1893

1893

World's Fair: The Columbia Exposition

The Panic of 1893. Stock exchange crash.

New Zealand first country in world to grant women's suffrage.

First exclusively African-American high school opens in U.S. Its name? Colored High (not kidding)

SCOTUS declares tomatoes 'a vegetable.'

born: Hermann Göring, Jimmy Durante, Big Bill Broonzy, Lillian Gish.

Antonín Dvořák - Symphony #9, op. 95, "From the New World"

And go here for the Columbia University Orchestra's recording of Dvořák's 8th and 9th symphonies, and also Beethoven's 7th, Brahms' 1st, &c., &c. Lots of good stuff.

1892

1892

Lizzie Borden chops her family up with an axe.

Ellis Island begins accepting immigrants to the U.S.

Wyoming: Johnson County War

born: J.R.R. Tolkien, Ernst Lubitsch, Gregory La Cava, Mary Pickford, Johnny Dodds, William Powell.

died: Walt Whitman.

Johannes Brahms - Intermezzi

Live and Direct, Part I

blah blah. blah blah blah blah. blah. blah blah blah. blah blah.

Not much to say today, except: good music below. Git some.

Fordmadoxfraud's Live & (Mostly) Bootleg Mixtape Vol. 1

TRACKLIST
1. Nick Cave - From Her to Eternity
I've always loved this song and this version of it in particular. This is what gave me the idea for this (and the following) mix.
2. Irma Thomas - Gone
Live at the Showboat, New Orleans, 12/26/77
3. The Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
Live at the Great Southeast Music Hall, Atlanta, GA, 1/5/78
4. Doug E. Fresh & Biz Markie - Let Me Clear My Throat
unknown provenance
5. The Pogues - The Auld Triangle
Brendan Behan song; live at BBC
6. Bruce Springsteen - The Fever
Live at Houston's KLOL-FM, 3/9/74
7. Miles Davis - 'Round Midnight
Live at the Berlin Philharmonic, 11/4/67
8. Prince - Head
Live in Detroit, 1982
9. The Misfits with Joey Ramone - 1969
Stooges cover; October 1998
10. Public Enemy - By the Time I Get to Arizona
Live in Winterthur, Switzerland, 4/9/92
11. The Meters - Hey Pocky Way
Live at the Showboat Lounge, Metairie, LA, 1/22/77
12. Otis Redding - Land of 1000 Dances
unknown European television broadcast, 1967
13. Giles - Live at the Bronze
Oops. I forgot I included this. I guess I'd been drinking a little when I made this mix. This is the song that Giles sings in the dream in Restless, the last episode of season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
14. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
live on the MTV Loom Tour, Vancouver, CA, 7/4/92. This bootleg would be perfect if only the vocals would be a little further up in the mix. I wish I had more MBV records. I wish more MBV records existed.
15. Van Morrison & Bob Dylan - Crazy Love
unknown provenance
16. Henry Threadgill - Gateway
live in the Bronx, 3/3/84

BONUS: for those of you with a taste for free jazz: The Art Ensemble of Chicago - Live in Hamburg, 1977

Boy, What'll You Do Then?

Here's a rare gem I picked up the other day from Borracho Muchacho. I try not to post stuff I've recently acquired from other blogs, but this song is so great my impulse control is totally shot.

Denise and Company was an all-girl garage-rock band, led by Denise Kaufman, aka Mary Microgram of the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey's army of hippies. From what I can tell, they were only together for a short while in 1965. But in that time managed to record at least one totally rocking song, this raw, snotty, sexy slice of garage heaven.

She went on to form the SF band Ace of Cups, a band with a lame, new-age Tarot thing going. Thereafter she became that most frightful of zoological oddities, the aging hippie. Whatever magic she had in 1965 is clearly gone now.

Denise and Company - Boy, What'll You Do Then?

I'm pretty sure the photo above is not actually Denise, but who cares, really.

Spies or UFOs? You Decide.

One day, Dinosaur Comics reminded us that Numbers Stations exist, and and I realized we needed some. So I sought out The Conet Project, a free source of mp3 recordings of shortwave numbers station transmissions, downloaded about a hundred or so, ripped 'em to CD, and now here we are, listening to them all and cackling with nerdish delight.

If you don't know what numbers stations are, or want a more detailed history than the Wikipedia article gives you, you might want to check out this NPR article, or, to get the gist:

Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast people reading streams of numbers, words, or letters (sometimes using a phonetic alphabet). The voices that can be heard on these stations are often mysterious: mechanically generated; spoken in a wide variety of languages; usually female, but sometimes male or those of children.

Evidence supports popular assumptions that the broadcasts are channels of communication used to send messages to spies. This has not been publicly acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station, but in one case, numbers station espionage has been publicly prosecuted by a foreign court.

This track here is a good introduction to what it's all about. Another favorite we have is one titled 'High Pitch Polytone', but which we here like to refer to as Oh My God This is Fucking Awesome. Another one I really like is something I call Frantic Computer Beeping Followed by Vaguely Desperate-Sounding Woman.

The Conet Project
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4

It's Witchcraft

Hoo boy. I spent all weekend combing my mp3 library and inching closer to finishing the myriad mixtapes I've started for my livejournal pals, and making up new mixtapes to post here in my journal, as an occasional alternative to posts with multiple downloads of single songs. As a consequence, I have a LOT of stuff to post this week. Let's get started.



Fordmadoxfraud's Magic Mixtape Vol. 1 (~91mb)

TRACKLIST
1. The Sonics - The Witch
2. Louis Prima & Keely Smith - That Old Black Magic
3. Eric Dolphy - It's Magic
4. Django Reinhardt - Magic Strings
5. Frank Sinatra - Witchcraft
6. Charles Sheffield - It's Your Voodoo Working
One of my favorite Excello blues songs.
7. Gustav Holst - Uranus, the Magician
8. Exuma - Exuma, the Obeah Man
From one of my favorite artists no one's ever heard of. When you start talking about scary magic musicans, Exuma's near the top of the list.
9. Mohammed El-Bakkar - Bisat El Reeh (Magic Carpet)
10. Sonny Sharrock - Princess and the Magician
11. Van Morrison - Magic Time
12. Art Blakey - The Witch Doctor
13. Ella Fitzgerald - Bewitched
14. Jumpin' Joe Williams & the Red Saunders Orchestra - Voodoo Blues
15. Goblin - Witch
From the Suspira soundtrack.
16. Ladytron - High Rise
from The Witching Hour
17. The Rattles - The Witch
18. Jean Shepard - Under Your Spell Again
Turns out there wasn't much country music in my collection with a sorcerous vibe.
19. Akim - Voodoo Drums
20. Wayne Shorter - Witch Hunt
21. Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell on You
Okay, obvious, I know. I thought about picking a different version; the one by Diamanda Galas, e.g. But this really is the best one.
22. Louis Armstrong - You've Got Me Voodoo'd
23. Albert Ayler - The Wizard
Hell, I could've filled up two mixtapes easily with just the Albert Ayler material that's about magic, wizards, spirits and witches, but I had to narrow it down. Ditto for Sun Ra, but I've decided I'm going to have a separate mix tape for space, devils and demons.

A few people have already told me that this is a dumb idea, as I'm far from the only person in the world who doesn't have broadband. But I think it's time I tried out mixtapes as an effort to give folks more bang for their downloading trouble. (We're all about more bang here at Zombiemusic Labs Inc.)

Enjoy!

1890

1890

At Auburn Prison, New York, William Kemmler is the first man to be executed by the electric chair, for the hatchet-murder of his commonlaw wife. It doesn't go well. The first shock, lasting seventeen seconds, fails to kill him, and the generator needs quite some time to recharge for a second attempt, during which time Kemmler can be heard pitifully moaning. The second attempt, lasting sixty seconds, works, but reduces Kemmler to a smouldering charcoal briquet. A reporter on the scene said it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging".

Idaho! Wyoming!

Massacre at Wounded Knee.

born: H.P. Lovecraft!, Adolphe Menjou, Ho Chi Minh, Stan Laurel, Agatha Christie, Jelly Roll Morton, Groucho Marx

died: John Jacob Astor III, Vincent Van Gogh

Johannes Brahms - String Quintet #2 in G minor, op. 111

1888

1888

Jack the Ripper!! The five 'canonical' victims: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, murdered. Also Martha Tabram; possible early victim.

Washington Monument opens to the public.

National Geographic Society founded.

Borneo becomes British protectorate.

born: F.W. Murnau, Irving Berlin, Raymond Chandler, Maurice Chevalier, T.S. Eliot, Joe Kennedy, Eugene O'Neill, Knute Rockne, All American

died: Matthew Arnold

Claude Debussy - Deux Arabesques

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade, op. 35
I. The Sea and Sinbad's Ship
II. The Kalendar Prince
III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess
IV. Festival At Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.



***and here's another recording of Scheherazade by the Peabody Symphony Orchestra (as well as MP3s of tons of other classical works the PSO has recorded)***

1887

1887

First production of Glenfiddich.

Ethiopia mops the floor with the Italians.

Largest snowflakes ever fall on Fort Keogh, Montana. They are 15 inches (38cm) wide and 8 inches (20cm) thick.

First observation of Groundhog Day.

Earmuffs patented.

Esperanto invented.

Electromagnetism discovered by Heinrich Hertz.

born: Fatty Arbuckle, Marc Chagall, Erwin Schrödinger, Marcus Garvey, Le Corbusier.

died: Doc Holliday.

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov - Capriccio Espagnol, op. 34

Fun With Peanut Butter

Here's something I copped from Beware of the Blog last year: video of Iggy & the Stooges live in Cincinatti in 1970. They do "TV Eye" and "1970" and Iggy gets up to hijinks with everyone's favorite sandwich spread. The news announcers narrating the concert are pretty hilarious too.

Iggy & the Stooges - Live in Cincinatti, 1970

1886

1886

John Stith Pemberton invents Coca-Cola.

Britain, ever-busy, annexes Burma.

born: Al Jolson, Junichiro Tanizaki, Hermann Broch, Ty Cobb, Kid Ory

died: Emily Dickinson, Franz Liszt.

Antonín Dvořák - Slavonic Dances, op. 72

Billy Preston Meets Outa-Space

Billy Preston
September 2, 1946 – June 6, 2006

Oy, has it really taken me eight days to get around to this?

Billy Preston had been in a coma for more than a year, and last week he finally died from "complications of malignant hypertension".

For a better obit than I can give here, you should go visit Billy's own website. And if you don't know much about him, you should check his bio on Wikipedia, which'll give you a rundown of the necessary details: piano prodigy as a child, got his big break as a pre-teen playing organ for Mahalia Jackson, collaborated with the Rollings Stones, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, one of only two Beatles sideman to ever get a record-cover credit ("Get Back" was originally released under the name "The Beatles with Billy Preston"), John Lennon and Paul McCartney argued over whether he should be admitted to the band as an official "fifth Beatle" (Lennon was for it, McCartney against), &c., &c.

Billy Preston - Let the Music Play (produced by George Harrison, and also my favorite Billy Preston song. It turns up on a lot of mix CDs I make.)

Billy Preston - Can't She Tell

Billy Preston - John Henry

Billy Preston - Nothing from Nothing

Mahalia Jackson - Then the Answer Came (live) - (I KNOW somewhere I have a 1958 Mahalia live track with a 12-year-old Billy on organ, but I can't find it right now. I'm going to keep looking. As a consolation, here's a young Billy, age 17, also live with Mahalia.)

For more farewells to Billy (and more Billy MP3s, if you dug these), you should check out the recent Billy posts at Monkeyfunk (who beat me to the title I wanted to use for this post, 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)'), and The "B" Side, which posts Billy's "He Brought Me Out", Soul Sides ("Little Girl"), Home of the Groove ("Sho Nuff"), Melomaniac (a bunch), Badminton Stamps ("Outa-Space"), Cable and Tweed (a bunch more), et al.

1883

1883

Krakatoa!!!

NYC: The Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic on February 24. Six days later, a rumor that the bridge is about to collapse causes a stampede that kills twelve people.

Two great entertainment firsts: The first vaudeville theatre opens in Boston, MA. The first rodeo is held in Pecos, TX.

Death and species extinction of the last quagga.

born: Sax Rohmer, Kafka, Mussolini (on my birthday!), Anton Webern (another composer who'll be popping up here a lot), Douglas Fairbanks, Lon Chaney, Sr.(!)



died: Karl Marx, Ivan Turgenev.

(p.s. - the picture above is NOT Karl Marx)

Johannes Brahms - Symphony #3 in F major, op. 90

Edvard Grieg - Sonata for Cello & Piano in A minor, op. 36

1882

1882

P.T. Barnum buys Jumbo the Elephant.

Jesse James shot and killed for five grand.

Egypt becomes British protectorate.

Nikola Tesla invents alternating current generator/motor.

born: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Sigrid Undset, Stravinsky, Samuel Goldwyn, FDR, A.A. Milne.

died: Charles Darwin.

Johannes Brahms - String Quartet #1 in F major, op. 88 "Spring"

1881

corpses of Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton

1881

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral!

Kansas becomes first U.S. state to prohibit ALL alcoholic beverages. (boooo)

Alexander II of Russia assassinated by grenade-throwing anti-Tsarists.

Tunisia becomes French protectorate.

born: P.G. Wodehouse (huzzah!), Pablo Picasso, Bela Bartok (who will shortly be appearing very frequently here), Billy the Kid.

died: Dostoyevsky, Modest Mussorgsky (crap, have I forgetten to post any Mussorgsky? and now he's dead)

Johannes Brahms - Piano Concerto #2 in B flat major, op. 83

1880

Emperor Norton I

1880

First town in the world gets electric streetlights: Wabash, Indiana.

Ned Kelly hanged.

Born: Tom Mix, Mack Sennett, W.C. Fields, George Herriman, Douglas McArthur, Robert Musil,

Died: George Eliot, and our dear emperor, Joshua Norton.

Antonín Dvořák - Six Mazurkas, op. 56

1879

1879

Anglo-Zulu War!

NYC: On the former site of 'P.T. Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome', the first Madison Square Garden opens.

Saccharine discovered.

Doc Holiday kills for the first time.

Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, NJ.

Born: E.M. Forster, Albert Einstein, Victor Sjöström, Will Rogers, Wallace Stevens.

Died: no one very interesting.

Bedrich Smetana - My Country

1878

1878

Phonograph patented by Thomas Edison.

Born: Carl Sandburg, Jack Johnson, Lionel Barrymore, Alfred Döblin, Upton Sinclair, STALIN!

Died: Boss Tweed.

Johannes Brahms - Capriccto for Piano in B minor, op. 76 no. 2

Some Albums You Might Just Need to Download

One thing I like to do when cruising blogs that post full albums is to make lists of Rapidshare URLs so I can go back and download what I want in my own time, without having to wade through months of archives to find a particular post. That is what I did today. I usually make them private or highly filtered posts, because I don't like sharing my sources. It kind of kills the mystique of the guy with the bogglingly large music collection. But I'm going to share this month's list because...well, no good reason.

Tonight is going to be dedicated to me organizing and ID3-tagging my new music downloads, and making mixtapes for my sisters, so I guess I just feel like sharing.

A lot of these files are from Lellebelle and the Rato Records Blog, which are terrific and everyone should really check them out, and Soundsational is occasionally pretty good (though more on the kitsch side).

In case anyone's interested in checking out a broader selection of what's available, you might want to occasionally skim through Realm of X, Ride Your Pony, Down in the Groove, Endless Mike 101, Lysergia (mostly 1960s psychedelia, folk and acid rock), Pinocchio's Easy Listening and Instrumental Corner, Xtabay, Snow Day, Sounds of Champaign (and the archives at the old Sounds of Champaign site might be of interst), Space Debris, Mexicovers, Tam Tam Melodie, Oops Whoops, Quimby and Lounge Tracks.

Generally, these blogs post a lot of strange and not-very-good records. Stuff you'd only need one or two records of, like space-age bachelor pad hipness, hawaiian tiki lounge music, whitebread bossa-nova craze records, obscure Gallic ingenue-pop, extremely square 'swinging' jazz played by white dudes who look like high school math teachers, &c., &c. Then again, maybe you're the kind of person who needs hundreds of Brazilian bossa-nova records. Who knows.

I haven't yet downloaded all the following albums myself (this is, after all, my to-do list), so I can't attest to the quality of each record. Caveat downloader! But they're all things I'm confident are at least a little awesome.



The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics!!! + The Sonics Boom - covers - original post

Duke Ellington - Such Sweet Thunder - cover

The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday + The Notorious Byrd Brothers - covers - original post

Swing for a Crime (Dutch bootleg noir theme comp) - cover - original post

The Ventures - The Ventures in Space - cover - original post

The Seeds - The Seeds - cover - original post

The Remains - The Remains - cover - original post

Alice Coltrane - Eternity - cover

Dick Dale & His Del-Tones - Surfer's Guitar - cover - original post

Fela Kuti - The Jazz Side of Fela part 1 - part 2 - cover

Bob Wills - King of Western Swing - cover - original post

Atomic Cafe Soundtrack - cover

Donald Byrd - A New Perspective - cover

Ray Baretto - Senor 007 - cover

Girls Born to Be Bad comps - Vols 1, 2 & 3 - Vols 4, 5 & 6 - covers

Talkin' Trash!: Greasy Rhythm & Blues With Attitude! '54-'63 - cover - original post

Isaac Hayes - Tough Guys - cover

Jimmy Smith - Livin' it Up - cover

Ennio Morricone - Psichedelico Jazzistico cover

Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in the West - cover - original post

Nancy Wilson - Just For Now part 1 - part 2

Beau Brummels - Triangle - cover

Ennio Morricone - Novecento - cover

Rosemary Clooney & Perez Prado - A Touch of Tabasco - +2 bonus tracks - cover

Ennio Morricone - Giu La Testa - cover

The Staccatos - Come Back Little Girl - cover - original post

Astrud Gilberto - Windy - cover

Astrud Gilberto - A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness - cover - original post

Connie Francis - Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites - cover - original post

Richard Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight - cover - original post

Nat King Cole - A Mis Amigos - covers - original post

The Four Freshmen - Today is Tomorrow! - cover - original post

Claudine Longet - Let's Spend the Night Together - cover - original post

Claudine Longet - The Look of Love - cover - original post

Claudine Longet - Colours - cover - original post

Claudine Longet - We've Only Just Begun - cover - original post

Tom Jones - Live in Las Vegas - cover - original post

Doris Day & Andre Previn - Duet - cover - original post

Gillian Hills - Gillian Hills EP - cover - original post

Henry Mancini - Charade - cover - original post

Doris Day & Harry James - Young Man With a Horn - cover - original post

Brigitte Bardot - The Brigitte Bardot Show - cover
- original post

Casino Royale SDTK, w/ Burt Bachrach & Dusty Springfield - cover - original post

Fats Domino - Christmas Gumbo part 1 -
part 2 - cover - original post

Remembering Cliff Richards & The Shadows - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - cover - original post

Gene Page - Blacula SDTK - cover - original post

Toes on the Nose (1960s surf compilation) - cover - original post

Lee Hazlewood - Cowboy in Sweden - cover - original post

JJ Johnson & Kai Winding - Jay & Kai - cover

1874

1874

New York City annexes the Bronx.

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. (I'm stretching, I know! Bit of a boring year, this.)

Born: Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Shackleton, Harry Houdini, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Fort, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Holst, Charles Ives (big year for composers!)

died: no one I'm particularly interested in

Anton Bruckner - Symphony #4 in E flat, "Romantic"

Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre, op. 40

Zig, zig, zig, Death in a cadence,
Striking with his heel a tomb,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees.
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack—
But hist! of a sudden they quit the round,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.