the rix mix

Congratulations to me, passed 1000 music uploads & 1000 subscribers for the Rixarcade You Tube Channel. I wanted the channel in the spirit of my WFMU shows, open to following wherever it took me. This was my first upload, Sept. 16, 2010.

Labels: music, video, WFMU

for Liz French

 I poked at Velma's smoldering cigarette butt in the ashtray
 with the point of a pencil. Why do women always do that?
Velma crossed her shapely left leg over her right,
then  changed to her right over her left. I didn't pretend not to look.

 "Well?" asked Velma.

 I said, "Velma, what part of 'I don't do divorce work'
 don't you understand?"

Labels: poem, WFMU

A simple easy listening arrangement of "La Dolce Vita." Always opened my WFMU radio shows with Nino Rota. (Rare exceptions were short pieces by Prokofiev or Shostakovich). Not always Rota's Fellini musc. Also sections of piano concertos & ballets. A wealth of Rota's concert hall music became available over the past few decades. Conservative in style, Rota chose to compose the way he did. He had a long friendship with Stravinsky. Never heard Kurt Weill & Rota mentioned together, but "La Dolce Vita" has a strong resemblance to "Mack the Knife."

Labels: music, WFMU

X-Ray Burns & I, live WFMU  broadcast from Asbury  Park of the Glen Jones Progamme with X-Ray Burns, a few years ago. . They broadcast a series of annual shows from the space age Howard Johnson's next to Convention Hall. For most of their broadcasts, the crowd they drew were pretty much the only people on the boardwalk on a sunny Summer Sunday afternoon, unless some event was at Convention Hall. The beaches were nearly deserted. One year there was a wedding, the next Patti Scialfi was rehearsing at the Paramount for a tour, Springsteen was there with his Corvette, I chatted with him  briefly as he was standing outside the theater but had left my camera back at my HoJo table. During those last two summers, the Asbury boardwalk was finally  reawakening, completely transforming itself in few years.  The Hojos is now a restaurant & nightclub. But who can say if Glen & X-Ray helped prevent its demolition?

These were were family events  with children & dogs in attendance.

Labels: Mahalo, photograph, WFMU

 My WFMU DJ friend, singer & songwriter Laura Cantrell, writes:

She managed to transform those old cheating and heart songs into soul music by resisting the overplay of emotion; her drama remains all pent up in that voice, painfully curtailed, both sentimental and stoic like the country folks who were her rural audience. 

Both Kitty & Laura were born & raised in Nashville, city girls.   Which meant Kitty, like country comedian Minnie Pearl (who attended a Nashville finishing school for women), probably had to push some urban sophistication into the background.  With Laura, it's enough that you know you're in the presence of a Tennessee woman, with all it implies musically.  A quality of Laura's singing that makes you lean toward the bandstand rather than away from it certainly derives from Kitty Wells. In fact, Laura does a wonderful version of this very song.

Labels: music, obituary, video, WFMU

Thinking of the late Peter Bergman & Firesign Theater.  Firesign  Theater's best albums were popular with college potheads from 1968 to 1973. Multi-layered & cyclical,  you never quite got to the bottom of them. The world of Monty Python was absurd. The world of Firesign Theater was absurd & sinister. There was a darkness  & paranoia in Firesign's comedy, a response to Vietnam, Johnson & Nixon, assassinations, domestic surveillance of the youth countercultures by the federal government.  Firesign Theater introduced me to an intriguing historical concept:  The only explanation for the way things were was that The United States of America must have lost World War Two. Meaning the American people; along with  the British people, the Russian people, the German people & the Japanese people.  We Americans thought we were fighting for the Four Freedoms as well as the right to organize unions & collectively bargain.

So who won? President Eisenhower put a name to the winners: The Military-Industrial Complex, a loose global consortium  of corporations &  various government defense & security agencies that  controls every major government in the world.  Individual crazies want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth & bomb Iran back to the  Bronze Age, but these end game war scenarios are dangerous & unprofitable. The long war with no clear winner is the ideal now.

The other thing was how easy it was to create visual images in the minds of radio listeners, using the cheesiest effects. If you play a recording of ocean surf & seagulls in the background & say you're broadcasting from the Jersey shore, everyone knows it's a fake, but they'll see beach & gulls anyway. Listeners have no reason to resist seeing it. I'd test it on myself. & since few listeners have ever seen the DJ/host, changing your voice changes whatever image they have of you. I had a very authentic sounding gravel voiced guy from Bayonne I brought on from time to time. His name was Gregory Ginzouac. Using sound to fool with visual images kept me interested in radio during weeks when I really felt like smoking a joint, kicking back & playing Neil Young for three hours & to hell with "free form."

Labels: culture, obituary, WFMU

Last night of the two week  WFMU Fund-raising Marathon, when the party moves to Maxwell's in Hoboken featuring live DJ karaoke with the Hoof 'n' Mouth Orchestra.  I did Hoof 'n' Mouth once, in 2004, when it was broadcast from Studio A  & the only audience was whatever other staffers & volunteers could crowd into the room. I did it to undergo the same initiation rite as younger , newer DJs.  Now you gotta perform for a multitude on a real stage with a spotlight. A number of other DJs apparently feel the same way about the larger venue & no longer participate. A shame since many  DJs are not extroverts.  Radio is a great medium for people who get serious stage fright, providing intimate one-to-one communication.  Even so, I always had a small case of butterflies before a radio show,  usually led off with almost 30  minutes of music,  & even before I turned on the mic for the first break had to take deep breath & think, "O.K. here you go." After that I was fine. The reality is the better WFMU does during the the all stops out fund-raiser when everyone is pulling together,  the less the station has to rely on gimmicky money making ideas at other times during the year.

Labels: WFMU

Playing with Howlin' Wolf for two decades, Hubert Sumlin was a creator of a library of fundamental electric guitar blues riffs. Any guitarists knowing their stuff learn  from Hubert  Sumlin.

On his own after Wolf died,  Hubert became one of the most admired & beloved guitarists in the world. Just the other day he was named 43rd on the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Best Guitarists, but of course Keith Richards,  Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page & most of the other living rock guitarists ahead of him on the list would gladly have stepped aside to let him move up. Keith was especially fond of him.

This photo was taken  on the shabby Asbury Park boardwalk five or six years ago, in front of the space age Howard Johnson's,  a hot summer afternoon, before the boardwalk's  more recent renaissance. WFMU radio host Glen Jones, who knew Hubert,  encountered him at the bluesman's  Saturday night Stone Pony gig & invited him to drop by for a live broadcast the following afternoon. Hubert showed up with his guitar, a funky old amp was somehow procured for him, & the master musician provided a  loose, entertaining set.  As you can see, he  didn't  "dress down" for the occasion.

Labels: Asbury Park, jersey shore, music, obituary, photograph, WFMU

Question from Facebook friend: How will RP Panthers do against Roselle tomorrow? Still 10:30 a.m. (or so) game? Home or away?

My reply: I haven't the slightest idea. I'm from Balikpapan, Borneo. Oops, changed it to Blackpool, England. (After I began receiving friend requests from Borneo.)

I haven't been to a Roselle Park football game since the Thanksgiving the season after I graduated high school. Roselle vs. Roselle Park was the game.

Here's the thing about Roselle Park. Over the course of 25 years at WFMU I received no  phone calls from anyone in or associated with Roselle Park when I talked about the town. When I mentioned Linden & Rahway NJ, towns I resided in while doing radio, I did occasionally get calls from people in those places. Rahway had a cluster of WFMU listeners.

During periodic megalomaniac phases, I'd conclude that no one as a cool as me could possibly come from Roselle Park. Was I abducted by aliens & implanted with false memories?  Two other substantially  cool people did indeed spend significant youthful years in R.P.: radio DJ & personality Vin Scelsa, acknowledged as one of WFMU's Godfathers; & versatile, Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Alan Pasqua, both of whom I knew slightly. Neither makes mention of their hometown on their websites.

Labels: culture, growing up, WFMU

This song often tempted me to adopt it as an opening theme for my late night WFMU shows, the ones that ran to 2 or 3 am. But I rarely felt like an Ole Night Owl at the start of the programs (although I usually did by the end), & I didn't want to telegraph the same mood every week. Even when I used music by Nino Rota from "The Clowns," which I did for years,  the mood depended upon where I chose to cue up the record.

Labels: birthday, music, WFMU

In 1999 I had known Glen  Jones for many years, but not really. He was large personality at WFMU with a huge audience.   I was a DJ who liked tucking myself  away on the fringes of the schedule. The only time I was interested in the size of my radio audience was at annual fund-raising time, which is too late to do anything about making it bigger.

The first really personal, relaxed chat I had with Glen was in Jersey City. Following a staff meeting in the uncompleted studios, before we moved, I wandered into a bar around the corner. From the outside it looked quiet & insular, neither up nor  downscale, & I thought it'd be nice to sit there for a little while & nurse a beer. Many of the other staffers had gone to the Flamingo Diner & I   wasn't in  the mood for the noisy push-the-tables-together  thing, waiting half-an-hour for a toasted corn muffin & bad coffee I didn't even want.   The bar was quiet & nearly empty. But over at  a little round bar  table sat Glen Jones all by himself. We exchanged little  waves &  he waved me over. We were in exactly the same mood, both a bit unnerved by the new location & feeling uneasy about  The  Big Change to come - although JC was a much more convenient location; both Scorpios, in our individual ways  creatures of routine & tradition;  & both familiar with the other's radio style.   This surprised me.  I hadn't figured Glen ever listened to me. We weren't so different. We liked to play a generous amount of music & then reward ourselves for choosing such wonderful records by speaking into a  microphone about whatever happened to be on our minds.  I don't remember what we talked about that night, probably our favorite old sitcoms, boardwalks,  & the decline of common courtesies like helping old folks across the street.

After awhile we felt better & left, Glen in one direction I suppose  to the PATH station, me in the other to my car parked around the corner (we were sober).  On that muggy, chilly, deserted Jersey City street, around midnight, outside a bar two blocks from the Hudson River, I suspect Glen & I walked away with a melancholy Sinatra song from the  50's as our soundtracks.  I don't know if Glen recalls this encounter, but I sure do.

Anyway, I became very fond of Glen, &  his WFMU accomplice X-Ray Burns. His girlfriend Gina is one of my dearest friends now. I knew her slightly because she was  a longtime WFMU supporter & an attractive woman, but had no idea she lived nearby until one afternoon I ran into Glen walking from the train station to her house.

Labels: Mahalo, WFMU

Ten years since the great WFMU jock Frank "Vanilla Bean" Balesteri passed away. After some length of absence, Frank had made a surprise appearance at the 2001 WFMU Record Fair. We were all so pleased to see him. At the close,  I said "Seeyah Frank." Station Manager Ken Freedman came over as I was packing up the dollar tables, mentioned in passing he had asked  Frank if he needed a place to stay,  Frank had  said no. We thought nothing of it at the time.  That night Frank died alone in a motel room. 

Frank had his issues, to be sure. But on radio he was brilliant & dangerous.  He was suspended more than once. He broadcast the most hilarious, lewd bit I ever heard on WFMU. Let's just say it involved a cheap hooker in a parked car.  Personally, he was one of the friendliest people on the staff.  He also suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice that could befall someone. It dragged on for years & cost him a fortune  before he settled it in his  favor.  I think it's what killed him. He was a small guy with a big heart, just wore out.

Frank could do the most outrageous things & still be liked by the station manager, even as he being reprimanded.  He could also do a straight up free form  music show when he was in the mood. Former manager Bruce Longstreet used to tap Frank on the head & ask, "Hello, who's in there today?"

Labels: obituary, WFMU

Stutterer Speaks Up in Class; His Professor Says Keep Quiet

Philip Garber, a precocious and confident 16-year-old who is taking two college classes this semester, has a lot to say but also a profound stutter that makes talking difficult, and talking quickly impossible. After the first couple of class sessions, in which he participated actively, the professor, an adjunct named Elizabeth Snyder, sent him an e-mail asking that he pose questions before or after class, “so we do not infringe on other students’ time.”

As for questions she asks in class, Ms. Snyder suggested, “I believe it would be better for everyone if you kept a sheet of paper on your desk and wrote down the answers.”

Later, he said, she told him, “Your speaking is disruptive.”

Unbowed, Philip reported the situation to a college dean, who suggested he transfer to another teacher’s class, where he has been asking and answering questions again.

As a stutterer, naturally this story caught my attention. The wire services picked it up, & the local Star-Ledger ran its own story.

When I was 16 my stutter was incapacitating as far as speaking in class. Giving an oral report was to die. I wanted the option of speaking or not & only once did a teacher offer it,  Ms. Donohue, a newly-minted English teacher.*  Yet, I wasn't painfully  shy. I liked being the center of attention, having the spotlight. Philip is from a   younger generation of stutterers who use speech therapy as best they can, but take the attitude that if anyone has a problem with  a stutterer, get over it.

Both the teacher & the dean were wrong. This was a "teachable moment" for them. I don't think the teacher should be punished. She was a public school teacher for 30 years & if this is how she always treated stutterers, it's not too late to change. The situation seems to have been resolved. Let the kid speak.

In high school, I might have appreciated the suggested alternative of submitting written comments. But then, I wasn't raising my hand much in class, a handicap in the English & History classes  where I often had something to say. Later, in college, with some smaller classes where  free-flowing discussions were encouraged, more like conversation,  I participated much more, which  in turn lowered the anxiety that increased the severity of my stutter.  Philip  needs no special consideration except that people be a little patient.  It was no problem with his classmates.

I still have have bad days.  But in all my years on the radio, nobody picked up on my stutter from what they heard on the radio, although I sometimes had to duck & dodge "jonah words," words stutterers see coming along in a sentence we know will be problems. I've  given poetry readings on bad stuttering days by opening with a short poem (now lost) I wrote especially for those times, not about stuttering, but with smoothly rhythmic lines I could sort of sing, & then chatting with the audience to relax before moving on to the next poem. By the third poem I'd be over the hump & enjoying the spotlight.

*Sophomore year,  my grades were going to hell. Ms. Donohue had me transferred out of one of her classes before the six week speech communication section, & into her higher achieving  class that had already done the speech thing.  I remember we  studied Macbeth in the new class & everyone was into it.,  The old class had  disruptive morons in it.

Labels: growing up, in the news, mental health, WFMU

Early on at WFMU I decided to have opening theme music for my weekly shows. Just made it easier to unpack, settle in to the DJ's chair, & get a little bit organized. Every show brings a slight case of butterflies,  I never liked   making major programming choices on-the-fly during the initial 20 minutes or so.  Later on in the program, yeah, that was challenge & fun of doing free form.  For many years my opening theme consisted of a  chunk of soundtrack from Fellini's "The Clowns," featuring Nino Rota's music & circus sounds, an elastic selection that could go one minute or five,

"Out" music is another matter. It  depends on how the show wraps up. There's many ways to close a radio program, but you should start thinking about it during the final 30 minutes, thinking ahead,  deciding what's gonna fit.  If I wanted to make a fast getaway after the show,  I sometimes chose a long selection & used the time for packing up & filing away CDs & records. It's  poor radio  etiquette  to run over into the next DJ's time because one's last song ran too long (always a few  jerk DJs who think they're exempted from this obvious courtesy),   You have to consider how many selections need to be back-announced,& what you want to say about them,  plus add in one's  standard goodbye, a brief plug for the incoming DJ,  & an official station I.D. I preferred  a smooth, unhurried wrapup  (Although timing a  close  finish & quick handoff is fun, too).  It's easier to come up a few minutes short with time to fill. That's why I often stuck this LP in my record bag. "Frustration" is a really good "out" song for the "running short" finishes. If I knew I couldn't  cram another full song in, about five minutes before the hour I''d start it up off air. Then, when my last  song ended  I bring up "Frustration" as background talk-over music, do my closing thing, then ride the music into the next show, fading it out just before starting the new DJ's opening selection. Maybe once each year  I'd play the song as a regular selection. My criteria for both "out" & "talkover" music is I have to like it enough to play it in entirety.

I bought The MG's as a fifty cent cutout, & when the LP became beat up  from so much travel back & forth to WFMU,  I lucked on to a new copy for next-to-nothing. It was never released on CD, & I didn't expect it would. It's actually a pretty good record, unfortunately titled. It's not  The real MG's without guitarist Steve Cropper, the name preceded by "Booker T &." But does have Al Jackson, Jr, Duck Dunn, & two other  fine Stax session guys. Carson Whitsett's electric piano noodling on "Frustration" isn't much, but the rhythm section of course is great, & I love the cyclical structure of the number's second half, with Bobby Manuel's spacy guitar, that cannot resolve itself into an ending.  It sounds like it could go on forever - hence, the title. It's music that has to fade out. They do a nifty cover of a Spinners hit, too.

Labels: music, video, WFMU

I have 220 Facebook friends, a manageable amount. Nearly all of them I at least knew of before I joined Facebook; that is, few of them were completely unknown to me. More than half are either WFMU DJs, former DJs, listeners, or people with some connection past or present to the station. For two weeks every year, every WFMU Marathon fundraiser promo posted by the station or a DJ is picked up & shared by dozens of others with all their friends. So in order to get at a few hours of personal posts & news items in my feed, I have to scroll down the page & individually "hide" the WFMU shares clogging it up. I don't want to hide the friends posting them. I make a modest general contribution to the station; I don't pledge the shows of individual DJs & probably wouldn't even if I could afford to spread a lot of money around. I'm ineligible for prize drawings, & all phone pledges have to be written on pledge cards &  inputted. Anyway, the last Marathon where I made individual pledges, I lost track & was shocked when the bill arrived.  Those $15 ones added up to an amount I couldn't honor in full.  WFMU DJs routinely  call in small pledges to other DJs as a token of support when shows are struggling to get the phones ringing.

As one of the worse  pitchmakers in the history of WFMU, my Marathon shows were rescued time & again by my fellow DJs. I imagined them listening & wondering, "How can a guy who talks so much on-the-air go so tongue-tied during the Marathon?" It was a mystery. I could pull together coherent monologues from a few sentences jotted on scrap paper, but went blank with a printed list of 100 reasons to pledge in front of me.  Other DJs who hardly said anything beyond announcing their setlists  became  articulate, convincing salespeople at Marathon time.  Put me in the second chair in the phone room as a co-host & I was an affable, relaxed, well-organized sidekick.

One Marathon, a long time ago, with the phones dead & panic creeping up my spine, my phone room co-host & I traded seats as a goof.  "I'll be you & you be me." I forget who it was - it was his idea - but by ceding my studio chair to him we generated a 15 minute flurry of pledges before the novelty wore off.

Now, there's a WFMU host who raises $80,000 during a single shift. Great for him, great for WFMU.  But it's an obscene amount of money to me, as I remember my struggles year after year to justify in dollars & cents my presence on the station. I couldn't allow myself think like that &  survived at WFMU even back in East Orange. You have to believe in what you do there enough to let yourself be subsidized.

Labels: WFMU

A small birthday party at WFMU ca 1997,  probably for DJ Fabio.  l-r: station manager & DJ Ken , DJ Donna, music director & DJ Brian, me, DJ Clay, DJ Bryce.

(I recognize my tee. A friend had a contract to print them for Target & gave away all the flubs.)

Labels: photograph, WFMU

WFMU manager Ken Freedman failed to gain liftoff in yesterday's balloon & lawn chair fundraising stunt. Became evident midway through his program the goal wouldn't be met. It was still a good show on live video stream. The idea was so hare-brained, & Ken prepared to go through with it (did he need a permit?). The annual "emergency" Fall pledge campaign brochure I received weeks ago didn't mention the balloon stunt, so it was apparently an add-on event. Many WFMU fund-raising ideas have these experimental beginnings; I wouldn't be surprised if Ken tries it again. I think he really does want to fly in a lawn chair, but he's right to put a hefty price tag on it & stick to it.

It was the crazy stuff at WFMU that kept my interest during dry spells when I felt I wasn't finding enough cool music to justify having a weekly radio show. Glen Jones' "Last Man Standing" project in 2001 to break the Guinness record for continuous live radio DJing (not a fund-raiser) may have prevented me from handing in my treasured keys to the front door & music library & walking away. Spending two nights with Glen as an invisible gopher (go fer this, go fer that) under the supervision of DJs Donna & Terre T, with no on-air responsibilities, reintegrated me into the community, which had been struggling to settle into the new Jersey City studios while preserving what many of us loved about the station. One of those nights I spent some time with Vin "The Godfather" Scelsa, who made WFMU free form in the late-Sixties, & came away believing I was a  small brick in the edifice, but a permanent part of it nonetheless.

Labels: WFMU

This video gave me a slightly nightmarish WFMU dream last night. The typical DJ nightmare - all radio DJs have them - involves a strange or changed studio, or being late for a show. But in this dream WFMU was having an open house party. The station has an "open door" for volunteers during the annual marathon fund-raiser, a lot of people may be there for some shows, never an open house party where it's packed elbow to elbow. You have to know someone to attend the big in-house  holiday party. The station's crowded Final Night of Marathon event got too large & is now mostly at Maxwell's in Hoboken. In my dream, manager Ken & I were the only staffers who showed up. Therefore, we were responsible for everything. Ken kept finding me like he wanted me to do something specific, I was willing to help in any way, but he never asked, he always got distracted & swallowed up in the crowd. The only other person I recognized was a particular nincompoop cashier from Pathmark who'd probably be working the popcorn wagon at Walmart entrance if he wasn't in the Union. But there was an ample food table, a buffet.  At the end of the dream, Ken was last in line & putting scrambled eggs on his plate.  Me, I'd had enough of the party & left by waking up.

Labels: dreams, WFMU

Had the kind of dream - always had them, you probably have, too - that might give an idea of what it's like heading into middle stages of a dementia disease. I was supposed to meet some older WFMU DJs for lunch at an outdoor cafe in downtown Elizabeth. Downtown doesn't have outdoor cafes, but no matter. In the dream I was still living with my parents, driving a Volks Beetle, & attending Ramapo state College - which didn''t exist at the time. So the timeline is screwed up. I was running late, got to Elizabeth, parked in a familiar lot, found the cafe, & the guys weren't there. How could I be that late?  It was just getting on noontime, Was it a brunch thing?   Well, I was hungry, so decided to walk on down Broad St, toward the Courthouse & get a cheaper hot dog or burger. Somehow I wandered off Broad, on to Elizabeth Ave., & into a different retail district that   wasn't so familiar, although I had some idea where I was in relation to the Courthouse, a tall building you can see from anywhere in Elizabeth if you get a line of sight. But I couldn't see the Courthouse, &  some of the streets were sinister (which indeed they are today, & always were in my experience),  Elizabeth Ave. wasn't the quite the  wide busy street it actually is that ends in front of the Courthouse. I was increasingly baffled, frustrated, saw a sign "to Goethals Bridge" that didn't help, except I felt I was around U.S. Route One east of Broad St, & I didn't have the sense to ask a traffic cop standing there, "Which way is the Courthouse?" Which would have instantly restored  my sense of direction. The only thing to do was wake up.

Labels: dreams, WFMU

When I joined WFMU, the Video All-Stars LP was one of the core albums in my small but choice collection of  what's now called "crime jazz" . "Crime Jazz"  is a broad term for TV & movie soundtrack jazz & the many imitations. It basically fell into two styles:  big band "action" jazz used to underscore chases, gun battles, & sinister situations; & a cooler "west coast" music for romance & nightclub scenes. There were also TV theme songs, some of them jazzy pop-novelty songs (77 Sunset Strip),  & speciaty numbers like mambos, but also classics like "Peter Gunn" that could be appropriated as rock & roll instrumentals. Crime Jazz of the Fifties easily evolved into the Spy Jazz of the Sixties, James Bond, etc.

Recorded for a bargain label (you were more likely to find it in Woolworth's with the faux Hawaiian records than a record store), it has a side of Peter Gunn numbers plus a side with three TV themes. The leader, Skip Martin, used  the same first call studio musicians favored by Mancini & other soundtrack composers, & the arrangements were similar to the originals. He just gave the musicians longer leashes; they played louder & had more solo space.

Labels: music, WFMU