My Castle of Quiet now 57% toward our modest shift goal for WFMU's October Fundraiser; thanks to ALL who have pledged to MCoQ thus far. Still a way to go, in less than three days. ...
HUGE THANKS to Rodger Stella and Kyle Eyre Clyd for their monumental, mind-bogglingly good live collaboration; Castleheads lapped it up with fervor, myself too! As listener SiHV put it, "Looking out at the hellscape of north Dallas. This is good accompaniment." Hoping Kyle and Rodger had a great rest of tour...I know they had some vehicle issues. Hope you turned out to your local venue to catch their live energies!
Thanks for listening as always, and thanks to listener Meatfucker for the lively discourse!
Our bloodied hand-grab up top comes from Brian De Palma's Sisters; click there to reach the archived audio etc. for last night's horrorcast™. Revisiting that film has been one of the highlights of my week thus far, it had been years.... Also enjoyed re-watching Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, another harrowing 70s gem—that Susan George and her wonky teeth, utterly adorable!
Damned Damned Damned was my first UK-punk record purchase. I brought it over to Mike Craig's house, ripped off the shrinkwrap, said something like, "look! punk rock!" 'Twas all very new at that time, you see.
Everything about the album sung the heady promise of something we were very ready for—songs that energized, going straight for the gut, deftly written and executed, complemented by Nick Lowe's very "you are there" Basher production. The whole record felt so alive, and easily transferred that feeling on first listen. And that cover—with the band all licking pie off each other's faces and hair—it was a little bit disgusting, so bold, and unlike anything Mike and I had ever seen before. Who were these disaffected Brits? A new plateau of cool for us to aspire to.
My long way of saying that the post-theme opener of "Born To Kill" curried a quick flood of comments on our playlist, and yes The Damned have proven to be timeless good music, with contemporaries of course, but without peer.
Also noted on our relatively "quiet" playlist was an excellent, new track from Planning For Burial, from the split 7" with Liar in Wait on Broken Limbs Recordings. With a monumental Laster album soon to drop (on 11.4; fulfilling and exceeding the promise of their EP), and a new Caïna LP coming soon as well, plus loads of other great releases, BLR is without question a label to watch. In a post-Lifelover world, it's gratifying to see that (for serious lack of a better term), post-shoegaze black metal has found an extraordinary voice in bands such as these.
Greetings Castleheads, friends, foes, sometime listeners, bands and labels,
My Castle of Quiet and WFMU have been "silently" fundraising since the 1st of October—this as opposed to our two-week, very loud, annual on-air marathon in Feb.-Mar.
We do run completely on donations, for all maintenance / improvements to our offices and studio site in Jersey City, as well as our transmitter site in West Orange, NJ.
We're working on getting our ground-floor performance space, Monty Hall, up to working standard, such that no gear or facilities need be shared with our on-air studios for live performance and music. You can also nominate your beloved pet to be named the WFMU Mascot for the year! (simply enter your pet's info in the "comments" field when pledging.)
So, if you can spare some coin, any coin, to support the station and the most-unique creative alliance we have forged over the years with the My Castle of Quiet radio show, please do so before the month is out.
Earlier this week, we presented Kraut-Out, nummer drei [archive here], the third in a series of much-in-demand / well-liked, full 3-hour broadcasts of wildly diverse 70s music from Deutschland. Week after next, our last show for the month brings a live collaboration from Rodger Stella (Macronympha) and Kyle Clyde (aka Penny Royale), Facebook event here.
To donate (and yes there is swag aplenty offered, depending on your pledge amount, see this page at WFMU's Web site for info), visit the My Castle of Quiet playlist page and use the handy white rectangle atop left to make your pledge.
At this moment, MCoQ is 33% of the way toward our modest pledge goal for the month. Thanks for your consideration, and your support!
As meme legend Doge might say, "much Teutonic!" ...And as I might say, "a Teu-tonic for the soul." Don't all groan at once....
Made a conscious effort last night, though Castle shows are often an equal mix of meticulous planning, and mood, to include the broadest-possible spectrum of all the Krautrock music I've collected and enthused over for three-plus decades now—the hard blues-rock, the "kraut-jazz," the Teuton folk, and the genres that fit more decidedly within the MCoQ format—the left-field electronic, the improvised, the dark, obscure, hypnotic "experiments." All subgenres of Deutsche-wildness were on the table.
To cite personal highs would just bracket the entire show, though I did enjoy slipping in an excerpt from Stockhausen's Sternklang, from the gloriously high-end 2CD reissue on Stockhausen Verlag, and the closing, with a longer selection from the first Krautrock record I ever bought [excluding the more-obvious, universal faves like Neu!, Faust, Can and Kraftwerk], Gilles Zeitschiff, one of R-U Kaiser's successful, albeit appropriated, Cosmic Jokers-releases of tapes culled from a massive jam session between Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel and Wallenstein members. Who could resist Gille, offering up her 1/4-inch headphone end for your cosmic injection?
Please see the white "widget" above this post to directly support the My Castle of Quiet show; we're 33% toward our pledge total for the month, thanks!
I could ruminate for weeks to months over what to say about Jed Hershon. Everyone whose life Jed touched in one way or another surely never forgot the experience. He was a true, full-blooded NYC character—cantankerous bookstore clerk, prankster, outrageous grump, loving-generous friend, true artist, and nasty S.O.B. all rolled into one.
Jed was the only NYC-based friend I've ever had who made the NJ-transit ride out to Essex County (the horror!), met my son and visited my home, more than once. I've had Manhattanite / Brooklynite friends who I've known a lot longer who never made that trip, so I'll always remember Jed for that consideration.
We became fast friends in '08 or '09. Born three days apart in 1964, both raised in the NY area in semi-secular, Jewish families, both music freaks, with a shared interest in the occult, a lot was simply understood between us, and that friendship quickly led to Jed co-hosting the My Castle of Quiet program on WFMU with me several times over 2009-2010. Archives of those shows can be cherry-picked and listened to near the bottom of this page.
I thought Jed and I had a great, natural-if-somewhat-crusty rapport; we were one another's ideal foil for a time, though my practice of being 100% real on mic, "bringing the outside in," as Jed called it, caused some friction but also made for some great radio. ...I won't go into the details of our subsequent "breakup," as that's our business, and all was forgiven several months ago. We were talking again, and I'm glad, especially in light of his passing, that the guy knew I loved him and that our fences were mended.
Finally, to epitomize my friendship with Jed Hershon, it's probably best to say this: I created the outline of a screenplay, back in 2010, for a film to be called Disposal, where characters based on Jed and myself "decide" to become killers, fed up with the many and constant challenges of NYC life. In a filthy, noisy Brooklyn brownstone, the characters first fall into, and then delineate, however crudely, a plan to be the 21st-century Leopold and Loeb, on a mass scale. ...Eventually, the bodies start to pile up, basement-burial space runs low, and "we" spend much of the film arguing about body disposal, whose turn it is to do what, etc. Eventually, one of those arguments crests to a head, and the character based on Jed ends up killing me, burying me along with rest, and moving on, with the police slowly closing in. ...
We shared equally the joys of lives lived with no holds barred, and the gnashing jaws of frustration, misanthropy and isolationism. Jed lives on in all our memories; I for one will never forget him, and I recall our friendship without the slightest regret.
Below are two collections, albums of Jed's sound art, shared on the Free Music Archive via the My Castle of Quiet curator portal. I had a lot of fun designing the cover for Nine Rings of Hell, grafting the head of an odd photo-potrait of Jed onto the body of legendary conjurer Eliphas Levi.
Below also is our one collaboration, a piece I've always been proud of, called "Hitler Is Dead."
If there is an afterlife, Jed is there, stoned out of his mind, and laughing at all of us.
Good times last night! ...Even if I'm sometimes feeling like life is weighing me down, leaden weight on my chest, I can always "give good show," and it emboldens my week.
A blazing hour+ of black metal, breaking gradually into trails of dark, heavy noise and psychedelia. ...It was cool to see a bunch of late-breaking comments hit on the playlist; The Castle is often TOO QUIET from 1:30-3.
Click on this week's screen capture, from Strip Nude For Your Killer, to reach the playlist, archived audio, and comments from last night's horrorcast™.
Forced to hold back a load last week by sudden illness, I was left with a vision of a perfect MCoQ show, which played out last night almost perfectly. ...Ideally, lots of rousing, careering black metal and punk the first 90 mins. or so, to be followed by scores & OST-type music and a hearty Krautrock blast at the finale. I pat myself on the back, which is not something I do every week, most certainly.
Apart from the music, my prevailing thought these past two weeks has been "people." Why is it so difficult for some to communicate, openly and freely? I've never felt like I had any time to do anything but, it comes perhaps too easily to me to just say how I'm feeling in any given situation, so when others cannot, when they veil and obfuscate, and approach their expression in a winding, snaky fashion, I don't understand. The time I may have "wasted" sleeping, is the time others have wasted not expressing themselves fully and without fear. I'll say this, it makes me deeply appreciate the people in my life who can just talk. Never, ever hold out on me!
Playlist-comment praise went to Motörhead's "Stay Clean," always a personal favorite; Заводь [Zavod], from Ukraine, their excellent album available here from Freak Friendly Diy; a 2012 Krieg track [from a 4-way split; we hope to host the USBM legends live, here at The Castle, very soon!]; and "Katmandu," a soundtrack cut from the always-good Piero Piccioni.
NOW THE BIG IMPORTANT NEWS: WFMU and My Castle of Quiet are now officially fundraising, more information at that link, but one thing we WON'T be doing is hawking our value ON THE AIR. This is our yearly, all-October, "silent" fundraiser, where we utilize our Web presence, and the collective Web homes of all our on-air personalities, to implore you to give us the financial support we need and rely on.
Special Castle events for the month include: Kraut-Out #3, coming much sooner than planned, as you all enjoyed Kraut-Outs #1 and #2 so much...I'm almost ready with a schön playlist; a live broadcast on our Oct. 28-29 show, from Kyle Clyde and Rodger Stella; Kyle has graced us with live music before [see link], and if you listen to WFMU/MCoQ, you know well Rodger Stella's many fine musical works. Lastly, a live visit from USBM legends Krieg is in the works, though that may come post-fundraiser.
SO PLEDGE, FRIENDS! Show your love for WFMU / My Castle of Quiet, and get swag. See the white, rectangular "widget" above this post to make a donation.
Our still this week comes from the very fine Nikkatsu "Roman Porno" / Pinku film, Tattooed Flower Vase, featuring, among many other great scenes, an excruciatingly long pussy-tattooing scene [no electric tools!.] She's one badass bitch, s'all I can say. Click on Michiyo to reach the streaming audio, playlist and comments for last night's horrorcast™.
