I Am an Elastic Firecracker featured some jelly-covered doughnut guy on its cover and I remember more than a few people asking who he was and why he was so prominently featured. I dunno – I always thought it was someone who liked the smell of napalm.
Anyway, one of three core songs we played off the album was Trip Along, although I should confess it was one we only tried to play. To begin, we actually had a copy of the full album in the control room, a rarity for us, and I believe we had owned it for quite a while. It may have even been one of the promotional copies sent before the album arrived on the scene. The only bad thing was that since we had the disc for so long, it had gotten used – and misused. Somewhere along the way it had gotten scratched up pretty bad and not every track was as radio-friendly as we would have wanted it.
I've mentioned our Wednesday night program of new music and regional musicians (see I think it's worth it for you to stay awake); one night in October of a now-forgotten year (probably 1997), I was on the air Friday night from 9 to midnight and not by my hand. I forget why, since this was not my regular shift by any stretch – someone had either made arrangements to be off that night or, more likely, forgot to. At some point in the second half of the 10:00 hour the music director stopped by and, one thing led to another, we decided to essentially kick-off "What's New Wednesday" on a Friday. Why not ( see So much for the days...tribal life)?
We laughed and thought it was funny, the two of us working tag-team for the next hour and endlessly finding a way at every stopset, or break, to point out that this was, indeed, "What's New Wednesday – on a Friday."
One of the instances of where I had a "sonic boom" – our name for some sort of on-air gaffe – arrived about midway through the hour when I decided to play the Tripping Daisies and, more so, play something I knew hadn't been played recently. So I played Trip Along – rather the first 0:40 seconds or so, before it morphed into this twitchy, stuttering echo-tinged sound that reminded me of the reason why we didn't play this song. The disc was scratched, stupid.
Calmly popping on the air, I faded out the song, noting the aforementioned music was a rare Tripping Daisy-esque song entitled "Skip Along," and, with the music director laughing in the background, I managed to get some other music on the air. The two of us managed to get through the remainder of the hour without incident that night.
Did I mention it was a Friday?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Trip Along
(Tim DeLaughte/Tripping Daisy)
Tripping Daisy
From the album I Am an Elastic Firecracker
1995
Sitting on a curved back couch
My mind it rolls
Reminds me it was so easy
Staring at the christmas lights in a box
That were once hanging on my tree
Proving once again that seasons change
So do we - it's nothing new
Similar to the love you find while kissing
Your first kiss, the world was blind
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on......
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on......
The magic potion within my brain
Painted pictures of everything
The cat that barks the dog that meows
The bird that flies all around
Trip along my mindless waveless
thoughts they carry on
Sitting on a curved back couch
My mind it rolls
Reminds me it was so easy
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Pass the gravy, pass the buck
Between the years I first heard Secrets and Lies at the undergraduate radio station and when I finally found a copy of the song, I always remembered it as a Thanksgiving song. Yes, gravy can do that sort of thing to a person.
The song appeared on one of our weekly preview discs and was played a few times before it probably got lost in the on-going shuffle of music choices. Regulated only to the first three hours (the Triple-A vs. pop fare) of our nine hours of modern rock music, looking back I sort of wish I caught it and included it on our weekend morning folk program where it would have been book-ended by similar-sounding music. Perhaps if our entire broadcast day was given over to this format of music – rather than splintered between classical, modern rock, jazz, hip-hop and so on – the song might have had a better chance and been more memorable. It may not have been that memorable to others during the rock format, hence why it was probably all but forgotten, but I distinctly recall taking immediate notice – there was something catchy and hook-laden about that chorus. At the time I didn't pay close enough attention. It wasn't until I had graduated and thinking of songs that the strange holiday-themed lyric pestered me. What was it? Finally, years later the truth was revealed: Jonatha Brooke.
By the time I heard of Brooke, she'd been touring the music world for at least a decade, first as part of the duo the Stories and then heading out on her own. Her most recent album was released in 2004.
Gravy. Go figure.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Secrets and Lies
(Brooke)
Jonatha Brooke
From the album 10 Cent Wings
1997
Every twenty seconds someone's pounding someone down
Every thirty more a liar's born
Every half an hour I get up and look around
And once or twice a day I ask for more
On a really good day there's something in the mail
Once a week I get a treat
Other times a month goes by
But I still mever miss a beat
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Once a year the holidays come swinging at your head
Feast until you're full of pain again
It tightens in your chest and now it's written in your face
You're staring at your lover or your friend
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more
Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more, I'm asking for more
Maybe if you're lucky you will have your sunny day
Once in a lifetime maybe twice
But even when you're dying you're still hungry for the choice
Was chance the only certainty in life?
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
The song appeared on one of our weekly preview discs and was played a few times before it probably got lost in the on-going shuffle of music choices. Regulated only to the first three hours (the Triple-A vs. pop fare) of our nine hours of modern rock music, looking back I sort of wish I caught it and included it on our weekend morning folk program where it would have been book-ended by similar-sounding music. Perhaps if our entire broadcast day was given over to this format of music – rather than splintered between classical, modern rock, jazz, hip-hop and so on – the song might have had a better chance and been more memorable. It may not have been that memorable to others during the rock format, hence why it was probably all but forgotten, but I distinctly recall taking immediate notice – there was something catchy and hook-laden about that chorus. At the time I didn't pay close enough attention. It wasn't until I had graduated and thinking of songs that the strange holiday-themed lyric pestered me. What was it? Finally, years later the truth was revealed: Jonatha Brooke.
By the time I heard of Brooke, she'd been touring the music world for at least a decade, first as part of the duo the Stories and then heading out on her own. Her most recent album was released in 2004.
Gravy. Go figure.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Secrets and Lies
(Brooke)
Jonatha Brooke
From the album 10 Cent Wings
1997
Every twenty seconds someone's pounding someone down
Every thirty more a liar's born
Every half an hour I get up and look around
And once or twice a day I ask for more
On a really good day there's something in the mail
Once a week I get a treat
Other times a month goes by
But I still mever miss a beat
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Once a year the holidays come swinging at your head
Feast until you're full of pain again
It tightens in your chest and now it's written in your face
You're staring at your lover or your friend
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more
Cuz it's hand to mouth, door to door, cradle to the grave
Asking for more, asking for more, I'm asking for more
Maybe if you're lucky you will have your sunny day
Once in a lifetime maybe twice
But even when you're dying you're still hungry for the choice
Was chance the only certainty in life?
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Get it on the table, pass the gravy, pass the buck
Get it on the table, secrets and lies
Silence, faith, and luck
Sunday, November 12, 2006
I'm gonna count up all my widgets and digits and all my stuff
At the undergraduate station I worked at, during our weekday rock shifts there was an attempt to play "modern rock" from a few eras – namely the 1990s but there were "flashbacks" to the 1980s that got air as well. Some were novelty throwaways – like Peter Schilling's Major Tom Coming Home or Dexy's Midnight Runners – while others were songs by artists that had a 1990s output (strong or otherwise) that somehow fit snuggly up against what else was playing. I arrived on the scene already a fan of Wall of Voodoo's Mexican Radio and Call of the West, both known for their warped Western and boggled-bandito sounds, and Mexican Radio was certainly a standout track during the aforementioned flashbacks. Actually, one of the more memorable times I played this song was not so much during a music shift but during our coverage of basketball.
For a few years, the college station was the radio flagship of the university men's basketball team, meaning our play-by-play team went over to the coliseum for home games or, for other games, headed away to parts unknown and hoped fans back at home were listening. For most of our remotes, the broadcast team would setup a mobile transmitter unit whose output fed into our audio console and fed out over the airwaves. It was a fairly simple process with little chance of error, although since it was also a transmitting device, sometimes it would send over static or noise.
Such was the night when the unit was sending about 90% of the game, with the remaining 10% shared between twinges of static and someone chatting fiercely away in Spanish. The first time it happened I didn't think much of it but it soon started happening more often, to the point that there was at least a three-to-five second pinch of noise that prompted the play-by-play team to actually apologize for the audio difficulties.
During one of the timeouts – and when I, back at the studio, began a 90-second PSA break, I jumped on the phone to talk with play-by-play announcers.
"What gives with that other radio station breaking in?" they asked. I didn’t have much of an answer for them, other than saying that most of their game was coming across strong and that I didn't think there was much we could do about the static unless they signed the mobile unit off briefly. Somewhat happy to hear their performance wasn't sounding all that bad, one of the announcers made the off-the-cuff remark before going back into the game that they could hear that other DJ talking but "we thought it was you - but we can't understand just what he says."
In a flash I knew what to do. Pulling the necessary CD down from its shelf, when the last of the PSAs finished and the announcers' cue to continue aired, I began the opening bars of Mexican Radio. Neither made the connection the first time, but about the third or fourth time we returned from a break one of them chuckled mildly at all the "Mexican Radio I've been hearing tonight." A subtle joke, yes, but one I thought was justly deserved.
Wall of Voodoo's main player was Stan Ridgway, a name I immediately recognized a few years later as a graduate assistant at the other radio station I worked at. Ridgway's Partyball was stuffed into our massive walk-in closest that served as music storage – floor to ceiling shelves of CDs, LPs and cassettes – and appeared to have never played. Borrowing the disc for a weekend, I quickly found I Wanna Be a Boss one of the funnier and catchier tunes and thought others would appreciate the song as well. Installing the disc back into the control room, I know the song got a slight ripple of playtime and praise. Stupidly, I didn't make a copy of the song and it was years before I was able to find a copy – by that time, I was working in an office setting and seeing first hand the types of bosses that Stan probably had in mind for his song.
Ridgway has continued to record since wanting to be a boss, both albums of his own music, as a member of the group, Drywall, and with his wife Pietra Wexstun.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I Wanna Be a Boss
(Stan Ridgway)
Stan Ridgway
From the album Partyball
1991
Well, I've been doodling on this notepad
And I been taking telephone calls
I can tell this job's at the end of the line
And I'm ready for the fall
But I been watchin' the boss carefully
And he always seems to be havin' a ball
And then I scratch my head and wonder
Why I'm down here and he's up the hall
Now, all of my paychecks aren't worth
The paper they're printed on
I get 'em Friday
But Monday they're all gone
There must be some way to change my situation
It's time that I took up a brand new vocation
I wanna take a two-week vacation
Twenty-six times a year, add 'em up
When I fly to exotic places
My jet will be a Lear
I'll need several secretaries
Just to jot down notes
I'll wear Gucci loafers
And expensive shirts
And blue, executive, exotic coats
Chorus:
'Cause I, I said I wanna be a boss
(I wanna be, I wanna be)
I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I'll have people workin' under me
And this lousy job I'll toss
I, I said I wanna be a boss
Well, I'll drive in fancy cars
Well, no, maybe I'll just cruise
With a limo––and a chauffeur,
TV, telephone, and booze
Tinted windows so the common folk
Can't see me here inside
Maybe every now and then for fun
I'll give some old coot a ride
Then maybe I'll slip him
A thousand dollar bill
Then he'll smile and shake my hand
And I'll put him in my will
I'm gonna count up all my widgets
And digits, and all my stuff
I'll make millions in a day
But it'll never be enough
Nope––not enough!
Chorus:
'Cause I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I just wanna take a four-hour lunch
And eat a steak with A1 Sauce
I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I'll buy up every stock there is
From ITT to Doctor Ross
I, I said I wanna be a boss
(I wanna be, I wanna be)
Now if I find a product I like
I'll buy up the whole company
Shave my face, and grin and smile
And then I'll sell it on TV
And everyone will know me
I'll be more famous than Howard Hughes
I'll grow a long beard and watch
Ice Station Zebra in the nude
And grow my nails like Fu-Manchu
Keep a row of specimen jars
Get other people to work for me––well
Maybe I'll buy the planet Mars, and
Build an amusement park up there
Better than old Walt's place
You'll have to be a millionaire to go
We'll smoke cigars and lounge in lace
Talk the talk of businessmen
And bosses that we are
So here's to me––the drinks are free––
'Cause I just bought this bar
Yeah––yeah, I wanna be a boss
I wanna be a boss, boss, boss!
Some kinda intergalactic boss!
For a few years, the college station was the radio flagship of the university men's basketball team, meaning our play-by-play team went over to the coliseum for home games or, for other games, headed away to parts unknown and hoped fans back at home were listening. For most of our remotes, the broadcast team would setup a mobile transmitter unit whose output fed into our audio console and fed out over the airwaves. It was a fairly simple process with little chance of error, although since it was also a transmitting device, sometimes it would send over static or noise.
Such was the night when the unit was sending about 90% of the game, with the remaining 10% shared between twinges of static and someone chatting fiercely away in Spanish. The first time it happened I didn't think much of it but it soon started happening more often, to the point that there was at least a three-to-five second pinch of noise that prompted the play-by-play team to actually apologize for the audio difficulties.
During one of the timeouts – and when I, back at the studio, began a 90-second PSA break, I jumped on the phone to talk with play-by-play announcers.
"What gives with that other radio station breaking in?" they asked. I didn’t have much of an answer for them, other than saying that most of their game was coming across strong and that I didn't think there was much we could do about the static unless they signed the mobile unit off briefly. Somewhat happy to hear their performance wasn't sounding all that bad, one of the announcers made the off-the-cuff remark before going back into the game that they could hear that other DJ talking but "we thought it was you - but we can't understand just what he says."
In a flash I knew what to do. Pulling the necessary CD down from its shelf, when the last of the PSAs finished and the announcers' cue to continue aired, I began the opening bars of Mexican Radio. Neither made the connection the first time, but about the third or fourth time we returned from a break one of them chuckled mildly at all the "Mexican Radio I've been hearing tonight." A subtle joke, yes, but one I thought was justly deserved.
Wall of Voodoo's main player was Stan Ridgway, a name I immediately recognized a few years later as a graduate assistant at the other radio station I worked at. Ridgway's Partyball was stuffed into our massive walk-in closest that served as music storage – floor to ceiling shelves of CDs, LPs and cassettes – and appeared to have never played. Borrowing the disc for a weekend, I quickly found I Wanna Be a Boss one of the funnier and catchier tunes and thought others would appreciate the song as well. Installing the disc back into the control room, I know the song got a slight ripple of playtime and praise. Stupidly, I didn't make a copy of the song and it was years before I was able to find a copy – by that time, I was working in an office setting and seeing first hand the types of bosses that Stan probably had in mind for his song.
Ridgway has continued to record since wanting to be a boss, both albums of his own music, as a member of the group, Drywall, and with his wife Pietra Wexstun.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I Wanna Be a Boss
(Stan Ridgway)
Stan Ridgway
From the album Partyball
1991
Well, I've been doodling on this notepad
And I been taking telephone calls
I can tell this job's at the end of the line
And I'm ready for the fall
But I been watchin' the boss carefully
And he always seems to be havin' a ball
And then I scratch my head and wonder
Why I'm down here and he's up the hall
Now, all of my paychecks aren't worth
The paper they're printed on
I get 'em Friday
But Monday they're all gone
There must be some way to change my situation
It's time that I took up a brand new vocation
I wanna take a two-week vacation
Twenty-six times a year, add 'em up
When I fly to exotic places
My jet will be a Lear
I'll need several secretaries
Just to jot down notes
I'll wear Gucci loafers
And expensive shirts
And blue, executive, exotic coats
Chorus:
'Cause I, I said I wanna be a boss
(I wanna be, I wanna be)
I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I'll have people workin' under me
And this lousy job I'll toss
I, I said I wanna be a boss
Well, I'll drive in fancy cars
Well, no, maybe I'll just cruise
With a limo––and a chauffeur,
TV, telephone, and booze
Tinted windows so the common folk
Can't see me here inside
Maybe every now and then for fun
I'll give some old coot a ride
Then maybe I'll slip him
A thousand dollar bill
Then he'll smile and shake my hand
And I'll put him in my will
I'm gonna count up all my widgets
And digits, and all my stuff
I'll make millions in a day
But it'll never be enough
Nope––not enough!
Chorus:
'Cause I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I just wanna take a four-hour lunch
And eat a steak with A1 Sauce
I, I said I wanna be a boss
And I'll buy up every stock there is
From ITT to Doctor Ross
I, I said I wanna be a boss
(I wanna be, I wanna be)
Now if I find a product I like
I'll buy up the whole company
Shave my face, and grin and smile
And then I'll sell it on TV
And everyone will know me
I'll be more famous than Howard Hughes
I'll grow a long beard and watch
Ice Station Zebra in the nude
And grow my nails like Fu-Manchu
Keep a row of specimen jars
Get other people to work for me––well
Maybe I'll buy the planet Mars, and
Build an amusement park up there
Better than old Walt's place
You'll have to be a millionaire to go
We'll smoke cigars and lounge in lace
Talk the talk of businessmen
And bosses that we are
So here's to me––the drinks are free––
'Cause I just bought this bar
Yeah––yeah, I wanna be a boss
I wanna be a boss, boss, boss!
Some kinda intergalactic boss!
Sunday, November 5, 2006
I Can Feel It In My Heart Something's Wrong
For reasons never really made clear, the first faculty advisor at my undergraduate radio station (good ol' Dr. Propel) had a signed, promotional picture (the usual black-and-white 8x10 glossy) of Troy "Big Shot" Peoples - the self-proclaimed Son of Funkenstein - hanging prominently in his office. By "hanging" I mean it was stuck to the wall with yellowish tape and by "prominently" I mean it was a oddly shaped wall near the corner of the building so there wasn't much room for anything else there anyway. The picture was a full-length shot of Troy standing next to his keyboard and dressed like he was trick-or-treating as George Clinton. It was autographed, thanking Propel for giving his disc a spin, a four-track single of his song I Dropped Da Bomb on You featuring the same song in various tempos subtitled "Slow Bomb," "Funk Bomb," and "Disco Bomb."
But was his CD ever played on our station? I don't know. I can't imagine what format it would have fit under - funk? R&B? While the song is a jam, I never remember seeing it in the control room. But that's the funny thing about this: we found the CD everywhere.
It started when the new faculty advisor arrived. A fairly easy-going guy named Martin Manning, he kept "Big Shot" on the wall and had a copy of the CD single in his office. Then we found another copy hidden away in the music library. Then we found another in the television station's equipment closet. Then another copy appeared in the faculty advisor's office. But was this one of the already discovered copies or a different disc altogether? Who knows - but it matched the CD later found in one of the radio production room. Then we thought we got rid of most copies by giving them away during the purging of the music library. Not so fast - someone found another copy and I think by then we knew either 1) it was a cursed disc, doomed to forever haunt the radio station; or 2) "Big Shot" had sent our station at least two-dozen copies of his CD. By this time someone was fed up with the whole thing and when the next disc surfaced – which you know it did - it was immediately broken in two. Ouch!
Even with that harsh punishment I still managed to graduate with a copy of the disc, which I have to this day. The disc notes the song is from the "soon to be released" album Da New Testament of Funk but I was never able to successfully find anything about an album by this name, especially from the early-mid 1990s. Notes with the CD single mention Calvin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples produced the song, names best remembered for their 1981 smash hit Don't Stop the Music. I'm guessing music ran in the Peoples family.
Still, I have to wonder whatever happened to "Big Shot"?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I Dropped the Bomb on You
(Troy "Big Shot" Peoples)
Troy "Big Shot" Peoples
From the CD single I Dropped the Bomb on You
1994
[Lyrics unknown]
But was his CD ever played on our station? I don't know. I can't imagine what format it would have fit under - funk? R&B? While the song is a jam, I never remember seeing it in the control room. But that's the funny thing about this: we found the CD everywhere.
It started when the new faculty advisor arrived. A fairly easy-going guy named Martin Manning, he kept "Big Shot" on the wall and had a copy of the CD single in his office. Then we found another copy hidden away in the music library. Then we found another in the television station's equipment closet. Then another copy appeared in the faculty advisor's office. But was this one of the already discovered copies or a different disc altogether? Who knows - but it matched the CD later found in one of the radio production room. Then we thought we got rid of most copies by giving them away during the purging of the music library. Not so fast - someone found another copy and I think by then we knew either 1) it was a cursed disc, doomed to forever haunt the radio station; or 2) "Big Shot" had sent our station at least two-dozen copies of his CD. By this time someone was fed up with the whole thing and when the next disc surfaced – which you know it did - it was immediately broken in two. Ouch!
Even with that harsh punishment I still managed to graduate with a copy of the disc, which I have to this day. The disc notes the song is from the "soon to be released" album Da New Testament of Funk but I was never able to successfully find anything about an album by this name, especially from the early-mid 1990s. Notes with the CD single mention Calvin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples produced the song, names best remembered for their 1981 smash hit Don't Stop the Music. I'm guessing music ran in the Peoples family.
Still, I have to wonder whatever happened to "Big Shot"?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I Dropped the Bomb on You
(Troy "Big Shot" Peoples)
Troy "Big Shot" Peoples
From the CD single I Dropped the Bomb on You
1994
[Lyrics unknown]
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