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Roky Erickson


On April 19, to celebrate both the triumphant release of the new Roky Erickson album and the announcement that Roky and Okkervil River would be performing at Urbana’s Pygmalion Music Festival, Honcho from Normal took us on a tour of Roky’s rich, twisted catalog. Come on down and drop out, Texas style.

What is Psychedelic?

We explore what psychedelic music might actually mean, since music is not literally a drug. This exploration leads us off genre, out of the 1960s, and into unexpected and delicious territory. A long strange trip, online to expand your ears.

Alice Caterpillar

Fanfare for the Speeding Bullet: Experimental Vocal Music

Mutatis Mutandis by Herbert Brun.

Mutatis Mutandis by Herbert Brun.

As a sub for Fanfare for the Speeding Bullet, the avant-garde show, I had it in mind to do an entirely a capella show focusing on experimental music for voice. I really wondered what two hours of anticommunicative voices would feel like. People talking to you who did not want anything from you. Halfway through, the usual host, who was supposed to be taking the night off, showed up and hovered nervously. Perhaps to Jason I was playing the wrong avant garde music. But isn’t that the point?

I include the complete playlist below and reconstruct the broadcast as well.

PART ONE

01 Central Park Transverse Vocal 1    0:43    Henry Flynn
Slender Fungus    3:36    Tones On Tail
Breaking Up Immediately Recognizable Units of Significance Is Hard to Do    4:27    William DeFotis
Universal Drainage    1:24    Phil Minton
That’s Halloween    1:47    Duplex Planet
Zweiter Teil    3:13    Kurt Schwitters
Dritter Teil    2:43    Kurt Schwitters
FIDDLE    0:05
My, I’m Large    3:58    The Bobs
Anselm_Berrigan    5:55    Anselm Berrigan
Maledetto    14:33    Kenneth Gaburo
The Flow of (u)    23:01    Kenneth Gaburo

PART  TWO

Lifting Leeks    2:44    Phil MintonShadowSong (1979)    5:10    Joan La Barbara
Three Lies    3:01    Phil Minton
Dialogue ”Lonnie Cooks Quail”    0:22    Dialogue with Glen Fitzgerald
Todor Todorka :trad.Bulgarian    3:11    Amasong
Unfortunate    0:14    Exene Cervenka
Erin (1980)    6:56    Joan La Barbara
Circlesong Two    4:14    Bobby McFerrin
Son Of Byford    0:27    Run-D.M.C.
Josquin: Petite Camusette    1:02    The Hillard Ensemble
01 Emergency    3:41    Sweet Honey In The Rock
02 Our Side Won    5:10    Sweet Honey In The Rock
03 Ode to the International Debt    3:16    Sweet Honey In The Rock
04 Are My Hands Clean_    2:56    Sweet Honey In The Rock
Well    2:08    Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
Ballad    2:15    Phil Minton
Dough Song 1    0:47    Phil Minton
Dialogue ”Acid Propaganda”    0:59    Dialogue with Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda & Ben Stiller
Gil    1:22    Don Van Vliet
Dough Song 13    0:35    Phil Minton
ENOUGH    0:02
Wafflehead    4:04    Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians
Whole Lotta Love    3:26    The Bobs

Clientele and Songs About Weapons

Here are two MP3 uploads of recent broadcasts for your electronic audio pleasure.

15 February 2010: A show dedicated to the band the Clientele, starring Rock Honcho “Oscar” Anderson from the weird city of Normal.

5 April 2010: Songs about weapons. Guns, knives, bombs, nuclear warheads, and yes, one rocket launcher.

Women’s History Month Rocks!

Danielle Dax.

Danielle Dax.

Cristy and her secretary pay homage to the hardest-rocking and/or most-interestingly-rocking women of rock and roll in this special broadcast.

The Night our Car Broke Down

Cristy’s ultra-cute cybergreen VW new beetle suffered another super-cute battery failure while we were filling the tank on the way to the station.

As a result we arrived out of sorts and fell back on a strategy we had not resorted to before: playing songs we really, really like.

Isn’t that what freestyle rock radio by passionate humans should be about?

Nah.

If that were so, we’d play the same stuff every month.

But it took the edge off a stressful night. Listen, enjoy almost as much as we did, dancing in the studio.

Check engine light is on, guys.

Check engine light is on, guys.

Radio Freestyle Anderson


Perhaps the best themes for shows are musical ideas that can’t be put into words.

On a dark, frozen, dangerous snowy night, DJ J Anderson joined us for a night of lesbian vampire soundtrack weirdness that can only be surrendered to.

At the end you can hear a song performed live in the studio by Cara Maurizi on WEFT Sessions.

Rock Geek Sports: Super Sunday

W: It’s time for Rock Geek News, live from Miami. We take you down to the field of Superbowl 44 where sports commentator Cristy Scoggins gives a
play-by-play recap of the halftime performance by rock stuporgroup The Who.

C: Well, what we’ve just seen is a disgrace, frankly. If football players can get thrown out of the league for using steroids, these geritol-and-viagara
sniffing dinosaurs shouldn’t be allowed onto the field at all.

W: To say nothing of being busted for child pornography. If some temp worker can lose her job for making a zine on the company xerox machine, tell me that a millionaire rock star can lose his superbowl gig if Interpol seizes his hard drive and finds pictures of naked ten-year-olds.

C: He ought to be on the dole, taking advantage of the English welfare state.

W: He’s creepy. Pete Townsend looked like Freddy Krueger in that dumb-ass fedora.

C: Daltry and Townsend’s vocals were so out of sync, they sounded like they were trying to harmonize over the phone. Although he’s too old and
feeble and complacent to smash his guitar, Townsend did the next best thing, which was to mangle his solos.

W: Does he even know that he’s still singing the line  “I hope that I die before I get old?” He should take a cue from Jonathan Richman’s line
“Someday we’re going to be dignified and old.”

C: I swear I saw Roger Daltrey’s lips stop moving but sound was still coming out. He was lip-synching.

W: But the most appalling thing to me was, lurking in the smoke and mirrors of the most overblown light show in rock history, were at least
three other musicians. Since when has the rock quartet Pete Townsend and the Who felt it necessary to employ a second guitarist? What an
embarrassment. If Pete Townsend is just up there being a pretty face while some session musician is hiding in the wings playing all his classic licks for him while he does that annoying windmill strum, well, then he better get a nose job.

C: Join us next year, for the great American spectacle of Superbowl 45, featuring young American athletes in peak condition, and wheezing British musicians on the verge of collapse.

Who's Been?

Who’s Been?

Songs about Mirrors

We’ll be your mirror, holding up songs that reflect our current taste and your future taste in rock, which sometimes will smash the mirror. Ah well, look into your mirror and say goodbye for me…. This show is now reflected on the internet.

Gross. If you don't know, don't ask.

Gross. If you don’t know, don’t ask.

Banjology


Banjologist and Bookglutton CEO Travis Alber hosted our show last night, spinning independent rock featuring the banjo. The show was fun, but educational, but haunting, and yet homey. A fun gathering around the glowing fire of the WEFT transmitter. Throw some mint in your julep and listen in.