No time for purrs and pats (70s Flashback No. 1)
Nothing says Saturday Morning like Josie and the Pussycats.
Josie and the Pussycats!
Long tails and and ears for hats
Guitars and sharps and flats
Neat, sweet, a groovy song
You're invited, come along.
Hurry, Hurry!
See ya all in Persia
Or maybe France
We could be India
Or perchance
Be with us in Bangkok
Make no difference
Everywhere the actions at
We're involved with this or that
Come along now!
Josie and the Pussycats!
No time for purrs and pats
Won't run when they here scat
There where the plot begins
Come on and watch the good guys win
Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats... yeah.
Disco sucks!
In honor of the start of another season of, as Glenn Hauser puts it, "stupid ball games," I present an article that originally appeared in a Chicago newspaper that documents the events transpired on July 12, 1979 at Comiskey Park in Chicago during Disco Demolition Night. It's interesting to compare this "big news story" to the steroid, cash, and corruption-soaked ball game of today. I found the writer's fifties-era writing style to be particularly interesting when looking at this in the context of almost thirty years of hindsight.
The horror at Comiskey
by Bill Gleason
Baseball, during Bill Veeck's two administrations at Comiskey Park, has been many things.
Thursday night it was a horror. Not a horror show but an unmitigated horror.
It was the most disgraceful night in the long history of major league baseball in Chicago.
It became frighteningly long before thousands of young people manaically ran into the playing field at about 8:40 p.m.
My wife and I were watching the middle innings of the first game from the seats behind the screen and above the aisle that divides the upper and lower boxes. Across the aisle were seven young men who were getting themselves "up" for the evening. They passed around a bottle of peppermint schnapps. They washed that down with a bottle of brandy. Some of them ordered ice cream from a vendor.
And they shouted their anti-disco obscenity.
They were vulgarians who Comiskey Park to become ruffians.
They were not there to watch the White Sox play Detroit in a scheduled twi-night doubleheader.
I told my wife to go to the press room and stay there.
All the signals of imminent riot had been flashed during the first game. Hundreds of phonograph records were sailed onto the playing field. Some were aimed at White Sox players. Fireworks were tossed onto the field. Some were thrown towards Detroit players.
The field was littered with trash. Members of the grounds crew and batboys ran into the outfield to clear the rubble. Their efforts were rewarded with more showers of trash.
It was "Teen Night," an event that was meant to be joyous and memorable. Sox management and WLUP-FM radio added a special touch. It would also be "Disco Demolition Night," a promotion that came out of the fertile mind of WLUP disk jockey Steve Dahl.
The young people of the Chicago area were invited to demolish disco records. Those who brought a record were admitted to the park for 98 cents.
Dahl must wish he had thought of something else. For thousands in the crowd demolishing a record was not enough.
The highlight of the between-games ceremony was to have been the blowing up of all the disco records that had been tossed into a huge box in deep center field.
Large fireworks were touched off in a row in front of the box. Then a fireworks "bomb" within the box was detonated. That was supposed to be the end of it.
Instead it was the beginning of the horror. When the disco records exploded, young men and women left their places in the lower deck.
Dozens ran onto the field. Then hundreds. Then thousands.
The White Sox security force—the men in the yellow jackets—were helpless at what had become a mob. "We had about 30 men here," a member of the security force said. (David Schaffer, director of operations for the Sox, said later, however, that security had been beefed up to 45 men in anticipation of the large crowd.)
Down the right-field line, George Schwartz, a chief of the Frain secuirty guards, was virtually under siege.
Schwartz, whose post is at the visitors' bullpen, treid to stem the surge of hoodlums but was grabbed and pummeled. A Frain usher ran towards short center field, trying to summon aid for Schwartz. The yellow-jackeded security men could not help. They had hundreds of youths swirling around them.
It can be said that the majority in the mob were exhibitionists. They came not to watch baseball but to be seen. They slid into the bases. They sat in the infield.
But hundreds of them were out there to do what they do best—destroy.
They tore turf from in front of the pitcher's mound. They ripped grass from the fringe of the infield in front of the shortstop. They smashed out large sections of the wire in the picnic area and Bullpen II, dining rooms under the left field stands.
Within five minutes the police had the situation in control, with the exception of a few stragglers.
Most of the rioters ran for the stands as soon as they saw the police, equipped with riot helments and flourishing night sticks.
The cops dealt quickly with all but those few who resisted. One policeman put his nightstick against the neck of a man who chose to be combative. Other cops used judo holds to convince the riotous.
Very little more than a show of police force was necessary.
The police, about 80 men, were under the command of Deputy Chief Charles Pepp of the Special Operations Group and Lt. Robert Reilly of the ball park detail.
Men of eight district tactical units had been alerted early to be in riot uniform. Most arrived outside the park, to reinforce the ball park detail, at about 7:30 p.m.
The alert had been sounded by Capt. Joseph Mullen of the Ninth District (Deering Station, a few blocks from the park.) "I was driving in the district at 6 o'clock and could see what was developing."
Questions will be asked why the tactical units and district police did not enter the park earlier. It is a department regulation that even the men of the detail assigned to the park do not go in until requested.
The call was sounded by Ridie Schaffer, business manager of the ball club.
We must keep in mind that most of those who rioted were not "kids." Most were young adults.
When they finally grow up, if they ever grow up, they may feel a sense of shame. They brought horror to baseball in Chicago.
Voodoo Chili
Woo hoo! This one from the Subgenius Reverend blog. Tasty and fun delights for your Sooper Bowling.
Voodoo Chile
To make your own voodoo chile, follow this recipe:
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 2 cups chopped onions
- 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 3 1/2 cups kidney, pinto or black beans, (two 15-ounce.cans) drained
- 3 1/2 cups crushed tomatoes, (a 29-ounce.can)
- 1 3/4 cups ORTEGA Salsa - Thick & Chunky (a 16-ounce jar)
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/2 cup ORTEGA® Diced Green Chiles, (a 4-ounce can)
- 3 tablespoons chili powder
- 2 oz. Jose Cuervo (minimum)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons ORTEGA® Diced Jalapeños
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano, crushed
- 2 teaspoons salt
Quickly drink the Cuervo. Repeat as necessary.
HEAT vegetable oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add beef, onions and garlic; cook for 4 to 5 minutes or until no longer pink; drain.
STIR in beans, crushed tomatoes, salsa, wine, chiles, chili powder, jalapeños, cumin, oregano and salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cover. Cook, stirring frequently, for 1 hour.
Makes 12 servings.
Gohomeproductions
Thanks to a tipoff in alt.slack, here is another fine web site featuring all types of audio animations. Search for "Strung Out King" for a most enlightened example.
Who would have thought?
"Bob" speaks Esperanto. Jen Via Tuta Vivo!
Pastor John archives!
For some reason our pre-scheduled recording of Pastor John Lewis off truthradio's webcast failed, and we got nothing but an empty directory and no rants for the holiday weekend. However, while poking around the truth radio web site, I discovered that there are now online archives of Pastor John's broadcasts! Hooray.
There are also archives of other shows carried on the truth radio webcast. I haven't had a chance to check these out to see if they provide any material as interesting as what comes from the ol' farm in Indiana.
Pastor John had the flu this past weekend, and his shows were covered by his son Nathan and some other "brothers" from Campbellsburg. Of these, "Brother Willie" provides right fine far 'n' brimstone preachin'.
Pastor John Lewis confirmed
Thanks to my trusty automated webcast snarfing app, I am happy to confirm that Pastor John Lewis has made the move to Saturdays and Sundays at 7PM eastern time on Truth Radio's webcast. John's show is always very entertaining and well worth the listen.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
I'll wager that you didn't know the President covered U2 songs. It is, indeed, true. Thanks to c-bee1 on alt.binaries.slack for the tip-off.
Pastor John is moving
One of the most entertaining webcasts there is, Pastor John Lewis and the Black Brigade broadcast, has been thrilling us now for many months. Pastor John's a long time shortwave minister who's been stuck on this little outfit called Truth Radio (warning! ugly and annoying web site!) Thursday and Friday evenings at 7PM eastern time. We are sure to listen to and record his pontifications for posterity every week.
Last night he announced that the broadcast will be moving. The last Thursday/Friday broadcasts will be on December 1 and 2, and effective December 10 and 11 he will move to 7PM eastern time on Saturday and Sunday.
I'll smash a vase, the radio
I finally tracked down that cool little song we first heard on an episode of Tasha Takes Control a while back. It's from an episode of Hey Arnold and it's called "Smashed" or "You Broke My Heart".
Dig.
Darling, you left my heart In pieces on the floor So tell me why shouldn't I Break some things of yours? I'll smash your lamp, the antique chair That stupid thing you always wear I'll smash a vase, the radio Those little teacups from Limoge Your wacky paintings on the walls Darling, Pow! I'll smash 'em all Lover, it's just a game Cupid can take the blame I'll take the place apart But don't worry, I won't smash your heart!
Prime time shortwave entertainment: this week, WWRB
On occasion, I will visit the website run by shortwave broadcaster WWRB, "world wide religious broadcasting," run by Dave Franz and others in Tennessee, to see what's new. This station has been known by several other call letters in the past, including WWFV ("world wide freedom voice" or something like that) and WGTG ("with glory to God"). I believe WWRB used to stand for "world wide radio broadcasting" in an attempt to broaden the station's scope. It doesn't matter, however; there is a lot of entertaining, crazy, and just plain offensive programming on WWRB that is not in any way religious. More on this thought shortly.
WWRB operates several shortwave services with ever changing names. One recalls World Harvest's various numbered "Angel" transmitters. I find the service naming awfully confusing, especially since WWRB always lists a couple of services that are either under development, are backup units, or are "reserved for use by the guvvmint" or something to that effect. To get through this somewhat confusing situation, let's summarize WWRB's transmitters as of this writing.
- North America Service #1 runs daily from 0000 to 0600 UTC on 5085.
- North America Service #2 runs daily from 0000 to 0600 UTC on 3185. This oddball frequency has been in use for several months now, replacing 6890, as the winter propagation is favoring lower frequencies.
- North America Service #3 runs daily from 0000 to 0600 UTC on 5745. Note that this frequency was swiped from WHRI after that station moved several services to those of the former WSHB.
- South and Central American and the Caribbean Service runs daily from 0000 to 0600 UTC on 5050.
- Middle-East/Africa/European Service runs daily from 1700 to 2400 UTC on 12172.
- There also exists "Southeast Asia" and "Australia/New Zealand/Western Pacific Islands" services, but there is no programming on any of these now. They're planned to operate from 1000 to "TBA" UTC if and wherever they're started.
All of the operational shortwave services on WWRB can be received reliably here in Maryland, but as HF radio goes, your mileage may vary. The latest HFCC data shows WWRB is authorized to run up to 100 KW on 5745 and 65 KW on the remaining services. The HFCC data shows 6890 instead of 3185 and there is an additional authorization for 9320, a presently unused daytime frequency. They're officially authorized for 12170, but as long as I can recall, they've been running this daytime service a couple of kilohertz upwards of that to escape interference from WWCR's flamethrower on 12160.
Now that we've addressed the technical stuff, let's move on to the programming. This station's evolved a bit over the past few years, beginning with its humble beginnings as WGTG, to abandoning some of it's quasi-religious programming, to embracing it once again. Mr. Franz himself would sometimes get on the air and rant for a while in the classic shortwave kook style about whatever was on his mind. Usually this would be a rant about a deadbeat programmer or some diatribe on "pay-triots" or something similar. Now the most we usually hear is Mr. Franz giving top-of-the-hour IDs using an old mic that sounds like it was new when Dick Nixon was using it to record stuff on his dictaphone.
Here's a sampling of some of the offerings on WWRB.
- The Full Gospel Hour: Monday at 0000 on 5085, Sunday at 0030 on 5745, Thursday at 0300 on 5050, Saturday at 0400 on 5050, and Sunday at 1800 on 12172. If you've ever heard this program, you will never forget it. The speaker delivers true fire-and-brimstones-style preaching in a very loud, shreiking and incomprehensible voice, separated by long immeasurable pauses. For the longest time, Allan and crew would fire up WBCQ's 17495 service on Saturday afternoon just to air an hour from this programmer (and perhaps a World of Radio too). The Full Gospel Hour remains on Saturday on WBCQ, but is unfortunately running on 9330 at the same time as the Lumpy Gravy Radio Show (2300 UTC) so I am otherwise occupied and unable to listen at this time.
As an aside, on January 15, WBCQ dropped Lumpy Gravy's internet feed for a few seconds in the middle of a Captain Beefheart song, and while I was listening to WBCQ's webcast recording of this event, I heard the distinctive sounds of the Full Gospel Hour bleeding through the wires in the background of the dead air. You've got to take notice of a programmer who can project straight through the electronics at the station like that.
- The Divided Kingdom: Tuesday through Saturday at 0400 on 5085 and Saturday at 0300 on 5085. Elizabeth Border, this show's host, has assumed the highest levels of shortwave kookery with her paranoid conspiracy rantings about the New World Order. Especially entertaining is her sock puppet skit featuring dialog between a falsetto-voiced "Barbie" and a low-voiced "Fatherland Security" accompanied by downright scary solemn music. This is clearly the most entertaining program on WWRB, and there's something in it for conspiracy theorists as well as kookologists.
- American Dissident Voices: Saturday at 2300 on 5085 and Sunday at 0400 on 5085. Ah, yes, the white supremacists. Also known as the Nazis. These poor old hatemongers hate everyone. Yes, "world wide religious broadcasting" takes on a whole different meaning after hearing a few minutes of the dreck shoveled out by these tiny-brained racist scumbags.
- Herald of Truth: Saturday at 2330 on 5085 and Sunday at 0430 on 5085. Well, these guys aren't quite as overt as American Dissident Voices, but be forewarned: their religious themes are thinly veiled promotions of the so-called Christian Identity movement, also known as the Nazis. How clever that WWRB packages these two programs back to back for their special Racist Hour.
- Mike Gibson Blue Grass Music: Sunday at 0300 on 5085, and,
- Mike Gibson Gospel Music: Saturday at 0200 on 5050. Mr. Gibson provides some relief to all of the seemingly non-stop demagoguery on WWRB. His bluegrass music show provides a good cross-section of gospel-oriented country music, and is well worth a listen if conditions are favorable.
- Faith Holiness Church: Saturday at 0000 UTC on 5745, Thursday at 0300 on 5050, and Saturday at 0400 on 5050. Pastor Larry Cain provides us with a religious message that starts out slow and collected, but gradually builds steam until boiling over in full froth as the broadcast goes on. This program is also heard Monday at 2330 on WBCQ 7415.
- Amos and Andy/Uncle Ed's Musical Memories: Tuesday through Saturday at 0230 on 3185. Ah yes, Uncle Ed's masterful re-creations of the lost episodes of Amos and Andy, meticulously re-created from the original scripts in Ed's own voice. An outside observer may be immediately tempted to ponder the racist and stereotypical overtones of Amos and Andy, but we're not going to get into that here. This is a very entertaining show. You can also catch Amos and Andy Monday through Saturday at 0500 on WBCQ 7415. Uncle Ed's Musical Memories is a well produced music show that showcases popular music from the thirties and forties. This show is also heard on WBCQ 7415 Thursdays at 2330.
- A Voice Crying In The Wilderness: Sunday at 0200 on 5050. We had the pleasure of leading in to Brother Joe's show on 7415 when we were in the Saturday 2100 time slot. Brother Joe's still there on 7415 Saturdays at 2200, "heading on the highway, the highway of Lord Jesus." Interestingly enough, his show is not "crying" on WBCQ. We'll have to check it out in greater detail on WWRB and see what's up with that.
Now, taking a look at the rest of WWRB's schedule, we note that there is an awful lot of programming slots marked as "available time slot for your program." Sometimes we will hear simulcasts from one of the other frequencies, the spoken King James Bible, and other fill programming. Recent reports indicate that Dave Franz himself hosted a classical music show in one of the available time slots (On Thursday 1/13/05 at 0000 on 3185, per Daniel L. Srebnick in DXLD 5013. WWRB also mentions that they run "tithe programming" in some of these slots, so there may be a chance to hear random weirdness on the station. With four frequencies running simultaneously every evening here in North America, the chance of hearing random kookiness are great.
Now, please don't get me wrong. If Mr. Franz and company want to offer a low cost programming outlet to the masses via shortwave, I certainly applaud their efforts and wish them the best. However I take great offense at the overtly "religious" tilt of the station and their ownership, in light of the repugnant programming such as that which is offered by the Nazis and hatemongers. And whereas one can certainly be entertained to the point of tears by the wackiness of Elizabeth Border and her paranoid sock puppets, this type of programming can hardly be called "religious." WWRB and it's "evangelist" ownership and staff would increase their credibility greatly, at least in my eyes, if they dropped the religious angle completely and admitted that they are simply a business who will put enyone on the air if they've got the 60 bucks an hour. Of course, it goes without saying that the station's owner must agree with your programming or else you won't have a chance of ever hearing your show on WWRB. Concluding thus, it is obvious, regardless of their better programs, that WWRB's owners and management are a bunch of paranoid conspiracy racist hatemongers hiding under the comfy blanket of "evangelism" and "religious" broadcasting in order to attract a revenue stream to their business.
And now, video
Well, Scott came home from an extended business gig in the desert, and discovered that his local fone company had chosen him to be the pilot test case for fiber optic to the premises. Sure enough, he ran a bandwidth test and comes back drooling all over himself with his nice 2Mbps downlink and uplink capacity to the 'net.
Now, as all good hackers, we know what happens next. How to test out this seemingly incredible underutilized bandwidth? Let's first add big fat shoutcast relays to our existing internet audio properties. What about video? Where are all the high bandwidth video stream sites? How many 800K video streams can we run concurrently off a single super-broadband connection?
The developers that brought us Winamp and Shoutcast (sadly minus creator Justin Frankle, who departed AOL recently), have been working on a next generation streaming format that is surprisingly easy to implement.
This new format, called Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV), is fully supported by the latest generation of the Winamp media player, and NSV streams can be served up by the same Shoutcast streaming server software that has been providing the means of distribution for thousands of internet broadcasters for several years.
Scott downloaded, installed and configured a video server using NSV GUI from scvi.net. After just a few hours of hacking, a stable setup is up and running classic television and film from Scott's new bandwidth farm.
Check it out at www.katiebecker.com and click on the (now somewhat inappropriately named) "Listen Live" link. The future is here.
Back when MTV didn't suck
I found this in my local used record store today. It looks like it dates back to the early eighties and the beginning of MTV
"Have you 'stereo-ized' your TV? Hear MTV: Music Television in stereo on your FM receiver. For details call your local cable company.
"You'll Never Look At Music The Same Way Again."
Tra la la, La la la la
In a follow-up to Saturday's random sound bite pirate, I have determined that the "Tra La La" TV theme song is from "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour". This was produced by Hanna-Barbera, and is similar to but is not one of those campy Kroft shows. The show dates to 1968. For those demented souls who are interested in such things, the lyrics to this tune are available online.
The New Year With Timtron
We had a quiet New Year's Eve. Jane didn't get off from work until 11, so we avoided various parties and enjoyed a quiet evening at home. Just by chance scanning the shortwave dials, though, we were treated to a Radio Timtron Worldwide marathon that started promptly after Amos and Andy ended at 1215am eastern time on 7415 and 5105. Tim is still going strong here at 1:42am (0642 UTC) January 1. Rock on!
Lenny Bruce Pardoned by New York State
From the New York Times, relased about 4PM ET on December 23, 2003:
Lenny Bruce, the pioneering, ribald comedian who died of a drug overdose in 1966, was given a posthumous gubernatorial pardon today for the obscenity conviction that some supporters believe hastened his demise.
Gov. George A. Pataki of New York said his decision to pardon Bruce nearly four decades after the fact was "a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment."
On December 21, 1964, Lenny Bruce was convicted of delivering an "obscene perfomance" in New York. Today's posthumous pardon corrects a wrong committed forty years ago.
Pastor John acknowledges rfma.net's contributions to his legacy
I am truly honored! Tonight Pastor John read a transcript of our very own Pastor John Lewis Drinking Game on tonight's broadcast on truthradio.com. I was very fortunate to have SoundForge chugging away, and as a result I can share this event with you!
He also mentioned in passing that truthradio has been "experimenting" with 7490 for the past week or so to see what reception is like. It looks like truthradio is losing it's satellite feed since the Galaxy 9 satelitte they use exclusively is being decommissioned at the end of the year. Conditions are really poor and nothing but noise was heard here on 7490 this evening (Saturday December 6 from 0005 UTC on).
Incidentally, Pastor John presented a most excellent show this evening! I daresay I heard him use the "S" word at 0039; "Rudolph the red nosed faggot deer" at 0045; followed by an extended rant about overweight people, "she was so fat, when she jumped up in the air she stuck;" and, finally, a brief mention of the drinking game again at 0050.
Mothra!
A little while back I noticed Godzilla Versus Mothra in the DVD section at the local Best Buy, and I had to have it. Jane and I got around to watching it on Friday night. The english soundtrack is a bit warbly, but consistent, and the video transfer is pretty decent.
After we'd enjoyed this classic, we switched over to listen to Radio Reaction Theater, the latest audio animation show from Complex Variables Studio in Pittsburgh. During this show, Brother X used the Mothra Girls song as background music for one of the show's many schetches. If this wasn't enough of a conceptual continuity moment, later in the evening we discovered that AMC was playing the very same movie late Friday night.
Pastor John missing from the airwaves this week
But at least we have a diversion, assuming we have archived copies of prior broadcasts.
The Pastor John Lewis Drinking Game
Inspired by I. P. Yurin in this message
The host should provide a sufficient quantity of the players' favorite alcoholic beverages sufficient to last for at least a good party.
Just prior to the start of a "Black Brigade" broadcast, each player picks, in coin toss order, a phrase from the following list until all phrases or words are picked.
- cock-eyed reprobate
- you're goin' to hell
- sodomite
- little bushie
- maggot
- hog fat
- mother-in-law
- baby murderer
- faggot
- raghead
- civil magistrate
If a player hears his or her phrase spoken by Pastor John or one of his rarely appearing Billy Bob fellow pastors, the player is entitled to a drink.
If any of the following occurs:
- Pastor John says "if you don't like it, lump it"
- Pastor John sings
- Pastor John mentions Jeremiah
everyone drinks.
This game is almost as fun as trying to figure out where in the hell Pastor John happens to be broadcast from at any particular time or day. He changes shortwave frequencies at the same rate infants need diaper changes. Most recently heard via Christian Media Network on 15725 and 5100 and the internet feed, but now he's dropped Monticello and is reportedly to be on WJIE 7490//13595 and an earlier broadcast on 15725. WJIE? WTF? I cannot determine if this station is even on the air and transmitting a carrier, let alone try and listen to Pastor John. CMN's web streams are frequently dull and unreliable, relaying nothing but endless commercials for expensive crap of dubious value, like colloidal silver.
Timtron interviews Joe Walsh
Here is Timtron's interview with Joe Walsh, noted ham and guitarist for the Eagles, which was done earlier this summer on the MV Katie and broadcast on Radio Timtron Worldwide on August 9. This was snarfed off of WBCQ's internet stream -- thanks to Scott for making sure the stream was up and online for us!
Happy Kook Day
In honor of Kook Day we're firing up the rig and putting her on the 'net so we can share the finest kook shortwave entertainment with our friends. At 10AM eastern time, WBCQ will be presenting Jeremiah 33:3 on it's 9330 service, as it does every weekday. You really only need to listen to this guy once or twice -- every broadcast is maddeningly self-similar in it's approach and delivery.
Here is the link to our kook feed.
Tobor Radio does 116 hours
On Monday night, I fired up Tobor the CD Server and started a Shoutcast stream from nine CDs picked by Dr. Becker for a test. The machine performed admirably, continuously spinning an 80 hour playlist until this afternoon, when the SCSI chain timed out and the server hung.
From the shoutcast server log:
This corresponds to the error message on Tobor's console:
Four hours shy of five days (~116 hours) continuous streaming isn't too bad for a test run, though.
Lost Discs Radio Show
Saturday, April 4, 2003, 0045, 7415. Lost Discs Radio Show tonight played a loop of Viet Nam era antiwar material, a tape of some guy from the INA giving a company briefing, the quote "The other day I heard someone say, 'You know America is in real trouble'", and patriotic music, over and over with interesting vintage sixties music mixed in between. This was followed by an Allan Weiner and Brother X "Lost Discs Radio Show" loop with females laughing in the background.
Great audio animation tonight from these guys, and worth getting home early on Fridays to hear them.
This is my United States of Whatever
On Sunday evening, March 24, 2003, at 0100 UTC, Johnny Lightning was having technical difficulties establishing the internet feed for his Sunday evening show on WBCQ, which unfortunately appears to be how WBCQ broadcasts the show. After about seven minutes, all was fixed, and I was quite surprised in his opening that he included a great George W Bush parody of Liam Lynch's United States of Whatever. This followed a snippet of the classic Marx Brothers' "The country's going to war" from the movie Duck Soup.
This was a great diversion from all the otherwise bad news coming off the airwaves lately.
Low budget webcasting
Good ol' Comcast is capping upload bandwidth for it's cable modem users, like myself, to 19.2K. This is done mostly because cable modem customers aren't allowed to put any services on the 'net, like web servers, and for surfing the net it's download speeds that really matter. Besides, they'd love to sign you up for a business class account if you want any kind of upload bandwidth.
I'm not interested in putting up a web server on my comcast account. I have a more than capable web hosting provider for that. However, I'd really like to send a live music and entertainment stream once in a while to an audio server out on the net. Last night, I built and ran such a beast.
The same problem with upload bandwidth is a bigger concern for dial-up accounts. I was building and configuring a computer to help an international shortwave radio station send a live stream of it's console feed to an internet streaming server. Right now, their primary means of getting on the internet is a dial-up account. They've been doing this for some time now, thanks to Dr. Becker's wizardry. The same scheme can be used to send a low bandwidth stream from a severely capped cable modem connection.
First, you start out with a reasonably equipped computer. In this experiment we used a Pentium II-450, with 128MB of RAM and a 10GB HDD. The system has a nice SoundBlaster PCI card which will handle the hardware side of encoding an audio feed. I installed Windows 2000 Workstation on the computer, and it was happy with this and ready to go.
The machine has a 3Com 3c905 10/100 ethernet card, and I salvaged two US Robotics Courier external modems to support a dial-up. The hardware checked out okay.
Next, I installed Winamp 2.81. Note, the tricks we're doing requires the "classic" Winamp. The new Winamp does not work with our broadcasting tools, just yet.
The next software needed is the Shoutcast DSP plug-in, that facilitates redirecting Winamp'e output to a Shoutcast or Shoutcast-like streaming server. This version is a little older than what Shoutcast is shipping, because we want to use a low bandwidth output setting that the newer versions of the plug-in don't support.
Finally, to support all different kinds of MP3 encoding schemes, we need to install the MP3 CODEC and supporting files. This is the final piece of the puzzle, and now we're ready to webcast.
Through experimentation and experience with this technology, Dr. Becker recommends a setting of 16/11 mono as an optimal setting for dial-up use. Considering the low encoder setting, I thought music would sound really crappy. However, once we poked a couple of holes in the firewall and started up a Shoutcast server to test the feed on, I was surprised at how well the stream sounded. It's not CD quality by any means, but it's not like listening to music that sounds like it was recorded inside a coffee can either.
Our test consisted of running a live stream of a small sample of Radio Free Mount Airy's music and entertainment library across the net to Dr. Becker's Shoutcast server in Kansas, which he then relayed to WBCQ's studio feed (which is offline right now, hence this activity in setting up a new streaming computer). We ran that stream overnight and it was surprisingly reliable and listenable. It was a lot of fun, too!
The last thing, which I didn't test but should work just fine, is running a true live feed. Presumably you'd have your mikes and mixers and various audio sources run through a mixer and other audio hardware and gizmos, and fed directly into the sound card's microphone input. It is easy to tell Winamp to take input live from the mic input rather than use a library of wave files and MP3s like I did. This will increase your CPU and memory requirements, but our PII-450 should handle this with cycles to spare.
This setup should reliably stream over a 33.6 dial-up, if line conditions are good. It helps to have a better quality modem, like the USRs I have sitting around from my BBS days.
Marion's memories are close to ours
As Lopez once said, "And now, something very, very, special."
Marion Webster started her shortwave show this evening with the Liberty Bell Launch, from an Edison cylinder record made in 1904. Jane and I were immediately taken aback by this musical selection, as it reminds us of a certain British comedy show that is, along with Marion, one of our favorite listening pleasures.
Then, as if we weren't completely engrossed in a conceptual continuity moment, Marion played a selection by Ada Jones, called "Cheyenne", that reminded us of the soundtrack from a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon.
We're presenting here the Liberty Bell Launch and Cheyenne, as recorded off of WBCQ's console feed. We hope you enjoy these musical selections as much as we do. If you like this, please consider supporting Marion's show on WBCQ. Marion offers any show for $10 on CD. Contact Marion at:
Marion's Attic
PO Box 583
Coventry, CT 06238
Blind Paul
Saturday, January 17, 2003, 2000-2029 UTC, 17495: Pan Global Wireless "program number sixteen" on WBCQ. Finally, a chance to listen to this highly regarded show.
Making fun of "the new Mix 104 point one", and other free-form discussion about radio, interspersed with interesting music (where does he find these tunes?). Blind Paul, the show's host, also promotes WBCQ and it's programs.
Contact info given as:
Pan Global Wireless
PO Box 1101
Faribault MN
55021
Overall SIO 555 here. This show followed Radio Timtron Worldwide at 1900, Zombo Mondo's Record Party at 1800, and a repeat of last night's Allan Weiner Worldwide at 1700. WBCQ has a winning lineup on Saturday afternoons on 17495, and I hope it continues. Sadly as the season progresses, our reception of 17495 in the daytime will get worse and worse, and by the spring we'll probably be in the skip zone and miss it completely.
Timtron plays Crack the Sky
This is a true Conceptual Continuity moment. It is very rare when my musical tastes and my hobby intersect so perfectly. I just finished posting pictures we took at Crack The Sky's recent performance at the Thunder Dome in Baltimore on November 23.
And, on the Radio Timtron Worldwide show this afteroon, Timtron played Crack The Sky's "Ice" (0158 UTC on Sunday, December 29, 2002), on 7415 KHz shortwave worldwide via WBCQ.
Timtron's weekly radio show is by far our favorite. There's always something cool to listen to. If we ever chose to make our own radio show, it would be very close to Tim's both in spirit and in content. He is the best.
Touch my monkey
The latest broadcast of WDCD on WBCQ featured a number of snipped together audio wonderments comprising a brilliant commentary on American religious propaganda from the last generation. Among the clips they presented were a couple of unbelievable-but-true tunes sung by a pair of young girls. The first, I've heard before, sometime long ago, is called "The Monkey Song", and it is a statement about Darwin's theory of evolution. The second tune is called "The Ecumenical Movement," intended as a statement of dissent against those who would advocate a world wide embracement of a common religion.
Whenever I hear such delightfully bizarre audio, I immediately google it and try and find a source. Thanks to April Winchell's wonderfully bizarre and entertaining multimedia page, I can share with you a fantastic find from an authentic record released by none other than Jerry Falwell, containing The Monkey Song and the Ecumenical Movement, along with Rev. Falwell's incomparable accompanying dialog.
Yes, it is true. One of the two girls singing on this record is the same Crystal Bernard who is an actress, most notably in the TV series "Wings." And she's (re)starting a musical career, it seems.
Boom goes the Cap Centre
Here are some pictures of the implosion of the Capital Centre from the print edition of today's Washington Post. These shots didn't make it to today's article describing the event.
Goodbye, Capital Centre
The Washington Post is reporting today that the Capital Centre was destroyed today in a ceremonial explosion.
Looking up at my collection of ticket stubs framed on the wall, I'm reminded of the time I spent at the Capital Centre. I had floor seats for Yes on February 12, 1984, on their 90125 tour. Their stage setup included a big flying-saucer disc shaped like the drawing on the album cover. I remember the cool humidity seeping from the plywood covering the hockey rink's ice.
I saw ZZ Top there on May 27, 1986, way up in the nosebleeds in section 204. I saw the revived Lynyrd Skynyrd there twice, in 1987 and 1988, as their fading tribute band was winding down before being revived again and again in later years.
I remember seeing Iron Maiden at the Cap Centre on a cold evening in January, 1985. Maiden's pyrotechnics and music were top notch.
I saw the Grateful Dead twice at the Cap Centre. For some reason I don't remember very much from the show on September 12, 1987. However on September 5, 1988, I happened to be visiting Town Hall in College Park when I was given a pair of tickets to the Dead show in the Budweiser sky box. That was surreal, watching the throng of Deadheads in a suite twenty feet above the crowd. I have several recordings of Dead shows at the Cap Centre, including one I had a chance to go to but declined -- September 27, 1981. I now regret passing up this show to study for a Chemistry exam.
Robert Plant did a Honeydrippers set when I saw him there on July 30, 1985.
The last show I saw at the Capital Centre was Fleetwood Mac, on Sunday, November 30, 1997. The outrageous $75 ticket was probably the most I've ever paid for a concert, but since Jane really, really likes Fleetwood Mac, it was $150 well spent. By then, they'd renamed the Cap Centre "US Air Arena," as was the trendy thing to do in the 1990s.
By the time I write this, the arena with the sloping top that looked like a Pringles potato chip will be history, to be replaced by a mall. That's just what Prince George's County needs. If it were up to me I'd return the Cap Centre parcel to parkland, like it was thirty years ago.