The Return of Musical Cheese! Sept 12, 2012

Here we are with a new semester at good ol' WIIT, the voice of Illinois Institute of Technology. The little radio station that could now has a new board and all us DJ's have had to go in for re-training.

I discovered that this board is much easier to use than the last one,  as long as I don't try to do anything fancy, like try to put phone calls on the air. The two CD decks will start playing when you hit the "on air" button on the board. And best of all, they have another deck for digital media: Flash drives, USB drives, etc. We are even closer to realizing my dream of being able to bring in all my music for a show on the half-a-postage-stamp sized chip in my cell phone. However, I can't crossfade between songs on the same flash drive yet, but I can still alternate between the flash drive and my CDs.

And I discovered that the class I'm taking this semester will actually run the entire alloted length of the class: right up to 9 p.m. Luckily the guy waiting to train me did wait until I could get my CDs out of the car. After about half and hour of watching me, he decided I was good to go.

So we have a "practice" run of the Musical Cheese Show. With no real special segments or anniversaries to mark, just running though my usual selections: Once-hit songs that are now obscure or sound outdated, modern hits that just plain sound "cheesy," and the occasional novelty record thrown in, too.

http://markmcdermott.com/MusicalCheese/Musical%20Cheese_2012_09_12.m4a 

Musical Cheese Practice Show: Sept 12, 2012 on WIIT 88.9 FM

Twilight Zone, Golden Earring 1982

Pop Muzik, M 1979

A little instrumental break here:

Hawaii Five-O theme, Ventures 1969

Peaches en Regalia, Frank Zappa 1969 (LP: Hot Rats)

Baby How'd We Ever Get This Way, Andy Kim 1968 (Another of the Brill Building songwriters who occasionally stuck out on their own, Andy had a bigger hit with "Rock Me Gently" in 1974, but is best known for writing "Sugar Sugar.")

Some Classical Gassers:

Hungarian Rhapsody (Dueling Pianos), "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" Soundtrack 1988, featuring Daffy and Donald Duck.

Pal-Yat-Chee, Spike Jones with Homer & Jethro, 1950

Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker), Parliament, 1976

Rocket Man, William Shatner, 1979 Science Fiction Awards (If you can't get down with the Shat-man, you can't claim to be playing Musical Cheese!) 

White Bird, It's a Beautiful Day, 1969

Woo-Hoo, Rock-A-Teens, 1959

Makin' Our Dreams Come True, Cyndi Grecco, 1976

("Schlemiel! Schlamozl! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated")

Hot Rod Lincoln, Charlie Ryan & the Timberline Riders, 1959 (Itself an answer song to another "Hot Rod Race" song, this is best known in its 1972 cover by Commander Cody)

I've Been Everywhere, Hank Snow, 1962 (Originally written by an Australian, with all Down Under place names!)

Maybe I'll feature songs that reference super-heroes each week:

Kryptonite, 3 Doors Down, 1999

What's the Name of This Funk (Spider-Man), Ramsey Lewis 1976

Galaxy, War, 1976

A selection whose cultural importance I labored hard to explain:

Solfeggio (Song of the Nairobi Trio), Robert Maxwell 1953

The Teddy Bears' Picnic, Edison Symphony Orchestra 1908

I Wanna Rock, Cab Calloway, 1942

The Happy Whistler, Don Robertson, 1956 (There's just something oddball about any instrumental hit. Whistling songs even more so)

No No Song, Ringo Starr 1974 (As it turned out, there were still some substances Ringo couldn't say "No No" to when he recorded this. But he got better.) 

We Have All the Time in the World, Louis Armstrong ("On Her Majesty's Secret Service" Soundtrack) 1969 ("What a Wonderful World" is probably the most overplayed song of this century. But you can't go wrong with this, the last song Satchmo recorded!)

Musical Cheese II: The saga continues!

Now, I don't know how long I'll be doing this little broadcast from the studios of WIIT. There may be a job coming down the line that keeps me from coming in for class, who knows? The next podcast could be my last!

So I learned a few things after last week's opening salvo. First, the Virtual DJ software on my Windows netbook is by default expecting a soundcard installed with two outputs: one for cue and one for air. So whenever I dropped an MP3 track on one of the cue decks, a channel on the song playing on air would cut out. Finally found the configuration to acknowledge that there's just the one stereo output. Now if I can just figure why the plug feeding the sound board only plays the right channel (I tried my headphone in the jack, that's pure stereo). For the sake of this podcast, I tracked the right channel into both ears.

My topic for the broadcast came to me after watching the Grammy Awards the previous Sunday. Another slate of Best New Artist nominees that by legend would never be heard from again. Checking the lists of previous nominees and winners, that see that isn't so much the case today as it was in the 1970's. I think Christina Aguilera has gone on to better things after her win. But there were some nominees so obscure that they didn't even have a Wikipedia article about them yet. But I still found an MP3 of the J's with Jamie, so their mark on internet posterity may yet be made. And I should have known when putting together a playlist of Best New Artist nominees, I'd be rutting out the greatest piece of musical cheese ever recorded!


Note: "Johnny Get Angry" by Joanie Somers reminded me that it's one of a very small group of pop hits to use a kazoo. The only other ones I could think of offhand was "You're Sixteen" by Ringo Starr and "Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish–which was not really a "pop" hit. But once again, the Internet comes to the rescue!
And yes, the Ace Frehley version of "New York Groove" starts out draggy. A previous DJ had messed with the pitch control of the CD deck and not set it back to normal. I tried to speed it up a little bit in GarageBand.

And of course, all the songs below have links to purchase a copy for your very own on iTunes, or another source if possible!

Playlist for Mark McDermott's Musical Cheese Show #2, February 15, 2012 on WIIT:

Pushin' too Hard--The Seeds (1967)
New York Groove--Hello (1975)
New York Groove--Ace Frehley (1978)
I Was Made for Lovin' You--Kiss--12" single (1979)
The Way of Love--Cher--Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves (1972)
Acid Queen--Tina Turner--Tommy Soundtrack (1975)

Special Feature: Select Best New Artist Grammy Nominees:
Let's Not Be Sensible--The J's with Jamie (1963)
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah--Allan Sherman--My Son the Nut (1983)
A Walk in the Black Forest--Horst Jankowski--Hard to Find Pop Instrumentals ii--(1965)
The Shape I'm In--Johnny Restivo (1959)
Afternoon Delight--Starland Vocal Band--Super Hits of the 70's v. 18 (1876)
Hey Deanie--Shaun Cassidy--Super Hits of the 70s (1978)
Feelings--Morris Albert--Super Hits of the 70s v. 17 (1975)
Rock On--David Essex (1974)
59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) - Feelin' Groovy--Harpers Bizarre (1967)
Joanie Sommers--Johnny Get Angry--Hard to Find 45s on CD Vol.5 (1962)
Steal Away--Robbie Dupree (1980)
Whispering/Cherchez La Femme/C'est Si Bon--Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band (1977)

What a Difference a Day Makes (Disco version)--Esther Phillips (1975)
Rock and Roll--Boswell Sisters (1934)
Jolly Fellows Waltz--Peerless Orchestra (1904)
Tumbling Tumbleweeds--Sons of the Pioneers (1934)
Matchbox--Blind Lemon Jefferson (1927)
Mule Skinner Blues--The Fendermen (1960)
Itchy Chicken--Los Straitjackets--Viva Los Straitjackets (1005)
Who Listens to the Radio--The Sports--Mushroom Evolution Concept (1978)
Sex (I'm A...)--Berlin--12" single version (1983)
I'm on Fire--5000 Volts (1975)
Sometimes A River--String Cheese Incident--One Step Closer (2005)
Highway 40 Unplugged--Brak--Space Ghost's Musical BarBQ
Gone, Gone, Gone--Charlie Feathers--single (1967)

Back in the Booth! My Musical Cheese show

It's something I've awaited for 25 years. I had promised myself that, if by some chance I got myself affiliated with a school or college with a radio station, I would get myself an air shift!

And that one-class certificate course I'm taking at Illinois Institute of Technology is my ticket.
Once I knew I would be going to the downtown campus for a class, I signed up to do a radio shift on WIIT-FM, broadcasting from the campus center on State St.
The orientation was pretty quick and easy. Now mind you, the last time I played music on the radio was before the station at Bowling Green U. had any CD players installed. Now at orientation, the Tech Director asks "so, is anyone going to be bringing CDs?" Turns out most people just bring a laptop with DJ software installed. And they have turntables, but due to the problem of theft, I would have to provide head shell and needle for two Technics 1200 turntables. The guy says they've got a grant for new equipment that will be installed starting in March, but for now we're "stuck" using a board from the 1970s. All right by me, I started out on boards from the 1950s.

For a while, I've highlighting my favorite obscure, silly or otherwise annoying old songs when I hear them on iTunes, and tagging them as "Musical Cheese." So that's the title of my new show. Featuring the stuff your parents forgot about when they said music was so much better in their time. So watch for my show to contain bad 70s earworms, unusual or obscure tunes from through recording history, and some of the comedy stuff that we played the crap out of back in the 70s. Hey, everything old is new again.

My weekend vinyl pleasures

In trying to keep up my little space on the web, I thought I'd go through my playlists that won't get posted: my vinyl listening.

This weekend, while pounding away at the keys, and not wanting to be distracted by putting on the TV, I just dug out some LPs. Got the ION turntable plugged into the computer anyway, and was intending to screen all my vinyl to start listing them on GEMM. I am admitting right here, in my scramble to leave no penny unturned, I'm discussing my listening with an affiliate link to the iTunes store.

Iggy Pop, Lust for Life (1977) remains, how shall I put it, "timeless." It's title track is a tribute to Iggy's long career as a heroin addict that would never get airplay if recorded today. It was used in its proper context in the movie Trainspotting, then was appropriated by clueless advertising execs for a cruise line's TV campaign. How Family-friendly!

Renaissance, Novella (1977). Even if you've had it with Prog Rock, this is a slightly refreshing package, made different by having a female lead singer in Annie Haslam, and a greater emphasis on classical and European folk elements over rock, though sometimes it's every bit as bombastic as Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

David Bowie, Alabama Song (1980). From Kurt Weill and Bertoldt Brecht's Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny. Apparently this was pushed out in 1980 as a way to hasten the end of Bowie's contract with RCA. Bowie sure sounds like he could do justice to the material. My German import 12" had it backed with Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam." I got it for the "B" side, "Space Oddity," but found it was a 1980 re-make. Whose orchestration sounded a lot like "Mother" by John Lennon.

The Hobbit Condensed

Some months ago, the cartoonbrew blog posted a YouTube video that had unearthed a long-lost pilot for a Howdy Doody cartoon film series, made on spec for "Buffalo Bob" Smith and NBC by animator Gene Deitch ("Tom Terrific" among many others). That film was thought lost for many years until someone unearthed a copy and posted it to YouTube.

Now another long-lost film has resurfaced, this one with a slightly bizarre history. But it offers insight to the weird world of movie making. The link below has the actual YouTube, and I am encouraging you to visit the fun that is Cartoon Brew to see the video. But the condensed version of this condensed version is this: in 1964, when J.R.R. Tolkein was just another fantasy author on Ballantine's backlist, the author's estate sold the movie rights to "The Hobbi" to a producer named William Snyder, who had done some work with Deitch and had picked up Deitch's Oscar for his cartoon "MONRO" in 1961. Snyder pitches Deitch on the project, he works up a screenplay, and makes a pitch for a full-blown animated venture to 20th Century Fox, which turns them down flat.

Meantime, by 1966, "Lord of the Rings" has been issued in paperback and Tolkein is now a cult favorite. J.R.R.'s estate gets a bigger offer for "The Hobbit," and prepares to let their contract with Snyder expire within a month, so they don't have to pay him anything.

Snyder notes that the contract only stipulated that he deliver "a full-color film adaptation of 'The Hobbit'" by deadline time. No mention of how long it had to be, nor how GOOD it had to be. So Snyder tells Deitch to tear up his script and produce a quickie animated version on one reel of film within 30 days. Which he does. Note that the movie is not so much animated as it is a still life with camera pans. But Snyder delivers a film, Tolkein's estate learns a valuable lesson about Hollywood contract, and "The Hobbit" and the whole "Lord of the Rings" trilogy passes through several hands over the next 25 years, briefly emerging as a made-for-TV cartoon and an odd bit by Ralph Bakshi, before emerging full-blown with Peter Jackson.

I'm just glossing in details. Click the link below for more of the story.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/gene-deitchs-the-hobbit.html