Episode 185: The Button: Live Sessions Take 1 (01/07/2001): (Full Staffed)  The Button will be playing their first live show next weekend in Columbus, OH.  This is our first attempt at putting our material together in front of a live audience. This radio show consisted of our first ever rehearsal sessions to be broadcast on the air. There was very little improvisation, as most of the material is rehearsed and based on cues. There were many mistakes, retakes, missed-cues, and alternate versions of our own songs until we found what gelled better. Also, a very amusing highlight was Paul Ryan breaking out into a coughing fit while doing a fake Mormon's commercial. Show began and ended with a new Button industrial-dance song called "Feima Built My Hotrod." We needed the filler to rewire the entire main broadcast studio so we could pull off what we needed to do live.

Episode 186: Burning Man 2000 in Stereo! (01/14/2001): (Full Staffed)  A second attempt to do a Burning Man audio collage radio show, only this time we did it in Stereo! The show from September 10, 2000 was recorded in mono because WRUW's studios were having technical difficulties at the time, which were only apparent to us when the show was over. If you buy either of these episodes, you will get the other episode mixed in for free. The master recordings have been re-mixed into a solid 4 hours of Burning Man audio collage. Also note that in episode 186, we had some new audio not used in the first BM2K show, which was downloaded from a variety of BM2K websites around the globe. This was our best attempt yet, not only because it was in stereo, but because there was plenty more variety in the source material, and the creativity in the live mix was much more impressive.

Episode 187: The Ryan-Asbestos Sessions - Part 2 (01/21/2001): (Full Staffed)  Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos doing the show on their own this week as a sequel to the episode they did from last year while every man was in Nevada (it continues on the music/noise/improv theme as well.) every man was here this time, but only to run the mixing board, watch the levels, and occasionally yell in the background like Bert from Sesame Street. This show blew away the one they did last year, with many more memorable moments, more variety, and with an overall improved flavor. The overall theme was "Make Your Own Music!" because...that's what they were doing. It was less of a collage, and more of an experimental jazz performance...sort of. This show, combined with last year's, is rumored to be cut-up, edited, collaged, layered, remixed, and re-mastered by every man into an entirely different piece...or pieces!

Episode 188: Losing The Crutches (01/28/2001): (Full Staffed) For the first time in several months, WRUW fixed their stereo sound problem coming from one of the main production rooms we do our show from. Therefore, we didn't have to rewire everything and lose the first AND last 10 minutes of our show setting up and breaking down our customized wiring job, and we also didn't have to consume the airwaves with stereo-test-records for 20 minutes this time. With this additional flexibility, we were able to plug in more of our toys and use the station's mixing boards properly, giving the listeners a more stereophonic environment, as well as our 100% undivided artistic attention for three whole hours. We played it the old school way this time, bringing in bags and bags of source material, and initially letting randomness assemble them together for us. Eventually we were able to create a theme based around the outcome, and the collage became more logical and less abstract, but only slightly. The dadaistic approach was necessary because our intentions were to have nothing but FUN with the show, but allowing us the flexibility to get serious with things if the mood hit us as such. We had some fun callers, and hysterical coincidences with our "sample communication" sections which are almost always inevitable when we place no restrictions on ourselves theme-wise. Lots of chatter in places between every man and Paul Ryan, and sometimes Dr. Asbestos would pitch in and confuse us by impersonating a caller. Also noteworthy is that throughout the entire show, there was an underlying soundtrack of weird and profane CB-radio-like conversations. We're not sure how they got there, but they seemed to fit so we never investigated. All in all this was a great "first time back" kind of show, even though we've never actually left. Perhaps a better analogy would be to say we were crippled for awhile but our fractured bones have finally healed, and this was our first day playing sport since recovery. Therefore, we'll appropriately call this one Losing The Crutches.

Episode 189: I'm Just A Bill (02/04/2001): (Full Staffed) Somewhat of a revisit to a show we did a couple years ago, making collage of all the sensationalized news stories surrounding the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton sex scandal, and spicing it up with flashbacks from the years Clinton was in office. It took a lot of turns from hour to hour, and we made our best efforts to keep each few moments as different as possible from the previous few. We prepared for this show for weeks, and with over 20 hours of material to pick from, originality wasn't much of a challenge. This ended up being a well done densely packed show with lots of humorous moments, and of course, none of it actually recorded!  It was due to a technical error on our part which we fixed, but nevertheless, the damage was done. If you taped this episode then you have one of the only copies (if this is the case, can you make us a copy, too?) Chances are, we'll do this show again in a couple weeks, and hopefully capture the humor we had in this one.

Episode 190: Forty Years B.C. (Before Clinton) (02/11/2001): (Full Staffed) A serious satirical overview of all our modern U.S. Ex-Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy (we pretty much neglected to cover Ford due to lack of material..) Using the collage approach, we layered comedy records with serious political speeches, satirical songs mixed with Will Rogers and his sexist views of the military, and psychedelic samples mixed with callers playing their home tapes of former US Presidents, particularly of Richard Nixon. This show was hysterical by default. You can't lose whenever comedy records are part of the mix, and this was no exception. A noteworthy and outstanding piece of source material was an album called "Richard Nixon Superstar," which was recorded before the Watergate incident, believe it or not! They were harping on his dishonesty and character without the upcoming ammunition that eventually nailed "I'm not a crook!" into the comedy acts of every comedian impersonating him for the rest of his life. It was such a densely packed show, we unfortunately didn't get to play nearly as much of that record as we would have liked. Additionally, the callers were extremely appropriate this week which always helps, because they become the entertainment while we get a chance to work on a new approach and gather more materials for our next subsection of the program. We had enough material to go on for another two hours and still keep things interesting, so who knows...we might revisit this idea again someday. (WRUW is officially broadcasting 1,000 watts this week from the new transmitter site. For the past 3 or 4 months, we've been at 50 watts. Thankfully, we digitally record the shows from a tuner that gets a clear stereo signal of the program. However, now the new 1,000 watt signal is a CLEAN signal, since we get much better readings than we used to with the old transmitter. WRUW now has a potential local listening audience of over one million people. The next power increase will be to 15,000 watts!)

Episode 191:  Chief Comedian Officer (02/18/2001): (Full Staffed) A not so serious revisit to Episode 189 "I'm Just A Bill." We forgot half our source material and got slammed with extremely silly phone callers, so this show was all over the place. It sounded completely different from the show two weeks ago, and was more musical than usual. We sampled the phone callers whenever they were humming, whistling, clicking, singing, and crooning...processed them, and turned them into little songs. When we weren't doing that, we were playing samples of the callers back at themselves to confuse them. When we weren't doing that, we were then actually being more serious about the Clinton collage. This wasn't as moving as "I'm Just A Bill" but was perhaps one of the most hysterical shows we've had in months. Noteworthy callers were our favorite "bong hit" guy, who also joins us by playing his drums over the phone...and some other fellow who sampled himself talking to an old arcade game. Unfortunately, our technical problems from Episode 189 revisited us too, so this gem never got taped. Anyone have a recording of this show? Let us know. 

Episode 192:  The Wild, Wild West Wing (02/25/2001): (Full Staffed) A light, often humorous, dadaistic approach to covering the weekly televised political drama, The West Wing. We had over ten hours of material to work with into our three hour show. However, keeping the comedy alive from last week, we allowed ourselves to break into worlds of irrelevance every so often, being heavily assisted by live telephone participants in our last hour. Not that anyone could tell, but Negativland's David Wills called in the last ten minutes...laughed hysterically for awhile...and then hung up. That last hour was particularly off topic, but that didn't really matter...since we weren't intending on being extraordinarily topical in the first place. The sample-mix was very thick for the first two hours, and later collaged with Gregorian chants (which were also being messed with a great deal by Dr. Asbestos.) Oh, and we also went into the "war against drugs" arena quite a bit, mostly because the samples from West Wing inevitably took us there. It was quite amusing hearing this stuff layered on top of this odd CD we found, which featured an industrial artist doing a cover of KMFDM's "A Drug Against War." We really had fun with this show, but it indeed had its serious moments of artistic collage...and that, I believe,  was when the dadaism was more apparent.

Episode 193: Rushing To Conclusions (03/04/2001): (Full Staffed) This now takes first place as the funniest show we produced this entire year! (and it was salt free!) Well, we  decided not to call this show "Rush Limbaugh is also an asshole." It was a three hour collage of Rush's voice, his critics, and his parodies. Doing an extensive search on the net, we found that if you filtered "Clinton" and "Bill" and "William" and "Gore" and "Hillary" and "intern" and all related terms to Bill Clinton....we found the Rush Limbaugh show produced only TWO parody songs having nothing to do with Clinton. They had to do with OJ Simpson, in fact. Much better. The mix was utterly hysterical, and the callers were as well...particularly the one calling in repeatedly saying "why the fuck don't you talk to the callers? I just wanted to say I love your show, but I don't get why don't talk to your callers...this is so fucked up." That sample looped for nearly 5 minutes after the call, until he called back saying "real funny, guys." After all, this show was NOT a tribute to Rush Limbaugh...though was it a criticism? It was rather ambiguous in many ways....especially with Rush's Clinton parodies being mixed with Al Franken reading his book "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot.." Ambiguity is a wonderful thing, and better suits dreams...where ambiguity rules, and it's ultimately up to YOU to decide the meaning. Such is this particular episode of Press The Button. 

Episode 194: Advertising Nothing (03/11/2001): (every man & Paul Ryan) The most vibiant and dada-like radio show we've ever done. Much of it resembled a dream, in that there were many moments of silence...often 20 seconds or more...and then sound (commercials) filled the void. By the way, the long delays within this show were 100% intentional. We were practicing a new school of thought (for us, at least) that sometimes no sound is good sound...or that long moments of silence help emphasize the moments filled with sound. This would be important for this particular show, because we wanted to emphasize our commercials! Commercials which, by the way, advertised absolutely nothing! That's right, they said everything a standard commercial is supposed to say, but the product itself was completely excluded. This went on for three hours, but one who wasn't paying much attention might not have ever noticed the fact that these commercials were truly advertising nothing. (Shifting now to present tense to describe the rest of the show) About ten minutes in the first hour get filled with the sound of the main studio clock ticking (yes, we put a microphone inside it...and recorded ourselves putting the microphone there, too!) In several sections of the show, we hear snippets of other radio shows from all ends of the dial in the AM & FM listening spectrum, floating from the left to right channel, fragmented, sampled, and remixed live. I'm told that was exceptionally illegal, but I personally didn't see any harm in it. There was a wonderfully neat section of The Doors "Riders of the Storm" being looped, delayed, down pitch shifted, and time stretched for about 5 minutes. It was extremely trippy! In the third hour, we were treated to one of the most strange and abstract Ryan Reports ever to air. Paul was seriously angry, often told Every to "shut up," Every was high on some unmentioned drug, the sound in one channel was slightly pitch shifted and delayed compared to the other channel, and they kept getting interrupted by more of those strange "commercial breaks" from the first two hours. The Ryan Report had no intro, and no outro...and neither did the whole radio show. In fact, after the Ryan Report unexpectedly ended without any verbal closure...all the studio microphones had their mic gains up full blast as the Paul and Every broke down their equipment (which takes a LONG time to do), and the next DJ came in and prepared for his show. Was this ending "unprofessional" or was it an improvement because its human interest elements? Personally, we found it far more entertaining than public service messages or promos. The DJ on after us agreed. What about you? We urge you to BUY this show and tell us your thoughts on "Advertising Nothing."

Episode 195: "Gunslinger" Book 1 (03/18/2001): (Full Staffed) Probably the least-known, and ironically greatest, “earth poetry”, the anti-epic, “Gunslinger”, by the late Edward Dorn is the focus of the first of this three part series. Lampooning the ideas of self, logos, pop culture, drugs, and the war in, well, you know where the war is, The Gunslinger, the Stetson-wearing Horse, Lil, and the narrator called I bandy with the “sicksties” popular culture ideas of the almost cartoon-like Old West: straight-talkin’, straight- shootin’, fuck-‘em-all-for-a-quick-fix cowboys, poor grammar, wood-grained-plastic cigar store Indians, tokin’- the-day-away dance hall madams, and a lot of stagecoaches stuffed with Tampico. Featuring Paul Ryan singing in a funny voice and a real “abso-lute”. And, if you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of Whitley Streeber making an ass of himself with a sugar cube dipped in LSD.

Episode 196: "Gunslinger" Book 2 (03/25/2001): (Full Staffed) In this, the second part of the three part series riding into the sunset with the “Gunslinger”, the narrator, I, dies, gets embalmed with a 5-gallon-can of LSD, and proceeds to call the show repeatedly, shouting things, giggling like a maniac, and asking what all of this means? Means? “[He] want[s] to know/ what it MEANS after you’ve/ seen it, after you’ve been there”(29). Returning to the Stoned Horse, and now finding ourselves in Universe City, we dive deeper into the solid wall of saloons, tanners’ yards, sagebrush and cacti, and the intractable problems of getting the gold through the canyon country and mescaline, generally. The sound of Howard Hughes, the seeming main object in the Gunslinger’s earthly search, beams forth through stories of Lakota Joe and the stagecoach ruined in the mudslide as he looks for the cheese and the crack to put it in before he begins his take-off roll.

04/01/2001 - WRUW OFF THE AIR (NETCASTING ONLY) Repeat of Episode 188: Losing The Crutches (originally aired 01/28/2001): Took live calls on top of show, but couldn't record any of it. Too bad, ECC called in for approximately 25 minutes.

Episode 197: "Gunslinger" Book 3 (04/09/2001): (Full Staffed) In this the third and final portion of this “Gunslinger” adventure, we finally manage to get it out of our system, and totally kick the habit. No more. We promise. Withdrawal pains ensued, which cause Paul Ryan to pretend to be Marjorie Perloff [an otherwise respected member of the staff at Stamford] and Dr. Asbestos then DJ’d Good, but then he DJ’d Bad, and then it got Ugly. every mann decided that wandering through the desert with a horse with two names, is a good way to wait for the timetrain. In the desert, Hughes is being a pain, ‘cause there ain’t no one for to give him the same. Faa laaaa la, la da da daa, laaa daaa laaa, Fa laaa la, la da da daa, laaa daaa la. Did you know that There is no medical use for Heroin? How about that? And the world of art dealing is very stressful. Unfortunately, Every attempted to send a letter to Dr. Flamboyant at the end of the program, picked up the wrong set of stamps, took a bad trip right there in the studio, when, in his words: “The cracker barrel started talking back.” Oh, well.

Episode 198: Glullemoxville (04/16/2001): (Full Staffed) The first hour was probably foreign to most listeners, literally. The mix included an Italian version of Austin Powers, Learning Italian training recordings, Learning German recordings, Yiddish books on tape, and readings from the original non-translated Roman Catholic Bible. Mixed within there was Paul Ryan speaking Swedish, every man speaking Spanish, and regrettably lots of live phone callers saying "hello." The second and third hours were far more cryptic. The second hour began with a "Ryan Report," which was seemingly broadcast at double speed! The subject of discussion: Glullemoxville. Never head of it? Well, you shouldn't have unless you're in the NSA. This is no joke either! there is an "Area" in Utah named Glullemoxville, which is a military installation not unlike the well renowned Area 51. The fun really began as Paul Ryan, every man, and Dr. Asbestos cracked out a (somewhat unlawfully) obtained military code book and used it to communicate with each other. This is where the "Glullemoxville" theme really hits home. Mixed foreign music, self-sampling, and more odd language recordings brought the last hour to a literally screaming close. This entire show is ear candy for anyone who admires Pink Floyd or Spiritualized. This is not to say any of the show contained the work of either artist...however if you consider how easily these artists go from quiet, calm, and abstract soundscapes to more confusing and noisy terraces, then the comparison is enormously appropriate. There was real harmony and serenity in the first hour, particularly. There was real noise in the last ten minutes.

Episode 199: Stravinsky's Cold War With Phish (04/23/2001): (Full Staffed) The show started out just fine; nothing like a good scare of nuclear annihilation from the 50’s and 60’s. There were even some effects of all out, total nuclear war, and Charlton Hesston to tell us all about them. But all of a sudden, like a meeting with Khrushchev, it took off in a completely different direction. First globalization, then the science of upholstery, all sort of mixed together as Paul Ryan and every man collage each other instead of the recordings they were supposed to be working on. Without warning, some jazz was played, and the situation got a little tense. Playing and then breaking down parts of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” into what ultimately developed into a demi-trip-hop 20th Century blur totally confused the issue, so it didn’t really matter at that point that the Phish was not fresh, though it was collaged from here to Chicago.

Episode 200: Cold War Part 1 (04/30/2001): (Full Staffed) This production was an outstandingly well done collage of old fallout shelter videos, cold war films, confused live phone callers, and little sample communication between Planet of the Apes & Beneath the Planet of the Apes (which was outright hysterical at times, not to mention ironic.) Instructions on how to properly use a bomb shelter, duck and cover, and retaliate against intruders are all provided in great detail -- in collage of course. This was somewhat of a continuation on what started in our first hour last week, but with greater direction and preparation. The collage was thick, with all three of us using samples, but not as dense as you might think...one of the reasons I praise this particular episode is that it shows how much we've matured in terms of timing ourselves, as well as being creatively selective. This built a better listening environment, and increased the chances of better "intentional coincidences" happening. Additionally appealing to me was the thorough channel separation throughout the program. Hardly anything heard in the left ear mirror the material in the right ear, though seldom did you hear things in both at the same time, allowing for an easier listening experience. Admittedly, despite how hard we tried to time ourselves, it was more dense than our average shows, so it's not for everyone. 

Episode 201: Cold War Part 2 (05/06/2001): (Full Staffed) To celebrate this the 200th episode (technically the 201st, but we decided to celebrate it this week), Darrick Servis, West Coaster, art car aficionado and audio artist extraordinatour, showed up at the station during Press The Button’s atomic crisis to lead us to the escape path from total nuclear annihilation: Just go into space! Either as tourist or as working astronaut, John Glenn and Dennis Tito butted heads with the nuclear explosions from dozens of public service announcements and movies from the darkest days of the Cold War raging below us and China, who we called Red China, pressed our buttons in Korea, ravaging banditos from the North to attack the simple, almost likable, peasants in the South, or so said Sam Spade Soundalikes and The Green Hornet, all mashed together, as if on the same windshield. By the third hour, the radiation sickness just got to be too much [they said it was only supposed to last two weeks!] and musical elements started mutating from nowhere, Every Scatting, Dr. Asbestos Scratching, Darrick Beat Boxing, and Paul Ryan Humming out a nameless little tune while the farmers were alarmed, Peter Jennings was bemused, and I could had sworn that David Spade kept saying ‘collage’, over and over again, to the beatz, to the callers, all over the damn place, like that radioactive dust all over your clothing.

Episode 202: Ho-Down Of The Century (05/13/2001): (Full Staffed) Could you believe that we, Press the Button, had not yet done a tribute to the King of Late Nite Weirdness, Conan O’Brien? We couldn’t either, so we did. Set to the soundtrack of their very own Max Weinberg Seven , the Tall Gawky One was babbling like a monkey, lunging from topic to topic like lunging someone we know at Alyssa Milano. Guest artists jammed, Conan did Leno impersonations, and Max just couldn’t seem to get the pronunciation of ‘ABBA’ quite right, no matter how hard he tried! Listen for the culminating beat box trip hop ‘Conan Verbalization-O-Rama’ where every non-word sound effect that Conan makes, up to an including his ‘Robert Wagner on the Party-Line’, is jammed, rhythmically speaking, in ways nobody thought possible! With Special Guests: A Laughing Mr. T, a Mime, an Ear of Corn, and a Gorilla in Bishop’s Robes, and The Spirit of the Comedic High Road, who totally loses it and calls Conan bad, bad names.

05/20/2001 - NO NEW SHOW DUE TO STUDIO PROBLEMS - Re-run of our Phish remix show.

Episode 203: Vanna, Can I Buy a Bowel? (05/27/01): (every man & Paul Ryan) Round and round the wheel goes, and when it gets sampled, nobody knows. Violating a quarantine order at the station, Paul Ryan and every man snuck in to the studios letting letters drop left and right, buying vowels, consonants, and solving puzzles Pat Sajak specifically told us not to. It got so bad at one point, after Paul yanked on the wheel so hard that it spun for nearly 5 minutes, Vanna got pissy and started talking to us like a learning disabled child who’d just found the Pudding Pop. Vowels were worth nothing, and each consonant was worth a million laughs as various contestant vainly tried to request letters that Pat would have nothing to do with, instead suggesting letters of his own. Finally the fumes got the better of us all, the wheel spun away off to infinity, new categories sprang up all over the place like mushrooms, and some contestant spelled ‘s-h- I-t’, making it a full day for all concerned. (Vanna: ‘Very Good!’)

Episode 204: A Sporting Chance (06/04/01): (Full Staffed) An email from a fan who was dead on: "I liked the introduction, explaining you were performing an artistic collage of sports programming, and instructing the callers to call in only with sports samples. I also liked the fact that less popular sports were used. The commentators seemed to show a different attitude towards their sports, and more of an appreciation for the skills required of the players, without emphasizing the importance of winning. In the second hour, you were right in saying that sports are among the least artistic topics to deal with as well as difficult to shape and mold into something more creative...these comments made me admire the content instead of reject it for the stereotypical testosterone association it had.  You've taken up this challenge and attempted to create a new perspective of these sports, which was quite artistic of you. The second hour seemed to reflect a lot of excitement and enthusiasm that sports seem to evoke from people. It especially reminded me of all the fans who take sports way too seriously, and only focus on the win/lost aspect. Using different samples to make a sort of music was very creative. The second half of this hour had an eerie, ominous feel to it.  In the third hour, the violence of some sports seemed to be the idea; the violence towards opponents as well as some self-abuse either in in their chosen sport or in training. I liked the fishing thing in the last 15 minutes, where you guys improvised dialogue while sailing on the fake reservoir, catching fish while being interrupted by a blue painted Ronald Reagan on a jet ski--who apparently looked like Sesame Street's Grover to every man. Some of the improv was hysterically funny, while other sections were just plain absurd. It's been awhile since you guys talked on your show, it was a refreshing ending to a well done performance."

Episode 205: Science Faire (06/11/01): (Full Staffed plus David Dixon, PHD) This was perhaps one of the most hysterical shows we've ever done to this date. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, [hours after the show aired] and special guest mad scientist David Dixon had, lying on the table, under a sheet, in front of us, a dreadful, fantastic, unbelievable monster SCIENCE SHOW! A switch was pulled, and it leapt to life! Children’s science programs writhed and crawled, Stephen Hawking burst in, did a doughnut in his wheelchair and started spewing expletives, in-between bouts of explaining entropy and the initial theories about black holes. Songs, whole songs [See, we told you this was weird] burst from all sorts of uncommon places, about the sun, about chemistry, geology, astronomy, physics, you name it. Every known song that had anything even remotely to do with science was played, purely for a change of pace from our usual unusualness. Yes, even Timbuk 3. One Particular show highlight: We played They Might Be Giants's version of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" along side with the original children's record version they covered; playing TMBG in the left ear, and the original version in the right ear. Worried callers ran about madly like villagers in a Frankenstein movie, looking for torches and trying to grab their sex pistols and ACTUALLY THROW THEIR RADIOS, all the while on the air. The stargazing guides eventually brought us back to earth where Napster Nuggets bounced and rolled by, as with an avalanche, bringing the show to an abrupt halt.

Episode 206: Words in C (06/18/01): (Full Staffed) Inspired by Terry Riley's classical composition effort entitled "In C", which was approximately a one hour long original orchestration done entirely in the key of C; we created an entire 3 hour found sound collage composition out of words in the key of C. Instead of using the words in terms of their context, we used them as musical notes. Each of us brought in a series of words, almost all of which were two syllable words, and varied in pitch. Some were feminine voices, others were deep low-voiced male advertising voice-overs. Keeping true to Terry Riley's composition, the very first note we hit, continued to repeat throughout the entire program without changing pitch. We used that as a base note to play against. The word, just for the curious, was "ban." The person saying the word was Peter Jennings, who sounded angry during the second hour for some reason. Odd psycho-acoustics would occur throughout the show as we continued to hear looping words in our left and right ears...at times we thought there were people behind us talking, or doorbells were ringing, or objects were falling. We found that when listening to the same spoken words in a continuous loop, NON-repetitive sounds or words would remain 300% more distinct than they normally would. The entire first hour was true to Riley's form in a purest sense, but don't go thinking we NEVER broke away from the intended convention. Indeed, sometimes we would pitch shift some words anyway, or chorus them, and constantly move them around from your left ear to your right ear and back....sometimes making notes go away, while bringing them back a half hour later. Some words were time stretched, while others were reverbed, delayed, and even thrown into 100% distortion. It wasn't the most listener interactive show we ever could have done, but was a truly unique approach for us, and certainly a new sound environment for the dedicated listener. Not all shows can (or should) be consistent to the others, artistically speaking, and we strongly feel this program succeeded in fulfilling its intentions. We are grateful to report we received two emails from listeners (one from Cleveland and one who heard us on the web) who complimented the trance-like originality it had. So it wasn't so much about context this week, though if you weren't aware of what we were doing, it may very well have given you an extremely intriguing message for sure.

Episode 207: A Show Called Show (06/25/01): (Full Staffed) Humbled by technical errors, the mythical ‘Jeopardy’ remains, to this day, mythical, though we thought we were making so much progress. Thinking that this was going to be the episode that we closed the cycle of elderly game shows, all appeared to be in readiness, then suddenly, somewhere within the computer banks at the Button Press headquarters deep in the heart of. . . well, you know where, a circuit went *pop, fizzle*, and suddenly, no Alex, no daily doubles, just Every, Paul Ryan , and the Good Doctor, and a little dog named. . . . Well, first the little dog was named Snuggles, as all the recent musical masterpieces from our brothers [and sisters] in arms at Snuggles made their way through the ether. This was to be followed by a protracted discussion about 60’s movies, spatulas, (green ones too big to lift) and a bathtub filled with Miller Lite. Somebody yelled, the callers wanted to know why the dog was named ‘Dog’, and ultimately came to the conclusion that they knew they were high, and that they were just trying to mess with them. Paul Ryan admitted that the Theory of the Pancultural Medium is actually based on the fact that Sherlock Holmes was not a real person and did not live in Milwaukee in 1983. Then everything started to get high again, including the UFO’s, including the life in the tub, and the rest of them just had their Walkmans on. Can't forget that Every spent 15 minutes insisting that Paul was a spatula, a green one at that.

Episode 208: Is Jeopardy! in Jeopardy? (07/02/01): (every man & Paul Ryan) After months of putting it off and weeks of intense editing the sound files, this show finally happened! Brought to you fully utilizing WRUW's new digital stereo mixing board and editing console, we presented a nice thick blend of Jeopardy! episodes, old and new, not excluding Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, Jep! (which is the kid's edition of Jeopardy!), and the Jeopardy! video game sound files, all 450 of them! Many times you'd hear contestants giving the right questions, only to hear Alex Trebek say "No, I'm sorry, that's wrong." Other times we'd hear the wrong questions, yet Alex would insist, "You're right, congratulations!" Some moments were rather eerie as we'd hear the various sound effect and musical elements of the Jeopardy! show fragmented and looped to create ambient soundscapes that Brian Eno would be proud of. A couple times we broke away from the theme to discuss with callers the fact that Paul Ryan is a giant green spatula while every man had difficulties with the upside down bathtub on his head. Things got a little crazy there for awhile, not to mention noisy, and having very little to do with Jeopardy! Of course, we eventually got back to the theme...despite our callers continuing along the lines of bong hits and green spatula-hood. We didn't mind, finding them a nice contrast to Alex Trebek's rather conservative game show voice. If you order this show, we'll include a prequel which never went on the air but was recorded in the production studio while we were hooking up our equipment. It was a hilarious and somewhat rare Q&A between Alex Trebek and a few all too devoted fans. Not sure why, but we never used this during the live broadcast.

Episode 209: Mystery Children's Theatre 3000 (07/09/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) This was by far our most listener interactive show to date, despite its heavy psychedelic directions. Vaguely similar to Mystery Science Theatre 3000, we mixed in parts of over a dozen recorded hours of a 10 year old girl reciting the words she memorized to all her favorite movies, including Beetlejuice, Clue, and all three Look Who's Talking films. We wonder...was our collaging THIS particular material true copyright infringement? Her voice was layered, with different sections of her audio in both the left and right channels, sometimes pitched differently, other times left alone. Her voice would spin around the room if your stereo speakers were far enough apart from one another while listening. Just when it began to get so trippy I could have sworn my own shoes walked across the room by themselves, we started getting bombarded with the most bizarre phone calls. Some of them were watching movies and making their own smart comments in vintage MST3K style. Others were obviously first time listeners, but bothered to not hang up for several minutes as they screamed "HELLO!" repeatedly. Then they started talking about pot and LSD for awhile, so we mixed in some of our own studio songs dealing with the same subjects. At one point they got really perverse, particularly this one woman who convincingly brought herself to several orgasms on the air! This was an ideal transition as we crossed over to the third hour of our show...for we learned the next DJ forgot to show up! On the bright side, this gave us an additional hour of programming, but only half that hour got taped. If anyone caught the last 30 minutes of this on tape, let us know!

Episode 210: Meditation Chronicles Part 1 (07/16/01):(every man, solo) They left me all by my lonesome this week. No fret, quite a bit was prepared. Out of this three hour show, about 2 hours of it was a pure live mix of Indian chants, yogic bells gonging slowly, panned in stereo, and very off-the-wall self-help spoken word getting mixed in...not sure how that happened. It was one of the most beautiful sounding things I've ever done, filled with harmonies, pitch shifting, and similar layers of unrelated meditative chanting melodies. Another hour was some interesting transition stuff. It wasn't an hour by itself, but an hour's worth of transitions happening during the live mix...some of it came from our "God the Devil, and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs" trilogy, some of it was Phineas Narco's "Midnight Voicejail," and other sections were just me doing a self-help, how to relax, how to lose weight, and how to meditate live mix, trying to spice things up with a bit of spoken word to contrast the the mostly sound-based Meditative sections.

Episode 211: Human Nature (Cries of Prejudice) (07/23/01):(every man, solo) Loosely based on material dealing with life during the turn of the 20th century, this was a super-heavily prepared for solo live mix addressing issues of African American slavery, Native American Indian preserves, Nazi Germany, old Cowboy and Indian tales, an in depth examination of the history of guns, Jewish persecution during World War II, and the effects the invention of electricity had on us all. Source materials included extremely old recordings of actual African American slaves describing their experiences, obscure songs about freedom, obscure songs about racism, political comedy pieces about immigration and prejudice, a two hour video I found about the history of gun usage in the Old West, traditional Native American Indian "folk songs", tradition African American drums and chants, a far more general video I found about the history of guns in the USA, various recordings about the Native American Indians losing their land, academic classroom lectures on the history of slavery of all kinds, more academic classroom lectures on the history of human ethics, a funny book on tape called "Give War a Chance" written by PJ O'Rourke, and finally, another lecture on the meaning of "Revolution." There was also a lot of stuff I used about the history of the USA, but only in brief snippets. There was more, but they were barely used or I just can't recall them. Overall, this was somewhat of a powerful tear jerking show, but presented a quite complete and in depth examination of "human nature."

Episode 212: Cleaning Up the Ashes (07/30/01) (Full Staffed + King Wilson & Dr. David Dixon) Fresh back from their wild, wooly, musical tour of the Midwestern states, (finally) the FULL STAFF returns to the Button studio that we call home, and we decided to bring some friends along. King P. (stands for ‘punctual’) Wilson, all the long way from Chi-town, and the redoubtable Dr. David Dixon (don’t call him ‘Dr. Dave’) from the very seat of higher learning called Marquette, exploded onto the radio waves with more laptops than you’d find in a Gateway Country store and 5, count’em 5 mixers. Some of which we even knew how to use. Dr. Dave (oops) answered the science questions the callers put to him, Every went into the pertinent details of the Burning Corn Music Festival, many of which will come out in the later trial, King and Dr. (‘just don’t call me Alphonse’) Asbestos poured out a thick bouillabaisse of yummy electronic goodness, and Paul Ryan kept interrupting with marches, polkas, bongos, and ‘Mousercise’, whatever the hell that is. Sounds erupted, scientific ethics got discussed, as did how to really burn CD’s. . . using a microwave (5 seconds, half power, not more) Paul Ryan and Every discussed Cheese and Pants Theater, and some girl kept calling, about something, but that too may also come out in the trial. In the words of every man: "One of our weirdest shows ever."

Episode 213: The Audio Family Album (08/06/01) (Full Staffed) Over 30 hours of family and friend tapes, many taken from ten year old 8 mm film, layered into a super three hour montage. We give you a trippy voyeuristic view into our past, our friends, and family, many of whom are no longer with us today. This was presented using heavy stereo separation, allowing for a total of four constant audio tracks....two per each channel, also giving us the freedom to immediately switch to 4 completely different tracks of family tapes on stand-by. Quite thick in concept, but pleasantly ambient in execution. This was a surprisingly immense pleasure to listen to, just for the mild psychedelic cacophony that ensued on both sides of our heads. Humor took the helm a few times as we heard our old friends referring to us by our given names during our college years, followed by hysterics as we heard every man inline skating through a rough downhill obstacle course. Without the video, the audio painted all sorts of interesting pictures in our heads. This never got to the point of resembling indecipherable crowd noise...rather at times it was more reminiscent of an intense and confused dream. So we share with you all these great gifts: our dearest memories.

Episode 214: Going to Mexico in a Time Machine (08/13/01) (Full Staffed) Someday, you have to repent. Everybody does. Even Press The Button. See, a long time ago, at a radio station far, far away, there were the prototypes of the radio madness that you hear today: ‘Transmit-O- Matic’, ‘The Vegetable Kingdom’, and a much younger Paul Ryan and every man [then called DJJ] doing all sorts of things, in the middle of the day, I might remind, on the radio, that simply couldn’t be done today. Like Sending Every on a trip with a Walkie-Talkie to Aliens breaking into a newspaper publisher’s Building with a Chainsaw after they leapt from a Spaceship christened ‘Fried’m Zone’’, or selling recording of the very broadcasts of the program, as it was being aired, naming both the price and the address to send your money to, on a nonprofit station, [side note from Paul Ryan; ‘During that time, I racked up so many infractions, that had I been caught, the fines would have been in the $4.5 million range’] or ‘Dead Air Radio’, or the ever popular sell off of the Country of Mexico for the low-low price of ‘Sews my Pants!’. Yes, that's right....'Sews my Pants!" was not a typo. You see, it was a different time then, and values were also different. But now is the time to reveal our sordid past to our adoring public, discuss, repent, and be better Radio Personalities for it. A crazed agglomeration of sound from the past, a full 3 ½ hours, too, through the trick to guess whether our number is 3682208, or 824-2261. Quite trippy in places, often humorous, and more often frightening.  Note: the last 20 minutes were cut off, since our digital home recording equipment assumes we're off the air at 3 am, and never considers whether the next DJ is going to be late. We'll probably go more into that lost material next week.

Episode 215: Barnyard Animal Giveaway (08/20/01) (Full Staffed) A continuation from the radio show last week, offering a collage of the most popular sketches we did from the VERY earliest available Transmit-O-Matic recordings (we forgot a disc last week) up to the oldest ones from the WMCE days in Erie, PA when Paul Ryan and every man attended college together. This week featured more complete sketches and less narration on our part. It was also much more of a collage, too.

Episode 216: Burning Mixer / We Will, We Will, Wok You (08/27/01) (Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos) Once again, every man has escaped from our Utah compound to be last seen heading to Nevada with Nobody in an attempt to placate the natives on the playa where the Man Burns. Meanwhile Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos feel a little left out. So, since King Wilson isn’t here to chide us for recreating the wonderful uniqueness of the Burning Corn Button Bonanza, we did recreate our Burning Button Bonanza, complete with actual live drum circle, with live, actual drums played by a live actual drummer. Additionally, if King Wilson [who is truly a great guy] would be professionally peeved by a Burning Corn Re-Exhibition, then he’d really go to the moon over any of those Daft French Robots, in Pants. So we did. Rhythms caught, were hooked, and squeezed through our electronic sausage stuffers, making a dense, fat sound, rollicking through your speakers. Looking to make it denser and fatter, we brought out the accordions, bagpipes, dish bells and the “Wok of Ages”, a truly immense thing, [it’s like 8 feet across, hanging from this big Portobello stand] and Paul Ryan grabbed the mallet and wound up. Truly it was, the very sound of God’s Own Doorbell. But our complicated, all-digital mixer took one look at that input signal and said: “Oh, Goodness! That will never fit inside me, it’s too BIG!”, and fell away in a quantum faint. There’s a lot of resonance to that Wok, so it took a while for The Doctor and Paul to recover. You will notice our own 18 ½ minute gap. Soon enough, order was restored, and we did the pants dance again.

Episode 217: Tape At Home For Fun And Profit (09/03/01) (Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos) While every man remained at large, last seen with Nobody, Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos got back to the Orthodox roots of the whole Found Sound movement: Home Tapes. Where a much younger Dr. Asbestos reads Britannica’s world history timeline, [Benito Mussolooney?] and an equally youthful Paul Ryan takes his first steps as a broadcaster [as “Wilfred” (?) DJ’ing “The Song of the Five-Seconds”]. Meanwhile, teenaged girls catch up a grounded-for-the-entire-summer compatriot with all the latest gossip, plus the many trials and tribulations that is volleyball camp, Martha Stewart imitators attempt to describe teddy bear construction techniques: stuff the joint, insert the stick past the fur and into the slit all the way up to the balls, and so on. In the third hour, in tribute to the Grand Master of home taping, David Wills, Paul and the Good Doctor recreate every man’s very first interview with David, using the original questions. While the threads of the meta-conversation were a bit shaky to begin with, talking about the difficulty and danger in getting to space, and the Second Viking Conference, callers started to appear well into the third hour, throwing the direction of the show wildly askew; though we did finally determine once and for all that there is only One Mustache, the Goat in Space in fact controls The Cheese, and Alex Trebeck really is a Viking after all. A truly mind-blowing ending to a show that was a little bent to begin with.

Episode 218: Recycled Bicycle (09/10/01) (Full Staffed) Steve.

Episode 219: Burning Man 2001 - The Initiation (09/17/01) (Full Staffed) After returning from Black Rock City, Nevada, every man dispersed his field recordings among the Press The Button staff. Mind you, this year every man arrived at Burning Man several days earlier, left a day later, and was armed with digital (not analog like last year) recording devices. The outcome was an awesome collection of over 100 hours of Burning Man found sound, including a three hour radio show every man performed with Hollywood's very own "Nobody", who used to be a frequent guest host of ours when he lived in Chicago. Also noteworthy were a couple of improvisational stage performances (Dysfunctional Family Theatre) that every man did with a few members of his village. On tonight's radio show, we included a great deal of Burning Man beat poetry, fireside conversations, sounds of the heavy desert winds, drunk people, several stereo systems blasting electronica music, fire trucks, mobile theremin noisemakers, and endless amounts of walkie-talkie conversations. The collage was educational and entertaining for those who never made it out to the Burning Man event, and filled with good memories for those who have. In fact, most of those who attend always come back with completely different experiences because they all explore entirely unique directions. Despite all the content, we barely tapped into the source material, so you can safely assume we will perform a couple more Burning Man 2001 shows within the year.

Episode 220: Limited Time Offer (09/24/01) (Paul Ryan and every man) For some reason, Dr. Asbestos couldn’t reschedule his “House Beautiful Magazine” interview, so it was up to Paul Ryan and every man to pull the levers and press the buttons to crank out this week’s program. This Week: The infomercial. Just buy that house with no money down, or buy that 347-piece ratchet set, or “Diamonique”, whatever the hell that is. VERY CONTENT RICH! Perhaps the most heavily produced live show we did in our existence, and easily the most interactive! With over 30 hours of prepared material (most of it we went through and marked), this was sure to at least be one of our most surreal shows satirizing our modern (especially recently) consumer culture. We all should BUY BUY BUY and shoot that economy back up to Never Never Land where it once was.... Using 4 separate mixers and 5 processors, Charlton Hesston pitched his Holy Land audio books, and cookware, or perhaps cook wear, was being pitched at almost subliminal speeds. But what puts the show over the top was the callers. For 3 solid hours, the lines were lit up like a Christmas tree direct to you for only 9 easy payments of $19.95. People were dancing on other people, singing, playing guitars and drums, imitating sheep and airplanes, thickening the program almost like magic. A leaping, snorting, bucking bronco of a program.

Episode 221: Just Shoot Us! (10/01/01) (Paul Ryan and every man) Since it's such an ideal sitcom for sample-collage, given all of its one-liners that work their silliness and absurdities into your brain in, or OUT, of context -- not to mention all of the exaggerated personalities in the show, and the often starkly contrasting guest stars, we decided to cut-up and mix over a dozen episodes of "Just Shoot Me!" starring ex-Saturday Night Live member, David Spade (and probably other noteworthy people.) As surreal as it may sound to do this, it's not unprecedented. In September of 2000, Dr. Asbestos and Paul Ryan did something similar with Will & Grace, though for completely different reasons. It just seemed like a really great idea to collage a sitcom, and as popular as that show was/is...it remains one of the more obscure ones in terms of celebrity voice recognition. Sure, if you're a big fan, you'll recognize them in a flash....but your average passerby wouldn't recognize Grace from George Burns's "Gracie." That makes the show flow better, since the "average listener" won't be mentally interrupted with familiarity. This time, we just adored how easy it was to cut up all of the one-liners from "Just Shoot Me!" We adored all the more how fluid they were mixed together in practically any order...even for a whole three hours! We received half as many calls this week (compared to last) not that you could tell. They were having fun communicating with the samples for awhile, and then just kinda went surreal on us...in fact, I swear they were trying to culture jam the culture jamming. They started playing news recordings of local drugs busts that were 30 years old, and if that wasn't creepy enough, they would continue this onslaught for a good 45 minutes straight! It didn't dominate the audio content, maybe confused it for it bit....but didn't cause any harm, either. After all, three straight hours of NOTHING but "Just Shoot Me!" collages would probably make you take the title far more seriously than intended. The breaks in thematic content more intriguing and mind expanding, as opposed to relieving or necessary. We had a great deal of fun doing this one, and it showed....or rather, it "exclaimed" as mysterious voices were chuckling in the mud from time to time. We were mixing a sitcom after all, but it was difficult to tell what was more funny...the one-liners themselves, or our exploitation of the fact that "Just Shoot Me!" is entirely composed of them.

Episode 222: I Love Lucid (10/08/01) (Paul Ryan and every man) Paul Ryan and every man try their hand at some emotional engineering: Found sound collage easily lends itself to this kind of manipulation, and we intended to prove it. Simply put, we encouraged our listeners to fall asleep with their radios on, right from the very first hour of the show. What did you dream? Asking the listeners to get comfortable, relax, close their eyes and empty their minds, we attempted to refill them with thoughts of our own making. Soft sounds, from nature and the artificial world, meditations, wandering rhythms, soft suggestions and jumbled phrases percolated their way through our listeners' minds. Abrupt changes occurred on a random basis to stir the mental pot, and thunderous applause leapt in at the end to wake them so that they would remember. If you heard it, write to info@pressthebutton.com with your experiences.Tthis is the first of a series of such dream related shows we plan to do in the future. Since we had a recording accident, we only have this show available in 56 kps mp3 format.

Episode 223: The Invisible Zen Chakras (10/15/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) A fan's email proclaimed this as "the most artistically accurate dreamlike radio show we've ever performed to date." Overwhelmed by such a compliment, we'' try to do our best here to document what exactly this particular show was trying to do. To build last week's theme, we wanted to create a listening environment that would send us, The Button, into a captivating trance-like artistic zone with no escape..a zone that we wouldn't actually be aware of until the show ends. We've thought about this for a long time throughout our many years of collecting found sound material, but only recently found a home for what used to be some of our more obscure findings. From athletic training tapes to healthy mind & spirit subliminal message programs, over time we've gathered a rather impressive collection of odd ball recordings, all with inconsistent themes, but also had one thing in common: the music and voice overs on these recordings sounded like they were coming from different dimensions. We're not sure if this was intentional, as in many cases this sonic element was highly inappropriate given the context of what these recordings were. Examples: How about a hypnotic baseball coach who never yells, he whispers? A dietician requiring your have a quadraphonic stereo system to hear his head spinning advice on what you should eat? Learn to swim NOT by vocal instruction, but by the sound of electronic pulses? Environmental natural sound records with AUDIBLE yet supposedly subliminal daily affirmation messages embedded within the recordings? We found that last one made the most sense, but until now had no other recordings to associate it with. After a few weeks effort into our ource material hunt, we obtained over 100 recorded hours of material to choose from! We meticulously picked the most appropriate samples to make each hour uniquely surreal, relaxing, mind numbing, thought provocative, and at least one person agreed to call it "dreamlike." The first hour's focus was an escape from reality through meditation, the second hour's focus was spiritual self-awareness through the yogi philosophy, and the third hour's focus was "the Art of Zen," which should NOT be listened to unless you're sober....and apparently shouldn't be listened to while driving (if the caution statements written on some of our recordings are to be believed.) Of course, there was SO much more than just a basic focus to each section. For instance, each hour had its own unique and thematically appropriate music, pre-produced and mastered by The Button before the show aired. Sometimes for a drum beat, we modified the sound of a tennis player practicing his swing, or a baseball player in the batting cage. We also intermixed many subliminal message tapes from hour to hour (these were the ones that said "don't listen and drive")...sometimes as many as 4 at a time, which is nothing if you consider that throughout this entire show there were consistently 16 inputs going at the same time at various volumes levels! All I'll add to this is one more thing...this is the FIRST time neither of us remembered anything about the show until we listened to it afterwards. Once the show ended, we almost instantly forgot what was going on for the last three hours, other than that it was some kind of amazing trip...we had no specific recalls whatsoever. Consider yourself warned.

Episode 224: To Jam A Culture Jammer (10/22/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) A three hour collage of the entire discography (at least, all that I have) produced by my favorite underground contextual manipulator, Wayne Butane. His short attention span appealing low humor cut-and-paste approach will surely amuse you, if you've never heard his work before, and we even took it a step further by manipulating HIS context! Pushing our studio to its limits, we methodically used all 5 of its CD players to cut-and-paste the "cut-and-paste master" himself, creating a whole new humorous work of art out of his many. As we expected, the show was so dense it was impossible to identify which albums we were mixing, since all of his albums have a remarkably familiar continuity about them, and many use the same samples repeatedly. Still, it was utterly hilarious! And if that wasn't enough short attention spanned racket for you, for the first time ever in radio broadcast history, we invented a new radio format mixing in the ambiance of internet voice-chat! Yes, we were the first radio show ever to collage and text-manipulate an internet chat room live! They were totally shocked with what we were doing at first. We told them they were being broadcast, but it took them nearly twenty minutes until someone checked it out for themselves and found WRUW's netcast! All they could talk about for the next hour was why they could only hear "bits and pieces" of themselves "mixed with music and weird noises." It was pretty amusing, but we eventually got them to understand what our format was all about. Hey, we can't complain. After all, we got them to say "Wayne Butane" twice!

Episode 225: Crossfire International (10/29/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) This was the first radio show we've ever done requiring ALL of our patch cables, in addition to four mixing consoles, and our usual truck load of media sources. We collected about 20 controversial and uncensored hours of debate from people all over the world; mixed into a chef's salad of totally unmoderated debate on current issues. We emphasize a point here to eliminate potential confusion: these were tape recorded "conversations" (most of them in English) from foreign countries...NOT foreign talk shows. We always hear the talk show format where the "host" directs the conversation and has the final say on when it should change, but we haven't heard people (particularly non-North Americans) talking amongst themselves about the current issues in the Middle East in ANY broadcast medium....until now. Comments varied from informed and thought provocative to ignorant and racist. Participants were from all over the world, including the Middle East. Locally, our phones were ringing off the hook as our listening audience mistook our source material for live callers. Beneath all the insanely chatty collage were insanely mixed records and CD's of rare Arabian music and Short-wave broadcasts. This incredibly dense program might be best described as an explosion of thought summarizing the hidden global sentiments which the biased media would sooner ignore than admit. We had a 20 minute late start because of the elaborate equipment setup.

Episode 226: An Eastern Experiment Up The Middle (11/05/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) An experimental approach to cutting and pasting rare Arabian music for the first hour, to an even more surreal collage of Islamic lectures for the second hour. Each channel had its own collection of unique layers of lectures, entirely different from the other channel in both content and artistic approach. The third hour contained a great deal of telethon begging, since the first show of the telethon comes on right after we're done. Please note: The third hour has been omitted from the recording, so a purchased copy will only be two hours.

Episode 227: Telethon Collage: Volume One (11/12/01): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) Throughout most of this show, we were required to read off show specific telethon premiums and ask for our listeners to pledge to WRUW's annual telethon. We played several tracks from our discography, as well as the entire The Button...For Dummies album. For one hour, we had prepared a collage of WRUW DJ's begging on the air in the previous week; two begging sessions in the left ear layered on top of two more begging sessions in the right ear, all going on at the same time. It was hilarious! Twenty seconds couldn't go by without the phone number being mentioned. If you order this show, you will only receive our telethon collage mix, which was only one hour long.

Episode 228: The City (11/19/01): (Full Staffed) Imagine you could go back in time, to, say, 1966, and listen in on everything that is happening in New York City that the time. The shows, the demonstrations the water rushing to the city via cut-and- cover aqueducts, all sort of appearing out of ether, wherever we happened to point the microphone. Visit Greenwich Village, see the sights, take in an off-Broadway show, maybe even one with Martin Sheen in it, wear cotton clothing, listen to the beat poets, learn what to do during a nuclear attack ["put out the fires, and get the invalids out of town!"] and see the dam, which holds back the water, or take a sample of the water, put it in a pan, with a culture medium, and while we're at it, with all this talk of water, where the hell is Aquaman? Yes, this show includes Aquaman, and vintage New York City from the 1930's to the 1960's, with many references to the past New York City World Fairs.

Episode 229: New Time Radio (11/26/01): (Full Staffed) We stirred together various Old Time Radio shows, particularly their sounds (at least, that's what we were attempting to emphasize), and made a new surreal broadcast out of them. The titles ranged from the familiarity of Groucho Marx to the obscurity of The Stanley Brothers, not to mention the always fascinating Bob & Ray show. The majority of the show was a rather dense mix, but had enough stereo separation to make the dialogues reasonably clear. The fidelity of the recording you'll get here is about as good as a stereo 56K mp3 (from the studio, not the air signal however), since due to technical problems that's what we resorted to as our archive this week. Still sounds pretty great, surprisingly, since compressed old time radio still sounds like old time radio. You could probably work out a deal with us on this one.

Episode 230: Three shows for the good Doctor under with Skyy,/ Seven for Paul Ryan in his hall-like home,/ Nine for every man doomed to compi[le],/ One for the Dark Show in its dark studio,/ In the land of Cleveland where the Shadows lie./ One show to rule them all, one show to find them,/ One show to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,/ In the land of Cleveland where the shadows lie (12/03/01): (Full Staffed) In middle earth, long ago,/ Ere sound of song or twang of bow,/ Were tales of joy and tales of woe,/ Collaged on the Press The Button show./ Paul, Asbestos, and Every too,/ who never even mentioned 'shoe',/ And Tolkien stories not a few,/ Edited down to 'lectronic goo./ Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Beorn,/ With sound effects like those of horns,/ In each a separate version born,/ The samples were from programs torn./ So listen now with extra care,/ to samples here and samples there,/ To "Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings" fare,/ To the MP3 version that you must snare.

Episode 231: Burning Man 2001 - Act Two (12/10/01): (Full Staffed) Since we've barely tapped into the hundreds of hours of Burning Man material recorded this year, we thought we'd try it again. The bulk of it was played straight this time, since we hand picked source material that was extremely ecclectic on its own. Of course, we still did *some* effects here and there, not to mention a great deal of mixing in the audio onto itself *and* the many phone callers we got this week. We also mixed in a live-mic recording of a radio show every man performed while he was in the studio. You'd hear people walking in and out, paying compliments, asking questions, setting up for the next show, eating, cleaning, filing, and talking on the family radios (which are a substitute for telephones at Burning Man.) Some accoustic folk music got mixed in, some lounge music from a Tiki-lounge theme camp we came across, and various bits of electronica music could be heard while we walked the playa late at night. Lots of sounds of other people's conversations, footsteps, chainsaws, hammers, wind, and many cheers as the man finally burned. For more information on Burning Man, go to http://www.burningman.org

Episode 232: Welcome to the Onomatopoeticium (12/17/01): (Full Staffed) Depressed from the roller-coaster-like ride of the previous week attempting to lay hold of musicians from Oblerin College, every man, Paul Ryan and Dr. Asbestos did a header off the high board into a giant pool of noise, much of it explainable. It was our first attempt ever to make "noise," and we mean REAL noise. For the most part, it was successful, though at times the noises became coincidentally musical. Nevertheless, it was clear that the show's focus was to exhibit a large variety of sounds. Sounds taken from real life, ordinary and otherwise innocuous, were cranked down upon by keyboards, samplers, Dr. Asbestos not merely scratching, but clawing madly at records, and very hot microphones, extruded a symphony of the season, no, not that season. . . The season called "Winter"; cold and dark, the fag-end of the year in the deep past the twilight. In the words of one of listener's feedback: "It's very hypnotic and entrancing. Actually I am pretty sure after listening that I was put under your radio show's control. Is this all part of your master plan to take over??" Very deep listening, for the deepest part of the year.

Episode 233: A Christmas Commercial (12/24/01): (Full Staffed) Our very first Christmas themed show, when the holiday was actually relatively near. (I think last time we did one, it was in June?) We played a variety of cutup Christmas songs (even "ambient" Christmas songs!), several of them were the same song played by different artists being layered on top of each other. Intermixed between songs were modern toy commercials in their entirety, setting the stage for the next hour. We also announced the songs we were playing in proper DJ style...well, sort of proper. We poked a little fun at local talk show hosts, which I'm not entirely certain if even the local Clevelanders picked up on. In hour two, we played a one hour pre-produced piece "A Christmas Commercial" centered around the consumerism aspect of the holiday in contrast to the lives of those in less fortunate circumstances, who cannot buy/receive gifts in masses, featuring many US and British soldiers who were at war during the holidays many years ago. The timing for such a collage piece seeemd appropriate, given that at this very point in time there will be many soldiers overseas without their families who won't have the convenience of buying gifts at a local shopping mall. We finished the last hour playing our unedited Burning Corn performance, mostly uninterrupted by phone callers (as always, when the phone stops ringing, your voice is live on the air, whether we like it or not.) With what little time we had remaining, we played more "ambient Christmas music" by request.

Episode 234: The Record Playa (12/31/01): (Full Staffed) Eager for at least the illusion of warm weather, every man broke out the complete recordings of his on-air extravaganzas at the 2001 Burning Man with Nobody, occasionally referred to as "Uncl Rus". Dense and very, very dirty, these broadcasts were created live at the Man, on one of the many dozens of low-power radio stations that had been set up there, only this station was in Gigsville, of all the largest Burning Man villages for several years in a row. Snippets of noise, patches of rhythm, and extended suites of "adult themed" books on tape stampeded swirling like the dust storms that whipped across the playa, and as varied as the many settlements within Gigsville. If it could be compared to any other Button material, think "The Button. . .For Dummies!". Numerous callers added to the fray, talking along, or merely gurgling, matched the recordings so well that they sounded like part of the original broadcast. Almost all the recordings got played in their entirety, except for about 12 minutes worth of every man's farewell broadcast to Burning Man, which was often improvised in a beat poetry fashion by himself and three others who were professional writers of fiction. Though we only had three hours to squeeze it all in, this show packed a dense fist of playa dust hitting your right ear only to spill out of the left, in true spirit of the menwho burn there each and every year. An engaging listen.