Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Christmas Ornament Sets Now Available!!!!

Each set is $15 plus $5 shipping in the US. $10 shipping to the rest of the world.
I will make sure you get these before December 25th. If interested, please email me at apocalypsepopsicle@gmail.com for availability.
I will mark sets as sold as people order. Thanks.

Set A, 3 Fat Ladies
-Pearl white
-Pearl Red
-Clear Green
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Set B, Mixed Pour Pearl Set
-Pearl White Wing'd Rhino, yellow wings
-Pearl Green Wing'd Rhino, pearl white wings
-Pearl White Fat Lady, partial gray wing
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Set C, Mixed
-Pearl white, Fat Lady
-Clear Wing'd Rhino
-Clear green Mori Katatsumuri
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Sunday, December 6, 2009

The Fat Lady Crew: Maintenance Division, Bureaucracy of Death

New Toys from Apocalypse Popsicle: The Fat Lady Crew
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Working for the Bureaucracy of Death, under the official auspices of the Almighty, the Fat Lady comes to sing reluctantly aging celebrities and has-been stage performers into the great beyond by taking their place in the limelight for one final lullaby. Appearing as a hallucination in front of an ailing former starlet, the Fat Lady's underlings will perform a mocking satire wherein the mortal's life is ridiculed. At the proper moment, the Fat Lady will indeed begin to sing, ushering the doomed on to the afterlife.

Many Fat Ladies
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In the performance of her duties, The Fat Lady is assisted by two (natural born) demons that are enrolled in a heaven-sponsored rehabilitation program. I say "natural born demons" as to differentiate from those former cherubs in Satan's fallen host. "Natural born demons" were always monsters and represent the flip side of the angel coin; when creating the angels to be hyper-beautiful, He essentially had to dissect all the nasty bits of hubris and ill-intent and toss them aside into the wastebin, Hell. Living in varying levels of filth, violence and depravity the demons were quite at peace with the internal instability of that dark realm. Hell was a miserable cesspool of perverted mutants, yet the inhabitants were content to live in their homeland and act out those nasty attributes that were central to their Godly creation. The brimstone and damnation era didn't come about until Lucifer's revolt, subsequent Fall and the creation of mankind and original sin. For several hundred millenia,it was their home. Until much like the Native Americans, Lucifer and his boys put them out to pasture on a reservation or else conscripted them into labor camps for decades at a time.

Old Testament God was tough on crime. But New Testament Yahweh has grown soft now that He's become a Father. Kids will change a man, it's true. A newborn baby's tiny fingers and little, adorable toes can quickly force the mean streak out of a once lone wolf.

God's new policy is Nurture over Nature (though he can't find a loophole to reverse that original sin clause). So naturally, His generous nature has led Him to fund several metaphysical non-profit groups in an effort to make reparations to those "natural born demons" who have been so oppressed for all those generations that came after the dawn of man. That's when Hell really started getting crowded and rent started skyrocketing. Naturally, the hellbound reservations for NBDs seemed like a good option to many demons in those early centuries.

Melancholy Mollies
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Melancholy Molly and Bad Baby Banana are two ill-tempered demons whose naturally performative personalities made them a likely fit as understudies for The Fat Lady. Molly's propensity for self-obsessed depressive ranting and compulsive lying were traits that The Fat Lady could hone for the pre-Afterlife chorus line. A slug-like lemonhead of a beast, she is an amalgam of angelic personality flaws. As is His Divine Right, He just mushed together these essences of disfunction, stuffed them in the equivalent of an airtight jar, and tossed it down into Hell to incubate. Certainly an annonying demon, but hardly evil. Ill-willed, yes. Completely blood thirsty and demented? No. Stamped approved for rehab and paroled from Hell in the late 1800s.

More Mollies
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Bad Baby Banana, on the other hand, is a natural slapstick comic. With a big shoe made for kicking ass, he loves to give unsuspecting butts the big banana boot. Unfortunately, following every successful wallop, Bad Baby Banana falls on his own ass. He's only got the one leg, after all. Unlike Molly, God molded Bad Baby around only one unfortunate behavior that was deemed unfit for Angelic composition. Bad Baby Banana likes to laugh when people die. Like farting is funny to children, dying is funny to Bad Baby Banana. But not him dying, you. Anyone, really. "So much left undone," he'd say, choking back a tear, while he visited the newly deceased that were awaiting pre-processing outside the North gate to Hell. Then he'd kick some poor dead sap in the ass, fall down, and just laugh, laugh, laugh. But again, not really evil, just cruel. He is quite aware of his phallic nature and will often wear a hat that makes his head appear quite nipple-like. He enjoys the attention this brings. It amuses him. But still at its root his perversion is of a non-murderous and primarily non-sexual nature, so the Board said he was up for rehabilitation. Released from Hell on Halloween, 1929.

Bad Baby Bananas
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The Fat Lady found Bad Baby Banana's talent for debasing others with a "smile" to be helpful in getting through her case files quickly. While BBB can unsettle the most stoic of aging idols reluctant to let loose that mortal coil, Melancholy Molly helps by being overwhelmingly and blatantly more self-absorbed that even the most selfish, delusional former child stars were left speechless. (Shirley Temple Black, the sands are rapidly accumulating at the bottom of the glass. Just some notice, wear something nice. When? Everyday this week sound good? Between 8am and 8pm. That's right. Like Comcast).


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Never a fallen angel, the Fat Lady more physically resembles the form of a natural born demon, but with the requisite 33% angelic soul content needed to hold rank in the Bureaucracy of Death. Since her Creation occurred after the Fall, she is not technically a hellion and takes orders from the Big Jew Upstairs.

Toys will be available for purchase soon. Some sooner than others, look for the Fat Lady and Friends Xmas Ornament sampler coming later this week.

Unpainted Blue Fat Lady Crew
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Sunday, November 29, 2009

White Teacher in a Black School

White Teacher in a Black School is a book by Robert Kendall, a former teacher in the Los Angeles School District. Published in 1964, the book rose to popularity following the Watts Riots and aimed to show the inequality present in schools primarily enrolled with black students. In fact, the book is credited with helping create standards for high school students in California. However, reading this book in 2009 will give you a different impression. Largely written in the dialect of mid-sixties black students, the text can be seen as a dark (and racist) anthropological vision of race relations in the 60s. Robert Kendall was also an actor in several television series and movies. One notable role is an uncredited turn as "Slave Boy with Pigeons" in the 1956 Charlton Heston classic, the Ten Commandments.

Completely coincidental fact: Robert Kendall died this month on November 12, 2009 at age 82.

This collage re-organizes some of the potent speech in the book while also incorporating images that attempt to tell a new narrative through juxtaposition and correlation. The artwork is on five separate wood panels and is not available for purchase. The other main source for the collage comes from an early sixties issue of the comic book Sad Sack. The rest of the images come from an assortment of print media advertisements and the (now-defunct) Weekly World News. Photo prints available on request.

Also, the cover art is pretty sweet.

black teacher white school

black teacher white school
Panel 1, Text A:
“Real sudden some big thing zipped across the whole place. Like a red piece of lightin it was. Scared the shit out a me and scared my chick too cause she grabbed me and I grabbed her back.
Panel 1, Text B:
And lookin down at that audience I think them all was as scared as us were. Some kind of funny spooky smoke came from somewhere. Then some kind of real giant spooky thing that looks sort of like the lines of a man’s hed comes fuzzy like thru the smoke.”

black teacher white school
Panel 2, Text A:
“He said the blacks should do everything they could to take the whites power away. Hit the whites in the pocketbook he says. Give bizness to black man and not to jew.
Panel 2, Text B:
“Cept when it came to pushin the white man out. Save money and buy houses where white man lives. Go to places where white man eats. March in lines demandin the rights that white man has. All kind of crap like that.”

black teacher white school
Panel 3, Text A:
“It was like his face was movin, like when you get mad, and there was two big eyes all red and spittin fire. Scaryer then any monster I ever saw in any movie. Then it started out talking!!!!!!!!”
Panel 3, Text B:
“It had a voice like come from the ded. It said how he had been a slave in Dixie and had been all beat up all the time but when he had given up the terble life he lived and gone to meet Jesus, Jesus had told him that the white man had to pay.”

black teacher white school
Panel 4, Text A:
“He said the more blacks in the world, the more there would be to take the power from the whites.”
Panel 4, Text B:
“He had told him that the white man was inferior and the black man was superior. He said the devil owned the white man’s soul and it was right for the black man to hate the white man cause evil nasty blood was in his vanes."
Panel 4 Text C:
“Then there was a sound like thunder and that old spook shouted to KILL THE WHITE DEVILS. The spazzes started shoutin it and kept it up like some crazy chant. My chick starts cryin and I dont blame her. I wants to cry too. Its all so dam nutty.”

black teacher white school
Panel 5, Text A:
“The orchestra comes up out of the floor agin playin that battle him agin and everbody was stompin and hollerin and carryin on like they was mad. The spook goes back to where he come from and the old curtin falls down on the stage. The spazzes start movin out, still all whipped up. I sort of just stood there, feelin funny, while my chick went on cryin, till that hell hole was empty. The lights went out finely. But I still waited a piece cause I didnt want no crazy nigger killin my chick cause she is white.”
Panel 5, Text B:
“At last we sneaked out a that old rat hole and I nevah want to go consortin with the devil agin!!!!!!!!!!!!”


EXTRA CREDIT
History of Sad Sack:
Sad Sack Wiki
Robert Kendall's hometown obituary:
Battle Creek Enquirer, Robert Kendall RIP

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Apocalypse Popsicle Printable Postcards

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How to print these postcards in Microsoft Word:

First save the back of the postcard image (located below this text) and print it out on the back of the paper you will be using. This is only if you want to give me credit for making these images. Please do this by placing the image into a blank Word document. Place the image into the document twice, one above the other separated by one line. By printing the reverse side of the document first, you avoid the ink smearing you might experience by doing the Front side first.

Save the front Postcard images to your computer and import them into a normal blank document. You will need to re-size the images using the Picture Toolbar. Maximum dimensions for US Postage postcard rate stamps (currently 28 cents) are 6" x 4". Minimum dimensions are 5" x 3.5". For the Revolutionary Rabbit image, you will have to use the Picture Toolbar to rotate the image in order to fit both images on one 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. Using card stock and a picture printer will work best. Orienting both images onto the same page

What would work even better would be a printer that could make these poster size. If you have one, print me out some and I'll pay for shipping and ink (up to $50 worth of ink).

postcards

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Hommonculus Space Baby: The Cartoon

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Based on an original story and song that I wrote a few years back, Hommonculus Space Baby is a classic tale of man's ingenuity and talent for inventing new technology leading to his ultimate bloody demise. Despite our communal fears of an asteroid collision, a new ice age, or nuclear Armageddon that will destroy our cursed planet, our real destruction will be much more innocuous. One of many new technologies designed to simplify one of mankind's constants irritations, who could know that it would go so disgustingly wrong? Life was not made to be simple.
Science will destroy us all!

*Not Safe For Work (unless you work someplace cool. no nudity, but some images of sex toys and references to the reproductive system. CK says Parental Discretion Advised, but I believe children need to know the truth. so gather your young ones around...it's apocalypse time.)


This Cartoon is animated and produced by Chuck Kamzelski. It is part of his cartoon series San Francisco Sundays While the Hommonculus Space Baby instructional music video does stand alone as a prophetic (and true) vision, that content is only amplified by the short film immediately following. Check out San Francisco Sundays Episode 1 and 2 on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/SanFranciscoSundays

Friday, October 2, 2009

An Uncommon Mirage: The Psychiatric Bedevilment of Susan Q

Sixteen months ago, I received a strange request from a Professor Hans Urfel, former head of the psychology department at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and current operating Director of an elite institution for studying the mentally ill. Due to the nature of doctor-patient confidentiality, I was unable to publish any part of my involvement in the study until just recently hearing of the untimely death of the patient. As for the patient’s name, I was never truly informed and all documents I received in regards to this matter stated the name as “Susan Q”. This is, of course, a false name given to me since my role in this endeavor was that of a technical contractor and academic consultant.

See below a copy of the original letter sent to me by Dr. Urfel.
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I replied to Dr. Urfel quite promptly, because he was quite right. I was in no position to refuse work. While the retainer was adequate, I felt I would need to push for a bit more money. He had approached me with an assumption of my cooperation. And while that assumption was correct, I disliked its implication of dominance.
My reply to Hans Urfel:
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Dr. Urfel ended up accepting my wage increase request and I set to work making the audio and video for the hallucination of Susan Q. The images in her vision were this: images of a strange river where boys washed clothes, wordless images of men yelling silently, threatening images of bears and flames with some reference to the “Bear” sub-culture of homosexual men. Although these references were brief and subtle, according to Susan they were represented as textual images, as if reading from a book. Other parts of the sequence include stage circus acts featuring “Victor the Bear” and his trainers in one section, and an elephant routine involving a woman held in the mouth of the great beast while it stood on a stool.

It was these two animal performances that I recognized while reading the accounts recorded by the psychiatric staff at the institution. They were from the Ed Sullivan show and were in vivid Technicolor. The Ed Sullivan Show ran from 1948 to 1965 in black and white. After making the mandatory switch to color in 1965, the show only lasted six more years and was canceled after the 70-71 season. This rapid decline had much to do with the changing times. But for me, it was a deeper shift in the way we access memory. The defined and rigid entertainment of black and white depended upon the writing talent bred from the radio age, but color needed no ally. Color TV exploded into our communal consciousness and slashed wide, permanent marks in our memory. Black and white images became synonymous with nostalgia. But I digress from the story of Susan Q.

Susan Q’s hallucination had an intricate audio soundscape consisting of some hip-hop elements most likely lifted from that night at the pub. It also features some dissonant melodies that she was able to hum under hypnosis, which I have represented with electric guitar. Several bits of poetry also infiltrate the scene. The transcriptions for these pieces can be found following the video.

Unfortunately for all involved, my contribution did little to help the severely removed Susan Q.

Dr. Urfel’s attempt at confronting her with her hallucination had a distinctly opposite effect. If she were not allowed to spend an hour a day watching the remake of her hallucination, Susan Q refused to eat and would steer herself into the corners of rooms, spending all day with her face to the wall. Her condition worsened to the point of hospitalization whereupon she withered and passed, ultimately dying from complications of pneumonia.

Since her death releases me from my restrictions in publishing anything about my involvement in this matter, I now present to you the very short film I created for Dr. Hans Urfel. Interpretations may vary.


The Voices that Susan heard:

Overheard voice: “Last night, I had the strangest dream. It wasn’t until it was over that I realized my eyes were open the whole time.”

Overheard poem:
“I wonder could I bother you for a spot of marmalade
just shove it in me brain holes
‘til me vision starts to fade”

The rhymes in the dance beat sequence:
“Brothers spit with liquid fist
Crush memories with time
Imitate the hypnotist
And rule your tiny mind

Blister quick, my wicked tick
I push my ‘barrow slow
I’ve been toiling with the wind
Now it follows me where I go

I can cut it up in pills
I can bend it to my wills
I can make it simplified
Universally bona fide
Won’t you look into the eye?
My sign is rising..."

Original musical composition and vocal samples are created by me. Audio samples freely contributed from these freesound.org musicians: Zajo, Simon_Lacelle, dobroide, LS, nicStage, FreqMan, mrbubble110, sleep, walkerbelm, fathead74, alexbird, Andrew_Duke, sagetyrtle, BristolStories, djgriffin, Jace, propthis, and Matanael.

Friday, September 18, 2009

OBAMA vs KANYE: Berlin 1989

Check it out. Audio track featuring off-the-record Obama in his assault against college dropout Kanye West. Enjoy the "video"
Feel the burn....


I made this kanye spoof image and this musical composition. But it wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Kanye's moment of hubristic selflessness and Obama's off-the-record rebuke. The music is composed mostly of samples from freesound.org users: patchen (trickyhop beat), djgriffin (acidhouse bass), acclivity (cuckoo), sagetyrtle (bells2), and BristolStories (chimes).

Did you like my autotuning? It was fun and a pain to do for free. If you would like to know how to autotune for free, here we go. Download FL Studio 9 Demo for free. This is a good program, but won't let you export from the demo version. Even if it did, FL Studio does not come with the ability to autotune. Thats where freeware .dll plugin for audio editors GSnap comes in. Made by GVST, this plugin allows you to manipulate autotuning through the frame of a different editor. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with Audacity (claims to be) and I had trouble using it in free sound editor Wavosaur. Yet it worked like a charm on FL Studio 9.

If only I could actually export the sample I made without paying for the license. The main difficulty with trying to autotune is that most audio editors can only do part of what you want and many editors are incompatible with autotuning plugins. It ruined my evening for a couple hours, as I had all the other samples ready.

Here's the simple way. It's easy if you go back to basics. Apply the GSnap effect to the modifications given in this video by youtuber WizardRuru: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J3Hlih9dvI
Plug your computer into some decent speakers to play out your unexportable FL/Gsnap autotuning effect and set up a decent digital microphone at a small distance from the speakers. Or you could even use the headphone jack connected to an audio editor, but I used a digital mic. Ha. Record output effect in your usual program as a source audio and taa-daa. It even made the sound slightly more robotic.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

kanye west, berserker hentai

I've been working on some promotional images for the blog. The idea is to scatter them around the internet looking for new readers.
Here's the first, playing into the KanyeWest/TaylorSwift meme that's run wild since the 2009 Video Music Awards controversy. Important stuff.
A lot of similarly themed image collages featuring Kanye's hubristic moment of selflessness can be seen at http://kanyegate.tumblr.com/

the apocalypse popsicle contribution
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this next one is somewhat inspired by the Love Among Freaks song Berserker, a song made famous by the film Clerks. but that's only half the idea...
berserker-APtag1

if you haven't heard the song Berserker, you really should
here's a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miYMx59P_uM

Fun fact: Love Among Freaks are from New Jersey like me. Also, their drummer went on to play in the psychedelic metal band Monster Magnet. I saw Monster Magnet play at the Jersey shore and Kid Rock opened for them before he was "famous".
You will be quizzed on this material.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Invasion 1963

Did you know JFK was replaced by an alien from outerspace sometime in 1963? Part of an ill-fated exchange program with Venus, the alien-JFK impersonated our 35th President with great skill. It was this alien that suffered the murderous assassin's bullet that fateful afternoon in Dallas. With our young Catholic president seemingly deceased, the REAL John F Kennedy lives even today in exile on the sandy shores of Venus. His return to Earth would reveal the existence of extra-terrestrials. If this knowledge had been made public in '63, it would have unfortunately destroyed the Great Work that the Kennedy's and the Venutians had been building together for two decades.

Here, on this very video, you can hear the tale of the false-JFK's interstellar travel to earth and the aftermath that resulted from the assassination of the Venutian Ambassador. From the lips of alien-JFK's only living hybrid offspring, Ralph Kennedy, the tragic journey of Ralph's grandfather is told here for the first time.


I made this movie. The words and voice are mine. Any footage used here has the direct cultural purpose of subversion in that the images are meant to narrate visually an intent that is both similar yet distinct from the intent of the poem recited. That is to say, that the original intent of the footage has not been reproduced nor would the resulting montage ever have cause to replace demand for the original works that help compose my video.
Fair Use is at play.

Many thanks and credit is due to freesound.org musicians and audio adepts: james.brody for his bean belt shaker, ultratone for his circus-like mashed drum sample, suonho (thanks again) for his basscapes samples, Cyril_Laurier provided wind, jakeharries provided water sound, pryght and marvman for their bass lines, sagetyrtle and st4ngs for their laughter audio, and Andrew Duke for his roll effect.

Spoken word piece by me entitled
"In Southerly Places"

low in the tawny tendrilous grass does grow
a speckled mother of pearlescent shadow
upon the tilted dolled-up dreamcoat
on the river-worn weakened shore
where the ferrymen bedraggled and weathered
refuse to touch a clay orange hand
the shadowy man shakes a shadowy hand
if you be seeing me again
there won't be any wound to mend
and none that sparkles in the east
can lead these men across the plains
the sandy wind to catch in sails
holding mouths wide open to suck the bravado born breeze
to swiftly speed the journey dead
in southerly places,
they speak in codes



Did you know that JFK was replaced with an alien in 1963?
I did. That's why they shot him. Although the world was kept in the dark, he was an alien worth mourning. The public killing made it impossible for JFK to return to Earth, leaving him to spend the remainder of his days on the planet Venus....
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A picture of Kennedy's kept woman; a Venutian/Human hybrid called "Claire"
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Thursday, September 3, 2009

An Introduction to Poetry

Enclosed herein: a short tutorial for aspiring poets with sample metaphors and instructional tips


I made this movie. The words and voice are mine. Any footage used here has the direct cultural purpose of subversion in that the images are meant to narrate visually an intent that is both similar yet distinct from the intent of the poem recited. That is to say, that the original intent of the footage has not been reproduced nor would the resulting montage ever have cause to replace demand for the original works that help compose my video.
Fair Use is at play.

The audio samples used were created by freesound.org users: suonho (memory moon blaster effect), sleep (weird loop), patchen (drowning 83 drum loop). Thanks for making your work available. Aspiring hip hop artists and subversion novices should check out http://www.freesound.org/ and http://creativecommons.org/

Text version of An Introduction to Poetry:

alabaster
words like alligator
connected by sound to poetic image
let's be blunt about it
it's just like mom's homemade apple pie
to an orphan, the foreign flavor it is
of never had, yet lost, pleasure
re-experienced in a deja vu first impression
long lasting taste
the most confusing memory
the longer the grasping moment of disconnect
it is just reminiscent
it is only liquid tension
held in stasis by rubber band fences
remember
remember what to forget
the remembering to forget, yes yes
how salivating, the desire to suddenly punch
i'll give you now what will be memory
hidden obscurely, traveling where i cannot see
beneath skull and between ears
that absorb and contain selectively impressed notions
push it out your mouth now
bring it back
bite it into segments with your shiny, relevant teeth
i will eat it like a baby bird
you regurgitate my intent
i consume your interpretation.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Moon Landing Party Jam

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Another track from the April 17th 2003 Hooked on a Feeling show, the Moon Landing Party Jam focuses on the 1969 communication between NASA mission control center in Houston and the Apollo 11 moon landing team of Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins. The other source audio is the "phone call" that President Nixon made to the astronauts. This presidential conversation was televised to millions around the world split-screen with footage of the moonwalk. The source recordings here represent the first inter-lunar communications ever recorded and they are far from clean. Every voice is over-modulated and the dialogue is puncuated by slightly piercing beeps. These beeps are there to let the earthlings know when the moonmen's transmission has finished and that they are ready for a response from earth.
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The audio for most of this track is composed by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, original acid house samplers from the UK in the 80s. The Ancients were forced to remove many of their initial records from stores as this was prior to the existence of sampling laws for musicians. Drummond and Cauty of the JAMs went on to form the KLF, a popular psychedelic dance group fairly similar to the Ancients. The more prominent song featured here was one of their hits as the JAMs, Doctorin' the Tardis, a song that fits the interstellar theme quite well. Later, the K Foundation burned a million UK pounds for very little reason.



Four funky fresh fellas

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MOON LANDING PARTY JAM

Moon Landing Party Jam - HOAF Tapes by slim

In 1969, the America was in the depths of the Cold War, struggling to come to terms with the Civil Rights Movement while the war in Vietnam raged on without a foreseeable end. It was a tense time for most Americans as the vision of 1950s wholesomeness grew tarnished and tired in the face of nuclear armageddon.

For a brief moment, the moon landing lifted that communal depression in America. As the masses watched from their living rooms, two men conquered the dreams of star-gazing children forever. Now that travel to the moon was a possibility, the dream had died. No longer could young boys and girls speculate about the skin-color of moonmen and whether or not the surface was indeed composed of swiss cheese. Snatching these colorful fantasies from the minds of children forever, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong trampled on top of those youthful dreams of a craterous moonscape. Like conquistadors, they quickly defiled the soil and planted their flag.



*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.


EXTRA CREDIT ALERT
Little known fact: Nixon thought the astronauts had space cooties.
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Here's an old song by me called "Equal Rights for Moonmen". It's an anti-war protest song I wrote back in the Bush administration.

Equal Rights for Moonmen - Slim Oliver

Friday, July 10, 2009

Eulogy for JFK in Two Movements: The HOAF Tapes

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Animated Gifs
From October 2002 until June 2003, I hosted a weekly radio show called "Hooked on a Feeling" on WCFM 91.9FM, Williamstown, Masssachusetts. It is a tiny college radio station broadcasting from within a valley in the Berkshire mountains. The peak of Mt. Greylock and the rest of them intercepted the transmission before it could reach beyond the valley. At max, the broadcast reached about six local town centers. Of course, the internet stream was up and running and I'm sure maybe three people listened to that as well. My show was on Thursday nights starting between 11pm and midnight.

With two turntables, two cd players, and a mixer in the middle of them, I began to mix spoken word tracks onto music in order to create sound collages. The plan was to create new musical documents that illuminated the popular culture associated through juxtaposition and the accompanying dissonant and synchronous moments. By manipulating the four sources in front of me, I created many mash-ups whose musical and intellectual intent has evolved from the source material. While much of the resulting material has political overtones, others are attempts at transcendent children's music. Some tracks even make the hubristic boast of approaching the level of "art".

Affectionately called the HOAF (hoof, or ho-af) Tapes, these tracks have languished for the past six years confined in their plastic prisons of magnetic tape. That ends now. Some of these tracks suffer from overmodulation on the source recording-I just consider it an artifact of the old machines available for use in the radio station. While I have made noble attempts at re-mastering, some of these artifacts will still be present.

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Jack on the yacht; note his posture that shows his physical deformity and the illness he hid throughout most of his short life


Eulogy for JFK in 2 Movements - HOAF tapes by slim
THE EULOGY OF JFK IN TWO MOVEMENTS
This track is a fairly simple composition featuring the words of JFK and Moms Mabley and the music of the Sandpipers and John Williams, as well as other bits and bobs of audio. This track attempts to evoke the accessibility of the charismatic Kennedy and the chaos and confusion in this nation following his assassination.

*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.

EXTRA CREDIT ALERT


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The potently mystical Shroud of Brookline

Also, this guy:
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He is the Solomon Islander that saved JFK's life in WWII.
You can read about that over here:
When Jack Fell Off the Boat