The Monitors: Silly Sci-Fi From Second City c. 1969

This oddball sci-fi satire used to pop up on late-night TV fairly frequently when I was a kid.

It’s based on a Keith Laumer novel of the same name (which I’ve never read) and deals with a group of benevolent bowler-wearing aliens who have conquered earth and imposed peace all over the world. They’ve also outlawed most earthling passions – you know – hate, greed, war, real love, etc. That doesn’t sit well with a growing rebel faction, which is where we come in.

It was a creation of Chicago’s legendary Second City troupe and was directed by Jack Shea, and was a joint effort of Second City and the Bell-Howell corporation. Many Second City alumni appear (Avery Schreiber, for one, at the same time that he was doing Frito commercials), as well as some actors who weren’t in it (Guy Stockwell, Susan Oliver, Ed Begley Sr., Alan, Adam and Matthew Arkin, Keenan Wynn and F-Troop’s Larry Storch) , some strange cameos by the likes of Xavier Cugat, Jackie Vernon and Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, playing himself in one of the numerous hilarious TV PSA segments. The cinematographer was future Oscar winner Vilmos Zsigmond.

There’s also songs by Odetta and loads and loads of quotable dialog and interesting soundbites.

This offering isn’t the movie’s soundtrack – I don’t think it’s ever been released. I simply recorded the audio when it was briefly available for streaming on that movie streaming service we love and loathe. I made it into a CD-length album, of sorts, mainly consisting of the theme, interesting dialog, those aforementioned PSA segments and more.

I hope you enjoy it!

The Monitors Are Your Friends.

Kill Ugly Radio Episode 02.01.11

Tonight, I played a generous chunk of The Evolution Control Committee’s brand spankin’ new album All Rights Reserved, on heavy orange vinyl. I strongly suggest picking up a copy. It’s available from Seeland Records.
I then proceeded to cruise through a fairly mellow set, with Bill Horist’s lovely album Covalent Lodge, from 2010 and some Sun Ra.
The rest was a blur of insane sounds and children’s records.
Enjoy!

Play
Download

Playlist:
Lalo Schifrin – What’s Wrong? – THX-1138 OST
–
The Evolution Control Committee – Listener License Agreement – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – What Would You Think If I Sang AutoTune – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – Pertaining to the Beat – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – The Shakes – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – Don’t Let The Devil Blow Your Mind – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – Machine Love – All Rights Reserved
The Evolution Control Committee – Pwn Monkey – All Rights Reserved
–
Bill Horist – In The House Of The Specious Phylum – Covalent Lodge
Bill Horist – The Breath-Width Isthmus – Covalent Lodge
Bill Horist – Smeared Slate Gales Warped In Oozing Windows – Covalent Lodge
Bill Horist – Glenn / Ganges – Covalent Lodge
–
Sun Ra – A Fireside Chat With Lucifer – A Fireside Chat With Lucifer
Brian Routh – Bob and Babs – SoundCloud
Rachel Taylor Brown – Abide With Me – Half Hours With the Lower Creatures Outtakes
Rachel Taylor Brown – Frances Farming – Half Hours With the Lower Creatures Outtakes
Steve Reich/Kronos Quartet – Different Trains – Different Trains
Dominique – Sambre Et Meuse – The Singing Nun’s Song
A Holiday In Oregon – Side Two – A Holiday In Oregon 7″
Bran(…)Pos -Ocean Fish – Chriphuis (Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack)
Bran(…)Pos -Pancar Sou – Chriphuis
Bran(…)Pos -Rhinostometry – Chriphuis
Bran(…)Pos -Wig Petter Spots Mugger – Chriphuis
Bran(…)Pos -Szou Malou – Chriphuis
Bran(…)Pos -Quistine Chapel – Chriphuis
Bran(…)Pos -Falsetto Alarmado – Chriphuis
Marvin Rainwater – You Think That You Got Trouble (Flipside to Gonna Find Me a Bluebird)
Trooper Dick Curtis – Well, Now… – Well, Now…
Agapeland Character Builders – Gentleness 7″
Georgina Liccione Stewart – Shapes in Action
Milton Babbit – Composition for Synthesizer – Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center
–
Children’s Starlight Chorus – E.T., I Love You – E.T., I Love You and Other Extraterrestrial Songs

Kill Ugly Radio Episode 01.25.11: Altered State of the Union

Mutated, noise generated by Barack Obama, filtered through LFOs, ring modulation and delay. It was the Altered State of the Union.
Plus, some recent vinyl acquisitions.
Noise. Music. More noise (please).

Listen
Take

Playlist:
Lalo Schifrin – What’s Wrong? – THX-1138 OST
–
Barack Obama vs DJ ManRich – Altered State of the Union
Core of the Coalman – Anxiety – Resipiscent Records
Unknown – Sausage, pork, beef, cheese, whole milk, butter, margarine, nuts (Found at Dangerous Minds blog)
Jim Larrance – Pastor Lax – Cut-Up Sound
Wire – A Touching Display – 154
Popol Vuh – Aguirre 2 – Deutsche Elektronische Musik
–
Pacific Northwest Bell – Holiday in Oregon 7″
Loach Fillet – Origins of the Two-Headed Spitting Cobra – Electric Pond: Solar Solution Resipiscent Records
Hawaiian Pups – Infinite Roads – Split Second Precision
Hawaiian Pups – Trash – Split Second Precision
Hawaiian Pups – Baby Judy – Split Second Precision
Uncle Ron – Airplane Trip – Adventureland
Alp – Artis – Out and About with Alp – Soleilmoon Records
Forrest McCollough – Flight F.I.N.A.L.
Brian Routh and Patricia Wells – Mashed Potatoes – SoundCloud
How Bacon Is Made
–
Ollie Halsall & John Halsey – Bum Love – Miniatures
The Residents – We`re A Happy Family/Bali Ha`i – Miniatures
Roger McGough – The Wreck Of The Hesperus – Miniatures
Morgan Fisher – Green And Pleasant – Miniatures
John Otway – Mine Tonight – Miniatures
Pete Challis & Phil Diplock – My Way – Miniatures
Robert Wyatt – Rangers In The Night – Miniatures
Stinky Winkles – Opus – Miniatures
Mary Longford – Body Language – Miniatures
Andy Newman – Andy The Dentist – Miniatures
David Bedford – Wagner`s Ring In One Minute – Miniatures
Fred Frith – The Entire Works Of Henry Cow – Miniatures
Maggie Nicols – Look Beneath The Surface – Miniatures
Joseph Racaille – Week-End – Miniatures
The Work – With Wings Pressed Back – Miniatures
Neil Innes & Son – Cum On Feel The Noize – Miniatures
Herbert Distel – Toscany In Blue (Last Minute) – Miniatures
Lol Coxhill – An End To The Matter – Miniatures
Ken Ellis – One Minute In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich – Miniatures
Steve Miller – Alice – Miniatures
Norman Lovet – John Peel Sings The Blues Badly – Miniatures
Patrick Portella – Serrons Nous Les Coudes – Miniatures
George Melly – Sounds That Saved My Life (Homage To K.S.) – Miniatures
Robert Fripp – Miniature – Miniatures
Andy Partridge – The History Of Rock`N`Roll – Miniatures
Phantom Captain – Breather – Miniatures
–
Children’s Starlight Chorus – E.T., I Love You – E.T., I Love You and Other Extraterrestrial Songs

Free Moby Music

Say what you will about Moby (me, I don’t necessarily have an opinion about him one way or another), but this is pretty cool:

“hi,
i’ll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film….“

Read on.

If you’re an independent radio or film maker, this is pretty sweet.

Thanks to Rabia for the link.

Songsmithing the Econopocalypse

I have been flummoxed by, but so far unable to write anything about Microsoft’s hideous product Songsmith. It is the death of music and the end of art. It is what the world will sound like when every last real, individual human is replaced with soulless replicants (next tuesday, at this rate).
But some genius by the name of Johannes Kreidler has used Songsmith to score the soundtrack to our crumbling economy and declining society.

Watch it here:

I did and laughed until I cried. Then I cried and cried.

Found at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, the Boing Boing for music geeks.

An Eraserhead Christmas

The post below is over two years old. I am reposting it for two reasons: the download link is still active (it was reupped eons ago!) and I just watched Eraserhead with my 17-year-old son last night.
It’s a Christmas tradition worth sharing.
No kidding.
In the 80’s, when I was a teen, my sister married a guy named Tony who became like a mixture of big brother and best friend to me.
We became inseparable and would often haunt all the video rental stores in a 50 square mile radius for weirder and weirder movies.
I was heavily into reading about movies that – in that pre-internet age – I had little hope of ever seeing. I had read about John Waters, Russ Meyers, Jodorowsky and others for years and craved to see them all. We found that the myriad of video rental stores, almost all of them mom-and-pop owned, usually had one or two weird gem tucked away somewhere. Often the owner would be curious and pick up some movie, despite it being esoteric and weird for hickoid Vancouver Washington.
So, imagine our surprise and delight when we found a video store* that had a copy of Eraserhead. I had been reading about this movie in the excellent book For One Week Only and would exhaustively read and reread the plot synopsis. I was intrigued also by snippets of the soundtrack that I would hear on late night radio shows on KBOO. Eraserhead occupied this holy place of weird movies on my list of must sees. We were so exited, we immediately went home to my Mom and Dad’s and set up two VCRs (kind of unheard of, unless you were a complete movie geek back then) to copy it. Such a sacred document needed to be preserved, didn’t it?
We watched it awestruck. Nothing I had read about it prepared me for it. I was numb for days afterward.
The buzz was infectious, apparently as others in my family wanted to know what the broughhaha was all about. This was Christmas holiday and we ended up showing it to lots of my family on Christmas eve. My Dad, who was used to Tony and I watching strange movies vacated the living room. As long as it wasn’t dirty or really violent or profane, he more or less didn’t care what we watched.
So, it was a surreal Christmas. David Lynch’s bizarre little piece of art became both conversation piece and theme for that particular Christmas. At least that’s how I remember it.

*The store that had it is still open. They still take courageous chances with movies, as well. It’s Video Connections in Hazel Dell, a suburb of Vancouver Washington.

David Lynch and Alan Splet
Eraserhead Soundtrack
I.R.S.

I don’t have to explain any of this to you, do I?
This is one of the few movie soundtracks that stands up well without its visuals. It’s a brilliant piece of Musique Concrete all on it’s own. And this is also the way I first encountered Eraserhead, thanks to a very outre radio show host (Daniel Flessas, Outside World). Lynch wisely chose to simply sample two long samples of the film itself, rather than isolate out any musical elements (largely made up of borrowed Fats Waller organ music). the result is a creepy industrial soap opera, set in some limbo-like hell. the oft-covered In Heaven song was penned by the late, great Peter Ivors, of Vitamin P and New Wave Theatre fame.

In heaven, everything is fine.
(re-upped 11/12/06)

A little early, but…

…here’s an old Halloween mix I did in 2006. A little dark and ugly, but there you have it:
Play
Playlist:

1. Siouxsie and the Banshees – Halloween
2. MX-80 Sound – Halloween
3. Matt Clifford – The Return of the Living Dead Theme
4. Karl-Ernst Sasse – Kampf Golem und Floriano
5. Horrific Child – Horreur Indescriptible Et Accumulee
6. Rev. Jim Jones – Last Recordings
7. Laibach – Smrt za Smrt
8. Throbbing Gristle – Hamburger Lady
9. Charles Manson – Tom Snyder Interview
10. Sonic Youth – Death Valley ‘69
11. Skinny Puppy – Worlock
12. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult – …And This Is What The Devil Does!
13. The Cramps – I Was a Teenage Werewolf
14. Roky Erikson – Burn the Flames
15. SPK – Agony of the Plasma
16. Goblin – Witch (from Suspira)
17. Angelo Badalamenti – The Black Dog Runs at Night
18. Butthole Surfers – Graveyard
19. Paul Giovanni – Appointment with The Wicker Man

Kill Ugly Samhain Sacrifice.mp3 ( 66.6 minutes, 66 megs)

I’m really hoping I get the chance to spin some discs sometime around Halloween this year.
If I do, I’ll be sure to post it here. If not, I may have to do another mix.