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Obviously, you start with Suicide. Then you hit the dusty highway & head backwards, about 15 years. On the way, you stop at a Howard Johnson's where you pick up smokes and an underage girl. Leaving, you spot a shoebox on the ground - it's filled with a stranger's snapshots, postcards and love-letters. You take it, because this will contain your memories. Heading back to the future, you make a pitstop in downtown NYC ca. 1981, just to wash up.
Now that you've got the basic ingredients for Dirty Beaches, you just need the right chef. He is Alex Zhang Hungtai, a bi-coastal Canadian of Taiwanese birth and no place of his own. Though currently, Montreal seems to be doing quite nicely.
Alex and guitarist Shub Roy recently made their first visit to WFMU, and I'm the lucky sumbitch who got to host & record them, while trying not to get drool on their sweet gear. Korg MS-10 synth! Ace Tone analog delay! A homemade fuzz pedal! Real nice mic too, I forgot to ask what that was.
Anyway, we're all real excited to share their live set with you, including an interview where we learn of other things happening in Montreal, and some upcoming releases, including 2 of Alex's film soundtrack projects. An Italian horror film!!
Keep checking WFMU's Vimeo portal and our Youtube channel, we're putting new stuff up all the time. Most recent highlights: an amazing live set by the great Argentina-via-Berlin synthpunk duo Mueran Humanos, a peek into the volunteer room on an average Friday afternoon, and these:
WFMU is very excited to announce a new collection of videos we're shooting & posting on our Vimeo page. Live bands by the truckload have long peeled the paint from the walls of our storied Love Room, and fer cryin' out loud it's high time we started visually documenting them! Check out excerpts fromCute Lepers, Angels in America, Ed Schrader's Music Beat, Peaking Lights, live performances from the 2011 Record Fair, and a bunch more. Make friends with us, get the feed, bookmark our page, whatever you do out there - but check in often! Huge thanks to Yvonne Slimslacks and Bridget M. for getting this stuff rolling.
Here's CSC Funk Band performing live at the 2011 WFMU Record Fair
Angels in America is the duo of Moppy Pont and Merv Glisten, a pair of pun-loving weirdos with equal love for Throbbing Gristle, Nancy & Lee, and Molly Shannon. It's all in their mix - their dense, scratchy, spitty, throbby, creepy, and often very beautiful mix. A bank of electronics (some homemade), a couple ghostly voices, and an occasional acoustic guitar are all they need to paint their aural landscapes of elsewhere. I can't think of a better way to describe their music than to suggest that Genesis P-Orridge had scored Eraserhead, hiring Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood to perform it.
Three years after hearing their head-cleaning 1st tape "Cunt Tree Grammar", I finally got the chance to bring Moppy & Merv onto my radio show. The entire session is here, below, for your downloading pleasure, as well as a 5-minute video excerpt shot by Yvonne Szymczak.
Tons more dl'able love from Angels in America on the Free Music Archive, including their entire new album on Ehse, the aforementioned debut tape, and much more - go, now!
Your next chance to see them live is at Zebulon on October 2nd as part of the Northern-Spy label's Spy Music Festival.
bonus: their cover of Legendary Pink Dots' "The Blessing"!
It's been a really great Marathon. So much chaos, so much engaging DJ-patter, so much mayonnaise on trousers. And best yet, so many listeners have been really stepping up to support God's Favorite Little Champion, WFMU. Man, it's a lotta work. So this Sunday night, we're all getting wasted. On the air, and also while singing. Only we dignify it with a name: The Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia
It used to be we'd ask some band to come down here and play during our Marathon Finale party - bands such as X-Girl, Planet Filly, and the Loser's Lounge Tribute to Queen spring to mind immediately. Then, for some reason, a kinda large group of us began frequenting a certain karaoke hotspot in Chinatown, and a previously submerged area of our egos was aroused. The instant gratification! The applause! The lights, the glamour and the liquor! Boy, it sure wasn't like radio.
Then (March 2001), someone (who was it anyway?) decided a live band karaoke thing would be the way to end the Marathon, and this idea has proven so durable that we ain't quit it yet. Ten years and counting, and it's been my total thrill to be bandleader all that time.
This Sunday night, March 13th, we shall once again unleash upwards of 40 WFMU DJs, all hopped up on courage, upon you the person with ears, and even eyes if you've got yourself a fast internet connection. Indulge me: The Hoof & Mouth Will Be Televised (right here), and on the air, starting up at 7pm and running til we drop. Hopefully that means about midnite.
Much more Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia may be found on this blog:
Here's a post featuring 2006's entire show in video form.
Here's a post featuring 2005's entire show in video form.
Here's a post featuring 2008's entire show in video form.
And here's hoping to see you there, it's really quite a party.
Melbourne, Australia's Fabulous Diamonds have haunted the periphery of my consciousness from the get-go. Too subtle to beg or demand notice, their charms are more a natural ooze that works, without trying, to irrevocably attach itself to the listener at the chromosome level. Which doesn't tell you dick about what they sound like, which is... let's say repetitive, rhythmically propulsive, melodically and harmonically static music that nevertheless is vertically dense and ever-evolving texturally. Does that help? Alright, my friend Sarah astutely said "they should've been on that (tribute to the Oneida song) 'Sheets of Easter' compilation"; last.fm compares them to Sun Araw and Gary War; and several publications have drawn lines to Blues Control and Naked on the Vague; all of these bands do ring in sympathy with Fabulous Diamonds.
Fabulous Diamonds are actually Nisa Venerosa and Jarrod Zlatic, drummer/singer and keyboardist/saxophonist, respectively. They've been at this game since about 2007, when they released a 7" on Nervous Jerk, & Mistletone Records and toured the U.S. with longtime FMU faves Psychedelic Horseshit. By 2008, they'd signed with Philadelphia stalwarts Siltbreeze, who have so far released 2 full-lengths by the band - a self-titled slab o'wax, and a CD called "II" (song titles have yet to enter the picture, and we’re not holding our breath).
In October, they played our Record Fair. We recorded it. Here's the first song.
The rest of the set is available for free download on the FMA.
We've raved on repeatedly about Barcelona's annual Primavera Sound Festival, and its unique status among music festivals as an echo of WFMU's own musical worldview. Here I'll focus on their total willingness to offer their seaside stages to not just the now & sexy reverb-drenched PYTs and long-canonized lions, but also to -- well, to guys like Gary Numan and Marc Almond.
When I first learned the line-up for this year's festival, I made no secret of my delirious happiness at Gary Numan's inclusion. I've still got the 45 of "Cars" (b/w "I Die:You Die") that I bought as a 10-year old kid, one of the first records I ever bought, and I still listen to it. From there I looked backward to Tubeway Army, and also bought the next couple solo records - but I didn't stay with him. Don't know why.
Marc Almond's a different story. He was always Tainted Love and Sex Dwarf guy, and that was it. The teenage Marc Almond fans I knew did not hang bandannas off their torn & faded Levis with the self-penned ZOSO runes, or drink Boone's Farm strawberry wine with older girls, so clearly nor was he our people. Of course, I never knew about this; and I never knew how effectively he would later fill my head as one of the lasting images of those days.
These were two of the most anticipated performers at
the fest, and turned out to be two of the most surprising. WFMU was thrilled to air both their sets live from Barcelona, and we're doubly thrilled to share the sets with you now, via sexy streaming audio.
Marc Almond:
Gary Numan:
Over: some youtube I took, along with my general impressions of each set.
Who are these upstarts, and how'd they get such gnarly guitar tones? Until very recently, The Condo Fucks were the New London CT trio behind the regional hit "Fuckin' Gary Sandy"; now they're being flown to sexy Mediterranean locales to play for thousands of screaming European ravers. What gives?!
Their story is told elsewhere, and often with entertaining attempts at figuring out the true identities of these masked pottymouths. The trio of Georgia Condo (drums), Kid Condo (guitar), and James McNew (bass) are, of course, Yo La Tengo, the internet smugly declares. I ain't buying it.
Well, they sure ripped the joint at this year's Primavera Sound Festival. With the sun slowly going down behind them, they commenced with a bash, burn and holler that didn't let up for 47 minutes. Kid Condo scorched the air with tones so overheated they could've cooked the meat-drums pummeled to tenderness by Georgia. On songs like The Electric Eels' "Accident" and Roxy Music's "Remake/Remodel", James McNew (also of the group Dump) shredded his throat to a fine garnish. By the time it was all over, I felt like I'd been living for a month behind the couch in their rehearsal cave; and when I feel that way, I like to share it. As broadcast live at the start of our Barcelona broadcast day on Sunday May 29th, here's their entire searing set.
Read on for the set list, some treats, and a contest!
(Michael Rother & Steve Shelley pic by flickr user crlsblnc)
The wealth and breadth of musical treats on offer at Barcelona's annual Primavera Sound Festival hit home with a suckerpunch on Saturday May 29th at 7pm, when I was forced to choose between live sets by The Clean, Michael Rother's new project "Hallogallo 2010", playing the music of NEU! and Harmonia, and Van Dyke Parks. After much deliberation I chose The Clean. My consolation prize for being forced to reject other such riches came during the walk over. The seaside stage The Clean were playing on was only accessible by first walking past another stage, where Michael Rother and pals Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth, drums) and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs, bass), were playing what is perhaps the definitive piece of motorik Krautrock, "Hallogallo", by Rother's legendary '70s Düsseldorf duo NEU! I hung around for a few minutes, then headed over to see a few songs by The Clean, one of which ("Tensile") drummer Hamish Kilgour dedicated to Rother. Heading back to the WFMU tent to begin our broadcast day, I stopped to linger in the sweet spot where the sounds of both bands collided, then procrastinated more at the Rother stage again to soak up the melancholy majesty of the Harmonia track "Deluxe (Immer Wieder)".
In an age where "heritage" acts are propped up to play their catalog on-demand for crowds ravenous to devour them in order to chalk up some bogus experience, a cynic might find something crass in the presentation of this music today; a purist might consider Rother's longtime partner, the late Klaus Dinger, irreplaceable. And it's right for a fan to always be on guard against the creep of hired-hands, or an artist's alienation from the art s/he created many years ago. I was prepared for disappointment; I got transcendence. Shelley and Mullan showed a sympathy to the music worthy of the people who created it. The power of this music filling limitless space and spreading outward to the Mediterranean Sea bordered on the religious. Give thanks and praise to Rother, Shelley and Mullan for allowing us to share their set with you.
Later that night, after the sun had set and the Tabaco Moon risen, I stood outside WFMU's broadcast tent as Brian and Jason fired up the set from Rother, Shelley & Mullan. As the motorik beat kicked in and we turned up the volume, I lowered my head in preparation for full-on drone-zone appreciation, pausing on the way to smile greetings at the guy standing next to me. Gently nodding, with a slight smile on his face, Michael Rother seemed to be digging it too.
In other NEU!se (i'm sorry!), Rother, Shelley & Mullan will be doing a few NY and Philly dates later this summer.
August 4 Hoboken, NJ Maxwell’s (as Michael Rother and Freund)
August 6 Lincoln Center NYC – FREE
August 8 Philadelphia, PA International House of Philadelphia
September is filled with European dates. For details, and the story on how this project came together, check Rother's site.
WFMU recently returned from Barcelona's annual Primavera
Sound Festival with a briefcase full of blues, beats, rocks, and
yes, punky reggae. While it was a joy to share so much of this very
'FMU-friendly festival over the airwaves, we
were sadly forbidden by federal language restrictions from airing much
of the amazing set by the UK class of '76 all-stars,The Slits. Happily, words like "poom
poom" still manage to travel unmolested in blogolandia, so it is here
that we thrill to share their entire set with you, full blessing of the
band in tow.
The Slits were formed in 1976 by mainstay Ari Up and future Raincoat
Palmolive. Guitarist Viv Albertine and bassist Tessa Pollitt joined
shortly after; soon enough, they were on the road with The Clash and
gaining the attention of John Peel, but it wasn't until 1979 that their
first record was released. Cut, produced by Dennis
Bovell, introduced the long-lasting prominence of reggae to the
Slits mix. The trio of Ari, Tessa and Viv remained more or less intact
until 1982, when the band called it a day.
In 2006, Ari and Tessa reformed the band. The current lineup
includes German drummer Anna Schulte, American singer Michelle Hill, and
guitarist Hollie Cook (daughter of Sex Pistol Paul, as a matter of
fact). By 2009, they'd released a new album, the far more dub-heavy Trapped
Animal, on Narnack Records.
The Slits' set at Primavera Sound was a freewheeling and
crowd-pleasing mix of old faves like "Typical Girls" and "Shoplifting"
and new tracks like "Babylon" and "Lazy Slam", plus some nuggets from
Ari Up's solo career. Ari's charisma, onstage costume changes, audience
come-ons and dreadlocks-as-dance-partner defined the vibe of their
enchanting Saturday evening set.
The set:
World of Grown Ups Typical Girls Shoplifting Reject Fade Away
FM Heard It Through The Grapevine Lazy Slam Partner From
Hell Lets Do The Split Babylon
Sunday morning 6am, May 30th in Barcelona, Spain; the 10th annual Primavera Sound music festival. Three days after it started, the party's finally over. Except WFMU can't stop the music, man. Thousands of exhausted revelers file out, but even as the sun rises, several hundred can't stop dancing. Meet you at the WFMU tent...
(Music by The Field, the last set of the festival aired on WFMU)
Three and a half years ago, I posted this account of Psychic TV's performance on DJ Fabio's radio show. Now I'm happy to return you to that session with a heaping bag of mp3s under the arm. Here is Psychic TV's entire session as performed live on WFMU, September 7 2006.
The three original tracks are available for free download on the Free Music Archive here.
Over at the FMA, be sure to also check out Fabio's posting of the entire live session performed by Psychic TV mastermind Genesis Breyer P-Orridge in collaboration with Tony Conrad and Edley O'Dowd.
When I first saw the lineup for this year's Catskills edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, all my excitement centered on one thing: the prospect of seeing the near-mythical NYC duo Suicide perform their (your-favorite-superlative-here) first album on the bizarre spaceship stage in the corrugated metal galaxy that is the famed Stardust Ballroom at Kutsher's Resort. Such glory having come to pass, we're thrilled that Alan Vega and Martin Rev have consented to our sharing two tracks from their set with you.
Suicide were in a playful mood for this show, with Martin Rev gleefully pounding tonal fist-clusters on his synths, and Alan Vega doing a slow menacing prowl in his track suit and twitching along to his every echo-laden howl and yelp. (pic of Suicide onstage at the Stardust Ballroom by Irene Trudel)
There were certainly bigger rockstars than Bradford Cox running
around banging into things at Kutsher's Resort the weekend of Sept 11,
but if you were at this year's Catskills edition of the beloved All
Tomorrow's Parties fest, I'm sure you would agree that neither Wayne,
Buzzo, Jon, Cristina, Steve, Sufjan, Nick, Eye, David, nor Bob totally
pwnedthe weekend quite like the man behind Deerhunter and Atlas Sound. A quick cataloguing of his ATP antics is here called for:
Jumping onstage with Bob Mould and No Age to howl along to "Chinese Rocks"
summoning the ghost of Lindsay Buckingham and spitting water out
his nose during a particularly hilarious interview with our Brian
Turner on WFMU,
leading a surreal (and mostly impromptu) piano-lounge karaoke
session with a gaggle of wasted Australians hours after the Flaming
Lips had closed out the festival on Sunday,
and an utterly compelling, always on the brink of collapse solo
acoustic set at Stage 2, full of stream-of-conscience banter that was
anything but "banter", and a stage manner reflecting that weird
netherworld between Total Self Posession and Complete Doubt. Dude's
got it down. Hear it for yourself, here, now.
The Bermuda Triangle were a strange post-hippie psych-folk band from New York that self-released one eponymous record in 1977 (Radioactive did the "unofficial" CD reissue in 2006). Comprising the folksinging duo of Wendy and Roger Penney, with mystery lady "Sam" on fiddle and drums, the band had evolved from '60s sunshine poppers Euphoria, and thousands of West Village basement pass-the-hat jams. The band was perhaps most noted for its odd instrumental lineup - bass, drums, fiddle, and electric autoharp, often heavily effected. This combination brings a weird and sometimes uncanny vibe to such material as Aerosmith's "Dream On" (Wendy here a dead-ringer for Heart's Ann Wilson).
WFMU dropped anchor on the shores of the Mediterranean last month at the invitation of Barcelona's stunning Primavera Sound Festival, where we joined 80,000 of our new best friends in an ecstatic celebration of music, good livin', good eatin', and futball victory. We're still a bit dazzled and sorting the spoils, but it looks like we had a fabulous radio weekend, broadcasting more than 20 excellent band sets and meeting many new friends from all over the world. We've just added streaming archives of many of the sets, and a bunch of mp3s for download as well. It fills my breast with great honor to offer this fresh batch of Barcelona mp3s from our hometown faves and longtime bruhs Oneida!
ONEIDA live at Primavera Sound Festival, May 30th 2009 (mp3s)
This was Oneida in a beautiful and psychotic dream: surrounded by gigantic weird paranoia-inducing ads for sunglasses, with the skyline of Barcelona behind the band and the Mediterranean Sea behind the audience, plus a killer light show. This was a one-off edition of the band, as core member Fat Bobby couldn't make it. In his temporary stead was founding member Papa Crazee, who some years back amicably departed Oneida to form the equally excellent Oakley Hall. A truly glorious evening.
Pics from the festival at the WFMU flickr group here.
Archives and playlists from WFMU's Primavera Sound festival broadcasts here.
Some of Oneida's past visits to WFMU here, here, and here.
Indeed hailing from Poland's plot of the Carpathian mountain range, The Magic Carpathians Project ("Projekt Karpaty Magiczne", to wy i ja) first announced themselves to a U.S. audience in March 2001, with a stunning and absolutely captivating performance on my radio show. The project of two artists, multi-instrumentalist / vocal shapeshifter Anna Nacher, and multi-instrumentalist / sound-sculptor Marek Styczyński (formerly of enviro-politico psych legends ATMAN), on this date they were joined by bassist Tomasz Radziuk and percussionist Jan Kubek. Irene Trudel and Chris Stubbs engineered.
OK, maybe "cherished" isn't quite the word to describe my long-held belief that Rory Storm was found with his head in the oven, his dear deceased (and complicit) Mum just a few feet away; but death-rock legends are legion, and the circumstances so often so lurid -- backstage Russian Roulette, plane crashes, murder-by-fan, on-stage electrocution, getting hit by a bus, on-stage murder-by-fan, infanticide, mariticide, murder-by-fan-club-president, Joe Meek -- that to learn he merely accidentally O.D.'d on sleeping pills (and Mum not so accidentally, despondent over finding him in such a state) is, by the standards of The Death Rock Tribune, a disappointment of some stature - so yeah, I cherished that story. I guess I'll just have to take comfort in the fact that Chicago guitarist Terry Kath really did say to his wife "don't worry honey, it's not loaded -- seeee??" The Internet has yet to shoot that one down, you'll pardon the pun.
In case you're wondering where I got this bad (and kinda sick) information, it was that blowhard Dave Marsh and some guy named Kevin Stein, and their 1981 Book of Rock Lists. Ahhh, times were different then. No wikipedia, you could just lie your face off and no one would challenge you until it was too late to make a difference. Yes, exactly like Mikey, pop rocks and soda. "Print the legend, not the fact", they said. But that's another post...
(In case you're wondering who Rory Storm was, he was a prominent figure in the Beatles' pre-history -- his Hurricanes were the ones from whom The Fabs stole Ringo.)
To end this thing on a positive note, there's a new Rory Storm on the block - this one comes from the land to the right of the land down under, and he's got a myspace page and makes very fine and broken acoustic music not too far removed from the scattered psych folk of his countryman Alastair Galbraith. Look for a great album out now called "The Sun Always Comes Up On Robot Morning".
"Metamorfose Ambulante", by Raul Seixas: in some parts of the world, this song is a cultural anthem. In our particularly little corner, it's just more grist for the mill. Well, it's a well-tended mill. So here are umpteen versions of a really beautiful song, just don't expect all of 'em to be as beautiful as this, the original. (Though the 1st five below are all well worth your time)
You need to watch that video, then here's a poetic, translated, rendering by a "Sir Bussy" to stream or download.
Well... there were umpteen versions. I put a lotta work into finding all my favorites, but typepad crashed before I had properly saved a buncha killer youtube links to astoundingly different versions of this song, so I'll just tell you to search "raul seixas" and "metamorfose ambulante" on youtube. We don't need no stinking typepad. Fuck typepad, i'm going to bed....
Several weeks back, while preparing for my contribution to WFMU's week-long celebration of the 7" known as Singles Going Steady, I rifled through the comps & splits 7" drawer and found the most frustratingly unknowable pair of records. They were clear flexis, seemingly torn from a magazine, bearing the word "Nice", the attribution "BarDor Productions", and a number (5, 6, 9 and 10), and that was it. These records were anonymous, and possibly orphaned. With such a near-complete lack of info, I had no choice but to listen.
I dropped the needle on one side... and heard some twisted gamelan-like orchestra recorded through 20 years of gauze; flipped and dropped it again... a disaffected woman's retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" as though it had all just happened to her, on the Lower East Side; switched to the other disc and it's like The Inflatable Boy Clams hitched a flying saucer ride. Everything I heard I absolutely loved. All the voices sounded familiar but alien; all the music seemed trapped in time, though not in the dated sense. I asked everyone in the WFMU office what it was - no one knew.
Googling "Bardor Productions" yielded 2 hits, one of which blew the case wide open: a link to a single Irwin Chusidplaylist. I got on the horn to my ol' pal pronto, and within minutes the mystery was both solved and deepened. Within a week, the record was mine - a gift. Nice! Keep reading, and it's yours.
