Potatoes Folk

WFMU posted Ralph Records 1987 “Collection of Folk Songs,” Potatoes. There’s mp3s by well-known weirdos like Negativland, artist Howard Finster, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Bongwater. My faves are the archive-sampled prison work songs and sounds by Rhythm and Noise, “Bertas Hammer” (3:16):

And at KGLT we wore the grooves of this get-back-at-ex-boyfren anon a-capella, “The Billy Bee Song” (1:24)”

Yesterduh

Audio art from Brian Joseph Davis:

During April of 2006, I ran a recording studio at Mercer Union. Passersby were stopped and asked to sing, from memory and with no practice, the Beatles’ Yesterday. They were given headphones with an instrumental track to help them out. If they couldn’t remember the words, they were told to “just make it up.” Everyone was paid a $5.00 performance fee. I then took all the versions recorded and created a mix featuring 60 layered individual tracks of people trying to remember the words.

Brian Joseph Davis, “Yesterduh” (3:39):

NPR Bashing

The Daily News Record (Harrisonburg VA) today published an NPR=commies editorial, titled “An NPR Celebration?” It raves over a single word in an NPR piece on China’s red army.

The article is unattributed, and neglects to mention, among many other things, that the idea for their op-ed is lifted, in part word-for-word, from a National Review blog by Mona Charen — whose livelihood is based on bashing liberals.

This is nothing new, GOPs hate Dems and vice versa — their bickerings are what passes as political debate in this country. But what did fascinate me is nearly all the verifiable info (including the NatlRevu source) was provided not by the paper but by the readers in their online comments.

People argue whether the unwashed masses are qualified as “news” reporters. Or must raw info first be filtered by Qualified Journalists, the annointed arbiters of What We’re Told. Having worked in MSM for decades, I have developed an alternate theory: The News is Always Wrong; at least non-MSM sources have a chance of being right. I’ll tell ya about it sometime.

Flight of the Conchords

Flight of the Conchords was a BBC radio series, is an HBO TV show, and are New Zealand’s “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a cappella-rap-funk-comedy duo.”

From NPR World Cafe intervu, “Beautiful Girl” (3:09 mp3):

From HBO, “Bowie’s in Space”:


FoTC tackles the “Issues” (2:27 mp3):

MP3s from What the Folk fansite.

Soundsnap

Soundsnap: “share free sound effects and loops.” From animals to audio art, available in .mp3 and .wav. Mix, match, & montage:

bass chord

horse

bowling ball

The Late Late Tom Snyder

The legendary late-night interviewer Tom Snyder died this week. Here’s some of his CBS The Late Late Show and NBC The Tomorrow Show guests:

Cackle Sisters

OMG!, the 365 Days Project (@ WFMU) posted 32 mp3s of  The Cackle (DeZurik) Sisters, on the Checkerboard Squares Radio Show.

From the 1940s, “Old Dan Tucker” (1:36):

Fresh Fundraisers

An Open Call For Fresh Fundraising Ideas: The Public Radio Talent Quest asks you to “Take a crack at re-imagining the style and sound of the public radio fundraising pitch.”