Jesse Jarnow

Archive for June, 2009

frow show, FMU-39

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Mikey Dread – “East Portland Dub” – Dread At The Controls: Evolutionary Rockers (Dread at the Controls)
2. Rob Burger – “The Tunnel” – City Of Strangers (Tzadik)
3. Satyajit Ray – “Devi (The Goddess)” – The Masterworks of Satyajit Ray (Navras)
4. Brendan Murray – “Sleeprunning” – Brendan Murray (Students of Decay) [feat. “Reprise: Crystal Rainbow” by William Penn (from “Crystal Rainbows,” SRI)] 5. Bob – “Such A Much Better Place” – Tom (Konkord)

6. Maitei America – “Llegada” – Harps Of Paraguay (Smithsonian Folkways)
7. Donovan – “Yin My Yang” – Beat Cafe (Appleseed)
8. Riichiro Manabe – “zankoku onna jyiôshi (part II)” – Dangai No Ketto OST
9. Eto Kunieda – “Casbah no Onna”
10. Pterodactyl – “Alex” – Worldwild (Brah)
11. Chris Weissman and Greg Davis – “Christalline” – Northern Songs (Autumn)
12. Grateful Dead – “Jam” – 26 December 1979 Oakland Auditorium (Dick’s Picks, v. 5) (Grateful Dead Records)
13. Mark McGuire – “Let Us Be The Way We Were” – Let Us Be The Way We Were CD-R
14. Phil Kline – “Pennies From Heaven” – Around the World in a Daze (Starkland)
15. Arrington Dionyso – “Tape A (side A) + Tape B (side A)” – Music for Two Tape Recorders (Speen Coffin)
16. Marek Choloniewski – “Eastern Tracks” – EMFP 01: Exploratory Music From Poland (Audio Tong/Polska! Year/The Wire)
17. Mary Heekin – “The Factory Girl” – The Art of Field Recording Volume 2: Disc 4 – Unaccompanied Songs and Ballads (Dust-to-Digital)
18. Lullatone – “Make This Sound” – Computer Recital (Audio Dregs)
19. Experimental Audio Research – “#8” – Data Rape (Space Age Recordings)
20. Foetus – “Sick Minutes” – Limb (Ectopic Ents)
21. Ocarina Orchestra – “Side B” – New Wilderness Audiographics cassette (New Wilderness Foundation)
22. Roland P. Young – “Crystal Motions” – Isophonic Boogie Woogie (EM Records)
23. Sandy Bull – “Little Maggie” – Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo (Phantom Sound & Vision)
24. Departmentstore Santas – “Photo Album of Baby” – At the Medieval Castle Nineteen 100-Year Lifetimes Since (Top Shelf)

25. George Foster, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Howard Johnson, Len Dykstra, Rafael Satana, Tim Teufel, Rick Aguilera, and Kevin Mitchell – “Get Metsmerized” – Get Metsmerized 12-inch (Passport)
26. MV & EE with the Golden Road – “Motorin'” – Gettin’ Gone (Ecstatic Peace)
27. lamp of the universe – “sumerian acid god” – arc of ascent
28. David Byrne – “Blue Hawaii” – Big Love: Hymnal (Suma)

29. Bobby Bare – “The Streets of Baltimore” – The Streets of Baltimore (RCA)
30. Robert Ward – “(I Will) Fear No Evil” – Hot Stuff (Relic)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
RSS feeds for The Frow Show with Jesse:
Playlists RSS: http://wfmu.org/playlistfeed/JJ.xml
MP3 archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/JJ.xml

Generated by KenzoDB ( http://kenzodb.com ), (C) 2000-2009 Ken Garson

frow show, FMU-38

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Prisonaires – “just walkin’ in the rain” – Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1970 (CMF)
2. Mike Nesmith – “Looks Like Rain” – Rarities
3. Fabio Orsi/Gianluca Becuzzi – “Act III” – So Far (Porter)
4. Tian-Yi Liu – “Fang Zhi Mang (Busy with Weaving)” (Zhonggou Changpian) [feat. “13 I 73 5 : 35 – 6 : 14 : 03 PM NYC ” by La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela from The Theater of Eternal Music (Shandar) & 5. Harry Patch scale loop (via John Schneider/BBC/YouTube)] 6. Ducktails – “Beach Point Pleasant” – Ducktails (Not Not Fun)
7. Evan Parker – “Aerobatics 2” – Saxophone Solos (PSI) [feat. “Rain” (unbackwards) by the Beatles, from “Hey Jude” (Capitol)] 8. Grateful Dead – “The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion” – Grateful Dead (Warner Brothers)

9. VietNam – “Welcome To My Room” – VietNam (Kenado)
10. Hanatarash – “Ultra Cocker” – Hanatarash (Alchemy)
11. Television – “Marquee Moon” – The Blow-Up (Roir)
12. Pocahaunted – “Ashes Is White” – Island Diamonds (Arbor)
13. The Wipers – “D-7” – Is This Real? (Park Ave)
14. Neil Young – “What Did You Do To My Life?” – The Archives, vol. 1 (1963-1972) (Warner Reprise)

15. Sly and the Family Stone – “You Can Make It If You Try” – The Woodstock Experience (Sony/Legacy)
16. Marlena Shaw – “California Soul” – Spice of Life (Cadet)
17. Darren Solomon – “In Bb 2.0” [http://inbflat.net/] 18. Greg Davis – “Pythagorean” – Primes (Autumn)
Badings – “Genese” – More Electronic Music (Basta) [feat. “13 I 73 5 : 35 – 6 : 14 : 03 PM NYC ” by La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela from The Theater of Eternal Music (Shandar)] 19. The Present – “Saltwater Trails” – The Way We Are (Loaf)
20. Daniel Higgs – “All Cherished Things” – Metapsychotic Melodies (Holy Mountain)
21. Borbetomagus – “Chiote a l’esprit” – A Go Go (Agaric)
22. Harry Taussig – “Dorian Sonata” – Fate Is Only Once (Tompkins Square)
23. Sun Araw – “Beams” – Beach Head (Not Not Fun)
24. Hikashu – “Shuffer” – Hikashu History (Tzadik)
25. SyZyGys – “Badol Bashimu” – Complete Studio Recordings (Tzadik)
26. Ojooba Ha – “Polhaee Skakastah” – Raks! Raks! Raks! 17 Golden Garage Psych Nuggets from the Iranian 60s Scene (Raks)
27. Bobb Trimble – “You’re In My Dreams” – Jupiter Transmission (Paralell World)

28. Cryptacize – “What You Can’t See Is” – Mythomania (Asthmatic Kitty)
29. The Hooterville Trolley – “No Silver Bird” – Get Ready To Fly: Pop-Psych From The Norman Petty Vaults (Big Beat UK)
30. Sir Douglas Quintet – “What About Tomorrow?” – 1+1+1=4: Return of Doug Saldana (Raven)
31. Merle Haggard – “Silver Wings” – A Portrait of Merle Haggard (Capitol)
32. Paul Simon – “St. Judy’s Comet” – There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (Warner)
33. Gene Clark – “She Don’t Care About Time” – Roadmaster (Edsel UK)

34. John Biz – “Mornings Made of Gold” – tXXXs demos (Industrial Park)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
RSS feeds for The Frow Show with Jesse:
Playlists RSS: http://wfmu.org/playlistfeed/JJ.xml
MP3 archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/JJ.xml

Generated by KenzoDB ( http://kenzodb.com ), (C) 2000-2009 Ken Garson

frow show, FMU-37

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. Tall Dwarfs – “Over the Waves” – The Sky Above The Mud Below (Carrot Top) [Get better, Chris!] 2. Cause Co-Motion! – “And You Wonder” – Because Because Because EP (Slumberland)
3. The Drones – “I’m Down Today” – Off the Wall (Past and Present)

4. – “Surprise Ending” – After the Fox OST (Rykodisc)
5. Darlene Love – “Long Way to Be Happy” – Back to Mono (Abkco)
6. Dorothy Ashby – “Soul Vibrations” – Afro-Harping (Verve)
7. Serge Gainsbourg – “Relax Baby Be Cool” – Aux Armes Et Caetera (Sunny Side)
8. Nazir Ali [Feat. Nahid Akhtar] – “Society Girl” – The Sounds of Wonder! (Finders Keepers)
9. Levon Helm – “Tennessee Jed” – Electric Dirt (Dirt Farmer/Vanguard)

10. Dave Longstreth & Sam Grossman – “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” – Todd P’s Springtime Unamplified Acoustic BBQ 2006, Roosevelt Island, New York City [via YouTube] 11. Christopher DeLaurenti – “Before Patrushka (excerpt)” – Favorite Intermissions (GD Stereo)
12. Jonathan Goldberger – “Vietsounds field recordings” – Let Freeform Ring: 2009 Marathon Premium for Stochastic Hit Parade (WFMU)
13. Asian Blues Dude & G Train – 12 June 2009 Lormier/Metropolitan
14. Sony Pavilion – Consumer Electronics Show 2006
15. bedecken procession – 14 June 2009 Jeff & Pam’s wedding [Mazel tov!] 16. Jeff Mangum – “Orange Twin Field Works, v. 1 (excerpt)” – Orange Twin Field Works, v. 1 (Orange Twin)
17. Eight Lamas from Drepung – “Purifying the Environment” – Tibetan Sacred Temple Music cassette (Shining Star)
18. Deep Listening Band – “Cave Water” – Troglodyte’s Delight (What Next?)
19. Steve Ward and Jeff Larson – “Twin Solid State Musical Tesla Coils Out of Phase” [via YouTube] 20. The Nether Dawn – “Greet the Evening with a Kapai” – Outer Dark (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
21. Bill Bissett & the Mandan Massacre – “She’s A Very Good Cook” – Awake In th Red Desert (Gear Fab)
22. Gregg Kowalsky – “Into the Marshes They Drove Me” – Through the Cardial Window (Kranky)
23. Emeralds – “Underwater Mountains” – Allegory of Allergies (Weird Forest)
24. – “Invitation of the Dance” – Music Box Waltz Melodies cassette (Bornand Music Box Co.)
25. Daniel Hecht – “Baba Dream Songs” – Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli (Numero Group)
26. J.G. Thirwell – “Descension” – The Venture Bros : The Music Of JG Thirlwell (Williams Street)
27. Sonic Youth – “Walkin Blue” – The Eternal (Matador)
28. Amorphous Androgynous – “Mr. S Sponge’s Groovy Oscillations” – A Psychedelic Guide To Monsterism Island (Lo Recordings)
29. Lydia Mendoza – “Olvidarte Jamas” – Excavated Shellac: Volume 1

30. 15 Degrees – “3.4.4” – Resting On A (Edgetone)
31. Ira Bernstein – “American Step Dance Medley” – Ten Toe Percussion: Clog, Tap, and Step Dnacing (Global Village)
32. Tavagna – “Dies Irae” – A Capella (Silex)
33. Holger Hiller – “Train Stations and their Melodies” – Little Present
34. William Parker – “Lights of Lake George” – Double Sunrise Over Neptune (Aum Fidelity)
35. Serengeti & Polyphonic – “Dawn Under The Bridge” – Terradactyl (Anticon)
36. A Broken Consort – “The Elder Lie” – Box of Birch (Tompkins Square)
37. Peter Laughner – “Lullaby” – Take the Guitar Player for a Ride (Tim Kerr)
38. Kath Bloom and Loren Connors – “Light from the Lighthouse” – Sing the Children Over (Chapter)
39. Akron/Family – “Suchness” – Akron/Family (Young God)

40. Tall Dwarfs – “Think Small” – Fork Songs (Flying Nun)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
RSS feeds for The Frow Show with Jesse:
Playlists RSS: http://wfmu.org/playlistfeed/JJ.xml
MP3 archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/JJ.xml

Generated by KenzoDB ( http://kenzodb.com ), (C) 2000-2009 Ken Garson

frow show, FMU-36

Detailed playlist here (with listening links).

1. Coleman Family – “People Has It Hard” – Local Custom: Downriver Revival (Numero Group)
2. The Other Ones – “The Laugh’s On You” – She Was So Bad! Unissued Sixties Garage Acetates Volume 2 (Norton)
3. The Beach Boys – “Take A Load off Your Feet” – Surf’s Up (Caribou/Epic)

4. Ducktails – “Boating” – II c30 (Future Sounds)
5. The Circulatory System – “The Spinning Continuous” – Signal Morning (Cloud)
6. Terry Riley – “A Rainbow In Curved Air” – A Rainbow In Curved Air (Sony)
7. Jim Altieri – “ACA drones” (tweeg.net)
8. David Parsons – “Three Spirits” – Tibetan Plateau / Sounds of the Mothership (Fortuna) [feat. Buddha Machine 2.0] 9. – “Kah Mohno (Dogon)” – Bush Taxi Mali: Field Recordings From Mali (Sublime Frequencies)
10. Lionel Marchetti, Voice Crack & Jerome Noetinger – “Afternoon 1” – Double Wash (Grob)
11. Nicky Andrews – “Desperate Boing” – Realistic Psychosis (Thomas Tomcat)
12. Conet Project – “Gong Station-Chimes” – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations (Irdial Disc)
13. Timothy Leary – “The Beginning of the Voyage (Heart Chakra)” – Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out OST (Performance)
14. A’Ohn – “Tov Don Deung Koun Ke (Incompatible Love)” – Tiny Toones (Tiny Toones)
15. Hugh Le Caine – “Noctune” – Pioneer in Electronic Music Design: Composition and Demonstrations: 1948-1972 (JWD)
16. Ben Reynolds – “How Day Earnt Its Night: 1.) Dawn Hurt, 2.) Noon and the Nails in the Coffin, 3.) Dusk and Darkness (Revolution)” – How Day Earnt Its Night (Tompkins Square)
17. Hermit Thrushes – “An Oil Fruit > Snowflake Heart” – Slight Fountain (Joyful Noise Recordings)
18. Wand – “Dead of Night” – Hard Knox (Ecstatic Peace)
19. Freddy Fender – “Dime” – 15 Early Tejano Classics (Arhoolie)

20. Grateful Dead – “Me and My Uncle” – 23 May 1969 Seminole Indian Village
21. Yo La Tengo – “Periodically Double or Triple” – Popular Songs (Matador)
22. Yoko Ono & Plastic Ono Band – “Ask the Elephant” – Don’t Stop Me! EP (iTunes)
23. Talibam! – “Jim O’Rourke” – Boogie in the Breeze Blocks (ESP-Disk)
24. Jim O’Rourke – “Seven Stars” – Tiny Mixtapes Vol. 1: Darfur (Tiny Mixtapes)
25. Susie Ibarra – “Drum Sketch #1” – Drum Sketches (Innova)
26. The Institute of Sub-Dimensional Frequency Research – “Recordings from the 3rd Paradigm (June 2nd 1948)” – The Speech Organs (Unverified)
Max V. Matthews – “Eight Tone Canon” – Computer Music Currents 13 (Wergo)
27. Glenn Kotche – “Stagger On” – Introducing (Locust/Quakebasket)
28. Theo Bleckmann & John Hollenbeck – “(love is patient) (it doesn’t matter)” – Static Still (GPE)
29. Olatunji – “Mbira” – More Drums of Passion (Columbia/Legacy) [feat. “Meditative Music 3” by Pulse Emitter (Pulse Emitter)] 30. Orchestre Sankai – “Rythme Kuatankuaka” – Zaire: Musiques Urbaines A Kinshasa (Urban Music in Kinshasa) (Ocora France) [feat. “Kah Mohno (Dogon),” “Tov Don Deung Koun Ke (Incompatible Love),” & Conet Project reprises] 31. Phish – “You Enjoy Myself” – 4 June 2009 Jones Beach / The White Tape (Phish.com/Phish Archives)
32. Soulful Strings – “I Wish It Would Rain” – Chess Psychedelic Jazz and Funky Grooves (Chess)
33. Kan Mikami – “It’s Good That I Dream” – Anthology of Japanese New Folk 1960-1976 (WFMU/Janitor From Mars)

34. Lord Sitar – “Have You Seen Your Mother Baby?” – Mindexpanders, v. 1 (Past & Present)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
RSS feeds for The Frow Show with Jesse:
Playlists RSS: http://wfmu.org/playlistfeed/JJ.xml
Realaudio archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/real/JJ.xml
MP3 archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/JJ.xml

Generated by KenzoDB ( http://kenzodb.com ), (C) 2000-2009 Ken Garson

what machine do you use to kill fascists? (faster times, 6/09)

What Machine Do You Use To Kill Fascists?

by Jesse Jarnow

Faster Times, June 2009

It wasn’t all too surprising that Pete Seeger didn’t have many thoughts about the internet and its effect on copyright. After all, dude is 90–87, when I interviewed him–and still lives in a house he built himself overlooking the Hudson River and chops wood everyday.

He did, however, point me towards a Woody Guthrie songbook which Guthrie published with the inscription, “this song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” He told me about a pamphlet he once published called “Mimeograph Power, encouraging people all over to mimeograph things.”

He asked me to send a copy of the article. Which I did, along with (as requested) a mailing address for Gilberto Gil, the one time Brazilian political dissident, then serving as his country’s Minister of Culture. (Seeger had lit up when the conversation somehow turned to Brazil and how a city there had built a system of radial bus routes. Internet, no. Brazilian city planning, check.) He responded with a postcard (on the front: a 40-item list: How To Build Global Community), saying he’d copied the piece and passed it along to a friend at Folkways. He signed it with a banjo.

It is hackneyed to call somebody “a human internet,” but Seeger almost unquestionably is. Over the course of his now seven-decade career, he has spread thousands of songs and connected hundreds of causes. And, while he was once a polarizing figure, blacklisted through much of the ’60s, he is perhaps the only man to have transformed both music and politics and transcended both while doing so.

In The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger, a fantastic New Yorker-profile-turned-short-bio published by Knopf on the occasion of Seeger’s 90th birthday this May, Alec Wilkinson quotes Seeger on his 1949 separation from the Communist Party. “I thought it was pointless,” Seeger says. “I realized I could sing the same songs I sang whether I belonged to the Communist Party or not, and I never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization.” That wasn’t quite enough for Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, who called Seeger before them in 1955. Seeger refused to testify, but refused to take the 5th Amendment either.

Since then, as Joseph McCarthy’s trials have taken their right place in history as something far worse than the vague American communism they were hunting, the impressiveness of Seeger’s nearly Biblical stand has only grown.

“Before the HUAC engagement, people sometimes regarded Seeger’s optimism as childish,” Wilkinson writes, “and unrealistic, as a habit of mind inconsistent with the moral rigor of a serious person. Afterward, he became a figure of undeniable stature. He had stared down jailtime. He had stood amid peril for his beliefs. He had typified the principles of all the brave people he sang about.”

Unless one grew up singing along with Pete Seeger’s music, it might be hard to hear it as anything but purely cornball, despite its obvious sincerity. This is by its very design, of course, evidenced by the fact that perhaps millions of people did grow up singing along to it. For whatever other ideologies he championed, Seeger has always been a populist, and this populism both fueled the nascent folk scene and, in some twisted way, via Bob Dylan, transmutated into the “sincerity” gene that has plagued, served, and saved rock and roll ever since.

If The Protest Singer whitewashes Seeger in any way, it is utterly appropriate of its subject. It is not that Pete Seeger needs a mythology–he has possessed that since 1955–but that the myth needs a proper form for transmission. The Protest Singer reads emotionally like any number of Great Hero biographies one might have accidentally ingested as a grade school student. Its dust jacket even suggests that it is such: an even balance of red, white, and blue on the spine and cover proper. And its colors don’t run. They sing. It should be read by every American child.

“This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” Seeger famously wrote on his banjo (depicted on The Protest Singer‘s rear), paraphrasing Guthrie’s blunter, “This machine kills fascists.” It makes one wonder, amid a tangle of USB cables and iPhones and the corporate-folk culture of YouTube, just what his own machines are capable of doing.

frow show, FMU-35

Detailed playlist (with listening links).

1. The Mountain Goats – “Absolute Lithops Effect” – All Hail West Texas (Emperor Jones)
2. Dock Walsh – “Bathe In That Beautiful Pool” – Take Me To the River (Dust to Digital)

3. – “福岡ソフトバンクホークス” [Translation (and mp3) here: http://umpbump.com/press/2008/01/04/if-only-the-royals-had-a-fight-song-like-this/] 4. Hideki Okajima – “Okajima Okie-Dokie”
5. Wooden Shjips – “Contact” – Contact 12-inch (Mexican Summer)
6. Leighton Craig – “San Souci” – Fabrique (Room40)
7. Oneida – “I Will Haunt You” – Rated O (Jagjaguwar)
8. Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound – “Kolob Canyon” – When Sweet Sleep Returned (Tee Pee)
9. D. Charles Speer & The Helix – “In Madagascar” – In Madagascar 7-inch (Sound@One)
10. Jeff Mangum – “I Love How You Love Me” – 4 February 2001 King’s Arms

11. Los Blops – “Maquinaria” – Blops (Shadoks)
12. Grateful Dead – “Dark Star” – 30 May 1969 Springer’s Inn
13. Haino Keiji and Yoshida Tatsuya – “Avenue D” – New Rap (Tzadik) [feat. rain, 29 May 2009, 9:05 am] 14. Machinefabriek – “Field Recordings, Rocks, Speakers” – Box Music
15. Forcefield – “Field Recording of 3rd Annual Roggabogga” – Roggaboggas (Load) [feat. “Heart of Darkness, ch. 1, pt. 2” by Joseph Conrad & “The Baby’s Family, Second Series” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, performed by Jose Echaniz (Westminster Gold)] 16. Iancu Dumitrescu – “Nimbus” – Nimbus / Zenith (Generation Unlimited)
17. Sunn O))) – “Alice” – Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord)
18. Tom Paley – “Love Henry” – Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?

19. – “皆川おさむ 黒ネコのタンゴ”
20. Bellerose Instrumental Club (Stephanie Gralow, conductor) – “See Dees” [recorded 20 May 2009 by elementary school students in my hometown. Northport, represent!] 21. Grigory Smirnov – “Mirrors of Emptiness” [feat. side B from Sun Circle 12-inch (Lichen), The End (side A, excerpts) by Tachibana Hajime.] 22. Cindy McTee – “Metal Music” – CDCM Computer Music Series, v. 9 (Centaur)
23. Halim El-Dabh – “Leiyla Visitations Six” – Leiyla Visitations [feat. “Feel Good! Look Great! Exercise Along with Debbie Drake, Noel Regney and His Orchestra” (Epic)] 24. Victor Herrero – “Trenos” – Anacorta (Bo’Weavil)
25. Ween – “What Deaner Was Talking About” – Chocolate and Cheese (Elektra)

The Frow Show with Jesse playlists: http://wfmu.org/playlists/JJ
RSS feeds for The Frow Show with Jesse:
Playlists RSS: http://wfmu.org/playlistfeed/JJ.xml
Realaudio archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/real/JJ.xml
MP3 archives RSS: http://wfmu.org/archivefeed/mp3/JJ.xml

Generated by KenzoDB ( http://kenzodb.com ), (C) 2000-2009 Ken Garson