Michael Maltese meets Franz Liszt. Back when listening to FM radio was a musical adventure, WBCN in Boston was to eclectic what Mt. Everest was to mountains--the one everybody looked up to. Not least because they would follow a song from Pearls Before Swine with something so completely off the wall that you had to stop what you were doing and ask yourself "What the hell are they playing now?" The song below being a prime example. Sung by Mel Blanc and written by (among others) Michael Maltese, I first heard this coming out of the radio one weekend afternoon in 1970 right after "Rocket Man." For the next two weeks I combed local record stores, not even knowing what I was looking for, until I finally found the song on an LP of Warner Brothers cartoon songs in the children's record section of the Harvard Coop. I dare you to listen to it and not smile.
Daffy Duck's Rhapsody
Set the Way-Back for 1986. This song I heard on WNEW, and while I can't remember the exact circumstances, I do remember finding it on a two-disc collection of club hits at J&R Music titled The House Sound of Chicago. I used to play this a lot, because it was silly, and because it would drive everybody else crazy. I also used to walk around repeating "I've got my uke-a-looloo and my hare stickum." What can I say, except that the 80's were a weird time to be in your 30's.
Hey Rocky
Good evening and welcome to Slaggers. Ah, but 1970 was an even weirder time to be 18. Especially if you were me. Cocky, stubborn, and with more unjustified ego than a second-year financial analyst. 1970 was also the first time I tried to ascend Mount College and (like the other two times) got no further than the foothills, hurriedly shouting "I quit!" before anyone could fire me. Fondest memory of that time: sitting in the McElroy cafeteria at BC (or was it the Lyons cafeteria?) listening for the umpteenth time to some yahoo playing Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" on the jukebox, and finally getting so pissed off that I plugged two dollars worth of quarters into the box to play the song below (the B side to the single of "Let It Be") 24 times in a row. By the fifth time the song played, the jocks three tables over were approaching the 1970 version of roid rage. When it started a sixth time, one of them went over to the juke box, picked up the thing like it was a toy, and banged it three times on the ground. Dead silence for ten seconds. And then, out of the wreckage, and to the cheering and applause of everyone but the jock at the juke box, the song began playing again. At which point the jock ripped the cord out of the wall, breaking the jukebox completely. It was out of commission for a week. When it was fixed, neither Led Zeppelin nor the song below were on the play list. I call that a fair trade.
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Showing posts with label the matthew comp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the matthew comp. Show all posts
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Who Am Us Anyway?
What do the following lines have in common?
"Why he's no fun, he fell right over."
"But it's really great shit, Mrs. Kresge."
"The department of redundancy department."
"Let's bend a couple in the Doo-Dah Room."
"You must mean the Old Same Place."
"What's all this brou-ha-ha?"
"May I take your hat and goat?"
"I don't care about your private life or what his name is."
"What's the bird's-eye low-down on this caper? Whatever that means."
"I ought to beat your brain out!"
"Rocky Rococo at your cervix."
1. They are all Firesign Theatre lines
2. which I can hear either myself or my friend Tom saying over and over again
3. because they are engraved in my cortex (and his too).
As part of my century-long project to encode every CD I own into mp3 format, I dragged my Firesign CD's out of storage and, which usually happens whenever I haven't listened in a long time to something I used to know by heart, I played them all. Meaning I talked along with them. And then encoded them.
But the one I played most is the one below. It always puts me through so many changes, as I wonder where Ruth is.
The Further Adventures of Nick Danger
And for a transcript? Go here.
"Why he's no fun, he fell right over."
"But it's really great shit, Mrs. Kresge."
"The department of redundancy department."
"Let's bend a couple in the Doo-Dah Room."
"You must mean the Old Same Place."
"What's all this brou-ha-ha?"
"May I take your hat and goat?"
"I don't care about your private life or what his name is."
"What's the bird's-eye low-down on this caper? Whatever that means."
"I ought to beat your brain out!"
"Rocky Rococo at your cervix."
1. They are all Firesign Theatre lines
2. which I can hear either myself or my friend Tom saying over and over again
3. because they are engraved in my cortex (and his too).
As part of my century-long project to encode every CD I own into mp3 format, I dragged my Firesign CD's out of storage and, which usually happens whenever I haven't listened in a long time to something I used to know by heart, I played them all. Meaning I talked along with them. And then encoded them.
But the one I played most is the one below. It always puts me through so many changes, as I wonder where Ruth is.
The Further Adventures of Nick Danger
And for a transcript? Go here.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Songs for the Matthew Comp: The Obligatory Bruce Tracks
Back when I haunted the Cedar like an alcoholic poltergeist (which would be a Jägergeist, right?), I’d make up a birthday mix every year and have them throw it on the CD player while I slowly but pleasantly obliterated every single brain cell I had accumulated in the prior twelve months. The past few years I’ve done that without any musical accompaniment to speak of, but this year will be different. Or the same. Depending on how you look at it. (And don’t expect me to look at it and see less than double a week from now, okay?)
But while gathering up a bunch of songs that mean the year to me, I’ve also been digging up songs that mean me, period: songs that my ghost will dance to when I’m gone, if you will. Or if not dance to, then at least whistle along with. That’s going to be a little more of an ongoing project, something I will be working on as I approach the conclusion of my sixth decade and the beginning of my seventh.
Believe it or not, there’s actually an obvious first choice. It’s a piece of Erich Wolfgang Korngold music, no more than two minutes in length, from the score of Captain Blood. What makes it the first choice is that it is the one piece of music I find myself whistling when I’m not thinking. You’ve probably all heard me whistle it at some point and wondered, “What the hell is that he’s trying to whistle? Does it have a tune? Or is he just making it up?” What makes it the second post is that the damn Captain Blood CD is in storage somewhere, along with the damn Captain Blood DVD, so the world is going to have to wait until I get corporate funding for the archaeological expedition that is digging through my stuff in storage before it sees the light of day.
This post is about the second and third songs, the two pieces of music I sing to myself more often than anything else. (Yes, even more than Marshall Crenshaw’s “Cynical Girl.” I know, I know -- hard to believe, huh?) The songs are "Point Blank", which I heard for the first time on September 25, 1978, during the Darkness Tour; and "Racing In The Street." Of the two of them, "Point Blank" is the killer. Hearing it for the first time was like getting, well, shot right through the heart. It still gives me chills. And as for "Racing in the Street?" Here’s how memory plays tricks on you. The River tour show I saw in Boston was on December 16, 1980. I know this because three of the clearest memories I have of this night are (a) seeing the band wearing black armbands because John Lennon had been shot the week before, (b) worrying, really worrying that some nut with a gun -- well, we didn’t want to put it into words, but the worry was there -- and (c) Bruce throwing himself into the crowd during "Spirit In The Night," which literally picked up all those worries and threw them away. And of the two Boston shows he did in December 1980, he only did Spirit in the Night on the 16th, not the 15th, according to this database. But that conflicts with one of my other clear memories of the night: the fact that they did "Racing In The Street" followed by "The River," one right after the other. Which they did on the 15th, but not the 16th. Proving that memory, like so many human activities, always aspires to the condition of art.
(My other big memories of that 1980 show? Hearing "Point Blank" again. And the very end of 'Wreck On The Highway," where Bruce just stands on stage looking at a spotlight as the song plays out, like a bystander staring down at a wrecked car with a hard, unreadable look on his face.)
Luckily, there’s a real world relic of that fake memory of mine, from a show the band did earlier on the same tour in Tempe, Arizona. As well as a great version of "Point Blank," one in which the piano introduction alone breaks your heart. So let these be the first cuts on the Matthew Comp.
Racing to the River
Point Blank
Play them and think of me.
But while gathering up a bunch of songs that mean the year to me, I’ve also been digging up songs that mean me, period: songs that my ghost will dance to when I’m gone, if you will. Or if not dance to, then at least whistle along with. That’s going to be a little more of an ongoing project, something I will be working on as I approach the conclusion of my sixth decade and the beginning of my seventh.
Believe it or not, there’s actually an obvious first choice. It’s a piece of Erich Wolfgang Korngold music, no more than two minutes in length, from the score of Captain Blood. What makes it the first choice is that it is the one piece of music I find myself whistling when I’m not thinking. You’ve probably all heard me whistle it at some point and wondered, “What the hell is that he’s trying to whistle? Does it have a tune? Or is he just making it up?” What makes it the second post is that the damn Captain Blood CD is in storage somewhere, along with the damn Captain Blood DVD, so the world is going to have to wait until I get corporate funding for the archaeological expedition that is digging through my stuff in storage before it sees the light of day.
This post is about the second and third songs, the two pieces of music I sing to myself more often than anything else. (Yes, even more than Marshall Crenshaw’s “Cynical Girl.” I know, I know -- hard to believe, huh?) The songs are "Point Blank", which I heard for the first time on September 25, 1978, during the Darkness Tour; and "Racing In The Street." Of the two of them, "Point Blank" is the killer. Hearing it for the first time was like getting, well, shot right through the heart. It still gives me chills. And as for "Racing in the Street?" Here’s how memory plays tricks on you. The River tour show I saw in Boston was on December 16, 1980. I know this because three of the clearest memories I have of this night are (a) seeing the band wearing black armbands because John Lennon had been shot the week before, (b) worrying, really worrying that some nut with a gun -- well, we didn’t want to put it into words, but the worry was there -- and (c) Bruce throwing himself into the crowd during "Spirit In The Night," which literally picked up all those worries and threw them away. And of the two Boston shows he did in December 1980, he only did Spirit in the Night on the 16th, not the 15th, according to this database. But that conflicts with one of my other clear memories of the night: the fact that they did "Racing In The Street" followed by "The River," one right after the other. Which they did on the 15th, but not the 16th. Proving that memory, like so many human activities, always aspires to the condition of art.
(My other big memories of that 1980 show? Hearing "Point Blank" again. And the very end of 'Wreck On The Highway," where Bruce just stands on stage looking at a spotlight as the song plays out, like a bystander staring down at a wrecked car with a hard, unreadable look on his face.)
Luckily, there’s a real world relic of that fake memory of mine, from a show the band did earlier on the same tour in Tempe, Arizona. As well as a great version of "Point Blank," one in which the piano introduction alone breaks your heart. So let these be the first cuts on the Matthew Comp.
Racing to the River
Point Blank
Play them and think of me.
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