WFMU's Beware of the Blog

"Going-Going-Real Gone" and "The Unsuspecting"

Today while I'm still out of town, let's look at two oddball stories here in the Comics Supplement, one by an unknown creative team from 1954, and another by old favorites Steve Ditko and Stan Lee from 1962.

Our first story comes from the fourth and last issue of MAD magazine clone Madhouse, the Sept./Oct. issue from 1954, an infamous and surreal little yarn - Going-Going-Real Gone. A bigger bunch of screwed-up and made-up 'hip' lingo and situations I could hardly come up with!  The only firm credits we have for the book are of its editors: Ruth Roche, and art editor Sam Iger, who both had long and interesting careers before working on this Ajax-Farrell comic book line in the 1950s. Words fail one on this tale, you'll see what I mean.

We'll close with a bonus short story from Amazing Adult Fantasy magazine number 13, June 1962, as brought to us by Ditko and Lee in "The Magazine that Respects Your Intelligence!", and it deals with one of their favorite recurring themes: the power and influence of television. 

So hold onto your intelligence and your sanity against the assult about to come - right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 66

Earcandy for your eyes

Wrekmeister Harmonies playing live at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn on August 30, 2013.

After the break: Negative Plane and Poison Idea at Saint Vitus

Jamaica-Queens-The World; Psychic Limb live on the My Castle of Quiet pseudo-finale

What makes a great grind band? Doing as much as you can in an average of 43 seconds' song duration, flexing those ferocious chops from all angles, and, though this may be hard to explain to someone whose ears are attuned to pop music and the traditional song form, a certain "catchiness," an anthemic propulsion that will make the listener/receiver want to propel oneself into the pit without a care for personal safety. Psychic Limb have all these qualities, in spades.

I've liked these guys from the second I heard them, they stand out mightily from the pack of late 2000s grind on bandcamp and elsewhere, and they make records that stand firmly amongst the classics of the genre. And yes, they can and do reproduce it all in person.

For months, drummer Casey and I tried to schedule a live radio appearance for PL, and finally were able to line something up for the final MCoQ weekly broadcast on June 7, 2013.

This set represents their latest (and reportedly final) release, Jamaica. They still seem to be playing a few shows here and there, so if you have the chance, catch them live while you still can.

Huge thanks to live-sound engineer Juan Aboites, who deftly scultped many a live Castle session in the show's final months of its original tenure. Thanks also to Tracy Widdess, for taking these photos of the band, and for co-hosting the last show with me in person, flying in from Vancouver Island, BC, to do so. Full broadcast archive can be streamed here.

Track titles, though they hardly seem to matter, are as follows: 22, 27, 19, 20, 29, 28, 24, 26, 21, 23, 30, 25. Psychic Limb's set is presented here as it should be, as one continuous mp3.

Andrzej Żuławski: A Man Possessed

by David Selden

Watch the whole film on Network Awesome

Andrzej Żuławski’s “intellectual horror film”, Possession begins with the protagonist’s return from an unspecified but apparently dangerous assignment. In an empty room at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, Mark’s employers plead with him to stay but he is adamant. His “subject” (and his pink socks) will elude them for now. Returning to his bland apartment in a 70’s housing complex, Mark (played somewhat woodenly by Sam Neil), finds his wife is leaving him for Heinrich, an intellectual martial arts expert with a wardrobe of silk shirts.

From there the film spirals into a queasy out of control psycho-drama, with acts of gratuitous violence appearing out of the blue with increasing frequency. Schlock is piled upon schlock until it almost becomes a bonfire of all the vanities of European art house cinema of this period, as well as being a cathartic scream and (perhaps) a pitch black comedy in the tradition of the Grande Guignol.

Żuławski, a protégé of Andrej Wadja, was never a director shy of overstatement. Here in Possession, his first and only English language film, scripted in the midst of a messy divorce case, he piles it on thick with

Another Set of Radio JIngle Demos AND a Advertising Sales Pitch (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 43) (MP3's)

Back in June, I posted a tape containing some radio station and advertising jingles, from circa 1957, all of them apparently demos. There was a nice response, and I got to thinking that there was at least one other tape from the same batch which was similarly marked. 

Well I've found that second box this week, and while it doesn't have the variety or length of the first tape, there are still some nice items. These are also all radio jingles, and from seemingly all over the country, too. but there are no products advertised here. And again, based on the box, it appears that these are demos, rather than finished products.

These are SO short (there are 13 jingles in barely 5 1/2 minutes), that I did not separate them into separate tracks, but I will list here the radio stations which are advertised, with the cities where mentioned:

KMYR 710 Denver - WIL 1430 - KJOE 1480 Shreveport - WINS Weather Jingle - KOIM 1290 - KDOK 1330 Tyler - WHB 710 - KCBQ - WKDA Sports Jingle - WQAM 560 Miami - WSAI 1360 News Jingle - KLIF Dallas (two jingles for this station)

Radio Stations Jingles Demo Reel (MP3) 

And now, here's another radio related tape which may be of interest. Whoever owned this tape used it again to record some fairly awful country music (and they didn't even record it very well), but through the magic of half-track recording, the original material is still present on the second side of the tap, so we all get to here it here. 

This is a tape from an advertising jingle company called Pepper Sound Studios, from some time in the early to mid 1960's. The tape begins with some testimonials from satisfied customers in the radio industry (heard in part one, below), then moves on to the meat of the material, a series of commercials done for a variety of products - examples of the work that Pepper Sound Studios was capable of. This can be heard in part two, below, followed by a sales pitch, also in part two. 

Pepper Sound Studios Presentation, Part One: Testimonials (MP3)

Pepper Sound Studios Presentation, Part Two: Sample Ads and Sales Pitch (MP3)

Tony Bennett and Others in "Youthful Romances" Comics

Rolling out a couple of weeks worth of vacation posts for the Comics Supplement while I'm travelling about, and today we'll start with two yarns from the unusual 1950s love stories comic book Youthful Romances, which had the distinctive gimmick of featuring real-live music celebrities in at least one story of each issue, as well as on the cover.

In our first tale we find two would-be lovers aided by crooner Tony Bennett, as penned by Harry Harrison and drawn by Ernie Bache;  and in the second our guest star is Bob Eberly, from Mechanicville, New York, as written by Ira Zweifach, and rendered by Bob Correa.

Enjoy some vintage funny-book celebrity cross-over fun right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 65

Earcandy for your eyes

Wehrmacht playing a Cryptic Slaughter mini set with Scott Peterson live at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn on August 25, 2013.

After the break: Pharmakon at 538 Johnson and Delphic Oracle at The Hive

Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 210

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

If you think that Warner/Chappell's copyright control over the song Happy Birthday is an absurdity, how about EMI's strict licensing enforcement over many of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches, including his historic "I Have a Dream Speech," delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago today.

I discovered this while performing research for an episode of my radio show that aired last night honoring the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. I was aiming to air King's entire speech and was having trouble finding clean audio of it. In my hunting, I came upon articles (here and here and an op-ed in the Washington Post here) chronicling the history of the King family estate's battles to preserve ownership of MLK's "performances."

In just the sort of act of civil disobedience Dr. King championed, the entire speech does keep popping up on Youtube and elsewhere, but the copyright cops keep getting them taken down.

The sale and broadcast of Henry Hampton's award-winning 1987 documentary Eyes on the Prize was held up for ages because the King Estate sued the filmmaker over use of unlicensed footage of King, including his "I Have a Dream" speech. Ironically, Hampton's film was further legally entangled by its inclusion of another piece of historic footage: a scene depicting Martin Luther King's staff singing him "Happy Birthday."

Sheesh.

    
Various  ~  Folk Music In America (15 volumes)
(Blog: Dinosaur Discs)

Your Tax Dollars at Work
"Folk Music in America is a series of 15 LP records published by the Library of Congress between 1976 and 1978 to celebrate the bicentennial of the American Revolution. It was curated by librarian/collector-cum-discographer Richard K. Spottswood, and funded by a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. The music, pulled primarily from the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song (now Archive of Folk Culture), spans nearly a century (1890-1976) and virtually every form that can be considered American music. This includes native American songs and instrumental music, music of immigrant cultures from all over the world, and uniquely American forms like blues, jazz and country."  (Description by Dinosaur Discs) 

Music #1 and #2; Tom Carter and Pat Murano, live on My Castle of Quiet, 5.24.13

Still working my way through the last few months of live performances on the My Castle of Quiet program, we find ourselves now at this haunting session from late May by Pat Murano and Tom Carter. 

This is an exciting time for improvised music in general, and the releases on Murano's Kelippah label, including the Carter/Murano LP, are at the very forefront of this exciting post-everything era in the genre. Here, we're "after" Krautrock, after 90s space-rock (Carter being a veteran of the much-respected, much-loved Charalambides), after the Parker/Bailey EMANEM-label vibrations from the UK, after doom/drone/"organic" improv, and basically that's all a good thing, as anything goes—one can tweak and kerplunk, be melodic, be massive, be subtle and contemplative, and give bursts of electronic noise, all in the course of one session, or even one piece. 

Carter and Murano seem to guide one another into vast fields of arcing melody and rhythm, and at least for this session (one must consider all the Murano / Carter works to really get the gist, including the aforementioned LP, and NATCH 4, also offered on our Free Music Archive), we're in blooming meadows of post-Kraut brilliance. Especially in "Music #2," Murano's synth figures weave intricate spiderwebs over and under Carter's Michael Rother-like, slow-burn guitar improvisations, before collapsing into a welcome noise-gasm in the concluding minutes.

Yet again, that "magic room," also known as WFMU's studio B, and the forum of the My Castle... show, seem to have provided the comfortable environment for another history-making session to occur. And though kraut/space might be the listener's initial reaction, absolutely nothing is off the table, and I hear elements of dub, doom, and wild, free noise in these tracks. Lie back, with or without your inebriant of choice, and enjoy.

Huge thanks to Tom and Pat (Mr. Murano having the dubious distinction of being the most-often-featured live performer on The Castle, having played this session, as well as ones with Malkuth, K-Salvatore, solo as Decimus, and also on Brian Turner's program in the duo Key of Shame), and to engineer extraordinaire Juan Aboites, and to Tracy Widdess for yet another varicolored photo manipulation of my scrappy captures.

A Slice of Weirdness from WFMT, Chicago (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 42) (MP3)

It's vacation week for me, so I'm offering up text and audio that are both short and sweet. I have a reel of tape which contains four totally unrelated segments of programming from the legendary classical station WFMT in Chicago. The two sections I can date are both from 1968, so I'm guessing that the others are, as well. They are edited together on a reel at random, so that if you play the reel, two of them are heard backwards, and two forwards on each side. 

One track contains Tom Paxton talking about, then playing, a song he wrote for a memorial TV show after the death of Robert Kennedy. Another contains a dull interview with a classical conductor. The third is nothing more than part of a coloratura soprano aria. 

Ah, but between the last two mentioned segments is some real weirdness. Clearly this was meant to be funny, but it's far less humorous than it is very peculiar. It portrays a phone call of complaint from a man, to a harried sounding WFMT announcer, who has taken the call while the currently scheduled record is playing. Perhaps this was met with great laughter at a WFMT staff meeting - that's one reason that occurs to me as to why it exists - but as I said, I just find it sort of intoxicatingly odd. 

 A Phone Call to WFMT (MP3)

The Doll Man Meets the Minstrel, Musician of Menace! (Sept. 1949)

Last week here at the Comics Supplement we enjoyed the second appearance of strange villain The Minstrel, and this time we're going to back up and check out his first battle with Doll Man from two months earlier in DM's own magazine, from July 1949, as written once again by Bill Woolfolk and most likely drawn by Alex Kotzky.

Get set for some hot and nefarious banjo-pickin' licks from this crazy-looking fella (particularly in this episode) and learn about the possible reason that his design was completely revised between this adventure and his next outing barely two months later.

More exciting musical criminal action right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 64

Earcandy for your eyes

Aa (Big A little a) playing live at Death By Audio in Brooklyn on August 8, 2013.

The Two Dimensional World of Three Dimension

The 3-D craze of nineteen fifties cinema was incredibly brief. 1953 was its banner year with at least thirty 3-D pictures released to the hordes. Although it quickly became associated with all-things juvenile and a ready replacement for the Saturday afternoon serials, the 3-D onslaught produced a few highly unlikely and decidedly mature little gems.

Take for instance Inferno starring Robert Ryan and Rhonda Fleming in multiple dimensions (skip your Rhonda Fleming joke, please). The premise was not for the kiddies. Fleming and a virile new man enjoy a torrid affair behind husband Robert Ryan's back. They scheme a way to get rid of him. Rhonda and Robert take a jaunt to a remote desert. Rhonda abandons him when he isn't looking. Rhonda speeds off and poor Robert is left to fend for himself amid heat and vultures. The rest of this incredible movie consists of Ryan's struggle to get back, griping and plotting his revenge, a sweaty, agitated internal monologue that drives the rest of the picture. Along the way he breaks his leg, nurses an infection and watches as an old prospector's house burns down, burning him alive, a grisly scene of a charred codger's corpse. Oh, and it's all in eye-popping 3-D.

Inferno is just one of several films being screened this September at the World 3-D Expo. It is not an annual event. To the contrary, it is as rare an event as some of the films themselves. Sure, plenty of rep cinemas around the world have a week or two where they showcase House of Wax with its obvious overwrought paddle-board-flying-in-your-face 3-D sequence. And sure, you may have attended a midnight screening of Friday the 13th 3-D, in which a group of teenagers hand the joint they're smoking right to you through the screen. However, any 3-D film you may have seen in a theater before was not projected as they will be this September, unless of course you were there in the nineteen fifties to catch 'em the first time round.

It took more than a pair of flimsy cardboard glasses to make 3-D movies work. It took two simultaneous projectors beaming two simultaneous images to create that original 3-D look. The World 3-D Expo - September 6 through the 15th - is projecting the films with dual projectors. Sound insufferably nerdy? Sure, it is, but attendees gave up the prospect of getting laid a long, long time ago. It's a unique experience and among some typical 3-D films come many you had no idea were meant to be viewed with cardboard eyewear. There'll be plenty of robot monsters and creatures in lagoons, but there's also the comedy team Martin and Lewis 3-Ding their supperclub shtick and a number of Looney Tunes cartoons you had no idea were originally shown in theaters in 3-D.

For more information visit the website of the World 3-D Movie Expo.

"Froggy" Landers and the Cough Drops (MP3's)

Here's an interesting little novelty 45 from circa 1958. It's "Froggie" Landers and his trusted by The Cough Drops, performing the song "RIver Rock". 

Froggie sings in a Popeye-ish throat singing style, and while he doesn't have a whole lot to say, he sure says it in a memorable fashion. I also particularly like the addition of the bassoon adding a single deep note here and there, echoing the tone of Froggie's singing.

All the worthwhile bits of this record can be heard on the a-side. Perhaps due to having no other ideas at the moment, those behind this record put elements of the backing track on the b-side, with a couple of rough edits, one of them truly awful, and a reprise of the vocal near the end. 

"Froggie" Landers was apparently the same person as Bob Landers, who made a single (and collectable) 45 for the Specialty label in 1956. But the most interesting thing about this record may be that the song was written by two men, unknown at the time, who were each about to start off on the legendary parts of their respective careers: Lou Adler and Herb Alpert! 

"Froggie" Landers and the Cough Drops - River Rock (Part I) (MP3)

"Froggie" Landers and the Cough Drops - River Rock (Part II) (MP3)

45 Label (JPG)

 

The Minstrel's Ballad of Mayhem / September 1949

Recently, while researching an upcoming blog post in this Comics Supplement series, I came across this second appearance of a villain called The Minstrel, a banjo-picking criminal. Unfortunately, when I looked The Minstrel up in the Grand Comics Database, I read the data wrong, and looked in the wrong place for the first Minstrel tale, so we'll look today at his second and final battle with Doll Man; perhaps I'll track down the first story someday. As soon as I saw a cover with a looming banjo-clad bad guy I thought it might make a good feature for a future blog.

   The Doll Man was created in 1939 by the powerful team of Everett M. "Busy" Arnold and Will Eisner and he ran for 14 years in Feature Comics and then his own book. This particular story, late in his career, comes from Feature # 138, and is written by prolific comic book scribe William Woolfolk and possibly drawn by Bill Ward.

   "Ohh, I'm a singin' minstrel man ... I sing and rob wherever I can!" Sound like my kinda musician! Let's join this concert of crime right after the jump!

UPDATE to this post: I just located the FIRST appearance of The Minstrel character (in Doll Man # 23) and I'll be posting it here in B.O.T.B. in my next installment, on August 17th.

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 63

Earcandy for your eyes

Missing Foundation live in Brooklyn at Goodbye Blue MOnday on July 13, 2013.

After the break: Reptilian Shape Shifters at Death By Audio and Akitsa at Saint Vitus.

Denton Blues; Bludded Head on MCoQ, 5.10.2013

As I said to the members of Bludded Head, for a good, long while, I'd been subsisting on the two, outstanding tracks from their debut 12"—and with great enthusiasm, am now proud to bring you live versions of these four, new  compositions from this unique Texan doom outfit. Studio versions of the songs are also available from the band on limited CDr. 

With two new members added to the lineup (and the original, intact core of Nevada Hill and Darcy Neal), these songs find BH in the realm of even greater dynamics and subtlety when compared to the tracks on their debut; the addition of double bass and an accomplished new drummer having opened up the compositional palate of the band considerably. None of the crunch has been sacrificed though, and Nevada's outrageous screams still ride atop the steamrolling melee of Bludded Head's mighty downbeats.

Doom bands come and go, many sounding similar to one another, with the greatest emphasis being placed on how far apart those gut-punch downbeats can be spaced; not so for Bludded Head, who seem in it to write, arrange and execute great songs, several worlds apart from the sameyness that characterizes many of their peers in the genre. My Castle of Quiet and WFMU caught up with the band mid-tour, and it shows, such that the freshness and intensity of these selections are at a dazzling peak.

Huge thanks are due to engineer Juan Aboites, for capturing the acoustic and electric powers of Bludded Head in equal measure, and creating a terrific, rich mix for broadcast. Thanks again to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting, for the Alchemical process she always applies to my pixel-challenged captures of the band, weaving mediocre photo-snapping into art.

Green Giant, SpaghettiOs, Swanson, Chevy and More - Another Collection of Ads (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 41) (MP3's)

Last month's 1950's ads and jingles were well received, so for this month's reel, I got out a non-descript five inch reel - one that came to me with no writing, and no box - which contains nearly 20 nice radio ads and music beds. 

I assume that the tape originated with whatever advertising agency produced all of these commercials, perhaps as a demo reel. The ads flow one after the other, with no leader between them, and sometimes virtually no tape space between them.

They range from barely 15 seconds to a few which go well over a minute (those that do almost fade out at the one minute point then come right back for another 10-15 seconds, perhaps for use by announcers who have more to say over the music.

The commercials are for both extremely well known brands, such as Green Giant, Chevy and Keebler, to companies I've never heard of, including Nekoosa Paper and Bernie Brothers (and I can't tell what the name of gas company is, in track two).

There are four tracks which are simply music beds (presumably for whatever use the station had in mind) and a fifth which only mentions the product at the end. There are even two ads which seem to be advertising the general use of an item, rather than a specific products - specifically, use of electric products (track 9) and use of sugar (track 16).

Enjoy! 

1.) Green Giant Music Bed (MP3)

2.) Gasoline (MP3)

3.) SpaghettiOs (MP3)

4.) Keebler (MP3)

5.) Chevy Trucks (MP3)

6.) Allstate (MP3)

7.) Music Bed (MP3)

8.) Bernie Brothers’ Bakers (MP3)

9.) Bright New Ideas (MP3)

10.) Music Bed (MP3)

11.) Music Bed (MP3)

12.) Swanson (MP3)

13.) Standard Oil Yellow Tag Tire Deal (MP3)

14.) Green Giant (MP3)

15.) Music Bed (MP3)

16.) Sugar (MP3)

17.) Nekoosa Paper (MP3)

18.) SpaghettiOs (MP3)

19.) Solo Suzuki (MP3)

"The Hepcats" by Jack Bradbury, from Hi-Jinx #3, November 1947

Today's Comic Supplement brings you jitterbugging animals - lots of them. If you are halfway hep to the jive, slip a nickle into the nearest jukebox and grab a partner to swing along to these two jumping stories from Hi-Jinx magazine, as published by B&I Publishing and edited by Richard E. Hughes.

The Dan Gordon-esque art runs throughout the book, as well as the wiggly-line, brush-drawn panel borders, making for a consistently attractive product. This is the only issue of the magazine available to me right now, and the art is unsigned, but is certainly by the very prolific artist and animator Jack Bradbury, who has a site all his own here.

Join us for two funny-animal adventures from just after the war: the first involving a jukebox rental, and in the second, we learn the 'hep' vocabulary for various instruments in a music store (with guest star 'Tommy Horsey'), right after the jump!

In case you didn't feel like showing up - Volume 62

Earcandy for your eyes

Sly & Robbie w/Bunny Rugs live in Brooklyn at MetroTech Commons on July 11, 2013.

After the break: MV Carbon at Public Assembly.