Thank you! Now we're rolling in dough.

We asked, and you gave.
But the real challenge is still before us. Can we succeed in recycling your irritating shekels (a reference to one of our pre-recorded fundraising announcements, not an indictment of shekels) into 3,000 watts of power? We are damn well going to try.

We have paid engineers, lawyers, and engineering firms to do all kinds of studies. We will now begin construction of a new tower, tall enough and large enough to accommodate a new directional antenna, and then place a new antenna atop said tower. We will actually buy a very expensive piece of equipment to replace our current transmitter, which I've heard is the size of a small car. When we're through, they say you'll be able to hear us in Dexter and Saline.

So once again, thank you for your generosity. Without the support of our community, WCBN would be unable to take these steps into its exciting, and increasingly relevant, future. If you pledged during one of my two fundraiser shows, you can expect a personalized thank-you note from me in the next few weeks. For some reason I have always done well during fundraiser- even my first year I am pretty sure I made over $1,000. Thank you.

Fundraiser 2013 was replete with the usual money-making tactics: pyramid schemes, blackmail, extortion, naked photos, and so on. On Thursday afternoon (2/14) David Schlitt of the Emergency Broadcast Hour agreed to have his body hair waxed, for a price. Many of you bought into his pain and exploitation, and WCBN is better for it. Thank you.
 
Some of us fell back on old favorites: "I will now force you to endure this Steve Perry record until you call. The first $20 pledge makes it go away." Then we responded to your obedience by engaging in three-ways with Van Halen. Thank you.

We really felt your love, way way more than three times.

Tight Pants Fundraiser playlists:
Friday February 15 | Friday February 8
Tight Pants Fundraiser Archives:
Friday February 15 | Friday February 8

Give Us Some Money!

WCBN's annual fund drive starts tomorrow, Friday February 8, and that means it is time again for you to mug the little kids on your street and send us the money! To get you all pumped, here are archives of shows I have done during fundraiser.

2012

Friday, February 17. SECOND SHOW OF WCBN 2012 FUNDRAISER. PLAYLIST! This 150 minutes brought in $800.
Friday, February 10. FIRST DAY OF WCBN 2012 FUNDRAISER. PLAYLIST! This 150 minutes brought in $500.

2011

Friday, March 18. Give us your money, 2 More Chuck Berry!
Friday, March 11. Give us your money, 1 Chuck Berry!

2010

Friday, March 19 Listen
Friday, March 12 Listen

2009

Friday, March 13 Listen
Friday, March 6 Listen

2008

Friday, February 8 Listen
Friday, February 1 Listen

2007

Friday, February 16 Listen
Friday, February 9 Listen

Rock out with your _ock out on WCBNSaturday nights at midnight

WCBN has a heavy metal program again. Now in its second semester, Odin's Dance Party is probably a little different from your average college radio metal show and it's definitely nothing like The Grind, which used to air on Friday nights for a long time before its mainstay host left us and the show was retired.

DJs who want to play METAL

We have a lot of DJs interested in playing an hour of heavy metal, and all of them have been granted at least one chance to fill in each semester. Some (myself included) are doing it less because we know anything about metal and more because we think a lot of it is kind of hilarious. I pick stuff based on appearance and title. Segues are organic and are done primarily by sound alone and always will be, so after picking a bunch of records based on their names and covers, I let the show go where it takes me.

Die-hard metallurgists surely would beg to differ, but I think the songs go well together whether they are black metal, death metal, thrash metal, speed metal, and so on. In fact I pretty much couldn't tell you the difference between these.

Spinning the Kreator

I never cared much about metal beyond Master of Puppets as a teen, because I was punk and metalheads had too much fucking hair. Now that I care less about hair (unless you are a hippie) I can enjoy this genre of music without taking everything so seriously.

Music for puking on tilt-a-whirls

Speaking of not taking things seriously, the last song I played was courtesy of Dragonforce. Thirty seconds into it I already felt like I was going to puke on a bad carnival ride. By the time is was over I was suffering from shaken baby syndrome.

Links to the shows I've done.
February 3, 2013.
October 7, 2012.

Links to the playlists of the shows I've done.

February 3, 2013.
October 7, 2012.

Wow, it's been a while since I put new links to new archives up here. So long that many of the new links will be to old archives. Oh, well. What the hell. Here comes about six months' worth. Maybe after that I will actually write you a new post not to read. It will be about choosing records based on their appearance.

Twenty Years - Part II

San Francisco was a cool place to go, but not in 1992. They say there was a recession going on in California then, and I barely knew how to land a job even in the best conditions. So I stumbled through babysitting, landscaping, graffiti removal, and other bullshit, and in between I wandered the streets of the Castro imagining I had enough money to get a slice and go to the movies. The thing that sucked the most was that nearly every club was 21+, so I couldn't even go to any shows, and with the famous (and all-ages) Gilman St a hefty train fare across the bay, I never made it over there.

A couple good things did happen though. LIAR came out and I bought it, on cassette, at some place on Haight Street. Not Amoeba. I think it may have been Rough Trade.

And two days before The Jesus Lizard played a 21+ show at the Kennel Club, I ran into an acquaintance from home who just happened to work the door there. My outlook transformed from despondent to ecstatic in mere minutes as he casually said "sure, just come to the door and I'll let you in. We'll tell'm you got mugged and lost your ID if anyone asks."

Actual Flier, Savaged by a Cat.

Here is actual live footage of what might actually be this show.
Do you want to know who opened up that show? None other than the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Vaguely aware of Pussy Galore, I nevertheless had no idea I was about to see a band that just might blow the Jesus Lizard right off the stage. Boy did they get my attention. I guess they must have been touring on their first album which is sort of the same as but different than their second album, and then Extra Width came out the next year and this pace of record-releasing is similar to the way they play shows like where no song ends or begins and the whole thing just kind of runs together and at the end you are like "WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED TO ME."


Eventually, the euphoria of seeing these two amazing bands on the same stage in the same night wore off. San Francisco was cold, lonely and unforgiving, so I went home.

Sometimes I can't believe any of these bands are still putting out records and going on tour. But here we are, more than a decade into the new millenium, and there's a brand new JSBX record out and a JSBX show in Detroit next Friday. They may be getting old, but they can still cut a bitch, so you can bet I'll be there with my fucking walker and my orthopedic shoes.

Twenty Years - Part I

Me and my driving companion at Niagara Falls

Twenty years ago I drove cross-country from Boston to San Francisco, where I had decided to live with some friends. My driving mate and I had brand-new driver's licenses and some foolish company called All America Auto Transport let us take this poor lady's Nissan Sentra for the conditionally refundable fee of $150.

NOTE: Not actual car

Me and my driving mate, whose new license was even newer than mine, did not want to pay tolls so we took US route 20 for the first two days until construction diverted us through LaPorte, Indiana, where we rear-ended a pickup truck and nearly destroyed the front end of the Sentra. After this we got on the interstate. At least it corresponded to the map.

The car had a cassette deck. 1992 was my year of cassettes, since it suddenly became very difficult to find new albums on vinyl and then I moved far away and left my turntable behind. My plan had not been to leave it permanently. I figured we'd get settled in SF, I'd get a job and save some money, and then have the rest of my shit sent out.

There are only two tapes I remember distinctly from this road trip. They were the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "BloodSugarSexMagik" and the Beastie Boys' "Check Your Head." Both albums still remind me of fall 1992, San Francisco, and all the accompanying ups & downs. No I'm just kidding actually. They both would if I still listened to the Chili Peppers album.

NOTE: Not actual cassettes from road trip. Those are long, long gone.

Even now, anytime I hear Robin Zander saying "this next one is the first song on our new album" and the opening beats of "Jimmy James", I can still picture our descent out of the Sierra Nevada with crystal clarity. There was a significant amount of traffic, and everyone else was hauling ass down the tight, curvy highway that winds down through the mountains. I clenched my new-driver teeth and grew some brass balls and kept up the pace all the way down. I probably left a stain on the driver's seat.

NOTE: This picture doesn't do any justice to what I'm trying to tell you. Just take my word for it.

How to get on the radio

Hello students. Hello non-students. Do you love the musics? If you enjoy serendipitous discovery and you need a way to blow off steam after classes/work, then get involved with WCBN.

You have a couple options.

• You can come to a Sunday orientation session. These occur at 4pm every Sunday. You'll get a tour and then your guide will get you started on volunteer work, as well as show you how to make an audition tape.
• You can also come visit us on Fridays at 6pm, for a program we call The 6 O'Clock Shadow. It's not a training or orientation session; rather, it's simply a chance for you to have a look around, pick out a few songs and play them with the DJ's assistance. When you're done, we hope you'll be interested enough to come back for a Sunday orientation session.

Look at some of these pages to pique your interest.
The WCBN homepage.
The 6 O'Clock Shadow.
The WCBN Blahg.
WCBN on Facebook.

Look at our gallery of awesome fliers and think about how if you were one of us, you'd create such better ones we'd weep with admiration.

Broadcast French on the radio during the day, using these handy tips!

I'm back, at last, to jaw at you again. Wow, the summer has really jetted by, and between all the fun stuff I've been doing, my job (which is also pretty fun,) and feeling grumpy again every time I look at my last post, I just haven't had it in me to write anything worth saying.

After quite a few weeks, my last six radio show archives are finally uploaded so it's time to reflect on something we have to do on the radio which is avoid broadcasting objectionable language during the hours of the day when children, who never hear bad words ever ever, might be listening to us. This could all become moot, since the Supreme Court recently ruled that the FCC couldn't levy fines for its unconstitutionally vague regulations, but for the time being, we continue to err on the side of not playing too many dirty motherfucking cunt cocksucking shitsquirt words during the day.

The idea that children who have never heard shocking language might be listening to WCBN closely enough to detect the occasional accidental f-bomb is as delightful as it is unlikely. However, not wanting to risk hefty fines or license removal or whatever horrible fates could befall us, I dutifully attempt to screen out bad language during my daytime show. Sometimes, though, you listeners insist on demanding that I play such tunes as The Jesus Lizard's "Blockbuster".

I'd like to think that rich radio stations with modern equipment have some sort of button bank with multiple sound effects which they can press and send a sound over the air that overrides whatever is being broadcasted for the duration of the material being overridden. My clever solution to this difficult challenge is to have another record spinning and then alternate which one is on the air using the faders on the control board. So when I know a singer is about to say something terrible, I simply pot down his volume while potting up the alternate. Sometimes I employ sound effects records, but really, almost anything will work. I think this technique was exceptionally well demonstrated on the 6th of July, about 40 minutes in. Check it out.

We love you, Adam Yauch.

Fuck Cancer.

I've spent a lot of the last few days in the zone, which means wearing the can headphones at work to shut out my co-workers, shooting baskets alone at lunch hour (which is "very zen" if you know what that means) and in general struggling with how to articulate my feelings about losing Adam Yauch last Friday. In a place as potentially public as this blog you can be sure I'll still only scratch the surface. The obvious things that everyone can relate to are (1) he was a tremendous entertainer who enriched millions of lives and (2) cancer claimed him at 47 which is just so fucking terrible.

All the internet is on fire with reflections- most of them sloppy and sentimental like this will be- but the LA Times article and the Onion A/V Club thing were good, and there might have been one or two others I read before I stopped reading that I should be mentioning but you don't really need to read more and more about it. In fact it is taking me days to write this, so let me add the Free Music Archive post, and the one on Trust Me I'm a Scientist. Blake Madden really hits the nail where the other posts seem to have shied away, in a paragraph that begins with, "Personally, I’m pissed off."

For me, and a lot of people my age, if I may be so presumptuous, losing MCA might as well be the same thing as losing a friend from high school or young adulthood. Sure, maybe we haven't seen each other in a long time, we haven't hung out in forever, we may have only a vague idea of what each other is really up to day-to-day, but we still care and cherish the times we had together when we were reaching adulthood. We partied together every night of the summer between junior and senior year of high school, drinking cases of beer in places like unused playgrounds and riverbanks.

We were city kids who went to integrated public schools and we loved both hip-hop and hardcore equally, so to us it was a logical progression when the Beastie Boys came along doing both and combining their sensibilities. Right around the same time as Licensed to Ill exploded, I had a copy of the cassette-only "New York Thrash" on ROIR which is now available on CD and vinyl and includes two early Beastie Boys hardcore tracks. There's a lot of stuff on that cassette that's better than the Beastie Boys' two songs (Bad Brains! False Prophets!), but there they are in 1982 being very fucking punk.

As predicted, I can't really go on. I'm not deluded that the masses are flocking to read my blahg, but it's still the same as putting your words up on a telephone pole. A lot of what I'm thinking is still too personal to share, but I'll close by quoting myself from an email I sent earlier this week and then recommend you listen to the archives of my friend and fellow radio host Paul Simpson, this Grand Royal mixtape, and the first hour of my archive from last Friday. Having a trainee with me in the studio helped me keep it together, or else I would have been a sloppy mess and that's totally unnecessary.

Quoting myself:

"With one paragraph, he [Blake Madden] approaches one of the thoughts I keep having, which none of the other articles I've read (not that I've read more than 4 or 5) have dwelled on. The brutal unfairness of it. How come we get to hear every day about disgusting monsters like octomom and the tanning mom and whoever else, murderers like Dick Cheney who get to live long lives, all the useless pieces of shit in the world, but a righteous dude like Adam Yauch doesn't even make it to 50? This is why people invent religions, to cope with crap like this. "Oh, God needed him in heaven" or some shit."

Paul's amazing three-hour tribute show
The Grand Royal Mixtape
Tight Pants, May 4, 2012

Goodbye, MCA. You were always my favorite.

Let's Trade Tapes!

I'm spending a lot of time lately with cassettes. This isn't because I'm a neo-hipster (I'm too old for that) although I have heard that cassettes are trendy again for them. It's actually because I've got a new old car! It has AM/FM/cassette so now I don't have to drive around wearing headphones!

Recently - really, really recently for this blahg - I explained to you how playing records on the radio every week was not necessarily a great boon to my music awareness. Well, this is a continuation on that thought, to some extent.

Being a radio DJ has also made it dramatically harder to create a good old mix tape. There's more than one reason for this so let me see if I can explain. In a sense, I make a mix tape every GD week, on the radio. I guess some people plan extensively for their shows and then of course there are commercial radio stooges who don't get to plan at all because a robot is doing it for them, but I don't plan at all beyond taking a few records from home and maybe thinking of what I'm going to play first.

I arrive about 30 minutes before the show, pull out a bunch of things I think I want to play, and with that stack, whatever I've brought from home, and listener requests (if I can get to them) I do the show. I've gotten really good at flying by the seat of my pants to a point where if a song is longer than four minutes and I have something in the queue after it, I feel bored and over-prepared. Describing it makes it sound like every show must be a total trainwreck but I listen to my archives every week and seldom gasp in horror.

With a mix tape you have the luxury of time, and also to go back and record over "She Blinded Me with Science" when you realize that hearing it once every ten years is enough. Futhermore, you are presumably creating something that you or a special someone will listen to more than once, whereas a radio show airs once and is then forgotten. It should be anyway. Unless you save archives. Anyway, they're different. Which is why it's ironically so much harder now to make a mix tape.

Perhaps this is all complete bullshit. Making a mix tape is a skill and an art. If you don't do it for ten years, you're going to be out of practice, just like the time last week when you tried to play "Michelle" on the recorder for your special someone but you couldn't do it because you hadn't played recorder since second grade. The more you do it, the better you'll get. So if you also have a car with a cassette deck, or you're a neo-hipster on the 'tapes are cool again' bandwagon, then let's make each other some tapes. I like ones I can sing along to while driving.

Being a radio DJ has kinda ruined how I listen to music.

I am old. I have been buying records for a very long time. Before I became a radio DJ, I used to bring records home and listen to them, the whole things, over & over. I could pull out any record I owned and know what all the songs were by name. If they didn't jive over time then I would get rid of them, mostly.

This is because duh, we listen to music because we enjoy it, right? I mean you kids today don't have any concept of an "ALBUM" but humor me for a minute. The bands work very hard on the package, including the song order and artwork, so out of decency you need to listen to the package as it was intended. Back in the mix-tape days, getting to know an LP intimately would help you make tapes no one would ever want to record over after you gave them to them.

These days it's totally different. Thank god a lot of record stores let you preview records at least, and I do. I play a couple seconds of a few tracks to see if they get my attention enough to play once on the radio. Sadly, this is frequently where my attention ends. I play the record on the radio a few times but once I stash it in my stacks, I forget about it.


Of course the record gets rediscovered every so often. I may stumble upon it while looking for something to play and I go "oh yeah, I forgot about this!" Like the proto-Birthday Party Boys Next Door record I keep forgetting I have.


Or I'll be listening to an archived show (this helps us become better DJs) and have to check the playlist and be reminded of something I played once that was awesome, like the Plungers "Let's Get Twisted" record.


The good thing about this is [re]discovering awesome stuff in your collection. Remember Rye Coalition? When they first stepped on the scene I gobbled up their early 7" records and the split 12" with Karp. Then they put out their first LP and I left Amerikkka for an overseas adventure which lasted almost 10 years. I guess they're still making records, but anyway, right now I'm rediscovering "Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet."


Tell me what you've [re]discovered lately.

Tight Pants Obsession of the Moment: Franz Ferdinand

I was toiling away at work today when I got a sudden earworm. I just had to hear the first Franz Ferdinand album, but I didn't have it with me because duh, I was at work, so I was reduced to playing youtube videos. They actually got the job done pretty well.

I realized that I know almost every word of this album, but not proudly because it's one of my guilty pleasures. As if I need to care what anyone thinks. As if I'm somehow losing punk cred with myself for being in love with this record.

So for the record, I'm in love with Franz Ferdinand (the record.)

I used to think sheepishly that it was pop bubblegum and was apologetic for liking Franz Ferdinand, but this is a genius album. Today I realized it not only is kind of like a Gang of Four record for the aughts (ahh, well, before Gang of Four actually made a new record for the aughts), it is also like a Talking Heads '77 album for the aughts. I'm making this parallel mainly based on lyrics and therefore attitude.

Plus I really enjoy saucy, fuckoff lyrics like "come on home, but don't forget to leave" and "I know I won't be leaving here with you." A girl can sing along with this record from start to finish. That is why I never take passengers in my car.


There aren't many albums I can remember hearing for the first time. By this I do mean a song on the radio or friend's house or whatever, not literally the whole album, but the implication is you hear the song and then you procure the album that comes with it, unless it is a single. What I also mean is the details are clear: not only do you remember hearing it but you remember where you were, what you were doing, maybe what year it was.

I was in Prague the summer of 2004, hanging around a friend's apartment and thought it would be neat to turn on a radio and check out some Czech radio and maybe discover some Czech bands but of course pretty much every station was playing English language pop or rock. It was under these conditions that I first heard "Matinee."

Do you think the nice Czech DJ came on the radio like we do at WCBN and clearly announced the name of the band and song? It was weeks before I heard it again, and I'm lucky it was a huge smash because it did reappear by way of Asian MTV. I used to live in a faraway land, you see, and I was in Prague on holiday from my Southeast Asian residence where I lived for six years.

So thanks to MTV and Asian CD piracy I bought my first copy (a burned CD in a plastic envelope with a shittily computer printed album cover and song list) of Franz Ferdinand and listened to it quite a bit for quite a while. Next six Tight Pantses, you're going to listen to it too.

...but if you're still looking for punk cred, how's this: drummer Paul Thomson was also in the wicked awesome Yummy Fur, although he wasn't on their incredible first album Nightclub. (See how uuhngschpugg can't admit that Franz Ferdinand is a good record.)

Into the Future, with Gramma K

I have some things to tell you.

1. I have handed off the Program Director duties to a new recruit, so prepare to witness my transformation from the Wicked Witch of the East into Glenda the Good Witch.

2. I invented a super-fast-amazing way to create my playlists without typing any html myself!!! (No, not by making the new PD do it.) This may result in Tight Pants playlists being more up-to-date!

3. I can personally confirm that The Listenership (WCBN's 40th anniversary commemorative smoked pale ale created for us by Logan at Arbor Brewing Company) is delicious and won't fuck you up too much. You can safely drink it on a work or school night, so waste no more time and get down there in WCBN's honor.

4. Not being a native of Michigan, I have never been able to wrap my head around the fact that this bridge is privately owned. How is that possible? It's so fucked up I can't digest it at all. So I did some googling to see how many other major international, or even interurban, connectors there were in the USA that were privately owned and I found this website which is pretty cool. Bridges!

Happy Friday, which it will be soon. See you at 3pm.

WCBN IS TURNING 40! Arbor Brewing Company helps us celebrate with BEER.

Hello friends,

Some are saying 40 is the new 30. The age until which a growing number of modern Americans are waiting to settle down, become half a marital unit, and begin to breed. But not WCBN. In its heart WCBN will always remain single, independent, and carefree. Actually it wouldn’t be that bad if WCBN reproduced.

Anyway, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of WCBN moving to FM on January 23, 1972, Arbor Brewing Company has brewed up a smoked English pale called “The Listenership.” You may join us in its unveiling on Wednesday, January 11, at WCBN’s monthly movie screening. This month the movie will be “Jailhouse Rock.”

Doors open at 8:30pm in the Tap Room Annex of the Arbor Brewing Company in downtown Ann Arbor. No one is sure how long this brew will be available (true greatness is always fleeting, so be thankful WCBN has existed as long as it has) so make sure you show up for the movie if you want to get a taste.

Your truly,

WCBN

NORTON RECORDS 25th ANNIVERSARY BALL: Part IV.

At last....day 4 and the last instalment. Wait, instalment only has one "l"? Oh, anyway, Saturday was an incredibly late night. When you get home at 5:00 the next morning I'm pretty sure it isn't technically Saturday any more. Put a long Saturday spent outside in the cold on top of a long Saturday night rubbing shoulders at the club, drinking beer and riding the filthy subway together and you get...sick on Sunday!

I felt so shitty that during my dinner date with family I almost blew Sunday night off entirely. That would have been a mistake, though. Because of said dinner I missed out totally on what could have been my first time ever seeing Bloodshot Bill. I take back what I said about one-man-bands belonging on subway platforms, by the way. I also fucking missed the Figures of Light for fuck's sake! Just get your info, I don't know, here

The Real Kids were scheduled but couldn't make it, so the last-minute addition was The Swingin' Neckbreakers. How ecstatic a couple young ladies in front of me were to see them! They knew all the words to all the songs and between each one kept raving about how totally psyched they were to see their old faves unexpectedly. For me that is like if the Jesus Lizard had bbeen substituted in or something.

Since I spent most of Sunday night half-asleep leaning against a wall, I was able to observe the crowd more. During the A-Bones a girl in front of me was texting her lame friend who wasn't at the show for like the whole A-Bones set. The exchange went something like this:

Lame Friend: So like how's the big concert?
Girl: So like the A-Bones are on right now.
Lame Friend: I so do NOT like that band.
Girl: You should have seen the Condo Fucks.
Lame Friend: LOL
Girl: They had this guy named Gaylord singing.
Lame Friend: WHAAT?!!
Girl: It was pretty funny.

...and then...the Tandoori Knights! King Khan, Bloodshot Bill, and band all wearing south Asian-ish costumes and parodying south Asians in a way only south Asians could get away with. Oh but also great rock'n'roll. As you know from my post below about Bloodshot Bill, I was swept entirely off my feet, although that was pretty easy on Sunday night. Hell, I didn't even stay for the Sonics. I had already seen them, and was so dead tired and sick that I slouched on a couch in the front room at the Bell House until my friends came out and we got a car home.

That's all! Now back to posting on this blog only once every three months.

OCCUPY MY TURNTABLE

I admit it, I had not heard of Bloodshot Bill before the Norton Records Ball. How is this possible? Well, due to living in a 'depressed market', as one promoter called the southeast Michigan area, and smugly but erroneously believing that having my own radio station would keep me informed about good new music I needed to hear, I'm pretty out of touch. I realized that at the Norton thing.

If you've been as deprived as me you may not realize that Bloodshot Bill has about a million records out. He's like a modern-day Hasil Adkins, only somewhat more sophisticated, and Canadian. But don't take my word for it- see for yourself! He has a blog.

I will get back to telling you about the rest of the Norton Dance in a little while, but for now enjoy this brief interlude inspired by the amazing Bloodshot Bill, who played in Detroit Sunday night November 27 at the Magic something or other and whose new record I finally discovered and which may well not leave the turntable for two months, a record previously set in 1993 by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's second album Extra Width which, incidentally, has been reissued this year.

NORTON RECORDS 25th ANNIVERSARY: Day 3

Saturday night. Minds were blown. At least, mine was. Not to sound like a cop-out, but for the one of you actually reading this blog on a semi-regular basis, I got the idea that you probably don't need seventeen paragraphs of philosophy. If you did you'd go to grad school. So I'll do what I can to be brief.

Here is the Norton Records 25th Anniversary theme song: JJ Jackson's "OO MA LIDDY". By the third or fourth time I heard this record in between sets, it started to stand out as an obvious DJ favorite. Were there others I didn't notice? Possibly, but this song will now always remind me of these fabulous four days in New York.

Saturday was so much fun, I got sick. Saturday. Saturnalia. The Nortones by day 3 had found their groove and achieved full sloppy appeal. Brooklyn's Daddy Long Legs were next, purveying a cruder, lower-fi Legendary Shack Shakers (who are an excellent live band) or perhaps Link Wray of the "Hidden Charms" style of Link Wray. They were joined by Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney of the Flamin' Groovies. I think I would have fainted if that had been my band.

I didn't imagine that The Hentchmen, a Detroit band I have seen many times and (I admit) take for granted a little would be one of the highlights of the ball. I heard they were a little nervous before they went on. Nervous! I can't say they stole the show that night entirely, because Luis & the Wildfires were also great, but they were great. Did going on early enough not to be drunk yet have anything to do with it?

The South Bay Surfers are said to be the West Coast's answer to King Uszniewicz & the U-tones. Someone please tell me if these bands suck out loud (in a good way) on purpose. I'm definitely not in on the joke...or maybe I am! Russell Quan played drums and at one point during their set, the singer/sax player turned around and told him he had to follow along with the rest of the totally dysfunctional band.

WCBN's rockabilly DJ shared Luis & the Wildfires' new album "Heart Shaped Noose" with me a few months ago and I was on the fence. That neo-rockabilly scene occupies a grey area between sorta cool and really corny as far as I am concerned. Robbie Fulks sums it up pretty well with this song. Chances are if someone raves about how "authentic" one of these bands is, they spend more time on their costumes than on the music. Luis & the Wildfires, thankfully, turned out to be a fantastic live band. I don't think I was the only one thusly impressed: later on at the bar, as I tugged on Luis's coatsleeve to compliment him on an awesome set, several other drunk boys & girls were doing the same. He very graciously thanked us all and called all the girls nice things like "honey" and "beautiful."

Saturday night was the only night I drank more than my share of beer. By this time I was half in the bag. I'm pretty sure that Untamed Youth and Randy Fuller Four with Deke Dickerson were great, but this is the part where you might want to look at the Youtube videos. The last act was ? and the Mysterians. I was that drunk lady next to you singing along too loud with "Be My Baby" which I am certain they played twice. We didn't get home til about 5am, but that is partly because I refused to take a cab and spent an hour and a half on the subway. Bad move.

Damn. Still not brief enough.

NORTON RECORDS 25th ANNIVERSARY: DAY 2

I thought it would be cool to show up fashionably late on Friday, but I overshot and missed not only the Nortones but also the Condo Fucks with the Great Gaylord. I walked in just in time for the last song on their set. It looked good. Luckily there is video footage of the whole thing, both tolerable video and godawful video, for those of you who prefer to have your senses assaulted by shaky pixelated images and bottom-of-trashcan sound.

One-man band Mark Sultan was next. It was hard to tell if he was seriously berating the audience for its generally tepid response to him (plausible) or if he was being punk rock. He plowed through a set that couldn't have lasted longer than 15 minutes, breaking his drum pedal at some point and appearing to use that as an excuse to finish and leave even though Billy Miller brought him a different one. I like Mark's records but I have to say the one-man-band routine live is the sort of thing that belongs on subway platforms. What I mean by that is it's not the most spectacularly interesting thing to watch unless you are one of those "how does he DO that?!" geeks. Which you probably are.

I picked up a new copy of the formerly readable, now useless newsrag The Village Voice either Friday or Saturday and it had a teeny little teaser someone had written for the Norton Fest. It said basically that each night had a band or two worth seeing, but the best night would probably be Friday. It was all moot of course since the whole shindig was sold out for weeks prior to the printing of last week's Voice, but that didn't stop them from recommending Friday night and listing the price of tickets. At least it's free- you can use it to line your catbox every week, or light your barbecue. And for your information, Village Voice, Saturday was the best night, but we'll get there soon.

Oh anyway. Jackie and the Cedrics! From Tokyo! I believe they said this was their first time in NY in about 5 years. They wore matching loungecoats like the Phantom Surfers, but worked a lot harder to appear competent and pulled it off. It is always a challenge to look like you are rocking out while you play most any kind of keyboard instrument; extra member Tucker Rodriguez made it happen.

The Reigning Sound is a band (and by band I mean a rotating cast of musicians supporting Greg Cartwright) I've always wanted to like so much more than I do. The current lineup is basically the Jay Vons with Greg Cartwright. They played an excellent set and were appreciated by a moderately sized but enthusiastic group of fans. Seeing them live was definitely more interesting than listening to Reigning Sound records, some of which (the new one, I'm thinking of) border on positively pop and ballad-y. You can download that new record here, by the way.

The crowning event of the evening was ostensibly the Norton Records Soul and R&B Revue. It was weird.

I know I stated previously that sloppy is about what I merrily expect from Norton...but the R&B Revue was supposed to be better executed. At least I imagined it would be, which was why I was surprised to see essentially a garage band with a bunch of old gentlemen singing a few songs. The Mighty Hannibal was led out by King Khan and did fine as long as he held onto the mic stand. You see, he's had a stroke and a heart attack, can't see a thing, and looked pretty feeble up there. His mind is obviously still sharp because he said a couple funny things including telling us that he had had a stroke and a heart attack, but tonight he was gonna give us all strokes and heart attacks.

Andre Williams came up next and did a couple tunes, including one of the newer ones, "Agile, Mobile, Hostile." Someone missed a cue and the result was the band repeating the same refrain over for a couple minutes, looking confused and embarrassed, while Andre Williams snapped his fingers, tapped his feet and opened and closed his mouth a whole bunch while he apparently waited for the band to do something. I started wondering if he was OK. Then finally they moved on to another song.

I know they still want to perform, and they are finally receiving their due after many years of relative obscurity, and I want them to receive the credit (and pay) they deserve, but trotting out elderly musicians in questionable health has a certain level of exploitation involved. It reminds me of the horrible spectacle of Chuck Berry fainting on stage in Chicago in January of this year. I won't post a link to that video- google it yourself if you really need to see it. You're a terrible voyeur, though.

To sum up, Friday night was not the best night of the four-day ball, in fact, it was the least best. I ended up being a little depressed and weirded out by the last hour. The most exciting thing about Friday night might well have been walking back to the train station and seeing some drunk driver totally plow over the median on 4th Av without even slowing down.