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Year Six (Episodes 235-288)
Year 2002 Episode
288: Props (12/30/2002): (Full Staffed) There I was, inside
this Philip Johnson-circa-1958 home in idyllic western NY state. The
sparse huge trees and well tended grounds were just the other side of
the thick walls of glass framed with dull beams of a wood I had never
seen before, but came closest in description to walnut. It was overcast
and warm, Lake Chautauqua mere minutes away, and I decide from my ultra-lounge
lounge chair that I will finally help Carrot Top with his scheme, only
then to renege when I find out his true plans. He goes on, expecting
my support. It had something to do with a street in the neighborhood
of this house I was in, [but never did leave]; a street on a hill, like
that in nearby Mayfield, NY, only smaller and more aboricious. Carrot
Top's left in the dust, his plans collapse. Quite rightly, he blames
me. I'm now glad that there are only relatively tiny venting windows
at the tops of the glass walls of this house I'm in, because Carrot
Top wants to kick my ass. He's been working out and he's mad as hell.
He keeps pounding on the glass. He keeps charging it like a wild animal,
during which time I never realize that he is without any props. You'd
assume that he'd have some kind of goofy glass breaking utility, like
a portable Beverly Sills or something, but it's just his fists and feet
this time. He makes one last charge at the glass, kicking it wildly.
Then, the alarm screams to life!. The radio station it is tuned to is
kicking up about the Cleveland Browns as it jerks me awake. It was a
dream after all . . . and I presume it was generated by the radio show.
Call it "X-Mas" themed with new remodeled compositions of Yuletide favorites,
like 23 layers of White Christmas, Too Many Days of Christmas, Every
Saturnalia (beta), and "Crack Your Nuts To This", which might make Tchaikovsky
barf. Dr. Asbestos made an audio tour of the incoming waves of relatives
and festering new crops of holiday music by "modern" artists, as we
also heard from something like karaoke, from WRP, [not too much like,
though] and the Lost Scrolls from the Book of Frosty about the coming
of the Savior, his minions and vices, and the Virgin Mary's sweet ass.
. . or something like that. A fairly evil show, all in all, if it can
generate dreams like this. And the words, and the music, and what we
did with it . . . this is one of those few shows that will surely damn
us to hell. Episode
287: Nagoya Math Journal Subs Two (12/29/2002): (Full Staffed) Once again, we were
subbing for the infamous Nagoya Math Journal. Though this was a "full
staffed" show, it certainly wasn't a proper Press The Button format.
It was essentially a second attempt at last week's "966" without
the Recycled Crayon present. Make no mistake, there was no shortage of pornographic
disco content (some of it actually made by porn stars!) We also featured
some audio collage from our friends Stop Children, Stark Effect, stAllio!,
Michael Townsend, and Wobbly. Oh, and we proved that pornography leads
to drug use and Communism. Before leaving the air waves, we taught some
15 year old boys all the graphic details about puberty, sex, wet dreams,
and masturbation. As usual, we were bombarded with phone calls . . .
the most noteworthy of which came from Pimpdaddysupreme
and the PiSs. We asked people to give their New Year's resolutions for
2003, and instead they gave us extremely uncreative insults. For example,
"your show sucks worse than a Hoover vacuum cleaner" (that
was one of the more funny ones.) This show is only available as a
partial 1.5 - 2 hour program, since most of the music played during
the program was edited out. It will only be sold along side another
order, but not by itself. Episode
286: Feminine Dialogues (12/23/2002): (Un-Staffed,
Widget, Recycled Crayon) <written by the Recycled Crayon> Is
a woman’s perspective and methodology all that different from a man’s?
Having witnessed a few male audio collage shows that sometimes tend
to became male cock fights about trying to be louder, better, and bigger,
we got the inspiration to attempt our own show. What would happen with
women working together without men? Would the same thing happen? Would
they even approach it in the same manner and attitude as a man? Of course
there were certain unavoidable influences that needed to be taken into
consideration. Being closely associated with Press the Button, we were
naturally going to be unduly influenced by them and their approach to
collage. Considering this, our approach was familiar to the audience,
yet surprisingly unique. All the samples, readings, music, and songs
were about, composed by, and performed by women. To mention a few, we
played compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Helen Reddy, Cherry, Janis
Joplin, and Leslie Gore. Our topics covered a wide range of issues,
including the cultural and historical stereotypes of women and women’s
roles, the liberation movement, barriers faced by women in the work
environment, athletics, discrimination, self image, biology, health
issues, women in the military, female oriented cartoons, and the history
of prostitution. Also included in the mix were some lovely chords played
by Widget on her new guitar. Episode
285: Nagoya Math Journal Subs One (12/22/2002): (every man/Paul Ryan/Recycled Crayon) This show took place on Saturday
night, and our attitude reflected it (we were substituting for the Nagoya
Math Journal who couldn't make it this week.) We threw several pieces
of ear candy at you during this three hour carnival. Firstly, we bombarded
you with oodles of goofy and mindless chatter. Secondly, in between
our talk segments we spun some fun-filled records of audio collage music
composed by like-minded musicians. Finally, we provided you with a surplus
of ignorant, perverted, disrespectful, sexist, racist, indecent, and
closed minded phone callers. We often referred to ourselves as "966"
since our format often resembled that of "669," a local college
radio talk show which airs locally in Cleveland on WCSB, 89.3 FM. Some
of our callers were so spiteful with their comments that you could almost
consider their content to be "hate speech." We hung up on
them whenever we could, but they kept coming back. Despite the low level
of humor and intellect presented within this program, we had all
of our lines ringing off the hook well into the next program. This
show is only available as a partial 1.5 - 2 hour program, since most
of the music played during the program was edited out. It will only
be sold along side another order, but not by itself. Episode
284: 29 Times (12/16/2002): (Full Staffed) The show opens with the
song "RIAArt" (off "The System That Never Fails") representing a little
tribute to our recent critics and their small-minded zealotry. The sea
is a hard mistress, and takes many with her every year. This show is
a look at some of those unfortunates. Liquid sound and song ebb and
flow . . . long samples . . . largely unprocessed . . . settle to the
bottom . . . gently bending . . . deforming, under the pressure of the
water. Taken from documentaries and our own voices, the stories of just
a few of the many ships that now find harbor where only the giant kraken
go were slowly pieced together, weaving civilian tragedy [the Titanic]
to the detritus of war [the Bismarck] and everything in between [the
Turtle, the Edmund Fitzgerald, etc.] By the third hour, the storms calmed.
The music settled and Mary and Jimmy take a boat trip . . . [trip] [trip]
[trip] [trip] [trip] [trip] [trip] [trip] . . . we hear new music made
from the uninspired musical compositions that bathed the narrators during
several Titanic documentaries. Little rivulets of incidental music coalesce
and join, filling the pool of sound ever deeper, until all of the listeners,
with their water-jackets soaked through (and sunk beneath the surface),
smoothly blend with the Spacemen 3 of the next program. Far looser than
usual -- one of the most trippy shows this year. Episode
283: Remetaled (12/09/2002): (Full Staffed) Throwing you all for a
loop that the Washington D.C. Beltway would be proud of, we actually
performed Heavy Metal music! Okay, we didn't perform it, per se. We
sequenced it! Overall, this concept is no different from how
a hip hop or techno DJ carefully beat matches his music in a "cue"
mode before mixing it into his currently playing tune. We just decided
to pick a more unique and challenging format to use for the same purpose.
After spending several hours during the week gathering source material,
each of us presented an hour long composition of sequenced (or "beat
matched") guitar riffs from past and modern heavy metal music.
No vocals or drum solos, no intros or outros, and sorry . . . playlists
weren't included either. The first hour was simply titled "Remetaled,"
and was randomly composed without our listening to the piece while putting
it together. In essence it was "Remodeled Metal." The sequencing
approach was academic, in that the BPM's of all the riffs were matched
perfectly, but the random inclusion of what loop goes where made it
rather startling and humorous in several sections. The second hour was
made up of three sections: Remetaled A, Remetaled B, and Remetaled X.
This hour wasn't randomly produced, though mostly stuck to an academic
beat matching approach. Remetaled A was more like listening to a live
rock concert with a never ending (though constantly evolving) guitar
solo; that's how smoothly it was produced. Remetaled B was ambient in
its flow like a breakdown from all of the earlier monotony . . . giving
you mellow strumming with and without distortion pedals being used and
virtually no drums were included, if any at all. Remetaled X kept the
trance feel, but added drums and more distortion. This one evolved into
the most varied section of the three that hour offering a pleasant grand
finale. The last hour was called Every Metal, and was sequenced live
using two methods . . . computer software and CD decks with beat matching
capabilities. It flowed a bit differently from the first two hours,
in that the first half of the hour was usually playing three loops simultaneously.
It was a wall of heavy metal madness, constantly changing riffs every
few seconds . . . not that you'd ever know! The second half was a stark
contrast . . . more transcending, less chaotic, and kindly removing
a few levels of warp speed from your earlier drives (we're not sure
what that means either.) If you love heavy metal, you'll definitely
get a "name that tune" kick out of this program on Drinking
Game proportions. Even if you don't care for metal, you'll love what
we did with it. Episode
282: It's a Setup (12/02/2002): (Full Staffed) When a standup comedian
tells a joke, it can be broken down into two parts: 1). The setup, which
lays down the groundwork for the joke, and 2). the punch line, which
ties together the various loose ends that the setup laid out before.
We removed the punch lines from the 45 years worth of standup comedy
records we brought (which ranged from the white bread to the risqué.)
An audience laughter without a punch line is absurd. A joke without
a punch line isn't a joke . . . it's possibly just as absurd, since
this removes the nature of the joke. Some might refer to such a thing
as "dada." If you want to look inside the nature of jokedom,
you avoid the humor at all costs. This was probably the least funny
program we've done in a while, and possibly the most labor intensive
to put together. Samples would start, from Bill Cosby to Rusty Warren,
then stop . . . and stop . . . and what the hell happened to the show?
Oh there it is . . . some laughter and clapping. Then another sample,
and so on. Very spare, anti-flow, anti-rhythm, a hard look at a hard
job. Episode
281: Charlatans "OK" (11/25/2002): (Full Staffed) Three different hour long
presentations of a charlatan who "crosses over" daily, John
Edward. First hour is rather musical, second hour is more philosophical
and contemplative, and the third hour is densely chaotic. If you had
your doubts of this man before, hearing his statements cutup into over
4,000 phrases (thanks to over 48 hours of our meticulous masochism)
you'll be far more skeptical. Aside from constantly repeating "OK"
and "does this make sense to you?" you find that he is regularly
envisioning children with a name that starts with the letter "J"
(like JOHN?) and often "crosses over" to five families at
the same time (increasing the odds of his successful predictions by
400%.) We're not saying we don't believe him. We're open to the possibility
that he receives messages from the afterlife . . . as much as we're
open to the existence of an afterlife. In either circumstance,
we seek indisputable proof before passing final judgment. We certainly
don't deny the lack of indisputable evidence towards the opposing claim
that life is terminated when our physical bodies die. There's nothing
wrong with asking "what if?" However, we'd like to think this
program answers "because . . . " without asking for proof.
In this case, we spend three hours considering the source. Episode
280: Saran Wrap Silence (11/18/2002): (Full Staffed) Reeling in shock from the
cancellation of previously scheduled guest performer Varian Shepherd
(Silence Syndrome), The Buttoneers retaliated by doing everything in
their power to become Varian (hopefully without insulting his
dignity.) It is important to note the Button staff were basking in the
exaltation of a successful performance the previous night at the OCEA(n)
festival [where n is a variable.] There, they met many creative audio
artists and musicians, spending several hours discussing unique philosophies
and artistic approaches. This combination of conflicting emotions resulted
in the happiest, crunchiest, crankiest, noisiest show they have done
in a while. Extraordinary amounts of sonic creativity was afoot. The
intrepid Dr. Asbestos arrived with much keyboardage, and a truly knobolicious
new Yamaha sequencer. To be honest, he could have been a show by himself.
Much like his mind at the time, his fingers were a frenzy, determined
to find the structure within the chaos. His audible urges ceased to
terminate, yet continually gave birth to new forms of energy and feeling.
He was the oceanic tidal wave; building, crashing, giving, and receiving;
leaving his cohorts no other choice but to let go of their egos and
follow his sail. The redoubtable every man sat aside Paul Ryan on this
ship, rowing starboard with not only his sampler, but with CD players
he could prove actually work (unlike the unfortunate castoffs awaiting
service at the station) plus a new articulated frame to house his copious
gear that looks for all the world like a 7 foot tall steel cockroach.
Paul Ryan, rowing on the port side, finally developed the sequel to
the original "radoiophone", which utilizes what he calls "DUal PAth
Multi-band VarIable Output muLtitasking-intErface NeuroTronic technoLogY",
or DUPAMVIOLENTLY. As a result of this, Paul Ryan is no longer allowed
to create acronyms. Needless to say, there was so much static that Van
De Graaf would have wet himself out of joy, probably electrocuting himself
in the process. Frequencies surged and folded into each other (like
cake batter) filtered through an entire Siberia of electronic snow.
Shapes in the sound began to form ghostlike rhythmic asymmetric sonic
sconces in the deep velour wallpaper of the overwhelming noise. Specifically
generated pink noise came and went, followed by brown, which is usually
the way that goes, and the callers went out of their way to match the
mood as they plowed through the heavy seas of sounds. Everything got
turned way past eleven, finally culminating in the radoiophone 2.2 being
turned upon itself. The Button dropped the anchor with this device,
pulling in the very broadcast it was broadcasting, effectively turning
a 15 kilowatt transmitter into an instrument. After reaching the shore,
we began walking what proved to be an unusually broad edge between endless
heavy loops and utter feedback destruction. A very involving show. Episode
279: Animalistic Evolutions of Recycling (11/11/2002): (Full Staffed) The last of the performances
from Recycled Rainbow 4 that we plan to broadcast. We started by playing
the final hour of the event. This was a live improvisational acoustic
set, including every man, Paul Ryan, Billy Catfish, plus Micah &
Michael from the Nagoya Math Journal. This set was recorded with 3 microphones
placed in 3 different rooms, each one panned in a different direction
to give the listener the perspective of sitting right in the middle
of it all. It was recorded around 8 am Sunday morning, not that you
could tell. The sonic progression went from dadaist spoken word, to
melodic singing, to harmonic electronic noise. The second hour was the
Evolution Control Committee's
set, which started out as a tribute to the removal of pants only to
evolve into selected tracks from their new album "Plagiarhythm
Nation." Much of this hour was distorted because someone wasn't
watching the levels during the second half of his performance, but it's
still listenable for the banter in between the songs where the ECC described
the songs and asked the audience whether or not each track should be
included on the album. The show ended with one of our most favorite
performances, albeit the most noisy. Of course, it could only be the
Animals Within Animals
. . . and this time there were 8 of them! Sonic distortion, perverted
spoken word samples, radio white noise, and a whole mess of found sound
layered itself all over this hour long set of audio cacophonic explosions.
They would have played longer but the cops showed up and told us to
turn everything off. Episode
278: Billy Shepherd Journal Data (11/04/2002): (Full Staffed) More performances from
Recycled Rainbow 4. An extraordinarily psychedelic Billy Catfish started
off the hour with bluegrass guitar layered on top of a banjo playing
in reverse. He was followed by one of the most noisy performances we've
ever heard from Varian Shepherd (Silence Syndrome.) Varian's set started
out with dark ambiance, only to rise to an extremely high level of abstract
minimalist noise. The second hour was filled with the very first
debut live performance from the Nagoya Math Journal; a young group of
intelligent collage artists whose expertise range from Physics to Drama.
The sound of their overall performance was "like touching Jesus."
The third hour was filled with something that can not, should not, and
will not be elaborated upon. On record, it will only be referred to
as "data." Episode
277: Kevin's Tape Recorder (10/28/2002): (Full Staffed) Included many analog tape
recordings made before, during, and after the Recycled Rainbow 4.0 event
that took place on October 19th, 2002. Among these were selections from
the "dadaist tape recorder" which sat atop the bar during
the event, used as a cash register. Those who wanted a beverage of any
kind would be charged "sentences" before receiving their poison.
It was interesting to hear the tape progress, as it identified who drank
the most, and how far along into the realm of drunkenness each "customer"
was. We also featured several conversations among Pimpdaddysupreme,
Micah - Michael - Sean (of the Nagoya Math Journal), Your Girlfriend,
every man, Matt the PM, Connie McCue, Hetmana, and the Recycled Crayon.
The third hour was an extremely mashed up rendition of the Nagoya Math
Journal radio show which aired on WRUW the night the actual NMJ members
were at Recycled Rainbow 4.0 performing. This means, they weren't present
for their radio show! Instead, a kind fellow named "Kevin"
did their program that night, doing his best to emulate their style
of layering and collage. We took those three hours, injected some of
our own recordings, and squished them into one hour which resembled
an extremely long and dense version of A Big 10-8 Place (part 1)
by Negativland. Not sure why,
but this entire hour was rich in caller content (none of it directly
demanded any caller interaction.) We even lit up all the lines
a few times, something which hasn't happened in months. Episode
276: Audio Cock Fight (10/21/2002): (Full Staffed + WRP
+ Micah + Your Girlfriend + Recycled Crayon + Connie McCue + "Ann")
This show basked in the afterglow of Recycled Rainbow 4.0, featuring
many guests. They all did a program very much like their "regular" radio
jobs on the internet megastation, Radio
Freedom, but now with more wiring. Much needed to be set up, and
duct taped down, or ought to have been since there was no duct tape
which Paul Ryan decried. There was, however, Wasabi, rice, and jelly
doughnuts which helped alleviate Paul Ryan's pain. Once connected, everybody
who could, grabbed a family radio and promptly ran outside looking for
PDS, but ultimately found the cheese plate which is not the same thing.
Frequencies bent . . . even the EBS frequencies. The phones lit up like
the Christmas tree at Pomona on Beat the Heat Fridays. There was funk,
there was Speak and Spell in equal measure, Dr. Asbestos played a keyboard
sideways and backwards, but this caused him to deny his identity [he
was fed doughnuts until recovered] every man was doing. . . well, something,
there was certainly a lot of THINGS coming from his gear, not all of
which could be readily identified, Jim Lederer spoke, allusionarily,
by the bye, D^2 (Dr. David Dixon), there was something about Bonanza,
and it got noisier and noisier and louder and louder like we had just
spun the bearings on the main shaft and were about to go after the seals,
pulling an mini- Exxon Valdez all the way down the highway. Needing
to refuel, Team PTB pulled into the pits leaving Team WRP out in the
lead, backfiring sonically but roaring away with it all from 2:30 onward,
totally confusing the next DJ coming up no matter how many times we
explained it to him. We might have done a noisier show than this in
the past, but never with so much style. Episode
275: Exploiting Great Explorers (10/14/2002): (Full Staffed) This week we tried our
best to make some interesting art out of several hurriedly produced
and overall god awful documentaries. These found recordings attempted
to provide informative biographies on the world's most "famous
explorers," such as Davie Crockett, Daniel Boone, Jacques Cousteau,
Leif Ericson, Ponce De Leon, Marco Polo, A. H. Stanley, Lewis and Clark,
Christopher Columbus, and Richard Byrd. Rich in content, though always
careful with delivery... we meticulously saved your ears from being
constantly bombarded from the same boring narrators; and all their stale,
skeletal, and sloppy sentence structures (which were so obviously written
at the last minute as though the producers had guns held to their heads
from network executives who made promises they couldn't keep to the
world's most famous cable companies.) These documentaries came from
specialized and extremely content hungry cable channels
that never should have gone on the air in the first place. We hope you'll
enjoy how we gave a little meaning to the meaningless this week. Episode
274: Remote Listening (10/07/2002): (Full Staffed) Right now, there are aliens,
little gray men, in Nevada. You can see for yourself, all you have to
do is project yourself astrally. We'll tell you how. Ordinary folks'
encounters with "the grays", trips inside the vaunted Area 51, tours
of the Roswell Extraterrestrial Museum, and a hypnotically turbid explanation
of astral projection and remote viewing. Thin and straggling at first,
like faint blips on NORAD's radar, the many voices (some calm, some
hysteric) dip and weave together like those little spaceships across
the Oregon sky; built just like lifting-body planes, by the way, until
the smooth tones of astral projection filled the radio drop by drop
like water until the various little beeps and boops from the space noise
factory brought by Dr. Asbestos diluted into an ever-widening pools
of sound. So pervasive was that voice, that at the command to rest,
first Paul Ryan's hands and feet went numb, rapidly followed by his
falling into a deep sleep. This lasted about 20 minutes, when at the
command to wake, Paul felt what he described as an "electric shock evenly
distributed over my whole body" and was suddenly wide awake again. (Yes,
one of our staff members actually fell asleep on the air!) Ordinarily,
Paul claims he is not susceptible to that sort of thing. Only by buying
this program will you know for sure if the same can happen to you. Episode
273: Sierra Nevada Puree (09/30/2002): (Full Staffed) First 90 minutes were an
extension of last week's program, The Californian, with material
we never had a chance to get to (like the recording of my pulling up
into The Weatherman's driveway for the very first time, his washing
my feet upon our first meeting, and our first conversations together
in person.) The second 90 minutes slowly blended from Californian recordings
to older Nevada recordings. Those were interesting selections from the
Burning Man 2001 archives that we didn't get a chance to air last year,
mostly because there are over 50 hours of them. The "burning"
sections were as every bit surreal as the Burning Man event itself,
while Dr. Asbestos washed every single layer in his constantly evolving
and entrancing hypno-psychedelic melodies. Episode
272: The Californian (09/23/2002): (Full Staffed) A thick mix of all things
every man recorded during his trip out to San Francisco, where he stayed
with Negativland's David Wills & Richard Lyons. We started
out the first hour playing the entire hi-fi audio version of the KJR
Culture Jam, which was written and recorded by Richard Lyons to
satirize the false claim so many Clear Channel owned radio stations
make when they say they play the best hits of the 1960's and 1970's,
but always seem to include several tracks from the 1980's, though their
advertisements deny it several times each hour. The mix thickened with
several recordings of every man having discussions of artistic (and
non-artistic) natures with Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, David & Richard,
the Recycled Crayon, Alex (Kirby Hooks), and Wobbly. Alas, since the microphone
was wrapped around every man's neck, he was in the audio limelight much
more than he would have liked (even when he was drinking or eating.)
Also included is a 72 minute group jam recording every man composed
with David and Richard before leaving California. Dr. Asbestos performed
along side this recording nicely with his Optomin, adding a spacey layer
of sonic richness. The show's final hour mixed more of every man's field
recordings, which this time featured the 9/11 performance Negativland
members Peter Conheim and Richard Lyons put together, as well as an
endless array of answering machine messages left at David's house several
years ago. Episode
271: Amnesia: Part Decatur (09/16/2002): (Paul Ryan & Dr. Asbestos & Micah)
Having learned his lesson from last week's program, Paul Ryan remembered
all the equipment that he had forgotten to bring from last time. However,
he was so caught up with remembering that gear, he forgot his "Big Bucket
O' Cables", which connected all the parts together. Much chaos ensued.
Out of this rose a thick electronic "taco" sauce to cover the bowl of
rice brought by Micah of the Nagoya Mathematical Journal, who was, oddly
enough, using chopsticks as eating implements, instead of musical instruments.
Crazy. Suddenly every man called, stupefyingly turned into Matt the
PM, but then the REAL Matt the PM called, and possibly also Hetmana,
though Every swore that it was just a recording, but then again, by
that time, he had transformed himself into Every Jam, so some of his
statements may have become suspect. But not the ones about Decatur [sorry,
Indiana]. Several trips were taken into the very early dawn of techno,
acid house, Marrs, and The Sparks, of all people. When we were done
whomping those suckers, several records were scratched in rising anticipation
of the climax of Every Jam's surprise: Luscious Jackson really can be
remixed. A loopy, lunatic musical adventure. Episode
270: The Show That The Button Forgot (09/09/2002): (Paul Ryan & Dr. Asbestos)
every man forgot to show up; admittedly, he was in California getting
his feet washed by The Weatherman, David Wills, so he sort of had an
excuse, Paul Ryan forgot his keyboard, though he remembered its power
supply, and a bunch of cords he didn't need, which displaced space in
his bags that should have gone to other things he did need, like a microphone
clip; Dr. Asbestos forgot a number of items as well, such as an on switch
for his newly invented Optomin, the greatest advance in Theremin technology
since Lenin learned how to use one. Using specially developed optical
sensors, the Optomin "sees" the good doctor's movements, and generates
sounds from that movement. Coupled to Paul Ryan's first musical foray
into chopsticks, and Dr. Asbestos's ultra-analog, ultra- Realistic,
ultra-keyboard the sound was rich and varied, opening with what could
fool people into thinking they were real drums and gongs [they weren't,
it was super-Thunderbunnies-stylee'], dense walls of electronic sound
were erected atop PTB favorite whipping boy, Peter Jennings, who first
attacked us with a US Army sound weapon, identical to one of Dr. A's
keyboard presets, only then to morph into Tinky-Winky, as the third
hour dawned onto the bright smiling face of a Sun-God Baby and the Teletubbies
transported themselves onto the starship Enterprise [Enterprise-D, that
is] only to find themselves on the Holodeck program of a Buddhist temple
in 20th Century England, blowing, and getting blown by monks, forcing
those of us who could still comprehend what the heck was going on, to
chant. Extremely-Super-Tremendous call in appearance by both every man
and The Weatherman, which sounds redundant but isn't, a lot of gear
plugged into a phone, and presumably a big bottle of "alcohol", which
we assumed was rubbing alcohol, but you never know. Episode
269: The Pacific Theater of the Mind (09/02/2002): (Full Staffed) Is this what we
call the the greatest Generation? If you go by what these oldsters are
saying, the Japanese are pretty awful people, bucktoothed, nearsighted
people. At least during WW2. But war, even war samples, do that to you.
Close combat, cave-ratting, braving napalm and heavy shelling, it makes
you bitter. Samples of men crawling up beaches, watching friends die
or the USS Arizona blowing sky high, jumbled violently together like
the unending chaos of war, this program features the two who have become
WW2's usual suspects: Tom Brokaw and Stephen "does-this-man-have-no-other-job"
Ambrosia. Lots of callers added to the warlike chaos, sounds almost
seeming to come from the 60's age of computer music, whipped past like
tracers right and left, all in all a very cold and dark sound, for the
first two hours, island hopping and the sound of the shattered peace
in Pearl Harbor. ["You could only volunteer to be a flame-thrower, you
know."] And no, that's not the sound of a bong, that's cavitation sounds
of the screw from a midget submarine. Finally, David Brinkley restores
some order for a few brief moments in the third hour, only for it to
come completely apart, like many campaigns do deconstructing yet again
in the third hour, pouch by pouch, blow by blow, as Sinatra is a Japanese
black Jew, and so is Kermit the Frog, but only on the Ovarian calendar.
Then Ronald Reagan called. Shake your ass to this, clap your hands to
this, this war in the Pacific, WW2 was the Big Beat Revolution, Snoopycow
is rediscovered at the Paul Ryan Roast, and if you got 'em, smoke 'em.
Get high, get happy. Episode
268: Are You a Good Glitch, or a Bad Glitch? (08/26/2002): (Full Staffed) We have problems, the station
is full of glitches. Paul is losing his bass and Dr. Asbestos is inside
every man's stomach. In a rather violent break from our norm, we tread
heavily upon the toes of other specialty electronic artists and prove
that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to create this, even our callers
glitched us as we talked about glitch...talk about symmetry. We briefly
discussed "bootlegs," compared them to Remodeled Music, read
off the Top 13 Greatest Glitch Albums Ever, tested the new TELOS system,
discussed various methods of making "glitch," talked about
Kid606, discussed art vs. entertainment, and made tons and tons of outstandingly
loud and obnoxious "glitch" music on the fly, having never
truly defined the term for our listeners, or ourselves. (Glitch is apparently
a method of creating new music using super tiny "partials"
of old music, with total disregard to keeping any original rhythm structure
or context...often parts of words are spliced together too, resulting
in a completely incoherent mixture of noise without any comprehensible
lyrics.) The third hour was quite possibly the most noisy and chaotic
we've ever sounded, with glitch coming from NINE different sources.
The entire show features brand new music from The Button, including
songs that exhibited different approaches to making "glitch"
from Dr. Asbestos, Paul Ryan, and every man. Episode
267: From an Old Depression to a New Deal (Part II) 08/19/2002): (Full Staffed) This time, instead of the
generalities of the decade, we focused upon the Great Depression. It
was appropriate, really. It was late, we were tired, and the low mood
of the show fed into our pacing of the program, enhancing the feeling
of downtrodden-ness and out-of-luck-ability. Even Groucho attempting
to lighten the mood seemed hollow and distant [Or was that the Weatherman?
There were several calls of cribbed phone conversations, some of which
were undoubtedly from that big Berkeley pixie]. There were more important
things to worry about, like food, or getting a job, even a bad job,
or getting that Army bonus. Nobody wanted to have sex (except Mae West),
all you could do was listen to the radio or go to the movies, assuming
you afford even that. However, as even depressions go, the pace picked
up by the third hour. The mood lightened. Buck Rogers was asleep in
Niagara. A bunch of young idealistic Communists called up, demanding
the overthrow of capitalism, or perhaps capitalism. They seemed against
big record labels, too, but what they got was The Crucifix Switch, (everybody's
doing it) rammed right up their atheistic asses. There's
a reason they called it depression. Episode
265: Party Like It's 1929 (08/05/2002): (Full Staffed) Back in the Old
Days, there was no good music, no sex, no fun. Wrong. Reminding our
younger listeners [anyone under 60] that back in the day, the Roaring
20's really roared, even if it is Peter Jennings and that guy from "Front-line"
doing the narrating. There was booze, and sex, rumble seats to have
booze and sex in, barnstorming airplanes to watch people having booze
and sex from, and when you have this much booze and sex, you usually
have at least one flapper mixed up in there somewhere (or more like
a dozen or so) plus a bunch of vamps and the occasional "it" girl. Jungle
Music thumped away, that's what they called that early jazz coming from
Harlem, sometimes taking on a modern beat but the vast majority was
unaltered from the days when they were new. We dare you to say that
the original version "Happy Feet" does not kick ass. Yes, they had BPM
back then too, right along side the fast cars, college sex parties,
and a dapper Jay Gatsby in that blasted pink suit of his. Bonnie and
Clyde, Scarface, the Great Waldo Pepper, and Babe Ruth all made special
appearances as well. The landscapes were cut-up, glitched, bootlegish
mash-ups of ragtime and jazz from the era that hailed such great composers
as Gershwin, and gave birth to the great anti-art movement named "Dadaism."
Sonically, this is a lighter, more thought-provoking arraignments of
samples, to the casual listener this could pass as an actual avant-garde
documentary. Episode
264: Playing with a Handicap (07/29/2002): (Full Staffed) This week, we brought in
all of our regular DJ equipment, mixing boards, effects boxes, guitar
pedals, source material, microphones, etc., and instead of setting it
up...we thought about it....and thought some more. Ultimately we decided
we've grown too dependent on our gear, and the mere notion of "perfecting"
ourselves. We've tried so hard, week after week, to have a certain special
unique sound from any other radio program that you've ever heard in
your life that we've ended up sounding the same. We've perfected a certain
sound that we've been going for, but have totally forgotten about the
impetus behind our show. We've forgotten about the "vibiance"
and the "pancultural medium" that we've been attempting to
prove evidence of in our every ounce of spent energy. We decided against
setting up our equipment...and instead, gave ourselves a handicap. We
optioned to rely totally on the radio station's equipment, something
we hadn't done since we had our very first program. The idea here was
to prove a point...that we do not need all of our fancy electronic gear
to do what we do...we wanted to prove that we could "culture feed"
using the most primitive setup available if we had to, and by doing
so, we hoped to avoid getting into "formula writing" and invigorate
our cause, our very reason for performing this kind of audio art every
week without ever receiving a cent. We put off our scripts, our source
material, and all of our regular gear for another week. We went into
WRUW's vast record library, grabbed whatever seemed interesting to us
in a 15 minute period of time, and sat ourselves down in front of a
couple of their turntables, turned on their microphones, fired up their
simplified non-scalable center-panned digital mixing board, and took
the difficult challenge of having to entertain our listeners for the
next three hours having nothing at hand but the minimal setup before
us. It was as though someone picked us up, tossed us into a teleportation
machine, and made us appear in some strange and unfamiliar place that
had nothing but a few pieces of standardized gear that your typical
club DJ would be content with. We were surrounded by records we've never
seen before, but forced to find a way to make them entertaining in an
art form this place has not yet seen or heard. We would prove that we
can do this with two hands tied behind our backs if necessary. We proceeded
to do this with great gusto, deceiving our listeners by saying that
technical problems made it impossible for us to do our normal show this
week, so we're going to "wing it" instead of doing a re-run.
We removed the spit socks from our microphones and stuck them into our
A/C units. We also stuck them in our rotating fans, as well as the radio
station's vacuum cleaner. We narrated the job a typical DJ has, and
broadcasted all of the sound effects you'd normally hear in a radio
station behind the scenes, including someone handwriting documentation
on the station's log, tape splicing, cleaning tape heads, cleaning vinyl
records, and picking out music from vasts amounts of plastic CD's clicking
and smacking together. We had fun doing a cut/paste with an old anti-drug
record which focused some of its content on Johnny Cash, we ridiculed
some early 80's electronica, we made some interesting rhythms by blowing
on our microphones in unison, we tested the "hiss" problems
going on with the main microphone in studio B, and we made some more
prank phone calls to WCSB, declaring that "the DJ just kicked the
narrator's ass!" Digging back into our collective audio collage
roots, we rooted through the endless collection of rare and unusual
vinyl in WRUW's record libraries, [do you remember the soundtrack to
the movie "Battle From Beyond The Stars"?] scratching them together
atop a thick background of every noisemaking object and machine we could
reach with our microphones. In hour two, that's when every man described
what was being played rather than playing it on the air, while Paul
and the good doctor struck a treasure trove of reel-to-reel recordings
of Turkish radio programming and "Sam Snerd, Space Detective", possibly
produced in 1983. If that wasn't enough, we spent the entire final hour
performing an amazingly thick deconstruction of classical music, with
layers upon layers of backwards and forwards pianos, violins, horns,
vocals, and strings...using cassettes, CD's, and tons of vinyl. Yes,
it was the world's first live three-way performance of the Thunderbunnies'
song "The Battle of Britain plus 7", a turbid meandering of every classical
work that could be played at once, by hand. Electric motors are for
sissies. The show had no proper intro or outro, as though it wasn't
even Press The Button on the air this week...which was a wonderful feeling
of relief...to go outside your own parameters, to re-define your own
category. and to once again discover your original purpose....which
we once again found in Press The Button. Episode
263: Mixed Fruit (07/22/2002): (Full Staffed) A three hour blend of random
silliness from the past; including the Ryan Report, noise programming,
sine waves, yoga music, lucid dreaming, heavy breathing, phone callers
trying to get us to tune into WCSB, and dadaistic sampling. Plus, for
the first time in radio, we introduced the new concept of illegally
playing netcasts from other radio stations over the air! (note: many
times in the past we've done this with internet radio but we heavily
processed them. This is the first time we played them clean...even announced
what we were doing.) The idea here isn't to get off on the fact that
this is illegal...but to show why it shouldn't be, since we were obviously
not using these radio programs as substitutes for our own, but as complements.
Episode
261: Weezer Sucks (Recycled Rainbow 3.0 Sessions Volume 3) (07/08/2002):
(Full Staffed) This was easily the most
surreal show we've had so far this year. Our very first caller went
on the air before our show's intro, asking us to play a local
band named "Brother Phoenix." We didn't hear her very well,
and assumed she was asking us to play her "brother's penis."
She had a sense of humor, but alas, not a regular listener. She described
them as a band that would blend in well with typical classic rock bands
which wouldn't fit any show within a 6 hour block before or after
our show. It was a highly amusing conversation, to say the least. When
then went on bring you what was supposed to be the third and final playback
show of the performances held at Recycled Rainbow 3.0 described in episode
259. We played back performances in sequential order from Hetmana,
Workshoppe Radio Phonik,
and Silence Syndrome (Varian
Shepherd.) Hetmana's track is composed of multiple layers of found sound
(emphasizing natural sound) into a somewhat rhythmic trance....the
structure is so incredibly subtle it's nearly impossible to notice,
but it's indeed there. It does get invaded my spoken word samples every
so often, but gives off the feeling of sitting out in the middle of
nowhere in the early morning with your eyes closed, with birds chirping,
trains passing, and the earth trembling below you. Hetmana admits that
this piece was purely inspired by the fact that her performance at a
previous Recycled Rainbow gathering manipulated my dreams....so she
decided to make a piece purely directed towards dream manipulation.
To change things up a bit, I played both of her versions of this piece
at the same time (she did two different live performances at RR3.) The
end result was....environmental sound meets ambient trance? Throughout
this hour, a couple people kept calling and hanging up, obviously expecting
us to answer with "hello?" I recognized one of the voices
as our first caller, in the background, saying "what the fuck is
going on?" Before the hour ended, we played some highlights from
the WRP setup session. Lots of busy chatter, sound effects, and dadaistic
statements coming from Being Generic (previously Beating Eric), Mark
Gunderson of the ECC, and
Quahogs. The
second hour contained about 50 minutes worth of WRP's set, which was
cut about ten minutes short due to an unprecedented non-stop
onslaught of callers who became a show by themselves. One caller alerted
us to a "moaning contest" that WCSB (Cleveland State University's
college station) was holding (the winner got free tickets to see Weezer.)
So we called and heckled them, and they played along, knowing full well
they were being broadcast. Eventually we tried getting WJCU (John Carol's
college station) into the mix, but they wouldn't play along (though
we still broadcast the conversation.) Needless to say, Weezer took quite
a bashing from the callers, not to mention ourselves. What could be
heard of WRP's set was a mix of freestyle rapping, bootlegs, real electric
guitar being played by Matt the PM, drum beats, family radios, and oodles
of fantastic noise, blending perfectly with the callers. To make things
more bizarre, approximately every third caller was David Wills
from Negativland. This
brought us into our most surreal hour ever, the one belonging to Varian
Shepherd. First 15 minutes entertained us with Varian's setup session,
overlaid by freestyle rapping done by Pimpdaddysupreme, Quahogs, and
Being Generic. Varian's set went into full force 10 minutes into the
hour, with an extremely psychedelic blend of ambient drone, voices,
and radio static. The callers followed suit, getting weirder, progressively
more spacey, and most certainly more drunk and high (you could tell.)
All three phone lines would constantly light up, and then we'd clear
them all (tech term for "hung up on them"), and then they'd
light up again immediately. Even David Wills stayed with us throughout
the third hour. An adjective like "surreal" does little justice
in describing this program. We don't know exactly what it was about
Hetmana, WRP, or Varian that brought about this madness...but we truly
feel it can be traced to one common source...the statement "Weezer
Sucks!" Episode
260: Recycled Rainbow 3.0 Sessions Volume 2 (07/01/2002): (Full Staffed) This is the second of three
playback shows we're doing of the performances held at Recycled Rainbow
3.0 described in episode 259. We played back performances in sequential
order from Richard Holland,
Animals Within Animals,
and Quahogs.
This show was pretty caller heavy around the second hour, which somewhat
trampled the performance from Animals Within Animals...but that was
okay, since one of the most involved participants was stAllio who is
actually in the band. To quote stAllio: "You cannot ruin
that which is already ruined." In the third hour, callers and psychobabbling
layered the DJ set from Quahogs, and eventually, so did the final 15
minutes of the AWIA set...as we attempted to play them both together,
wondering if doing so would result in an atomic explosion. It didn't,
but our heads were in great pain (great meaning really good.)
The Richard Holland set was a mix of spoken word, heavy beats, and song
samples. It was quite rhythmic, accessible to the ears of the "noise
haters", yet attractive to the lovers of found sound audio art.
The spoken word samples were longish, as his intentions weren't recontextualization...rather
they seemed to beg the question "what if these oddball words were
layered on top of this totally irrelevant music?" It seemed to
work all the time, but only Richard Holland himself would ever think
to put such sounds together in such a seamless and creative way. The
AWIA set was outright noise...not in the way Merzbow (or a machine factory)
would be....let's put it this way: You know when you're driving on the
highway and one radio station starts fading out, and another one starts
fading in, and sometimes you hear pure static and white noise? Imagine
10 radios doing that at once (but they all are tuning in different sets
of two stations), and imagine the volume being 10 times as loud...that's
a VERY close representation to this hour of pure cacaphonic bliss, which
also utilized stereo panning to some extents. Though they weren't meant
to be THE headlining band, they really stole the show in my opinion.
We cannot fall back on "louder is better" as a formula for
success, so I won't...but I will say the mix was extremely diverse,
creative, and verbally entertaining. Their intro saluted everyone at
the gathering with spoken word samples cut up to read the desired text,
and their entire mix was a blend of random noise and NOT-SO random spoken
word samples...the contents of which were hysterically funny at times,
so it's quite obvious they meant to include them in their set eventually.
These qualities kept you interested, no matter what your favorite flavor
of found sound sampling was. I guess you could say they had a little
bit of everything for everybody? The Quahogs set was an eclectic mix
of Drum&Bass songs, and was on very early in the day. It's one of
those sets that can be interesting on two levels...using it as background
music or using it as a point of focus (as is the case with a really
good DJ.) It's something that worked better visually, he was really
fun to watch, but that's the case for all three of these performances.
I hate to give the "you had to be there" line, since I strongly
feel all these performances stood on their own musically, but obviously
they were enhanced when experienced in person. Keep in mind, if you
buy this program, you'll be getting some chatter on top of the sets
that wasn't included in the originals, from ourselves and callers...and
some of the sets were slightly pitched down or pitched up to make them
blend better with whatever layer we were mixing them with (especially
the AWIA track.) I wouldn't rank this show any better or worse than
last week's, though the audio fidelity of our recording was 56 kps stereo
mp3 since out main recording gear failed this week. The mp3 has one
advantage, it was recorded from the studio signal (not the air
signal.) It's still good, but we had to be honest with you...it's not
the best fidelity we can offer. Episode
259: Recycled Rainbow 3.0 Sessions Volume 1 (06/24/2002): (Full Staffed) A playback show of the
performances held at Recycled Rainbow 3.0 (a party we had last weekend
which focused its theme on the peak of the salon era.) This week's show
highlighted performance from that gathering, specifically those from
The Evolution Control Committee
+ Beating Eric (or Being Generic), King
Wilson + Billy Catfish,
and Chris Richards + Hetmana. The ECC segment was particularly strange,
though stuck to the salon era as much as it could....and included a
theremin, ancient record players, and genuine 78's from the 1920's.
Mark Gunderson rarely spoke, but played the theremin for all it was
worth, constantly changing his method of playing, his melodies, and
processed effects. His partner, Beating Eric, played old 78's on a couple
old school turntables (not using "old school" in the slang
sense...they literally came from old schools.) From time to time,
Beating Eric would get on the microphone and read excepts of dadaistic
statements he brought with him. A few times in the mix, recordings of
conversations held earlier on in the evening were heard. The performance
featuring King Wilson and Billy Catfish was outright unique, as they
featured a man playing a guitar (Billy) combined with another man using
sound making software on his laptop (King.) Noisy at times, but mostly
melodic with a good deal of digital drumming which constantly changed
its frequency, pitch, and structure. Chris Richards finished off this
program with his extremely psychedelic and progressive guitar licks,
not to mention his usage of over $1,000 worth of effects pedals. Though
this time around, he had a partner, Hetmana, who combined her violin
with Chris's guitar to add to the improvisational yet colorful sounds.
To make things even more dense, we mixed Chris's performance from Recycled
Rainbow 2.0 a few decibels underneath this one. It was impossible to
tell you there were two different shows going on at once, but your mind
would definitely bend 90 degrees hearing an already psychedelic performance
layered on top of another one. It sounded like a band of 4 or 5 guitar
players going their own directions, yet at the same time, carefully
harmonizing with one another. As usual, as if this needed to be said,
people who called the show were immediately put on the air on top of
the mix. Consider this a variety show of sorts...each hour was 100%
different from the next. Episode
258: Clams Never Neglect Workshoppe Radio (06/17/2002): (Full Staffed + WRP,
Quahogs, Connie, and Recycled Crayon (fomerly known as Recycled Crayon))
Special guests from the weekend's avant garde salon explorations
with a bit of quadraphenia (or is that quadrophenia?) mixed in. A 'sound
telethon' of sorts was held...possibly against the will of the average
WRUW listener (but then again what is an average listener, right?) DTMF
tones abound, Matt the PM and Pimpdaddysupreme mixed it up with a bit
of soundraising campaigns whilst Quahogs spun random blasts from the
past. Connie manned the landlines, taking the calls...as flooded as
they were. This was by far the most active PTB in terms of telephone
calls. Dr. Asbestos and Paul Ryan were in the house...spouting words
of wisdom. EM insisted on sampling and holding Matt the PM....which
Matt actually liked... The end of the program ended up in a chorus line,
all parties singing the phrase, 'He is a smart assssss....he is a smart
asssssssss...'. every man ended up threatening to mute PDS's ass near
the end for clipping issues (apparently, PDS shaved a bit too close).
Matt the PM left his handtruck at the WRUW studios...and he is wondering
if it is still in service....? Alas, a fun time in Cleveland.....yes,
yes...yes...YES?!? There's no one on your line.... Naw, I'm expecting
a call...... Episode
257: every man is Talking (06/10/2002): (Full Staffed) Virtually no collage this
week, so we can thankfully lay that overused word to rest. Instead,
since our show kicked off the 2002 WRUW telethon, we included a lot
of relatively straight spoken word content. This might have bothered
some people, particularly those who told our telethon answering service
to "shut the fuck up and play some audio collage." Oh well,
we meant to make this program somewhat minimalist for the sake of variety,
in addition to contrasting last week's and next week's program. Mixed
within our mandatory telethon talk breaks, we played samples of an extremely
high every man discussing the history of Press The Button in great detail,
and how he and Paul Ryan met for the first time. (We emphasize that
these samples came from "recordings" of every man.
He was not in the studio getting high, as WRUW bans DJ's for that sort
of thing.) Mixed within the mix within THAT mix were samples of Paul
Ryan reading from the revised Button Manifesto, which at the time of
this writing is still a work in progress. Near the end of the show,
when every man started discussing the snuggles mailing list, we played
some tracks from the snuggles Dictionaraoke webpage, and some of our
favorite 'bootleg" tracks from various snuggles artists. No callers.
It's policy that all incoming calls during telethon week get picked
up by the telethon answering personnel. Good show to buy if you're interested
in how this whole program got started, and if you don't mind slightly
reverberated voices panning left and right all over your head for three
hours. Episode
256: Charlie Parker, Pray For Us (06/03/2002): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) Nearly 150 minutes of new music made
from Charlie Parker fragments. Charlie Parker is often viewed as one
of the most inspirational and innovative jazz musicians of all time,
particularly to the dadaists/surrealists, like Jackson Pollock (who
often listened to Parker while painting his most abstract works.) Some
parts were new songs with new rhythms, some were new melodies, often
backwards, some were a variety of loops layered and compounded into
nearly unbearable harmonies, and other sections resembled modern electronica
in its repetitious trance-like nature. We had some stunningly creative
callers, including those from the Evolution
Control Committee, Matt
the Prodman, and Pimpdaddysupreme.
ECC found some samples from movies which made mention of Charlie Parker,
and Matt and PDS coincidentally called at the same time to play instruments
at us over the phone, not to mention their rather surrealistic conversations
with a random person who walked into our studio...an odd man with an
obnoxiously loud voice. The recording is nearly a half hour short of
three hours because we edited out all the WRUW telethon promotional
chatter. Episode
255: Art Techniques: Painting & Drawing (05/27/2002): (every man & Paul Ryan & Recycled Crayon) Despite that we were all
suffering from colds and food poisoning (I'm not joking, 6 hours before
the show we could barely move), we decided to show up anyway to bring
you this audio collage of artists creating visual works of art, specifically
drawings and paintings, layered with relevant documentaries and instructional
videos. (We felt a bit better once the meds kicked in, and figured they
could provide unexpected artistic results.) Surprisingly, this show
was caller heavy, including calls from Negativland's
David Wills and the Evolution
Control Committee with his friend Irene Moon. The sound scapes were
often unusually quiet, with only the sounds of our scribbling pencils,
swirling brushes, squeaky erasers, rustling papers, canvas adjustments,
and stirring water jars (of course, some of these were processed, panned,
layered, sampled, recycled, and even pitch bent.) In the third hour,
Paul Ryan and every man took callers (mostly internet listeners) to
discuss how the visual arts could be compared to the audio arts, the
legitimacy of "random art" or "accidental art",
and whether art which is not displayed or shown is truly art. Though
less dense than our usual style, it was quite inspirational for the
visually creative among us. Don't take our word for it, see for yourself: Episode
254: The Jedi Bastards (05/20/2002): (every man
& Dr. Asbestos) A reflection of society's frequently rekindled
obsession with George Lucas's Star Wars films, a legacy which has now
been heavily in our faces for over a quarter century; making a radio
show theme concerning this topic completely inevitable. We offered an
abundance of media coverage from past and present, several songs made
from the movie's dialogue and music, a multitude of parodies, interviews
with the cast, their appearance on Sesame Street in the 1970's, audio
from amateur films dedicated to Star Wars, a vast number of related
audio books, instructions as to how to build your own R2D2 unit, a special
audio bootleg copy of Episode II: Attack of The Clones, relevant Saturday
Night Live routines with the original cast, snippets of the Star Wars
movies translated to various foreign languages, cutup and layers from
the actual films themselves, original movie trailers, tons of sound
effects, space cruisers zooming around your head, bad Star Wars jokes,
lots of profanity, and perverted heavy-breathing phone callers. Never
a dull moment. Special thanks to Peter Lopez for providing a
lot of the more rare source material. Episode
253: When in Rome... (05/13/2002): (every man
& Dr. Asbestos) A rather not so serious attempt to cover
reasonably serious subject matters: the rise and fall of the Roman Empire,
tourism of modern Rome, operas/plays that took place in Rome, and just
about anything that played a role in shaping Rome's modern culture.
Some highlights involve snippets from a hysterical old video
tour guide of Rome that we recently acquired, and an equally amusing
instructional tape for instructors who wish to teach the Shakespearean
play "Julias Caesar" to their students (the narrator pauses
every 4 words, regardless of whether the pause actually belongs there.
If this guy truly is an instructor, he certainly doesn't teach "Public
Speaking.") We had some new female caller on with us for the entire
first hour and a half, and were surprisingly treated to calls from fellow
friends like The Evolution Control
Committee and Ball200. We
also received a few Dictionaraoke
calls, which we strongly suspect came from the Workshoppe
Radio Phonic guys. We got side tracked from the theme several times,
but usually in a good way. Despite being particularly noisy at times,
the content was rarely dense, as we tried hard to leave the listener
a lot of breathing room. Often we'd get on the microphone and get extremely
silly with the callers, asking people to talk to us in Latin, taking
our pants off in the studio, asking for real Romans to call in,
giving ourselves rim shots to statements that weren't even jokes. Due
to a few other elements like that in the mix, we strongly felt the content
was a little reminiscent of our good shows in 1998-99. It even
had our signature overly delayed and heavily distorted departure of
noise. APODICTIC! Episode
252: Wain 1346 (05/06/2002): (Full Staffed + Recycled Crayon) In the
first hour, each of us recited recycled and rearranged text...some of
it we email this week to an internet mailing list called "snuggles,"
whose members kindly bombarded us with more of the same. These emails
were cut and pasted together into a nice 8 page document which we later
rearranged a little bit more, added it to our existing text, and incorporated
it into our program this week. Underneath the spoken word text was ambient
landscapes created by Dr. Asbestos, and phone calls from who we think
was Pimpdaddysupreme, who helped out a great deal in reading us technical
manuals, cutting up digital recordings on the fly, and cross fading
between two turntables which blared awful children's records. In the
second hour, Dr. Asbestos began reading selected phrases within several
newspaper clippings, our voices began to change, and every man took
charge of supplying the transcending landscapes beneath the sometimes
nearly whispering words, which were often distorted and inaudible. At
one point, it became more about the "sound" of the spoken
word, and the meaning became "meaningless" so the clarity
was intentionally removed. To help emphasize the "lack of meaning"
Dr. Asbestos got more complex with the spoken word context editing formulas,
as every man became more minimalist and repetitive, hoping to get you
to ride the sound and only the sound. If you made it this far, the extremely
psychedelic final hour made your head spin. Words were going backwards
and forwards, pitches were bending up and down, channels were panning
left and right, bags were ruffling, newspapers were crinkling, cans
were opening, throats were gurgling, people were singing, and Paul Ryan
was playing...yes, Paul Ryan composed at least half of the third hour's
soundtrack, as the other half was composed by our special guest performer
"Recycled Crayon," who composed actual music from visual art!
No, not "for" but from...she actually had sounds coming from
visual works based on their textures, colors, patterns, densities, levels
of shading, and sizes. Was this entire show Dadaist audio art
by definition? Perhaps. Or, perhaps this was our most juvenile and "pointless
beyond pointlessness" program to date. Nevertheless, it's one of
our personal favorites. Episode
251: Sine Language (04/29/2002): (Full Staffed) Your present dimension
is left uncertain, as sine waves replace oceans, and your concept of
direction is completely dictated by what side of your head they flow...bells
are eventually replaced by slowly moving random tones, which are eventually
replaced by the never ending organ dirge, which is ultimately filled
in by the looped, panned, and reverberated half of a piano chord, which
bends itself slowly upwards for an entire hour. The callers begin to
abstractly scream their dismay in a surrealistic fashion at the never
ending harmonics of the hour, when it suddenly ends without their awareness...and
is replaced by a looped test tone signifying the next radio show has
begun. The announcer declares you WERE listening to Press The button,
but are now hearing something else. They still don't get it, and despite
having been on the phone for the past half hour, they continue spewing
out their bizarre rhetoric. For your listening pleasure, we tapped on
the few key moments of the next show into this recording so you too
can enjoy the experience. Both minimalist and trippy, this one is certain
to appeal to the hardcore Ambient music fan. Episode
250: Parking Cars in the Collage (04/22/2002): (Full Staffed) The sound of a car's engine
spins around your head from left to right...and then from the opposite
lane a new car drives from the right back to the left. In depth documentaries
get mixed together teaching you all there is to know historically (in
fragments) about over 20 types of cars, from the Nissan Z-Type to the
earliest Model-T Ford. For a solid three hours, in classic "buttonizing"
style, the three recycling amigos consistently cutup, sliced, crushed,
shuffled, and dealt out the automotive sonic cards in a newer and far
more interesting presentation than if these old documentaries were left
alone. We get to hear classic car commercials, classic corporate jingles,
and helpful tips on buying your own car. Near the end of the third hour,
the Button trio goes into some sort of musical trance, combining musical
fragments of car commercials with Dr. Asbestos's electronic synth and
drum beats. Humorously, rather notorious local phone caller named "No
Money Mark" called several times asking us "are you finally
going to tell me what this is you're playing? Hello, can you hear me?"
Other than "Vroom Vroom," he never got an answer. A narrator
declares, matter-of-factly, "Cars were everywhere." Episode
249: Poetic Remnants (04/15/2002): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) Leftovers
from a lost generation of sound, partly the old beats, partly the old
hipsters, but namely last week's radio show. With so much work having
gone into it, we couldn't possibly use it all...and
we had many more ideas leftover that just wouldn't have properly fit
the theme; such as uninterrupted poems from some not so famous beat
poets (sorry: no Burroughs, Cage, Ginsberg, Kerouac this week.) With
deconstructed sounds and music rushing
underneath their voices like the thawing top layer of ice on a creak
in the spring, the beat poets stand knee deep within it as they speak
their inspired words without any cutups or interruptions from us. If
you are looking for cutups, we got that too! In at least an hour of
the show, we feature the background music of Charlie Parker being fragmented,
looped, constantly panned, and pitch shifted to the point of almost
resembling modern electronica trance. It took about 5 hours to put that
together, as it was composed of 2 completed hours of cutup music, carefully
put together in layers. The show finished with a caller telling us how
much influence we've had on his dreams, as he wakes up and falls asleep
on a regular basis while listening, never knowing which state of reality
is the real one. So we put this question forward...what defines reality?
Episode
248: Detritus (04/08/2002): (every man & Dr. Asbestos) Detritus
primarily refers to loose fragments or grains that have been worn away
from rock. It can also refer to accumulated material or debris. In this
case, we made a show from a great deal of the latter definition, though
only in fragments, which suits the former definition. We took them all
and created three unique hours of "reconstructed" (none of
it was left in its original form) works of music, gathered from the
era of the "musique concrete", Dadaism, and the age of the
hipster. Many excerpts were taken from audio art made by visual artists.
They key here is that it was all "reconstructed" into something
newer, and in some cases it's quite possible we made them better. With
over 40 hours of production going into this program and over 400 hours
of source material to choose from, this was extremely involved from
a technical standpoint, and has become our most ambitious effort to
date. The sounds of coughing, crying, and laughing swim around your
head while deconstructed violin strings dance below them, snippets of
words coming from John Cage get dispersed over Germans chanting "dada
doy dada doy", and complete works of classical music get cut (using
syntax cuts) into over 600 pieces only to be randomly "reconstructed"
into a completely new composition that some may call "detritus"
and other may call "music." Episode
247: Railroad Radio (04/01/2002): (every man & Dr. Asbestos + Workshoppe
Radio Phonic + Your Girlfriend (via the internet) A wild, somewhat informative,
and often noisy trip from the newly developed railways of the past to
the most recently developed locomotive railroad stations. First two
hours were thick with informative "train" content, sampling
from various documentaries, featuring callers who played songs about
trains, and to top it all off Dr. Asbestos threw in various train sound
effects and heavily processed samples. Third hour's focus was on toy
trains, model trains, and a history lesson for youngsters. Throughout
the show we had WRP with us over the internet, constantly providing
entertaining "train" content, particularly stories about various
train wrecks. Primarily, Matt the PM spoke while Pimpdaddysupreme mixed
in samples. Show ended with one of the CD players in "stutter"
mode, playing a particularly interesting musical tone. While we creatively
manipulated that sound for a good 5 minutes, we blended into the next
program for at least another ten...a little bit of that got recorded.
The entire program had an appealing soundscape, as trains drove from
the left ear to the right ear, and bells often rang in the opposite
directions. Often soothing, sometimes disturbing, but always entertaining.
Episode
246: 20th Century Boys (03/25/2002): (every man & Dr. Asbestos +
Workshoppe Radio Phonic + Your Girlfriend (via the internet) An exploration
of the most memorable and significant moments of the past 100 years
using the collage method...the ONLY method that makes it possible to
summarize 30 hours of source material in under 180 minutes. This program
also introduced a neat new way for listeners to participate without
having to use the phone...they can NETCAST to us! That's what our good
friends from Tennessee did this week. Matt the Prodman and Pimpdaddysupreme
setup a netcasting server on their home PC using a cable modem which
we connected to using basic internet streaming software...and throughout
the first coupe hours of the program they were there with us (with a
minor delay) sounding as though they were in the studio with us. The
quality was fantastic....way better than the telephone. At one point
they started asking "Your Girlfriend" everything she remembered
about the 1980's, as long forgotten (as they should be) 1980's TV sitcom
theme songs played in the background. Richard Holland, the brains behind
Turntable Trainwreck, called in and read the lyrics to T. Rex's "20th
Century Boy." Our famous trippy burnout hippy girl called in and
cursed at us for an hour, and we made a song out of it: "Penis,
Vagina, Poopy" which eventually turned into a perverted version
of Kraftwerk's "We are the Robots." Um...yes, so when we DID
focus on the theme, we briefly visited every decade of the 1900's throughout
the show, and learned that the 1990's possessed the most "celebrity
focused" culture of them all...even Peter Jennings agreed with
us on that point. Episode
245: Excerpts from Recycled Rainbow 2.0 (03/18/2002): (Full Staffed + Hetmana) A three hour recap of
the recent 12 hour event named "Recycled Rainbow" (the second
of such gatherings.) Performances by Chris Richards, Jim Altieri (with
dancer Mandoline Whittlesey), Animals Within Animals, Workshoppe Radio
Phonic, The Button, and Hetmana were squished together to give the listeners
a decent idea of what took place last weekend. Callers chimed in, playing
samples at us which blended nicely with the mix. As usual, one of the
frequent callers was Negativland's
David Wills, who kept telling us we were "really crazy *this*
time." All within a couple hours, you hear remixes of Beatles songs,
psychedelic guitar loops, short wave radio noises, insanely loud drum
beats, field recordings, spoken word samples, and meditative trance.
In the show's last few minutes, Hetmana performed one of her new ambient
songs live, following the Animals Within Animals set. Surprisingly,
the two blended quite well together. Recycled Rainbow, held in Lakewood,
Ohio, can be best described as a salon; a gathering of artists, intellectuals,
philosophers, musicians, and various counter-cultural types. Together,
they perform for one another, exhibit artistic displays, and discuss
various issues of modern culture that impact their preferred medium
of art. Althought not entirely coherent, pieces of those conversations
could be heard in various parts of the three hour mix. Episode
244: Workshoppe Radio Chaotik (03/11/2002): (Full Staffed + Workshoppe Radio Phonic, David
Dixon, and the Recycled Crayon) After the math of Recycled Rainbow 2.0,
everybody who hadn't left yet; Matt the PM, Pimpdaddysupreme, Dr. David
Dixon, Recycled Crayon, and the usual Press the Button crew [yes, Paul Ryan
managed to show up this time.] descended upon the station to recreate
some of the RR that didn't get recorded when the recording computer
went blooey the second time. Everybody got set up, using a total of
8 mixers, a new record, and the show began. . . but only in the left
channel. Somehow, the connection between Studio B and Studio C had broken
down, so we needed to run separate cables between the studios ourselves,
except that the necessary adapters to make that connection were being
used to connect studio A, where WRP and Dr. Dixon were, to studio B.
Ultimately a different set of connecting cables were used to connect
A to B, so B could connect to C and the offending B to C connection
could be bypassed, with it attendant mixer. So far, we were 28 minutes
into the program, as this process was being described colorfully by
all. And as that wasn't enough, when the offending connection were bypassed,
it rendered several microphones dead, so during the rest of that hour,
new mic's were added to the cubic feet of cable snarl. So what was the
show like, you ask? Well, Dr. Dave mic-in-tracked like a train, WRP
air-raided, family radio style, the new, more powerful airwaves, [this
is our first program at 15,000 watts of transmitting power. It reaches
everywhere except Lakewood, where local residents have erected a gigantic
anti-EM umbrella] Dirt Goddess took her oral exams, and the Buttoneers
were very, very noisy. The Weatherman called, as did Hetmana, who violated
our "no hello" rule, but that's OK, she has too many hubcaps, and can't
seem to get rid of them. As Dr. Asbestos attacked his keyboard with
more wild abandon than usual and Paul Ryan hallucinated cats until they
turned the lights back on, everything reached such a huge crescendo
that everyone climaxed early except every man, blew right past us into
the next program. Not a dull listen by any stretch of the imagination. Episode
243: Internal Dream Logic (03/04/2002): (Full Staffed) Paul Ryan spends the entire three
hours picking our brains with mind mending and brain teasing head games
and riddles. If you love mysteries and detective stories, this is the
show for you! Dr. Asbestos was the primary recipient of Paul's twisted
teasers, but the sleuth callers in our listening audience quickly came
to his rescue offering hints, clues, and their own logical processes
of elimination. However, anyone listening couldn't deny something "out
of order" within the overall presentation. It "represented"
auditory hallucinations, but didn't actually create them. This was nothing
like the "In C" show, where we were actually trying to create such a
hallucination, or any of our other hallucinogenic programs. This was
a "fake" radio program. We made it seem to the listener that
they were having auditory hallucinations. Words were connected in ways
they wouldn't ordinarily. Every so often, there was a seeming gap in
the stream of the conversation, and it seemed like a point was suddenly
rehashed (when in reality it wasn't.) Finally, that point never finishes....and
it goes on somewhere else. The end result: A mixture of consciously
aware mathematical principles and "internal dream logic."
Episode
242: Recycled Rainbow (in three parts) Vol. I (02/25/2002): (Full Staffed) Lugnuts 72. You're killing me!
"What the Fuck is this Shit?" - Pump. Pump. - Glad you asked.
We asked our own Paul Ryan this question, and here is his report: "Well
- Pump. Pump. -This was a recording of the Recycled Rainbow art party
that was held in January. I had the job of listening through the 7 hours
of recordings, condensing it down to fit a 3 hour show. Not something
I'd want to do every week. But, there were Wesley Willis samples, Star
Wars, shovelfuls of Napster Nuggets, something I thought was tunrtablism
of Mark Gunderson's, the guy from the Evolution
Control Committee, >David Dixon interrupts, "No, I played
that from my laptop. The track is "A Little Dog Named Snuggles" by Jacknife
Lee."< Oh! - Pump. Pump. - and a couple of rants about the people
of Smyrna, TN, and some kind of Soviet Robot Dance Party. The calls
flew in... probably in record numbers. We had Matt the PM, Pimpdaddysupreme,
some very horny girl ['is that a mirror in your pocket? because I seem
myself in your pants.'], who was also extremely high, Negativland's
David "The Weatherman" Wills, Quahogs, our recurring saxophonist,
the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, somebody else's rant about the
overpopulation of S's in place names [i.e. 'I'm going to Krogers'] and
we did finally determine that Scotchguard, if it doesn't actually have
ether in it, produces the same effects as ether would if huffed. Easily,
the most profane PTB episode, ever, perhaps the most profane program
in the history of radio. Oh yes, and David Wills wants you to know 'Pump
Gag.'" Episode
241: What is this? Know The Answer. (02/18/2002): (Full Staffed) As we spent the entire week working
very hard on finishing two album projects, we hoped to play it light
this week and decided to finally answer that forever nagging question,
"Who is Varian Shepherd?" He's been on our show once already,
and we've planned to collaborate many more times in the future. His
music could be described as a cross between The Orb and Spectrum with
heavy emphasis on creative uses with found sound sampling. Some call
it "spacey," some say "psychedelic," and others
"comforting." Regardless of what people say, we left it up
to you as we mixed album on top of album of his music in ways he probably
never intended anyone to hear it. Callers were particularly synchronized
with the show this week, as they called in for 10 to 20 minutes at a
time playing their own instruments along with Varian's music. We've
heard saxaphones, clarinets, accordians, and electronica played at us
over the phone, all of which mixed perfectly to Mr. Shepherd's melodies.
King Wilson also called in several times from Chicago, IL adding a hysterical
perspective of ambient sound, including Cookie Monster, the Fraggle
Rock theme song, and samples from the TV show "Freaks & Geeks."
What seemed like what was going to be a potentially light and easy going
show turned out to be reasonably dense and highly interactive. "What
is This?" you might have asked during certain points of the show.
This mix of beautiful and most unusual sounds was a tribute to one of
the most underrated audio collage artists in the midwest, Varian Shepherd.
We hoped this helped you "know the answer." Episode
240: Automobile Safety Tips (02/11/2002): (Full Staffed) An interactive mix with
the phone callers about the safety precautions and concerns of driving
an automobile for the first time (to prevent that from being a fatal
last time.) High school driver's education videos, Chrysler sponsored
news footage about car accidents, and Christian right-winged short film
pieces about drunk driving are also included. Incidentally, this was
the first show we've had in weeks with just the three of us doing a
theme together, and our anxious attitudes permeated throughout the entire
three hours, making this one of the most dense found sound collage programs
we've ever done (in the past three weeks, we gathered about twenty hours
of source material for this topic.) Additionally, many impressive "forced
coincidences" happened during our sample communication sections
of the program, more than usual (and usually, we have a lot!) Lots of
stereophonic sound effects were added to the mix, as we got to
hear cars driving from one ear of the listening spectrum to the other.
However, you must keep in mind that this program was less focused on
sound effects, and more on driver's ed. It was less focused on cars,
more focused on driving them. Drive safe, drive sane, drive sober, and
most importantly...drive sandwiches. Episode
239: Music in Three Parts (02/04/2002): (Full Staffed + Oberlin College students David
Levin and Jeff Allen) By the most curious of coincidences, good friend
to the show David Levin, of Oberlin College fame, brought himself and
fellow music student Jeff Allen to the show to rock out in three parts.
Each hour was different from the other. First, we had sedatives, telephones
ringing off the hook without being picked up, and a thick, slightly
mushy, slightly ambient feel. Robots pretending to be John Cage played
the piano, and Shaun got rhythm. I almost forgot...we used genuine Dungeons
& Dragons dice for added sound effects throughout the hour, and
sparsely during rest of the show. Hour two was a little more rhythmic,
and much more sampled, thanks to Jeff's vintage reel-to-reel, the show
looping unto itself like a giant audio mobius strip, turning inside
out again and again until we said the magic word: "fucko". [which is
not the same as saying "Fu, Kew".] We got the chickens, we got the bread,
we put the dish machine in the dish machine while "John Washington"
from the Thunderbunnies got remixed so much that Mark Falk and Barry
McAndrew both got turned into Mr. T. Finally, David broke out the guitar
for the third hour, along with BOTH of every man's vintage Casio synthesizers,
and BOTH SK-1's, and BOTH Akai S-2000's, and BOTH Alesis Midiverbs,
and BOTH laptops, and BOTH Alesis Microverbs, and BOTH Zoom's [well,
you get the idea. . . ] There was a definite sea change, and David launched
into determined noodling which developed a slightly frisky, slightly
disturbing quality like "Teddy bear Picnic". We heard from Pimpdaddysupreme
and were all sent scrambling, looking for the Weatherman's [yes, he
really called, and he called last week, too] cigarette case. Then "Sexaphones,
Sexaphones, Sexaphones, Sexaphones. . ." and if you can identify the
late-19th century Classical composer who contributed to the last hour
of the show in heavily modified form, you'll receive a free copy of
this show. Send all answers to info@pressthebutton.com
Episode
238: The Ratt Pack (01/28/2002): (Full Staffed + Oberlin College students Jim
Altieri & Sam Withrow) The next long awaited chapter of our
collaboration with musicians from Oberlin College. We performed a three
hour improvisational music piece with two students from Oberlin College,
including Jim Altieri who has made several other appearances on our
show in the past. Had a nice ambient and lush introduction which turned
extraordinarily psychedelic as the hour passed by. Sam Withrow played
mostly the guitar via a live mic'd amplifier, while Jim often used a
laptop and his mixing board. every man played two heavily processed
20 year old synthesizers, while Paul Ryan played every possible kitchen
utility one could possibly own...not to mention a fan, a car buffer
(we presume), and a drill. Dr. Asbestos had an impressive archive of
pornographic sounds on a laptop (and an effects pedal) which added nicely
to various parts of the ambient mix. We were significantly interrupted
half way through the show by the host of WRUW's "Female of the
Species" show, who kept demanding we stop our program and sign
her and a friend up to get free rickets to see the heavy metal band
Ratt. Pimpdadysupreme called in the show at that point, and had "Your
Girlfriend" on the line. "Your Girlfriend" got into a
fight with the host from "Female of the Species," which in
turn forced her to stubbornly hang up on us. After a short breather
from the odd events that ensued, we continued the performance until
the show's finale, where every man put a giant metal salad bowl on his
head, inserted a microphone by his left ear, and allowed Paul Ryan to
drum on top of it with a giant plastic spoon. Doing so gave every man
serious flashbacks, causing him to play the flute. Episode
237: Rubber Cocks and Dognut Shops (01/21/2002): (every man, Dr. Asbestos,
Varian Shepherd, and Workeshoppe Radio Phonik) This is the first time
in a long while tha we literally filled all three production studios
with audio gear! After a great party at Recycled Rainbow that weekend,
featuring Mark Gunderson, Stark Effect, Workeshoppe Radio Phonik, Varian
Shepherd, The Button, and various Snuggly people, this episode seemed
like an afterparty to a long noisy 3 day Rave. This episode is filled
with dognuts, Bush-smokers, impromptu news/weather reports and Angry/Confused/Inebriated
callers. Varian Shepherd laid down the ambient landscape to which Pimpdaddysupreme,
Matt the PM, Dr. Asbestos, and every man digitally wanked over. After
giving shout-outs to party goers, "Cleaning the House" and
then burning it down, Pimpdaddysupreme showed what a dickhead he could
be and stormed out of the studio with a two way radio and a rubber lesbian
prosthetic strapped to his face. every man kept the odds of potential
police arrest so people could gamble at home while Dr. Asbestos played
the doorman. PDS was chased by the cops (sometimes chased them back),
took off his pants in front of the Thwing Center and assaulted a group
of Case Western students. The students followed him to the radio station
whereupon they proceeded to play stupid children's games. After the
students left, Varian Shepherd took over the last half hour of the show,
improvising a collage of ambient meditative sounscapes through tons
of audio gear used only by himself during the show. Dr. Asbestos layered
a great deal of porn sounds into this half hour as well, experimenting
with odd soundscapes that he hoped to use in future weeks. The whole
show was utterly fantastic, even during the 5 minutes we spent on the
air making fun of Paul Ryan for sleeping through his alarm and not making
it to this show! Episode
236: Experimental Music (01/14/2002): (Full Staffed) Well. . . it was, 50 years
ago. When all the squares were listening to Dean and the songs from
"Oklahoma!" [there's a reason they called the music from musicals "pop
music"] A bunch of poor folks from the south and a Cleveland DJ started
a trickle of "race music" that turned into the gushing torrent of rock-and-roll,
which, by the way, was a euphemism for fucking. Back then, it was pretty
out there, about as out there as audio collage. Truly representing the
phenomenon backwards, we started with a torrent of sound, Actual Alan
Freed recordings, and a few re-creations using Jay Leno, plus Billy
Lee Riley, Howlin' Wolf and Sam Phillips explaining that "Mr. God would
have trouble" as a studio owner trying to re-create the rock-and-roll
phenomenon, interspersed with virtually every old rock song we could
get our hands on. By the third hour, some square music got played, which
calmed things down a little, while it was explained to us that after
RCA makes their metal master, a mother matrix has to be created from
it to make the stamper. [the stamper!] Sorry, probably too inside of
a joke there. Anyway, a bunch of session players complained about Sam
Phillips' mismanagement, but it all got worked out in the end, as we
rode off to the hop and hear "Great Balls of Fire". Episode
235: New Year's Resolution (01/07/2002): (Full Staffed) To start off the new year in an
entirely new way, we did what we almost never do...we DJ'd! That's right,
we played songs, almost all of them in their entirety, completely unaltered
in any way that I can recall. However, these are FUN songs...some have
been sent to us and others we've found ourselves over the past five
years. We've always been meaning to play some of these, but the opportunity
never presented itself. From the Thunderbunnies and Alien Journalism,
to Phineas Narco and Wobbly, each and every single one of these tracks
were made by artists who specialize in deconstruction of found sound,
recontextualization of speech, and challenging the U.S. Copyright Law;
and as you know, all these properties are ones that we, Press The Button,
have taken as our own personal idioms in life. Make no mistake, we STILL
took live callers on the air over the mix, but outside of that we vowed
to not alter the sound of the actual recordings. The callers called
during tracks that were more ambient than dense, so it all worked out
quite well. This turned out to be one very entertaining program, and
since the artists we DJ'd during the show were all independent of record
labels or distributors, we can legally sell it to you!
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