WFMU's Beware of the Blog

More Rogue Taxidermy

Someone said that cat videos are the new internet porn, and it's not a far fetched concept for anyone on social networks.  Those with pet owners on their friend list often find themselves with pictures of pets (and breakfast) in their feed, along with the corresponding complaints from the more curmudgeonly among us.  

Somehow, over time, I've gradually become privy to perhaps the less pleasant (but no less cute) side effect of this phenomenon; odd taxidermy.  It was probably when I went to the Buckhorn Exchange in Denver, where the walls are filled with taxidermy; one or two of the animals mounted on the wall had anamolies, like three eyes for instance, and everything on the wall had once been on the menu (I only drank there).  I've got a collection of photographs of dead birds.  I was concerned that I'd offend people here if I posted about this, but there is a precedent here on WFMU's Beware of The Blog, so I decided to add to its legacy.  The foregoing is a veritable coluratura of creepitude. 

I knew that people made alligator handbags, but I admit, I had no idea that there were people making a deer's rump into a bottle opener, or packaging ale into the corpse of a squirrel.  I'd say with no shame that I'm not terribly surprised.  I am surprised, however, that a man took the corpse of his beloved cat, Orville, and made it into an "Orville-copter".  All that aside, I'm more interested in the botched taxidermy, the critters who are forever immortalized with crooked, constipated facial expressions, or the guy who may have gone to jail for fusing the parts of different endangered animals together (all of this is undeniably striking by the way) to make two headed geese, or a squirrel crab, etc.   Whether they are intended as memento mori or fashion statements or surrealistic heirlooms, is for the viewer to decide. I am not sure if I'd do these things to my cat Chollie (he'd make a good bear skin rug), nor am I sure if I'd consent to be some kind of human paraglider corpse, but I do find it fascinating. The range varies from profoundly artistic to childish and mean spirited. A whole slew of selected odd taxidermy below. 

Related: Human Doll Clones in Japan (you can't "unsee" this), and Robotic Beastiality Sculpture decomissioned after 20 years due to broken goat motor.

Irma Serrano AKA "La Tigresa"

I first read about Irma Serrano within the pages of The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.  Better known as "La Tigresa", Serrano was an actor (in theater, soaps, and movies of the 60s), as well as a singer, and to some extent she was involved in politics.  She was a senator, I'm not sure what her exact role was, except that it was certainly to the extent that she was involved in political scandals.  She was arrested for publicly flirting with The President of Mexico, and they are rumored to have had an affair.  Her first film role was alongside a Mexican wrestler named Santo, in the pulp film Santo Contra los Zombies.  According to Jodorowsky, Serrano engaged in one conniving PR stunt after another, and practiced animal voodoo with the best of them.  She had a refridgerator full of animal parts and supposedly a goat buried underneath her living room floor. Serrano is considered to be an icon of the golden age of entertainment in Mexico. Below, the song title appropriately translates to "Calling The Devil", from Serrano's first self titled LP, and I'm also including a clip of the aforementioned Santo Zombie movie's ending.  

  

Londo Sandooglebaum, A New Orleans Tour Story, and Arthur Godfrey

 

On tour in 2011, I found myself in New Orleans with my only place to stay being a squat house without a working toilet, gas, or hot water.  It would have been fine, it was charming enough, and it would have been with the comraderie of genuinely good people, but I'm incredibly glad I ran into Drew Ziegler/Londo Sandooglebaum instead.  Some of you may know him as the genius behind Complicated Horse Emergency and Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu or the vocalist for a very convincing Laibach cover band called "Budweiser".  Drew helped me get to the shows I had booked, and also helped me jump onto a bill at a clandestine metal bar speakeasy rather than playing at a sports bar in the suburbs.  He and his roommates let me stay at their place, which was an old iron ore factory converted into a dadaist/surrealist paradise.  

Some areas of the building were just full of tons and tons of barbeque grills and bathtubs.  Other areas were stacked with vintage juke boxes alongside what I could only call "circus memorabilia" for lack of a better word, and a great deal of the stuff Drew used for his absurdist plays, seemingly easily acquired and in casual abundance.  Another part of the building seemed to be a separate house unto itself, I'm still not sure as there were several floors, some of which were accessible only by a ladder. Bizzare makeshift lofts with clothing hanging from the walls and a huge room with nothing but pool table, for instance.  Mysterious rooms made up of torn and damaged turn of the century Victorian decor, complete with water damaged paintings, long, skinny, ripped velvet couches, and ornate green patterned paisley wallpaper.  They had an absolutely adorable pit bull, and some of the tenants' rooms were built entirely out of doors.

 A few of my memories include being drunk, while Drew hand fed us arugula like baby birds, or while he played the above song on an old beaten up hand crank 78rpm player.  The speed would warble Godfrey's words at different speeds, taking the song into even more eerie territory.  "The MAAAN  WITH THE WEEEEEEIRD BEEAAAAAAAAAAAARD".  Unfortunately, I heard that place has burned down.  Nobody was hurt to my knowledge, but I find it to be absolutely tragic, as it was an experience that I will never forget, and it was an undeniably special place.  Drew has relocated and all I can do is speak the world of him and wish him the best.  

 

*UPDATE* - I am completely incorrect about the burning, apparently that was a different place.  

On Chasin' Wimmin (Not Safe For Women)

I was initially and perpetually inspired by this post on "Country Fuzz" to add in my own modest contribution, although, I don't really know too much about that and it's obvious that what I'm sharing here only superficially has anything to do with the original post in question, if at all.  Instead I am posting about "the proper object of every man's attentions"; chicks, dolls, you know.     I sort of feel like I am Andrew Dice Clay trying to give you dating advice, or demonstrating "Picking Up Girls Made Easy" only somehow having big vaseline laden hair.  This is a part of history, and it's fun to make fun of parts of history that are silly now, and to think about how we will also look back from the future, and feel silly as well, about how we feel now.  LOL

 

I had these two rollickin' country tracks that I thought were great (and kinda hilarious), and someone is trying to sell the one by Ray Pillow for $495 (!) for some reason.  I spent a good year hoping that I would find this one single that I'd had.  All I can remember is that the chorus is something like "36 at the top, 22 in the middle, 37 at the, ...hey hey!". It would have been a perfect trifecta. It really pains me that I can't find it among all of my 45s that I don't always (never really) arrange into any kind of order whatsoever.  I don't know the name of the artist or anything.  So maybe one of you fancy record collector types can help!?  In the meantime, I know I'm going to really help out my cause by adding in this track from the record of the same name, even though it is a beatnik jazz song and doesn't really fit in with the rest at all, except for the obvious. It's about GIRLS though!  What a novel idea!  Sigh,  I knew this would be awkward.  

Ray Pillow - And I Like That Sorta Thing

Jimmy Dean - I Won't Go Huntin' With You Jake ( But I'll Go Chasin' Wimmin)

Jonah Jones - I Dig Chicks!

Interview with Paranormal Researcher and Sound Artist Michael Esposito

In October of 2011, I did an extensive email interview for an article in a weekly paper on Michael Esposito, paranormal researcher and experimental artist.  Esposito specializes in Electronic Voice Phenomena, the occasional tendency for voices to mysteriously end up on more or less quiet recordings, when there is no logical reason for them  to be there.  Not simply a ghost hunter, he also incorporates these sounds into compositions either alone or with other well regarded collaborators.  His biography makes one wonder how he ever slept, as he was a psy ops officer in the gulf war, a student at four different universities (including American University in Cairo, Egypt), and he has performed all over the world in support of numerous releases, many of which were published by the venerable Touch Music UK.  He's been interviewed or featured in films more than a handful of times, and he has worked the “lecture circuit” for paranormal conferences, as well as festivals and exhibits in Graz, UK, and Sweden.  As is to be expected, my article, with a small maximum word count, couldn't possibly do justice to the depth of background necessary for such an undertaking, and after it was done, I had a longing to be able to communicate just that.  In the process of my research, not only did I do an interview but I also followed up after the initial article, read an extensive bio, numerous published and unpublished essays, and plenty of information online.  In the process of this final interview, Michael probably flew to 5 different countries to perform or record. 

Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout

I happened to meet Linnea Quigley at a movie marathon the other night.   She's known as the "Scream Queen", and she's been in over 100 low budget horror movies, including Creepozoids, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Night of The Demons, Sorority Babes In Slime Bowl-O-Rama, Silent Night Deadly Night, Don't Go Near The Park, and Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings.    Return of the Living Dead is one of my favorite horror movies, and I saw it when I was 4 or 5 years old.  She happened to be the first woman I ever saw naked, when in the movie, she spontaneously starts getting nude and dancing around in a cemetery, after fantasizing about how she wants to die in an awkward punk rock candor.  My grandmother came running into the room, covering up the screen and saying "This is filth!  This is terrible!"  Linnea was a very good natured and upbeat person.  She also does music (Horror Workout includes her singing a punk song) and film production these days, so I'm told.   This highly educational film is going to be reissued, and it's not safe for work..  

Their House Is A Museum, Where People Come To See 'Em

 

We live in strange times.  We are approaching the third and fourth wave of vintage retro music, particularly exotica revivals, a music style that is initially almost a mockery of traditional Polynesian music, but in itself a pretty wide open, otherworldy bastard of a music genre, among others.  I never thought that Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons would see so many generations of enthusiasm outside of their initial flashpoint, but there are workings and reworkings.  People still think that the wing wong chong sounds in "China Girl" and "Kung Fu Fighting" are implements of traditional Asian music, even though to anyone outside of 1940, they hardly have a resemblance.   Sometimes, though, reworkings of reworkings of concepts that never really existed in real life can be captivating.  Such is the case with the marvelous people who are trying to make the half-imaginary mansions from the Addams Family and The Munsters, both TV shows filmed on generic stage sets, a reality.

It might be more than a little geeky, but I totally support these folks who are trying to settle this problem once and for all.  

For the Addams Family, it seems to be rather impossible.  An architect named Mark Bennett did an entire book speculating the floor plans of several television sitcoms, but this blogger points out the very obvious flaws in these plans, especially in the (lacking) foyer to the Addams Family house.   Both of these fellas are cross referencing scenes from every episode of the series with one single painting of a house in LA that is now demolished.  The image of the house was only ever painted from one angle, scenes from the series were never shot there.  It happened to be painted on glass, and they would simulate rain in front of this painting when necessary.  Sometimes, they would zoom the camera all the way into the window to show us more intimately what Pugsley or Wednesday were doing. 

Children's Day at the Morgue

 

Sheldon Allman has been mentioned before on this blog in 2006, wherein we were informed about his history as an actor and singer in the 60s, notably appearing on The Fugitive, and The Twilight Zone.  It was also made known that Allman did a record called Folk Songs for the 21st Century and he did music for an episode of Mr. Ed, writing and singing two songs as the voice of the talking horse, among many other things.  What wasn't mentioned was that he also worked with Bobby Pickett on two horror themed musicals, and more importantly, he did an exceptional monster record called "Sing Along With Drac".  I did an interview with Count Loachfillet a few years ago, and he turned me onto it.  It's a killer!   Above is a youtube clip where the uploader (incidentally considering the recent post) mistook him for Thurl Ravenscroft (good company as far as I'm concerned).  

Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids (talking to a fake psychic!)

Of the wide oeuvre that exists from famous bands whose precocious demos seemed like the last thing that a major label would pick up and find to be marketable, so far as I know, Marilyn Manson & The Spooky Kids has got to take the cake.  This isn't to say that the music was bad per se, it's just that they amount to about the most unconventional way to cater to nefarious record labels imaginable.  Some of the demos included answering machine messages, readings of The Cat In The Hat, weird off-kilter drum machine ditties, and vulgar spoken word over pitch bent samples and backwards voices.  The Spooky Kids started out with the lead singer reading poetry while the would-be keyboard player, previous to being able to afford a keyboard,  would have his own little playhouse set up in the corner of the stage.  Madonna Wayne Gacy's little annex was made up of oversized building blocks and stuffed animals, and he would spend the entire time playing with army men, ignoring the audience.  Later on, the Spooky Kids would take their dark side of childhood affectations concept and go on to incorporate sadomasochistic cage play, chainsaws, homosexual antics, and reckeless pyrotechnics (their first drummer Sara Lee Lucas, quit after being set afire on stage).  Sometimes they would throw plastic bags full of chocolate into the crowd, other times they would throw out plastic bags full of cat shit.  

The Spooky Kids had a couple of side projects:  "Satan on Fire" and "Mrs. Scabtree".  Satan on Fire was a fake Christian death metal band, consecrated with the intention to infiltrate the Christian "club scene".  They had radio play for a song (that I have never been able to find) called "Mosh For Jesus".  Mrs. Scabtree was referred to as "not even performance art, just art".  Apparently they had a song where all they would do is name the women around town whom they knew had herpes.   They would paint their faces black and wear dresses, and insult the crowd most of the time.  

 

Murder Your Marilyn (64 minutes - many more links below the fold!)

Luke Skawalker

 In high school I used to take the train to The Fireside Bowl after work, and if I had time, a friend and I would hang out outside of a liquor store and get someone to buy us beer, so that I could carry it into the bowling alley in my backpack and we could drink it at the show.  The Fireside Bowl was only operating as a bowling alley maybe once a week, if that.   Most times, it was a punk rock venue, with filthy walls and trashed tiles hanging from the ceiling from sometimes incredibly forced and hardwon attempts at crowdsurfing, or just general overcompensatory posturing and recklessness.  

Right now we are in a muck of all kinds of blip hop and witch house and whatnot, but this genre melting pot concept was more scarce 14 years ago, with one exception, that there was a strange (but relatively huge) "ska core" phenomenon  that most people would like to forget.  

Luke Skawalker was like the rational extreme to that somewhat hair-brained concept of fusing punk/hardcore music with ska; In recordings, sometimes they seemed serious and innocuous, but there was always something that was so backwards, awful, irrevocably pedestrian, and just plain silly, that made you almost feel guilty for considering liking them.  Live, on the other hand, was pretty remarkable.

Luke Skawalker - Not Your Average Ska Song

Happy Days Are Here Again! (Ferko String Band)

I see that a few people have aired this band on WFMU, but I'm absolutely miffed that no one has written about them!   This record is one of my favorites, it is a steamrolling, unmitterated embodiment of pure happiness.   The Joseph A. Ferko String Band (anchored to an annual Mummers parade in Philadelphia), has been active since 1922.  In the 50s and 60s, they not only made the Billboard Charts, but outsold Fats Domino and Sammy Davis Jr.   Dubbed "The Happiest Music in the World", the Ferko String Band (still active) has performed for The Jackie Gleason Show, in some movies, game shows, or national morning news programs over the years, and in the aforementioned LP recording (which I don't think I'd have the liberty to share), the unit is supposedly 100 men strong.   Every song is in the same tempo (often faster than the videos featured here) and all of the happy-go-lucky lyrics are unrelentingly shouted for the duration of the record, in a bombastic fit of precise and disciplined racket.  In my estimation this record is like the blind mob rule of absolute and unflinching joy, some kind of Mickey Mouse military rally against the hangover goblins.  I will stop at the risk of being accused of hyperbole and let you listen for yourself, but I mean it!  Don't be so glum!  

 

The Compiled Reviews of Jliat

Jliat, the preferred nom de plume (purportedly came to him in a dream) of conceptual artist James Whitehead, is one that makes many people in the noise scene cringe with anger (especially what he calls "rebellious Americans") because of his vehement stance on the concept of anti music.  Not only is he a person who has released CDs that exhibit the various different "kinds" of silence, CDs that are not only silent but will make speakers smoke if turned to high volume, classical music midi files repurposed with war sounds, a DVDr boxset of 233 discs containing in total 711 days of audio, an automated program that mimicked the effects chain that Merzbow had at the time of its creation, set to generate (and upload) 4 minutes of random noise every day without human intervention, and so forth.

He has also angered many a noise label for his opinions that devalue the concept of an artist/truth seeker/genius of present day with the resolution that we are in a post modern cesspool.  To jliat, we are left with only a few outmoded post ironic creative devices set to  a devalued instinct towards limp mnemonic conceptual repetition.

Paradoxically, he has been a consistent reviewer for the  venerable publication Vital Weekly over the course of several years, and a shit disturber in a couple of chat forums about noise for a good while too.   His reviews seem to come with the resolution that all recorded noise is basically the same (as something that communicates nothing), or it is thinly veiled music, neither of which merit a consistent level of literary acknowledgement/observation.

Instead, jliat, undoubtedly a sophisticated and well-educated man, who as a student at Falmouth School of Art crossed paths with AMM, John Cage, John Tilbury,  Harrison Birtwistle, The Music Improvisation Company,  and various progenitors of fluxus, electronic and tape machine  workshops, etcetra etcetra, will use the admittedly open ended and unassuming medium of noise reviews to wax poetic, expounding upon various realms of art history or just seemingly belching out polysyllabic free association verbage, rather than even attempting to paint an adequate picture of what the listener might expect if she were to purchase the release in question.   

With the assistance of Mr. Whitehead, and since Vital Weekly is a publication that encourages the free distribution of its contents, I present to you all or at least a great many of the reviews Jliat has done over the course of several years, in all of its dizzying and convivial, unrepentantly counter-intuitive glory (after the jump).

Nolan Thomas - "Yo' Little Brother"

 

 "Yo Little Brother", according to the youtube comments, is a video where the at times psychotic looking narrator, Nolan Thomas, is following his wee leather clad brother around trying to protect him from the evils of drugs.  As they parade through the dark alleys of some pastel colored cardboard urban landscape, he finds that the impressionable little one is not being led astray in the concrete jungle, but instead, breakdancing with a group of kids that dress up as Cyndi Lauper, Prince, and the Boss, upholding music as a preferrable high.  While the wikipedia entry says different, it appears that Nolan Thomas (Marko Kalfka was his real name) was prototypical of Milli Vanilli, lip syching to the voice of Elán Lanier on this track, while he sang on all of the others.   

Interview with dave phillips: "Any form of definition will eventually work against itself"

The most important thing to convey about Dave Phillips is that he fuses rawness and intensity with meticulous composition, rendered with an indelible form of scarcity. Whether it is short, sharp, and sparsely explosive tracks, or what Ron Lessard called “Otto Meuhl having his way with Hermann Nitsche”, Phillips uses body sounds, amphibian field recordings, conventional musical instruments, or things like party balloons, with widely varied results, but most apparently as a means to “activate primordial shared emotions otherwise hidden by civilized experience”. Not limited to that, “dp” has been participating in various punk, hardcore, metal acts or projects that are as light hearted as covering the B-52s, or the somewhat absurdist collaborations with Tom Smith (To Live And Shave In .LA), or Schimpfluch Gruppe, and others, since 1984.

Full interview beneath the fold...

8 hours of Daniel Burke (Illusion of Safety) as DJ on WZRD circa 1988 (mp3)

Almost a quarter of a century after the fact, these recordings of Daniel Burke on WZRD blow myself and probably most other freeform DJs out of the water. An incredibly important staple of the experimental/music scene of Chicago in the 80s, WZRD, broadcast from the decrepit and littered, cavernous bowels of Chicago's Northeastern University, represented pure unmiterated spirit.  Burke, who has virtually been a kingpin of off kilter soundscapes since 1983, under the project name Illusion of Safety, not to mention also being a film maker, visual artist, photographer, pizza maker, and freestyle frisbee practitioner, does his job exceptionally well at the radio DJ console. These archives are rife with expeditiously shifting tectonic loops, apparently from his own personal rig; tertiary industrial totems often augmented with entropy, crime reports, and rare flash-in-the-pan underground relics from the cassette network of that time.  Although he was anonymous simply as a "wizard", part of the station's traditional musk, Burke really made these radio shows his own. One notable aspect of WZRD programming also seems to be their penchant for designating the parameters of mandatory public service announcements very loosely, so rather than hearing about your average non-profit humane organization, which is all fine and good, we get to hear an articulate yet somewhat troglodytic Mr. Burke reading texts on the mysteries of sonic vibrations as dictated by Hafler Trio, or disseminating tragic information about the nuclear radiation that killed John Wayne and many others while filming in Nevada in the 70s. I promise to anyone who is interested in the evolutionary mnemonics of freeform radio, this is not to be missed.  Many thanks to Dan for sharing!  

*These dates correspond exactly to the labels on Daniel Burke's CDRs*

10/8/88 #2 Part 1 | 10/8/88 #2 Part 2 | 10/8/88 #3 Part 1 | 10/8/88 #3 Part 2 | 10/8/88 #4 Part 1 | 10/8/88 #4 Part 2 | 12/3/88 #3 Part 1 | 12/3/88 #3 Part 2 | 12/10/88 #1 Part 1 | 12/10/88 #1 Part 2 | 12/10/88 #3 Part 1 | 12/10/88 #3 Part 2 | ?

It's A Strawberry Marshmallow Snow World

I don't care about Christmas, or any other holiday equivalent. I don't even like funny songs making fun of Santa Claus anymore (Jimmy Stewart and Tiny Tim are still cool though). With respect to other people who believe in things that I don't, that's all fine and good, there's nothing ethical I have against the practice, I think it's good for kids. I have to admit, though, that the very concept of something that seems out of place at any other time to listen to it (whereas Halloween music is good all year round), the despicable novelty of Christmas music, the sell-by date of it all, it's disappointing. I don't care at all for it. It's in the background at Walgreens when I occasionally buy my cigarettes late at night, and that's it.

Aelter II (video)

 

2 Duets That Go Together

 

I found out about this couple by way of Angela from Weirdo Records saying that each of their records were one of those that you could hardly play a side from it before someone came up to the counter and bought it.  And aren't these two absolutely darling?  While I have worked at record stores, none of them had the gumption to have slabs like these gracing the shelves, and I had to have it.  The claim to fame for Paul & Paula (not their real names) started as a neighborhood couple in college who sang this song at a nearby Texas radio station and spurred a wave of popularity that coasted well past an initial record deal. They are credited for setting into motion the barrage of duets that followed in the 60s, with this hit Hey Paula (written by "Paul"), which was number one for most of February in 1963.  

See the 2nd duet below...

200 Public Service Announcement Videos

 

I have collected 200 Public Service Announcements into a playlist on youtube.  Everything from vintage to present, serious to silly, disturbing and nonsensical.   Drug abuse, sexual abuse, forest fires, littering, drinking and driving, texting while walking, bullying, farting, menstruation, and more.  Take a walk down memory lane or learn a thing or two along my little detour of the information superhighway.  It could make you delirious.

Blood Lust - Conversations with Real Vampires (mp3)

This is from a promotional cassette for the book of the same name by Carol Page.  Some time around 1989.  Purportedly equal parts sympathetic and incisive book about "honest to goodness bloodsuckers".  The audio sounds like Lost Boys exploitation mixed with half baked Creep Show mannerisms, plodding pianos, deep voices, screaming samples, a real hoot.  Clandestinely dubbed from the library of WZRD.

Bloodlust - Conversations with Real Vampires