UBU Hour Radio Programs

Radio supergenius Rolf Semprebon and his band of radio theater acrobats perform amazing feats of radio play daring-do once a month on The UBU Hour.

The productions are pretty amazing, with rich sound effects and editing and fine voice performances from the talented cast.

They’ve taken on no less than the Neo Con agenda, the second coming of Jesus and the Bush Family.

My favorite is The Man Who Didn’t Give a Shit, a dense, highly scatological saga about a man’s inner turmoil as to whether he sacrifice his values to rise to the top in his company, with shit.
It’s like a filthy The Fountainhead, as co-written by Franz Kafka on Ex-Lax.

I’ve run into Rolf at the station at odd hours, merrily cutting and pasting away and he promises more on the Moron Saga of Dubya Tush and the Tush family, and more filth.

Check out their nearly complete audio archives here.

The UBU Hour

The first Monday of the month, from 11 pm to Midnight.
Experimental radio theater with dada/surreal elements…

On KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland OR

Big City Orchestra

Pal Ninah Pixie sends me the following:

Brand-New WEB RELEASE from BIG CITYE ORCHESTRHAE

LULLABY

NOW AVAILABLE from the UMBRELLA NOIZE COLLECTIVE

download full tracks + album cover art:

1. Passing Note
2. uBung
3. Virginal
4. Wind Chest
5. Wood Wind
6. Faster
7. Chance Music
8. Tirez

cast: dAS, Ninah Pixie, Andy Cowitt, Michael Wertz, Cliff Neighbors, Melissa Margolis, Insect Deli, Dark Muse
cover art & design: Michael Wertz (www.wertzateria.com)

Don Joyce and Negativland

A couple of commissioned pieces from Negativland that they did for New American Radio in the late Eighties/early Nineties. Both pieces saw later release in truncated forms, yet neither has ever come out on disc in the form offered here. The most radically different ( and longer) of the two is Advertising Secrets, which is vastly different than the 7″ that eventually came out on Eerie Records. Guns isn’t that different, but varies somewhat in mix and sequence and doesn’t have the Then and Now/ A-side/B-side orientation, as it appeared on the SST issued vinyl EP.

Advertising Secrets utilizes a big chunk of the already bizarre concept album TM Productions: Tomorrow Radio as a launching point, so it’s doubly weird.

From New American Radio:

Don Joyce and Negativland: Guns! (1989)
A dense, pulsing “action song,” whose verses deal with America’s intimate relationship with firearms: “The gun and the Bible carved this nation out of the wilderness,” a man exclaims. A tradition unfolds that links the voices of the past as we know them through television cowboy movies and gangster films, to the modern Annie-Get-Your-Gun, the business woman of the ‘eighties with her handy sub-machine gun. An evolving patchwork of movie excerpts and TV ads, statements and information about guns, and of certain phrases repeated like bullets.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Negativland: Advertising Secrets (1991)
A dynamic blend of rhythmic elements and original audio constructs — actual ad jingles, lines and phrases — commentary by and about advertisers — books on tape materials about how commercials are conceived and created — plus various out-takes from commercial productions which depict the sophisticated process (and elaborate cynicism) of the professionals involved. “My motivation is to inspect and depict some of the paradoxical aspects of media advertisement which both attract and repel me as an artist in America — a society whose entire economic well being rests solely on consumerism and the need to manufacture want.” (Don Joyce)
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Go get them here.

Note: I posted these separately last Summer, but am re-upping them by request.

Negativland’s Mark Hosler Interview

Mark Hosler was in town to present his Adventures in Illegal Art: Creative Media Resistance and Negativland lecture and multimedia show.
Mark gave a brief history of the ‘band’ (he says he doesn’t think of themselves as a band), told mainly through their many run-ins with the media and their lawyers. He also showed us the many, seldom seen videos the band has been doing in collaboration with others. Who knew that the infamous U2 single had a video? Not many since they have been court ordered to never, under any circumstance show it in any way. It was great.
After the show was a brief Q & A.

Mark was kind enough to drop by the KBOO studios and man a mic on The Outside World, this week hosted by Dr. Zomb, who used to be an occasional contributor to Negativland’s Over the Edge program. The interview is very informal and Mark plays some real Negativland rarities, including the bizarre acapella, gospel-tinged cover band The 180-Gs.

You can download the program here:

Mark Hosler Interview.mp3 (80.75 MB)

Negativland’s MySpace page (more up to date than their official website)

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Laura’s Brain

Something I made with my Kaoss Pad.

Is it done yet? I don’t know.

Guest vocals by Laura Bush.

Enjoy. 

Ken’s Last Ever Radio Extravaganza

Ken of K.L.E.R.E. has dropped me the following line:

two new live shows to be created
one: in a few hours (friday june 8, 4:30-6pm CT / 5:30-7pm ET)
the other: in a few days (monday june 11, 12-1pm CT / 1-2pm ET)

both via live webcast: http://counterfolk.com/lastever
and both on live radio in austin, tx: 91.7-FM
*thanks to gary and john for airtime

live, improvised sound collage experiment
wherein you may participate via contributing sounds with telephone during show
or other ways you may devise
then/now/later

mixing combining existing playing happening
free from plan or thought

may also be listenable later on web page if you miss it

live listening, past archives, ‘podcast’:
http://counterfolk.com/lastever
(try a blue show from the upper-right corner)

If you’re a fan of live, improvised collage radio, be sure to check it out.
It’s his last one ever, so you have to.

Negativland

Over the Edge Vol. 4: Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies
Seeland Records

Fabulously overblown re-issue of the formerly cassette-only Over the Edge series entry Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies, presenting Richard Lyon’s titular soul-less radio personality character in his many failed attempts at radio stardom. The first disc unveils an insidious change to KPFA’s programming to a bland, middle of the road music and canned news segment format called The California Superstation. the horrified and clueless call-ins are priceless, as is Lyon’s portrayal of a huckster who is totally oblivious to his own vapidity. Done in ‘air-check’ style, all songs – horrid though they are – have been culled out of the mix, leaving Dick’s IDs and commercials alone.
Side two, titled Dick Vaughn’s Moribund Music of the Seventies, documents Dick’s failed countdown show to highlight some of the low points of Seventies music. All this is wrapped around some befuddled call-ins (not included on the original issue), an assessment of Dick Vaughn’s pathology by a radio psychiatrist (Dr. Oslo Norway) and some relatively recent updates on the death of Dick Vaughn from Negativland’s 1993 concerts.

Link Removed.

For more Negativland mayhem, be sure to visit Carnival of Headaches. He’s got the excellent OTE Time Zones Exchange Project, as well as lots of other goodies.

Meet the Meat Beetles

Sometimes when taking a long break from finding cool music, cool music finds you instead.

The well-named Wongo Starr dropped me a line to let us know about his cool sampledelic band the Meat Beatles. Fantastic tape manipulation, turn-tablisms and great use of sampling are contained herein.

The lengthy track Backwards Devil Music #13 had me chortling coffee out my nose this morning.

They’re so good, I wonder why I haven’t heard of them before.

Go check ‘em out!

Negativland in Portland

Woo Hoo!

After seven years, Negativland comes to Portland and is doing a live simulcast on KBOO:

Legendary trickster band Negativland brings a new version of their weekly radio broadcast (Over the Edge, on the air since 1981) to the live stage for the very first time, mixing music, found sounds, found dialogue, scripts, personalities and sound effects within a “radio” theater-of-the-mind. “It’s All In Your Head FM” is a two-hour-long, action-packed look at monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs.

I’m all a-twitter with anticipation.
I’ll keep you posted with details. I plan to record the radio broadcast at home and hopefully will take pictures (if the Baghdad’s goons will let me).

Negativland

A Big 10-8 Place
Seeland Records

The follow up to 1981′s Points has Negativland fine-tuning their homespun audio collage to mind-blowing proportions. It also introduces more thematically tied material and a narrative story structure of sorts (albeit a very dada one) thanks in no small part to uber-nerd and band mascot/muse/technician David ‘The Weatherman’ Wills. This also introduces a very deft use of tape collage (thanks to the newly joined Don Joyce), which forms the first part of this two piece epic, which is so mind-pummeling magnificent and at times resembles Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy. The second major section is an extended story narrated by the Weatherman that is very silly and surreal and introduces lots of trademarked words and phrases into the Negativland lexicon – featuring also an apparently real argument between Wills and his mother. The back of the craftily packaged CD tells you to listen to this loud with headphones on, which may be the case, but you’ll feel like your brain has been soaking in Formula 409 afterwards.
Highly recommended.

Fetch My Cigarettes

Inexplicably, the first two albums, which I posted last summer, are still active.
Check them out here and here.