Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Thanks For Getting Busted





Godzilla bless you, Daryl Hannah. We need more celebrities to step up and get busted for speaking out against the XL Keystone Pipeline. More people need to hear about it.

The Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry Canadian crude oil across the middle of America, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.




What could go wrong? It's just raw crude oil, and the Oil Industry hasn't spilled any oil since, like, forever. I mean, we can be pretty sure that the Big Oil's streak of bad luck is over and nothing bad will ever happen, anywhere along the entire length of the pipeline. No earthquakes, no tornadoes, no floods and...

...hey, did you notice this- the line runs very close to Oklahoma City, which , sadly is still remembered as the place where American terrorist Tim McVeigh blew up an office building. My guess is that he'd have picked the pipeline as his target instead, had that been an option.
The Keystone XL pipeline would be a tempting target for anyone with explosives and a serious grudge against America.

The objective is to reduce our dependence on 'foreign' oil, which I guess means America annexed Canada and it didn't make the news or something, because last time I checked, Canada was a foreign country.

I wonder if Saudi Arabia is worried about the competition from the XL line? It would be in their best interest if some wackjob did something horrific to the line. Not that anyone would.

Speaking of Saudi Arabia:

Did you know that they are building solar powerplants in Saudi Arabia? They would rather export the oil than burn it in their own air. Right now the plants are in their first stages, but it is only a matter of time and research until the technology is developed into an advanced enough state to be commercially viable. My totally non-scientific guess would be that it will take decades before 'Green' energy can be produced at massively commercial levels, so the sooner we get started the better.

If America won't lead the way in renewable energy, the Saudis will. Of course, they'll be building nuclear power plants as well, so it isn't as if they Saudis are 'Green', they are just smarter than we are. They'll be powering their luxury resorts with wind farms and solar arrays and exporting their smog to us.When the oil runs out, they'll sell us the technology we should be developing now.


Remember how we finally succeeded in our mission to spread Freedom on Iraq, at the cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars? Do you know what the newly-Freedomed Iraqis want to do?:


Many of the world's biggest energy companies may have to surrender most of the gas from Iraq's vast southern oilfields to a processing and export project led by Shell, a final draft contract between Baghdad and Europe's biggest company shows.


Under the $17bn gas deal to be ratified by the Iraqi cabinet, Baghdad has pledged to do what it takes to ensure these fields supply the Shell-led Basra Gas Company (BGC) joint venture with all the raw gas and natural gas liquids (LNG) it needs, including for an LNG export plant.






We spilled all that blood and treasure to set up a State that promises to give OUR oil to the damned Europeans. What a bunch of ingrates! Are we gonna have to invade them all over again?

Maybe we should invade Holland instead, Shell is a Dutch company, after all.

.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

The E=MC5²





Do you remember the days when you could get 10 free record albums just by writing a fake name on a Columbia House Record Club coupon and dropping it in a mailbox?

The card gave a few choices of favorite musical styles. If I recall, I think the list was pretty limited, the choices being more or less : Rock, Soft Rock, Classical, Jazz, Country, Pop, R&B and maybe Disco, since this was the 1970's after all.

You pretty much had to go with plain-old 'Rock' back then. 'Soft Rock' would get you laughed at by your friends- they were way too cool to admit that they liked The Carpenters as much as you did.
Today is different. I'm a DJ and I'm almost terrified to discuss genre for fear of seeming completely clueless. There are more genres than there are bands- and there are a LOT of bands!

Me: What kind of music do you play?

Coolster: Oh, it is combination of emo, crust-core, mixtape, shoe-gaze, twee metal and new rock, but with lots of ambient darkwave 8-bit alt-folk elements, and of course, some spoken-word psyche-salsa beat breaks.

And then they'll play a song and it'll sound a lot like an old 1980's Casio playing the same beat over and over while a couple male voices yip and yap in the foreground and amplified guitars fall over and break in the background. And when I ask the Coolster how they got the neat guitar sound, he'll tell me it was sampled from some old record he stole from his Dad...he thinks it was called Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Some old dude he'd heard about somewhere.

Aaargh. Don't kids today know anything about musical history?

I bet none of them remember prototypical Math-OCD band, The E=MC5².


Formed at MIT in the late 1960's The E=MC5² was comprised of a rotating cast of students and professors who understood that all music is somehow math-based, even if the math is sometimes a bit faulty. They also took a lot of acid and talked far too much while they were tripping, and before long, a now-unknown 'core' group found themselves undertaking the daunting task of converting the numerical value of pi to music.


The band spent their formative years in an abandoned schoolhouse, surrounded by chalkboards, cheap guitar amps, lava lamps and blacklight posters; members would drop in and out as academic arguments, exhaustion, intellectual misadventures and heavy drug use took their respective tolls, but according to legend they persevered through all obstacles: switching to acoustic instruments during blackouts, changing locales as as the authorities chased them from one condemned building to another, a haggard, bearded and discredited physics professor slapping a bongo in 3.14 time while zealous students chanted numerical litanies in order to keep the song going until a new venue could be found.

The descendents of the original members are still playing , currently doing the latest in a decades-long series of farewell tours. As of this writing, the The E=MC5² hold the unofficial World Record for the longest continuously performed musical composition of all time, with their trademark opus 'Pi-Eyed' clocking in at an amazing 38 years, 6 months, 10 days, 11 hours and 12 minutes. Thirteen minutes now, since they are still playing!

Today's show will be a tribute to the madness that is the The E=MC5²: We'll hear a carefully selected two-hour excerpt from the decade-spanning classic 'Pi-Eyed' , including a fabulous moment in 2008 when the late Captain Beefheart came out of his hermit-like retirement to sing a nine-hour duet with Amy Winehouse, who wasn't dead yet. Legend has it that Canadian rockers Rush are playing the background musical parts of this segment, but everyone present was either senile, wasted or currently dead, so no one will ever know for sure. A wayward guitar solo was once credited to Eric Clapton, but upon being asked, he quickly assigned the blame to George Harrison, who had been dead for years at the time.

With some luck, there might be time to play some other songs, but you'll have to tune in to find out, won't you?

WRIR 97.3 FM
...the fun starts at 1PM 8/13/2011.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

A Head Full of Quandry and a Mighty, Mighty Thirst

I love my radio friends

There are many ways to cope with the lingering spectre of depression. One way would to stay up all night listening to six billion songs in a single evening, imagining to oneself how the songs will fit together,for example: how will the end of this Bird York song fade into the beginning of this Joan Wasser tune?

Pretty damn well, it turns out. If you don't believe me, download the podcast and hear for yourself. If you do believe me, download the podcast and enjoy it.

What I'm trying to say here is: download the podcast.


THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB: AUG. 6th 2011

(Originally aired on WRIR 97.3 FM. )

The Kinks- Preservation (Single)

This is a nearly-unknown Kinks track...a very un-Kinks-like groove rocker with very Kinks-y timeless lyrics.

Booker T. Jones- Progress

You can get the awesome compilation CD that this soulful tune is taken from here, for FREE.

Joni Mitchell- Don't Interrupt The Sorrow

Ah, Joni. This song is nothing short of brilliant. The title of this post is taken from it.


Bird York- Bought A Gun

"By the time I'm eleven, I'll be a man"

Joan As Policewoman- Nervous

Had a couple callers on this one, they loved it and they should, it is awesome...I have been a huge Joan Wasser fan for years...why is she not totally fucking famous yet?

Sparks- I Can't Believe That You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song

"And only you and only you, my love"

Of Montreal- An Eluadarian Instance

This band is better than a million circuses.


Kalliopi- Summer Is Over

She's from Greece. Things are tough in Greece right now, hopefully there's some solace in music.

Nouvelle Vague- Making Plans For Nigel

XTC cover.

Tom Waits- Make It Rain

"Sharpen my knives on my mistakes"

Amy Winehouse- Fuck-Me Pumps

Add Amy to my list of unattainable post-mortem crushes; Voltairine DeCleyre, Clara Bow, and Amy Winehouse.

Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald- Frim Fram Sauce

Oooo tasty.

Rare Earth- Is Your Teacher Cool?

Depends on the lesson.

The Stranglers- The Sweet Smell of Success

Funkadelic- Funky Dollar Bill

Jimi Hendrix- Message of Love

Miles Davis- Spanish Key (single edit)

Michelle Malone and Band du Soliel- Cortez the Killer

Awesome live cover of classic Neil Young song...Michelle Malone is the real rocking deal.

Jennings- Surrender

New album coming soon!

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- Cloudy Eyes

Atomic Rooster- Devil's Answer

Roxy Music- Three and Nine

John Cale- Taking It All Away

Brian Eno- The True Wheel

David Bowie- Blackout

Man, this song is about best thing that ever happened to my ears, ever.

Astronauts of Antiquity- Breakthrough

Misty Boyce- Be A Man

I like the way the title of this song doesn't say what you probably think it does...but if she was a man, she couldn't sing like she does. And that would be a bummer, 'cause she sings great.