Episode 394: Day After Christmas, A (12/26/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / J. Kyle Moyer / Widget) To be perfectly honest, about 85% of this show's content was provided by a remarkably intelligent first time caller, who at first talked with himself, until he realized he was on the air. Kyle called in later on, and the caller was convinced he was the host of the show. They bantered back and forth about various religious topics while we played Christmas mash-ups underneath them. Other first timers called in, making the conversation more bizarre as they were all trying to find out from one another what the point of the show was. Kyle chimed in with rather abstract and uninformative answers, which only further confused them. This was far more entertaining than any of us ever expected!

The callers were unusually sharp and witty, and had a sense of stage presence about them. While the conversations were deeply philosophical, they kept a sense of humor about themselves. At one point, three of them discovered they were all musicians and agreed to break out into an improvisational jam session which lasted a good 20 minutes. For this, we dropped the background music and the callers reigned supreme.

People stopped calling in right around 30 minutes short of the end, which we filled with extremely rare electro-ambient trippy Christmas instrumentals.

We forgot to record this one. What a shame, as this turned out to be one of the most entertaining shows of the year!

Episode 393: Damn Weiner Kollage (12/19/2004) (Leia Alligator, Kevin Busta, Dirt Goddess, Glacial 23, Ryan Kuehn, Derek Mason, Lisa Miralia, J. Kyle Moyer, Jack Smiley, Widget) (written by Lisa Miralia) Snap! Crackle! Pop! What was that? Hot dogs grilling on an open fire? Battling guinea pigs? Waterfalls and birdcalls? Ah, THAT was The Damn Wiener Kids taking over the airwaves for two and a half hours of a totally improvised and unplugged sound performance. Bound by certain guidelines, this experiment was still completely open to each performer's individual interpretation of the use of specific objects, thus lending an element of confusion to a study of noise made within structure. Kind of like nature. The rules were:

No electrical or battery-powered objects.
No musical instruments or traditional percussive devices.
No vocals or spoken word.

Hmm. Quite a departure from Press The Button's customary (and quite creative) format of audio collage made from sampling and electronic manipulation of music, voice, and found sound/recordings. The scene:

Outside a blizzard raged as ten performers gathered around three mics in WRUW's studio, surrounded by all manner of objects and materials carefully chosen for their audio effect potential. The official list included things like paper, scissors, zippers, staplers, plastic, tape, keys, cans, rocks, bowls, spoons, bottles, measuring tapes, brushes, sheet metal, and several other "mystery items", to name a few. Interesting. Time flies when you're making noise. There were some really funny moments like when Ryan K. was doing a Hendrix imitation with a hairbrush, but of course we had to stifle our giggles.

Basically the objects were deployed in intervals with everyone using similar items at the same time, but in their own way. The experiment's purpose was to discover what range of sounds could be coaxed from the same items, and whether the total effect would emerge as a texture, a mimicking of something familiar, or maybe even rhythmic or tonal-like patterns. The performers varied their applications and mic distances/studio positions to further eek as much effect as possible out of each device. Each object group's time segment was overlapped into the next to create cohesion. There were also sounds of the "mystery items"occurring at random. The last 15-20 minutes of the show held a free-for-all object/gadget mosh pit of noise where, surprisingly, distinct patterns emerged from seeming randomness. Structure was found in chaos. The studio floor was definitely evidence of chaos, covered in all manner of debris and devices by show's end. What a great experience!!

It's hard to imagine what this broadcast must have sounded like to listeners. This is the source material broadcast for a series of mixes and re-mixes that Press The Button plans over the next few weeks. This evolution will be an experiment in and of itself. (Per Everyman, "it was beautiful to listen to how the sound was without structure throughout most of the show, and when the rules were lifted, and the performers were allowed to do whatever they wanted, it was stunning to see them conform to structure . . . and create a rhythm and a tempo . . . without having to do so, totally freeform . . . yet seemingly planned and rehearsed . . . this was fascinating.")

Engineered by: Everyman with assistance from Carl "Route 66" Hunt.

Episode 392: Disseminating the News (12/12/2004) (every man / Glacial 23, Nick Traenkner) Written by Nick Traenkner: What's that yellow kid doing over there? It was a small room crammed with audio equipment and I felt very safe knowing that the actual antenna was probably miles away from me as I leared how radio waves are sent (lots of high voltage sent up antennas) in my research for this show. The show started out with an on-the-scene report of the Buddha's defeat of suffering as one of the first big events for translation and news. It was indeed news on how humanity can defeat suffering. And indeed there was a bald kid in a frock dancing around the hills near where Siddartha meditated and became The Buddah. Last week the beginning of the broadcast had to do with how the good news was elementary in the history of publishing and early journalism so I didnt read anything having to do with the Jesus. After that it was pretty much a retrospective of print, broadcast (radio/TV) and web journalism all mashed and mixed up together. The samples were pretty much chronological (from what I remember). The room was very hot and I kept thinking that I was coming down with the flu. Everything that was read was either a paraphrase of historical data or readings from actual documents:

The Santangel letter (Christopher Coloumbus) (1493)

The Santangel letter was reprinted after recieved and distributed in Spain as a news pamphlet.

Letter from John Milton in protest of prior restraint exercized by The Stationer's Company with regard to copyright and publishing

Letter from "Silence Dogood" (adolescent Benjamin Franklin) From New England Courant Monday March 26. 1722

NEW YORK EVENING POST BELCHER vs BOURKE (round by round coverage of a boxing match from 1802)

"The Elections in England. — Tories and Whigs" by Karl Marx (London foreign correspondent for The New York Tribune 1852)

Morse Code messages from The Titanic sent via spark transmitter/reciever.

Needle telegraph messages sent by English Aristocrats and The Royal Family.

One of the first AM radio messages sent by Reginald Fessenden December 23, 1900 sent 50 miles: "One, two, three, four. Is It snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If so telegraph back and let me know."

Call letters and slogans from early US AM radio station

Text from the FCC website "About the FCC".

Transcripts of an interview with Matt Drudge

Excerpts from Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal for a networked information system based on hypertext for use by CERN researchers (March 1989) (this would become the World Wide Web)

***

And radio call letters used to mean something.

And objectivity in journalism has rarely ever meant anything.

And money and circulation numbers have always meant pretty much everything.

And newspapers and television shows do start wars with countries that really have little to do with anything.

REMEMBER THE MAINE! TO HELL WITH SPAIN!

What do I think of this show?

I went home and listened to "How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?"

Episode 391: Discussing the Situation (12/05/2004) (every man / Glacial 23, Nick Traenkner) Almost as the show's title indicates, this was all about the "French Situationists," but not really, which makes this even more about the Situationists, and while it may lead you to believe it is more dadaist, it really and truly isn't, or wasn't. A situation was created, and you had to deal with it as best you could, but there was no way to fail. You just had to "deal with it," and it didn't matter how . . . we did our jobs by creating the situation. It wasn't just any old situation. It was a show that began as a documentary on journalism, its history, and its evolution into the modern web site . . . but it never got that far, despite the listeners understanding that "journalism" was what it was all about, it stopped being about, until the very end, where it was "sort of" about, but not really . . . it was about "Situationist dadaist journalists" and ended on that very note, despite not being on a different note an hour ago, and a far different not a half hour before the hour before that. Lots of calls, lots of noise, lots of music, lots of spoken word, but not really, it was more far more French than we are letting on.

Episode 390: Donahoo, Fleisher, and Michaels (11/27/2004) (every man / Glacial 23, Johnny La Rock, Mush Mouth, Subroc) Perhaps one of the most surreal programs ever to air, but you'd have to sit through the entire 4.5 hours worth to fully understand why. The first half hour was very frat-boy humorish, but split into two very distinct parts. The first part involved our guests (Johnny La Rock, Mush Mouth, and Subroc) promoting all of their upcoming shows and thanking people who showed up to their recent ones, plugging their web sites all throughout. The second part involved the same guests promoting all of their non-existent upcoming shows, featuring 4-star celebrity performers as the headliners, and still plugging their web sites all throughout. If you noticed this transition, you'd find it humorous. If you didn't, you might be irritated. Then again, you might have noticed and were still irritated, but that's okay, because the first half hour evolved into the next part of the show, where sound effects and music riddled the mix, special effects consumed their voices, and a most extraordinarily large number of callers washed over us like a monsoon! They jammed off and on, introducing each other as they would perform some of their better known songs which they usually play on stage before an audience. Things only got more bizarre in the third hour, where they stopped performing songs, and began improvising techno, off-the-wall spoken word poetry, and constantly evolving bouts of noise. The callers never let up. The hour ended, and the next DJ never showed up . . . our guests went home, and we stayed on for another two hours. In hour four, every man & Glacial 23 began performing extended versions of songs they hadn't practiced together in roughly two years, which turned out remarkably well -- the callers never let up. It was sometimes dance-worthy, sometimes depressing, but most often funny. The final hour was ambient, mellow, thought provocative, and sent you straight into space as our callers turned the tables and played samples at us. They spoke to each other in a beat-poet fashion, right up until the very end. Our own recording device ran out of space and missed the final 10 minutes before the next DJ took over and officially ended our show. We were extremely exhausted, but extremely high. This was well-received by our regulars, but only by those who listened from beginning to end. We readily admit, this format was most unusual for us.

Episode 389: Distant Memories Vol. 3 (11/20/2004) (Electric Grandmother, 6 Volt Haunted House, Experimental Gathering @ Zion, Tyrone Shoelaces) Started this one out with several segues between Electric Grandmother's performance at the 9th Recycled Rainbow event, and Tyrone Shoelaces's performance at the 6th, which was recorded to minidisc from an open mic close to the speakers. Crowd noise and conversation from both EG's and TS's recordings oddly seemed to socially interact, so we tried our best to cultivate more of that with our mix. Caller interaction sprinkled over this audio montage with children's stories, falsetto vocals, and sound effects. The second hour was filled with the entire critically acclaimed 6 Volt Haunted House set (Matt Cassidy and Jack Smiley of 9VHH) which was performed at Recycled Rainbow 8. On top of this mix, 9VHH's only other band member -- Craig R. Chojnicki -- ironically called in, not realizing we were playing a 6 Volt set. He addressed every man by name repeatedly, which ultimately coaxed him to get on the mic and converse. A most surreal conversation ensued, until Craig finally recognized his own band's samples being played on the air and asked what was being played. Then, as you can imagine, an even more surreal conversation ensued. The final hour was a highlight reel, carefully edited in advanced from three hours of experimental group improvisational performances recorded at the Zion Church in Tremont, OH, September 18th, 2004. Several musicians participated -- among them were every man and Derek Mason (the event's organizer.) The recordings themselves were extra-special, as they were picked up by a high quality lavaliere stereo microphone strategically placed in the center of the church's balcony to capture some extremely interesting acoustics. The sound: at times structureless ambience, other times musical, riddled with spoken word, crickets, organs, pianos, and backwards vocals. Not for sale (but will trade for a copy of the Zion recordings, specifically.)

Episode 388: DJ's Over the Rainbow III (11/14/2004) (Colorforms, The Black Fives, 6 Volt Haunted House, The Former Yugoslavia) A DJ who performs "over the rainbow" is not your typical DJ. In fact, none of tonight's performers are anywhere near what you'd expect from a conventional DJ. The now official Colorforms line-up were the last ones to perform at Recycled Rainbow 9, and the first ones we played in tonight's show. This set showed the members have come a long way since RR8, more in sync with one another than ever, and doing a much better job defining their specific genre of choice, which we suspect isn't so much a musical genre as it is a level of consciousness. It is impossible to listen to this and not mentally insert sounds and words and images that aren't there in the room with you. Numbing of the senses, yes, but also it in part removes your filters . . . it opens up an untapped way of perceiving the world, colors, smells, taste, touch, sound, etc. We could go on, but as we do, we hear the sounds of The Black Fives who are at times reminiscent of Aphex Twin, sometimes dirtier, sometimes far more cleanly produced. They presented us several true songs with creatively manipulated electronic beats, sequenced patterns, and occasional vocals (Steve from The Black Fives read parts of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and something from Marquis De Sade into a baby monitor that sat in front of a microphone.) They were a big hit, and deservedly so. This was followed by 6 Volt Haunted House (Craig and Jack from 9 Volt Haunted House.) They hooked up an Intellivsion into a phrase sampler, and encouraged the audience to play video games as a way of interacting with the performance. This produced some of the most far out sound effects that were mish-mashed, crushed, and blended into industrial beats, found sound collages, and space segments that ebbed and flowed, and ebbed more and flower further down into The Former Yugoslavia's set. TFY's performance was one long space segment filled with spoken word samples, loops, effects pedals galore, ancient turntables, databending, magnificent self-plundering, noise, and it all came to a screeching halt with a woman's voice clearly reading the last line of James Joyce's Ulysses. This entire show was riddled with caller interaction by audio artists who figured out some clever ways to blend in with the mix, making these into "enhanced" versions of all the performances. Not for sale.

Episode 387: Distant Memories Vol. 2 (11/07/2004) (Colorforms - alpha, Varian Shepherd, DJ Empirical) Playback of various Recycled Rainbow 8.0 sets in their entirety. The Colorforms line-up of band members from RR8 was technically from a pre-Colorforms era, but nevertheless consistent with the current line-up. The show started out with a half-hour spontaneous performance they made around 4 am, the Friday prior to the actual Recycled Rainbow event. There was an audience of about 5 - 7 people, all of whom were laying down listening. The sound is hard to describe, but "harmonic noise" is what we'll call it today, noise being used loosely to describe the inconsistent tempo of it all, which breaks it away from your stereotypical ambient music. It sounded as though the performers were using their heartbeats as guides, or their breathing . . . as they were all in sync with each other, mostly, but as a whole, out of sync with a consistent tempo, mostly. It would become a wall of sound, beautiful, barely musical, and teetered on the border of structured/unstructured composition. It is improv, but doesn't sound as such. Varian Shepherd's set is next, an hour long, and clearly more on the "unstructured" side of the fence. His set presented a drone, both with music and spoken word. A musical range of notes were often heard, but not following any rhythm or structure at all. This is the softer side of noise as well, but the spoken word was deliberate, thought provocative, and its placement was well-rehearsed. The sound built to a wash of effects, spinning from ear to ear, harmonic keys being hit together, undecipherable spoken word, and transitional white/pink noise elements rising and falling. It is a pleasant listen, and most appropriate as "headphone music." We ended the show with DJ Empirical, who is best known for his incredible skill at mixing mashups live on turntables (not on CD decks, not on a laptop.) A listener will be chuckling every so often at the unpredictable match-ups he puts together. He can make the singing from an Ernie & Bert (Sesame Street) song seem like the perfect thing to throw down on top of a music bed intended for Missy Eliot's vocals. It's always funny, but it always works. Not for sale.

Episode 386: DJ's Over the Rainbow II (10/31/2004) (The Record Exchange, stAllio!, Recycled Rainbow 9 Dada Tape) More highlights from The Record Exchange performing at Recycled Rainbow 9, plus most of the bar room's "dada tape recordings," and the entirety of stAllio!'s RR9 set, which offers the friendly reminder that "the Media are lying to you." It might be noteworthy to mention that the data tape caught lengthy glimpses of Tropic's "Three and a Half Seconds" rant with every man at the bar, and the concluding minutes from The Damn Weiner Kids set (performed on the same floor where the dada tape recorder sat.) Not for sale.

Episode 385: DJ's Over the Rainbow (10/24/2004) (The Record Exchange, The Former Yugoslavia, every man) Playback show of various recordings from Recycled Rainbow 9. Most of these came from our good friends Ryan & Brian (of Thursday Club fame) who formed an amazing side project called "The Record Exchange." It's almost un-plugged for them, as their audio tools were pretty much reduced to nothing but turntables and effects pedals. Their sound? Imagine if Merzbow DJ'd your wedding reception. The first half hour of the program included a rare jam session recording made late Friday night, including Ryan, every man, and Aric Vance (of The Former Yugoslavia fame.) We took callers, but the recordings were so loud you could barely tell what the callers were saying, singing, or doing. Despite the loud levels you normally get from the Ryan/Brian duo, their odd combinations of sonic elements were extremely diverse and engaging, the source material was all over the map, and their effect patterns were changing and evolving at a deliberately methodical rate, keeping the head-space strong and intrigued. A few sections were reminiscent of Varian Shepherd's Silence Syndrome. Not for sale.

Episode 384: Definite Articles (10/17/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Recycled Crayon / Jack Smiley / Ryan Kuehn / Leia Alligator / The Former Yugoslavia / Connie McCue / stAllio!) This is the post-Recycled Rainbow 9 radio show, featuring many guests who stayed over after the event. We've never had this combination of artists before, which made it more interesting. Some of the guests were strictly acoustic, while others were strictly digital. Some were classically trained musicians, while others had no prior experience performing music before (seldom do you ever see a laptop and a flute on the same stage performing music together!) Some are "noise" artists, some are rock musicians, and some seldom ever dip their chips into the audio realm. We used two recording studios, both of which were filled front to back with various instruments, effects pedals, family radios, databent toys, laptops, microphones, mixing boards, cables, record players, and keyboards. After a half hour of freeform jamming with the entire group, Recycled Crayon (Dirtgoddess) split the bunch of us into randomly selected groups of three, and instructed us to perform in roughly 15 minute segments, then allowing the next group fade into the mix without losing the same tonal vibe or tempo. This format continues until the end of the program. As a result, this ended up a better flowing mix than usual (in the case of having multiple guests.) Compared with previous RR shows, this was more musically structured, less chaotic, yet still very silly in parts. We recorded the whole thing, listened later and it sounds great. We highly recommend this one!

Episode 383: Dark 70's Show (10/10/2004) Live sequencing of hundreds of musical sample loops which were stolen exclusively from the 1970's, often resulting in a surprisingly dark ambiance, seldom dance-worthy, and frequently psychedelic. We're proud of the fact that this mix kept itself interesting for the duration of the program. Source material ranged from classic rock, to country, to funk, to disco, to amazingly obscure modern rock. While sequencing is usually predictable when it overstays its welcome, the program's saving grace was the fact that no single genre was over-emphasized. To pull off a show like this was a difficult and time consuming effort. Much worse, we only had a week to hand pick all the samples we wanted to use (there were literally hundreds of them in the mix.) We really liked this one . . . so much that we may actually use some of this source material on a future album project.

Episode 382: Digital Steamboat (10/03/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Recycled Crayon) Sweet polynesia, a Be-In, celestial soundscapes, improvisational jazz, drum circles, chants, preaching, sequencing, singing, and creative spoken word input provided by listener interaction. Ambience padded the entire show with brief moments of cheerfulness or melancholy. The harmonious ride felt interminable until the boat ran out of steam. It was all reminiscent of evaporating water, steam escaping into the atmosphere, and your emotions are slooooooowly slowing down. Not recorded.

Episode 381: Deviant Birthday Bash (09/26/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / J. Kyle Moyer / Ryan Kuehn / Leia Alligator / Mike Corrimer / Erin Peterson / Jack Smiley) Celebrating J. Kyle Moyer's birthday, the first half hour featured some mellow guitar layers from Kyle, Leia's flute work, Mike's hand drums, and a rather unique wall of noise fading in and out coming from Ryan. Hour two: pure insanity! Pitch bent voices (left ear is low, right ear is high), robots on the telephone, Dave Mansbach called in to offer color commentary to the robot, Leia and every man trading rhymes, wits, noises, and philosophy on the mic, Kyle sings "The Final Countdown" (Europe), Mike and Erin run around whistling, playing flutes, making noises, giggling, stamping their feet, and singing "Happy Birthday." Lisa calls in to play "Happy Birthday" on her accordion somewhere in there, she swears it, but with so much going on it's hard to say specifically when. Jack Smiley shows up in the last hour, and Mike, Erin, and Leia depart early because they all have to work in the morning. The final hour starts out with a mellow drone, and gets layered with a caller talking with an echo on his voice, which eventually fades into another musical layer, and every man plays space phaser pads on his sampler, Glacial 23 brings in a drum beat, Jack fades in his whirling Korg making sounds we've never heard him make before, Ryan provides oceanic waves of thunder, static, and electromagnetic pulsations, and the birthday boy jams out the most beautiful guitar work of his career, matching wits with Ryan, every man's keys get distorted, Jack's Korg gets louder, Glacial 23's beat gets more erratic, lights begin to flash, the earth shakes, everything wiggles and jiggles until every nerve in your body is about to simultaneously burst into flames, it gets hotter and hotter, and it all finally erupts, magma becomes lava, and WRUW's Studio A melts into Studio B, and there's nothing left but the next show taking over in Studio C. Happy Birthday, Kyle!

Episode 380: Discharge of Flames (09/19/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Dirtgoddess / J. Kyle Moyer) every man, Dirtgoddess, and J. Kyle Moyer (via telephone) provided a rather abstract talk-radio format to discuss the details of their experiences at Burning Man 2004. Meanwhile, Glacial 23 created a mind-altering soundscape which perfectly suited the spoken word content. Hear stories about playa dust, the Happy Camp, Nobody, playa fishing, bookmobiles, the burning of the temple, the Alternative Energy Zone, snow cones, star clusters, and much more.

Episode 379: Dragon Wings (09/12/2004) (every man) Something ancient about the approach in this one . . . and something dark and filled with temptation. Much of this was composed from field recordings made at various festivals, sporting events, road trips, and at Burning Man. Sound effects, music, spoken word dialogue, and yet more music fades in and out unpredictably. Excessive stereo panning and delays are switched off and on randomly, depending on the mood, and various degrees of pitch bending are applied when appropriate. Perhaps the perfect thing to listen to while heavily medicated, tired, or inebriated. The performance itself transformed every man's reality into a dream world, resembling that from which he returned from just a week ago. Musical in parts, but that wasn't the emphasis here. Meditation, mind expansion, leaving the self, and exploring the outer limits are inevitable interpretations here.

Episode 378: Disrupting the Olympics (09/05/2004) (Glacial 23 / Widget) A continuation on the style of the previous week, though this time with more familiar material (longtime listeners may even recognize some of the spoken word material). A few of the more choice bits from the previous week did also make their way into the mix. A very chaotic, but entirely listenable production.

Episode 377: Distinctive Individual (08/29/2004) (Glacial 23) Playlist provided by Glacial 23:

2 CDs of "Musique Concrete" Everyman made.
One track of ambient something-or-other Glacial 23 made about a year ago.
A field recording of a Waffle House somewhere around Indianapolis that went terribly awry (to be really pedantic, it was actually a Waffle & Steak House)

and the rest(* indicates something that wasn't new to Glacial 23's record collection):

Our Place in Space - Floyd Cramer
Steam Past and Present (a train SFX record)
The Human League - Total Panic (Fascination B-side)
Various unknown Russian records
a Texe Marrs cassette titled "The Panopticon"
a cassette titled "How to Haunt a House"
Octave One - The X-Files (Tracks used: The Neutral Zone, Phatima)*
Biting Tongues - Love Out
First Component Series Stereo Test Record
Charlton Heston Reads from the Life and The Passion of The Christ
Kold Kreu - Don't Let 'Em Drop The Bomb
Human League - Non Stop (Mirror Man B-side)
I Remember Germany
Components Corporation Stereo Hi-Fi Test Record
Beastie Boys - Rock Hard 12" (Tracks used: Rock Hard, Beastie Groove (instrumental))
OMD - Dazzle Ships (Tracks used: International, Time Zones, Of all the Things We've Made)
Choir of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary - The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
A Special Message from Pat Robertson cassette*
A Memorial Album for JFK
Stallio! - True Data 12"
Section 25 - From The Hip(tracks used: Beneath The Blade, Inspiration)*

Episode 376: Divine Revelations (08/22/2004) (every man / Glacial 23) A found sound criticism of the Book of Revelations, with a tangential subplot covering other well known prophets, like Nostradamus. We briefly touched on the pyramids, the seers, the time travelers, and the psychics. Callers offered us their own prophecies for the end of times, and one caller gave us an extremely unique interrelation of the Book of Revelations, asserting that Jesus Christ is an alien, or rather, that the "second coming" will involve Jesus Christ returning to us in a spaceship, with 19,999 UFO's behind him (20,000 total) and the bankers of the world will write him off as "just an alien", one that shouldn't be trusted . . . or perhaps a demon that should be shot down, studied, and taken advantage of. The caller offered specific passages to back this up, and his logic was so compelling and fascinating that we gave him a good 20 minutes to explain it all. There were also many beautiful musical moments in this one, often swimming in and out of various recordings of people reading the Book of Revelations in 6 different languages. Other layers of sound within the collage came from Gregorian chants, some record we found from the early 70's that read a giant "666" on the front cover, an old home-made cassette tape we found thrifting at the Cleveland Greek Festival that contained a creepy recording of chanting nuns, sequencers, samplers, pitch bent microphones, Glacial 23's electronic madness, and various spoken word pieces offered by both every man and Glacial 23. Lots of goodies squeezed into a short period of time.

Episode 375: Dipropylttryptamine (08/15/2004) (every man / Glacial 23) A drug made specifically for the auditory system. The ingredients were love, feeling, nature, the fourth dimension, and an unnamed parallel universe. The chef served all pre-produced mixes, including a new every man composition called Mother's Temple of Acid, rumored to have been inspired by the works of a similarly named musical group. Callers played along with their own pre-produced mixes, spoken word, and live improvisations with guitars and drums. Ear candy? No. Noise? No. Distorted harmonies? Perhaps it's best to say it's a harmony of all things that aren't harmonic, yet the results are agreeable.

Episode 374: Different Strokes (08/8/2004) Changing up the format a bit, this was a playback of various recordings from Recycled Rainbow 8.5. Highlights include: Luigi's performance on his home-made modular synth, Beating Eric's spoken word tape-loop collage, and various recordings made on the Recycled Rainbow dada cassette recorder. One listener described this program as "mind melting." Another listener was certain we manipulated Beating Eric's performance, or at least layered something on top of it, but I assure you we did not! That's exactly how he performed it, and yes, it was extremely unusual . . . not just unusual for him, but unusual on the whole. We didn't take any callers this time, either.

Episode 373: Drinking to Caress (08/1/2004) (every man / J. Kyle Moyer / Sticky Twinkle Wheel) The idea is "loose", rising, falling, settling, and not necessarily getting back up immediately. Caressing your mind, body, soul with silence, to once again climb the ladder having learned something from absolute zero.  Nothing fierce, nothing dense, and no competition. No one takes a "solo flight" but everyone takes off. There are several landings. Silent gaps, some say, are moments of reflection. More passive than active. More mellow than madness.  A better word to use here is "less."  The beauty is discovered of that which lies down beneath us. Less traffic, less conversation, less hate, less loud, and lesson learned. Drink to this one. Allow yourself to be caressed.

Episode 372: Discard (07/25/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / The Former Yugoslavia) A tribute to Aric Vance, founder of The Former Yugoslavia. The first hour featured his latest album Discard in its entirety, as removing any individual track from this masterpiece would be an insult to the rest of the record. The details of the album's sound constantly change, but the overall texture and approach remain similar throughout. It requires the deepest listening to fully appreciate how one can get lost in Aric's world, where suddenly everything becomes a beautiful floating dream with distorted edges and blurry colors. The deeper you listen, the more remarkably different every second of this record sounds. Enter hour two, we give you a live never-before-heard performance Aric made specifically for this show (we've been planning this with Aric for several weeks.) The jam was much more loose and freeform, and the callers this hour were all too happy to take advantage. Accordions, bongos, gurgling, and children's toys fill all the phone lines for almost the entire hour. As soon as you'd disconnect a caller, someone else would fill in the gap! The last half hour of the show presented a handful of brand new tracks by The Button. The source material for most of these came directly from Discard, but one of the tracks was an entirely new piece  inspired by Aric's latest approach to music composition. Callers flooded this section as well, but their content blended right in perfectly. The show ran over a few minutes as the next DJ was still getting ready, so we faded everything down except for the callers who doubled-their efforts to entertain us with a variety of unseen sound-making devices . . . which we can only guess were guitars, echo-boxes, delay pedals, chimes, bells, and a handful of speak-and-spells. 

Episode 371: Define A Scalene Square (07/18/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Ethereal Transmission / 9 Volt Haunted House / Sticky Twinkle Wheel) Eight performers, four bands, and over 30 instruments. Rarely does such great synchronicity ever happen with so many artists with such dissimilar backgrounds, all of which are used to taking center stage when the spotlight shines, yet each of us has had much experience in the world of electronic improvisation (which we are certain has become the next "freeform jazz" movement.) The ranges of music here were wise, mostly high-energy, upbeat, and often crazy . . . but always on beat, never too crazy to retain a conventional song structure. Some was reminiscent of a new-wave industrial, perhaps one which has never yet been heard, a Gothic beat from the future, or an extremely happy accident that found a home on Press The Button. The last half hour was extremely mellow and trance-inducing, but to be fair, every hour had these kinds of moments . . . these "drone zones" if you will, where not only the listener, but the performers get lost in the sound, forget where they are, what they are doing, what they came here for, and that's when things truly synchronize. Overall, we can fairly say that everyone performed at the same time! This is mostly true, though there were moments when one person would step back during a beautiful moment, not knowing what to add, and just observe, or get lost, or listen and learn, and grow, and eventually come back into the set, changing the pace, taking the lead, and everyone else follows. Eight performers, all playing together, all at once, without taking turns . . . we can honestly say that this was a first for this program, and surely won't be the last. At least for tonight, we have all learned to lose the ego. I wonder, if for a moment, if the entire world could feel this sensation, just once, that it might carry it on forever . . . no more military spending, no more weapons, no more fear. As during this session, we were not afraid, but loved, and loving . . . 

Episode 370: Driving to Flight II (If You Know What I Mean) (07/17/2004) (every man / Ryan from Thursday Club) Filling in for Darkfield Imagery (an industrial formatted show on WRUW.) An artistic tribute to flying taking over where "Driving to Flight I" left off. More flying sound effects, more flying music, and more flying callers! Less of a documentary, more of an Andy Warhol sound sculpture. Ambiance turns noise, turns musical, turns ambiance, turns noise, turns musical, turns silent, turns ambiance, turns, churns, burns, learns to land, and lands to learn. The second hour turned into more of a surreal talk break with callers losing their tickets, trying to park their cars, getting money out of ATM machines, trying to get parking attendants on the air, reciting They Might Be Giants lyrics, talking in high pitched voices, sometimes heavily delllllllayyyyyyed, flying, but always flying low.

Episode 369: Deconstructing Deconstruction (07/11/2004) (every man / Thursday Club) A playback recording of the Thursday Club performing with every man at the Asterisk Gallery (07/09/2004) in Tremont, Ohio. Somewhere between Merzbow's loudest white noise and John Cage's total Silence lies the truth. Structure set us free. Chaos enveloped freedom in a timely manner. Hate was tamed by love. The dog and the cat slept soundly together as doug meyer's inflatable solar system collapsed at the night's end. Ohio City would be nothing if it weren't for Lakewood and Tremont, two slices of bread . . . one covered in sesame seeds, the other soaked in mustard. It's called a match made in Pergatory, or a union made in Paradise Lost. "i played along with my accordion here . . . it sounded pretty good." - Lisa Miralia

Episode 368: Driving to Flight I (07/04/2004) (every man / Glacial 23) A rather avant-documentary on the history of flight, brought to you by over three dozen narrators (including various members of the Peanuts gang.) We started things off with a lengthy remix of the mostly instrumental song "Flying" by the Beatles. Eventually, sounds of planes taking off and landing become the sound scape for the pilots giving their scheduled reports (in real time from a radio scanner tuned-in to the local airport) The pilots describe current weather conditions from above, and tell of their altitude, distance, and estimated times of arrival to their home base in Cleveland. You'll also learn how to operate the controls in a cockpit from real pilot training videos. Every so often, you'll also get a 1959 helicopter flying lesson. Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang give a brief history of the Wright Brothers while callers challenge the integrity of Sally's facts. From time to time, Dean Martin and Burt Lancaster recite lines of dialogue from the movie Airport, while callers let us know they too are flying (we think one or two of them were rather flighty, in fact!) When no one has anything to say, plenty have something to sing, as various songs dealing with the concept of "flying" get mashed-up and mixed-in. If that wasn't enough, the hosts of the show were metaphorically flying throughout the entire performance. We never did get around to the landing part . . .

Episode 367: Designing Structures From Chaos (06/27/2004) (every man / Glacial 23) Music from Noise. Frequenting the infrequent. Ordering the disordered. Organizing the disorganized. Patterns designed from scattered playing cards. Melodies composed from randomly hit notes. Repetitious loops sequenced from unpredictable sound effects. Structure from chaos. every man and Glacial 23 took some of the more incalculable works from both the Thursday Club & stAllio!, and turned them into something more systemic and accessible. The callers this week were far more conforming to the theme than expected, which provided for an unusually agreeable improvisational collage. "In your face" was put in its place, logically and mathematically, Ryan and stAlly!, back and forth on the see saws of sound, 60 seconds, click, 120 seconds, click, 240 seconds, click, too many see saws, sick. You go up, I'll come down, slick. Half live, half produced, trick. The ending might surpass the beginning, pick? Heads or tails, the up always has a down, until the coin lands on its side, and we give it a spin, flick! Recorded in stereo . . . in someone's car stereo, literally, during the show. The left always had balance with the right, that's the routine . . . the republican convention . . . the cultural custom, just a force of habit, lead down the beaten path, get with the program,  follow the procedures, obey the formulas, just out of habit, at the daily grind, until it's familiar, it will make you regular, in cycles . . . every day.

Episode 366: Dr. Moyer, I Presume? (06/20/2004) (J. Kyle Moyer) Kyle made us another collage this week, but this time it's of our recent musical collaborations outside of the radio show (non Recycled Rainbow related.). A few  experimental Ethereal Tranmission instrumental jam sessions here, some rare recordings made of J. Scott Franklin when he played at an elementary school, and lots of Colorforms stuff (a recent side project of ours.) A bit of material here is completely new improvisational work Kyle made specifically to mix with the rest of the collage, all performed live . . . on tape. The callers were extremely "hello"-ish so we didn't bother recording them.  We recorded everything else though, so this one is for sale.

Episode 365: Death to WTAM (06/18/2004) (every man) Substituting for Rich Lowe's "Night of the Living Dread" from 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM EST. Since this program coincided with the airing of the Mike Trivisano talk-show on WTAM 1100 AM, the bulk of this program was dedicated to this Clear Channel owned station. Three hours of WTAM's programming was recorded during the Mike Trivisano show (commercials, traffic reports, and station ID's included), then broken up into 1100 sample fragments, and remixed together in layers. The samples were dry for awhile, but eventually gained an interesting sonic texture, with slight pitch bending, downwards, upwards, backwards, and NO-words were ever heard in their original context. You might hear a 1-800 number in its entirety, but you'll never know why you'd want to call it! You constantly hear the call letters WTAM, over and over, to the point where it's sickening . . . we've found the call letters mentioned at least once every 120 seconds during the Trivisano show. This collage piece certainly made light of that fact, not to mention made art out of that fact. It was sometimes humorous, but most often unsettling and disturbing.

It worked its way into something less dense and more musically ambient, but not before we got over three dozen phone calls from reggae fans who were assuring us we were having transmitter problems "we've been listening to a half hour, and all we hear is programming from WTAM, sort of, I think, but please alert your station engineers and get the problem fixed!" At one point, Case Western's police department barged into the station saying they too were getting phone calls from people saying the station appears to be off the air and that they couldn't reach us through WRUW's request line for the past hour (which was true, since it was filled with callers saying the same thing to us.) No one ever understood our explanation, so we started agreeing that the station was having problems "thanks for letting us know, but we already have an engineer on the job sir, the damned digital STL is down again but thanks for the call anyway!"

The final hour was an utter deconstruction of last week's "Night of the Living Dread" program, with Rich Lowe's recontextualized talk breaks in the left ear, and his cutup music in the right ear, but then they switched ears, and again, and again, again . . .  for an entire hour. Callers loved this one too "we think your transmitter is having problems, it sounds like six stations coming in at once, but I'm certain WRUW is one of them, since I hear Rich's voice, I think . . . will this ever get fixed?"

I was most sympathetic. "It's not the transmitter, sir, it's the damn CD players! We just replaced them darn near two months ago, and now listen to what they're doing!"

The listeners tried calming me down. "Well, considering they are used 24 hours a day, it makes sense to me! Maybe you just need to have some backup units."

"Good idea, sir! Maybe WTAM will donate some to us?"

We're not certain Rich Lowe will ever let us substitute for his show again.

Episode 364: Dish Washers in Stereo (06/13/2004) (every man) This all vinyl show hammered flashbacks to The Electric Company, The Muppet Show, The Jetsons, Flash Gordon, The Transformers, The Avengers, and much more. Spacey music soundtracks get riddled with phoned in sound effects from our more creative listeners. The ambience was most often relaxing, but unusual enough to captivate your attention. Somewhere in the show, every man improvised some spoken word about medical ethics, candy factories, and Laverne & Shirley. The overall vibe of the program reflected the human condition. Its tonality was as humorous as it was painfully sad. A good mix of spoken word and music, but alas -- not recorded.

Episode 363: Distant Memories Vol. 1 (06/06/2004) J. Kyle Moyer's collage of all the recordings made during Recycled Rainbow 8 weekend. The collage itself accurately captured the mind numbing experimental trip everyone rode for 72 hours straight. Intense, loving, diverse, and always pushing the boundaries of sound. Artists featured were J. Scott Franklin, Thursday Club, Ethereal Transmission, 9 Volt Haunted House, Beautiful Puppy, Varian Shepherd, DJ Empirical, and various random sounds made late Friday night / Saturday morning during the Recycled Rainbow basement jam session. Not for sale.

Episode 362: Dinner for 16 (05/30/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Kyle and Dave from Ethereal Transmission / Leia Alligator / Ryan & Bryan from Thursday Club / stAllio! / Jack from 9 Volt Haunted House / Widget / Recycled Crayon / hetmana / holly / Kristi / Varian Shepherd / Mittelschmerz) This was the post-RR8 after-party. We're not entirely sure how to musically describe this but we'll try. With 16 performers on hand, we decided it would be best to break them up into groups of three and have them perform half hour segments. Every 30 minutes, we grouped three of the least likely artists to perform together, based on their preferred musical styles. First 30 minutes was performed by Varian, Dave, and Bryan (with Kyle altering Dave's effects for about 15 minutes worth.) Second 30 minutes was performed by Widget, Ryan, and Leia. Third 30 minutes was performed by stAllio!, Jack, and Glacial 23 (Kyle sat in for about 10 minutes of this one.) Fourth 30 minutes was performed by Everyman, Varian, and Kyle. Jack saw an opening and jumped on the train about 5 minutes into this segment and did some fantastic guitar work until the very end. Last half hour was musically performed by Varian and Bryan, and spoken word was performed by every man, Glacial 23, Kyle, Dave, Leia, Ryan, stAllio!, Widget, Recycled Crayon, hetmana, holly, Kristi, and Mittelschmerz. This last section was completely disorienting and dream-like. We prefer not to overuse this comparison, but the program as a whole truly resembled a very intense acid trip.

Episode 361: Diesel is Cheaper (05/23/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / J. Kyle Moyer / Leia Alligator / Ryan) Sixteen dogs under a truck.

Episode 360: Dali Dada (05/16/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / J. Kyle Moyer / Jack Smiley / dean balog) Yoga, meditation, and the mere concept of Zen all played a major role in this transcendental theme. Words spoken everywhere, samples from yoga instructors holding class, moogs and korgs shaking hands, Kyle dialing in from home for 2.5 hours (save a few minutes to get fresh batteries), a layer of dean balog's pre-assembled music loops and recontextualizations, sitars bending and waving in reverse, gigantic wind chimes getting distorted, carnival music for babies, haunting gregorian chants, deep philosophical advise whispered in your ear, colors on the tapestry and mixing and moving, its sound is rising and falling, rising some more, but ultimately falling one final time . . . yet there is no such thing as The End.

Episode 359: Dirty & Distinguished (05/09/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / J. Kyle Moyer / Jack Smiley / Ryan) A completely live improvisational jam with absolutely no preparation beforehand whatsoever, and . . . it . . . worked! Ryan showed great reserve with his noise antics as he slowly faded himself in and out, always at appropriate moments, always adding to the moment, never taking away. It would not have been the same without him there, we assure you! Glacial 23 never sounded more in tune with the world as he was constantly the rhythmic foundation, but you could never tell when it began or changed or ended, as it was all incredibly subtle. He was the reason your head ever bobbed up and down, and he may very well be the reason we kept any listenership during this particular program at all! Yes, his input was that good! Kyle and every man played off each other in a variety of consistently mellow patterns, with EM on keyboard and JKM on guitar. One would argue they fell asleep while staying awake, if that makes sense? We've heard this being called "in the zone." Kyle did a little bit of spoken word sampling "walk in the night time, all alone with your mind" which completely tripped out the beginning of the 2nd hour. Jack came in about an hour into the show (we invited him, he had to work that night, but got out early) and played along beautifully with an assortment of colors to pick from . . . melodic moog, noisy effects, and psychedelic cassette tape manglings. Jack was in tune, beautiful and distorted, ugly and clean, yinning over his yang, definitely in tune with the rest of his peers, who were definitely Dirty & Distinguished. Everyone in the same room, no one facing the other, gear spread out everywhere, a million volts of electricity being sucked away from Case Western's electric bill and being given back to the listeners who walk in the night time, all alone with their minds!

Episode 358: Down Under The Rainbow (05/02/2004) (every man / Ethereal Transmission / Jack Smiley / Ryan / CultJam) First hour was a mellow ambient recording made by Kyle and every man serving as a perfect wave that ultimately crashes into the second hour. Without this kind of introduction (which was composed from theremins, guitars, keyboards, CB radios, Indian chants, front porch recordings, and washing machines) the rest of the show would have been a startling ramp with no proper mood setting. Hours two and three were an unaltered recording of a jam from Recycled Rainbow 7.75 which took place roughly around 5 am. Description written by CultJam: "Late night basement jam. I could have stayed in the black light room indefinitely, but my attention was drawn by these sounds entering through the open door, emanating from the basement bowels of La Maison de RR. The Music Lair beckoned. It's hard to find words to describe what happened down there. It was really late.. maybe 3 or 4 or 5 a.m. by this time. I lost track of time, actually, but I know that when they stopped, it was just before sunrise. It was an improvised jam created by Kyle, Everyman, Dave, Ryan and Jack using guitars, keyboards, samplers, noise machines and techno devises that I don't know the names of. It was beautiful. It flowed. I was completely drawn in. I tried to contribute on a guitar with a drum stick, but didn't want to do anything to interrupt the oneness of sound these people were evolving.* That was like being in a dream surrounded by some of your favorite people, watching and listening as they create a soundtrack out of thin air for the chimera fantasy pink and blue satin cloud floating and diamond-star lit freedom joyful big smile wandering in a meadow butterfly ride breezy journey into wonderland. What more can I say?"

*it was a beautiful contribution and most certainly didn't take away from the oneness, but rather became oneness. This is why we credit CultJam as a contributing artist.

Episode 357: Delicatessen of Imagination II (04/25/2004) (every man) Playback show of carefully assembled highlights from the recent Go Factory events (particularly from Go Factory 3.) We're not entirely sure of all the names of all the people involved, but we recognized a few: Beating Eric from To Box With Man doing spoken word, Luigi playing his various circuit bending toys, Michael from Volta Sound on guitar, Erin (also from Volta Sound) doing spoken word, Matt from INS doing some spoken word and playing the bass, our good friend Nick on keyboards and drums, Chuck from All Go Signs on guitar, Kyle from Ethereal Transmission doing both guitar and vocals, and every man on the sampler / keyboard / laptop thing. Delicatessen of Imagination II documents an amazing & ongoing head trip called the Go Factory.

Episode 356: Debt Removal (04/18/2004) (every man / Glacial 23) Playback show, as this was our annual WRUW telethon program. Played various tracks from past radio shows, studio albums, and solo albums. Gave some radio show history, philosophy, and personal insight to its future.

Episode 355: Dialects of France (04/11/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Ethereal Transmission) A 30 minute live improvisational set opening up for The Lost Film Festival at Pat's In The Flats in Cleveland, OH. Our musical movements for this particular show could be best described as: space-age dreamboat organizations of complete chaos . . . pop. Someone else called it "Pressing The Ethereal Button Push." Kris Harsh filled in for our broadcast show on WRUW. Recording turned out distorted and won't be available.

Episode 354: Digital Dancing (04/04/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Ethereal Transmission) A trip to a musical synchronicity never before explored, a newness and a oneness, a unity . . . a united state of being. Performance of melody, harmony, and rhythm, of guitar, of drums, of keyboards . . . pianos, strings, and silver things, imitation meat getting chewed up by laptops, imitation corn on the sampler cob, imitation horn from the groove box / tapping of feet, a pulsating beat, incomprehensible voices, unintelligible telephones, the Dead, the heads, the meds, the hurt in the dirt, the burn, the ashes in the urn, smoking more, getting high - rising and rising oh my - the top, BLAM, the bottom, CRASH, and NEW newness and oneness all over again, and all over again, now and forever, IN THE NOW . . . forever.

Episode 353: Dick's Picks (03/28/2004) (every man / Glacial 23 / Kyle + Pastor Dick & The Weatherman) When you think of "Christian" music in the 21st century, your likely choice of formats is either modern pop or old time gospel, whose lyrics are all safe, sane, and filled to the rim with the good teachings of Jesus Christ. If you're not thinking of male chauvinist lyrics, spoken word pieces condoning corporal punishment, lectures discouraging homosexual behavior, melodies driving the fear of God in to your heart of hearts, a 5 year old singing about Satan, or Charlie The Hamster (Alvin & The Chipmunks soundalikes) singing about Jesus . . . then you've probably never heard the real thing, certainly not the way it was meant to be heard 30 years ago (like all things musical, the best stuff is always out of print.) If this is an issue that plagues you, then this week's show is the answer to your prayers. Press The Button and Negativland's Pastor Dick collaborate in this exploration into the rare (possibly never before heard) Christian music from the past. As our ears take a listen through history, we are exposed to several truths about Christianity that most modern preachers would prefer you never know. We uncover the cover-ups, unravel the conspiracies, broadcast the secrets, and reveal the real "Axis of Evil" George W. Bush is hiding from us. Are we going to Hell for this? Only if we believe what they have been telling us!

Episode 352: Discovering B-Music (03/21/2004) (every man & Glacial 23 + Kyle of Ethereal Transmission) A common element found in the typical "B-Movie" is an extremely small amount of dialogue. Consequently, they sport a great deal of low budget filler music. One might consider their existence wasteful, like recyclable bottles in a garbage dump. Those are most often re-usable, which holds true for these lengthy music beds. We made our best environmentally conscious efforts to make these discarded pieces of audio into something more useful. They mostly came from 60's and 70's films covering various genres: horror, documentary, drama, mystery, action, and pornography . . . not that it matters, as they were recontextualized into new compositions. The mix never got out of hand, as the hand held many moments of silence (silver not golden), it peaked above dense clouds of noise, and like a box of puzzle pieces scattered all over the table, its fingers fell randomly everywhere in between. You're walking through a jungle . . . the jungle is wild . . . with numb hands, legs, and mind, hearing various sounds roar past you, up in the trees, and below your feet. Walking endlessly, the jungle is wild, all the various visions you see, all the muscles you cannot feel, are exactly what you hear . . . tonight.

Episode 351: Delicatessen of Imagination (03/14/2004) (every man & The Go Factory) Radio-edits of various recordings made at the very first Go Factory workshop held at All Go Signs. The Go Factory was a workshop of painters, writers, musicians, and philosophers from the Cleveland area. Everyman's role was to help facilitate the audio in the atmosphere, using only the input from strategically placed microphones as his source material. The results were unlike anything we've heard. Spoken word voices layered upon backwards steel guitars plugged into heartbeat monitors flowing into Elvis loops with a real time drummer and five people playing pitch bent folk instruments while Chuck DJ'd, Beating Eric rapped, Everyman sang, and everyone danced. Nothing we can adequately put into words.

Episode 350: Drowntown Before Sundown (03/11/2004) (every man) A one hour show substituting for Hot & Fresh on WRUW, which normally airs Thursdays, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM. every man did a live solo mix using old film reels, contemporary jazz, digitally processed static, public affairs programs from the 1970's, hundreds of sound effects commonly used in the cartoons that aired in the 1960's, various deconstructed loops of Beatles music, and live rain recorded from a microphone in front of the studio window. Not recorded, just doing someone a favor.

Episode 349: Dragonflies (03/7/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) Bzzzzzz!!! A slow flowing spoken word collage about insects, with an emphasis on ants (AAAAAAANTS!), bees, crickets, cockroaches, butterflies, ladybugs (ladybugs, ladybugs, LADYBUGS!), potato bugs, and other bugs. "IT TICKLES MY HAND!" Sampled sounds from the insect kingdom made up most of the music bed, sequenced with electronica beats produced live on the fly. Bzzzzz!!!! The third hour was made up almost entirely of music used in an odd children's documentary on insects we found at a thrift store. "Cut it up into little pieces." It was completely deconstructed into about 400 pieces and reassembled in a melodic way such as to come off as something new (what does it taste like?), yet as soothing on the ears as the original (anyone wanna try it?). This caused a caller to remember his war against ants when he was 5 years old, all in great humorous detail. "Use the scissors" (cut it up into little pieces.) Minutes later, Everyman offered an improvised narrative about "bugs," comparing humans to insects. (Cockroach, Kafka?) After a few more sampled spoken word lectures about cockroaches, the musical landscape obliterated itself into a million twisted bit-crushed samples, all distorted, pitch bent, BUZZING, and 100% unrecognizable, like perhaps the Earth is today. Bzzzzzz!!!!

Episode 348: Distributed For Free (02/29/2004) (every man & Glacial 23 + Kyle of Ethereal Transmission) We had one rule for this program, "Use only field recordings as your source material. If you're going to make music, have it come from field recordings." Some of the recordings were as old as 1973, and some were as new as present time. We found some of these recordings on cassette tapes at thrift stores, some were given to us, some we made ourselves before the show, and some were made in real time via a microphone placed outside the air studio picking up the ambience of the other WRUW employees walking around, filing music, and talking. Hear music loops of bagpipes from a scottish festival, guitar tuning from an independent band warming up before going on stage, teenagers playing 8-bit video games in the early 1980's, and every man dropping his pocket change on top of a mess of CD jewel cases through a delay pedal.

Episode 347: Deranged (02/22/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) A seemingly random mix of motion picture sound effects, sustain pedals, classical music, and scrambled electronica were the soundtrack to a deranged man's mental metamorphosis. One fan called it "a three hour nightmare that lasted three days." Intentionally not recorded, as this was somewhat of a "tech rehearsal" (practicing with new gear vs. new content) for upcoming radio shows.

Episode 346: Drastically Quiet (02/15/2004) (every man & Glacial 23 + Kyle of Ethereal Transmission) Everything is calm and lucid, like people sawing or chanting, and water doing its flowing thing. A fountain with a motor, plays backwards, a single note from a violin never ends, Stephen Hawking through a delay pedal, and the sounds of giant bells are reminiscent of tiny little chimes. If the environment has a say, then it babbles interminably from beginning to end, blowing, washing, or singing calm songs into our already calm atmosphere. It helps things to grow, like our sound, as in all things in life is life, and has joined the adult world where things are bigger, louder, faster, and tense! Everything was synchronized but our watches, like improvisational jazz, and one of us, our guest Kyle, wasn't even in the same room. Your nerves deserved this, as we did this for us . . . but you've heard already that us = them? Ask them, and they'll tell you, a single note melody turned multiple-note harmony, has taken our structure-less boy turning him into a well trained rhythm machine, with all the same modulars and mayhem of the dance floor, out of the quiet study room in the library. Educated education, isn't that interesting? You learn while it knows nothing but what you explain, and then it grabs onto the same conventions our cultures have embedded deep into our subconscious thoughts, whilst becoming the teacher, and our brains go numb and we dance to the very machine we created, the machine which now reveals to you its culture. An example, not an explanation, which you once gave as it now gives back. Quiet down now.

Episode 345: Diagnosis of an Alligator (02/08/2004) (every man & Glacial 23 + Ryan of Thursday Club and Leia Alligator) No plan, order, set list, or even an outline - this time. We have learned the true meaning of "last minute preparation" after abandoning the notion of getting a substitute DJ following an extremely busy week, every man called Ryan and Brian of Thursday Club 90 minutes before show time, but Brian couldn't, so Ryan asked Leia (with whom we've never performed with on the air before) and she could, but no one knew the theme, or what to bring or sing, or what to play or say.

"Bring everything you got!" They scrambled and brought everything, as did every man and Glacial 23. Show time started on time, ironically, because the performers didn't. Only half the gear was properly installed by the time the show officially started.

"Here, play these two CD's I made! Play them at the same time. Play one louder than the other . . . if we're not ready by the time they both end, play them again, but play the quieter one louder, and the louder one quieter. They'll sound completely different. Cool?"

Deximer, Etapicitrap Tnegnat!!!!

Problems begin after the problems began. G23's laptop wasn't capable of running all his standard audio applications, Ryan forgot a power supply to a mixing board, every man forgot to bring longer RCA cables, we didn't have enough keyboard stands (or garbage cans), and all of our cables were too short "let's just move everything closer together - closer - CLOSER"

A spider web of waist high cables, turntables, keyboards, effects boxes, surge protectors, power cables, mixing boards, records, wind instruments, sheet music, laptops, and "silver thingies" enveloped the 4 of us in a 10 x 10 space with extremely poor lighting . . . but we did in less than an hour! No one could hardly move, and leaving the room was out of the question unless you crawled on the floor under the spaghetti wires stretched around your legs. Nevertheless, we did it in less than an hour, and performed as though we were entirely unaffected by the situation.

Good friends, positive energy, high spirits, and improvisation. 100% improvisation. This turned out to be one of our most impressive all-improvised live mixes to date!

Ryan, normally surrounded by hundred's of pieces of gear and known for mastering the fine art of using feedback distortion as an instrument, was limited to two turntables. He picked out several records based on the vibe of the moment, playing off anything the rest of his comrades would play or say, giving the turntables constant attention. "Unplugged," for all intents and purposes, he made up for his lack of effects pedals and sound making toys with his ability to pick the right parts of the records for whatever was going on . . . ifthingsfeltfast, heplayedfast . . . if things sloooowed down, sooooo did he. If he heard a trumpet, he'd grab a big band record. If he heard a piano, he'd mix in some light classical . . . always moving, mixing, slowing, speeding, skipping, flipping, and picking . . . he was constantly in the now, as Ryan constantly is. Eighty minutes into the now . . . Ryan's mixing mixes worthy of happy tears of sadness. He didn't know where he wanted to go, but knew where he wanted to be.

Leia was armed with a bag of various flutes, and played them as though she were classically trained. Everyone was sincerely in awe with her ability. As she performed, every man threw on some extreme effects making it seem as though they were being played in a hole 9 miles below the Earth's surface, changing pitches, sampling them, playing them back at themselves, delaying them, and sometimes playing them backwards. Eventually, every man broke out his own flute, knowing he was unable to play as well as Leia, decided to play random notes in the background, adding an avant guard jazz improv vibe to the mix. Leia would then add her own voice to the mix, constantly exchanging from singing notes to playing them, all through the same effects, so often and quickly that it was nearly impossible to tell them apart . . . as though she invented a new instrument that plays the flute and a human voice simultaneously. She was a human synthesizer. BRAROWROWOROWARRRRRNGGG!!! When she wasn't playing flute, she was rattling this metallic tube of noisy wires that created this incredible natural reverb in the room, or she'd join G23 and talk on his vocoder about alligators. And them some more BRAROWROWOROWARRRRRNGGG!!! She shy? Shouldn't!

A caller was completely in synch with us the entire night, playing piano when he heard piano, synching with G23's sequences and beats, playing flute sounds in the same manner, and when he heard Ryan slooooooooowing down . . . he slooooowed down, playing deeply pitch bent spoken word samples. The callers were disguised as performers as we watched from afar from a toasty 10 x 10 telephone.

At one point, in the 3rd hour, everything totally stopped at the exact same time, as though everyone in the room was winding down simultaneously, all having the same thoughts of "let's finish this section because I want to try something else." Within a tenth of a second after it stopped, a new song started on Glacial 23's "silver thingie", and everyone played along with it as though it were rehearsed that way. A couple people noticed giggled.

The show ended the same way, as though it was meant to stop at that exact point in time, and everyone knew it without having to look at a clock.

We're very fortunate to have not asked for a substitute this week, or we would have missed out on this beautiful experience performing with these talented artists during this incredibly unusual moment in time. Everyone was truly in the moment.

Episode 344: Dreaming Life (02/01/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) Inspired by Waking Life, this dreamscape is a soundscape made from soundscapes of dreamscapes, mixed live in black & white patterns, other times in living color. Blistering and burning from the back of your brain something bursts bubbles to your front, finally opening your eyes to your ears, the world within the mirrors, the circle, the glass, moving fast, shake shake shake, you're never awake. Calls so surreal as the soft sounds sift their ways through airwaves of hair waves, makes time for thoughts that substitute talks, and the temperature fades from seconds to days . . . losing meaning from time . . . all that is logical is illogical given the right circumstances. The sounds of dreams are sounds of streams, but can be disturbing as bubbles bursting . . . brains hurting, or maybe thirsting. It's your first day of school, or perhaps you've been in school forever. Death can be one of the same make . . . a dream? or just awake? Not recorded.

Episode 343: Dissection of the Carcass (01/25/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) Playing with the playback of playback performances by Thursday Club "reflection on the reflection of the sound of ear, the sound you hear", Ethereal Transmission "Okay, we've got words . . . and guitar . . . so that's two strikes against us", then presenting participants in a powerful improvisational production "bop it, twist it, pull it, ARRRRRRRGGGHHH!!!", and bending the bent deconstructed data sideways into an hour long dirge every man refers to as "Drifting Frequencies", and it all happened on or about or around or because of Recycled Rainbow 7.5. "The last hour and the last half of the second was very cool but i must ask . . . . . WHAT???????" Lots of liberties were stolen in this inaccurate representation of the truth as the performers performed the performances. The players played the play. We often call this Experimental Behavior. The broker says sell high bye bye low and this won it as low as it could go so we'll just say "no" to lettin' it go.

Episode 342: Decompression Afterthoughts (01/18/2004) (every man & Glacial 23 & Widget + J. Kyle Moyer) Special guest J. Kyle Moyer of Lakewood, OH's very own Ethereal Transmission collaborated with us to express the concept of "decompression." This was one of those rare shows where 100% of everything we did was improvised, as we've just come off a weekend of true decompression with Kyle, and the only source material we managed to gather were our thoughts. It's fascinating how dynamic the audio content was considering we had four performers in the studio. In terms of sound, it's very difficult to describe, as this program doesn't resemble anything we've done before. Lots of experimental noises coming from Kyle (wah-wah, phase distortion, moaning in space, floating in water), the occasional bloop, bleep, zip, and smack coming from Glacial 23 (and playing the radio station's internet feed into the mix creating a feedback loop), the always topical theme based spoken word samples coming from Widget (Space Ghost and Pittsburgh Penguins??), and the stream-of-consciousness spoken word of every man were certainly present ("we have to invent our own words here . . . discomplating Burble streets.") Things happened hear that always happen during an improv show. Microphones failed, levels were unpredictable, we didn't have the right cables until the very last minute, our first 15 minutes turned into a sound check, and the callers were never more confused as to what we were doing. Yet, to a listener hearing this out of context, it was all quite entertaining and intentionally "dada." The second hour picked up experimental momentum, and the last hour was sonically the most intense as all four of us finally found ourselves, figured out where we were flying, and flew.

Episode 341: December Songs (01/12/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) Written in December 2003, these three. 100% Recycled by we. One, from nature, drum circles, an old Casio keyboard, and me. Two, from classical compositions and 1950's instructional films that we couldn't actually see. An avant guard experimental jazz group called The Rick Jensen Trio was sampled exclusively during hour three. One, or two, or all these may or may not have been in their final states of being, open or closed, we don't know, do you care? "Are you there?" It's cold, dreary, snowing, THREE!, and everything is ugly (III), and "play some music" (3) talent doesn't exist (UNO, DOS, TRES!) "Play some music" or? "you're not IN!" Everyone is reborn "HEY!", their worst enemy. "I can't listen . . . " to this anymore? ". . . go fuck yourselves!" <click> <click> <click>

Episode 340: Donner and Blitzen (01/05/2004) (every man & Glacial 23) Entirely composed of found family recordings made in late December, 1985. The show begins with rare (never before heard) recordings contributed by Negativland's David Wills, where we sit at his kitchen table in Contra Costa County, listening to his mother and grandmother discuss purple fingernails (how ugly!), oven noises (how much sound do you think you're really going to get out of that oven?), towel theft (David, why would you have a towel with flowers on it?), and bird crap (it was years ago, but I remember it crapped right there!) These recordings begin to slightly pitch bend, fade, and reverberate as we hear children singing Christmas carols, parents opening gifts, and interactive callers discussing the true history of Jesus Christ. More children sing, more gifts open, thrift store cassette tapes dominate your ear sight, and David's grandmother laughs and laughs and laughs as she tries to not fall while walking up the stairs. A childish voice assures us "if you want a puppy, you'll have a puppy!" The second hour is filled with more recordings from Christmas, 1985, brought to us by Brian from Thursday Club, who starts out as one, but wait . . . he's two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven times the Brian! (though easily less than seven years old.) Brian meets Brian, meets layers, meets Brian, speaks backwards, sounds leftish, then there's Brian, upside down, over there on the right, says Brian, backwards, more Brian, on top of Brian, fireworks, ice hockey, cheering for hours (within the hour), piano, repeat, mom and dad, television, cut, paste, left, right, forward, fore ward, reversible Brian, I repeat, reversible Brian. In the last hour, we hear five hours of Widget's family, in the last hour, we hear a family Christmas gathering five times as large as Widget's, large groups, small room, walking here and there always yelling "NoooooOOOOOoOOOOoOOoOoOoOOOoo!!" Christmas mashups galore on the PA system, five times galore, and Christmas song poems sing "I got stoned for Christmas." You'd be surprised how quiet those 10 (I mean 50) people are when walking here and there, opening gifts, making believe they are in the year Nineteen Eighty-five! As quiet as five stones.