Tag Archives for WFMU

WE ARE NOW READY FOR THE WEEKEND, or: NEW ENDLESS BOOGIE IS HERE

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ENDLESS BOOGIE’S LABEL NO QUARTER RECORDS EXPLAINS SOME STUFF:

CD/2xLP OUT FEBRUARY 19th
WFMU session: January 15th, 3-6pm (east coast time)
Record Release show 2/15 @ Cameo Gallery
Brooklyn, NY w/ Arbouretum & Hans Chew

New York’s Endless Boogie are pleased to announce that their third studio album Long Island will be in stores February 19th. The foursome – comprised of Paul “Top Dollar” Major, Jesper Eklow, Harry Druzd and Marc Razo – have made a monstrous, epic of an LP spanning 8 tracks and running 79 minutes and 48 seconds. More often than not, Matt Sweeney joins them on these songs, a recent staple of the live band (at least at New York–area shows) and an able partner for Major to work off. Sweeney and Eklow are credited with producing.

Paul Major says of Long Island: “There’s a lotta strange characters on this album, I don’t know who most of them are. They span time. They seem to know me. They insist there are no messages in the music beyond blasting off and staying there… We brought the beast back alive this time, be careful when you tear off the shrink wrap… “

A note about the album art: despite its bizarre and eerie resemblance to Paul Major, the painting, entitled “Skogtroll,” is actually from 1902 and was done by a Nordic artist named Theodor Kittelsen. It exists in the public domain.

Hear Endless Boogie perform for THREE STRAIGHT HOURS this Tuesday January 15th on Brian Turner’s WFMU program. You can stream it online: WFMU.org

PRE-ORDER THE ALBUM NOW AND GET EXTRA STUFF: NO QUARTER STORE

Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Bull Tongue” column from Arthur No. 29 (May 08)

BULL TONGUE by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore
from Arthur Magazine No. 29/May 2008, available from The Arthur Store

Great new LP by Portland’s Jackie O Motherfucker may be our fave of theirs since Flat Fixed. Spaced out jabber and float with casual/urgent female vocals that almost sounds like certain moments of Fuzzhead at their most blues-wailin’est, interspersed with Velvetsy volk moves, and overlaid with swabs of smoke & jibber. The slab is called Valley of Fire (Textile) and it’s a monster. Also out from Jackie O is a sprawling 2 LP set, America Mystica (Dirter Productions), which was recorded in various caverns by the touring version of the band between ’03 and ’05. Not quite as precise as Fire, but its muse is savagely crunchy in spots and never so formal as to appear in a bowtie. It’s an open-ended weasel-breeze you’ll happily sniff in the dark. Is that a hint of Genevieve’s crack?

This young noise dude from Minneapolis named Oskar Brummel who records and performs under the name COOKIE has released his first entry into the new new American underground noise forest and it is frothingly balls-deep: good n’ harsh. It’s a cassette titled Ambien Baby and it flows with both a FTW sexual undertow and a strange-feeling/shit-coming rejoice. There should also be rejoicing over the fact that Times New Viking seem to have made their transition to Matador with their instincts intact. Their new LP, Rip It Off, is as grumbly and fucked sounding as any blast of gas they emanated previously. Nice thick vinyl, too. I guess you need it heavy when the needle’s buried this far into the red. Smooth!

It has taken a little while to actually read the bastards, but now that it’s done, there can be little doubt that Process Books has blasted out three of the best music-related tomes to have been peeped by our tired eyes. First up is the new edition of John Sinclair’s Guitar Army. This is one of the great American underground revolutionary texts—ecstatic, naïve, visionary and powerful. It’s a little funny to glom a few of the embedded old (old) school opinions about what is happening, but it’s still a wonderful read, and a doorway into eternal truths, if you can stay open to its music. The new layout is pretty good. We miss a few visual aspects of the old one (like, where’s the Frantic John flyer?), but the new pics more than make up for it, and the bonus CD—music, interviews, rants, poetry—is fantastic. As is Paul Drummond’s Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson. We’ve read endlessly about Roky over the last 30 years, but this book is jammed (JAMMED) with new facts, reproductions of fliers, posters, photos and ephemera we never even imagined, and Drummond really covers the subject the way he deserves to be covered. It’s really an overwhelming effort. The same is true of Robert Scotto’s Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue. The writing can be a little sere, but the story is juicy enough to mitigate this dryness. We finally get to read the story of how the collaboration album with Julie Andrews came to be. There are meetings with Arturo Toscanini and Edgar Varese. It’s quite a tale, and Scotto has done his homework. The only frustrating note is that there really isn’t a comprehensive straight discography. If there’s a second edition, it would be a welcome addition. Also, while the CD tracks are bitchen—especially the early recordings by (one presumes) Steve Reich—some notation there would be cool, too. Other’n those quibbles, we couldn’t be more celebratory ‘bout popping our corks. Buh!

We reported a while back how the horn has become a significant sound source in basement noise life with the weirdo bleat/junk processing of John Olson’s reed kill with Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines etc., and certainly Slithers, and to a mighty free jazz extent the always amazing Paul Flaherty. Furthering all this way hep ghost-trance-sense improv is Dan Dlugosielski’s new(ish) project Uneven Universe. Dan oversees the EXBX Tapes label and has recorded great gunks of noise-jam as Haunted Castle, plus he’s spooged out a few Uneven Universe documents. The one we keep going back to is The Rattling Caverns, on sweet Ohio label Catholic Tapes. It will make you wanna huff smoke-think and drink brews and maybe get some arm-around. If you’re lucky.

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WFMU IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST RADIO STATION BAR NONE FOREVER SHUT UP

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In an era when everyone pretends that the mobius strip of endless ipod jams are satisfying I choose to stay freshly amused with a battery of living deejays who never leave the station in East Orange, and even if they did leave they’ve archived every show since forever and there’s no commercials.

I was first taken in by WFMU in the 95th year of last century when some deejay played the entire radio conversation between a train driver who had lost his brakes as he was heading into a big curve and certain doom. I think someone had put something in my drink because by the time the guy jumped from the burning train (and survived! he gets on the radio and tells everyone he’s buying them beers tonite!) I was crying and checking my radio dial to try and figure out who had just saved my life.

I’m serious when I say that I lived in New York until this radio station went live on the interweb. Out of all the New York things I could not part with, WFMU was the most important one.

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When people ask me what I’m listening to I tell them, “WFMU, never ask me again!” because WFMU is all I listen to, ever. There is nothing that WFMU can’t do. I used to be worse. If I went out of town i would be overcome with ennui, wondering what Brian Turner might play this week. The sense of loss was overwhelming, depressing even.

People always want to know how come I write so good. What I tell them is: I listen to Brian Turner on Tuesday, followed by the brilliant and bizarre Dave Emory (Daves of The World Unite!), who would have to be my greatest inspiration in my amazing career as a whatsit.

My favorite five hours all week to get the drivel wrote is Tuesday because I know that Brian Turner is deejaying just for me. Yeah. We work together, me and Brian. Of course Brian doesn’t know about me yet, but he will, and one day we’ll be together.

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After Brian Turner’s show, Dave Emory delivers a well-footnoted dissertation confirming what I suspected about how Nazis are still the running the game, whilst I get all the cooking and cleaning done. Then I get drunk, abuse myself and cry to Al Jolson songs during the Antique Phonograph Music Program. It’s a cheap date night and everybody is happy afterward.

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I then float off on the night time deejays who often do the greatest stuff because they are allowed to get weird. Solid Gold Hell with Sue P. never fails to gird me up for the extra hour of an all-night typing binge.

I love the ever discombobulated Terri T and her little Attitude (“I said don’t call when I’m on the mike!”), and I can’t tell if I like Dave the Spazz or Fools Paradise with Rex more. Rex has the politically incorrect 78s in the fur-lined fallout shelter with the bubbles. Dave the Spazz has a monkey. Both of them use soundbites that seem to work with my life (“Dave? Dave? this is highly irregular. I think you should take a stress pill and think things over”.)

The station is also a great way to scare indie rock idiots or Vice types out of your house at four in the morning if you know how to blast the awesome, unparalleled gospel show called “The Sinners Crossroads which is worth the link just to hear Kevin Nutt’s North Carolina accent. It makes their haircuts hurt!

If there is something on WFMU that doesn’t suit you, like that guy who screams in ersatz german (stop it for the love of god!), you can always go to the recent archives page.
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Harvey Pekar guests on Douglas Rushkoff's "Media Squat" radio show this evening

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Tonight Arthur columnist Douglas Rushkoff will interview legendary file-clerk and comic book writer Harvey Pekar on his weekly radio show Media Squat. Topics to be discussed include Pekar’s new graphic novel on the history of the Beats (which you can, frustratingly enough, read without images on Google Books), Rushkoff’s new book, and Pekar’s famous on-air conflict on Late Night where he called Letterman a scab and shill for GE.

Media-Squat Radio airs every Monday at 7pm EDT
Listen on WFMU, iTunes, or Media Squat
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBr4NxujLvw

May 9: Chhandayan's 10th Annual All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music in NYC

Highlights from Chhandayan’s 9th Annual All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music

One of the many wonderful things about getting a bit deeper into Indian Classical music is learning about the way ragas work better when they’re played at specific times of the day and night. E.g. When things get hectic after lunch here on Arthur’s Atwater Campus, we’ve learned to put Nikhil Banerjee’s Afternoon Ragas – Rotterdam 1970 on blast so we can keep things in focus.

So when there’s an epic Indian Classical jam like Chhandayan’s 10th Annual All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music going down in New York City, you know it’s gonna be awesome ’cause this is how these nocturnal ragas are meant to be experienced: All through the night and into the woozy early hours of the AM. It’ll be just like sweating through the wee hours to the oonce-oonce-oonce except instead of extended trance breakdowns and all the hands in the air there’ll just be a collective sense of silent elation as Utpal Dutta “goes for it” with a wild 4am tabla solo. Plus you’ll probably feel a lot less shit come dawn. Please note: Sleeping bags and mattresses are prohibited.

Ready to get pumped? WFMU is previewing the show this Saturday, May 2 from 6-9pm on Rob Weisberg’s Transpacific Sound Paradise. For more Indian ragas we’d also like to direct your attention to the outstanding archives of now-silent audioblog The Magic of Juju. Likewise, the Pandit Pran Nath album that Babcock hipped us to back in early March is still available for download over at Big States.

What: Chhandayan’s 10th Annual All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music
How much: Tickets range from $25-$100
When: May 9th 7pm – May 10th 6am
Where: The New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 W 64th Street, New York, NY 10023
More info: http://www.tabla.org/

Rushkoff defends the Dark Ages tonight on WFMU, 7pm EDT

Provocative thinker/Arthur columnist Douglas Rushkoff will be doing his weekly radio show, “The Media Squat” live tonight at 7pm EDT on WFMU. Streams at wfmu.org.

Doug tweets:

StreetsBlog Aaron Naparstek joins me on MediaSquat: WFMU.org, 7pm, and itunes WFMU. I plan to defend the so-called Dark Ages.

Should be interesting listening, especially for folks who were intrigued by Doug’s recent essays on the economy (“Let It Die,” “Hack Money, Hack Banking”) when he touched on current scholarship regarding life and commerce in the late Middle Ages.

It's Time to Party: Transmodern in B-more and FMA Benefit in B'klyn

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Two big events on the East Coast this weekend. In Baltimore, its the Transmodern Festival all weekend long with a gaggle of some of the best tweaker-performers around (Dan Deacon maybe the best-known of them). Here’s a nice chat with the festival’s organizers from the Baltimore City Paper.

In Brooklyn on Saturday night, there’s the Launch Party for WFMU’s FreeMusicArchive.org , a site that will soon be eating many of your evenings in solitude by providing you with tons of free and totally legal downloads by great musicians who you really want to listen to. Before that happens, you can get out and among other people one last time and hear live music by Sightings, Pink Skull, John Dwyer’s new band, Excepter and DJ Brian Turner. Here are deets.

We will expect to see smiling, drunken photos of you at one of these events on Flickr Monday morning.

Assteroidz: Diamond Dave Edition

Q: Do you have Asteroids? A: No, but my dad does.”

OMFG! We thought the mere IDEA for this thing was funny enough, but then Van Hagar’s ugly mug comes floating through the space debris. GENIUS. Forget the latest Tom Clancy nuclear holocaust first person shooter war porn: Diamond Dave’s Assteroidz is the video game of the year.

Find more wonderful Van Halen oddities over at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.