. Finewine on Downtown Soulville. The track is from America The Beautiful: An Account Of Its Disappearance--an ironic orchestral portrait made in perhaps America's most turbulent year, 1968.

Daniel Blumin played "Sunshine" from Peter Hammill's 1971 solo album, Fool's Mate. This Donovan-like piece is a surprise, as Hammill often used a wailing, tormented voice singing in the ultimate heavy prog band, Van Der Graff Generator. Compare the zippy solo track to Generator's "The Sleepwalkers" played by Daniel in 2009.

Do you know nothing I said above matters? According to TV preacher Harold Camping, the world is ending tomorrow,  May 21.

 

Of course Camping also said Judgement Day was in September, 1994. Believe or not, Scott Williams   marked the occasion starting with "Take Me Away" by Ween, then playing Blondie's "Rapture,"  tape of his daughter, Lila, and 1970 Jesus rock by Friends. He threaded the entire set together with Forrest McCullough's "Flight F-I-N-A-L: A Dramatic Companion To Death." Last year, he played "No Room For Two On The Poll" from 1972 by the Israeli band,  Apocalypse.

More doomsday radio: On Underwater Theme Park, Meghan spent her show on songs that count time, starting with Emergancy Broadcast Network, The Cure, and Clouds.  On Teenage Wasteland, Bill Kelly played Skeeter Davis' "The End Of The World." Mike Sin played "Paths and Planes and Future Gains " by Keith Reif's 1970's band, Armageddon.

But in the likely case we're all here Sunday morning, here are two bonus archives. New material from The Indelicates was sandwiched between Billy Preston and Queen on Music From Daddy's Hideaway, and on Miniature Minotaurs With Kurt Gottschal, my favorite segue of the week: the soothing pop of The Carpenters played against the throbbing anxiety of the Crazy Dreams Band. Sometimes the best pairings are polar opposites.

 

 

Recent WFMU New Bin Faves

Alberorovesciato - Tigers On Acid In The Hell Of The Brushwood  (Singing Knives) This band is two Italian chaps currently residing in Berlin whose business is seriously primal percussion escapades (they even play in caves). I posted a scorching video of their work on BotB last year and it's a real pleasure to see Tigers on Acid make its way into the new bin. Reminds me of a brawl scene in an old cartoon, where you just see a tornado cloud of dust and a leg or a shoe now and then. The record is like a high fidelity field recording yet it's very intense and totally free, full of tiny percussive instruments and various ethnic drums with a smattering of gutteral screams and the occasional low drone adding a flavorful depth. Pretty amazing that it's only two people stirring up this ruckus, but when you play with tree branches instead of drumsticks, I guess it's like having many hands. Audio from the album here. (Scott McDowell)

La Gritona - Demasiado Tonto Para Los Ninos Listos (Tortuga)  - La Gritona emerged from Boston on the heels of grunge, tossing out a walloping, cohesive amalgamation of Voivoid, Black Flag, Swans, and Butthole Surfers into zones closest to metal. They were definitely evoking some of the unruly chaos to be evident in later acts like Converge (one member went on to Hydra Head recording artists Keelhaul, the label's sister imprint Tortuga put out this definitive anthology). Like Harvey Milk or Gore, La Gritona may have been around in the wrong time, when the rest of the word was focusing on some common and overdone influences, these guys were taking cues from not-so-evident dark corners. Artful, powerful stuff (and great X and Misfits covers) herein. Audio: "Jupiter".(Brian Turner)

Stan Hubbs - Crystal (Companion) Reissued 1982 LP originally recorded in Stan Hubbs' Sonoma County CA living room with a group of younger players. "A few years after making the LP, Stan Hubbs became one of the few persons in history to smoke so much pot that he died" -Acid Archives Audio: "Seems Like It's A Rich Man's World" (Jason Sigal)

BJ Nilsen/Stilluppsteypa - Big Shadow Montana (Helen Scarsdale Agency) Not having been to the Treasure State myself, I am guessing that Big Shadow Montana is not a site-specific reference. Instead, the two untitled tracks might present a vision of Montana's big skies and open spaces as dreamed up by an oppositional android with a penchant for the surreal. Having collaborated numerous times before, Nilsen, Sigmarsson, and Thorsson sound like one hive mind at work here. Not sure who's doing what, but it hardly matters. The ever-evolving stew of processed sound, a fantastic array of washed-out analog keyboards, disembodied voices, menacing drones, and what sounds like field recordings, electronic bird calls, and fragments of sitar, accompanies the troubled dreamer's imaginings. An analog bubblebath this ain't. Traces of chiming clocks and Geiger counters mix with phone static and stretches of dark turbine drift. Out of nowhere, the android emerges in an underground reservoir with only dubbed out bass floatation devices for company. Within minutes he is alone with hundreds of stars collapsing around him - brightening and fizzling out to reveal whispering tree trunks and snatches of opera. Was that a trumpet or just a tweaked teapot boiling? Bam! The automaton is transported to a ghost town saloon where an electronic music box trio plays to a roomful of heavily-accessorized and somewhat sedated grizzlies dancing with each other in slow motion. The Montana tourism board may not want to adopt this psychotropic dreamscape as its official soundtrack, but I bet all the haunted ghost towns would finally feel enfranchised! Audio: Side B (excerpt) (Daniel Blumin)

 
Dawn Culbertson - Return of the Evil Pappy Twin (cassette, Silvox) One of the more puzzling covers collections in some time, Culbertson (1951-2004) cassette offers Ramones, Devo, Stooges, Sabbath all performed by a woman classically trained in ealy Renaissance music from Italy, Germany, and France. Far from being a yukfest of tongue-in-cheek academic appropriation of these songs, nor a postmodern cutesy-fication ala Nouvelle Vague, the appeal for me in this cassette I suppose is that fact it's tough to peg why exactly there's a lute version of "Mongoloid" et al. Hearing the vocals, I can ascertain a heartfelt approach as well as a distant one at times, certain lines and phrases ring out in a whole new refreshing way. Witness: "Hot For Teacher" (audio)

WFMU carrying live sets from Primavera Sound May 27-28

(left: Endless Boogie implement your freedom of choice, pic: Brian Turner) WFMU returns a third time to Barcelona's amazing Primavera Sound Festival on Friday, May 27 and Saturday, May 28th! The festival's official USA radio partner has been carrying full on live sets live from sunny Spain that in the past have included Pavement, Sonic Youth, Liquid Liquid, Marc Almond, Mission of Burma, Yo La Tengo, Sunn o))), the Vaselines and many more, with some of the archives available online and the FMA! This year's broadcasts happen from 3pm to Midnight ET both days, with the schedule TBA, but take a look at this year's incredible lineup, and a listen to the Free Music Archive's Primavera 2011 Preview Mix (below).

If you are doing up a rockcation at Prima, please stop by the WFMU tent in the main fairway to the stages, say hello to Liz Berg, Scott Williams, Brian Turner, and Jason Sigal who will be manning the broadcast and recording the sets throughout the stages (the festival starts on Thursday the 26th, but we will be starting broadcast with some backlogged sets the following day). It will be hard to beat the 6am sunrise dance party that we involuntarily hosted last year, but many magical musical moments are certainly on the horizon for attendees and FMU listeners alike at Primavera 2011.