WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Franklyn MacCormack and Friends Discuss Old Time Radio, March, 1964 (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 62) (MP3)

This tape came to me with a batch of others, none of them in boxes, and with minimal indication of what it might contain. There is a sticker on the reel, seen at the right, which reads "Radio's Nostalgic Yesterdays, 3/30/64

That sticker's information is true enough, but what it doesn't say is that the tape contains a rare recording of the legendary WGN Radio personality, Franklyn MacCormack, chatting with a few other long-time radio voices, about the history of radio, in particular, what would later become known as "Old Time Radio". The show was part of a series - an episode of "The Reviewing Stand" - which brought together personnel from WGN and WNUR, the radio station run by Northwestern University. 

Also featured in the conversation are Willard Waterman (best known as "The Great Gildersleeve"), radio producer James Jewell, and moderator James H. McBurney, then dean of the school of speech at Northwestern University.

Besides the involvement of MacCormack, I find this discussion particularly interesting because those taking part don't have any notion - indeed, they don't seem to think it would be possible - of the comeback in popularity of what would become known as Old Time Radio (OTR). That comeback would begin taking place in the early '70's, thanks to, among others, Chuck Schaden, whose career reviving OTR shows and stars started right in Evanston, mere blocks from Northwestern, a career that took him to the Radio Hall of Fame.

There is an assumption, mentioned a few times here, that these shows no longer existed in any playable form, which Schaden and many others demonstrated to be untrue, and which you can still determine to be inaccurate via visits to myriad OTR websites, as well as eBay.

They also discuss the likelihood of OTR drama and comedy being attempted anew in that day and age, 1964, and their belief that it could work. Aside from the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, no attempts made after that point that I'm aware of (Theater 5, The Zero Hour, etc.), actually did make and keep an audience. 

And of course, in the midst of this, there is the requisite, gratuitous slapping down of the rock and roll music that had taken the place of "good" radio; music which, we're told, is un-hummable and forgettable. Interestingly, it was this very week when The Beatles held the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100, with some very memorable work indeed. 

Just an interesting conversation with a couple of radio legends involved. I enjoyed it, and I hope you will, too. 

Franklyn MacCormack and Friends (MP3)

Tape (JPG)  |  Tape Label (JPG)

Comments can be sent to bobpurse@gmail.com 

The Adventures of 'Music Master', 1942-1945 - Part One

"Flung into a series of amazing adventures by his impetuous nature, and intense hatred of injustice, John Wallace finds himself the possessor of the wonderful Pipes of Death and becomes the Music Master, matching long forgotten secrets of the ancients against the marvels of modern science..."

So begins the nearly three year run of a character high on the list of "Most Oddball and Bizarre" comic book characters from the Golden Age, our pal the Music Master, who needs only a note of music, or at least a burst of sound approximating a musical note, to perform strange and fantastic feats. Even though studying weirdo comic book character ideas is a long-time obsession of mine, I had only recently learned about this fella while trolling through old issues of Famous Funnies, one of the early magazines published in the comic magazine format. In the later issues of FF they began to introduce original in-house characters (in addition to their standard fare of newspaper strip reprints), and also promote new ones from their sister magazine Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics. In one of these colorful in-house ads I noticed a new character being promoted named 'Music Master', who sounded like a shoe-in for a WFMU blog post, or at least worth a closer look. Luckily, these magazines are in public domain, so I downloaded the entire run of Music Man stories to study.

In his first yarn our protagonist is quickly stabbed in the chest and mortally wounded with a violin bow. Well, now, this had me going right off! I certainly haven't seen any comic book crooks deal out violence that way before. Thanks to the musical ministrations of Antonini the famed violin maker he is not only revived (using an 'ancient Egyptian instrument') but his body has become "...attuned to the frequency of musical sound waves, and that he can identify himself with any musical note so that his body will react and cling to the waves of sound, and he will be transported with the speed of sound to the source of the music.". As time passes the writer of the series, Stephen A. Douglas, also the editor of the magazine, develops many more unusual things to do with hero 'John Wallace's' audio-based powers, often venturing into surreal territory.

While not one of the most amazingly weird hero characters from the early 1940s (and there are a lot of VERY strange concepts that were tried), he has his moments, along with some lovely art here and there by various hands. Come along and join our long-haired composer/player/super-hero as he battles crime right after the jump!

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. 

Putin Summer Retrospective

As befits the future Savior of Humanity (or at least the Savior of Blonde Russian Gymnasts in the Duma), Vladimir Putin has been extremely busy this past summer. One of his major tasks has involved recruiting new members of the Putin Pals, his protective managerie of super-powered animal agents. Thunk Tank Cohost Jay and I often wondered why it was that the Putin Pals did not have any bird members, when their primary mission will be to defeat the insect forces of MANTIS. How is it that Putin would recruit a Were-Whale before he’d got even one bird? (Anuka, the Flying Donkey, does not count as a bird, because: Legs. Hooves. Hair. Mammal.) Naturally, the Leader was just waiting until the time was ripe, and this summer he finally judged time to be squooshy and soft enough to unveil his Craneforce. Dressing in the uniform of a Crane Obergruppenfuhrer—sort of a white hazmat jumpsuit with weird black goggles—Putin jumped aboard Craneforce One and led the baby cranes on skywriting maneuvers high in the sky above Moscow, where they wrote “Surrender, Pussy Riot!” in smoke, and also in Russian, not English. And Cyrillic. Cyrillic letters are really hard to make in smoke, but of course Putin enjoys the challenge.

Dress Up As Natives: "You Had to Be There"

They shared bills with contemporaries like the Five, Carsickness and the Cardboards, but unlike those bands, Pittsburgh's Dress Up As Natives sounded every bit a "lost" UK DIY act.  Boasting jumpy rhumba-bass, thorny guitar and flippant vox, it's hard to believe that this all-female quartet's sole 45 (Public Records, '82) originated in America's formative Rust Belt punk scene.

But, hey: It did.  This odd outfit actually began as the Non-Stops, a similarly wavey group with a co-ed roster.  "The Non-Stops were basically the original Natives with someone named Rebecca playing bass," said Gina Cotton Simpson, former keys player for DUAN.  "Rather than kick her out, they all quit on her and restarted the band to form Dress Up As Natives."

That was sometime in '81, and they'd already forged their own sound through shows at the now-legendary Electric Banana, gigs in Market Square, occasional road trips to Ohio and West Virginia -- and through frequent practices at the Krishna House, where Simpson once lived along with members of the Five and Carsickness. 

Sharon Needles Interviewed

photo by Natalia López de Quintana

Article by Marty McSorely

I can convince almost anyone to come see almost any shitty band, but in years of attending drag events I have only ever been able to convince one straight male to attend with me—and I think it was the free vodka that convinced him. I catch some flack for being a straight dude that is a fan of drag culture, reluctantly and loosely identifying as a post-hetero-retro-sexual (if you need a label).

But it’s easy to explain my enthusiasm for the performance stylings of men in dresses. These artists are not just manipulating paints and brushes. They are manipulating their bodies to create illusions and performances that will stay with their audiences long after they wash off their make-up and take off their heels. More than that, drag is one form of performance art that still has the ability to freak out the most conservative of squares, but also make many members of supposedly “progressive” art communities think twice before attending. And for those that question drag as an artform: they give Oscars for make-up and costume design, and as a whole these queens have a much quicker wit than any of the masses in improv classes. Plus, these gals put it all together and then dance in heels with their dicks tucked up between their legs. Now that shit, I’m guessing, takes some practice.

Taking it a step further is Sharon Needles of Pittsburgh’s Haus of Haunt, who lives by the mantra “when in doubt, freak ‘em out.” Sharon is challenging long-held standards of beauty not only in the drag community but in the world at large. I got to sit down with Ms. Needles at Barefoot’s Pride Week launch party last week, where she affirmed her role as America’s Next Drag Superstar. This night, while other queens imitated Aretha and Cher, Ms. Needles gave us a Peggy Bundy that channeled the Cramps’ Poison Ivy. This isn’t just a lip-sync or a dance performance; this is commentary.

We could talk at length about Needles choosing to impersonate the lazy, channel-surfing, bonbon-stuffing icon, but it’s the little things that make me love Sharon. Instead of flipping though a TV Guide on stage, she is flipping though the latest issue of Time Out New York as she clicks the remote at the audience. Sharon isn’t bored with what is on TV. She is bored with pop culture as a whole and is looking for something more. “There is no reason not to know what is going on in the underground. You don’t have to listen to fucking Madonna or Lady Gaga… I grew up in my record store. I grew up in my video store. Today, with the Internet, people have no excuse not to be informed of other options.”

Q & A with Coil's Drew McDowall

Let me count the ways I love Drew McDowall, half of Compound Eye (with Psychic Ill Tres Warren), member of CSD with Kara Bohnenstiel, and recent collaborator with Emeralds' John Elliott in Outer Space. All cool and great things, sure, but I first heard about Mr. McDowall from his days  as a member of Coil. Hell, he played on perhaps my favorite record of all time, Astral Disaster. He's playing on Wednesday at Death By Audio at the Modular Solstice show*, I would totally go to that if I didn't live 1305 miles away.

What was the first truly strange record you ever heard?
Apart from the countless strange children's records with forgotten names and multicolour vinyl, the first record that I remember thinking "what is this? I really don't understand this" was The Faust Tapes. I was 12 when it came out and I bought it because it was cheap (49 pence) and because I liked the cover art. I can't say that I liked it initially but I was obsessed by it, playing it endlessly, trying to understand it, trying to figure out why some one would do such a thing.  A couple of years later it would become a litmus test that I used frequently: I would ask people what the thought of it (it seemed like everyone had bought it) and try and come to some conclusion about them from their answer. Most of them hated it.

A couple of questions about your time in Coil. You were on my personal favorite - Astral Disaster. Anything you can share about the making of that record, an interesting anecdote?
That record was the culmination of auspicious currents. We recorded on Samhain in Southwark the oldest part of the city. London is a living being (that is not a metaphor) and we were on the bank of the Thames below the level of the river, under the her main aquatic artery. The record is a distillation of all those influences. Unusually for Coil it was recorded quickly and more or less live.

Blow Away Your Troubles: A Note on Martin Newell and Cleaners from Venus

Martin Newell missed UK punk.  Or, rather, it missed him.  "I felt that punk was a party which had been partly my idea," he told me through recent e-mail correspondence, "but which I then ended up not going to because it was already too crowded."

He'd skirt the party's periphery some years later, through various in-roads in the late '70s and '80s, but he'd already been making music years before young, excited Brits would shrug off glam-rock hangovers and coalesce into their own units, such as the Damned, the Clash and, of course, the Sex Pistols.

Indeed, before glam flamboyance rolled over to punk's increasingly rabid trappings, Newell was already a seasoned player in the heady bacchanal popularized by Slade, the Sweet and Mott the Hoople.  At 20 years of age, he served as the frontman to Plod, a raucous glitter group who played often to great response, recorded a series of clap-and-stomp "hits" in '75, then folded due to what he now characterizes as "a dodgy record company."  (Italy's Rave-Up Records issued the recordings on LP some 35 years later.)  At Plod's demise, he wasted little time in joining another group, Gypp, and they continued to mine glam territory, now tempering it with prog-like exploration.

Their exploration was largely on-stage, however.  "Gypp was a great live band," said Newell, "and a brilliant bunch of guys. I'd just had three years on the road with them and was very frustrated with not being able to spend time recording."

Exacerbating that frustration with Gypp's slim recording schedule was the band's lack of positive critical reviews -- of which there were some, but not enough -- and as the '70s wore on, Newell found himself through with Gypp, done with life on the road.  But not with music altogether.

Jayne and Jackie!

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jayne County on my program on Thursday; she hit the stage at Bowery Electric on Thursday for the Max's Kansas City Alumni Reunion shows (which goes on through Sunday). Check the archive for the interview. I heard that Jayne might be at La Mama before her much anticipated Max's reunion performance, so it was off to the Ellen Stewart Theatre first! The La Mama show was- Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis -an exhilarating collage performance containing elements of the Warhol star's life; poetry, film snippets, songs and great vignettes. The final performance is on June 10th. With a killer cast: Justin Vivian Bond, Bridget Everett, Cole Escola and Steel Burkhardt, the production was a huge pleasure to take in. Jayne County did indeed grace the theatre-goers with her rendition of Max's Kansas City, as seen here as an encore to the show. She was gone in the blink of an eye (aye aye!) as soon as the show was done, and was soon to get onstage with her alma mater, so to speak, the Max's Kansas City Alumni Reunion show. The shows run all weekend at Bowery Electric, check their site for scheduled shows!

 

 

Hardly Any Bruising: Webster Hall's Black And Blue Bowl

The Black and Blue Bowl at Webster Hall annually features a variety of hardcore bands. Considering my hardcore roots, I thought I would know more people at the show, but the bill was mostly mid-period bands.  I did see some great metal shirts throughout, which made me immediatley comfy- Behemoth, Sodom, Gorguts..and at some point I did hear some Celtic Frost over the PA. The sold out crowd surfed, dove, piled-on and stared in awe at the slew of bands presented in this 9 hour day. There were no barriers in front of the stage, what a welcome touch. When the dancing actions of the hardcore genre were misconstrued as 100% aggression years ago, the barriers were born in almost all mid- to large-size clubs. It was nice to see more interaction with the bands. One of the bands on the bill early was Holland's Born From Pain, their new release: The New Future is available as a free download on their Facebook page; recommended. The Dave Smalley led DYS were a band I was really looking forward to seeing; full of fury, the Dag Nasty, Down By Law, and former ALL singer was all heart as usual, punchy as hell; most of my photos of him were blurry -running around on the stage like it means everything to his survival, he always brings all he's got to a live performance. Here is a shot of Dave with guest vocalist Drew Stone of NYC's Antidote. Drew will be a guest on the Peer Pressure segment of my program June 21st; he's the director of ALL AGES, The Boston Hardcore Film. The NY debut of this film will be June 29th-July 1st at Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema.  From the west coast, the crowd was treated to a swift kick in the butt by Rotting Out from LA, who mixed their hardcore with thrash, in a super-infectious manner. The Mob, who debuted their soon to be released 45, Back To Queens to the sold out crowd, probably goes back furthest in NYHC history than anyone else featured at the BnB Bowl. With a few demos recorded previously, their first release: Upset the System came out in 1982, and they helped push initial recordings from Urban Waste and Agnostic Front in the early 80s as well. Vocalist Ralphie G was a featured guest on the Peer Pressure of DKFM in December; listen here. They were laser tight, heavy, and frenzied revealing their seasoned confidence. Paul Bearer's guillotine edged wit was center stage when Sheer Terror took over, taking out the audience with his barbs and his vocal braun.

Digital Stimulation: An Interview with the Units' Scott Ryser

Suicide may have lit the torch in the mid-'70s, but one could argue that by decade's end, its carriers lived on the other side of the country -- in San Francisco.  Sure, L.A. had the Screamers and some other odd ducks.  But SF hosted an impressive number of bent bands who used synths, tape machines and other electrical apparatus to extend punk's mutated left end by leaps/bounds.  Informed by avant garde composers and performance artists, fueled by apocalyptic abandon and paranoid pop twitch, groups like Tuxedomoon, Nervous Gender, the Residents, Factrix, Minimal Man, Chrome, and Pink Section would release timeless slabs of aggresively bizarre noise -- as would the Units, whose Digital Stimulation LP (415 Records, 1980) remains a personal favorite.  The album's a lush and moody salvo if there ever was one, and I was thrilled to ask former lead synth player and vocalist Scott Ryser (right) a few questions about the band and its M.O. by e-mail last week.

Right Between Method Man and Mobb Deep and Nowhere Near Either

The first time you hear Mission Man, it’s hard not to be reminded of the Shaggs. Though the Ohio-based rapper works within the general realm of hip-hop and the Shaggs traded in bizarro-world '60s pop, the initial reaction you'll have is quite similar, "I've never heard anything like this before."

Born Gary Milholland, Mission Man has been recording and performing wherever anyone will have him since 1997, just prior to his eighteenth birthday. He’s recorded hundreds of songs over the course of eleven albums, writing, producing, and releasing them completely on his own. He raps about his day-to-day (working at Papa John’s, playing basketball, sticking to a diet) and isn’t without a certain classic hip-hop boastfulness, but the most common themes in Mission Man’s songs are his unceasing need to stay positive in the face of adversity and the pursuit of his dreams.

The rub: Mission Man employs no discernable use of melody, rhythm, pitch, or song structure, by even the most generous definitions. Admittedly, there’s nothing inherently shocking about that idea. There are numerous rappers who flow off the beat, and the notion of musicians manipulating the conventions of a given genre is practically essential to said style’s survival. But we're not talking about an experimental musician here. Make no mistake, Mission Man wants to be worldwide. Indeed, Milholland was astute enough to realize that calling himself Mission Man, in addition to spelling out his raison d'etre, would place him directly between Method Man and Mobb Deep in a hypothetical record store. That he sounds nothing like either, and would be the potential target of immense ridicule from fans of those artists, apparently never occurred to him, or if it did, it left him undaunted.

Milholland is a unique case. His music makes virtually no sense in the context of an artist who is presumably working toward commercial goals. He sings off key, his backing tracks shift between corny Muzak-style surges to discordant atonal constructions and his rhymes are delivered in an endearingly vanilla monotone. Yet Milholland is for all intents and purposes a regular guy who knows exactly what he’s doing and loves every minute of it. To simply call his music bad or make fun of it, in addition to being lazy, is to overlook a compelling body of work that is a testament to vision and sense of purpose. In many ways, Mission Man is your classic “outsider artist,” and while that term carries with it plenty of baggage, there’s no denying that there is something compelling about an artist who is creating absent any regard for the expectations placed upon him by an audience, his peers, or the conventions of the medium.

A new short-documentary called Mission Man: Do What You Love by Lawrence Kim explores how and why Gary Milholland soldiers forth in the face of what one could argue is largely self-imposed adversity. What could at first glance be cast aside as an arch "know your meme" novelty about any number of YouTube oddities, is in fact a nuanced, completely straight-faced, and surprisingly moving look at how we define success and happiness, and why it's good to have outsized ambition. 

 

Chillin' at the Papa

Open Mic

 You can watch Do What You Love via YouTube in its entirety below, while reading a brief interview with director Lawrence Kim . 

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...

In Praise of Miller (on Miller)

I work about three blocks from Henry Miller's childhood home: 662 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.

I walk by it on lunchbreaks.  Sometimes I stroll by after I clock out.  Outwardly, the building itself has no real significance.  It's an unassuming redbrick three-flat with an unused ground-floor store front.  There's little to distinguish it from any other building on the block, but I keep going back.  I'm in awe of its cultural importance.  I'm in awe of Henry Miller.

The old goat's account of "the neighborhood" is one of many repetitive, hypnotic constants in his writing.  His Fourteenth Ward appears promimently in several of his best works -- in essays, memoirs, novels, etc. -- so whenever I pass the rising redbrick, I immediately succumb to a dizzying carousel of comparisons: Miller's Williamsburg vs. its modern counterpart, his Brooklyn vs. others', his struggle to break through a square existence vs. my looming 5 p.m. beer urge. 

Live Room, Live Shows, Live Shots

A quick check-in from your kamikaze reporter... Since the marathon ended I've gotten out to check out a few bands: shots are in this order: Magic Circle from Boston, Windhand from Richmond, VA, Rhode Island's Pilgrim, a shot of Brooklyn's own Natur and then live in the WFMU studio on this past edition of My Castle of Quiet: Wretched Worst! This Thursday at noon, the PEER PRESSURE guest on my Kamikaze Fun Machine program will be Mike Hill, guitarist and songwriter/vocalist of TOMBS to DJ a set of music that's sure to be killer! Final photo in this bit is of TOMBS from last year's SXSW performance at Lovejoy's. Enjoy!

Seize the Time: Pat Thomas, Black Power, and Listen, Whitey!

As author Pat Thomas puts it, “Every revolution needs a soundtrack!” And in the late-'60s/early-'70s, the soundtrack and the revolution were often one in the same. In hs new book, Listen, Whitey!: The Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 (Fantagraphics), and companion CD/double-LP of the same name (Light in the Attic), Thomas examines the Black Power movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, the explosion of creativity happening across the musical spectrum at the time, and the now-obscure Black power protest anthems that resulted from the two movements intertwining.

A writer, producer, and musician, Thomas has also worked at Water and 4 Men With Beards, where he began his research for the Listen, Whitey! project. Surely the crate-digging chops he honed while at those labels came in handy when tracking down some of the impossibly deep musical relics from the heyday of the would-be black revolution (most notably Black Panther house band The Lumpen).

It’s almost shocking that no one has explored this topic in depth until now, given the longevity of the Black Power aesthetic and our continued obsession with "The '60s." When taking into account the rocky state of our nation  (politically, socially, and culturally) and the fledgling Occupy movement creeping into the mainstream, it seems not only timely but essential. (Although one shudders to think what a consensus-driven Occupy soundtrack might sound like.) 

Interview: Roy Montgomery

It's been over 30 years since Roy Montgomery's recorded debut -- the Pin Group's "Ambivalence" 45, issued as the first single on Flying Nun Records in 1981 -- and he remains as intriguing and understated a player as ever in New Zealand's subterranean avant-rock culture.  With PG and subsequent outfits, like the Shallows and Dadamah, his guttural baritone and basic sturm-and-drang strum helped shape the inimitable post-punk of "the NZ sound," as popularized by Flying Nun and those associated with it.  In the years since, he's collaborated with or released songs alongside noteworthy musicians and projects such as Bardo Pond (under the name Hash Jar Tempo), Flying Saucer Attack and Grouper.  Montgomery has also single-handedly fashioned a wide discography of meditative instrumentals -- beautifully landscaped compositions that combine the loping, churning whorl of Krautrock with the fundamentals of minimal composition to yield a remarkably personal and cinematic hum.  The Christchurch-based musician took a moment to answer a round of questions by e-mail last month.

Eric Cecil/WFMU: Can you describe the formation of Pin Group?

Roy Montgomery: The band evolved over the period of a year or so, starting with a four-piece known as Compulsory Fun which featured Ross Humphries on vocals, Tony Green on drums, Dave McKenzie on bass and myself on guitar.  Dave departed after our first and only performance.  We then regrouped as Murder Strikes Pink with Ross shifting to bass and a friend called Paul Champion taking on vocals.  I think we may have performed three times.  This was during 1980.  When Paul left we went into recess, so to speak.  Throughout this period I had been conferring regularly with a poet friend called Desmond Brice, who half-seriously went by the name Jim Despondent at the time.  He produced screeds of rather dark and gloomy verse (think Doors meets lapsed Catholic) and passed them generously around to people including myself.  When my band activities stopped I set about trying to write music to his lyrics with him playing bass.  While we found our instrument-playing styles incompatible the songwriting seemed to work so I asked Ross Humphries to take up the basslines and we persuaded former Vacuum Band drummer Peter Stapleton to moonlight while he was still doing the odd Victor Dimisich Band show.  Desmond agreed to keep feeding lyrics as and when required.  The first two Pin Group singles have lyrics by Desmond on all tracks.  Gradually more and more lyrics came from the band members.

FOOD (1972) – Gordon Matta-Clark's Restaurant – Directed by Robert Frank

FOOD is a short film directed by aritst/photographer Robert Frank about Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden's conceptual restaurant. Founded in 1972 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, FOOD brought together many factors of the local community, artists and otherwise, becoming a space for dialogue and conversation as well as a living piece in it of itself. 

The Pope of Trash: John Waters

by Whitney Weiss

Talk Show - John Waters

See more on Network Awesome

When I was 22, I was lured to Provincetown (once a thriving hotbed of underground artists and cultural revolutionaries, now home to condominiums and dogs in strollers) by the promise of relatively easy money and the opportunity to meet my favorite living director, John Waters, who spends his summers there. When the film festival brought Jane Lynch and Gael Garcia Bernal to town, I kept my eye on the prize: a man whose own twenties were spent living in a treehouse and having sex in the town cemetery, activities that seemed to have been replaced by the current crop of twenty-somethings with shopping at Marc Jacobs and fucking in the gym.

While the money never came that summer, a chance to speak with The Pope of Trash did. One balmy evening, he and his boyfriend were sitting on a bench in Town Square while I walked by on my way to

Demo to London: The Handgrenades / Sponsors Story

In '79, the Handgrenades issued what would become the best UK DIY punk single not actually from the UK: their "Demo to London" b/w "Coma Dos" 45, self-released in an undetermined quantity on the band's unnamed imprint.

The single is a killer.  It was also once a source of profound mystery -- to collectors and wayward punk geeks, at least.  Omitted on the sleeve are the band's roster, their location and where they recorded their material, and the only nuggets of information profferred are a production credit attributed to Bob Levitan and the word "phonographix." Given this anonymity, and in light of the title and subject of "Demo to London" -- not to mention the otherworldly cut-up cover art, production, vocals, and musicianship (or lack thereof) -- many took the band's provenance to be London, or perhaps the outskirts of Manchester.  The flip's manic "Coma Dos" sheds even less light on the single's origin, and the listener's left with a clang-punk artifact of the highest random order, reminiscent of contemporaries like Swell Maps, the Petticoats, Desperate Bicycles, so on, so forth.