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WFMU, among a great many other things, is about community, i.e., presenting and promoting local musicians / artists / humorists, in addition the great International performers we present. My Castle of Quiet has always been about the business of seeking out exceptional local musicians, and it doesn't get too much more local for us than Through Thorn and Brier, their craft honed in our shared County of Hudson, NJ. At one time, WFMU's staff was chock-full of NJ-bred radio personalities, many of whom lived and or passed through nearby Bayonne, including late-great broadcasters and good friends of mine, Terry Folger and Frank "Vanilla Bean" Balesteri, both of them taken from us way too soon. Bayonne borders directly on WFMU's home town of Jersey City, and offers great pizza, good bars and a decent standard of living for a largish NJ city. All that considered, if you told me that Bayonne had bred a strong, talented, one-of-a-kind punk / metal band, I still might have doubted the veracity of your claim, not sure why though. That is, right up until the first time I heard Through Thorn and Brier.
Originally stumbling upon their songs on bandcamp, in a position I now often find myself in, checking out a band that I missed live for no good reason except that I generally like to stay home. Sporting twin brothers on vocals and guitar, amidst a mighty, accomplished lineup, TTAB play a threatening, driven brand of metal-infused punk music, with arcing guitar melodies, swinging, thudding riffs, and ominous, almost tribal beats; add roaring vocals and a general mood of rolling with reckless abandon. If punk-metal hybrid bands can be "catchy," TTAB certainly ARE, their riffs immediately inspiring head swirling; one of those physically motivating bands that make me wish that I had long, straight, flowing hair to swing in time.
Every Through Thorn and Brier song is something like a mini-suite, blasting through multiple inspiring riffs and you-must-pay-attention time signatures in a matter of minutes, taking you on a ride you can't fully absorb the first time, and isn't that the way? Shouldn't a band's numbers be such that new pleasures reveal each time you listen?
Call them screamo (don't!), call them hardcore, or metal—all those genre labels quickly dissolve in the hands of the best of bands—and TTAB's songs cover a wild breadth of punk and metal styles with purpose and ease, such that the hops are never gratuitous and always contribute quite naturally to the sum of their parts.
I was very pleased to present this excellent band, well-deserving of more widespread notoriety, as evidenced here. (Note: Where songs were played without a complete stop in between, they are presented here as such, i.e., tracks 1 and 3 consist of three songs apiece.)
Thanks and much appreciation must go to engineer Juan Aboites, for working his ass off, and making everything sound full and ferocious. Thanks too, to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting, who for maybe the 100th time, pieced together a handsome band portrait from my miserable iPhone captures.
You can hear the Good Grief EP and Failure Prone MLP (both worth owning) and purchase hard copy of the same at Through Thorn and Brier's bandcamp page. There, you'll also see their use of non-typical, decidedly un-metal imagery, a move well appreciated by this DJ / writer. Also visit ttabhc.com for more up-to-date band info.
Join us for a weekend of vinyl worship: WFMU's 2014 Record Fair throws down at the Armory at Lexington and 26th St (68 Lexington Ave) in Manhattan THIS Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!
HOURS & ADMISSION
Friday, May 30th - Early Admission 4-7pm ($25, with unlimited re-entry all weekend) - Regular Admission 7-10pm ($7)
LIVE BROADCASTS - Michael Shelley (Sat 11am-1pm) - Fool's Paradise with Rex (Sat 1-3pm) - Cherry Blossom Clinic with Terre T (Sat 3-6pm)
LIVE VIDEO (watch Record Fair madness on our Ustream feed) - Clay Pigeon of the Dusty Show interviews revelers at the Fair (Sat 1pm & 6pm, Sun 1pm & 6pm) - Dan Melchior and The Flatmates perform live (Sat 3:30pm) - Live set by Laura Cantrell (Sun 2pm) - Ubu Sings Ubu Band performance (Sun 5pm)
The Varitone was an effects unit marketed for Sax, Flute and Clarinet use, starting in 1967. I'd never heard of it until picking up this seven inch, 33 1/3 RPM demonstration record a short while ago. I was underwhelmed by the sound of the thing, and was surprised to find that it was fairly well known in its day, looked fairly goofy attached to the side of an instrument, and proved popular with a number of musicians.
But all of that was presumably in the future when the Selmer company produced this promotional record, which I would guess came out at the same time as the product itself. Sorry about the beat-up quality of the record - it came to me in that condition...
"Henry Valpin set down the sounds of the heavens and wrote them into a devastating harmony, which he called ... Sky Music.
Here is a factual story that is indeed stranger than fiction ... If you find it difficult to believe, I will not blame you! But I swear to its truth and write it now just as I saw and heard it happen!"
(from Sky Music, 1956)
"Eerily, like music from another world, the magic notes hung in the air! Dorothy and John Blaik shivered as they watched the strange, evil-looking vampire girl sing the "Song of the Undead!"
(Song of the Undead, 1952)
Yes indeed, we're back with another duet of terror tales this week for the Comic Supplement here at BotB. One is a hearty pre-comics-code dish, and the other, our lead story, is of the later not-quite-so-grisly variety, toned-down so as not to upset the kiddies. I think you'll find both of them amusing, though, and their songs will echo in your mind until our next meeting here in two weeks, when we will head in another direction genre-wise to serve up more music-and-media-related vintage comic book goodies.
I recently acquired four rather wonderful production reels, the product of someone named Bob Hahn, featuring works created for the Canadian Radio market. These seem to have been sampler reels, and like many of the commercials I've been lucky enough to come across from the '50's and early '60's, they are all really nice, and quite magical in places. Today, the tape labeled as the first of the four: This particular reel is dated October 9, 1961, which (and this is entirely unrelated) was also John Lennon's 21st birthday.
I've grouped them together where there were ads for the same product, unless those ads included full minute ads, which I've largely separated out into their own files. A few are no more than music beds, and many contain instrumental passages meant for voiceovers. In all, there are 20 ads heard within the 11 tracks below.
A few notes on the tracks:
Track three is interesting in that it contains the voices of some Canadian radio personalities, including Gordon Sinclair, who would become more well known in the US over a decade later, when he wrote and recorded the original version of the spoken word hit "The Americans". I don't know what "Big 8" was (featured in track 5) - there is a soft drink company by that name in Canada, but it only seems to have existed for the last 30 years or so. Tracks 8 & 9 sound identical to me, but were separate on the list and the tape, so both are included. And although track 11 does not metnion the Dow company (at least, I don't hear it) in the lyrics, this ad is referred to on the "take sheet" (reproduced below) as "Dow Square Dance".
Enjoy! There are more where these came from!
Comments can be sent to [email protected] - I will try to add any received to this post.
