Friday, October 4, 2013

Don't Hurt the Radio for Against All Solid Testimony Machines Have Feelings Too





Give, please. For me. Though they still owe me product for that Kickstarter thing. And Scott the DJ (in the green shirt in the above) is awesome, one of my favorites, always a !!! show, he has the best bed music I've ever, this week he played, after playing my favorite of his bed music behind a mic break, a vocal version of that bed music. Song below. So give.







  • Theories of bed music. Some DJs use the same song for all mic breaks, others have a small rotation of songs (like Scott), others change theirs from show to show, some don't use any. Today, after years of thought on this (I think about this constantly, it doesn't surprise you to know) I would use the small rotation of constant songs. I would like to install a small rotation of bed music for this blog - I made this request a couple of years ago: does anyone know how to set up music that plays when this blog is accessed? The music would also need to shutdown (rimshot) when the few of you who actually listen to the music here click play on a youtube. Since this will never happen, I'm not going to taunt myself with determining the three rotating bed music songs.
  • Kidding. Of course I have, do, and will always.
  • Jim takes a whack at Shutdownarama.
  • Soy huevon.
  • terror and courage.
  • We pledge allegiance to the concrete of Mega-Fortress One.
  • Hollow inside.
  • Kairoschlerosis.
  • Linky Friday.
  • October.
  • There are still unique sentences to write.
  • Walser, for those of you who do.
  • This was put in my head yesterday (by WFMU DJ Mary Wing), woke up with it in my head this morning (and of course flashed me to Darling Buds):







RADIO

Tom Clark

Don’t hurt the radio for
Against all
Solid testimony machines
Have feelings
Too

Brush past it lightly
With a fine regard
For allowing its molecules
To remain 100% intact

Machines can think like Wittgenstein
And the radio’s a machine
Thinking softly to itself
Of the Midnight Flower
As her tawny parts unfold

In slow motion the boat
Rocks on the ocean
As her tawny parts unfold

The radio does something mental
To itself singingly
As her tawny parts unfold
Inside its wires
And steal away its heart

Two minutes after eleven
The color dream communicates itself
The ink falls on the paper as if magically
The scalp falls away
A pain is felt
Deep in the radio

I take out my larynx and put it on the blue chair
And do my dance for the radio
It’s my dance in which I kneel in front of the radio
And while remaining motionless elsewise
Force my eyeballs to come as close together as possible
While uttering a horrible and foreign word
Which I cannot repeat to you without now removing my larynx
And placing it on the blue chair

The blue chair isn’t here
So I can’t do that trick at the present time

The radio is thinking a few licks of its own
Pianistic thoughts attuned to tomorrow’s grammar
Beautiful spas of seltzery coition
Plucked notes like sandpaper attacked by Woody Woodpecker

The radio says Edwardian farmers from Minnesota march on the Mafia
Armed with millions of radioactive poker chips

The radio fears foul play
It turns impersonal
A piggy bank was smashed
A victim was found naked
Radio how can you tell me this
In such a chipper tone
Your structure of voices is a friend
The best kind
The kind one can turn on or off
Whenever one wants to
But that is wrong I know
For you will intensely to continue
And in a deeper way
You do

Hours go by
And I watch you
As you diligently apply
A series of audible frequencies
To tiny receptors
Located inside my cranium
Resulting in much pleasure for someone
Who looks like me
Although he is seated about two inches to my left
And the both of us
Are listening to your every word
With a weird misapprehension
It’s the last of the tenth
And Harmon Killebrew is up
With a man aboard

He blasts a game-winning home run
The 559th of his career
But no one cares
Because the broadcast is studio-monitored for taping
To be replayed in 212 years

Heaven must be like this, radio
To not care about anything
Because it’s all being taped for replay much later

Heaven must be like this
For as her tawny parts unfold
The small lights swim roseate
As if of sepals were the tarp made
As it is invisibly unrolled
And sundown gasps its old Ray Charles 45 of Georgia
Only through your voice


8 comments:

  1. I prefer the SDF-1, as long as there's no singing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. re request for donation to that radio station - maybe later (i've never listened to wfmu, actually) - coincidentally, just before reading here i'd made a donation to wikipedia, my first

    re "radio" - i was going to post a link to modern lovers "roadrunner" (radio on) song but while trying to decide which was the most entertaining version i decided to point to a song sung live on conan o'brien

    Jonathan Richman - I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFU98mEem4

    the runner-up as my favorite jonathan richman youtube video this a.m. is his version of a leonard cohen song "here it is"

    ReplyDelete
  3. WFMU's a great station. Always has been. I've written about it—in fact, allude to it my novel. I've donated many times over the years. Got the tee shirts and swag to prove it. Joe Belock and Frank O'Toole and Bill Kelly, among others, are my faves.

    The problem with 'bed' music (a term which means something completely different to me—I'm thinking 'ambient' here, you dirty minded scoundrels, what did you think I meant? 'Bolero' haha I'm no Dudly Moore.) is that it might cause your site to load even slower than it already does (at times).

    However, I believe you can embed certain streaming services like Spotify, etc. and choose channels. They'll have embed codes on their sites that should make it easy for you and provide some diversity. It would be like turning the radio on when someone goes to your site. Of course, for people who surf (serf?) at work, it could be a problem. Me, I listen to music when I read your site—every fucking day I have access to the 'net. So, it might clash with what I'm listening to. Then again, mash-ups were really popular (esp. @ FMU) about 8-10 years ago. So, theres' that.

    And thanks for the link. You know me, I'm just trying to make sense of it all. And not afraid of being shown to be wrong.

    "Way Behind Me" is one of my favorite running tunes, btw. Always makes me pick up the pace and try to pick out someone in front of me to pass when it pops up at random. Wow to the Darling Buds song, too. Gotta check out more of their stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A poppy-synthesizer version of Bolero is one of Scott's three mic-break bed music, so serendipity abounds. And O'Toole's signature out music of Riddle's Route 66 always sends a good throb of nostalgia through me.

      I tried soundcloud here a year or two ago but, as you say, it made page load slower. I'll look into spotify.

      Delete
  4. Holyfuck, you reward that wackaloon narcissist idiot Clark from Popehat with a link? How he talked very nearly reasonable people like White and Nonwhite into giving him a free spot from which to troll is beyond me. Seriously, beloved. That guy is a fucking layer flake.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The contempt expressed for Capitol Police made me laugh (and remember flares in Germantown and police overreaction) and saved me the effort.

      But yes, Ken is the guy I go there to read.

      Delete
  5. And yes, I know I trolled the link by Ba'al-taunting you. Completely my effing bad.

    ReplyDelete
  6. When did Ken grow a beard? I very rarely say this, but the facial hair is a good look for him.

    ReplyDelete