WFMU's Beware of the Blog

A Vanity Record for the Ages (MP3's)

Two months ago, I posted an oddly enjoyable vanity record produced by the Film City label, of a song titled "Scotch Tape". As I wrote at the time, most of Film City's releases were of the song-poem variety, but a few here and there featured singers doing their own material, almost always accompanied by Film City's ubiquitous Chamberlin keyboard.

Barely had that post been written when I came upon another vanity record from the same label. And, as might be the case with you, as well, listening to this one made my mouth drop open in wonder.

While this one has none of the goofy charm of "Scotch Tape", it does have the benefit of being at least twice as peculiar. And although I had speculated that Rodd Keith was the Chamberlin master on most any Film City vanity pressing, the exceptionally poor keyboard performance on these tracks makes me wonder if I was off target with that assumption - the playing here is nothing short of atrocious. Some "Orchestra and Chorus"!

On the other hand, maybe the musician involved was simply struggling to find a way to appropriately accompany Bert Lowry, whose performing style is certainly unique.

Bert Lowry with Orchestra and Chorus - Portland Rose Song (MP3)

Bert Lowry with Orchestra and Chorus - Voice of the Rose (MP3)

Record Label A Side (JPG) - Record Label B Side (JPG)

The American Song-Poem Music Archives page for Film City indicates that Bert Lowry actually released "Voice of the Rose" twice - once, heard here, on the flip side to "Portland Rose Song", and again, as they A-side, with a song titled "Pasadena Rose Song" on the flip side. I sure wish I could hear that one.

Reigning Sound

New EP coming November 1st from our very own DA the DJ and the Reigning Sound!  

Reigning Sound - Lyin' Girl (mp3)

Rappers at Richmond Auditorium, May 4th, 1984

Today we have a 45-minute slice of hip-hop history graciously provided by musician and collector Rob Wortman from his vast self-recorded cassette archive:  an early rap event from Richmond, California as taped from the audience one fine night in May of 1984.  

Sadly, these are all the details that we have at present, no listing yet of the DJ's and MC's that we will hear in this gig. Also, there seems to have been some problem with the PA sound at the event - numerous 'dropouts' occur, tiny moments of dead air in the mix. These are not artifacts of the recording but were heard live. For added listening convenience, I have broken the tape side into three parts. A thank you goes out to Billy Jam, from whom I borrowed the ticket-stub scan of the July, 1984 Richmond Auditorium show, which was as close as I could fi
nd to an illustration of this May 1984 gig, but does show how simple the graphics were for such things at that time. Fans of this sort of historical record might also enjoy these previous WFMU posts of mine which feature another tape from the Wortman archive that happens to be from the same month and year.  Word !

Part One      Part Two      Part Three

My RadioVision of the Great Icelandic DJ

Back in 2010 I posted the video for the Best Party's campaign song here on Beware of the Blog. The Party—which was started as a satire of regular Icelandic politics—actually won a majority in their local election, and their founder and chairman, Jon Gnarr, became mayor of Reykjavik. Now, through the magic of Benjamin Walker, and due to some mistake that no one can explain, I am to meet His Honorableness, Mayor Gnarr, and his chief strategist and campaign manager, Heida K. Helgadottir, when I introduce their keynote address on Saturday at the WFMU Radiovision Festival.

I became an Icelandophile when I worked at the dog magazine, whose offices were two blocks from Scandinavia House. I often went there for lunch at the AQ Café, and would check out their art exhibits and excellent film series. It was at Scandinavia House a few years ago that I saw the documentary Kurekar Nordursins, and became a huge fan of the great Icelandic radio DJ, the Cowboy of the North, Hallbjorn Hjartarson. The film records (in what feels like real time) the 1984 Icelandic Cowboy Festival, which took place in a tiny northern fishing village and seemed to consist of a lot of drinking, some music, and occasional attempts to ride shaggy little Icelandic ponies while drinking or singing, but mostly drinking. I was so inspired by it that I tracked down Cowboy DJ Hallbjorn and wrote to him, hoping I could get him as a guest on WFMU. I imagined gathering up donations of moldy country vinyl at the Record Fair and shipping it off to Skagastrond, Iceland, and becoming radio friends with this international superstar.

But then months passed, and I had given up before I finally got a reply. DJ Hallbjorn had to go to a great deal of trouble to find someone who could translate my email into Icelandic and then translate his reply into English to send to me. Of course, I had no idea he didn’t speak English. He plays all these American country-western songs on his radio station, so I just assumed … Plus, I’m American, which is also why I just assumed… Anyway, I felt bad for putting him to so much trouble, so I didn’t write again. But now, every year when the Record Fair comes around, I think of Hallbjorn Hjartarson and wish I could send him some Little Jimmy Dickens records.

And this year, tomorrow, I will get to meet real Icelandic People and ask them if they know Cowboy DJ Hallbjorn—it’s a very small country, plus he is extremely famous, so they might! I just hope Jon Gnarr and Heida K. Helgadottir speak English.

 

Blood Lust - Conversations with Real Vampires (mp3)

This is from a promotional cassette for the book of the same name by Carol Page.  Some time around 1989.  Purportedly equal parts sympathetic and incisive book about "honest to goodness bloodsuckers".  The audio sounds like Lost Boys exploitation mixed with half baked Creep Show mannerisms, plodding pianos, deep voices, screaming samples, a real hoot.  Clandestinely dubbed from the library of WZRD.

Bloodlust - Conversations with Real Vampires

DJ Handi' Archive Picks: A Radio, A Groove, Seven Inches, And A Record Fair Comin' On.

On Surface Noise, Joe McGasko presented a show decked with soul. Listen to this New Birth. song. After annoucing, he continued with late 1970's Isaac Hayes. Compare the lush instrumentation to modern, mechanzed  grooves: Small Change returned to WFMU this month for several editions of Nickel And Dime Radio. Hear "Bach Goes Balie Funk" by Ophex, followed by two N-ron tracks.

Joe Belock on Three Card Monte played 1966's "Show Me The Way" by Great Scots, then "The Answer Was You" by Sloan. Both have a straight-foward rock vibe, but notice the Sloan selection is much more lush. Sloan continually mines Beatles/Small Faces layering.

You won't hear this in Sonny Sharrock, free jazz's most famous guitarist after Derek Baily. Hear his atonal six string shards on "Portrait Of Linda, All Three Colors." Sharrock probably offered his music's best description. "I'm a horn player with a really fucked up axe."

Finally, as this weekend's record fair approaches, WFMU began Singles Going Steady week. The station plays only 7" records. Irene Trudel ended this week's show sounding exactly like early 1970's FM radio, playing Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, The Lovin' Spoonful, and John Lennon,. If , like me, you weren't there in those days but wish you were, begin here!

Stick Men With Ray Guns Invade The Local News

Nothing quite amuses in the way that a vintage local news report on those crazy kids and their "punk rock" does, but there's something extra surreal when the dry, patronizing drone of the local anchor follows around the going-ons of a band that actually represents the genre at its most gleefully obnoxious rather than just another new-wave Blondie rip-off. Here's some great footage of underdocumented Texas noise-punks Stick Men With Ray Guns profiled sometime in the 1980's on one such evening news sojourn. Come for the condescending narration from an anchor who just can't seem to believe that these Stick Men, what with their slam-dancing and their angst and their atheism, aren't some junkie thugs lying passed out in a gutter, stay for some pretty excellent footage of the late Bobby Soxx and his cohorts:

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 138.2 (BONUS)

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

ANTHEM FOR THE 99% MOVEMENT?!

On September 13, 2011, the music sharing site 45 Blog posted "The Other Ninety Nine," an inspiring, patriotic cri de coeur performed by Bill Cagle and the Spirit of '68. Four days later, a thousand protesters marched on Wall Street demanding economic justice. Coincidence?

We download, you occupy...

 

The Other Ninety Nine  (Bill Cagle and the Sprit of '68)
(Blog: 45 Blog)

From the lyrics: "Where are they, the other ninety nine? The decent folk, the righteous. Do they rally together in brotherhood, only to mourn? Can they not rally together for good, to overcome those things that make them mourn? Is it not time for such a rally of the other ninety nine? Where are they, the other ninety nine percent. The silent people, the sleeping giant….Look! They're coming. By the millions they're coming. From New York's sidewalks, from Chicago's factories, from the Mississippi Delta, from California's golden shores, from every state in the Union. Shoulder to shoulder, marching together to overcome wrong and set this nation right!"

Listen to my radio show Give the Drummer Some—Tuesdays (6-7pm) and Fridays (9 to noon)—on WFMU's web stream Give the Drummer Radio.
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Check out every installment of Mining the Audio Motherlode

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 20

CMJ RECAP

Best New Band:
Virginia Plain
Stage debut at Union Pool on October 20. This is beauty in its purest form.

More after the jump

Wild Live Zounds on Saturday For Shock and Awetober!

To be more specific, this past Saturday, Terre T hosted on her Cherry Blossom Clinic, 2 live bands::  Wild Flag (all female quartet containing members of Sleater-Kinney, Minders and Helium) and UK DIY anarcho punk rockers Zounds! Yowza, now that's a show! I was asked to engineer both, and responded with a HELL YES, and so our work was cut out for us! Check out the archive of the program. Shock and Awetober, indeed!

WFMU Record Fair & RadioVision Festival - This Weekend!

 Don't miss out on the best record shopping weekend of the year! Luxuriate in the presence of hundreds of thousands of records and CDs, great films and live music, plus tons of live WFMU broadcasts!

WFMU Record Fair

Oct 28th - 30th (Fri - Sun)
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W. 18th St, Manhattan

Early admission ($25): Fri 4-7pm (includes unlimited re-entry all weekend)
Regular admission ($7): Fri 7-10pm, Sat/Sun 10am-7pm

Bring in your Record Fair postcard or this coupon for $2 off admission!

Live Music:
- Prince Rama: Sat, 12:45pm
- Sediment Club: Sat, 3:30pm
- Black Hollies: Sat 4:30pm
- CSC Funk Band: Sun, 1pm
- John Fahey tribute w/ Glenn Jones, Charlie Schmidt, and Ragtime Ralph: Sun, 3pm

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 138

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

Singles Going Steady...

Sevil Öztatlı  ~  "Seks Seks Seks"
(Blog: Turkish Psychedelic Music!)

So Nice She Named It Thrice
Random bit of lyrics as translated by Google: "Her hips like a bomb/Pumpkin vine branches/The eyes are seeing cross-eyed/See my woman/They say in the name of sex sex sex."

 

66 Clips of Monster Music / Halloween Playlist on Youtube

This being my favorite time of year, I've collected 66 of my favorite video clips into a youtube playlist.  They are of a slimey, zany, Halloweeny nature;  Vintage commercials, cartoons, sitcom interludes, and fun loving monster music spanning a few types of interdisciplinary [ghoul] schools of thought.   The moon is nothing but a circle of ghosts!  

Week in WFMU: 10/24 - 10/30, 2011

Singles Going Steady Week is NOW as we gear up for the Record Fair and as Shock and Awetober begins to draw to a close. DJs will be playing nothing but 7-inch singles on their shows all week, as they continue to fundraise using the new "silent" method that's been in place all month. We are having a barrel of fun but working very hard -- please make a donation to your favorite DJ or DJs! This way they'll have something pleasant to remember once they finally have time to re-shelve their records and do their laundry. Donate using a DJ's playlist page, or via the WFMU homepage. The station needs your support very badly in order to stay alive.

Take a look at the Upcoming page for details on how various people are interpreting the Singles Going Steady format: there will be at least one all-early-'80s broadcast of post-punk and new wave goodness; an East Village-style DJ party; and some husband/wife and boyfriend/girlfriend battles. During the Record Fair, which takes place all weekend, many of the 7"s will come to you straight from the Metropolitan Pavilion itself. And this amid plenty of sets by special guest bands, as well as more WFMU listener meetups! (Find out about the Halloween-themed Thunk Tank meetup here, featuring literary readings and signature cocktails. And, not least, about the exciting Antique Phonograph meetup here!)

The WFMU Record Fair is one of the major highlights of the WFMU calendar year -- don't you dare miss it! Come to the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th St. in Manhattan, on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to shop, socialize, eat pizza, see performances, drink beer, et cetera. Click here to download the dealer guide and DJ schedule. This year is also our first-ever RadioVision Fest, going on concurrently in the same building. Let's all be there...

Trubble Club Collaborative Comics

Trubble Club is an informal group of Chicago comic artists that meet every week to produce collaborative comics. Inkers such as Edie Fake, Jeremy Tinder and Grant Reynolds delight in farting out the most absurd panels full of gross-out humor and ridiculous surrealism.

Time Travelers Don't Wear Pants: Peter Fonda's Idaho Transfer

A snake crawling through the desert is caught by a longhaired hippie with a radio. A young woman in yellow pants walks through Craters of the Moon, Idaho, descending into a vented metal chamber buried in the rock. Inside, she removes her boots and yellow pants and places them along with a clipboard into a metal box beneath a machine with glowing colored buttons, teleporting herself into a large, clinical room where she puts her yellow pants back on, throws her boots in the corner and exits to have a muted water-cooler conversation about the poor quality of chocolate milk with Keith Carradine.

Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention Live in '71 on a Beach

Really ace footage of these two bands playing on Ainsdale beach in 1971 near Southport, England.  More at this youtube channel, but I chose this particular clip for the jaunty lil jig Maddy Prior does toward the end.

Elisha Shapiro, Nihilist (mp3)

"We're celebrating the disintegration of order, reason and rules. I just hope we're not too late."

Elisha Interview

Elisha Comedy Bit

After a turbulent run in high school, my perspective started to morph from an "us versus them" approach to a more suitable "me versus them", and a desire to have as much fun as possible with it. Jello Biafra had painted himself into a corner, KMFDM had become caricatures of themselves, and even though Atari Teenage Riot could continue to bolster their jack-in-the-box reactionary teenage angst, I was no longer in a mood for catch phrases or campaign slogans of any kind. Before long, I was hanging out in my friend's basement bathroom that he'd converted into a bedroom, watching the mushroom cloud sequence from Dr. Strangelove on repeat, doing excuisite corpses, making pornographic collages, writing for and publishing "dadaist" zines (which also included pornography), and setting random things on fire. It might be cliché in a round-about way, but it sent the ball rolling in a lot of different directions.

Who Says the Art World Isn’t Scary?: Roger Corman’s Classic, A Bucket of Blood.

By Caryn Coleman

Movie - Bucket Of Blood (Roger Corman, 1959)

Watch more on Network Awesome

If there’s a better satirical film on the art world than A Bucket of Blood (1959) then I certainly haven’t seen it (note: John Waters’ Pecker comes close). This playful jab at the beatnik artist types of the 1950s easily translates into the ridiculousness of contemporary art. Reportedly made by “King of the B-movies” Roger Corman for a mere $50k, A Bucket of Blood is a thoughtful and provoking look at the beginning of modern art as cultural phenomenon. It has a lot in common with the 1953 version of House of Wax (André De Toth) in its representation of the frustrated and revengeful artist, however, it moves beyond the artist as “individual” to cleverly mimic -- and mock -- the capriciousness of the art world as a whole.

John Fahey tribute/panel at WFMU's Record Fair October 30th

WFMU's annual Record Fair approacheth once again; 200+ dealers and a wide variety of tables to shop at, collectables, cheapo records, an Audio/Visual lounge for films, live music from artists like Prince Rama, The Sediment Club, People Like Us, CSC Funk Band, and Black Hollies throughout the weekend as well. Take a look at our event schedule right here and plan accordingly. Of special mention: a panel being presented on Sunday in the A/V lounge entitled "Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You", which will feature Joe Bussard, Claudio Guerrieri, Glenn Jones, Ragtime Ralph and Charlie Schmidt talking about the late great acoustic guitar legend John Fahey (Dust To Digital has just issued an archival box set of the same name which is out this month, it chronicles his time on Bussard's Fonotone label from 1958 through 1965). The panel takes place at 1:00 PM, followed by a showing of Desperate Man Blues, a documentary about Bussard, with Joe himself doing live commentary. Afterwards at 3, the action moves into the main hall of the Record Fair, where Jones, Ragtime Ralph and Schmidt will do an acoustic homage to Fahey's music.