WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Seeing Color TV for the First Time - A Tape from 1966 (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 66) (MP3)

I'm not quite old enough to clearly remember the point at which my family got a color TV, and suddenly not everything was in black-and-white. But my guess is that anyone a couple of years older than me or more (I'm about to turn 55) has a clear memory of that moment. 

Here, then, is a tape from my own family's home-recorded collection (a large set of tapes by the way, one which no doubt set me on the road to collection those made by other families). 

The tape dates from the first week of August, 1966 (the ability to date it so closely will be mentioned below), and features me older brother recording with a friend of his. This was his common practice, and became mine, with my friends, as I grew a little older. My brother (Bill) is heard here at 12 years old, his friend about the same. We'd had a color TV for some time, but the friend (Steve) had apparently yet to see TV in color. 

Essentially, this tape captures segments of about six minutes of broadcasting (with much cut due to the recorder being turned off and on), including bits of a game show, a newscast and commercials, as well as what anyone seeing TV in color for the first time in 1966 would want to see most, the NBC Peacock. 

If you can get past the constant noise from handling of the microphone, and the various inanities and noises made by 12 year old boys, this is a neat little time capsule in just under four minutes. 

Some specific highlights: 

    - at 0:13: "Ooh, it's a color TV? I wanna see a color TV"

    - at 0:29 (and again at 1:02): Moments from the original incarnation of "The Match Game"

    - at 039: an ad for New Era Potato Chips and a subsequent discussion of them by the boys

    - at 1:27: the original Match Game theme (aka "A Swingin' Safari"). An indelible, wonderful tune and record, and still my favorite game show theme song ever. 

    - at 2:01: easily my favorite moment here - a comment in response to a "Girl from U.N.C.L.E." ad. 

    - at 2.06: Bill expresses his absolute hatred for the show "Occasional Wife". His strong reaction is odd, given that the show won't debut for another five weeks. 

    - starting at 2:34: here's a neat discussion, with regard to something I'd forgotten. The UHF channels (at least those in Chicago), didn't necessarily have shows that ran hour-to-hour. If a show ended at 2:40, the channel went dead until the next show started at 3 PM. Steve wants to see a UHF channel in color, but neither Chicago UHF station seems to be broadcasting. There is a weak signal from Indiana (Bill says we also could get Milwaukee), but it's mostly just sound. The Chicago stations will likely start up again at 3, but Bill wants to get back to NBC for the peacock. 

    - at 3:12: "that's Nancy Dickerson?" Also, whoever is reporting is talking about the recent University of Texas Tower Shootings of August 1st, which give us an approximate date for this tape. 

    - at 3:36: at last, the NBC Peacock. 

I hope you enjoy this neat little nugget of television history, as experienced in the suburbs of Chicago. 

Bill and Steve: Seeing Color TV for the First Time (JPG)

Silly Pilly vs. Mighty Bear

"Hello boys and girls and dads and mothers!  Here is a book full of the funniest people I know:

Mr. Wheatley Whale --- he's forty yards long, he weighs 80,000 pounds, he's good-hearted, but he's always getting mixed up.

Then there's Brumas --- the fattest, funniest little bear you ever saw.

Judy, That's Me! --- a little girl who helps Mr. whale out when he gets in trouble.

Silly Pilly --- who's so silly! He does all the silly things you DON'T do, because you know better.  

Then there are all sorts of puzzles and games and jokes and things we like to do and say and think about.

Will you write to me and tell me what you like best about our first book and tell me what you'd like in the next book?         

Best wishes to you from your friend,        Frank Luther."

Thus reads the introductory page from the one and only issue of Frank Luther's Silly Pilly Comics, and if that doesn't whet your appetite for a look at more, well...um...y'know, I can't really blame you! 

Francis Luther Crow, aka Frank Luther, nearly forgotten now, was one of the kings of the 78 rpm-records-for-kids market for many years in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Besides being an ordained minister, country music artist, radio and television personality (he was even covered by Negativland!),  he also had his own one-shot comic book as well, which brings us to that half of today's post. 

We'll examine the entire issue of Silly Pilly (what a name!), as well as a crazy little story from Mighty Bear #14, so hang on to your hats and dive with us into the wackiness that is today's WFMU Comic Supplement -- right after the jump!

The Many Dangers of Television

That piece of talking furniture over there;  you think it is a passive, entertaining friend. But is it really as innocent as it looks? 

Today we bring you five cautionary tales to help prepare you for the horrors and mind-bending strangeness that could issue from your television at any time, and not the ones coming from your satellite hookup. No, that thing has come unplugged, what you are seeing is issuing from somewhere else, perhaps even from your own mind. But who can tell?

We here at the WFMU Comic Supplement worry enough about the dangers of unbridled radio listening, but we also keep an eye on what's happening on 'telly', and what we see there isn't good. In fact, it is downright terrifying.

And, on the artistic side, we are VERY pleased to welcome comic book creative genius JACK KIRBY to the blog today, in two different tales.  We've been searching high and low for stories of his to present here, and this week we realized that we actually had two in our files that would be appropriate, so, one of our favorite storytellers is the guest of honor today, along with a couple of other fine artists.

Put down that remote control for a bit, and join us for this highly educational post - right after the jump!

Red Buttons and the Acrimony of Hilarity by Kliph Nesteroff

 "Television has never seen anything like the turnover of personnel on The Red Buttons Show. The writers, directors, producers and supporting players come and go so fast the star can't learn their names before they head for the exit." - Voice of Broadway, April 8, 1954 

"Mel Brooks, signed just a week ago as writer-director of The Red Buttons Show, has resigned." - Variety, September 30, 1954 

In the spring of 1952 NBC had a reputation as the domain of sketch comedy. The Texaco Star Theater starring Milton Berle popularized televised sketch, The Colgate Comedy Hour with Martin & Lewis amplified it, and Your Show of Shows introduced us to the work of Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. NBC's sketch comedy programs had something for each demographic, showcasing both lowbrow and highbrow styles, enjoying ratings dominance and critical acclaim. Competitor CBS was desperate to emulate NBC's success and in October 1952 attempted to do so by investing in a comedian named Red Buttons. His moniker fit his burlesque roots where it was common for nouns like Rags or Peanuts to be used as first names, an offshoot of burlesque strippers who also used strange pseudonyms.

The Red Buttons Show had an enormously popular first season on CBS and Buttons was hailed as "the comedy find of the year." But the second season was so disastrous that chroniclers called it the most severe fall from grace in comedy history. The Red Buttons Show was praised after its first several episodes, but press coverage soon changed from one of critical elation to a marveling at the chaos behind the scenes. “The first year Buttons was a major sensation,” wrote Colliers magazine. “The second year he went right down the tubes.” 

Success ruined Buttons as he destroyed his own show. His ego and anxiety expanded and his agitation was taken out on his employees. The slightest thing could set him off and his secretary was terrified of him. "Red scares me Monday [broadcast] nights," she said. "He doesn't make sense." He routinely fired employees after only a few weeks on the job. Variety called Red Buttons the only TV star with "more writers than scripts." The employees he retained often quit on their own, unable to handle the volatile, irrational atmosphere. He screamed at future legends like Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon and Mel Brooks, telling them to fuck right off. They did. By 1954 there were few comedy writers left who hadn't had some sort of terrible experience with The Red Buttons Show. Octogenarian comedian Bobby Ramsen says, "He fired all the people who later became the icons of American comedy. Red had different writers every week. 'They're not sending me out naked again! This is the worst crap I have ever seen!' God, he was terrible. Buttons became a monster."

"Barbie the Nightclub Singer" and Other Dabblings in High Art

"It was OUR SONG Roger's and mine ... the love song that formed the background of our romance ... THE THEME THAT BROKE MY HEART.

It's all over and done ... and I NEVER think of Roger anymore ... never, except when I hear THE SONG they're playing ... it was 'OUR SONG' then ... the theme they were playing that first night right here when Mark introduced me to ROGER MELTON."

Thus begins the heaviest of our four light tales today. And in the others we will visit The Archies as they try to rehearse, take in Barbie and Ken at their hit nightclub act, and learn about how taking up accordion can change your life forever!

A frothy mix of comics madness featuring humor, romance, adventure and accordions - all to be savored right here at the WFMU Comic Supplement - right after the jump!

"The Stranger in Studio X!"

 

"It was the weirdest fifteen minutes that anyone at radio station WBOR ever remembered. The spine tingling series of misadventures, which made that night so memorable, began exactly at midnight, on an otherwise routine evening . . . And there were those who saw the occurrences of the next quarter hour the sort of eerie puzzle to which no man would ever find an answer. Those never-to-be-forgotten moments of bewilderment and fear started in the middle of Dawn Creighton's popular disc jockey program . . . Started, in fact, at the very moment the door to Creighton's broadcasting booth opened , and in walked . . . "The Stranger in Studio X!"

As you can see, we'll be back in the radio studio for another storyline today, as well as experiencing some raw terror as provided by a television set (big surprise there!),  a violin-playing clown, and a radio.

So snuggle in close and let's explore today's menu of four short stories dating from 1947 to 1952, all pre-comics-code stuff this time, nice and raw! 

Plunge into another exciting installment of the WFMU Comic Supplement, right after the jump!

"Station G.H.O.S.T!"

"How many times have you seen a ghost story on television? Did it leave you frightened, fearful
that ghosts really exist? Of course it didn't . . . Yet, could you really be sure? Perhaps this tale will change your mind, for you are about to witness the real-life results of the spine-chilling stories told on . . . Station G.H.O.S.T!"

Another excerpt from today's selections:

"Roger Dorn loved beautiful music - - but not when the hands that played it were those of a man he had murdered!"

Ok, well,  there's also this to look forward to on our banquet today:

"It was a novel idea . . . This dance on the large native drum! Patrons crowded the exclusive New York night club to see the famous Annette perform! But as the exotic dancer's feet began tapping out a rhythmic tattoo, strange things commenced happening . . .Horrible, unearthly things! And the giant Haitian tom-tom became a drum of doom!"

Yes, as you can see, we have four stories from the dark side of music and entertainment today, including a dance of doom to go with that drum of doom, either way there's plenty of accursed doom to go around for everyone in our bounty of comic book sickness this week at the WFMU Comic Supplement!  Take your seat and dig in -  right after the jump!

"Tee & Vee Crosley in Television-Land Comics" (1951)

"In the following pages,  you will learn of the exciting adventures of two typical American youngsters, TEE and VEE CROSLEY in "Television-Land". We hope you will enjoy them but only as a prelude to the even more exciting and fascinating adventures you will enjoy when you have Crosley Television and Crosley Kitchen Appliances."

Indeed - what red-blooded American youngster could resist that pitch? Thus begins today's comic book excavation into a particularly dark and strange corner of 'corporate' comics, usually free magazines designed to instruct or sell products or both. This book is a really messed-up example of this type of advertising and goes deeper in the confidence in its own power of persuasion than anyone who reads it now will believe. The pitch within is not just HARD sell - it goes many an extra mile to hammer its points home over and over in the context of a cute funny animal kiddie comic book world populated with an excess of appliances and characters obsessed with gadgets and features of same.

Herein is a confusing mixture - were the children this was apparently aimed at really expected to be interested in the relentless intrusions of Crosley products for their post-war suburban home? Enough that they would nag Mom and Pop about said merchandise, using the comic book as a spiced-up candy-coated catalog / script to convince them and soften them up to the virtues of all things CROSLEY? It is indeed a very sick and desperate ploy, and one which I doubt really worked very well. On the plus side, though, the art and package itself is professional and attractive, clearly by a studio that already knew how to produce slick kiddie comics; and the interactive 'game / toy' feature pages are particularly well-done and look like they would be a lot of fun to actually cut out and assemble and play with.

Come along with Tee and Vee, our brother and sister protagonists, as they explore the excitement (and not in a dream sequence, either!) of the magical world built by Crosley. It's all right after the jump!

"The Brush that Could Haunt Men's Souls" and "The Mark of X"

Today we'll diverge a bit from the usual 'music' related comic book stories in this series and look at two tales from the 1950s run of the DC book "House of Mystery" that involve, first, a comic book artist and an art brush, and second, a television writer who discovers an interesting solution to writer's block.

"It was only a brush -- an ordinary painter's brush ... but in its soft and yielding bristles was hidden the power to force from men the truth!  Lies perished in their hearts ... Falsehoods froze on their lips ... and once their innermost secrets were revealed, found themselves teetering on the very brink of doom!"

Thus begins our first thrilling story from House of Mystery #10, January 1953, unfurling for you right after the jump!

"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!

"On the Air" NBC Radio Promo Comic from 1947

Jimmy's little sister had it right when she exclaimed as they listened to an elaborate radio dramatization, "It must take an awful lot of work and -- and people to put on a show like that!".  Jimmy himself remained unimpressed until he was reduced drastically in size by a manic and frightening anthropomorphous microphone and shown just how complicated and expensive the whole process really was.

Although this 16-page giveaway comic book put out by the National Broadcasting Company in 1947 is mainly a puff piece hyping all of the amazing material that one could dial up for free at home on their radios, it also stands as a fairly accurate guide to NBC procedures at that time.  Still, that evil little microphone character is just scary; no way around that.  We even get a glimpse of the early television broadcasting setup from New York.

So let's go on a guided tour of the most sophisticated radio organization at that time, with loads of thrills, chills, adventures, and you might even learn something along the way!   All as illustrated handsomely by Sam Glankoff, right after the jump!

Don't Free Pussy Riot

Last night I saw Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, and now I’m convinced that Pussy Riot should be in jail, which I think was not the filmmakers’ intent.

The video shows three strong feminist women and their history of activism, culminating in their action in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The three who were arrested—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich— are not the only members of their political collective, although you wouldn’t know that from the film. They also are not “girls,” they are young women in their mid-20s and early 30s, they are wives and mothers, they are educated and intelligent enough to have devised an ideological basis for their political protest. Yet since their arrests, they’ve been portrayed as “girls” who “didn’t realize” that defiling a revered place of worship would offend anyone, which is complete bullshit: The whole point of the action was to offend as many people as possible. If people weren’t offended, they wouldn’t pay attention. Well, they’re paying attention now; they’re paying attention all over the world.

The women of Pussy Riot must have realized there were likely consequences for their actions. Just as Edward Snowden was prepared to accept the loss of his well-paid job, the end of his comfy life, and his possible extradition to the US to face treason charges, so Pussy Riot should have been prepared for arrest, trial, and conviction. They say they are feminists: Let them act like feminists. Their prison sentences are the proof of everything they’ve said about Russian repression. Let them take the consequence of their actions like strong feminist women, not disingenuous, apologetic little girls. In the words of Sammy Davis Jr. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Be punk, Pussy Riot: Be strong.

UPDATE 6/18: So what I was trying to say was unclear, and that is the fault of my writing. Mostly I was objecting to the documentary's portrayal of "girls," but also there's the rather alarming footage of the three prisoners apologizing and saying they "didn't mean to offend anyone." This is contrary to their otherwise strong statements--contrary, in fact, to their actions. The obvious injustice of two years in prison for their protest is what has called international attention to the very repression they were protesting. I have friends who participated in ACT UP's protest inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989; no one went to prison, but it brought international attention to the AIDS crisis and forced the government to begin dealing with it. I hope Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer will turn out to be as influential. Also, one week on, Edward Snowden looks less like a hero. -B.

 

 

“MAN GETS EATEN BY AN ALLIGATOR”: THE WILHELM SCREAM

BY CASEY DEWEY

Watch nearly all of the 200 uses of "The Wilhelm Scream" on Network Awesome

At some point in 1997 my friends and I were debating the merits of the remastered, souped-up re-releases of George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy. We discussed the issues of introducing Jabba the Hutt in the first film, how the CGI-enhanced added TIE-Fighters was a positive addition, and we lamented the loss of the Ewok’s “Yub-Yub” song at the end of Return of the Jedi. On Jedi, one of my friends said “With all of the stuff Lucas added visually, couldn’t they have at least changed Boba Fett’s pussy-ass scream when he died?” Little did we know at the time that the “pussy-ass scream” was in fact the legendary Wilhelm Scream.

What is the Wilhelm Scream? Trust me, you’ve heard this sound effect over a thousand times. You’ve heard it in every single Star Wars film, even the dreaded new trilogy. You’ve heard it in all of the Indiana Jones movies, you’ve heard it in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and also The Hobbit. You’ve heard it in most Quentin Tarantino movies. You’ve heard it when Harold and Kumar went to White Castle. You’ve heard it

"The Hiss Parade (with conductor Raymond Scat)"

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY THOMAS MICHALSKI

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

Watch the whole series here.

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

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

Solar Records: The Sound of LA

by Tony Best

Watch the whole show on Network Awesome! (updated)

SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles Records) was THE hottest R&B label of the late 1970s and mid-‘80s. Rivaled only by NYC’s Salsoul Records, SOLAR successfully bridged the delicate gap between disco and funk during a period where both genres were struggling to find an identity in the post-Carter/pre-Reagan administrations. Buoyed by bouncy rhythm tracks and appregioed synths, SOLAR’s Jheri curl-slick music embodied L.A.’s hip (and stratified) cultural identity. From backyard boogies in Compton to roller-skating jams at WeHo’s Flippers, SOLAR kept the City of Angels – as well the world – dancing on sunshine.

SOLAR dawned in the mind of Dick Griffey. A music industry heavy with a keen interest in Black entrepreneurship, Griffey launched the label in the summer of ‘77 as an outlet to foster underrepresented talent in the record business. The early artist roster included Shalamar, The Whispers and Carrie Lucas,

Clyde Crashcup Invents Hi-Fi

"When all's said and done Leonardo, there is such a thing as too much realism in hi-fi!"

Although spoken in 1964,  the modern quest for high definition imagery leads down some thorny paths as well. Today we find our protagonist 'Clyde Crashcup', a Ross Bagdasarian creation, in the fifth book of his short five-issue run, seeking to improve his hi-fi set with mixed results.

From the John Stanley / Irving Tripp creative team that wrote and drew so many terrific 'Little Lulu' stories for Dell Comics comes this quirky series about a 'real gone' scientist and would-be inventor, adapted from his segments on the televised cartoon program The Alvin Show between October 1961 and September 1962 as voiced by Shepard Menken (in his impression of actor Richard Haydn).

Discover who really put the 'woof' in your woofers right after the jump!

Say It Ain't True: The Elvis Files

by Thomas Michalski

 

What's on Network Awesome today?

Occam’s Razor teaches us that the simplest answer is usually the correct one, but try telling that to a dedicated conspiracy theorist. It’s not that life isn’t complicated, or that crazy things don’t happen, but a simple explanation (Oswald Shot Kennedy, a weather balloon crashed at Roswell) is mathematically far more likely than one involving vast sinister cabals and little green men. The persistent tabloid-fueled belief that Elvis Presley did not in fact die on August 16, 1977 is no different. The simple explanation for what happened that day is that years of stress, health problems and raging pill addiction finally caught up with the iconic rock star in the form of a massive heart attack in his Memphis bathroom. The complicated explanation could, honestly, be just about anything (time-travelling ninjas), but the most commonly circulated is the one put forth in the amazing 1990 home video The Elvis Files, that Presley’s “death” was actually an elaborate hoax perpetrated, kind of half-assedly, by the United States government.

The hour-long special is hosted by none other than Bill Bixby, best remembered for playing Bruce Banner to Lou Ferrigno’s Incredible Hulk on the late 70s/early 80s TV series (technically, he played “David Banner”, they changed it because CBS thought “Bruce” was too gay). Bixby was a natural choice for the job since he had actually starred alongside Presley in two of his movies, 1967’s Clambake and1968’s Speedway, and

Awesome Tapes From Africa Weekend on Network Awesome

Live Music Show - Classic Sudanese Music on TV

We're thrilled to collaborate with Awesome Tapes From Africa this weekend to present the most interesting and inventive collection of African videos this side of Khartoum.  Guest curator Brian Shimkovitz culls from his deep knowledge of African music to deliver collections of African TV commercials, Pop Music of Pre-War Somalia, even the outrageous 2002 film, "Sharon Stone" - a classic Nollywood drama about an overly ambitious woman willing to do anything to make it to the top. 

Of course the mainstay of Awesome Tapes From Africa is incredible music and here's an ocean of amazing music captured on over-saturated film and video. He elaborates about the Live Music Show above:

"It doesn't get any better than this! The music of Sudan is as varied as the country is large (as Africa's largest country, it's about the size of America's Midwest). Over the years the traditional sounds have seeped into popular music, as shown by Sudan's many TV stations. Watch some classic gems from a small selection of Sudan's most revered artists. Explore the web using Google Translate to help with the Arabic names and discover tons more where this came from"

Playlist:

Zaidan Ibrahim

Al Balabil

Mustafa Sid Ahmed

Hanan Elnil

Eman & Amany (The Sudanese Twins)

Hanan

Zaidan Ibrahim

Hanan Elnil

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.