WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Al Johnson is Decent: An Interview

"Al Johnson twisting and blinding the incomparable Mark Shippy in Chicago"

From 1995 to 2007, Alan S. Johnson served as the frontman for U.S. Maple, a Chicago-based band that defied any kind of "genre" catergorization. Frequently pegged as "noise rockers" or "deconstructionalists," Al and co. instead seemed to construct a new sonic palate rather than "take apart" established ideas of music, as "deconstruction" implies. The songs of U.S. Maple were entirely complex, made up of bizarre rhythms and beautiful atonalities that could allow listeners to enter a strange and mysterious place where most rockers would fear to tread.

   

The movement and grace of Al Johnson as a frontman, allowing his body to become an instrument, his voice emitting a kind of singing that is at once familiar but of an alien tone, could be the ultimate factor in what set U.S. Maple apart as a completely individualstic group. 

   

Currently, Johnson is very active, hosting the Skin Graft St. Louis Homecoming on June 21st, and regularly writing on his blog, Al Johnson is Decent. This interview was conducted over e-mail in August of last year. Check it out after the jump!

   

Revilo P. Oliver: The White Supremacist with the Palindromic Name (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 39) (MP3's)

Well, last time around, I shared a 1960's record brought to us by the right wing zealots over at Key Records, and that got me to thinking about this insane reel of tape I came across years and years ago, featuring the exceptionally obnoxious ramblings of Revilo P. Oliver. Mr. Oliver (who said that being named palindromically was a family tradition), was notable for being a white supremacist and a founding member of both the National Review and of The John Birch Society.

That's enough to peg him as a fringe-dweller right there, but Revilo (and I wish it was pronounced like "Revile" -  a feeling which he inspires in me - but I think the accent is on the first syllable) later decided that 1960's American conservatism was just too liberal, and he joined the National Alliance - part of the National Socialist movement - that's right, Neo-Nazis.

The tape features two lengthy lectures, each about an hour long. His main focus seems to be on simply expressing a smug superiority, never really saying too much about what his beliefs are, but rather spewing insults, simplifying and misrepresenting the views of those he considers vermin (i.e. anyone who isn't Western, Caucasian, or who doesn't agree with him), and giving lengthy examples of idiocy on the part of specific individuals, which somehow are meant to indict everyone on the other side of whatever issue he's on about.

There is so much gold here, it's hard to know where to start, but I did find two statements quite telling. The first is when he just sort of states, as fact (and in passing) that the only civilization that matters is the one "that we, the white men of the Western Hemisphere, created". And the second is when he actually says, in reference to what he called the "baneful" effects of slavery, adds that the worst of these baneful effects were on the owners.

Hold on your hats, wigs and keys, ladies and gentlemen, and have a listen to a first class wacko, Dr. Revilo P. Oliver:

Revilo P. Oliver - Liberals (MP3)

Revilo P. Oliver - Degeneracy (MP3)

Tape Box (JPG)  |  Tape (JPG)

Listening to his rants, I find myself wondering - if ol' Revilo were still around today, would he realize that much of the progress that has been made over the last 30 years has been developed, improved and made ubiquitous by the more progressive humans of this era, and that many of the biggest problems on Earth during that period have come from the tyrants, the religiously intolerant and other representatives of the far right?

But then I think of Revilo P. Oliver's political descendants (in the Tea Party and their ilk), and recognize that even they have failed to perceive those developments - so I assume that Oliver wouldn't have noticed, either.

"The Hiss Parade (with conductor Raymond Scat)"

Today's WFMU Comics Supplement Section shines a light on an interesting find: the ninth issue of 'From Here to Insanity', the Charlton Comics answer to MAD magazine, originally published as the April 1955 edition.  I had never seen famed composer and conductor Raymond Scott parodied in a comic book before, so this was a real shock when I stumbled upon it! In fact, this issue is full of music references, and I've included a single page feature and another short story from this same book, along with the featured tale which sends up the  'Plucky Strike Hiss Parade'.

The Hiss Parade yarn is bulging with 1955 pop culture references, most of them identifiable, but several that I can't quite put my finger on just who is being parodied, and I'm hoping our readers can help me out with those. Here in order of appearance is the group of players in this nutty story:

Our hero Raymond Scat, who is easy enough to peg - I had never thought of his ears as being all that large (see photo), but people did look much different than in real life on camera in those earlier days of cruder transmission technology, and also the colorist made him a blonde, but did retain his mid-fifties flat-top look;   the interviewer 'Dick Johnstown' - obviously drawn to resemble actor Jack Webb,  but just whose name is being joked with I'm not sure;   'all-knight DJ Vary Grayface' - I don't have any idea on this one -but it's probably easy for someone with a better knowledge of 1950s DJs than me to identify;   'Spooky Lambsclub' (series regular Snooky Lanson);   singer 'Dorothy Collars' - there's an easy one - Dorothy Collins, the regular singer on most seasons of the show and the wife of host Raymond Scott);   'Givesall McKillsme' - (another series stalwart- Gisele MacKenzie);   'Van Monotone' (love these names!) - no idea who he's supposed to be;  an unbilled Lee Liberace sticks his mug in there for one panel;  and in the third piece shown below, "What in the Heck is a Mambo?" we see Groucho Marx, who delivers a pointed MAD magazine reference and tells a character who says 'mad', "That was the lucky word!"

No writer credits (and this is some fudged-up 'humor' writing - those MAD imitators had their work cut out for them, the scripts in this book are almost completely incoherent), but the book was produced in the Al Fago studio (so he may well have had a hand in the writing), and the cover and single page feature were drawn by Fred Ottenheimer, who also drew for Charlton's other MAD clone "Eh!",  and the two full-length stories were drawn by famed 1950s-1960s comic book artist Dick Ayers.

Let's take a look at this odd and insane magazine right after the jump!

Heil Honey, I’m Home: The Worst TV Show Of All Time?

BY KRISTEN BIALIK

Watch the only full episode of "Heil Honey, I'm Home"

What's on Network Awesome today?

It’s hard to imagine how the studio pitch forHeil Honey I’m Home! went beyond ‘Picture it: It’s the 1930s and Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun are living in their Berlin apartment/American suburbia home. But they keep getting into zany situations because they can’t seem to get along with their Jewish neighbors, the Goldensteins! (Pause for overenthusiastic chuckles)Any post-WWII audience is gonna love it!’ Really, it’s hard to imagine even getting there, but the British Satellite Broadcasting channel Galaxy went so far as to create an entire series around the premise. Yes, I said series. The world would never know the extent of Heil Honey I’m Home!, however, since the show was cancelled after the first episode aired in 1990. Who’s surprised?

The basic plot of the first (and only) episode to see the light of day takes place around the 1938 German annexation of the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland, though this is largely just an odd backdrop to Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun’s domestic issues. Neville Chamberlain does make an appearance, a fact Hitler tries to hide from his “meddling” blatantly stereotypical Jewish neighbors. Of course, the Goldensteins find out because Eva (read: women) can’t keep secrets and so they pop over to meet Chamberlain and set him up with their frumpy teenage niece. Eva Braun’s plan to get the Goldensteins out of their hair before the Chamberlain visit is to get them knocked-out drunk and “bundle them back to their

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 59

Earcandy for your eyes

Patrick Noecker's Assemble performing live at Knockdown Center in Queens on May 11, 2013.

After the break: Marissa Nadler at Saint Vitus, Cammisa Buerhaus at Market Hotel and the complete Suicide show from 2007 at the Seaport.

WFMU Broadcasts Live from Primavera Sound Fest, May 24-25

WFMU returns to Barcelona's amazing Primavera Sound Festival on Friday, May 24 and Saturday, May 25th! This year's broadcasts happen from 3pm to Midnight both days, artist schedule below. Don't miss it!

WFMU Broadcast schedule (ET, acts/times subject to change - updated 5/24)

Friday, May 24
3:00 Hot Snakes
4:00 White Fence
5:00 Woods
6:00 Fuck Buttons
6:45 Merchandise
7:35 Killer Mike
8:10 Daniel Johnston
9:00 Om
10:00 Neurosis
11:00 Josef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch
11:30 Fourtet

Saturday, May 25
3:00 Swans
4:20 Orchestra Poly Rhythmo de Cotonou
4:50 Guardian Alien
5:30 Goat
6:00 Tinariwen
6:20 Mulatu Astatke
6:45 Death Grips
7:10 Thee Oh Sees
7:40 Meat Puppets
8:15 Dan Deacon
9:00 Jesus and Mary Chain
9:30 Dead Can Dance
10:00 Nurse With Wound
11:00 Omar Souleyman
11:30 Wu-Tang Clan

 

As the festival's official USA radio partner, WFMU has been carrying sets live from sunny Spain five years in a row, and artists we've broadcast in the past included Glenn Branca, Grinderman, Sonic Youth, Codeine, The Pop Group, Demdike Stare, The Monochrome Set, Marianne Faithfull, Einsturzende Neubauten, Pavement, Pere Ubu, Wire, and many more, with archives available online and the FMA!

Vintage Jeans Commercials: Fit For All

BY KRISTEN BIALIK

 

WATCH VIDEO: Collection - Vintage Jeans Commercials

 

“Once in a great while, a natural phenomenon occurs that is so beautiful, so dramatic, it overshadows everything else. Sergio Valente has created a phenomenon the whole world will be watching: Sergio Valente black denim jeans. They’re more than beautiful. They’re out of sight.” This is the narration for a Sergio Valente denim ad in the jeans collection. The voiceover is so deeply impassioned. The slowly-revolving pan shots around a backlit, denim-clad behind are so intensified. The tight shots of tight asses are so all encompassing. The ad is dramatic to the point that it must be hyperbole. But you can tell that it’s actually in earnest. And the funny thing is that behind the inflated language, there’s a grain of truth to the ad. Jeans have become an unstoppable phenomenon in the world of fashion and apparel. The ubiquity of jeans has become so universal that they are almost hidden in plain view. The phenomenon really is "out of sight."

Anthropologists Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward of the Global Denim Project consider the global denim phenomenon a perfect example of the “blindingly obvious.” The sheer scale of denim’s presence has made us take that presence for granted. In Miller and Woodward’s estimation, in the majority of countries in the world, the majority of people on any given day are wearing jeans. With the exception of rural areas in China and South Asia, Miller found that when he stopped and counted the first 100 people to walk by, about 50 percent of the population wore jeans everywhere from Brazil to India, from Turkey to the

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 207

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

The universe of music-sharing blogs just keeps expanding. My latest obsession is Lola Vandaag, which began posting in October 2011. Describing itself as ongeregelde verzameling geluid ("unregulated collection of sound"), this wonderful blog leaves no continent unappreciated.

Some of the delights you'll encounter: Enchanting radio broadcasts from the world over, street organ sounds, international religious oddities, smoldering dance bands, cantorial superstars, rantings of shamans and mushroom enthusiasts, sizzling accordionists, music that will make you cry—and that's just hoeing the topsoil. Dig in and get your ears dirty.

To whet your appetite, check out our lead-off item, below.

 

    
Various  ~  'Are 'Are: Flutes de Pan Mélanésiennes
(Blog: Lola Vandaag)

The Wisdom of Solomon Islanders
"The society in question is that of the 'Are'are, whose 8,000 members live in the southern part of Malaita....The 'Are'are call instrumental music 'au ("bamboo"), for, with the exception of the slit drum 'o'o, all instrumental music is played with instruments made of bamboo. The most gifted musicians, the true mane ni 'au ("men of music") continue even today to compose new mani 'au ("pieces of music"). Instrumental music is "programme" music (in the broadest sense, or in the narrower sense, one could call it "descriptive" music). Each piece, composed according to strict rules, carries a title which is a general résumé of the "programme." Bird calls, frog croaks, buzzing of insects and the cries of other animals, the patter of rain drops on a leaf, the murmur of a river or the roaring of the ocean, the crackle of branches in the wind; all the sounds of nature can furnish the theme for a composition. Man-made sounds can as well: children crying, the groaning of the sick or wounded, the snoring of sleepers, words, work noises, etc. Certain compositions are inspired by melodies coming from songs or from other types of instrumental ensembles. Certain pieces translate a visual theme such as the swaying of a spider or the come and go of people."  (Description by Hugo Zemp, taken from the liner notes to Volume 3 in this same series.) 

A Desperate Masterpiece: Lars Von Trier's Riget (AKA The Kingdom)

BY THOMAS MICHALSKI

Watch the first episode of Riget (The Kingdom) here.

Watch the whole series here.

By the earlier 1990s, Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier was already an internationally well-known art-house auteur, fresh from winning a slew of awards, including the Palm d’Or at Cannes, with Europa, the final film in a trilogy of the same name. His increasing notoriety and the end of Europa had brought his career to a crossroads, but figuring out what he would do next was complicated by the fact that his personal life was falling apart all around him. There was the divorce from his first wife, the death of his father, or at least the man he thought to be his father until his mother, who passed away soon afterward, informed him otherwise, and if that wasn’t enough, he had his cash-strapped production company, Zentropa, to worry about. In an attempt to raise some money, while also keeping things low impact, Von Trier agreed to co-write and direct a miniseries, the supernatural hospital drama Riget (The Kingdom), for Danish TV in 1994. From the outside, it must have looked like a step backward, career-wise, but if it had inauspicious beginnings, Riget would turn out to be some of Von Trier’s best remembered work and have a profound effect on what came after it.

Riget borrows its title from the nickname of the real life Danish hospital where it takes place, Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, though if it’s anything like on the show, you probably wouldn’t want to be a patient there. For one thing, it’s haunted as fuck, with the ghastly cries of a young girl emanating from an

Key Records Presents: The Fearless American (MP3's)

Last fall, Listener Mindwrecker wrote a fabulous post exploring the wonders of the 1960's far-right record label known as Key Records. I read it with great interest, because I've always picked up records on the Key label when they've crossed my past. They never fail to entertain, and can often inspire both a laugh and a touch of horror, within a few moments of each other. 

I bet I have close to a dozen Key releases down in my "spoken word" section, in the basement, of which my favorite, and yet also the most depressing, may well be the one Mindwrecker already shared, by Walter Brennan.

But here another prime example, an album featuring a speech by Dan Smoot, publisher of The Smoot Report, in which he extols the virtues of Mr. D. B. Lewis, who was a manufacturer of pet foods. (Smoot, it would seem, was a true believer. Not only was he associated with the Birchers, I learn from Wikipedia that he later went on to oppose George H.W. Bush's candidacy for the U.S. Senate on the grounds that Bush's positions were essentially those of a Democrat!)

It's amazing to hear, in this speech, which took place at some point during the run-up to the 1964 election, the same rhetoric, the same ideas, and in places, close to the same slogans, as those espoused in recent years by members of the tea party and its offshoots. Time, it's sad to say, doesn't do away with all bad ideas - "those who cannot remember the past..." and all that, I guess.

If anyone is interested, there could certainly be more Key Records mayhem to come!

Dan Smoot: The Fearless American, Part One (MP3)

Dan Smoot: The Fearless American, Part Two (MP3) 

Record Label (JPG)

(album cover to come soon - I'm having issues with my scanner)

"Harmony of Horror"

"Did you ever hear a melody of murder, a dirge of doom, a tune of terror?  Heh-heh!    Sharpen you ears and they will catch that strain right now!  Many things are possible in this strange world.  I should know ... I'm one of those things myself!  So harken closely and get the wits scared out of you!"

Thus goes the cheerful introduction to another happy little WFMU comics supplement, courtesy our host The Thing, coming from his very own comic book "The Thing" number five, from the October/November 1952 issue.

It appears that mayhem of every nasty kind has been perpetrated in the comics world by music and musicians, so let's look in on another poor soul done in by one of nature's most deadly forces -- right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 58

Earcandy for your eyes

Deafheaven playing live at Saint Vitus on February 22, 2013
After the break: Nails at Saint Vitus.

WHO’S GOING TO BELIEVE A TALKING HEAD?” 1985’S UNDEAD CLASSIC RE-ANIMATOR

BY ANTHONY GALLI

Watch the whole film + more HP Lovecraft related video on Network Awesome

Okay, so maybe there’s something to be said for not raising the dead. History seems to show that nothing good ever comes from it. Exhibit A: 1985’s Re-Animator.

Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s 1922 short story “Herbert West: Reanimator,” Re-Animator tells the story of a mad, young scientist who kills his mentor, an old mad scientist,while trying to bring him back to life. Dr. Herbert West is then, unsurprisingly, exiled from the University of Zurich to the now infamous Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts.

And yes, Lovecraft’s Arkham is the namesake of Batman’s notorious Arkham Asylum, home to such notorious reprobates as The Joker, The Riddler, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Bane. Small world.

Herbert West was convinced that animal life could be reanimated successfully after death because life is no more than merely a cellular reflex function; animals are nothing more than electrical machines. Dr. West was convinced that “the so-called ‘soul’ is a myth.”

West’s Promethean hubris will prove to have dire and fatal consequences. Or, as one famous margarine commercial from the 1970’s reminded us, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”

“Herbert West: Reanimator” is a modern-day re-telling (or, re-animation, if you will) of Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Gothic novel Frankenstein. Mary Shelley, 21-years-old when Frankenstein was originally

New Version of 1911's Revenge Anthem, "The Spaniard Who Blighted My Life" Winner of Free Music Archive's Latest Contest

For this month's Revitalize Music Contest, artists from Lisbon to Austin dug through public domain songs, got inspired, and submitted their creations to our contest repository. Our talented judges from the music, radio, and public domain worlds loved hearing the wide range of incredible entries, but eventually had to select a winning song.

OUR WINNER IS CROWN THE INVISIBLE

Crown the Invisible created an incredible power pop rendition of the 1911 revenge anthem "The Spaniard That Blighted My Life" by Billy Merson. The song tells the story of a man whose girl is charmed away by a Spanish bullfighter.

'Twas at the bull fight where we met him
We'd been watching his daring display
And while I went out for some nuts and a programme
The dirty dog stole her away

The winning band's been around for about a year, and are a blend between a studio compositional project and a raucous psychedelic act. They are all young, grizzled rock dudes who live and work in East Williamsburg warehouses, where they've been cultivating their space/stoner rock sound. They describe their band as "if Rick Wakeman played with Ride, but the songs were written by The Pretty Things while they watched Planet of the Apes and listened to Hawkwind." That is to say, they all grew up on early '90s and '60s British stuff.