Cyber Secrets #5: WFMU

Jud Jud: The Band Too Straight Edge for Instruments
A hoax? A parody? A hoaxady? A load of complete nonsense? Obviously, we love things that defy definition and Jud Jud fills that niche with aplomb. Too often tricksters and pranksters bail way too early and scream, “Hey, look at me and how clever and hoaxy I am, I just did this CRAZY thing.” (I’m looking at you, Rappin’ Joaquin Phoenix.) Jud Jud kept it real with their continued unreality, releasing a 7-inch called The Demos and a collection called No Tolerance for Instruments at some point in the ’90s (but claiming they were recorded a decade earlier) and displaying flyers that showed them headlining fictitious gigs. Their songs (with names like “Fast Song” and “Grindcore Song”) mostly involved them repeating the word “Jud” into different stereo channels, while highlighting their violent grasp of all things straight edge. We can only approve.

Del Close’s How to Speak Hip LP
Del Close is the godfather of modern comedy, having his fingers in such hilarious pies such as Second City, Saturday Night Live and legendary improv group Upright Citizen’s Brigade. He was also a complete lunatic who added a demented gonzo edge to every yuk yuk he approached. He’s quite sedate on this incredible 1959 mockery of hipster culture, playing the straight man to John Brent’s raving beatnik and attempting to get the world to speak “hep.” But his comedic oddness leaks through, with microphones in beards and fake insurance scams. Still as vibrant and smart now as it was over 50 years ago.

Bob Dylan Rehearsing "We Are The World," aka The #1 Best Video Ever on YouTube
Decades of mystique and careful image nurturing are scorched away in nine minutes of studio footage! Bob, clad in a puffy leather jacket, looks like he’s never even seen a microphone before as he proceeds to perform the world’s worst Dylan impression and painfully man-hug Lionel Richie. It might be the presence of Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder that makes Bobby look even more shoddy and uncomfortable. Or it could be those pants. What was he thinking with those pants? Luckily it was all worth it, as the single was released and the world was saved.

Gallery of Banned LP Cover Art
It’s amazing that we used to bitch about CDs bringing about the demise of glorious LP cover art, now that we download everything and graphics have been reduced to mere thumbnails. Unfortunate, then, that when bands did have the luxury of a 12x12 inch palette to utilize, they littered it with filthy boobies, commodes and strident middle fingers. I expected as much from The Bob Seger System, but The Mamas and the Papas? Really? I thought more of you. That John Phillips seemed like such a nice, wholesome fellow. I can’t believe he’d defile a record sleeve with a toilet.

John Cage Weirds Out Network TV Audiences
Context is everything, ain’t it? Pay $81 to see John Cage’s Water Walk performed at BAM and you’ll sit reverentially and silently through the entire piece, as a food mixer is switched on and a goose call is activated. Make it part of a 1960s game show and people will guffaw like they are watching Sinbad. The show in question is I’ve Got a Secret, and though as the audience are told who Cage is and what he’s going to do, I don’t think the host quite grasped the concept. It’s an amazing piece of television, as the avant-garde collides with a show sponsored by Winston’s cigarettes. And there’s the added bonus of Cage sounding exactly like Vincent Price.

Interactive Vinyl Fetish Image
I’ll assume you’re a fan of all things “meta.” (You are currently using the internet, after all.) Well, prepare to set your meta settings to “stunned” as you witness this remarkable, possibly satanic info-graphic thing, featuring a lady and some records. But that’s not all: The records, and even bits of the woman in question, will link you to various exciting destinations concerning vinyl records. SEE the oldest record shop in the world. LEARN how records are made. GAG at some truly horrible hip hop album art… and other things of consequence.

Lee “Scratch” Perry's Guinness Ads
After years of residing in Switzerland via Jamaica and outer space, Lee “Scratch” Perry has been officially recognised as having the planet’s most inaccessible accent. Perfect for shilling stout! The great one exhibits his worldview and holds forth on a plethora of philosophical ideals in these TV ads, under the auspices of advertising “Irish Pepsi” (as Guinness is never known). I think the idea might have been “Drink Guinness and you will go insane while investing in colourful tracksuits.”

Captain Beefheart's Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing
You should always trust a captain. They can marry people, they are nautical and, in at least one case, they knew someone called Tennille. After working his way through the ranks, starting at Private and then Sergeant, Don Van Vliet finally became Captain Beefheart and had some interesting, if not startling, things to say about guitar playing that involve sweat, hats and church keys. Follow all his suggestions and you’ll soon be shredding like the man who plays guitar in Nicki Minaj’s back-up band – who is obviously the best in the biz.

James Brown Hawking Miso Soup
He went by many monikers. The Godfather of Soul. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. Mr. Please Please Please. And, perhaps most famously of all, the Hawker of Soup. Many stars pop over to Asia and quietly appear in ads for a variety of baffling products, hoping that nobody will notice and the check will clear. Sean Connery sold yoghurt. Sylvester Stallone sold sausages. And of course Bill Murray sold whiskey, as shown in the documentary Lost in Translation. But no one has done it as loudly or excitedly as Mr. Brown. My goodness, he loves that miso.

Satan's Favorite Note
Dear black metallers, you don’t need expansive studded armbands and a wounded goat to make yourself appear exceptionally scary. Just drop a cheeky “diminished fifth” into your latest composition (which, for the sake of argument, I’m going to assume is called “Blood, Death Cult Demon Mama”). Throughout musical history, the “devil’s interval” has been used to strike terror into the hearts of audiences – it’s been adopted by practically every horror film composer. Why, before the soundtrack was added, The Omen was considered a playful romp à la Home Alone; the diminished fifth changed all that. Learn all about it here.

The Most Disturbing Theme Park of all Time
What better way to promote your medicinal ointment than to create a theme park featuring some of the most horrific images the human mind can conjure? Built in the ’30s by the manufacturers of Tiger Balm, Singapore’s Tiger Balm Gardens (renamed Har Paw Villa Dragon World in the ’80s) features a series of morality tableaus warning people to basically sit still and not do anything – except rub copious amounts of their product all over yourself. If you don’t, a variety of terrifying things might happen to you, including various slayings, gnawings and nasty encounters with crab people. It worked. I now have a cubbyhole full of Tiger Balm and I haven’t left the house in four months.

Royalty-Free Porn Music [Vol. 1 / Vol. 2]
Yikes! There is simply so much to remember when you make a pornographic feature film: the actors, the sets, the props, things to clean the props, food for the dolphin. And once that’s all sorted out, you need some music. Not just any sort of music, mind you – you need proper “adult situations” music with heavy use of a wah-wah pedal and perhaps a saucy sax. But have you seen the price of effects pedals lately? Since the economic downturn, their cost has skyrocketed; hell, sax prices have been through the roof since Clinton’s spell in office. Lucky for you, there are tons of royalty-free scoring scores on the internet just waiting to be dabbled with.

Spectrographic Images Hidden Inside Songs
For years we’ve been told about hidden messages in music. Play something backwards and the devil will appear and eat all your Pop Tarts… that sort of thing. But with the use of difficult machinery and math and other stuff that I have no hope of ever understanding, artists like Aphex Twin, Venetian Snares and Nine Inch Nails have actual pictures within their tracks – the images only emerge when the soundwaves are displayed. Then again, you could just listen to a song while doodling on your jeans, saving you a great deal of time and money.

Kids Who Like Hip-Hop, Metal, Goth, Punk, Trance or Techno are More Likely to Grow Up To Be a Pain in the Ass
Hey! The mom in that Beastie Boys video was right! I mean, we all knew that listening to deviant music turns you into a delinquent on the fast track to juvie, but now it has been proven by nerds in lab coats and thick glasses. (This is a gross generalization… though I bet they do have thick glasses). Hopefully this will be the first in a series of articles demonstrating childhood myths are true after all. Soon, it will be scientifically verified that eating vegetables really does make you big and strong and masturbating causes blindness.

Incredible Time-Lapse Photographs of Nude Dancers
By photographing and combining over 10,000 images of the same naked body in motion, artist Shinichi Maruyama creates beautiful fluid images that are almost unrecognizable as a human form. Normally I have to drink my own body weight in Schlitz while visiting The Blue Oyster Bar to produce a similar effect, and that usually leads to a subsequent court case and a hefty cleaning bill. If only I knew these pictures existed, many lives would not be so badly soiled.

Russian Prison Tattoos [NSFW]
At the crossroads of tragic, terrifying and beautiful resides the Russian prison tattoo. Once, they were as remote as it is possible to be – marks on the body of a criminal left to rot in the distant Russian prison system. Now, these often-intricate tattoos are documented and displayed for the world to witness, illustrating the finer points of a fearsome criminal underworld with its own laws and language.