Hey, I got on the radio again yesterday. I forget what the show is called on WHAD 90.7 in the afternoon, but they're talking to Gubernatorial Candidates all this week. Well, they had some Independent Candidate on yesterday who was just talking out of his ass. Conspiracy Theory Keeping The Black Man Down nonsense was just the tip of the iceberg...

So I decided to try to call, and got through on the second try. After waiting on hold for 5 or 6 minutes, I actually got on the air. The following is not a transcription since I haven't bothered to call the Public Radio Store to buy a cassette copy of the show, but to the best of my recollection I said:

"Hi Kathleen, I just wanted to call to thank you and all the staff of Wisconsin Peoples Radio for having this guest on your show today. He is singlehandedly making all the rest of the candidates seem sane, coherent and extremely well educated."

Kathleen Dunn, professional that she is, replied, "Okay." And went to the next caller.

Ha! As if making Ed Thompson seem well educated is anything to sneer at. At least he didn't make Jim Doyle appear to be a greasy dishonest *cough* career politician... Sorry about the redundancies, folks!

From Hunter S.Thompson's Generation of Swine: "The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason..."

This is often misquoted, and it does have a ring of truth in this variation. The punch line at the end lets us know that HST is a humorist, I guess... "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

Trivia from All Music Guide: "The London (Ontario) Werewolves, members of minor-league baseball's Frontier League, until recently featured a mascot named Warren Z. Vaughan."

Oh, in the unlikely event that anyone reading this wants to contact me, try " mrdrdave at yahoo dot com " until I get around to doing some HTML work on this template... I accidentally told my boss I'd get some work done this week...

The Oldies Station (not to be confused with the Classic Rock Station or the Retro Rock Station) that plays a "Forgotten Oldie" every morning at 6:50 has been playing local (Milwaukee & Wisconsin) tunes the last two weeks. A good concept that you might not expect from a MegaConglomerate-owned (Clear Channel) station, IMHO.

Anyway, they run it as a contest where they take phone calls and give away some promotional item to whoever can name the artist. It seemed like they'd been dumbing-down the contest recently ("Eve Of Destruction" "forgotten"? You don't exactly have to be a Trivia Champ to know Barry McGuire did that one, right?), so it's nice to get Obscure N Provincial for a bit! (Though to be fair, the morning after "Eve" they played "Dawn Of Correction", and I could not remember the artist. I also didn't remember the song sounding so terrible, but that may have been the first time I ever heard it on a speaker larger than two inches in diameter.)

So, it's been nice to hear tunes like The Messengers "That's The Way A Woman Is" and one of the Robbs many not-quite-Hot-100-bubbling-under-near-hits on the radio for the first time in 30+ years... Underground Sunshine's copy of the Beatles' "Birthday" is nearly the definition of pointless, but what the heck. They played a song by the Larry Lynne Group this morning, but I couldn't identify it. But that's okay, cuz Tuesday morning I was the ninth caller and won a couple dinner coupons for the Thunder Bay Grille, correctly identifying Thee Prophets as the guys playing "Playgirl". Another 30 seconds of fame plus Free Food! Life is Good...

Here's another five hours of mp3's. The first batch (up until EL&P) are Milwaukee and Wisconsin bands from the 60's and 70's. Some good tunes there, albeit in rather low fidelity. Information on many of these bands can be found HERE. I thought this site might have been where I downloaded some of them from, but I can't find any sign of active links at the moment. The rest of it is my usual melange of pop hits from the 60's, obscurities, and oddball stuph spanning the ridiculous to the sublime and back again the long way...

Mustard Men - I Lost My Baby
Baroques - Mary Jane
Robbs - Race With The Wind
Shivvers - When I Was Younger
Shagg - Stop And Listen
Thee Prophets - Playgirl
Legends - Lariat
Underground Sunshine - Birthday
Esquires - Get On Up
Legends - Say Mama
Paul Stefan & Royal Lancers - I Fought The Law
Gypsy - Gypsy Waltz
Paul Stefan & Royal Lancers - Say Mama
Harvey Scales & Seven Sounds - Broadway Freeze
Baroques - Iowa (A Girl's Name)
Robbs - Bittersweet
Esquires - And Get Away
Death - Depression
Emerson Lake & Palmer - Toccata
Soundtrack - Debbie Does Dallas
Aphex Twin - Hot Butter Popcorn
King Crimson - Groon
Bach - Invention #5 Glenn Gould
Biffy - Under The Double Helix
Captain Beefheart - Carrot Rabbit Diamond
Battlefield Band - Miss Kate Rusby
Gluckstein - Chopin Nocturne Opus 15 #3
Chopin - Nocturne Opus 15 #3 G Major [Rubinstein]
Thunderclap Newman - Ice and Essence
Ken Griffin - Koekoekswals
Offenbach - Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffm
Gluckstein - Schumann - Traumerei
King Crimson - Providence
Soundtrack - Deep Throat
Man Or Astro-man - Curious Constructs
Metallica - Star Wars Imperial March
Morte Macabre - Lullaby from Rosemary's Baby
Black Mass Lucifer - Solomon
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Telephone And Rubber Band
Henry Cow - Bittern Storm Over Ulm
King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part III
Adrian Belew - I Have A Dream
386 DX - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Spooner - From My Head To My Shoes
HAL 9000 - Sorry Dave
Firesign Theatre - Confidence In The System
Spooner - Working Girl
Bonzo Dog Band - Sofa Head (Peel Session)
Golliwogs - Walking On The Water ( Early CCR)
Garbage - Butterfly Collector
Gary Glitter - Rock And Roll Part 2
David Seville - Witch Doctor
Viv Stanshall - The Young Ones
Mega Smegma - Bad Bunny
Klaus Nomi - You Don't Own Me
Human Sexual Response - What Does Sex Mean To Me
Ramones - Carbona Not Glue
Nils Lofgren - White Lies
Neil Young & Graham Nash - War Song
Pearls Before Swine - City Of Gold
Lefty Frizell - Saginaw Michigan
Janis Ian - Society's Child
Neon Philharmonic - Morning Girl
Paul Mauriat - Love Is Blue
Unit Four Plus Two - Concrete And Clay
Hedgehoppers Anonymous - It's Good News Week

I Meant To Do My Work Today
Richard Le Gallienne

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand--
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Here's my latest Winamp playlist. It's undergone minor evolution over the last week or so, and it's about time to empty it out and start a new selection from the mp3 Archive. But it gives a snapshot of some of my listening lately, so there ya go... Perhaps this will become a weekly feature.

Tom Rapp - Margery
Cat Stevens - If You Want To Sing Out
Ian Tyson & Sylvia Fricker - Changes
Flying Burrito Brothers - To Ramona
NGDB Hillman & McGuinn - You Ain't Going Nowhere
King Crimson - Ladies Of The Road
Homer Simpson - In Your Face, Milwaukee!
Garbage - The World Is Not Enough
Gorkys Zygotic Mynci - Face Like Summer
Buffalo Springfield - Sad Memory
Gene Clark - Some Misunderstanding
Kinks - A Well Respected Man (BBC)
My Morning Jacket - Heartbreakin Man
Go-Betweens - Part Company
Leon Russell - Tightrope
King Crimson - Prozakc Blues
Moody Blues - Ride My See Saw
Only Ones - Love Becomes A Habit
Residents - Return To Sender
Nils Lofgren - Keith Don't Go
Captain Sensible - Wot
Arthur Prysock - Ebb Tide
Pete Townshend - Flying Boy
Cyrkle - I'm Not Sure What I Wanna Do
Ramases & Selket - Minds Eye
National Health - The Collapso
Leonard Cohen - The Captain
Pearls Before Swine - Suzanne
Peter Perrett & The One - Daughter
Justin Hayward - John Lodge - I Dreamed Last Night
Dr. Feelgood - I Can Tell
Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Tomahawk Kid (live)
Flying Burrito Bros - Beat the Heat
Rick Roberts - Davy McVie
Best of the Moody Blues - Go Now
National Health - Elephants
Cat Stevens - Foreigner Suite (Full Version)
The Rolling Stones - She Smiled Sweetly
Cyrkle - Red Rubber Ball alternate mix
The Balloon Farm - A Question of Temperature
People - I Love You
Michael Nesmith - Born to Love You
Nils Lofgren - Cry Tough
Cat Stevens - Don't Be Shy
Crosby Stills & Nash - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
John Martyn - May You Never
Dream Academy - Life In A Northern Town
Pearls Before Swine - I Shall Not Care
Blood Sweat and Tears - Fire and Rain
Pearls Before Swine - When I Was a Child
National Health - Toad Of Toad Hall
Moody Blues - You Can Never Go Home
Van Morrison - Have I Told You Lately?
Egg - While Growing My Hair
Tim Rose - Hey Joe
Kronos Quartet - Marquee Moon
Chris Hillman - Create In Me A Clean Heart
Chad & Jeremy A Summer Song
Cyrkle - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
Switched On Bach - Two Part Invention in D Minor
Wendy Carlos - Two Part Invention in B-flat m
Danny Gatton, Joey DeFrancesco - Blues On The Half Shell
Serge Gainsbourg - L'abominable strip-tease
Cyrkle - Big Little Woman
Buffalo Springfield - Bluebird (long version)

"Stairway To Heaven" is my daughter's new favorite song. If you've been listening to FM radio the last thirty years (like I know I have), you're probably sick of the song, too. It's become a joke, or a punchline anyway, and any respectably hip music snob will have little good to say about it. The song's primary fault, however, is that it's been overplayed. It spent a decade or two as radio's "most requested song" and the Media, as we know, Gives The People What They Want. (As trite, predictable and boring as radio has become in the post-deregulation Clear Channel era, it's been an incremental change, not a massive paradigm shift.)

So, as I was looking through some CD booklets, some of the Zep photos inevitably reminded me of Almost Famous which Lora & I watched on video last weekend. Exactly why that movie was rated R is a little unclear to me, BTW. You can see more raw sex and drug innuendo on Fox between seven and nine PM any day of the week. It seemed like Matt was a little interested in it, but as he's only rated to PG-13, we tried to shoo him away. As if it's possible to keep a kid from gravitating to an active video screen these days.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, "Stairway To Heaven". Huh. It's a darn good song. As Sarah played it over and over while doing her homework last night, I came to appreciate it and then enjoy it again. It's cool to hear old songs through new ears. The recorder can be an effective instrument in a Rock context. Page is a very skilled guitarist. (Duh.) Plant's vocals and lyrics are highly appropriate. (If you want to make fun of the bustle in my hedgerow, be my guest, but your mocking is irrelevant. If you're some Sid Christgau wannabe who finds it pretentious cuz it isn't really rock and roll if it's more than 3 minutes long and you can't dance to it, why don't you just go away right now. Shoo!) And when the Loud Part begins with those ringing Dsus4 chords, well, that's just the archtype of a Rock & Roll Moment. Classic. Defining. Like McGuinn's 12-string intro to "Mr. Tambourine Man" or Daltrey's scream in "Won't Get Fooled Again". Make your own lists. (E-mail them to me if I get a link working around here.)

[Zo]So, I immediately wanted to play her the "Stairway" version on Zep's BBC CD, but suppressed the urge since that Historical Moment would mean relatively little to her. (It was before LZ IV was released, so, as the intro was played there was no Ovation of Recognition cuz the audience had never heard it before. Imagine that. I can't remember the first time I heard it. I remember the first time I heard "Ramblin' Man", but that's another story...) Then I thought I'd burn her a CD of "Stairway To Heaven" and "Over The Hills And Far Away" and "Tangerine" and any other songs I could dig up that feature the Acoustic Side of Zep more than the Heavy Blues N Rock Juggernaut Side...

However, before I got my stack of Zeppelin CD's down to the computer desk, I remembered that I have too many other unfinished projects at hand to take on this fun but ultimately pointless exercise at this time. Well, I'll know where to find Disc Two of the Led Zeppelin Box Set for the immediate future: in Sarah's CD changer in heavy rotation with her Anime Soundtrack CD's...