Thanks to everyone who joined in the hysteria last Friday night as Georgia, James, Bruce and I took to the airwaves to grapple with your requests in return for donations of your hard-earned $$ to WFMU. And I do mean everyone. There were more pledges coming through than we could compute – it’s only now that I’m realizing how many we never acknowledged at all, not even in the empty-the-bench closing medley of “Sex Bomb.” With that in mind, we want to send our regrets to Andrew in Brooklyn, Conor in D.C., Bean Bag Amerika in Brooklyn, Laurie in Chapel Hill, Ann in Flushing, Daniel in Flushing, John and Becky in Greenwich, Ann and Evan in Providence, Stephen in West Chester – this is getting to be like the end of Romper Room – Stephen in Canada, Chris in Madison, Ben in NYC, and Arlene in Jersey City for overlooking their suggestions. But we want to send out our most profuse apologies to everyone whose request we did take and the resultant bloodshed. And I do mean bloodshed. Even before the night was over, revisionism had set in, positing that my index finger started gushing blood during “TV Eye.” But I’m here to tell you it happened during our incendiary take on “Second Hand News.” Thanks again to one and all. Keep supporting WFMU.
Is this really my first post of the year? In that case, let me bring you up to date. We’ve spent the early part of 2010 trying to see how many people we can get on stage with us to perform songs by the Clean. It’s going pretty well. Times New Viking helped us out with “Oddity” in Lawrence, Kansas in January, and card-carrying Clean member, RobertScott, sang “Secret Place” and “I Wait Around” with us on consecutive nights in Auckland and Wellington earlier this month. Saw This Is It en route to New Zealand and My One and Only on the way home – guess which flight didn’t have on-demand movies.
Now that we’re caught up, it’s nearly March, which means it’s time for the WFMU Marathon. For the 15th year in a row, we will take to the airwaves and, with your help and generosity, humiliate ourselves so that this great station can continue the doing of their thing. In case you’re new to this catastrophe, if you pledge $100 to WFMU between 8 and 11 pm on Friday, March 5, during Pseu Braun’s Thing with a Hook program, you can make a song request. And we will try to play it. How is this possible, you ask. The answer is simple: It’s not possible. Can’t be done. But there’s countless ways to get it wrong, and we’ll attempt as many as we can within the constraints of a three-hour show. As ever, we will accompanied by Mr. Bruce Bennett on chord-missing and word-forgetting. Air personality Gaylord Fields will be co-hosting.
If you don’t want to wait for Friday, you can donate to WFMU right now and email your request to Gaylord, who will keep it in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall’s doorstep until March 5 at eight o’clock. Caution: If you’re the person who thinks that Oscar® winners get advance word or the NBA draft lottery is rigged, wait for Friday to make your request.
I also wanted to mention that Wilco are offering up some free concert downloads on their website, with the request that download’ers send donations to OXFAM or Doctors Without Borders. One of the shows offered is the July 13, 2009 concert at Keyspan Park, featuring some special guests including YLT.
The latkes have all been eaten, but here’s one last holiday treat: a 1987 TV performance with the band doing a Modern Lovers-inspired rendition of a Christmas classic. Enjoy!
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” We’re here to tell you that also in that category is the 6.4 on the Richter scale earthquake. Moments before we went on stage last night in Taipei, our final show of 2009, we encountered something that none of us had ever experienced, but nevertheless recognized instantaneously. It lasted somewhere between 15 seconds and an eternity, and subsequent news accounts (some which put the quake at 6.8) report just a few injuries, freeing us to lament that we were too rattled to work up an impromptu “I Feel the Earth Move” or “Shakin’ the World.” (As we all know, the Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobellis v. Ohio was not unanimous. Along those lines, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t concede that one member of our touring party did not realize there had been an earthquake until after the show was over.)
