Some of you long-time visitors to thelocustDOTorg may remember the “tribute” I did for the CONET project from Irdial Discs. It is a four-disc set of recordings of shortwave “numbers” stations, and I originally heard about them from the title of Wilco‘s excellent “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. The title sprang from a clip they used from the CONET project at the end of their “Poor Places” track of a young girl repeating “Yankee… Hotel… Foxtrot…” (the lead-in for the “Phonetic Alphabet NATO” track on the CONET discs). Kelly and I originally heard this track on our honeymoon, whilst in a rainstorm in St. Louis. It was hella creepy! (but awesome). Later, my interest was piqued and I set up my CONET tribute.

Fast-forward two years, and we see that after a two-year legal battle (previously unknown to me), IRDIAL is being reimbursed by Jeff Tweedy for royalties. I had assumed that Wilco had cleared it, but apparently not. Wired has a good article summing this up, entitled Wilco Pays Up for Spycasts .

It should be pointed out that Irdial has put some of their assets into the public domain under their Open Content system, and you can download their entire catalog (if you can find a mirror) for free personal, non-commercial use. I have mirrored the 4-disc CONET set and accompaning PDF in my CONET tribute.

I was tipped off to
Retro Crush’s 50 Coolest Song Parts by the venerable Memepool yesterday. It’s a pretty good listing of the cooling “parts of songs” ever. I’m all for listing stuff, but certainly not taking them as gospel. My stance on this is ever-so-bluntly pointed out by Retro Crush listing a Phil Collin’s song as the “#1 Coolest Song Part” ever. EVER. I couldn’t hardly agree more with Mr. Jackson Cooper‘s assessment: “Bullshit, I say.”

The end result might very well have been “bullshit”, but the whole notion of “cool song parts” is still wickedly valid. I think about cool song parts all the time. The #2 song on that list — “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who — was a prime example that was the first song I associated with “cool song parts” when I read the title of this well-conceived and ill-concluded list. As I was chatting with Jackson, I noted “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sat in the car [with Kelly] and had her just listen to that keyboard solo [and resulting scream from Roger Daltrey],” and then stated “Kelly — this is what the end/beginning of the world will sound like.”

I know a cool song part when I hear one — there is something about the perfectly placed drum solo, the rising crush of an orchestra, a well placed lyric or perhaps a “ROCK!” that sends a shiver up my spine. It’s almost like I’m scared, excited and incensed all at once — such is the sway that music has o’er me. It’s not like I’ve always had this reaction to music, though. I clearly remember the first time it happened, and it was a bit of an odd circumstance for a revelation.

Cue wavy fingers of a man going back in time…

Well, I was working at Dairy Queen, washing dishes on a weekday night, possibly winter (winter fits the story, anyway). I was in my late teens, early twenties.

It was late at night, and we’ve got the radio tuned to some family-safe radio station — probably 107.7 WSFR — the best hits of the 70′s 80′s and today, played in a pseudo-random order, but with a very small sample of songs.
Considering the length of time I had worked at this restaurant, I’ve heard just about their whole playlist at least a hundred times over (all Jackson Brown songs are inexplicably played with twice the frequency, I don’t know why).
I know all the lyrics to every hit Kansas and Boston ever had — you know the one about “I done the rancher’s daaaaughter, and I sho’ did hurt his priiide”. Yeah, LOVE IT.
So anyway, it’s safe to say I’ve heard every hit song from the 70′s by now including Springsteen’s “Born to Run”.
There I am, attempting to scrape day-old burnt gravy out of the bottom of a stainless steel container.
Greasy Adidas Samba’s on my feet, black pants, apron and ball-cap, red shirt, pony-tail at the time.
…And that song comes on and, at that moment, I finally pay attention to it or perhaps, we paid attention to each other, I don’t know for sure.
But that opening of that song (the audio of which is sadly missing from it’s entry on that list) just grabbed me and I listened to the lyrics of hope and desperation on “mean streets”.
Streets that i’ve never tread, but the lyrics hit home, and hit home hard.

"Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run"

"Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims
and strap your hands across my engines"

His voice rising in intensity like a man trying to race up the stairs of a subway tunnel. The decrescendo of the middle of the song with Clarence’s sax going bum bum bum bu-bu-bu-bu-ba-bum. The dark before the dawn, and then that explosive rip of “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes…”
And i couldn’t help it — I let the dish fall in the sink, and I put my hands on the edge of the sink, and I just started to cry.
Not tears of sadness necessarily or even joy. Not the uncontrollable sobbing of terrible weight — just enough to know that I had been bested. Bested by a song that had hit me right square in the chest.

I think that might be where it started. A particular piece of music — just like these little chunks on the list — can hit me like a ton of bricks.
Like I said, a shiver up my spine, usually, but some things hit me right square and cut through all this flesh and bone and emotional defense, and POW. Right in the kisser.

So, yeah, from that point on, I’ve been a fan of Bruce Springsteen.

Why did it happen *right then*? When I know I’ve heard that song a million times? I’m not entirely sure, but I think I know myself a little better now.

Today, after the batteries on my Nomad drained themselves playing early (read: good) U2, I decided to tune into WOXY up in Cincinnati via their internet audio stream — but it appeared to be down. Checking out their site, I learned that they A) stopped broadcasting on the web May 13th and B) had been sold back in January!!

Ever since I first tuned in to them back in early 2003, I had been smitten. I kept up-to-date with shows in Cinci, as well as good music in general. While it wasn’t perfect, it was still very independent and played good music. 97X was owned by Linda and Doug Balogh, who had solely owned and operated the station since the early 80′s. Being in their mid-to-late thirties at that time, they are now pushing 60, and would like to find time to enjoy the spoils of their labor. As mentioned on Sledge’s (a WOXY DJ) blog, they very well could have sold the radio station in ’96 or ’97 for triple what they received in the sale this year, but they decided to fight the good fight against behemoth corporations. (Don’t get me started on the 1996 Telecommunications Act which allowed corporations even greater ownership percentages in radio markets, please. It also started the broadband internet revolution, so it’s not ENTIRELY bad.) So alas, one of the very few family-owned/independent radio stations has gone off the air.

There were initially some indications of attempts to salvage 97X as an internet-only stream, but after some calculations it would seem that was made impossible by the RIAA‘s insistance on royalties for web broadcasts. Yay, way to stifle independence in radio. I hope thee choke on your foie gras.

For futher reading, check out Sledge’s blog, and his comments on the sale of 97X. Also, oh-so-apropo, PBS’s Frontline will be airing a broadcast entitled “The Way The Music Died” tonight at 9 PM. I’ll be watching, as should you. Oh, and it should be noted that the image used in this article is in fact, not related to WOXY or radio, but the cover image from Matt Fraction‘s great comic with the same title as this post.

I’ve always had a thing for strange things — ghosts and UFO’s and all sorts of odd things. Early memories of Halley’s Comet and space shuttles and stuff soon gave way to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, V, and the paperback cover of Whitley Strieber‘s Communion
that used to freak me out. Recently, it’s been more “realistic” interests such as cryptography, ciphers, The DaVinci Code or The Rule of Four. All of this stuff has always just been there — like some subcurrent.

Recently, Charlie at work piqued my interests in such things again, as he is also an observer of these mysterious, wonderful and fun conspiratorial ramblings and skeptical science. It would seem that all of our conversations, whether they involve Neal Stephenson‘s Cryptonomicon, or perhaps the Masons (which bring into light Alan Moore‘s From Hell and Gary Spencer Millidge’s Strangehaven), or perhaps the edges of science itself in the form of Nikola Tesla, are connected in one manner or another with some facet of our lives in very odd and conspiratorial subcurrenty sort of ways. Jack White, of The White Stripes (a favoured band of us both) has a bit of a thing for Nikola Tesla and his brand of high-voltage fruitcake science. We both in one manner or another have family or friend connections to the Masons or the Ordo Templi Orientis — both of which are real, actual, secretive organizations filled with tantalizing mythology and years of history. I could go on and on – and if I was a conspiratorial theorist worth my salt, I certainly would! But, alas, I am not — I’m just making a point that this stuff is terribly interesting.

So, just recently, on This American Life specifically Episode 265 titled “Fake Science”, they did a piece on Art Bell, the proprietor and host of Coast to Coast AM. I played a bit of it for Charlie and my surrounding office-mates (specifically the part where a man claiming to be “the Anti-Christ” calls into Art), and this morning, Charlie introduces me to Mel’s Hole. Mel is a man who discovered a hole in Ellensburg, Washington that he claims is at least 80,000 feet deep and might be a portal to another dimension. I cannot and will not attempt to explain further here, but suffice it to say you can listen to the saga by checking out the Mel’s Hole Audio site which has a number of Art Bell broadcasts with our man Mel Waters.

Art Bell and Mel’s Hole is just terribly entertaining to me, and I don’t claim to believe much of any of it. But, some unexplained mysteries of this world, some odd correlations or connections are just too interesting not to explore! I love it, and I can’t get enough of it. I’d suggest if you’ve got a little time, just poke around, you’ll find something.

…i apologize to you, Led Zeppelin. i had forgotten the rock that you brought by not listening to you in some time.

Just listen to the rhythm seciton on “Celebration Day” and tell me that John Bonham wasn’t the greatest rock drummer of his day and John Paul Jones the greatest rock bassist of his day — perhaps only matched by Keith Moon and John Entwistle from the Who.

…so, the other day I decided to whip my MP3 collection back into shape with a better organization and naming convention, and to put good ID3 (v1 and v2) tags into them. The organization/naming convention I chose is as follows:

Artist/

 Album/

  Artist – Album – Track# – Title.mp3

Various Artists/Compilation/Soundtrack albums pose a different problem, so this file-level naming convention is a bit different:

Album – Track # – Artist – Title.mp3

I think that works out well. Any ideas?

“Good Charlotte? More like Mediocre Green Day!” — Chris Rock.

It wouldn’t be so funny, if it wasn’t so true.

Jackson recommended that I:

A: Go here.

and

B: Watch the linked video.

I did both, and both were awesome. I’d heard that Junior Senior song a couple of times, and liked it — but combine that with a wacky/awesome 8-bit likeness of a squirrel et alia, well… I don’t think I need to explain that to you.

Many of you may not know about the band Ween, but I think that there song “Where’d the Cheese Go?” might either sum them up, or perhaps give you a good introduction. You see, it was created for Pizza Hut‘s “The Insider” ad campaign, but rejected.

Ween was introduced to me by David Gruneisen, and after listening to the varied tracks he had on his MP3 share at Corvus, I came to appreciate their oddity.

Hey mister, won’t you please help my pony?

special thanks to Geoff for pointing this out!

As many of you know, I’m a huge White Stripes, and recently Jack White, leader of said Stripes, broke his finger quite badly in a car-accident (that also involved Rene Zellweger, of all people). Well, in a move that can only be called the truest form of fan service — Jack and Meg have provided us with pictures and video of Jack’s finger surgery. Yeah. Watch the video and note that The White Stripes are playing on the intercom in the background. Oh girl! You have no faith in medicine!