WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Star Children: Heaven’s Gate and the Self-Destructive Family

by Joe DeMartino

Watch the whole video on Network Awesome

If we’re very, very lucky -- and I’m talking here about the kind of luck that would get you rudely expelled from even the highest-class Las Vegas casino -- the star Betelgeuse, located 640 light years away from us in the top-left corner of the constellation Orion, will die within our lifetimes. Betelgeuse is much larger than our sun, which means that its lifespan is correspondingly shorter. Its death throes will manifest in a supernova -- a stellar explosion of such magnitude that it will put out apocalyptic amounts of light and energy. Stars operate on eonic timelines, so Betelgeuse could erupt in the next ten seconds, or the next hundred thousand years. If our luck holds, we’ll see it almost as a second sun -- it’ll rival the moon in the night sky. We’ll be able to read by its light. For a few brief months, Betelgeuse will put on an inspiring show.

Most of us will stare at it and see something gorgeous. Others will be quietly terrified -- the heavens rarely speak unless to say something, and nothing good can come of a message sent through the death of another solar system. Still others will marvel for a day, until the wonder of the thing recedes into banality, long before the star itself dims.

For at least one person -- and I don’t yet know who that is, but I’ll near-guarantee he or she exists -- the supernova won’t be inspiring, or terrifying, or banal. It’ll be an excuse. Time to go. Time for everyone to go.

Marshall Applewhite -- slight, wide-eyed, with the calm conviction of an airline pilot -- saw his excuse in the comet Hale-Bopp, whose passing was perhaps the most widely-observed celestial event in human history. Applewhite’s cult, Heaven’s Gate, counted among its beliefs the idea that the Earth was

The Films and Music That Made My Year

The films listed below could all be considered "horror," the great bulk in the genre sense, with a significant few in the true-to-life, human-drama sense. Entries are by no means intended to be up-to-date or contemporary, though many are. A dozen-plus gems near-guaranteed to rock any cinéaste's watch list and/or Netflix queue.

Attenberg - A Greek drama, with a minimum of quirk and a lot of (tortured) soul; an alternately heartbreaking and humorous drama about two female friends, one who's deeply socially and sexually repressed (her closest connection being with her dying Father), while her girlfriend is basically the town tramp, continuously attempting to school her in the ways of love and men. Their stories arc, collide and intertwine, to a thoughtfully employed, rousing score of classic Suicide songs. Great, inspiring, slice-of-life stuff.

V / H / S - My favorite horror film of the year, with Kill List coming in at a very close second. V / H / S churns the handheld-shaky-cam technique to its most clever heights, with what's barely seen, or seen in a peripheral blur, to be the scariest material therein. The premise is also terrific, such that this collection of shorts are all presumed to be on unlabeled VHS tapes, found by some thieves in the house of a man who has either expired, or been rendered unconscious, in an easy chair, faced by a stack of snowy televisions. I love ideas; that's what keeps me coming back again and again to horror films, and V / H / S is simply overflowing. The film was a collaboration, a mash-up of sorts by some upper-echelon undergorund-horror writing and directing talent, people like Oren Peli, Ti West and Joe Swanberg. A tense and harrowing ride throughout. Don't try too hard to figure it out, or apply conventional narrative sense to the proceedings; just let it wash over, and prepare to be genuinely scared.

Walter Brennan's "He's Your Uncle! Not Your Dad..." (part two) and Vick Knight and the KEY Records Story

 

"A fella in the lobby asked me if we were going to record this album in stereo. I told him absolutely not. Stereo has two loudspeakers, one on each side of the set.  The one on the right is OK, but I refuse to listen to anything coming from the left.    Seriously though, if I brought home a record machine with a speaker on the left, my wife wouldn't let me in the house.  Now there's a patriot for you!"

(from side two of "He's Your Uncle!")

Today we're presenting side two of this bizarre ultra-right-wing album from 1967, luridly written and directed by Vick Knight and voiced with gusto by Walter Brennan, in continuation of the first post on this subject two weeks ago. Since then I've tried to uncover more information about the KEY records label and its strong predilection towards hyper-conservative and inflammatory spoken-word albums. Join me after the jump for this entertaining record (via mp3) and the related facts and pictures that have turned up about this under-documented Los Angeles company.

Smells Like Columbus Circle

Last Wednesday was Art Day, so Sluggo and I went to see Discovering Columbus, which was supposed to end on November 19 but has been extended through December 2. The friend who gave us the heads-up about the extension said it was because so many people missed seeing it on account of the Superstorm; I haven’t been able to confirm that, but as soon as she told us it was still on, I jumped online and got tickets for Wednesday morning. 

The piece is easy to describe, but its effect is not simple. Tatzu Nishi has built a living room up in the air around the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. You climb up seven flights of stairs, and enter a hallway, and then turn into some rich guy’s living room where the 13-foot–tall statue is a knickknack on the coffee table. It’s delightful. A little girl who followed us inside dissolved in a fit of giggles when she saw it, the kind of little-kid giggles where you finally have to tip over onto a chair and kick your legs like a bug. Then her dad started trying to teach her to say “recontextualize.”

It’s cool to get to see the statue close up; it’s cool to see it in that context, which brings up thoughts of the 1% and private art and public art. The furniture is mostly from Bloomingdales, but the wallpaper was designed by Nishi himself, and features images of things he knew about America when he was growing up in Japan: Elvis, Marilyn, Michael Jackson, Coca-Cola, Malcolm X, Mickey Mouse. It made me think about how Columbus didn’t even know he was in America, he thought he was somewhere else. Everybody’s always discovering America, and nobody ever knows what it is. The big, flat-screen TV in the room is always on, set permanently to Fox News.

After we discovered Columbus, I went across the street to the Museum of Arts and Design for “The Art of Scent,” which had opened the day before. It is the best museum show I have ever smelled. 

I was lucky to get there the day after the show opened—it really was delayed by the storm—before everything starts malfunctioning and they run out of the perfumes. When I was there, the only thing that wasn’t working was the player for the video interviews with some of the artists—no big deal. Also, I was there at 11:00, right when the museum opened, and when I walked into the main gallery, it was empty: empty of people, and empty of things. It looked like a big, white, empty room, until I noticed some faint depressions in the wall, about the size and shape of a row of urinals. This was the exhibit: 12 scents, arranged in chronological order, from Jicky (1889)—Jicky!—to Untitled (2010). You stick your head into one of the urinal-like devices, and a puff of scent envelopes your face. The sort of info that’s usually on a wall label is projected onto the wall next to where you’re standing, then disappears. The exhibits lead you through a sketch of developments in the art of fragrance—the introduction of synthetics and new molecules and new ways to construct olfactory compositions. Although all these scents were developed to be sold commercially, they are not treated as commercial products, they are presented as works of art.

In a smaller room off the main gallery, there’s a long table with bowls full of the 12 scents featured in the main exhibit. You’re invited to dip a scent strip in each one and then use a tablet to enter two words you think describe each. The words “hostile” and “unwearable” weren’t included, so I wasn’t able to say anything about “Untitled,” but I took a scent strip from each sample anyway. There were five slits along one wall, where cards were dispensed to show four mods in the development of Tresor, along with the final composition, and it was interesting to see how that happened and at what point I thought they should’ve quit while they were ahead.

I’m probably not the average perfume-wearing DJ, in that I would rather smell like the air from a bicycle tire (Bvlgari Black) or a stack of wet cardboard (Dzing!) than a flower. Even so, I think you should go to MAD for “The Art of Scent,” just because there’s never been anything like it. And because you’ll get to smell Jicky.

 

Their House Is A Museum, Where People Come To See 'Em

 

We live in strange times.  We are approaching the third and fourth wave of vintage retro music, particularly exotica revivals, a music style that is initially almost a mockery of traditional Polynesian music, but in itself a pretty wide open, otherworldy bastard of a music genre, among others.  I never thought that Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons would see so many generations of enthusiasm outside of their initial flashpoint, but there are workings and reworkings.  People still think that the wing wong chong sounds in "China Girl" and "Kung Fu Fighting" are implements of traditional Asian music, even though to anyone outside of 1940, they hardly have a resemblance.   Sometimes, though, reworkings of reworkings of concepts that never really existed in real life can be captivating.  Such is the case with the marvelous people who are trying to make the half-imaginary mansions from the Addams Family and The Munsters, both TV shows filmed on generic stage sets, a reality.

It might be more than a little geeky, but I totally support these folks who are trying to settle this problem once and for all.  

For the Addams Family, it seems to be rather impossible.  An architect named Mark Bennett did an entire book speculating the floor plans of several television sitcoms, but this blogger points out the very obvious flaws in these plans, especially in the (lacking) foyer to the Addams Family house.   Both of these fellas are cross referencing scenes from every episode of the series with one single painting of a house in LA that is now demolished.  The image of the house was only ever painted from one angle, scenes from the series were never shot there.  It happened to be painted on glass, and they would simulate rain in front of this painting when necessary.  Sometimes, they would zoom the camera all the way into the window to show us more intimately what Pugsley or Wednesday were doing. 

How to Sell the Iron Fireman in Winter - A Pep Talk for the Sales Force Via Acetate (MP3's)

In addition to lots of reel to reel tapes, I also collect home recorded and other one-of-a-kind acetates. These heavy records, often are recorded with the same sort of things that can be so fascinating on reel tapes, although usually with the opposite end of things in terms of sound quality. Here's an example, a pep talk for a sales team heading into a difficult sales period. 

Here's what little is evident from what is said on the two-sided, eight minute recording (and on its label): A man named Cy held a position in management with the company that made the automatic coal stoker for furnaces known as The Iron Fireman. It was early winter. It had been an election year, and it was a war year - maybe 1942? 1944? Or possibly during the Korean War (a possibility which depends on whether that conflict was called a "war" at the time, or if it really was called a "police action" at the time). 

Cy is trying to sound buddy-buddy with the guys, and also seems to want the talk to sound off-the-cuff and conversational. But he can't pull it off - it is painfully obvious that he's reading a script - he's just not that good at it. Travel back to another time and place, and see whether you would have had what it took to sell The Iron Fireman during winter: 

The Iron Fireman: A Personal Word from Cy, Part One (MP3)

The Iron Fireman: A Personal Word from Cy, Part Two (MP3)

Record Label (JPG) 

"He's Your Uncle! Not Your Dad..." By Walter Brennan

 

I had an itch to post this during the final weeks of the presidential race, but due to the record's rather hateful (but hilarious) far-right conservative script (as read by one of my record-collecting faves Walter Brennan) I elected to wait and see how the chips fell before I dove in.  Since the reptilian/humanoid candidate lost we'll now present side one of this rare little gem. Again, one of those discs that I've been DJ'ing bits of for a LONG time and I'm glad to share it in its entirety (well, side one this time anyhoo).

   As written by Vick Knight in the early 1960's for Key Records (who I'd like to know more about), it spends two full sides tearing down the LBJ administration and its 'terribly destructive' policies carried over from the Kennedy years. I got quite a shock when I first bought this and heard Mr. Good-Time Ol' Farmer Guy using his normal voice for a change and ripping savagely into anything remotely resembling liberal government policies. The stark cover also struck me as quite attractive as well.

  Both sides of the lp are continuous, so I broke it into eight parts when I ripped it to digital years ago, for easier DJ'ing and listening. So buckle up and hear a side of Mr. Brennan that you may not have heard before.

Side One pt. 1           pt. 2           pt. 3           pt.4

A 1953 CBS Radio Sales Presentation (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 33) (MP3's)

In one corner of my basement archives, there is a large stack of tapes I bought two or three years ago, which have proven especially fascinating, to the point that I'm deliberately parceling them out to myself, as sort of periodic "gifts" of really special listening. These are media tapes, many of them raw audio from television or film, and most of those having something to do with the CBS networks.  I previously shared a tape of Howard K. Smith and Sen. Albert Gore, Sr., from this same collection (which contains a lot of Howard K. Smith tapes). 

Today's tape is different than the others that I've listened to in that it is the soundtrack for a film, specifically, a film meant to drum up advertising business for CBS radio. There are enough moments of background music, and even a few sound effects, to make it clear that there was a visual element to this presentation. And this tape is undoubtably the final raw source tape for the soundtrack - there are upwards of 50 splices in the tape, where various recorded elements were stitched together from what were probably multiple takes, some of which are visible in the scan of the tape. There's even a cut in the middle where a very non-announcer-like voice tells us that there would be a switching of film reels. 

It's an interesting presentation, even without the visuals. After a brief, catchy introductory piece, there is a lengthy discussion of how prosperous America has become in the last 15 years (and I'm sure those who were in abject poverty in 1953, and/or fighting racism would love to hear how the country was one big middle class at that point, with very few people living at the fringes). It ties this in with the increased buying power of Americans. Then it moves into the sales pitch.

I was sort of fascinated by the fact that although the subject becomes RADIO at about the six minute point, the word "radio" is not mentioned until more than three minutes later (although there are clips from radio programs, and there may have been many visuals of radios, of course), and even more interested in the fact that CBS is not mentioned until about 3/4 of the way through, and initially, it's mentioned as an example of a network, rather than the focus of the presentation. 

The presentation concerns itself largely with the omnipresence of radio in the country, its varied uses and its mobility, and finally, the value of advertising on radio, versus print or television, especially the lower cost for what had been proven to be greater audience attention. There is a funny series of short ads for a fake hair care product in the mix, too.

A odd point is made about CBS having "more of the top 29 programs than all other networks combined", which made me wonder if that "more" number was 15, making the the more typical statement, which would be about the top 30 shows, impossible. Or perhaps there were only 29 network shows left by 1953 - whether the CBS honchos knew it or not, national radio programming of the sort being promoted here was quickly leaving our world. Before the end of 1957, the very last radio network comedy show (Stan Freberg's masterful half-hour) would go off the air, and by 1960, there were precious few dramas, and few, if any, variety shows. 

A 1953 CBS Radio Sales Presentation (Film Soundtrack) (MP3)  | Tape (JPG)  | Tape Box (JPG)

The Cry Of My Lai (MP3)

Ivan Lee  -  The Cry Of My Lai  (2:51)

The My Lai Massacre was surely the ugliest incident of the entire Vietnam war. The event took place in March 1968 and involved members of the U.S. Army murdering hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.  Estimates place the number of victims at somewhere between approximately 350 and 500 people, many of them women, children and the elderly.

The awful killings inspired a number of topical country songs about the event, almost all of which, in a position that doesn't seem too defensible in hindsight, defended William Calley, the Leiutenant who ordered the killings.

Ivan Lee's The Cry Of My Lai, however, is an exception in that it offers Calley no support and, in fact, decisively condemns his actions.  In case you missed it, this event was the subject of an earlier Beware Of The Blog post, one that included 9 other records about the massacre.

Putin Summer Retrospective

As befits the future Savior of Humanity (or at least the Savior of Blonde Russian Gymnasts in the Duma), Vladimir Putin has been extremely busy this past summer. One of his major tasks has involved recruiting new members of the Putin Pals, his protective managerie of super-powered animal agents. Thunk Tank Cohost Jay and I often wondered why it was that the Putin Pals did not have any bird members, when their primary mission will be to defeat the insect forces of MANTIS. How is it that Putin would recruit a Were-Whale before he’d got even one bird? (Anuka, the Flying Donkey, does not count as a bird, because: Legs. Hooves. Hair. Mammal.) Naturally, the Leader was just waiting until the time was ripe, and this summer he finally judged time to be squooshy and soft enough to unveil his Craneforce. Dressing in the uniform of a Crane Obergruppenfuhrer—sort of a white hazmat jumpsuit with weird black goggles—Putin jumped aboard Craneforce One and led the baby cranes on skywriting maneuvers high in the sky above Moscow, where they wrote “Surrender, Pussy Riot!” in smoke, and also in Russian, not English. And Cyrillic. Cyrillic letters are really hard to make in smoke, but of course Putin enjoys the challenge.

JFK Tribute 45's from the Fringes (MP3's)

November 22, 1963, saw the end of John F. Kennedy's life, and, as many have observed, the end of many hopes, dreams and wishes, of a certain innocence, and of any success for Vaughn Meader. But literally within days, the events on that Dallas afternoon had given birth to a new cottage industry, that of JFK tribute records. Has anyone been to a rummage sale, estate sale or used record sale without coming across at least a few copies of Kennedy tribute LP's?  

More interesting to me than the mass produced big budget albums from the major labels are the one-off singles done with perhaps more sincerity than talent. For your consideration today, here are two of them. 

Johnny Tucker appears to have made only one single for the obscure Sonic label. The record is undated, but one online source indicates that the backing band heard here is listed on some copies (although not mine) as The Pastels, aka The Vigilantes. Johnny's tribute is simply titled "Mr. Kennedy", and is straightforward enough until about the halfway point, where someone made the bizarre decision - one I can't remember ever hearing on a record - of having a spoken word section double tracked, made even weirder by the fact that the two vocals are ever so slightly out of synch with each other! 

I've included the flip side, "Walk With Me" (which does not related in any way to Kennedy) for completists: 

Johnny Tucker - Mr Kennedy (MP3)  |  Johnny Tucker - Walk With Me (MP3)  | Johnny Tucker A-side Label  |  Johnny Tucker B-side Label

Song-Poem companies also made hay off of the Kennedy tragedy. Today's other record came from the Sterling song-poem factory in Boston, and features one of my favorite song-poem singers, Norm Burns. My particular love for this singer is fairly hard to explain, if all you have in evidence is this record, which is fairly awful in both writing and performance, but there are enough examples of his gifts here to demonstrate why I think so highly of him.

This record, however, is more entertaining for its deficits, particularly some of the choices made by the songwriter, who contributed the lyrics to both sides. The more famous song here is "John F. Kennedy Was Called Away", which was included in both the first (LP) and second (CD) song-poem compilations released, back in the '90's, and again, I'll include that here, both because it fits the topic, and because there may be some who haven't heard it. The flip side has not been heard outside of those of us obsessives in the song-poem collecting world, and it shares some of the same qualities with its more famous record-mate. It's called "John F. Kennedy's Election Race". 

The laziness (or perhaps incompetence) of the songwriter really calls attention to itself. I particularly like: 

 "And now he is gone, and all we can do is sing these songs" (did the obvious and more effective rhyme "carry on" really not occur to the writer?)

(about Oswald): "He saw that there's really no use, because there's nothing anyone wanted to do."   (um...huh?)

"He did not discriminate any race.... (he) tried to keep each and every one in his place" (well, which was it?)

"Now in West Berlin, he had been"

And my favorite is the way the lyrics to "Election Race" build up to the big finish, that last important line, in which we learn that: 

"John F. Kennedy loved our air force base!"

This record, by the way, came out nowhere near time of the events it describes, but rather, was produced some time around 1972. 

Norm Burns and the Five Stars - John F Kennedys Election Race (MP3)  |  Norm Burns and the Five Stars - John F Kennedy Was Called Away (MP3)  |  "Election Race" Label  |  "Called Away" Label 

 

Doc on Portland's Defunct DIY Venue The X-Ray Cafe

thx Nathan Cearley

The Dog Day of Summer: August 26

Sunday was National Dog Day, which apparently is celebrated on August 26 each year by anyone who happens to know about it. Even though most people do not know about National Dog Day, everyone knows that dogs are awesome, especially Boston Terriers, which are the best dog ever for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that purebred dog people are always going on and on about how their dogs are still suitable for the task for which they were bred, e.g., they do not actually take their Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever down to the pond to lure ducks with his attractive white markings, but they could if they wanted to. The Boston Terrier, however, was originally bred to be a little super-deformo pit bull fighting dog, yet there never was a BT in the world who would fight, they just want to play and be happy and lick your hand and eat delicious treats. In other words, the breed was always a total failure at the task for which it was bred, and that is why it is still awesome even today.

The Rise & Fall of MP3 Blogs — guest post by Casey Rae

The history of the MP3 is one of technological innovation, consumer demand and all-too-persistent litigation, often against those very consumers who embraced the format in the heady post-Napster days. The story of this resilient digital audio file has been recounted many times — from the recording industry’s early wars of attrition to the MP3s role in the filesharing explosion to the bloggers who help curate an oversaturated music marketplace.

What doesn’t garner as much discussion is how the MP3 format — celebrated, reviled or somewhere in-between — has come to define the digital music experience, both for millions of listeners, and for those who help drive discovery. At one point, not so long ago, music bloggers sat near the top of the curatorial heap, using MP3s to help create overnight stars out of teenage indie rockers. Others highlighted niche genres and aural nuggets from decades past.

At first, MP3 bloggers were seen by the industry as freeloading pariahs, but eventually even the major labels came to embrace this segment of the online music community. Seeking a promotional fast track, the PR flaks hit the blogosphere hard, cultivating relationships with known tastemakers. Eventually, the pursuit of musical passion became a business concern, or at worse, a hassle.

I was a full-time music writer back when CDs were the promotional norm. Over the course of time, the padded envelopes slowed to a trickle and my inbox was flooded with MP3s from labels and publicists. It was frankly hard to keep up. The annoyance factor eventually contributed to my decision to do something different with my life.

I know I’m not alone. Looking around these days, you could be forgiven for thinking the “music blogger bubble” has popped. There are likely several reasons beyond inbox fatigue. The rise of “social music” — where friend networks replace curation via instant “recommendations” on platforms like Facebook — surely has something to do with it. But listening habits are also changing. No longer is downloading necessarily the fastest and most convenient way to get your musical fix.

When thinking about the future for MP3 blogging, it’s instructive to consider how younger generations discover and access music. The listening behaviors of those under 20 can tell us a lot about how aspects of our networked world might evolve. A new Nielsen survey suggests that YouTube has overtaken radio and CDs as the primary way American teens listen to music. At 64 percent, YouTube listening is even ahead of iTunes, which comes in at just over 50 percent. YouTube, is of course, a “streaming” platform, which presents a potential challenge to downloading culture.

In other words, streaming access is rapidly becoming a norm. Recent reports show that Warner Music now counts streaming as 25 percent of its overall digital music revenue. This is certainly significant for a sector that has struggled for more than a decade with the implications of online music.

Ode To Mary Jo (MP3)

  

Marvin Solley  -  Ode To Mary Jo

 On July 18, 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne left a Martha's Vineyard party with Senator Ted Kennedy, who piloted  his Oldsmobile 88 off the side of a nearby bridge and into the water below.  He managed to escape, but Kopechne drowned in the car.  In an act of indefensible cowardice, Kennedy fled the scene and did not get around  contacting the police until 10AM the next morning.

It's somewhat amazing, but people were still recording songs about the event 11 years later.  Well, maybe not people in general, but Marvin Solley.  Solley ratchets up the intensity factor by beginning his song with sound effects of a car skidding out of control and plunging into the water.

A few other songs about this tragedy can be heard in previous BOTB posts.

Daffy’s Inferno: An American World War II Propaganda Revue in Seven Chapters

by Joe DeMartino - Collection: US WWII Cartoons

What's on Network Awesome today?

Beyond a few broad, core truths (the Nazis are Evil, the Axis are a Threat), propaganda is by its very nature filled with falsehoods, exaggerations, and lies. It reveals far more about the country that created it than its actual target. In the following cartoons, which cast the most popular animated characters of the time into situations both comic and nightmarish, the concerns of World War II America are laid bare: it's scared, defiant, and strangely obsessed. 

Wrath

During a parable about the idiocy of signing a non-aggression pact with a man who is a wolf AND a Nazi, the Three Little Pigs run into the eldest pig’s house, which is made out of bricks and heavy cannons. There’s a sign on the door which says: “No Dogs Allowed”, except “Dogs” has been crossed out and

MP3 - A Crash Course, guest post by Jonathan Sterne

Today, there are more mp3s in circulation than all other recording formats combined. This alone would be cause to write a book about them, but I became fascinated with mp3s because of how they are made. An mp3 encoder uses a mathematical model of the gaps and absences in human hearing to remove some of the data in an audio file, in order to make it smaller. If the encoder “thinks” you won’t hear part of a sound recording, it yanks it out on the encoding end, so that the resulting mp3 file is smaller, and therefore easier to transmit over data lines or to stockpile on hard drives and flash memories.

I wanted to know where this model of human hearing came from and what it could tell us about our contemporary sonic culture. The result is my new book, MP3:The Meaning of a Format.

The technology behind the mp3 is called “perceptual coding,” and I quickly discovered it has deep connections to the development of hearing science and telecommunications over the last hundred years. Everything we think we know about hearing in the state of nature is a result of the interactions between ears and media in the 20th century.

MP3s also point to the importance of compression in the development of communication technologies. Each generation of new media is usually sold to consumers as being of higher definition and greater verisimilitude than its predecessor (think of how DVDs and Blu-Ray have been marketed, for instance). But developments in compression and lower-definition transmission are equally important for everything from telegraphs, to telephones, to color television, to satellite transmission to the internet. This other history is less apparent because it is manifest inside our hard drives, and inside the massive infrastructures that allow us to move data around. It is not as shiny or sexy as the latest consumer gadget, but it could well be more important for everything from aesthetics to policy.

Silver Bridge Disaster - Part 4 (MP3)

Yep, it's time for another dispatch about the Silver Bridge disaster.  I really never intended to do four of these, but somehow I keep finding additional 45s about this terrible event, and I'm contractually obligated to share 'em all with you, so here we go again.  Incidentally, parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found at the linked numbers in this sentence.

Lowell Varney & Jim Horn  -  The Silver Bridge

In case you're new to this tragic story, the Silver Bridge spanned the Ohio River between Kanuaga, Ohio and Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1928 until December 15, 1967 when it collapsed and fell into the icy waters below.  The catastrophe, which happened during the busy afternoon rush hour, cost 46 people their lives.

The tragedy was the inspiration for a number of topical records; I'm up to nine at this point and I have a feeling that the well's pretty close to dry at this point.  The disc we're focused on today comes from the REM label, a Lexington, Kentucky outfit that took its name from the initials of owner Robert E. Mooney, who also produced this piece.

From a Soldier in Thailand, to His Girl Back Home (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 31) (MP3's)

Somewhere in my collecting travels, this reel came into my collection. On it, the recipient of (what I'm sure were) countless audio letters from her sweetheart, collected four of them, splicing what were originally three inch reels back to back onto a seven inch reel. 

The sender, as the tapes makes clear, was at the time a soldier stationed in Thailand. The month was June, and the days of the week mentioned (i.e. Saturday, June 19th) would indicate that the year was either 1965 or 1971 (assuming as I do that the tapes were made during the '60's or early '70's). 

The tapes begin on June 7th, but most of that tape seems to have been lost over the years, so I've included the fragments (the first two minutes of side one and the last two minutes of side two) at the end of this post. 

The meat of the audio here are three tapes from late June - on the 19th, the 25th and the 27th. The first tape is nice to hear, but to me doesn't contain as much of interest as do the other two tapes. In between the tapings on the 19th and 25th, the man speaking and a cohort took a lengthy trip to Bangkok, and the sites seen during that trip, and another shorter trip make up for the most interesting parts of the audio letters from the later in the month. 

The tape from the 25th describes the drive, and the endless farm fields, as well as some particularly interesting temples. The tape from the 27th has my favorite moment, in which talks about a bike ride he took with another soldier, and how they were invited into one of the temples, at the virtual insistence of the monks, the reasons why, what happened once they were inside, and... well, you'll hear it, as well as his explanation for why he believes they acted in that way. 

In between all that are descriptions of life on the base, discussions of the oppressive heat, random observations on other things, and many, many tender expressions of his love for the girl he is missing. 

Finding recordings as like the one on this tape is among the biggest reasons I spend my free time delving into the contents of old reels, and I'm sure there are others out there who will enjoy this just as much. Here are the three main recordings, split up into the two sides as they originally would have been heard on the small reels: 

From a Soldier in Thailand - June 19th, Part One (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 19th, Part Two (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 25th, Part One (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 25th, Part Two (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 27th, Part One (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 27th, Part Two (MP3)  

Here are the fragments of the earlier recording, as well as a scan of the tape itself:  

From a Soldier in Thailand - June 7th, Fragment One (MP3)  |  From a Soldier in Thailand - June 7th, Fragment Two (MP3)  |  Tape (JPG) 

Kitty Wells, First Queen of Country Music

Like its southern sister, reggae music, the folkways inherent in country music songcraft tend to hold onto and remold a good melody when they catch one. The song "Wild Side of Life", by William Warren and Arlie Carter is one of the most famous examples, using the basic 1 / 4 / 5 arrangement from the Carter Family's touching "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes", which was itself inspired by elder tunes of course; and had already been riffed upon once since the Carters as "The Great Speckled Bird" (a now seemingly antique song on its own) by Roy Acuff. According to writer Bill Malone, the song's co-writer William Warren found inspiration for "Wild Side ... in his memories of a relationship with a younger woman, a 'honky-tonk angel, as it were, who found the glamour of the gay night life' too hard to resist".  Hank Thompson's version of the song (recorded on December 11th, 1951, with his new producer Ken Nelson) was now his first charting single since 1949, living three and a half months atop the Billboard country chart in the spring and early summer of 1952.    Hank Thompson / The Wild Side of Life

Pretty soon, down in southern Louisiana a record was cut by a young lady from Washington, Louisiana, name of Al Montgomery and prepped for release by author Jay Miller on his own Feature label. Through a quirk of fate, Montgomery never got a chance to break through with her version, as the song fell into the 'right hands at the right time' to make it the biggest thing ever.