Year Three (Episodes 85-136) Year 1999

Episode 85: The Non-Prophecy Organization (1/3/99): An in depth analysis on the FALSE prophecies of those best known for their accurate premonitions. Show features a special remix of a 5 year old Paul Ryan Report on which Paul is introduced to "Incorrect," a talking fish with arms whose wife was killed from inhaling firework debris. Callers make predictions. One caller was the host of The Radiophonic Workeshoppe, Matt the PM, calling long distance from Tennessee.

Episode 86: Sales Part 1 - Effective Winning Strategies (1/10/99): Extended show (3:15 am.) Intense sample mix, lots of callers right off the bat, including The Button's very own Uncl Rus (Chicago Cacophony Society), Matt the PM (The Radiophonic Workeshoppe), and David Wills (Negativland). David called around 2:45 am,, but the other DJ never showed up, so David stayed with us until he did. Lots of callers, not a lot of talk, lots of mixing, not a lot of chaos, and that amounts to the perfect sales formula.

Episode 87: The 21 Nudist Colony Locomotives (1/17/99): The Japanese owned Button Press, Inc. demanded that the staff members of the Press The Button radio show leave their secret corporate headquarters "somewhere in Utah" and go visit their number one satellite affiliate in Cleveland, WRUW. The choice form of transportation for the Button family is their trusty Button Locomotive Transporter (or the BLT) which uses The Underground Railroad to get from Utah to Tokyo to make their annual Press Buttons & Jam (or PB& J) conference with their Japanese owners. This railway also meets all of their station affiliates, and was built as such by the Button Press, Inc. as each affiliate made their payment to pick up the official weekly satellite signal. This mostly radio theatre episode was mixed heavily with samples of trains, the number twenty-one, and nudist colonies.

Episode 88: Chilled Buttons (1/24/99): Collage of many past episodes as well as some new material served with wine (you'd have to listen to understand that.) Despite this being a semi-best-of show, we still took live calls. David Wills (Negativland) called for the last portion of the show, playing live ham jammers and assorted short-wave broadcasts.

Episode 89: Shifting Frequencies - Part 1(1/31/99): An incredibly symphonic collage of short-wave, scanner, and AM/FM radio broadcasts, both live and prerecorded. All the callers were hilarious, especially an interesting conversation between Nixon and our very own Paul Ryan regarding the unknown perverted truth about the Scooby Doo show! David Wills (Negativland) made a scheduled appearance for the entire last half hour of the show playing us recorded Amateur Ham Radio jammers who phoned in to the most recent Over The Edge show on KPFA. We also spent several minutes tuning in various scanner frequencies listening for the "horrible noise." It was probably the most fun program so far this year. In fact, the Press The Button staff began performing a half hour before they were actually on the air.

Episode 90: Driving Madness (2/7/99): Special guest Paul Ryan! Two all new Ryan Reports aired in their typical half-recorded half-live format so Paul could interact with real-time callers. Subjects discussed were government, fires, farmers, and Sesame Street. The mix of the show was a collage of cars driving, cars racing, car talk shows, car documentaries, car commercials, and automotive expert Paul Ryan's personal reflections on the industry. Special calls came from Uncl Rus and an unusually goofy David Wills (Negativland). David played many heavily processed car commercial samples at us over the phone (in addition to a lot of processed crazy laughter) as we added him to our mix. His mix over the phone was so good that we barely added anything to it, and as usual, he ended our show on a good note. "You guys had everything up, and you had the bent hot dog," he said to us off the air when the show was over.

Episode 91: Sesame Street After Dark (2/14/99): Special guest Paul Ryan! A serious documented history of Jim Henson's Sesame Street, and the early formation of the Children's Television Workshop (in collage format.) Paul and Stanley take calls, answer questions, and address serious issues regarding Sesame Street conspiracies. Stanley's brother, Horace (a muppet), gets electrocuted, burned, and smothered. FEATURING: An all new half hour Sesame Street related Ryan Report!

Episode 92: Episode X (2/21/99): This incredible gem of a program appeared to be a live remix of our very first 3 hour show from early 1997, in which the Press The Button staff was in Wonderland seeking Alice. However, within the same time frame at frequencies much higher than the sonic listening range for all human beings, the Press The Button staff performed a live 3 hour show that could only be heard by dogs! Don't believe us and need proof? We thought you might ask, so we encoded a small portion of the show in both realaudio and mp3. Warning: there was a slight malfunction with reel-to-reel around the 27th second of recording in which the tape speed dramatically slowed down. We quickly hit the play button again to bring it back up to the appropriate speeds inaudible by humans. (Note: due to RealPlayer's inability to encode very broad frequency spectrums, your dogs will notice some significant quality loss in the segment. Even today's best mp3 encoders do a lousy job in hitting those pitches the human is unable to hear.) The show audible to humans-only is not available on tape due to serious renovations being done with our main production studio. The show audible to dogs-only is not available due to the frequency limitations of modern analog tape.


Episode 93: Renovations (3/1/99): The Button Press completely renovated their studios for quadraphonic broadcasting...during the show!

Episode 94: Abandon All Stereo Now! (3/8/99): The first ever interactive quadraphonic broadcast in radio history! Three hours of beautiful melodies, live phone calls, live sampling, and quadraphonic harmonies that could only be truly complemented by a set of four speakers. Many, many times this show has brought you the new "spinning" effect, but this special broadcast has made it a full around-the-room spin! David Wills (Negativland) called 15 minutes before our show ended and played us "The Chicken Tape," featuring his family discussing the purchase of chicken, their new next door neighbor who happened to be a ham jammer but has since passed away, and his grandmother reading text from his favorite book, and George Lucas's very first movie.


Episode 95: Where Have All the Jammers Gone? (3/15/99): Dedicated to the sad downfall of the infamous ham jammer repeater tower in California, K7IJ. First hour was a musical noise fest of sounds used by the ham jammers before they were shut down by the FCC. The second hour was more interactive and focussed on quadraphonic jamming, more so than ham radio jamming, but included the harmonies of scanners and short wave broadcasts in real time. The third hour had an intense amount of scanner and short wave broadcasts, and included a very appropriate 45 minute interactive teletour with David Wills (Negativland) that included 15 year old tapes of incredibly hilarious and intense ham jamming. Some of the material made it to past Negativland releases, such as The Letter U and the Numeral 2, but David said most of it never left his hands until now. The teletour was interactive with the Press The Button staff, as it communicated back and forth with the samplers, keyboards, scanners, and short waves used in the studio. The show ended with a brief vocal communication between David and Stanley about where most of the samples came from, and which Negativland releases used some of them.


Episode 96: Poetic Noise (3/22/99): Poetry readings are sampled, resampled, and resampled until some of them become musical notes, and others become noise. The emphasis was not so much on the meaning of the poems, but on the fact that the spoken word can be mutilated and processed so much that it can be completely different from its original form. Some words were taken out of context and used as background beats while others were turned into musical notes layering over the beats. A interesting phone call from Paul Ryan revealed that he was on a Chinese radio telephone with dying batteries. This was the first broadcast of the year with a fully functioning new production studio, so we brought in 5 keyboards to celebrate.

Episode 97: Books Galore (3/29/99): Books, books, books! Press The Button goes a bit back to their roots with their "sample communication" technique. In fact, almost the entire show consisted of that format, containing samples about books, authors, the written law, and home computer businesses (ie. books stored on computers.) The ending of the show was a somewhat danceable performance mixing every single sample that was stored in digital memory during the program, with analog beats, moog, and synth. Also, very unique callers added some interesting sounds to the mix.

Episode 98: Tennis Telecommunication (4/5/99): Sound evoked imagery produced a hypnotic way to improve your athletic achievements in Tennis, your overall mental ability to be one with the tennis court, and your ability to effectively increase your company's profits using the telephone, assuming your company owns a tennis court (tennis, by the way, has been regulated by the FCC because they claim it "sucks," no joke, look it up. It can no longer be broadcast over ANY radio telephone.) The show ended with a new never before played Ryan Report, created by Paul Ryan over ten years ago in his first home recording studio in his attic.

Episode 99: Press The Button Telethon (4/12/99): The most action packed radio theatre show to date! Featured: Stanley Salacy, his brother Burt Bosco, Dr. Asbestos, the Rhubarb Nazi, and Paul Ryan with three brand new Ryan Reports! The Ryan Reports answer the question "Why is Paul's confirmation name, Felix?" and answers "whatever happened to Captain Avenger with his shoelace stranglings" and unfolds an ancient message buried within Chinese tea bags and fortune cookies. The general show theme, of course, was the WRUW telethon, but calls were still taken on the air by Stanley and Paul in between the odd yet entertaining Ryan Reports. This unusually chatty radio program was still as sample driven as any past shows, for one of the Ryan Reports included the use of samples for the first time ever! (Way to go, Paul, keep it up!) Lots of fun "sample communication" between the callers and other various audio outputs occurred, and lots of promotion for two of the top premiums were announced: John Oswald's Plexure (very hard to find these days) and The Button's first CD. Many thanks to all the listeners who have supported us with donations from the beginning, and special thanks for the 50 dollar donation made by a first time listener! We have and will always appreciate everyone's help. To the guy who made bong hit sounds at the show's end, don't forget to take my pants out of the dryer!

Episode 100: One Hundred Year Receptacle (4/19/99): The Button Press (the corporate entity, not the radio show!) celebrates it's 100 years of existence, dating back to April 19th, 1899. Various aspects of Button Press history are put into perspective, including snakes, lounge, church, the hippie revolt, religion, drugs, Jesus Christ, sex, God, and pornography. Stanley Salacy discusses each philosophical topic taking callers who were more into joining our receptacle format than in contributing to the discussion. Old snippets of the very first Press The Button program were also included.

Episode 101: Mobile Promotion (4/26/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. A large stereophonic receptacle mix of automobile sounds, discussions, and commercials. Special talk show "The Car Psychologists" hosted by CP1 and CP2 accepted live phone calls, and later on Paul Ryan and Stanley Salacy of the Button Press, Inc. argued over whether or not Stanley was an elephant. People were burned, morphed, transformed, and given rides throughout this thoroughly mixed promotion for automobiles. Somewhere in the mix, David Wills (Negativland) called in with a couple car commercials from the 70's.

Episode 102: Stark Contrasts (5/3/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Noticeable to both the programming staff and the listening audience were very stark contrasts in content, flowing from heavily pre-produced scripted material (Paul Ryan's radio theatre production "Harvey", Stanley Salacy's "Guide to the Perfect Espresso") to live 100% improvised dialogue about the potential of secretaries being outsourced by computer dictation software, and the threat of robots destroying the human race. Stanley lost his leg and his teeth after falling into a hole because there was no light because Paul shut them off because they both found that the robotic versions of themselves were energized by solar power and had to die because they were outsourcing their roles as radio staff because of financial backing from The Button Press, Inc. Due to the entertaining struggle they all had on the air with their robot counterparts, The Button Press, Inc. agreed to not outsource their staff until artificial intelligence improves enough to match their on-air foolishness. The sample mix made many references to religion, the love of the Earth, the purpose of the national guard, and killing.

Episode 103: Debacle (5/10/99): Initiation: One radio program in the left channel (interview with Robin h. about found sound), with another in the right channel (interview with Hogwild! who has just resigned being WRUW station manager.). Medium: portions of old recordings of the show with live callers mixed in. For example, Mr. Blister calls in to tell us that he is now on CABLE TELEVISION on Cuyahoga Community programming Sunday nights, 11 am to midnight right before Press The Button, working for a show that has some flavor of WWF wrestling. Finale: Live mix, live callers, discussions of colon kicking, bowlin', stonin', rowin', and Poland, and the fake Gilly (who called us one giant Debacle), the Uni-bonger, Old man, Satan, God, Shawn Kemp, and masturbating Sean called! This program received more calls than any other show we've had, and unfortunately due to malfunctioning transmitters and cassette decks, wasn't taped.

Episode 104: Parting Shot Mix (Up or Down) Trio (5/17/99): Special guests Pauline Oliveros, her students from Oberlin University Rob Reich and Cory Archangel, teletours from Newmusic@oberlin.edu and TImara@oberlin.edu, as well as listening audience participation. Pauline expertly plays her cow horn, mixes her CD collection, recites several passages from her books, and improvises vocals. Rob plays processed electric guitar and synth. Cory plays acoustic guitar, broken turntable, guitar pedal, walkman, and office furniture. Sam plays turntables, carts, and telephones. Jay plays sampler, cassette decks, stereo panning, processor, and zip drive. The show begins silently with taped interviews of Pauline mixing together, eventually creeping into meditative sonic sounds, with a sample mix of lectures about electronic music, music as a "form," and an examination of the creative process. The second hour gets louder, more mixed up, and more creative than the first. The third hour begins with intense noise at high volumes, working its way back to the silent sounds of the show's entrance, until the last ten minutes of the program during which Jay interviews Pauline over the live mix of her students. The interview sounds more like a track on one of Pauline's albums, for the questions and answers were delivered in the same meditative landscape that was delivered throughout the show. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities it the many facets of sound. Since the 1960's she has influenced American Music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Many credit her with being the founder of present day meditative music. All of Oliveros' work emphasizes musicianship, attention strategies, and improvisational skills. She has been celebrated worldwide. During the 1960's John Rockwell named her work Bye Bye Butterfly as one of the most significant of that decade. In the 70's she represented the U.S. at the World's Fair in Osaka, Japan; during the 80's she was honored with a retrospective at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., and the 1990's began with a letter of distinction from the American Music Center presented at Lincoln Center in New York. There is currently a plan for a global celebration of the 50th anniversary of her work in the year 2001. Oliveros work is available on more than 17 recordings produced by companies internationally.

Episode 105: Dinosaur Sex! (5/24/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Most people never consider the idea that dinosaurs actually had to have sex in order to have children, and fewer consider the idea that it was Pleasurable. This program was a three hour lecture (somewhat) about Dinosaur Sex! Everything from sexual methods to dinosaur genitalia is described in detail. A new Ryan Report aired, but it was suddenly interrupted by The Button Press, Inc., since Paul Ryan was discussing his recent *top secret* interrogation by our Japanese business owners. Dr. Asbestos quickly popped in a prerecorded Ryan Report from 1962, when the first Paul Ryan (no relation to our Paul Ryan) did the program thirty years ago back when it was a conservative call-in show, CO-hosted by right winged Stanley Slattery from the Washington Post. Many dinosaurs called to join the mix, adding their own vocal impersonations of Godzilla, or Godzilla having sex (which was preferred given the theme.)

Episode 106: Dinosaur Quadraphonic Sex! (5/31/99): A continuation of last week's theme, with more emphasis on dinosaur diets. The third hour was our very first quadraphonic broadcast synchronization with WCSB's Corporate Cookie Cutter. His first hour of broadcast is during our last hour of broadcast, so we both played the same music set, except our set was played in opposite channels, and a bit delayed to enhance the quadraphonic listening experience for anyone listening to both radio programs with two radios. One would be placed before you tuned to 91.1, and the other would be placed behind you tuned to 89.3. We monitored 89.3 in our headphones as we synchronized music sets to create a quadraphonic "spinning" effect for all local listeners. This procedure will be better developed and repeated over time.

Episode 107: Signing The Transcendors (6/7/99): The Button Press record label debuts their latest signed band, The Transcendors. After an awe inspiring live performance from the most psychedelic sonic artists hailing from Lakewood, Ohio, The Button Press immediately fell in love with The Transcendors! TBP's corporate owners kindly asked them if they would like to perform live on the Press The Button show, and they not only agreed to play a number on the air...they asked if they could perform for the entire three hour program! The Press The Button staff members loved the idea, and gladly accepted their offer of adding an innovative spice to their weekly broadcast. The rest, of course, is more than history...in fact, it was one of the most mentally and spiritually expanding experiences to ever grace The Button Press satellite system.

Episode 108: Mother Jupiter (6/14/99): First hour was almost entirely composed of nothing but natural sound: birds, whales, crickets, wind, water, lions, horses, elephants, and too many others to count, shifting, twisting, and pitching in many different channels. The second hour was philosophical about nature's purpose, and involved our show's host, Captain Athstenosphere (The Dirt God),trying to find a record label willing to market and distribute his new double CD of dirt sounds, which was recently rejected by The Button Press record label. This lead to the revelation of how to properly cook "fresh fish," which couldn't be revealed until he accidentally flushed himself down the toilet, all the way to the planet Jupiter, where he began to eat dirt, declared that all humans are buzzards, and took an incredible amount of live phone calls. In the third hour he came back to Earth, and told us we need to run our raked up leaves through a paper shredder, stick the shreds in our toaster ovens, stick fresh fish in with the shreds, toast the fresh fish, stick a "metallic hoe" inside the toaster to get them out, electrocute yourself, and become food for the "yellow buzzards." This fantastic revelation for the perfect fresh fish received yet another onslaught of callers who debated whether or not nature was music, whether there was such a thing as good and evil, and whether or not Captain Athstenosphere should release a second album called "Toilet Water" based on his interesting experience (which he began to compose during the last half hour.) Throughout the whole show, about 50% of the callers contributed their own "natural sounds," a term which they loosely interpreted. Note: Nixon called to share an unbelievable but true story about his recent fishing trip in Canada, in which one of his friends was "banned from the country forever." This one, you've just got to hear for yourself!

Episode 109: Name That Monster! (6/21/99): Special guest Paul Ryan.Featuring a brand new full 35+ minute Ryan Report, this show was loaded with all sorts of goodies, including the first airing of the The Button Press's radio game show "Name That Monster!" NTM involved getting a monster on the air, and the callers would have to guess who he/she is by asking questions and narrowing down the possibilities. Those who guessed correctly won a prize! (tape of the show or a copy of the first Button CD.) Two versions aired tonight, a preview-test and an actual air-test. The monster in the preview-test version was "The Titanic Captain," which was guessed correctly by one of the callers. The monster of the actual air-test was "Barry Manilow" which no one guessed correctly! That was probably because he was disguised in the voice of Frankenstein's Monster. Still, even after singing his most popular hits on the air, no one knew who he was. Learn from history and never forget it....or suffer the chance of a second holocaust!

Episode 110: Operation Midnight Climax (6/28/99): Questioning the need for the complete sentence. Discovering the fourth dimension, a world without time, and the possibilities of a limitless universe. Seeing the world like a fish within a sea of water, seeing the world like a human within a sea of air. The government's mind control experiments, and the discovery of LSD. Some numbers that are greater than others are symbolically less significant than tiny numbers. Discovering dual realities, the subconscience, and the untapped segments of our brains. The quantity of phoned in participants was greater than that of any other show, and their quality was commendable.

Episode 111: Post-Stupid-Festival-Show (7/5/99): Special guest Paul Ryan.Featuring yet another brand new length Ryan Report. The show addressed your emotional well being, physical fitness, the difference between men and women, starving children, effective bowling (in every sense of the word "bowl"), and made very strong demands of the listening audience to freeze their pants. The show had plenty of fire in the works, and ended with a bong.

Episode 112: Chicken Salad Theatre (7/12/99): Special guest Paul Ryan.A live receptacle mix that starts off with the South Texas Polka Party, breaking down to a whole new Ryan Report about changing dimensions, to great Jewish music, to the Chicken Salad Theatre, to prime cuts of blue grass, to a book review of "The Modesty Blaze and The Xanadu Talisman", to a touch of classical music, to the differences between humor in the 1930's and humor in the 1990's, to the voices of the south, to the difference between late night news coverage versus prime time coverage, to Reggae for kids, to high speed railroads, to music from Holland, to Time Travel Radio, to backwards swing music, and ends with digital bongs. In essence, a new theme was introduced approximately every ten minutes throughout the program.

Episode 113: Save Pacifica (7/19/99): This program contained many fragments of over 20 hours of recorded material addressing the Pacifica censorship conflict with KPFA in Berkeley, CA. Samples covered the "gag rule" arrest of KPFA's Dennis Bernstein during his radio program, the dozens of arrests made at the KPFA protest as a result of Bernstein being pulled off the air, the potential of Pacifica selling KPFA, and the Radio Free Berkeley netcast outside of KPFA's studio, which provided a live ear to the ongoing protest rallies. The Pacifica gag rule doesn't affect stations it doesn't own, but WE were censored by management for not attributing our commercial radio broadcasts covering the Pacifica situation. We were unplugged 20 minutes before we normally finish, and a public affairs program was put in our place while management lectured us on our faults. Sound clips of our show's abrupt ending (while the microphones were still on!) will be available on our mp3 site, http://www.mp3.com/pressthebutton (no longer functional.) For more information on what the Pacifica/KPFA situation is all about, please visit http://www.savepacifica.net/.

Episode 114: The Secret Behind The Special Sauce (7/25/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Easily the most dense and content rich program to date. Begins with a new Ryan Report revealing the fact that RPS and UPS are quite similar to Christ and the anti-christ. The UPS truck is revealed as matter, and the RPS truck is "anti-matter." This answers the question, "Why do you never see an RPS truck and UPS truck together at the same time?" If you did, there would be an explosion. The hour continued revealing the secret behind the "special sauce." This hour was extremely caller heavy. Hour two began with a surprise phone call from one of our rare guests (and sometimes member of The Button) Uncl Rus. He called from his new commune in Berkeley, CA (though he called it a "cult") and wanted to say his greetings and salutations to our listening audience with his female friend April. Lots of secrets codes and underground information was exchanged between Rus and Dr. Ricardo (from the Ryan Report) about upcoming divisional Button Press staff meetings. Much thanks goes out to "David from Toronto" for his phone call explaining how to tune in to KPFA if you lived close to the site, and how to tune it in on the internet. From there, the hour finished telling the tale of the secret behind the special sauce. Some heavy metal song was being performed by the Press the Button staffers with improvised lyrics about the cast of NBC's E.R. This hour continued with the heavy caller patter the first hour introduced. Hour three began with the post-special-sauce-party-mix, which was not nearly as insane as it was "in-Spain." Lots of dialogue going on between Franco and his seniorita, who just couldn't seem to stick to their written dialouge. The callers were less heavy in this hour, but from the more interesting sounds that they made we made a sample heavy orchestration out of them, which resembled chickens, bong hits, and gregorian chants.

Episode 115:Tme Warp Radio (8/2/99): Rocky Horror / Death Metal / Shock Treatment / Iron Man / and the Doors. Those words only barely describe how horror-ific this program was. Eating my own words in the past "everything that sounds good now sounds even better slowed down and distorted" we did a lot of the broadcast following that philosophy. It was loud, overly distorted, our voices were impossible to hear, and the samples were chaotic. Then again, that level of cacophony would only make sense given that 50% of the format was under the influence of Meatloaf. If you don't know what that means, order this tape, and learn a new definition of overdriven noise.One extraordinary highlight is that much of the show featured the new heavy metal band recently signed to The Button Press record label, Smoking Iron on the Water, Man.

Episode 116:The Ryan Report's 5th Anniversary Special! (8/9/99):Special guest Paul Ryan.Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report, which consists of an in depth documentary of Paul Ryan's history in radio, tracing all the way back to the very first Paul Ryan Report aired in 1936 by a completely different and more conservative Paul Ryan. The report goes on to document the other 4 Paul Ryans who preceded the Paul Ryan of The Button Press, Inc. As the story of Paul Ryan #6 unfolds, you'll be amazed at how many co-hosts, announcers, and substitutes Paul has had in the past, and you'll love the story of how he accidentally got on the air for the first time while merely returning a potted plant to a DJ friend.You'll laugh at the obscure and heavily misguided rebroadcasts of the very first Ryan Reports ever aired by this Paul Ryan 5 years ago on another radio station. The show also featured a lengthy collage of found sound artists from The Button Internetwork (a bunch of links), including Social Security, WRP, Steev Hise, Escape Mechanism, King Wilson, Phineas Narco, Data Control, and Naked Rabbit. Lots of other things happened with callers. One huge special thanks goes out to David Wills (Negativland) who called us twice. The first time he played the sound of his cat buddy playing with the microphone, and the second time played the sound of a bumble bee which layered itself repeatedly to the point of becoming a swarm.He later revealed to us that it indeed was a live recording of his microphone inside of a bee's nest! The fidelity over the phone line was awesome.

Episode 117: Moss Buckets (8/16/99): Began with a very odd mix of music from The Button Internetwork (artists from the snuggles mailing list) combined with our cutting up a children's song called "Gilly the Grocer." As for the rest: Transplanting, watering, feeding, planting seeds, growing, trimming, and consuming plant life from the garden...but not necessarily in that order. This show included hundreds of samples from Home & Garden type sources, and included a lengthy 2 hour talk show providing instructions on how to grow and maintain your own garden at home. Many callers provided helpful information about growing plants indoors with a lamp, and some of them didn't stop at plant life. For instance, they also grew mushrooms in their garden, which in the long run makes shopping cheaper when it comes to that special steak dinner with the family. A caller highlight was David Wills (Negativland) calling up in the third hour with an old victrola recording of a female singing this really funny song. As usual, the fidelity of his recording over the telephone was phenomenal .

Episode 118: Bela Lugosi's Dead? (8/23/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Intro: An all new Ryan Report, which addressed cigarette-ology. Soon afterwards, Paul Ryan and Stanley Salacy investigated a dark house on Haunted Hill, which had within it an indoor graveyard, which held the graves of CDC (we're not sure), BLT (Bela Lugosi's Toes), and the Graveyard Cafe. There, Stanley and Paul were served by the spirit of Bela Lugosi, who fed them a good deal of Boris Karlof's carcass for dinner. Later, Bela possessed Stanley. Even later, Stanley was unpossessed, and turned into Lela Bulosi, an Italian muppet described as a combination of Ernie, Bert, and The Count, and is featured on the Sesame Street for the Undead in Italy. The show also featured many new releases from The Thunderbunnies. Also included: interactive phone calls from the listening audience.

Episode 119: Action Never Fails (8/30/99): Thirty minutes whet your indecisive appetite. Another thirty minutes transcend your mind as The Button performs a live version of their song "Beatrice Crocker." Ninety minutes make your decisions for you, improve your self-esteem, better your future, enhance your career, find useful references, and educate those who have not yet sold themselves to employers in need of more *resources*. The concept "be who you aren't to be what you will" develops quietly in the distance, just ask your librarian. The Button performed their music live again for thirty minutes with one final previously unreleased word, "Concentrate." Now release it.

Episode 120: Deconstructing Phish (9/06/99): Three hours of live musical improvisation using over 100 samples gathered from every album Phish has ever released to the public, some which they haven't, ie. bootleg recordings, as well as rare interviews of Jerry Garcia from various dates in the 80's. Mixed within the show were live phone callers playing their own mixes of Phish music/interviews. The point of this experiment was to match Phish's musical improvisational approach used in their live concerts. There was no intention to put down the band, we were only using them as an influence, and their music as our instruments. Most of this program has been recorded directly to digital audio tape.

Episode 121: Keeping Kids Christian in Collage (9/13/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report. "We send them off to college, and when they finally come back, we hardly recognize them." This program was not intended to be pro-religion or anti-religion, but rather to expose Catholicism as portrayed in the media by covering three different themes using mostly catholic audio samples. Part one, the positive aspects of spirituality. Part two, the negative aspects of technology. Part three, how staying spiritual and improving technology can both happen without religion. The sample communications within this show surprisingly introduced a lot of religious irony that we hadn't even originally planned on bringing up. This show included a mocking (in the voices of children) examination of the newly developed and laughable "True Christian" Church in comparison to the Roman Catholics. The TCC introduced the 4th living man in this world who truly believes he is the pope. The parody "almost" made pope John Paul II look like an excellent role model.

Episode 122: The Fourth Chime (9/20/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report. A large mix of all original NBC radio programs, commercials, and of course, chimes. This program went deeper than the standard three key chime typically associated with NBC, and documented the facts about the rare "special emergency" chime NBC hasn't used since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which consists of four chimes. Tapes of all the NBC chimes were played to complement the literature read on the air about the subject matter. An interesting note, is that all music performed during this show was made from deconstructed processed samples of these chimes. The first two hours were very sample heavy, offering thousands of historical NBC sound bites. David Wills (Negativland) called up twice in the last hour to entertain us with improvised audio art using his SP808 and Feedback Destroyer.

Episode 123: You Know, Alaska (9/27/99):Special guest Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report which addresses the new PRESS RELEASE!...Stanley Saacy goes insane over it. The second hour began with an all refurbished Ryan Report about elves living in Alaska! The remainder of the program was a large sample based collage exploring the fantastic natural offerings of the state of Alaska, and its capitol, "You Know." Lots of silly verbal improvisation happened. Also in the third hour, there was a brief discussion of the "hollow Earth." That is to say, we educated our listeners on the fact that the Earth has no middle, just a lost continent and a sun so that people within the Earth may survive and technologically surpass the human race.

Episode 124: You can Count on It (10/04/99):Special guest Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report, where Paul interviews a lawn therapist. Yes, as in, giving therapy to your front lawn. The remainder of the program was a large sample based collage of government espionage shortwave radio number stations (the spooky people who endlessly recite random numbers that can only be deciphered by someone with a special decoder key), recordings of 30 year old short wave pirate radio stations, airline scanners, and many other things related to numbers and the phonetic alphabet that we had on hand. Within the first hour, former Button member Uncl Rus phoned in from his new job in Hollywood, CA where he apparently now works as "best boy, key grip, and gaffer" for Hollywood film productions. In the third hour, we had a couple "performance" calls from David Wills (Negativland). He interactively performed with us through the course of two 15 minute phone calls, playing a huge cut-up he made of his scanner/ham radio recordings that made references to numbers.

Episode 125: Crazy Collectables! (10/11/99):Special guest Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report, where Paul confuses the collectable theme with property collections. The show's theme was indeed about collectables: coins, stamps, action figures, records, toys, cars, instruments, and many other fun collectables! Hundreds of samples about collecting things were mixed into the program until the third hour, when things got.....silly. Paul talked about his classic 1971 Honda AZ600, which is the first of its kind, but Stanley insisted the car was built for pigeons, and went as far as dressing up like a pigeon (in attempt to fool Paul) just to make his point. Too bad for Stanley, a giant alley cat found him and ripped his costume apart, leaving Stanley naked in the studio. Caller input assisted Paul in making a wardrobe for Stanley, which consisted of pop cans, super glue, and Don Henley records. In the last half hour, David Wills (Negativland) called to ask the eternal question, "Are you dapper?" and then to play an old collectable 78 record on a victrola inherited from his father. He then told us about his old tape recorders, one of which was an antique collectable he restored, it was an original from The Outer Limits program in the 1960's. The show ended on a very odd conversation with David about The Refrigerator Lady.

Episode 126: Rocked by Radio (10/18/99): Special guests Mark Gunderson of the Evolution Control Committee and Paul Ryan. Show starts off with a brand new Ryan Report, in which Paul, Stanley, and Dr. Asbestos try to decide if they should purchase the space station Mir, currently owned by the Russians who recently abandoned the malfunctioning satellite. The financial backing of The Button Press's four Japanese owners could purchase and reconstruct it, but would the Russians sell it to the Japanese? Furthermore, would they sell to the Japanese knowing they represent The Button Press? After the Ryan Report, The Button Press Satellite System was assisted by Mark's computer "Brianiac" to bring a live performance of the Evolution Control Committee to the radio. Infrequently, the satellite feed disconnected from Brainiac. When this happened, Mark Gunderson and the Press The Button staff performed a live mix of their own. Their mix extended last week's "collecting" theme with a HUGE emphasis on pants. Uncl Rus called at the end of the show to talk with Mark about the California time zone, Orange Juice, Jews, littile morons, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Episode 127: Poor Investments (10/25/99): Special guest Paul Ryan. Show started out well with an all new Ryan Report, in which The Button Press officially purchased the Space Station Mir! Keep an eye on The Button Press website for details as they are revealed. Within the next half hour, a giant sample-communication collage among all of the Press The Button staff took place portraying a gruesome message about Money Matters, playing the stock market, as well as buying and selling. Then the theme took a bad turn as Paul Ryan felt ill and had to leave the program at the start of the second hour. The theme took an even worse turn as we discovered 80% of the media we brought ended up being accidentally erased! For the next two hours, the remaining members of the Press The Button staff heavily improvised a musical orchestration with samples of their own voices, organs, telephone sounds, and silly noises with their tongues. Some pretty astounding sounds came from this apparent disaster, and some of the media we had "on hand" but wasn't meant for this theme seemed to add an excellent unwordly quality to the mix, combined with some of the theme related material (what little there was left of it.) The point of the originally intended theme was a bit distorted (more than usual) but we feel this program had many moments of aural pleasure for those who take a liking to space, ambient, trance, meditation, drugs, electronica, or minimalist noise.

Episode 128: Crisis Over a Coffee Maker (11/01/99): (By the orders of The Button Press, Inc., from now on, if Paul Ryan appears on the show we will refer to the show as Full Staffed.) Today's show started out with a new Ryan Report which told you all about those hazardous billboard signs. The next half hour was the "After Ryan Report" which was a call-in talk show mixed with a new Thunderbunnies collage. The next half hour was our all new TRIVIA-O-MATIC! game show, hosted by Paul Ryan and Stanley Salacy, on which callers with successful answers to the questions provided by the Trivia Machine received a free TRIVA-O-MATIC T-shirt! Soon after the game show as a phone call from Uncl Rus who called us from his new home in Hollywood, CA. Rus told us all about his recent expereince with tripping on X, which we sampled him and made a song out of his intriguing tale. The last hour of the show as the true meat of theme, and continued where last week's show left off. By example of a hilarious recording of a grade school classroom performing standard parliamentary procedure, we exhibited that it takes 45 minutes for a politician withdraw a motion he/she just put on the floor five minutes ago all because of modern parliamentary stamdards. The motion was to purchase a coffee maker for their meetings, but then the person who motioned for it wanted to withdraw right away...but couldn't until all of the ammendments to the ammendments on the motion were voted upon, which took 45 minutes following proper parliamentary rules. Also in the mix were stock market histories, leftover Uncl Rus samples, and more of the Thunderbunnies collage. This show, as thick as it was, never had a dull moment.

Episode 129: The Button...For Dummies (11/08/99): (Full Staffed.) Hour one: A very brainless (and filled with subliminal messages for the IRS) Ryan Report for dummies, followed by an even more brainless Ryan Report lounge for dummies hosted by two dummies. Hour two: First half hour was another installment of our all new TRIVIA-O-MATIC! game show...for dummies. Yes, the Trvia-o-matic machine was broken, and could only ask questions for dummies. The Trivia-o-matic answers were also incorrect answers....for dummies. The remaining ninety minutes of the show: The Button performed their new album "The Button...For Dummies" keeping it interactive with phone callers, who ended up making a weird talk show over the musical performance, while we turned their talk show into music. This was probably one of the most non-typical shows we've ever had...for dummies. Disclaimer: in our honest opinion, there are no real "dummies." That is a word used to describe inferior intellect by incredibly arrogant pompous "humans" that have severe cases of low self-esteem and are suffering from Holier-than-thou syndrome. "True yellow is he who spots a dummy." -- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 521, Line 6

Episode 130: Hope OpERa (11/15/99): (Full Staffed) Hour one: Aired the entire finished RE-WRITTEN "The Button...For Dummies" album which ended up not containing any material from it's previous version performed live on last week's show, and also is currently unreleasable for reasons of copyright enfringement. *RELEASED ON CD TWO WEEKS LATER* We allowed live calls on top of it, which we're glad to say complemented the overall environment of the piece. Hour two and three: We performed a sample collage taken from 6 hours of ER and Chicago Hope tape edits, which were a product of over 20 hours of editing during the week. We called this piece: "Hope OpERa." For the curious, that was Rosemary Clooney we were playing under the mix. This was perhaps our most illegal show to date. One my think our admitting this fact is our way of expressing pride, or expressing an overly tried "fuck the establishment" attitude. We would like to make it as clear as possible that the intention of airing said "illegal" material was to make a point of how our art work poses no threat to the music, film, advertising, and news media industries from which we compile the majority of our sound environments. Reading this description does nothing for those who hadn't LISTENED to the program, because if you did, you would understand the shock and dismay we often feel when we're told our content is "illegal" and that it infringes copyright laws....which are put in place to protect the producers from others who wish to pirate their entire work and release copies under their name, or versions barring extreme similarity with the intention of cashing in on the original production. If you heard this program, you'd understand that it poses NO threat to ER, Chicago Hope, any major network affiliate, or the music/film/advertising/news media industries. It is doing the same thing an author does when writing a story...taking old ideas every has heard before and turning them into something new, attempting to avoid cliches, and contributing a reflection of modern society using a NEW take on old familiarity. Artists do it, reporters do it, advertisers do it, and so does every musician you've ever heard. A painter paints the reporter they see, and we play back the reporter we hear...but since "audio art" was never considered an established form of expression, we're illegal, and need that reporter's permission to include him in OUR painting. We've never rebroadcasted a news report claiming it to be our own...we simply used it as a reflection of modern society by deconstructing it, and renewing its original intention. This is not unlike what any other artist does. It is a very disappointing realization that until the laws become more clear on this issue, we will always be illegal in this culture.

Episode 131: Psychic Blends (11/22/99): (Full Staffed) Special guests:Jim Altieri, James Macadamias, and David.Levin (brilliant musicians from Oberlin University.) The first two hours began with half hour Ryan Reports. The first was a repeat from two weeks ago so you could hear it without the severe interference we had with the Satellite feed, and the second featured Dr. Asbestos participating from the space station Mir (now currently owned by The Button Press, Inc.) The non-Ryan-Report sections of the program featured "Psychic Friends" samples, complemented by the wonderfully improvised compositions performed by the very talented musicians from Oberlin. The "psychic messages" were diverse...sometimes depressing, often humorous, and mostly introspective. The sound elements were meditative at times, but more in the sense of a "chaotic blender buffet" than a "techno trance." Instruments featured ranged from Xylophones and Accordions to Casio SK1's and Macintosh Computers....also, keyboards galore, and toys, and chimes, and too many others to mention or to possibly recall. However, we shall not forget the spoken word, with which the Oberlin students were blessed....in song and speech, humor and wit, and knowing when not to use it. Despite the musical cake mix there were many moments of appropriate silence...louder than feedback, emphasizing a point better than a school semester of lectures...carefully placed sound elements afterwards, and orchestrated with the kind of caring love only found within true artists who are proud of their work, and take every consideration as to how others will see, hear, and feel their message, no matter how abstract or concrete it may seem. They were a show by themselves, and were TWO SHOWS playing with The Button..

Episode 132: Star Trek Four: Egg Sample (11/29/99): (Full Staffed) Special guest musicians from Oberlin University: Stefan Tcherepnin, Jarred McAdams, Ezra Buchla, and David Levin (David and Jarred were here last week.) This show took up three production studios, with seven performers, and over 30 instruments involved in the mix (photos available to disbelievers.) This show's main focus was a combination of music, dialogue, lectures, and tapes of Star Trek related material. The entire three hours of audio collage ranged from William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy taking drugs while singing folk hippie classics, to extensive lectures on speaking the Klingon language....all the while being layered on top of improvisational music by the Oberlin students. The musical mix went even better than last week, in that all the performers were much more focused on their input to the overall mix than before. The mix was constantly subdivided into 10 minute onslaughts of different melodies, while maintaining relatively consistent sample sources throughout the program. Really good "sample communication" happened in the last hour among Stanley, Paul, and Dr. Asbestos, and the Oberlin musicians completely altered their sound at the same time...playing more of a duality of sound structure than a melody...going between a very mellow ambient clarity and an extremely noisy screaming cacophony. For those who asked, the answer is "yes"...real CB radios were used as an instrument in this broadcast.

Episode 133: A Play on Shakespeare (12/06/99): (Full Staffed) Quite a bit of interaction with live phone callers happened this week. Show began with an all new Ryan Report about the celebration of Saturnalia. The next half hour consisted of a cut-up music mix from the classical era. The majority of the music heard was not the original compositions, but the music being played through various filters, processors, and samplers at a variety of pitches and delays. Much of the music was fragmented and turned into something else. This music continued to the very end of the show, but in the second hour, there was about 45 minutes of spoken word "sample communication" going on from literally hundreds of fragments from Shakespeare's plays. The final hour consisted of improvised singing and song writing by The Button, on top of remixed classical music, or Shakespearean dialogue (mostly unedited at this point, so it served more as background ambiance than part of a thematic message.) The last half hour included a lot of screaming about the word "hello," the weather, the word "today," family, pigs, and chickens....it was somewhat country music sounding, and it was meant to be a satire on small talk. It could be considered a "moving" piece in a sense with all the Shakespeare and classical being played under it, though the piece was completely unrelated to the theme.

Episode 134: A Morning at the Opera (12/13/99): (Full Staffed) The entire first hour was an extended rerun of an older Ryan Report, which was interesting considering it's a live program...the rerun was 15 minutes (live minutes) longer than its original airing, and including commercials, closed the first third of the show. The rest of the program was an attempt to prove the point that completely new and original music can be made from deconstructing already made music...and in this case, the music of choice was opera. The second hour was extremely musical, yet none of the music was in its original form in any way. This kind of musical category is often referred to as "illegal art," because all of it was made from stolen parts of other songs. However, I think we proved the point that this was almost impossible to realize until blatantly pointed out to a first time listener of the program. Musical melodies and harmonies were modified, bent, and pitched differently with added effects to make them into entirely new melodies and harmonies, yet technically this was all still "illegal art." The final hour was more of an emphasis on PDQ Bach tape cut-ups than opera itself, but they were all cut-ups of his opera satires, which may or may not have been obvious, depending on how knowledgeable you are on this particular musical genre. Uncl Rus called us in the final moments of the program attempting to get the Press The Button staff members to sample him, which was really funny because he kept looping his own speech so much it sounded as though we had accomplished the task quite effectively. Alas to those who mentally applauded at the time for a job well done, he was never sampled at all.

Episode 135: World War II (in stereo) (12/20/99): (no Paul Ryan this week) This program bombards you with musical fragments and formal announcements heard around the globe on short-wave & standard radio during the years of World War II. There were so many disturbing ironies and dismal coincidences within the show's content, it was frightening. David Wills (Negativland) called in the last ten minutes to play a section of "We'll be right back!" which is a recording about the concentration camps in Germany. "We'll be right back!" is a solo release exclusively produced by Don Joyce (Negativland). Though extremely rich in content, this was by far our most depressing radio production to date.

Episode 136: The Freedom of Information Act (12/27/99): (Full Staffed) First hour consisted of a brand new Ryan Report, in which Stanley Salashey officially changes his radio name to "every man" because he was sued by the Stanley Tool Co. over copyright infringement over his former name (refer to previous Ryan Report episode.) The first hour consisted of many live phone calls of people sampling our opening Ryan Report segments and playing them back at us over the phone. Then the calls got more serious (more serious than 100% irrational behaviour, that is.) We began discussing the new fad everyone has over these gel-like photo Lords of Corn toys, one of which exploded on Every (formerly Stanley) and discolored his clothing, skin, and a select few internal body parts. The rest of the program accepted free format phone calls about the Subgenius Church, trading versus purchasing, Good vs. Evil, Explosive Toys for children, the pancultural medium, vibiance, putting aloe in bread instead of egg, promotions for the latest Button material, and lots of other stuff. In essence, there was no theme other than freedom of discussion. This was the closest thing to a talk show we've ever consistently done throughout an entire program, and it inspired a phone call from "Old Man" who we hadn't heard from in several months. This was the last show of 1999.