I CUT PEOPLE: "I Quit"

27 tracks of lightning-fast audio edits whizzing by in 24 minutes? It can only mean another release from I Cut People and their ever-improving m.o. of wicked social satire thru a dense collage of countless samples. The album is called "I Quit" but let's hope he isn't. With Negativland members dropping dead left and right, and The Tape Beatles seemingly out of action, ICP would appear to be our best chance for reversing the usual one-way stream of corporate/religious info-tainment, creatively recycling this waste, and spitting it back. The inanity of the mass media, politics and consumerism, and the anxiety it produces in the brainwashed populace has never been more funny! And entertaining! NOW how much would you pay?! 

I Cut People "I Quit"

Picks to click: "Try It," "All You Need Is More Things," and "All About Crap." And if Beavis and Butthead were sound collagists, they would have proudly produced "Dick Bible."

Party Like It's Only $19.99

What better way to note the shockingly sudden passing of Prince then with this 1999 release by mashup pioneers the Evolution Control Committee? Prince, and in particular his song "1999," serve as the jumping-off point for all manner of avant-tard shenanigans. The ECC (recording under a number of phony "band" names) are joined by such sample-sound stars as Wobbly (doin' the John Oswald 'plunderphonics' thang), Wayne Butane with another one of his funny sound collages, Realistic, and Fossil aka Pea Hix of the great Optigonally Yours, who remind us that Van Halen's "Jump" is kind of a "1999" rip-off. ECC's own tracks range from Weird Al-ish parodies, such as the Oktoberfestive "Polka Like It's 1999," to dense, challenging noise-fests.

Party Like It's Only $19.99 

Listening to this album is an appropriate way to memorialize another great who died today, Richard Lyons, one of the founders of the legendary culture-jamming collagists Negativland. They don't have a track on this disc, but their influence is certainly all over it. Since Don Joyce has also died within the past year, I wonder if the band will continue. Maybe they should recruit some of the talent featured here. Or People Like Us, or The Bran Flakes. Or me! Can I join?!

The EZ-Listening Gangsta Rap of DJ NoNo

 By request, the marching-band versions of Stooges classics is back up.

"Planned 10 years ago, the Ballroom EP (now album) has been a long time coming…
Mixing ballroom music – big band, jazz, bossa nova, exotica, swing, easy listening and classical pops – with hip hop and r n’ b." So sayeth that red, rad robot DJ NoNo (aka Tim from Radio Clash) about his mashup collection now on-line for your dancing/romancing/listening/downloading pleasure. And what a pleasure it is, mixing the likes of hardcore rappers Public Enemy with an exceedingly cheesy version of the "Mexican Hat Dance." One of the oldies that gets remixed is one of my all-time fave mashups: "Stripper Jackson," which features Jacko singing over a version of that bump-n-grind classic, "The Stripper." This is the kind of stuff that I used to feature regularly in the early days of this here web-log.

Only 9 tracks long, and it's all quite fun and ridiculous. And I'm not just saying that because it's partially dedicated to me. (Looks at the floor) Ah, shucks...

DJ NoNo: "Ballroom"

1. Mexican Love War (Public Enemy ‘Make Love Fuck War’ vs Geoff Love ‘Mexican Hat Dance’)
2. Push It Muchacho (Salt n’ Pepa ‘Push It’ vs Esquivel ‘Mucha Muchacha’)
3. March of the Forgotten (Joe Loss ‘Mark of the Mods’ vs Dre ft Eminem ‘Forgot about Dre’)
4. Swing The Guillotine (Death Grips ‘Guillotine’ vs Glen Miller ‘In The Mood’)
5. Stripper Jackson (Joe Loss ‘The Stripper’ vs Michael Jackson ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’)
6. Quando Tip (Q-Tip ‘Breathe And Stop’ vs Manuel ‘Quando Quando Quando’)
7. Super Wheels (Eminem ‘Superman’ vs Joe Loss ‘Wheels Cha Cha’)
8. Ludasifinado (Ludacris ‘Stand Up’ vs Laurindo Almeida ‘Desafinado’)
9. Cha Cha Like It’s Hot (Snoop Dogg ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ vs Starlight Strings ‘Unforgettable’ 2015 remaster)

"Another Goddam DEATH Dedication"

R.I.P. Don Joyce of Negativland. 

The legendary sound collagist/radio mastermind/culture-jammer has joined Snuggles.

If you didn't download the "Helter Stupid" show that I posted last year, a bootleg with excellent right-off-the-mixing-board sound quality, now would be the time to check it out:

Negativland Live - "Helter Stupid Tour" 1989

Christianity is Stupid! This video is GOOD:

TRIBUTE TO PINK FLAMINGOS

Donald Featherstone, the appropriately-named creator of those plastic reproductions of our pink feathered friends, has just passed away at the age of 79. As if being the father of the world's most notorious lawn ornament wasn't eccentric enough, Featherstone and his wife were also known for always wearing matching outfits! Now that is just the sort of weird, goofy, good ol' American trash culture that John Waters immortalized in his 1972 film. 

If you haven't seen "Pink Flamings," perhaps the ultimate cult movie, I sure as hell ain't gonna tell you about it. Let's just say that even tho I only saw it once - and this was back in the '80s, when the earths' crust was still cooling and dinosaurs walked the earth - a mere glance at the song titles of the soundtrack recall images that are permanently seared into my brain. So let's pay tribute to Mr. Featherstone with the suitably trashy soundtrack of '50s/60s rock, r'n'b, and easy-listening oldies that Waters used to underscore his characters foul (not to mention fowl) behavior. Some of these songs are as insane as any crazed early rock (e.g.: "Chicken Grabber," "Surfin Bird") while others, like the perfectly presentable "Happy Happy Birthday Baby," are used as ironically innocent counterpoints to the on-screen depravity.

Plus! At no extra cost to you! Other "Pink Flamingos"-related audio oddities thrown into the file:

- Edith Massesy's single, which featured her "singing" a cover of the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry," and a lovely original, "Punks (Get Off The Grass)." Massey had moved to the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, and her thrift store was a popular hangout for local punks and weirdos, who recorded this with her in 1982.

- Divine "You Think You're A Man" (7'' version); S/He recorded a surprising amount but I just have this one catchy bit of '80s disco.

- The Illuminoids "Satan Said Walrus Eggs," a mashup from 2007 that mixes Massey's "Pink Flamingo" dialogue with the Beatles, over a stomping beat from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The Egg Lady meets the Egg Man, with special guest: Satan. One of the members of the Illuminoids was Howie Pyro, who took the name for his super-swell internet show "Intoxica" from one of the songs on this here soundtrack:

"Pink Flamingos" + Bonus Filth

1. The Swag - Link Wray & His Ray Men

2. Intoxica - The Centurions

3. Jim Dandy - LaVern Baker

4. I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent - Frankie Lymon And The Teenagers

5. The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard

6. Ooh! Look-A There, Ain't She Pretty - Bill Haley & His Comets

7. Chicken Grabber - Nite Hawks

8. Happy, Happy Birthday Baby - The Tune Weavers

9. Pink Champagne - The Tyrones

10. Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen

11. Riot In Cell Block #9 - The Robins

12. (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window - Patti Page

Happy Tax Day, America!

Was just gonna re-up both sides of the outsider oddity that is Ah-Ah Allen's "Kick The IRS" single, but why stop there? Behold!

A wee Taxday Mix

Ah-Ah Allen - Kick The IRS
Ah-Ah Allen -Montana I'm So Proud of You
F.U.2 - Tax Exile (late '70s fake-punk)
Lenlow - To the Taxmobile! (classic mashup from 2004: Beatles vs Surfaris vs "Batman" theme)
rx - Taxman Obama (The Prez "sings" the Beatles)

My fellow Americans! Remember, April 15 is the day to show Uncle Sam your love.

We'll Be Right Back After These Brief Messages...

Let's get commercial...

Back in 2008 we posted a hilarious radio spot from the conservative religious group Focus on the Family responding to a law passed in Colorado that allowed trans-gendered people to use public bathrooms. Recently we received this fairly genius bit of animation that illustrates the ad, making it even funnier. It comes to us courtesy of Mutant Lab, who are clearly doing the Lord's work. Work it, girl!

A clever, amusing new music video by Los Angeles rocker Taylor Locke finds the artist tooling around town in a motorized easy chair, the comfy kind one might find in a living room. The video makes it look like a cheesy tv commercial for what I thought couldn't possibly be a real product, but upon further investigation, the website appears to be real. Ok...What could one possible do with one of these things? I doubt that they're street-legal. It certainly does make music videos more interesting (along with the nekkid lady!) The catchy power-pop music is quite good, too.

Sound collagist I Cut People have a mordantly funny new on-line album that slices and dices innumerable American media sound bites, revealing the existential angst, neuroses, and anxieties contained in bland public service announcements, cheerful commercials for medications, news broadcasts, and chat shows. The tracks are brief and the whole thing flies by fairly quickly, but it's not background music. Attention must be paid to catch the rapid-fire edits in such wickedly surreal cut-ups as "Ebola Vacation" and the lewd, rude "Watch Me, Innocence." Listen for free, buy for cheap:

I Cut People: "Miserable Day"
Bandcamp page

We now return you to our usual programming...

The Psample-delic Psounds of Carl Stone's "Four Pieces"

If you think sampling in music means MC Hammer looping "Super Freak," you gotta another think coming: Los Angeles legend Carl Stone has been using custom software to spin complex, beautiful webs out of found sounds since before most people even owned a computer. The closest comparison to another composer one might make would be to John Oswald and his Plunderphonics, but Oswald often hits with an ADD-addled aggressiveness. Stone takes a more trance-inducing path that sometimes approaches Minimalism, but the results are still too thorny to ever function as yoga music.

Track #1 "Wall Me Do" is not, as the title suggests, a Pink Floyd/Beatles mash-up. The title, like most of Stones' titles, comes from an LA area Asian restaurant. It's glitchy electronica, not unlike Aphex Twin, but years before the fact. #2 is pretty funny, slicing and dicing that classical classic "Pictures at an Exhibition" into an increasingly unrecognizable delirium.  #3 ("Shing Kee") from 1986 hypnotically loops unidentified sounds (inc female vocals) into dreamy gorgeousness; tho reminiscent of Frippertronics and Steve Reich's early tape-loop works, the gradually unfolding patterns bear the stamp of Stone's original style. Play this with the lights out, glass of red wine in hand. Aaahhh... And #4 is Stone sampling himself, in this case remixing #1. I actually prefer it to #1 - it's all Minimalistic grooviness, but with no predictable looping and phasing.

Carl Stone - Four Pieces (1986-1989)

I was happy to see that Stone is performing live this March 22 with LA Free Music Society vets Tom Recchion and Joseph Hammer. Those two have been using extreme turntablism and tape-loop tomfoolery to great effect for as long as Stones' been tweaking his Macs. Don't think Stone was ever actually a member of the LAFMS, but note that Recchion designed the insert to this album.  And the two used to rule the KPFK airwaves in the 1980s with back-to-back (Tuesday night?) shows, Stone with "Imaginary Landscapes" and Recchion's "Soundings II, aka the Tom and Tony Show." Between Stone's alt classical-to-Yma Sumac approach and Tom 'n' Tony's avant-tarde mix of free noise, kitschy thrift-store records, and live antics (e.g. playing the entirety of "Sgt Pepper" on fast-forward when the CD was first released), Young Master Fab's mind was suitably re-aligned. Tom Waits said he wept when he first heard Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet" (which Waits would later sing) on LA radio in the '80s. 'Twas on "Imaginary Landscapes" - I was listening that night, too.

100 Copies of The Beatles' White Album Playing At The Same Time

Artist Rutherford Chang says: "I collect first-pressings of The White Album and currently own 1,034 copies." As part of his 'White Album' project (which also includes a record store only stocked with copies of you-know-what arranged according to serial number) he somehow got 100 of them to play at once. I wonder how? Sounds quite good tho, like 100 needles were dropped onto 100 turntables at pretty much the same time. Then they slowly go out of phase, like an old Steve Reich tape-loop piece. Surprisingly wonderful, e.g.: "Julia" (end of side 2) whips up a really nice drone. And I hadn't actually sat down to listen to the White Album since I was a kid, so it's also an interesting way to revisit the album.

Four 20+ minute tracks, one for each side of the White Album, plus lots of pics of White Albums in various states of decay:

Rutherford Chang - We Buy White Albums (file removed by corporate Blue Meanies)

Reminds me of another Beatles-related oddity, a very skillfully executed mashup album based on the absurd (or is it?!) premise that someone visiting another dimension where the Beatles never broke up brought back a cassette of one of their later albums. It's actually made up of tracks from various Beatles solo releases. The whole crazy story, and the album download, is available here:

The Beatles Never Broke Up

Thanks to Amadeus, And Count Otto!

Ambient-Abstract-Noise

For those moments when you need to get away from the idea of music as, y'know, tunes, what with all those distracting rhythms, melodies, lyrics and other fancy accouterments, and you just want to, as Cage said, let music be itself: tracks from recommended new(ish)* releases that soothe body and soul in a colorful sonic bath. And by "soothe" of course I mean that this ain't no New Age audio wallpaper, but can get rather dark and weird at times.

27 minutes of: ambientabstractnoise




1. Philip Jeck "1986 Frank Was 70 Years Old" (from "Surf") - Turntableism as ambient sound collage; guest vox from Woody Woodpecker.

2. Back Magic "Future Graves" (from "Chorus Line To Hell") - Duo's guitar/drum lo-fi racket sometimes resembles actual rock music, and quite nice rock music at that; then we get to this chilling instro, based on a keyboard and air-raid siren sound effects; the apocalypse has never sounded so appealing.

3. Carolina Eyck & Christopher Tarnow "10,000 Bells" (from the as yet unreleased "Improvisations for Theremin and Piano, Vol 1") - Another duo, but they're German, and have had music lessons. Eyck in fact, studied under Lydia Kavina, Leon Theremin's grand-niece and former member of Messer Chups.

4. Allen Ravenstine & Robert Wheeler "Nocturne" (from "City Desk") - YES!! The once and future synth wizards of the mighty Pere Ubu have teamed up for two albums ("City Desk" and "Farm Report") of pure unadulterated analogue electro improv sci-fi soundscape loveliness. "At points one or the other musician would leave the room, letting the antique synthesizer fill in his parts until he returned." 

5. Chris Campbell / Grant Cutler "Song 2" (from "Schooldays Over") - The all-too-brief album is a meditation on Ewan MacColl's 1961 Irish folk ballad about kids moving straight from school to backbreaking labor; the song is teased apart and beautifully reconstructed on such self-descriptive tracks as "Pump Organ, Gongs, Balloon Bassoons." Marimbas, glockenspiels and kotos also join the keyboards in beautiful melancholy.

6. Chris Campbell "Water Mirror" (from "Things You Already Know") - Campbell's really been hittin' it lately, what with his work for the crucial Innova label, and not one but two excellent recent albums. On this one, a fairly large cast perform both on standard stuff and on invented instruments and oddities like propane tanks, psaltrys, and singing bowls for something in between ambient, minimalism, and freak rock. So nice.

I also quite liked THIS. 

* Except for the Philip Jeck which came out in 1998 but I only just discovered it.

Christian Marclay ‎– "More Encores"

I don't recall hearing the word "turntablism" back in 1989 when this album was released, but that's what this is. Needless to say, this ain't no "wiki-wiki-scratch" type stuff. I saw Marclay in performance with Tom Recchion and Toshio Kajiwara in 2003 and it was quite a sight to see records being so creatively abused, e.g.: 8 'tables all playing copies of the same record, with stickers placed on the vinyl so the records would skip at certain points. I wanna do that! 

The performance was part of an exhibit of his visual art, which is quite spectacular as well. Witness his giant, useless accordion, or his album cover collages (but what's the middle album in this one, the one in between Michael Jackson and Roxy Music?). 

From the liners:

Each piece is composed entirely of records by the artist after whom it is titled.
"John Cage" is a recording of a collage made by cutting slices from several records and gluing them back into a single disc.
In all other pieces the records were mixed and manipulated on multiple turntables and recorded analog with the use of overdubbing.
A hand-crank gramophone was used in "Louis Armstrong". 

Christian Marclay ‎– "More Encores"

Negativland Live - "Helter Stupid Tour" 1989

At the time this excellent board tape was made, multi-media collage/ performance art/ prankster legends Negativland had been around since the early '80s, releasing several albums that served as warm-ups for their glory years of the late '80s/early '90s, when they ruled college radio, signed to the indie label everyone wanted to be on (SST Records), and generally moved from being mere (if brilliant) performers/recording artists to becoming a genuine cultural force, merry pranksters manipulating the gullible mass media, and daring to pull down the pants (so to speak) of some of the biggest figures in the music industry.  They paid for their hijinks big-time, but ultimately came out the other end bloodied but unbowed. Lo these many years later, as seen in today's post-internet media-overload environment of mashups, youtube, etc., they seem positively visionary. And this performance finds them at the top of their game. Even if you're very familiar with Negativland's "Escape From Noise"/"Helter Stupid"/"U2" era (as I would imagine many, if not most, Maniacs are) this is still a fresh experience, as they take elements from their album tracks and rework them into lovely new mutations.

Negativland Live - Hampshire College 1989

Side 1:

1 - Christianity Is Stupid
2 - Helter Stupid
3 - Escape From Noise
4 - Time
5 - Another Perfect Cut
6 - Free TV Or Pay TV
7 - The Playboy Channel

Side 2:

1 - Playboy Channel 2
2 - Why Don't They Blow Us Up?
3 - I'd Like A Piece Of Meat / Michael Jackson
4 - U2
5 - Car Bomb

This comes to us from maniac Bob Berger. Can't thank him enough. He writes: "Recorded off the sound board onto Maxell XLIIS cassette with whatever tape deck was present, this tape has been legendary among all of my friends for many years. The sound quality is amazing... I've never heard Negativland recorded quite so well... Given our state(s) of mind at that show, I have no idea how we managed to capture this as well as we did... but here it is. At home, I've chopped these bits up into each track as best I could, but I figured that it would be best to preserve the whole show's continuity as two sides of the, now infamous, cassette.

Enjoy.

colunco23"


And - hey! - let's not forget to salute "guest vocalists" like the recently departed  Casey Kasem, and  L.A newscaster Hal Eisner. When on those rare occasions I stumble across Eisner's TV appearances, I chuckle, almost expecting him to say, "This is Hal Eisner. This is stupid."

RIP Snuggles.

The Big Beat A-Go-Go Sound of DYMAXION

This intensely obscure band recorded these songs between 1995-1998 using methods I cannot quite figure. Clearly, there's a mixture here of sampled sounds, low-tech electro beats, and live instruments...but the samples are all instrumental, and of things I can't identify. And I'm not even totally sure that there are live instruments. I'm just assuming, as the same twangy-surfy guitars do seem to pop up quite a bit. One song covers The Fall's "U.S. 80's - 90's," and indeed there's a bit of off-kilter post-punk influence here, too. Bloops, bleeps, peppy beats, and the afore-mentioned guitars give the whole thing a retro '60s discotheque feel, but the somewhat lo-fi sound removes any Space Age optimism from these tracks.  Rather, there's a gritty, black-and-white feel that negates any Technicolor beach party atmosphere. Bummer in the summer. 

This, their only album, collects everything they did. They thank Stereolab in the liner notes, which isn't too surprising, but otherwise, there's no info, tho according to Internet sources, two New Yorkers named Jeremy Novak and Claudia Newell are the responsible parties, and Newell dropped out half-way thru, and has not returned to music.

Pick Hit: "I-Man Transport", the one song with (sampled) vox, apparently from a dance instructional record, mixed with a synth reminiscent of Pere Ubu's "Blow Daddy-O."

Dymaxion x 4 + 3 = 38:33