gLASSsHRIMP Radio Playlist 7th April 2009

Presented by Scott McMillan and Howard Aggregate

‘Droplet’,  by Lawrence English, from album A Colour for Autumn, 12K Records lawrenceenglish.com 12k.com

‘Casio Halzbeit,’ by Knalpot, from album Knalpot, self-distributed myspace.com/knalpot

‘My Shoulders are as Wide as Your Hope is Heavy’ by Konntinent, from album Degrees, Integers on Symbolic Interaction Records

‘Who Were You With Last Night’ and ‘Who’s Your Lady Friend’ by Bernard Manning, from the album The Wheetappers and Shunters Social Club (Affiliated) on Granada Records, 1976

‘Leaf Green Bodies’ by Taiga Remains on album Wax Canopy on Digitalis

‘There is Something I Have to Say” by Bonnie Prince Billy on Domino Recordings dominorecordco.com

Howard Aggregate’s Late Preview: ‘Kev’ll Fix It.’

‘Ammunition 5′ by Seaworthy on album 1897 on 12k

‘Jantar Mantar’ by Icy Demons on album Miami Ice on Leaf theleaflabel.com

Howard Aggregate’s Late Preview #9

Kev’s rehearsing for his new Resonance show ‘Kev’ll Fix it.’ It starts next Monday and it’s the subject of tonight’s Late Preview. As the title suggests, the format of the show resembles Jim’ll Fix it, a ‘70’s and ‘80’s tea time telly staple beloved of people of a certain age. People who, in their early teens, wanted Jim to Fix it for them to sit in a racing car, or meet the Prime Minister. There were those who wanted Jim to Fix it for them to sit in a racing car with the Prime Minister, for which foolish request they were ridiculed by the studio audience. Who were just like you, only that little bit more middle class.

Kev has sent us a sample of the letters, emails and texts sent to him along with his replies. We begin with an email from Cobwanner Crabwitch. He works unsocial hours as a despatcher for a late-night lingerie emporium, and has a young teenage son, Jason. Cobwanner writes: Dear Kev, would you please fix it for my son to visit the Galapagos Islands. He wants to be an evolutionary biologist like the ones on Melvyn Bragg’s programme. I can’t afford for him to go to South America because my job for the lingerie emporium doesn’t pay much (but then I don’t do it for the money). I would like you to help fix it for my son to realise his dream because if he doesn’t he has threatened to stop listening to Melvyn Bragg and go on Jeremy Kyle. Yours sincerely…

Writes Kev: Galapagos was formed by Ludo Chalkface, originally the bassist in The Nanas of Novocaine, with five members of the recently split Lemonfather, whose lead singer, Bob McGob, had been a leading member of the early seventies Ludlow pogo acapalla scene. Their first album came out in 1988 on the now defunct Ventnor Vinyl label. According to a recent book on the subject by Trish Hackensack, VV operated either out of a cave in Ventnor once used by eighteenth century wig smugglers, or in an abandoned Soviet Navy submarine which had run aground on nearby rocks while on manoeuvres in 1976. (Coincidentally, that was the year that Lemonfather brought out their first 12-inch, Dromedary Safari, recently re-released on Righteous Monkey, downloadable from their myspace page.) I last saw Galapagos at the 1998 Runty Munty Festival in Littlehampton – which, since it has been taken over by the Corsican Mafia, has really gone downhill – and although they did a good version of The Forehead Song they were, to be honest, rubbish.

Dear Kev, Please could you fix it for me to get in a racing car? Like the ones the Top Gear chaps have? I want to run over the Prime Minister. If you fix it for me I promise to make you a Baron! Name and address witheld.

Dear David, Smashing Gear Baron is in fact another name for Harvey Wallflower, aka the Trackie Bum Boys, aka Largactyl Ptereodactyl; and that’s just a small selection! Whatever the name, they were one of the most innovative bands of the golden age of pub rock. Despite their frequent changes of name, averaging two a month in the period ‘82-5, they are not known to have ever recorded, or performed, or even met each other – even virtually over the internet. This is despite the fact that they all drank in the same pub in Erith, the Trunkshankers (good pint of Beardlifter there) and in summer shared a pre-fab bothy on Canvey Island. The core members of the band were Steve Rank, who some believe to have been the singer, though he is not known to have opened his mouth other than to drink Beardlifter, and the Dick twins, possibly interchangeable on guitar and drums. However, both Bee and Gus Dick were acutely allergic to musical instruments due to an Erith-centred epidemic of exploding plastic xylophones in the late sixties. This may have been connected with the expansion of the then-Purfleet based Semtex Sounds into instrument production. See Lester Weirdon’s book, The Inevitability of the SE London Exploding Plastic Xylophone Epidemic and its Possible Causes, available only in Kazakhstan. For more information on Baron Smashing Gear et al, just type any word into a search engine and then look on about the four-thousandth page.

Kev’ll Fix It starts next Monday.

 

gLASSsHRIMP radio playlist 30th March 2009

Black Flowers, “Polly On The Shore” from the album I Grew From A Stone to A Statue (Bo Weavil, 2009)

My Cat Is An Alien & Encore Zaffiri, “Improvisation no.1″ from the album Through The Magnifying Glass Of Tomorrow (Atavistic, 2008)

Harappian Night Recordings, “Bare Cairo” from the album The Glorious Gongs of Hainuwele (Bo Weavil, 2009)

Beatnik Filmstars, “Slow Decay” 7″ single (Satisfaction Recordings, 2009)

Howard Aggregate’s live phone in

Benjamin Finger, “Howl (At the Buffalo Girls)” from the album Woods Of Broccoli (How Is Annie Records, 2009)

The Mores, “When A Man Loves Another Man” single (Ambiguous, 2009)

Svarte Greiner, “Dress” from the album Man Bird Dress (SMTG, 2008)

Howard Aggregate’s Late Preview #8

Let the shadow play continue. Because what is radio but a play of sonic shadows, a phantasm, all in the mind? How do we know radio is real? Is it a shared illusion, a form of mass audio hypnosis?

That’s the question posed and in all likelihood answered by the Resonance philosophical round table, Radio God, later tonight. In a new departure for the show (and the station) presenter Andrey Bendwick-Hogspawm will be testing his theory of radio’s illusoriness by not broadcasting the show. Instead Andrey will think it into existence, free of the constraints of equipment, engineers, electricity. He will in fact not be turning up at the studio, and has told regular panel guests Hank and Loretta Schnorbitz that the show is being broadcasted live from the Derek Jarman Memorial Home from Home Mobile Home Home just outside Dungeness. They should be arriving about now.

You, the listener, are invited to contact Andrey during and after the show to tell him what you think of his great thought experiment. Has it worked? Are radio waves fiction or fact? Are episodes of early Resonance programming now drifting past Proxima Centauri? Is that where they came from in the first place? And if radio was a grand aural sham after all, then is telepathy a reality? And if it is, am I going to have to stop thinking about – well, am I going to have to stop thinking?

There is a drawback to contacting the show. Andrey’s doesn’t  believe the internet is real. So even if you want to, there’s not much point sending an email to bendhog@bendhog.moc. As for texting him, well, he never liked mobile phones and don’t even think about sending a letter because he won’t reveal his address in case it’s raided by the thought-bailiffs. Find out if Radio God is just dead air or not later tonight.

Truth and reality collide yet again – with reality coming off worse and lying bleeding on the road for hours before an ambulance is called – on Saturday. That’s the day when all usual Resonance programming is cast aside to make way for Phantom Raspberry Blower Day. This is a unique celebration of the character created by Spike Milligan and made mildly famous by the Two Ronnies in the mid-seventies. For those of you who don’t know, the Blower terrorised Victorian London by repeatedly raising his cape in polite society and making a rude noise. There are programmes looking at the social implications of public raspberrying in nineteenth century Britain plus a special hour long feature on capes of the V+A, particularly the blackest, swishiest and those with the shot-silk purple lining villains preferred.

There’s also Aoki Ampersand’s stunning two-hour long slow-motion recording of a raspeberry blown in 1978 by a Stockport centenarian, believed to be Britain’s oldest raspberry blower. Some might say that he was the Phantom Raspberry Blower, he certainly was old enough!

If you think along those lines be sure to catch the late night round table discussion Who Was the Phantom Raspberry Blower of Olde London Towne? This is where a collection of historical crime writers and assorted Victoriana malfeasance mongers tackle the Blower with the wild and frankly unsettling passion usually reserved for discussions of Jack the Ripper.  There’ll be contributions from Frank Fetid, bespoke blade-maker at whitechapelhistoricalcutters.com (forward slash, forward slash, forward slash) and noted crime novelist Tabitha Tapped, author of Was Jack the Ripper Gandhi?

That discussion will probably overrun by hours, but persevere because it will be followed by Marcus Hoopla’s updating of the Blower legend to the 1950’s. Instead of foggy London, Hoopla transposes the arena of lip-flubbering, sputum-hurling dastardliness to the bloody end of French colonial rule in Algeria. He takes the 1966 Giulio Pontecorvo film, Battle of Algiers and subjects it’s soundscape of French paratroopers loud-hailering their holed-up rebel adversaries and stirring Ennio Morricone score to regular interruptions of what the OED defines as ‘a sound made with the tongue and lips expressing derision and contempt’. If you think that sounds bad, you should hear his Death in Venice.

If you think gLASSsHRIMP is bad, then all we can say to you is BLEEEUURRRGHHH!