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Episode Guide


Year Two (Episodes 52-84) Year 1998

Episode 52: Hallucination Engine:2/HostileTakeover (5/10/98)- Returning to a three hour format, we return to the topic of various drugs. A little later, some folks from other parts of the Frequency Modulation spectrum use the phone lines to make the show their own.

Episode 53: Veteran's Day(5/17/98)- Discussion of the forthcoming holiday, Veteran's Day. Masonic/Illuminati receptacle. The World's most unwanted song. SINATRA=I R SATAN.

Episode 54: Arab fm hifi(5/24/98)- Masonic-themed stuff. We can't really tell you more than that, as our throats would be cut across, our tongues ripped out at the root and buried at the low water mark.

Episode 55: absolutely 100% (5/31/98)-originally slated as somewhat random receptacle, this quickly turned into an episode about one of our favorite athletes-turned-actors: OJ Simpson.

Episode 56:The Ryan Report(6/7/98)-Eating Orange Flatin Croutons at a casino in Las Hubbards in 966. Very dapper. Phone-sex colour poems(although none about orange, sadly. I guess they couldn't find a rhyme in time).

Episode 57: The dapper duck line(6/14/98)- The start of some severe pause-policy sampling. Some Hardcore fundamentalist preaching. And Dave's not dead anymore, I think.

Episode 58: Morality is Stupid (6/21/98)- more pause-policy stuff, plus a bit on the existence of morals at the end.

Episode 59: Hallucination Engine 3 (6/28/98)- a rather generic look at hallucinogenic substances, done as only we can do.

Media Terrorism Vignette 1: 966 Scare (7/4/98)-Listen and See

Episode 60: Ryan Report 2/Better Chinese Homes and Ramberts(7/5/98)-Paul Ryan visits with two new Ryan Reports. Home construction is examined in great detail and in Chinese. Later, a disciple of Bill Moyers nearly wrecks everything.

Episode 61: some various random musical stuff(7/12/98)- A live (or pseudo-live) performance by the Button of Area 51, as well as some live improvised techno-kinda stuff featuring some very dubious sample material (let's just say this could only be aired after midnight...). Plenty of technical mishaps, but nonetheless entertaining.

Episode 62: Weather Exorcism(7/19/98)- A show about weather, severe and otherwise. Attempts were made at getting caller impersonations of their favorite weather patterns, with mixed results. features various chunks of an episode of Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza(a show unformatted similarly to our own). Try this to hear most of it in streaming RealAudio.

Episode 63:The Best little Horror-House in Cleveland (7/26/98)- A mangling of bits of various low-budget horror films.

Episode 64: Golden Medallion (8/2/98)- A hunt for the famed Golden Medallion in South America, followed by some stream-of-consciousness word association.

Episode 65: The Camping Show (8/9/98)- A live broadcast from deep in the woods of northern Canada, the Camping show provided a live feed between the Great White North and Cleveland, so callers could intereact with the hosts.

Episode 66: Freshman Orientation '98(8/16/98)- Since Case Wackass Reverse University is holding freshman orientation, we thought we'd do a little of our own. three "freshmen" were given the opportunity to be on the air for a while, interspersed with some educational randomness.

Episode 67: Button Release (8/23/98)- To promo their new self-titled CD, The Button perform various selections from it, as well as some unreleased stuff.

Episode 68: Freedom of Appropriation(8/30/98)- A mix loosely about the troubles of pressing albums in these troubled times. After this episode aired, the RIAA did modify their pressing guidelines to at least acknowledge the existence and possibility of Fair Use. Coincidence?

There was no show on 9/6/98, as WRUW's transmitter died.

Episode 69: Whitewaterfostertravelfilejoneslewinskygate(9/13/98)- A mix about our poor beleagured president, and the media's hounding of the story. Will probably never be released due to obviously illegal sampling of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar". Various high-level sources call in with their theories/news on the event.

Episode 70: Mir, Mir, on the Wall (9/20/98)- Featuring special guest Paul Ryan!! For this first time in history, an interactive radio talk show was broadcast from spacestation Mir! Started off with an all new RYAN REPORT episode about why the trees are so short in nothern Canada, many callers believed elves are the cause, which set off Paul Ryan to a field trip to the North Pole. Aftwards, we unsuccessfully attempted to maintain contact with Stanley Salashy from Mir, so Paul Ryan desperately called other potential guests for another Ryan report and successfully got a hold of Satan for a live interview! Another Ryan Report took place while Dr. Asbestos tried fixing the faulty WRUW satellite feed from Mir. In minutes, we had Stanley Salashy live on the air from Russian spacestation Mir...bringing Earth the first ever interactive talkshow from space!

Episode 71: Generation Q (9/27/98)- The turn of the century brings us a new generation of faith, which Stanley Salacy of The Button Press believes will be the faith in human life, not spiritual life. The "Q" stands for "questioning." Most listeners thought Stanley wasn't serious in his belief that religion will die in the next century, yet many called and shared beliefs as to what religions the next century will bring us. The most notable of these potential religions was "Theraminism," which is the belief that Uncl Rus (from Chicago) is God. At one point, the satellite broadcast from The Button Press was interrupted by a punk 70's kid on his CB radio for roughly 30 minutes. He also managed to take calls which has The Button Press baffled to this day.

Episode 72: Warming Up To Play (10/4/98)- The Button Press's very own sound artists, The Button, were in the studio to play some live music duringStanley Salacy's Press The Button Programme.  During their warm-up session, Stanley discussed with the callers Hoover vacuums in outer space versus the deadly swarm of flying fish in Cleveland, OH. The consensus was that "those fish aren't fresh." Finally, The Button finished warming up, but the radio show ended

Episode 73: Infancy (10/11/98)- The birth of humanity, music, ourselves, and our listeners. Concentrations were heavier on the birth of rock&roll, how to effectively communicate with any basic infant, and earliest childhood memories.

Episode 74: Toddlers (10/18/98)- Paul Ryan appears with Ryan Report #11, concerning the amazing powers blankets have over the monsters under your bed. The show itself addresses how life is very scary between the ages of 3 and 8 because your parents no longer let you sleep with them. You're therefore much more vulnerable to the monsters, however, you begin your own record collection to ease your fears so you can at least entertain yourself with songs about love, happiness, and Jesus Christ. Then again, like most of our callers claimed, you just might have been happier sleeping with the monsters.

Episode 75: Junior High School (10/25/98)- Proper education for children ages 9-14 explored here. Lots of heavily thematic samples and callers in this show, including our first caller over the age of 60! We intelligently discussed the downsides/upsides of co-ed junior high with him in regards to his having attended an all boys school, as well as the downsides/upsides of co-ed junior high for his 14 year old daughter now attending an all girls school.We also heavily sampled his voice over the conversation which he never seemed to notice since he was listening through the phone, and not the radio. Tisk tisk!

Episode 76: High School (11/2/98)- Sound bites of an interview about high school with Negativland's David Wills two hours before the broadcast play throughout this nearly pointless program with nearly pointless samples and nearly pointless noises with nearly pointless callers that clearly made the point of how we all felt about high school. So psychedellic you just HAVE to get HIGH to it! Also, for the first time in Press The Button history, the on air staff significantly swapped artistic roles, with Dr. Asbestos doing concrete art, and Stanley doing abstract.

SPECIAL EPISODE: 966 2 (11/7/98)- Friday night/Saturday morning at 2 am - 5 am, Press The Button did another parody of WCSB's 669 radio show which airs during the same time on WCSB, 89.3 FM, Cleveland. 669 was postponed this week because the host was out of town, so we ended up getting their caller base. Special guest Nixon (or Eskimo Guy) showed up under the name Jamaican Man for the duration of the show. Note: This parody was done in honor of 669, not to disrespect them. We feel they are the best at what they do.

Episode 77: College (11/8/98)- A total party show, man! Starts out with an 80's theme, with commercials from the 80's intertwined with a group of people talking about how to get into college. Within a few minutes, a talk show started involving the "audio ink blot test" to which the show received a record breaking amount of callers in the first hour. Negativland's David Wills calls in at the beginning of hour two, and discusses his college years, as well as his tape recorders, his cats, his roof, and Negativland's first album. In hour three, he played a tremendous amount of his answering machine messages, one of which was Negativland's Don Joyce telling him to call Over The Edge during the week of the Weather CD Release Party, only the tape was constantly being manipulated by David during the playback. He also played lots of cable channels, ham radio jammers, and noises that ruin your orgasm on the Playboy channel. The show ended with loyal caller Mr. Blister asking for dating advice which generated plenty of calls, until Jamaican Man called and discussed his cousin Nixon's drunk driving accident when he was 22 years old and broke every bone on one side of his body and lived to call about it. Party on, dudes!

Episode 78: Post-College Collage (11/15/98)- Guests: Uncl Rus from Chicago, Slink Moss from New York City. The music and sample mix was 100% from the 1980's. This is the first show that actually required all three of WRUW's studios!t Slink and Uncl Rus were in Studio A, where Rus played the theremin and Slink played the electric guitar and and sang improvised vocals about life after college. Stanley Salacy and Dr. Asbestos were in Studio B mixing and taking calls. Uncl Rus and Slink Moss would frequently run to Studio C to mix records or do talk show bits. Later, Mr. Blister calls us from the hospital where he was admitted after having a minor heart attack at work! Throughout the show, Blister calls a few more times from his hospital bed giving us updates on his current condition, only to get off the phone each time because the nurses needed to take blood tests. The second hour was mostly a live performance improv by the members of The Button with Slink Moss. Negativland's David Wills calls in for the third hour to discuss the tape recorders he was using between the ages of 22 and 35. At the same time, Mr. Blister calls in on another line which Uncl Rus punched into the mix through the microphone in Studio C. For about ten minutes, you could hear both conversations, and surprisingly clear! Blister said he was hooked up to a bunch of things in his hospital bed, while David Wills was admitting he had an orgasm that day. Later we learned that his cat "Buddy" pumped twice during the week.

Episode 79: Middle-Aged Remote Control Receptacle Program (11/22/98)- First hour is a mix of recordings from the tavern being bartended by frequent-caller Mr. Blister and all the middle-aged people within it along with several samples about beauty and cosmetics for the aging woman. The host Stanley Salacy began reading texts about the questions most people ask themselves when their age doubles, and about the social differences in every ten year stage of life. In hour two, Mr. Blister called from his bar, and we forced him to hand the phone to a middle-aged man who was sitting there drinking. We chatted with him for nearly a half hour about the texts being read before his call, when we cut him off and went to the next caller, "Old Man" who went into his own personal feelings about the same topic. In hour three, Negativland's David Wills called at the very top of the hour, so we faded in the conversation after the mandatory station ID's and public service announcements, which was probably very confusing to anyone who was listening (which made this a typical start to the third hour.) The confusion continued as David told all the middel-aged listeners to pull out their remote controls and to "press the buttons" next to an AM radio turned all the way to the bottom of the fequency spectrum. Doing so results in wonderful noises coming from your radio's speakers, per David's various examples with many remote controls over the phone. A few people called in and did the same collaging with our mix while David was still on the line, adding even more collage to our variety of samples of David and other callers being played back at them. David helped us close the show with a great mix of 70's commercials, nuclear attack warnings, and tapes of his middle-aged mother and grandmother while we twisted, tuned, and shifted those same recordings as they came at us live, and mixed them with even more cosmetic and beauty tips for aging women. (Note: Buddy pumped again this week.)

Episode 80: Attack of the Horrible Noise (11/29/98)- The Stages of Life theme was rudely interrupted by interference caused by the asteroid field the planet Earth recently went through. The horrible noise continued throughout the entire program while people called in about UFO sightings in Cleveland Heights that may have been responsible for adding intensity to the interference. Mr. Blister called from work to criticize Nixon for not going to strip bars on the east side, and Nixon called to criticize the strip bars on the east side. Some wacko from Waco called from a hospital in Poland claiming to have arrived there via UFO transportation provided by white fluffy teddy bear-like aliens. Negativland's David Wills called near the end of the program with a voice processor patched into his telephone, and was in an extremely confused state of mind as locals called up to spout out non-sensical gibberish at him, but that didn't stop him from fighting back with his own collection of entertaining noises and samples making the cacaphony of the interfering horrible noise almost musical. (Note: David mentioned off the air that his cat Buddy indeed pumped again for the third week in a row.)

Episode 81: Bob Newhart Toast (12/06/98)- A toasting in recognition of the forgotten Bob Newhart standup comedy from the 1960's before he started doing sitcoms. It was more fragments of Bob than straight comedy pieces, and was hodgepodged with improvised extremely psychedellic sound environments, interrupted by interesting callers with processors, callers with recordings of our earlier shows, and of course, The Button's Uncl Rus (drunk at the time) calling in from Chicago to play his new song over the air. Somewhat like a talk show in parts, very much so an improvised musical performance in others. If you're into an extraordinarily psychedellic scene, this show is for you.

Episode 82: The King's Conspiracy Call-In  (12/13/98)- This death conspiracy show had one major rule: Everyone who calls must not only sound like Elvis, but must also report an Elvis sighting. San Fransisco's public access celebrity Bug Girl was the only exception, as in the first hour she provided a nice collage of sound effects, music, and Negativland's David Wills rapping out incredible abstract poetry. The show then explored the conspiracy that Elivs left an answering machine message circa 1981 revealing why he hoaxed his own death. We read the text of the message in its entirety with commentary from the callers, in addition to an incredible mix during the second hour. In hour three, mixed within the phone calls, was an hour long non-stop cut-up collage of every Elvis record we had in our library.

Episode 83: *5 Hour Special Edition* History of English Language Part 1 & The Devil In Miss Jones (12/20/98)- First two hours are filled with brief educational samples about the english language and properly grooming your child for school. That's in addition to very small cut-up pitch-shifted fragments of a special Pat Robertson tape after he obviously took several strong hits of depressants. That became our favorite "sample communication" type mix, in which all the sample outputs communicated with one another completely out of context...the results were hilarious. The third hour was more noisy and musical, with a call from Mr. Blister's bar in the first half hour. The hour finished with a surprise call from Negativland's "more dumb than ever" David Wills who stayed with us for the next hour! When he wasn't taking calls for us, he charmed us with tapes he made from an old sampler, in addition to instructions on how to properly change a lightbulb in your refridgerator.We also discussed David's maniupulation of the english language as well as our own, with words such as "seatbeesate" and "stratakoovia." We played the "guess this sound" game with David and the listeners for about a half hour, but for some reason David kept confusing the sounds, and confused paper tearing with "belly dancers wearing skirts" and bottled water swishing with choo-choo-trains. He got one right though, the sound of a"pornographic video tape being taken out of it's case." Indeed, the final hour was loaded with soundtrack samples of all the original "The Devil in Miss Jones" movies, (David says he saw the original film in a movie theatre!) mixedwith callers who discussed witchcracft, satanism, strippers, and how to get to first base with a stripper using satanic witchcraft.

Episode 84: *5 Hour Special Edition* 1998 Finale (12/27/98): The last program of the year! Utterly tons of source material, and untterly no preparation whatsoever. These 5 hours were entirely improvised, unrelated, and without any significant theme. Highlights: Rare recordings of Negativland's David Wills, including an appearance on a San Fransisco public access show hosted by BugGirl and her sexy date with him, very unique recordings of BugGirl being remixed by The Button, the unwelcome return of "masturbing shawn" has phone sex with a female caller, tons of bizarre recordings from shortwave Radio Taiwan, and lots of remixed cut-ups of extremely rare european 60's psychedelic garage rock from WRUW's record library.