Read:My:Back

Updates: Radio! Cooking! My Questionable Decision to (Briefly) Front a Rock Band!

So... long time, no blog. Perhaps it seems like an easy out, but I blame the one year old. At some point over the last several weeks, she must have crossed some invisible threshold of development which ultimately manifests in me having no time for anything that's not dad-related. Even her daily naptime—previously branded as my chance to blog, further develop my cockeyed business proposal, or even bang out the occasional cover letter/résumé—has lately morphed into my sole opportunity to clean the house, plot out dinner, or make up for the increasing difficulty in getting a full night's sleep of my own.

Anyway, don't read that as a complaint. The Kid is awesome, and short of pulling in a paycheck for it, I really couldn't be happier with the current routine.

Having recently realized that I helmed only a paltry FOUR fill-in shows on WFMU in 2010, I'm happy that there has been so much radio in my life lately. Aside from some perfunctory engineering work during the WNYC and WQXR membership drives, I've also had the opportunity to spend some quality time with two old broadcasting confidantes from my old digs at Princeton's WPRB. And of course, there was the WFMU Marathon which had the best vibe of any since 2007, at least. Congrats to all my pals there for a great job. It remains an honor to occasionally walk in your company, especially as such newsfeed-grabbing calamities as the KUSF debacle unfold with painful reckoning for anyone who appreciates independent broadcasting.

Being part of the WFMU Marathon is an exhausting practice, and I'll freely admit that this was the first one in a decade that I felt somewhat disconnected from. Of course, this is more my own fault than anyone else's, what with my frustratingly uncooperative and financially restrictive schedule preventing me from being as involved as I'd like to be. But on the upside, the 'thon was a great opportunity to catch up with a few old friends, and feel once again like I'm surrounded by My People. Re-visiting an organization that routinely displays its passion for creativity and which (usually) puts its best foot forward can be a little jarring, especially having focused my attentions on more traditional non-profs over the last few years, where said passions are frequently muted by bureaucracy or simple indifference. In other words, it felt great to be reminded of the possibilities.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, activity has been stunted, but not abandoned. Once again I must cite the demands of caring for The Kid as the primary reason for backing away from the adventurous end of the home cooking scene. She just demands so much attention now, and dinnertime has taken a turn towards a correspondingly more traditional standard. Which isn't to say I'm not enormously proud of having recently whipped up homemade fish paste, Middle Eastern meatballs, or miso marinated flank steak with mirin roasted carrots. (All delicious!) My wife and I are also totally floored to have so effortlessly ditched The Kid's regimen of jarred baby food in favor of pint-sized portions of whatever we happen to be eating (including all of the above mentioned dishes.) Expanding The Kid's palate early on was an important goal for us right out of the gate, and I'm thrilled that she's taken so eagerly to everything from grilled fish and paella, to hummus, balsamic reductions, and pretty much everything else we've plopped down for her to snatch up hungrily. Defying the bland diets we were raised on feels like a healthy and responsible move on our part as parents, not to mention a refreshing break from past traditions that only served us poorly later in our own lives. (I didn't try sushi until I was in my mid-20s, avocado not until several years after that. She's already had both.)

And then of course, there's music—always lurking in the background, like a vengeful aristocrat in a Francisco de Goya painting. Having such limited access to FMU over the past year, my awareness of new stuff has taken an unfortunate nosedive, but it is just such instances which I believe validates ownership of a large and cumbersome record collection. When times are tight, you can always get lost in your own private stash and (re)discover something for jaded ears. After finally accepting that the Audio Technica ATPL-120 turntable I bought several years ago is a fucking LEMON that can not be coaxed away from its predilection for dropped channels and omnipresent hum, I've learned to tolerate the surface-to-noise reality and have lately been cranking older vinyl sides by Konono No. 1, Jesu, and the Fastbacks. Also getting lots of attention these days is the perhaps misleadingly titled Skinhead Revolt comp of early ska and rocksteady, which is just back-to-front brilliant. In stumbling around my own archives, I've also earmarked some releases to be hawked on eBay or Discogs whenever the economy eventually rights itself. Of all the possible futures I can envision for my family and I, none of them involve me owning 80s/90s hardcore records by Stars & Stripes, Moss Icon, or Crucial Youth. If some 22 year old with rich parents wants to elevate his social standing among his peers and simultaneously pay me handsomely for the records that will do it for him, I've got no problem with it. Which, in itself, is a relatively new phenomenon for me—When I was younger and more puritanical about art and commerce, I frequently balked at the idea of selling such releases for large sums of money, often opting to give records that are probably worth a mint now to friends, if not lazily discarding them by some similar means. Many years from now, I expect images of Rough Trade picture sleeves and obscenely rare garage rock 45s will come back to haunt me while trying to explain to The Teenager why mommy and daddy can only pay for the first three semesters of college.

Had enough of me yet? Well, in the interest of closing the circuit of recent activities (and perhaps tantalizing you with my long dormant talents as a karaoke singer), here's an MP3 of me singing with WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia, live at Maxwell's on the last night of the Marathon. The song is "Helicopter Spies", originally by Swell Maps. Although my performance certainly pales in comparison to the original, it is no small accident that I'm posting it almost five years to the day since Nikki Sudden passed away unexpectedly in New York. Intro and vamping by MC Joe Belock. Matt Fiveash on bass, Evan "Funk" Davies behind the drum kit, and the low-slung, six-string talents of Scott Williams, Brian Turner, and Jason Sigal.

[Download]

"Play it like Slade, Evan!"

 

Rare Earth wrecking ball—"Hey Big Brother" live in '74 + Soundcloud remix

Not many people my age routinely deploy an appreciation for the band Rare Earth, but I have always, always, always loved the song "Hey, Big Brother". This live version, recorded during 1974's California Jam concert (which also counted Deep Purple, the Eagles, and Black Sabbath in the lineup) does a pretty effective job of demonstrating why, even through the thicket of handlebar moustaches and ubiquitous helicopter shots of the sprawling crowd (now alleged to have been several hundred thousand strong.)

Rare Earth, in case you don't know, were among the first all-white acts signed to the Motown label. At their best, they were a funk-rock act that tread smoother, more accessible waters than the James Gang. They had a string of hits in the early 70s, but are probably best remembered for their cover of "Get Ready", which is OK, but doesn't hold a candle to this one. It's nice to see they haven't faded entirely from modern consciousness, as this recent and rather blazin' remix of "I Just Want to Celebrate" from Soundcloud demonstrates.

Watch the video all the way to the end for a short appearance by legendary broadcasting blowhard Don Imus, who strolls through the crowd with the local California police chief.

Imus: "Do you like rock & roll?"

Chief: "Some of it."

Very insightful, Don. Than you for your ongoing commitment to broadcasting excellence.

Four Songs About Ice

Photo by Truu. [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

If you think my periodic musings on moldy oldies like the Gun Club, Swell Maps, or Roxy Music indicate that I've sworn off new jams forever, let these periodic mixes from the FMA be the first to state otherwise. Yeah, I write about a lot of old music here—mainly for my own enjoyment. But more importantly, I listen to a lot of new music because that way lies the future. It's the same balance I've always sought to apply when programming a radio show: let 'em know where you come from, but also give 'em a sense of where you're heading. Too much of either ingredient, and you end up either sounding like an insufferable hippy or a dough-eyed neophyte. As such, here are Thee Oh Sees, Wovenhand, Dragen Espenschied, and Outpost—Four modern artists comped together thematically by what seems like the only constant in any of our lives here in the metro area.

Cold Turkey [MLK Day WFMU Fill-in for Scott Williams, 1.17.11]

Click here to listen with your preferred media player.

The Telescopes - "Dsm-iv axis 1307.46 (Night Terrors)" - Every Noise has a Note * [compilation]
White Noise Sound - "Don't Wait for Me" - White Noise Sound *
Mattison - "Oval" - Leaves
Bunny Sigler - "Let it Snow" - Let it Snow
Lame Drivers - "Working Song" - Various Deficiencies Vol. 1
The Fall - "The Classical" - Hex Enduction Hour *
The Wellington Arrangement - "Love" - Glimpses Vols. 1 & 2 * [compilation]

Timmy's Organism - "Ugly Dream" - Rise of the Green Gorilla *
Tuxedomoon - "No Tears" - No Tears EP
Soft Drinks - "Pepsi Cola" - The Thing from the Crypt (I Nearly Died Laughing) [compilation]
Negativland - "Drink it Up" - Dispepsi
Big Blood - "She Sells Sanctuary" [A cover of The Cult]
The Fans - "True" - Squares Blot out the Sun [compilation]
Jesse Winchester - "Step by Step" - Let the Rough Side Drag
Latyrx - "Bumpin' Contraption" - Solesides Greatest Bumps 4xLP [compilation]

Gal Costa - "Da Maior Importancia" - India
The Silver Jews - "The Poor, The Fair, and The Good" - Tanglewood Numbers
Tommy McCook - "The Shadow of Your Smile" - Trojan Rocksteady 3xCD [compilation]
The Plastic People of the Universe - "Kanarek (The Canary)" - Magical Nights 2xCD *
Viktimized Karcass - "The Heat is Gone" - Turn of the Grindstone [compilation]
Twinkeyz - "Sweet Nothing" - Aliens in our Midst: Complete Recordings 1977-1980
Earth - "Divine and Bright" - A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction *

The Hank IV - "Garbage Star" - III *
Konono No. 1 - "Paradiso" - Congotronics
Encre - "Flux" - Flux
Monolake - "Plumbicon (Sleeparchive Interpretation)" - Plumbicon Versions EP
Forest Swords - "Glory Gongs" - Dagger Paths EP *
Swell Maps - "The Helicopter Spies" - ...in "Jane from Occupied Europe"
Nikki Sudden - "Midget Submarine (Swell Maps)" - Live on WFMU [Download the whole set here.]
Boards of Canada - "Peacock Tail" - The Campfire Headphase

Martin Luther King - "I Have a Dream"
Vera Lynn - "Yours" - The World of Vera Lynn

Nikki Sudden on WFMU [MP3s]

One of the selfish (but great) things about being involved with WFMU is how it's repeatedly granted me the opportunity to interact with my musical heroes. I'm no starfucker, but there's something to be said for dancing right nextdoor to the fantasy, and how doing so often reveals details of Our Most Exalted Rock Gods which are strangely absent from the written histories. For instance, did you know that Joe Strummer smells of tobacco and peppermint, Donovan is a bit like a leprechaun, or that Anton Newcombe is actually a really sweet guy?

In other words, there are the people, and then there is the mythology. But within the sacred confines of WFMU, the crossroads of those two competing concepts never resonated with greater poignancy for me than in the case of Nikki Sudden.

In the early 1970s, Nikki started a band with his brother called the Swell Maps, who somehow married the disparate influences of Krautrock and T. Rex to spectactular and lasting effect. His next band, the Jacobites, made no less a statement, albeit with very different ingredients in the cooker. And then there is the decade's worth of amazing solo albums and the memorable NYC-area shows that Nikki played in support of them. I made it a point to see him perform every chance I got, so by the time schedules finally granted him time to swing by my radio show for a live set on March 20th 2006, it felt like a meeting that was long overdue.

Nikki Sudden passed away unexpectedly less than a week after that performance, and it remains a crippling testament to what was a truly wonderful night of music in Jersey City. I wrote a short piece about the evening for the Brooklyn Rail several days after the news broke, so no need to go into all the sad details again. I'm just glad the tracks from that session are finally available for everyone to enjoy. Hosting Nikki on the radio was a years-long dream of mine, and I'm still humbled and honored to have spent some time in his company.

Eternal gratitude to Rob Watts and Danny Hole. Thanks be to Nikki. Stay bruised.

Xposted on the FMA here. Check the other Nikki sessions just made available there, too.

Radio Science with Jonathan Richman

I've been doing weekly radio programs (WPRB, WRSU, WFMU) on and off for 20 years now, and in all that time, you'd think I might have learned something important. Then again, maybe it all depends on how broad your definition of that word is. For example, I have firmly established beyond all doubt that opening a radio program with this song will generate an email or phone call from a girl on the inside of six minutes.

This isn't a hunch or a gag, nor is it thinly-veiled advice for my single friends who also reside behind the mic with some degree of regularity.

This is science. This is Jonathan Richman.

Photo by Dani Canto [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Good taste by McGasko.

John Lennon vs. Me

This time of year always reminds me of the night a squad car carrying John Lennon's body sped past me on the streets of New York City. On December 8th of 1980, I was eight years old and in the city with my family for a holiday-related dinner with relatives. We were out late—much later than my parents ever kept me out back home, but I'm sure they'd been drinking and having a grand old time. The relatives we'd dined with were somewhat wealthy, and in fact we had eaten dinner at Tavern on the Green, then regarded as one of the city's more exclusive (albeit touristy) restaurants.

I had only a dim awareness of who the Beatles were back then. In 1980, I was far more interested in reenacting scenes from Star Wars with my friends than I was in any kind of music. But the Beatles' legacy was forever burned into my consciousness after my father jerked me away from the street as that squad car came screaming past, the bloody head of its famous occupant slumped against the rear passenger window. The Dakota apartment building where Lennon was murdered is only a few blocks from Tavern on the Green's old location near Central Park West, and sometime shortly before 11 PM, we were walking back to the garage where my father's car was parked. But when we crossed 72nd Street and observed the chaos left in the aftermath of the shooting, someone—a tear-streaked woman, by my father's recollection—told us what had happened. We left the city and drove home to the dark suburbs of New Jersey without speaking, probably listening to the news on the radio.

In spite of the weirdness of having been only blocks away when one of history's most famous murders went down, I never got into the Beatles the way most other kids seem to, and I often wonder why that is. Until I got older and started getting an allowance, the only Beatles record in the house was Let It Be, which belonged to one of my older siblings. Perhaps Lennon's death coupled with the eulogistic tone of that album's eponymous track is what set my associations with the band on such a weird path so early on. When you're a little kid, a song's lyrics are often the first thing that hits you, and lines like "in my hour of darkness / she is standing right in front of me / speaking words of wisdom / let it be" certainly influenced the childhood anxieties I experienced in bed at night. Long after my parents had ordered the lights switched out, the images conjured by that type of poetry were a lot to wrap my head around. It's funny to think about it again thirty years later—by anyone's estimation, a long time has passed since then. It's also quite peculiar for a band that broke up two years before I was born to in some way serve as a milemarker by which to observe my own aging. Maybe that's what people mean when they call Lennon's music "timeless". Maybe it's why that term has always bothered me so much.

[Years Ago], a [WFMU] DJ Saved my [Bank Account]

I do not fetishize vinyl records. Running the WFMU Record Fair for eight years landed me in enough confrontations with hygiene-deprived, vinyl-hoarding cellar dwellers to effectively scare me away from that lifestyle forever. Nope, my preference for LPs has nothing to do with that oft-recycled speech about how the look, feel, and smell of vinyl is a component of some shamanistic part of music fandom. I just think CDs are trash, yet I must reconcile this with my interest in physical artifacts, especially those having to do with the cultural flotsam of history.

In addition to the creepy factor, I remain somewhat in awe of people who meticulously care for their record collections as if they were living, breathing organisms. In particular, I love the story that circulated widely after John Peel's death detailing how he maintained a special box of favorite 45s; those which he felt represented something more important or progressive than just a pair of good tunes. I more or less quit buying records years ago when money got scarce, and again, the personal side effects of running the FMU Record Fair for so long certainly tarnished the notion of acquiring more vinyl in my mind for years afterwards. But it was at a Fair sometime in the early aughts that I acquired one of the singles which I would definitely add to my own box of personal favorites, were I ever to compile one. That single was "Romeo", by the Wipers, which I bought from Crowe.

Crowe was one of my first favorite people at WFMU. When I joined the station's staff in 2000, he was already sort of a fringe character there, having not helmed a weekly show for some time. But his caustic wit, intimidating presence, and his willingness to get up in the face of anyone foolish enough to cross him instantly earned my respect. He also seemed to like me—or at least tolerate me, which I took as a major point of pride since I tend to think of myself as a geek, and imagine that everyone else does too.

When I first met Crowe, he was totally unlike the stereotype that many people imagine FMU DJs to uphold. He prioritized his work and family far above the arcane knowledge and music biz hooey that other independent radio types sometimes traffic in, and in that way, he represented exactly what I'd hoped to find at the station. Not music geek heaven, but radio heaven—a place populated by fiercely intelligent and interesting weirdos who were bold enough to speak candidly with a hot microphone in their face. Crowe's acerbic mic breaks were universally crazy, hilarious, and often involved characters who operated several steps outside of society's normal channels. However, he also had a lot of insanely good records crossing his desk in some sort of business capacity, though I never did figure out why or how. Queries for details were usually met with muttered profanity, the lighting of cigarettes, or a story about some guy's house being burned down because he owed a lot of money.

Anyway, I'd been badgering him about doing a table at the Fair, and he finally agreed, though he didn't bother to show up until the last day of the event, when FMU staffers would traditionally catch a price break on the dealer fee. As he began carting his records in, he plopped a filthy box of 45s down on my dealer check-in desk and said: "Watch these. I have to go talk my way out of a goddam parking ticket", and then promptly excused himself back out onto 19th Street. Sunday morning dealer check-in was comparatively slow to the other days, so I began flipping through the box of unpriced 45s, nearly all of which were the sort to give me heart palpitations. Original singles by artists I loved, but which I'd never been able to acquire such early releases by: The Scientists, Johnny Thunders, Sun City Girls, Jah Wobble, Wipers, and so on. I began making a pile of the most desirable 45s, knowing I might have to evacuate my bank account in order to acquire them. (Which even during those better economic times, was not really an option for me.) Vinyl fetishists, as I had learned, often waxed romantic of blundering into some hole-in-the-wall record shop with no expectations, only to discover THE MOTHERLODE: A treasure-trove of all the definitive musical artifacts of one's own personal aesthetic—or however one chose to fancy it, anyway. This was that instance for me, only I hadn't needed to seek it out—Crowe had dropped a complete historical record of everything I was in love with right in front of me on a freezing loading dock in Chelsea at 7 AM. To say that I was pretty floored would be putting it mildly.

The pile was probably twenty or thirty records tall by the time he returned from his dealings with the NYPD meter maid. In the realm of Record Fair price indices, I knew the eventual transaction could end up costing me that month's rent, so I'd been trying to cherrypick only the best stuff. This was no easy task: nearly everything in the box looked amazing and was in what Crowe sometimes called "tits condition".

"You want those?", he asked when he saw me flipping through the pile. "Gimme, I'll work out the damage for you" he said, snatching the records away from me. As he flipped through them, he began adding numbers out loud which quickly climbed into the triple digits, occasionally pausing on a record to either smirk, nod approvingly, or wave it in my face while demanding to know "why the hell [I wanted] this piece of shit". Then, back to the addition, eventually reaching a total that I knew was going to sting badly. In my mind, I'd already begun the mournful re-filing of singles I would have to pass on in order to get the price down, and that's when Crowe said:

"Alright, Lupica... Twenty bucks for the pile—cash and carry. I am hooking you up, do you hear me? Don't ever fucking forget this."

Needless to say, I haven't.

Back to Work with the Lame Drivers

For no reasons other than to satisfy my own enthusiasm and to finally publish this heavily doctored image of WPRB's old broadcast control board that's been soiling my hard drive for a few years, here's a stellar track by the Lame Drivers.

Musical comparisons to Pell Mell are pretty rare around the bloggysphere, for reasons that are either too sad or ridiculous to go into, but I swear it's a point worth making in this instance. Despite the fact that 2010 was not a banner year for my explorations in new sounds (having a kid will do that to you), this track will hopefully find a place of honor on best of the year rundowns besides my own. Stream or download the Lame Drivers' "Working Song" from the Various Deficiencies Vol. 1 compilation using the player below. Looking for more by the Lame Drivers? Right this way.

Oxbow's Geometry of Business

Oxbow plays burnt, shithouse blues direct from the 28th century. The damaged and unsettling vibe that characterizes much of their music can handily take down a dozen so-called "extreme" genres, and mess up your head six ways from Sunday with the same punch. Known and feared widely for their incendiary live performances, Oxbow records sound like the ancient constructs of a nomadic race of alien time travelers. Observe this acoustic run through of "The Geometry of Business", performed at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive last June.

As you can see, the acoustic setting in no way diminishes the seething fury of the music. Vocalist Eugene Robinson uses the acoustics of BAMPFA's cavernous performance space to his advantage, howling and grimacing as if driven by a frantic, wild-eyed instability. For comparison's sake, here's streaming audio of the LP version, originally from The Narcotic Story (2007, Hydra Head Records)

There are also several electric performances of the song on YouTube.

When The Narcotic Story came out, I eagerly volunteered to review it for Dusted Magazine, and then panicked upon realizing that I was in way over my head. That it's taken me this many years just to conjure up the meager wordage for a simple fan post speaks volumes to the menacing and wholly unique musical demolition that is Oxbow. (Fortunately, fellow Dusted scribe Adam MacGregor was there to wade through my epic ill-preparedness and pony up the great review the record deserves.)

I've yet to see Oxbow live, but my desire has only been bolstered by the stories told by those with better judgment. Back in 2004, Robinson and guitarist Niko Wenner came through WFMU and performed a stripped-down acoustic set live on Brian Turner's show. Stream or download it from the Free Music Archive using the player below. All hail our conquering overlords!