MediaGeek!!!!!

My Seldom Heard Radio broadcasts on Saturdays via WNEC 91.7 in Henniker now include the excellent grassroots media program MediaGeek, hosted by Paul Riismandel with producer Drew Tarico. I am honored and happy to relay MediaGeek at 4pm, to promote the important topics and information this program covers every week. MediaGeek starts with a few minutes of weekly media news updates followed by in-depth interviews. MediaGeek covers DIY media, pirate and Low Power FM radio, podcasting technology, and much more. For more information click on www.mediageek.org.

Playlist - July 30, 2005

Seldom Heard Radio Playlist
WNEC 91.7 Henniker NH
July 30, 2005
DJ Frederick, Producer & Host


“music & culture in the spirit of free radio”


Artist/Song/Recording Name

Sinead O’Connor – Fire on Babylon – Universal Mother

Ivy – Worry About You – Long Distance

Ooberman – Running Girl – Running Girl

Thievery Corporation – The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter – The Cosmic Game

Dreaming Blue – Shine On – Dreaming Blue

7 Rooms – New Shoes – Crystal Cool

-123min – So Tre Ma Po > Won’t Get Higher – XL Live

Benedikta – Sohajova Mama – Punky Dumky

Golden Palominos – Boy (Go) – Visions of Excess

Snowdrops – Mad World – 7” vinyl

Doveman – Reflections After Jane – MP3

The One AM Radio – I Think This Is My Exit – The Hum of the Electric Air

Super Daughter – Empty Core Disappear > Flickering – The Animals We See

Sufjan Stevens – Chicago – Illinois

Kite Operations – Effervescence – Dandelion Day

Gravenhurst – Damage – Flashlight Seasons

The Space Lady – Major Tom – Songs in the Key of Z Vol. 2

Dungen – Festival – Ta Det Lught

The Clientele – Six Foot Drop – 7” vinyl

Free Design – I Found Love – The Now Sound Redesigned

Oranger – Porpoise Song – 7” vinyl

1040 kHz

Prominent in my record collection is one of only 1,000 copies pressed of Greg Murray's debut 7" vinyl EP released via Elefant Records in Spain. I read about this record some time ago while browsing Tonevendor www.tonevendor.com for new vinyl releases (if you have browsed this blog you probably realize I'm a vinyl junkie) and bought a copy based upon the description alone. Often my intuition pays off and this time was no exception! Greg Murray's songs embody everything I enjoy about indie music - deeply felt lyrics, inventive melodies, songs that keep playing in your head long after the first listening. The first song "Go Honey" is timeless, with a hint of psychedelia that might have been right at home on AM radio back in 1970 yet is completely original and engaging. "Edge" features folk-ish guitar, harmonica, and minimalist druming that weave together perfectly. All four songs on this EP illuminate and expand one's musical consciousness. Greg has recorded several other EPs (equally excellent) and a more recent full-length CD "Tymes Ten". For more information including free MP3s (thank you!) check out Greg's informative and comprehensive website at www.gregmurray.co.uk

Free Radio San Diego raided!

News release from FRSD: On Thursday morning, July 21st, 2005, the FCC and US Marshalls executed a raid against Free Radio San Diego. This raid (in a nutshell) took all of our broadcast equipment, including antenna, transmitter, cable, computers, audio mixing equipment, and other essential hardware.

It was understood that this raid was coming. Not from anything that happened as of late, but hey.. if you roll the dice against the FCC, there's a pretty high chance (roughly 100%) that they will do something else other than sit around and lament. No one was arrested, all of our spare equipment is intact, and we have absolutely no plans to pack up and go home. We will be having a regular staff meeting to discuss the situation, and probably a public meeting as well.

Link to interview conducted on Free Radio Santa Cruz [download mp3] (14 minutes). Link to interview conducted on Enemy Combatant Radio [download mp3] (30 minutes).

If anyone has any money that they'd like to contribute, we lost roughly $3,000 worth of equipment, and need to replace it. Our new transmitter alone is $1,300, we hope to have (new-ish) computers donated, and even our RF cable will come out to $100-$200. We rarely ask for financial help, but if you can spare it, we sure could use it. Really, anything helps. We have some spare equipment to put in, but for various reasons that is only a temporary fix, and some equipment we're completely out of right now.

FRSD website: www.pirate969.org

The One AM Radio

One of the things I hope to accomplish with this blog, as well as my radio broadcasts, is to broaden readers' / listeners musical horizons. I want to turn people on to the very overlooked indie "band" The One AM Radio. The One AM Radio is the moniker of songwriter / musician Hrishikesh Hirway & occasional guests. His songs are heartfelt, introspective, bordering on melancholy and minimalism ... with beautiful melodies and sentiments, sometimes swells of strings or (mostly) unintrusive electronic effects.

I've managed to obtain most of The One AM Radio's recordings (several are out of print). "Night Falls" is my favorite, a split CD-EP with the Wind-Up Bird and its standout track "All That I Can Recall Is the Haunting":

i could not see the horizon
the seas had swallowed up the skies
the wind died down, and the world turned silent
the fog rolled back before my eyes
diffuse blue light swelled all around us
like water at once both clear and deep
i called to you over and over,
but you would not come out from sleep
voices rose up in a chorus
in a song of longing and what could be
i closed my eyes, but i could see you
oh Light, please stay with me.

For more info on The One AM Radio including mp3 downloads visit www.theoneamradio.com

Radio Free Brattleboro cd

Given everything that Radio Free Brattleboro is going through right now, it would be a good time to show them some support & pick up a copy of the RFB Live In-Studio Performances CD available at www.cdbaby.com This compilation has been a favorite of mine since its release and includes the following tracks:


1) Smiley Bob Project - Radio Free
2) Paul Barrere & Fred Tackett of Little Feat - Down on the Farm
3) Greg Brown - Bucket
4) Louise Taylor - Call My Name
5) Darryl Purpose - A Crooked Line
6) Bethanie w/Phil Bloch - Water Run Deep and Wide
7) Adrian Crowley - A Northern Country
8) Derrik Jordan - Invitation to Ecstasy
9) John Hughes - Bamba Bojang
10) California Guitar Trio - Circulation
11) Euphony Groove - Bemoan
12) Ill Wind Ensemble - Broken Chord
13) Elevator Tribe - Static Between the Stations
14) Mountain of Venus - The Bridge
15) Relative Strangers - Same Undone
16) Gordon Stone & Michael Daves w/Phil Bloch - Sunday Driver
17) Dexter Grove - 3 am
18) Reed Foehl & Putnam Murdock - Come September
19) The Mammals - Quite Early Morning

Every track on this compilation is excellent. It starts out with a rolicking free radio folk anthem by the Smiley Bob Project which I have played many times on Seldom Heard Radio & the cd just evolves from there. With music as diverse and enjoyable as this emanating from the airwaves, radio is alive again. Alas, the fate of Radio Free Brattleboro hangs in the balance of the courts. For the latest: www.rfb.fm

The history and evolution of Seldom Heard Radio part one

Deep in the recesses of my childhood memories, I spent many hours exploring my father’s “cavern” in the basement of our suburban house – his electronic repair shop, which smelled of must and damp and solder. His work benches were strewn with the chasis of televisions & radios, and mysterious tubes of all sizes. At some point in my early childhood – I think it was around the age of eight, I simultaneously started collecting 7” vinyl records (the first record I ever bought was Atlantis by Donovan)… and heard a shortwave radio which had been brought in for repairs. The deep tones and unfamiliar languages intrigued me, as did the static and strange noises between the stations. The airwaves were alive.

This is one of the hazards of starting a “blog” … it’s part journal, part news, part advocating. This whole musing was triggered by a letter from John Campbell of Devon, UK who heard Seldom Heard Radio on 6235 kHz in April via Jolly Roger Radio International in Ireland. He said, in part “I’ll be very interested in … any information about the history and style of programming of your station …”Alas, John, you may get more information in these posts than you expected!

My initial encounter with shortwave was quickly forgotten, unfortunately, as I focused on “dx’ing” (distance listening) medium wave (AM band) stations in the US. As a child I spent hours tuning in stations from as far away as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Canada and even Mexico. Around this time, my local AM station, WFEA had a sort of underground 60s pop and rock format, and I became determined to hang out at the station if I could. I rode the five miles across the river on my bike, and found that a couple of DJs would actually talk to me! Years later I learned that my father had played cowboy music live on WFEA in the late 1930s before he was stationed in India during World War II..

As I became ten, eleven, twelve, friends of mine & I would play “DJ”, rigging up homemade Radio Shack transmitters, or recording music and shows onto monolithic tape recorders. Back then we could get an AM signal out almost a quarter of a mile by rigging our crystal set … and we were triumphant. Thus the seeds of Seldom Heard Radio were planted …

The history and evolution of Seldom Heard Radio part two

In the summer of 1977, I spent two months at the University of New Hampshire taking summer courses. Immediately, I gravitated toward the radio station, WUNH, which I discovered was being run by a scruffy looking guy with a two day old beard who didn’t speak much but would run in every few minutes to throw on another record. When I offered to help him out, he was thrilled --- I could play any music I wanted but had to play requests if anyone called. No problem.


I felt like I had just been handed the keys to the kingdom and embarked on doing something I always wanted to do if given the chance to be a DJ --- play entire LPs at a time. So listeners to 91.3 that summer were treated to my already eclectic taste in music --- From the Mars Hotel by the Grateful Dead … Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells … Eat a Peach by the Allman Brothers … Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks … the phone rang several times a day but not for requests … people were calling thanking me for playing certain LPs or just for playing music they couldn’t hear on other stations. I was delighted.

By 1978 I was becoming a serious teenager and thinking of college, work, and more work. I didn’t have much to do with radio except for listening to WSLE, a freeform community station in Peterboro NH, where in the course of an hour one could hear local musicians, acoustic music, celtic, reggae, rock, and even jazz. It was sweet bliss until WSLE was sold in 1981 and the format changed to … disco! There was so much outrage from listeners in New Hampshire and Vermont that a non-profit was formed, Concerned Citizens for Responsible Radio, to protest the sale and see what could be done to restore WSLE to its rightful “format”. Legend has it that Tim Tobin, one of the WSLE DJs, on his last shift played “Stairway to Heaven” and drove away from the studio, letting the turntable drift out to the LP’s end grooves, and all that could be heard on the frequency (92.1) until the new station owner arrived was the steady static of ‘click click click’ at the end of the record.


The Seldom Heard Radio story picks up again in 1999 … but that’s another post.

The history and evolution of Seldom Heard Radio part 3

In Y2K, the Universe converged to lead me back to my intrigue with radio. Quite by accident, in the early part of the year, I noticed a program guide for the local college station, WSCS, in the weekly shopper that arrives in the mail like clockwork each Thursday. I had never heard of WSCS and decided to give the station a listen. Looking over the program schedule I was hooked --- no commercials, new age and celtic music, folk shows, WSCS had to be special. And I felt I had something to offer via my eclectic knowledge of music.

I wrote a letter to the Program Director offering my services as a volunteer DJ. Within a week, he called, we arranged to meet, and before I knew it, I was trained in the stations policies and equipment and running a broadcast of my own every Sunday.

But what to call the show? Color Wheel Radio (after the literary journal I co-edit)? I wanted to play mostly obscure music, artists rarely heard on the airwaves. Numerous names floated through my mind … then I thought (bizarrely) of a old bluegrass / country band called the Seldom Scene … and since the music I wanted to feature was seldom heard … the pun stuck and the name was born. Life was good, the tunes were awesome, and little did I realize the realm of shortwave radio was waiting for my rediscovery …

960 kHz

READER COMMENTS ENCOURAGED!!!! All readers of this blog are invited and welcomed to comment on any post you might wish to add to or respond to. Your feedback is much appreciated. As I remind listeners during many of my broadcasts ... "thanks for listening."

The history and evolution of Seldom Heard Radio part four

Just as Seldom Heard Radio was debuting on WSCS in 2000, I was re-connecting and rediscovering the magic of radio on so many levels --- learning about propagation, the physical properties of electricity, production of radio waves, etc … I started researching radio stations and broadcasting alternatives around the world … and rediscovered shortwave listening.

My first shortwave radio was a Radio Shack DX 394 which miraculously brought back all of the bleeps and squelches and static-filled sizzles of my childhood radios. Within weeks I decided that I had to bring Seldom Heard Radio and other projects to the shortwave spectrum. Within another few weeks I was creating programs for broadcast on WBCQ The Planet (7415 kHz) and WRMI (7385 kHz). These were very low-tech homemade shows full of obscure music and minimal announcing. On WRMI I experiment with other formats including co-producing a show called "The Drive-In Double Feature" with DIY shortwave host B-Movie Bob, where we played and discussed music from B movies of the 50s, 60s & 70's.

Listener response was sporadic yet positive, and soon I had extended Seldom Heard Radio to shortwave in Europe via Radio 510 International. From Europe, the floodgates of listener feedback opened, and I received dozens of letters from happy (if somewhat musically perplexed and bewildered) listeners. Correspondence arrived from Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, England, Belgium, the Netherlands. People in Europe seem to take radio more seriously, and, also seem more motivated to make it more of a two-way exchange of communication. I was delighted.

Over the course of a few short years life and activity and energy levels intervened and I decreased the shortwave broadcasts to focus on production of my local FM program. Yet Seldom Heard Radio was going to evolve again … via the internet and Radio Lavalamp. Stay tuned for that chapter … and more.

Dx'ing with Cumbre

Part of the purpose of this blog is to encourage people to learn about and take an interest in shortwave radio. One of the best programs in production related to what's happening in shortwave is Dx'ing with Cumbre. The show is hosted by Marie Lamb and contains a wealth of listening tips and up-to-date information on stations and programs broadcasting on the shortwave spectrum. For more information surf to www.cumbredx.org on where and when you can hear this weekly program or for streaming audio.

Media Minutes

Every week during my broadcast I include the five minute news update called Media Minutes. Hosted by John Anderson and Kimberlie Kranich, Media Minutes focuses on the latest info regarding FCC regulations and policies, legislative and legal issues, Low Power FM stations, PBS and NPR, telecommunications coporations, microbroadcasting, and trends in commercial and non-commercial media. The program is free to download at www.freepress.net.

SHR Playlist July 16 2005

Seldom Heard Radio Playlist
WNEC 91.7 Henniker NH
July 16, 2005
DJ Frederick, Producer & Host


“music & culture in the spirit of free radio”


Artist/ Song/ Recording

Pat Metheny Group – Have You Heard – The Road to You

Thievery Corporation – Revolution Solution – Cosmic Game

Banco de Gaia – Desert Winds – One A.D. (Waveform)

Vidna Obmana – The Angelic Appearance – The River of Appearance

Steve Roach & Vidna Obmana – The Gathering – Well of Souls

Soul Whirling Somewhere – Wish – Eating the Sea

Love Spirals Downward – Sideways Forest (CD EP)

Dreaming Blue – Stars Go By – Dreaming Blue

7 Rooms – Wheezy Joe – Crystal Cool

RF – Internal Notes 5 – Falls

Hotel Alexis – Superman & Vitamins – The Shining Example is Now Laying on the Floor

The Birdtree – Black Rainbows – Orchards & Caravans

Gravenhurst – Hopechapel Hill – Flashlight Seasons

Nick Drake – At the Chime of a City Clock – Bryter Layter

Auburn Lull – Building Fifty – Cast From the Platform

Stereocrash – Silver Starlight – Vegas Daydream

For Against – Coalesced – Coalesced

Neil Halstead – Two Stones in My Pocket – Sleeping on Roads

Fit & Limo – Seraph – Terra Incognita

Steeleye Span – Lovely On the Water – Spanning the Years

Fairport Convention w/ Sandy Denny – Autopsy – Unhalfbricking

WOOL Black Sheep Radio

While the news from Brattleboro is grim, with Radio Free Brattleboro still off the air, just a few miles north on Rte 91 in Vermont the community of Bellows Falls has a new licensed LPFM station broadcasting at 100.1. WOOL! check them out at www.wool.fm. Their website contains in depth info on the organization and happenings at the station. Congratulations, WOOL!

Revenge of the Lawn?

Many years ago I watched a documentary called “Lawns” on PBS and was fascinated by people’s obsession with their yards. Although I had done my share of yardwork in my life, was even part of a groundskeeping crew once in my youth, I never developed this affinity with having the perfect yard. Watching this program, the infinite variety of grasses, care techniques, tools, landscape designs were staggering. Yet everyone they interviewed seemed so rigid about their lawn care routines and practices, it was almost frightening. In fact they showed one home with a ‘natural’ lawn … people who believed nature was intended to be its own creation, to flourish without human intervention. Their neighbors almost unanimously despised this couple, or assume they were lazy or uncaring about the community, simply because their lawn was different. An eyesore, they called it. One neighbor on their block commented “well, it’s a free country” and that’s about as much support as that couple ever got.

In the never-ending battle with lawnmowers and weed whackers, I’m the losing party. Every single time I get my lawn mower repaired, it dies again within minutes. When it is functioning properly, we get a week of rain. The weed whacker was running just fine until it ran out of twine. Upon my arrival back from the hardware store I learned the motor had seized up somehow.

My neighbors on the right, left, and across the street amaze me with their riding mowers. Every man on this street owns a riding lawn mower other than me! How do they afford it? Their shiny green John Deeres look as if they had been just moments ago been driven out of the showroom. And these men are outside mowing practically every single day! Rain, shine, wind, bitter cold, humidity, one-hundred degrees … they tend their lawns as if they are shrines to civilization itself, as if the whole social order would collapse if a single blade of grass were left uncut. Where do these men find all this time to lavish on their lawns when they have businesses, children, lives to pursue? I wonder if they pay as much rapt attention to their kids’ and spouses’ needs.

Around the same time as seeing the Lawns documentary on PBS I watched another documentary on PBS called Sherman’s March. It was filmed by Ross McElwee, who had intended to walk in the footsteps of General Sherman’s armies and document the still-lingering effects of the civil war over a century later. Instead, his girlfriend broke up with him just prior to filming and the project became an odyssey of introspection and documenting his feelings as he traveled. The effect is brilliant. Through McElwee’s cinema verite style we discover his flaws, his idealization of women, his longing for companionship yet reserved, aloof, self-absorbed nature.

One minor point of the film showed a group of men who had some other fixation with lawns – specifically lawn ornaments. In the stealth of night, they would sneak into one another’s yards and steal lawn decorations. These were not just any lawn ornaments, these were giant plastic and plaster large-as-life representations of dinosaurs, elephants, moose, and other wild animals. I guess this was a whole new spin on the ‘steal the garden gnome’ phenomenon.


The pirate spirit inside me was laughing as I watched these men make their strategies and in the cover of darkness wrestle gigantic icons into pickup truck beds and trailers. No doubt it was a fun game, knowing that tomorrow, your buddy just might sneak off with your favorite tyrannosaurus from beside the pool, or your entire mutant flamingo collection, and you might have to triple your vigilance. Now that kind of activity could make me fond of lawns, and their keepers.

Musings from a Saturday Afternoon

Every Saturday afternoon at 2 pm I drive the 20 miles along route 103 then route 114 to Henniker NH from beautiful downtown Warner. The route is thankfully a scenic one with minimal traffic, and on a sun-filled day is a refreshing and engaging opportunity to contemplate what I will do during the broadcasts each week.

Part of me holds a pirate's spirit, and if ever there were an 'almost' pirate station, it is WNEC. Yes it is licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, yet the station is hardly ever on the air. In fact, perusing the station log today revealed that WNEC had been off the air since last Saturday at 9 pm when Kristin, WNEC's music director, signed off for the evening.

As my shift progressed, and I was sinking into the sublime groove of jazzy tunes (a kind of different mood for my shows), I realized the right channel indicator was not moving. Checking the radio outside the broadcast booth, the LED display confirmed only one channel was being received. So, if anyone was listening, they would hear the program in monaural at best and through only one speaker at worst. A discussion with Kristin revealed that the station also had this technical glitch this last week. She left a note for the station manager but nothing had been done. I was assured this technical difficulty could continue for weeks or months without intervention. My memory flashed back to a series of months when WNEC was only audible as far as the parking lot.

The phone is usually quiet when I'm on the air. I wonder who, if anyone, is listening. And if someone is listening, are they catching the vibe I'm sending out? Do they feel the intent behind the flow of music, the smattering of media news that I read, the frequent references to 'free' radio?

WNEC is a 150 watt station and my Grundig 800 picks the signal up crisp and clear at home, some 14 miles away (as the crow flies). There is something primal and beautiful about radio signals and hearing stations that are ephemeral ... there ... and then gone. That's what attracts me to pirate radio and shortwave listening. WNEC embodies the "FM" version of that primal attraction. A reminder that not everything is perfectly timed or scheduled in the world, that honest media is fragile, a product of human hands and hearts. Sometimes the silences between transmissions are more powerful than sound itself.

Moondog!

Moondog was a street musician and poet who hung around the 52nd to 54th Street area and around the old Madison square Garden in Manhattan in the 40's and 50's, through to the 70's. He often dressed in Viking regalia considering himself to be Nordic in sensibility. His costume would consist of homemade robe, sandals, a flowing cape, a horned Viking helmet, with a long spear of his own manufacture in his hand. Passers-by called him "the Viking of Sixth Avenue". Reaction to this garb was to hamper his musical development due to him being considered a crank. In later years he was persuaded to abandon it for more conventional dress (by his own admission, this was a good move). He was a mainly self-taught composer who worked with home made instruments and produced eccentric jazz and classical based pieces as well as vocal rounds. Part of the charm of his work is the brevity of much of it.

He was born, Louis Hardin, in Marysville, Kansas on May 26, 1916 but his family moved to Wyoming. He was interested in drums and drum rhythms from an early age. He played drums in Hurley High School in 1929 and in 1949, he played tomtom and flute at a Sun Dance held by the Blackfoot in Idaho. By then he was already blind as he lost his sight in his early teens when a dynamite cap exploded. He studied music and finished high school at the Iowa School for the Blind, and in 1933 studied braille at the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Louis. He composed all his pieces in braille.

In 1942 Hardin got a scholarship to study in Memphis but he mostly taught himself ear training and other musical skills and theory from books in braille. In 1943, he came to New York and met Artur Rodzinski, Leonard Bernstein, and Toscanini. Supposedly he bowed to kiss Toscanini's hand but Toscanini pulled it away saying,' I am not a beautiful woman '. Hardin also began to meet jazz performers such as Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. This gave his work a jazz feel which together with a certain beat quality in the form of humorous philosophical statements and the use of background sounds gives makes him a true eccentric.
Hardin began to call himself Moondog from 1947 in honor of a dog "who used to howl at the moon more than any dog I knew of".

Despite his status as street musician he intermittently recorded for the CBS, Prestige, Epic, Angel and Mars labels. One of his songs, "All Is Loneliness," (on "More Moondog" for Prestige and "Moondog 2" on CBS) was recorded by Janis Joplin. He also wrote music for radio and television commercials, and his music was used on the soundtracks for Jack Nicholson's "Drive, He Said," and the Coen Brothers "Big Lebowsky". Moondog also worked on an album of "Mother Goose Songs" with Julie Andrews. He was also feted by jazz musicians - Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, 50's beat poets and 60s flower children. His CBS "Moondog" album came about when James William Guercio - producer of Chicago and director of cult film "Electra Glide in Blue" - heard him and decided to record him. Moondog was also interviewed on many television shows, including both "Today" and "The Tonight Show."

In the fifties Moondog sued the disc jockey Alan Freed, the rock and roll king. Freed used the name Moondog as well as one of his records because it had a howling wolf in it. Then, when he came to New York, he had a program called the Moondog Show. Moondog won the case and Freed stopped using the name. There is a rumour that Stravinski intervened by speaking to the judge.

Moondog disappeared from the streets of New York in 1974 because he had been invited to perform in Germany. After his performances in Hamburg, he began to perform on the streets of Europe where he met Mrs. Sommer who transcribed his music and acted as his publisher and business manager. Her father supported Moondog in his later years. He produced at least five albums in Europe, including a "sound saga" titled "The Creation," and regularly performed his compositions with chamber and symphony orchestras in Paris, Stockholm and cities in Germany. Moondog died of heart failure on Wednesday, September 8, 1999 in a hospital in Munster, Germany. He was 83.

Seldom Heard Radio playlist July 9 2005

Artist/Song/Recording Name

Thievery Corporation – Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun) – Cosmic Game

Subaro – Dousan Foly Take 2 – Speak In Tones

Blue Nebula --- Gracious Measures --- Stay

7 Rooms – Blurred By Rain – Crystal Cool

Gila – This Morning – Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Kawataba Makoto – Do You Remember Our Moonshine Magic – Folklore of the Moon vol. 4.1 – Full Strawberry Moon (Hand/Eye)

Orange Cake Mix – Like Waves In Space – Like Waves In Space EP

Percy Hill – Make Believe – Live MP3

Faraday Cage – Set The Controls For the Heart of the Sun – Aether One Sampler

The Colorfield Theory – Spin Outside You – Leave Here While You Can EP

The Clientele – Impossible – Ariadne EP

Windy & Carl – Instrumental #2 – 7” vinyl

The Album Leaf – Essex – Soul Beach EP

Tres Crow – Maine - Maine EP

Shortwave Pirate Relay online

Great news!!! "The Gulch" is an internet station serving the shortwave pirate community currently streaming audio of pirate stations via their website at http://hakston.tripod.com/index.html. They offer a mix of music, news, and commentary concerning the short-wave pirate scene, as well as rebroadcasting shows from pirate stations. So ... if you don't have time to sit by the receiver waiting for your favorite pirates to sign on, this is the next best thing. Currently on the playlist at "The Gulch" is WAIR's tribute to Phish, Radio Time Machine, a parody of Grasscutter and Sunshine (two pirate station operators who are a couple) and more. I swear on a stack of FCC regulations & rulebooks that I had absolutely nothing to do with any of the broadcasts listed above. *wink*

WNEC on-air sign-on

WNEC playlist July 2, 2005

Seldom Heard Radio Playlist
WNEC 91.7 Henniker NH
July 2, 2005
DJ Frederick, Producer & Host



Artist/Title/Recording


The Colorfield Theory – Spin Outside You – Leave Here While You Can
Half Light – Golden West – Wait For Someday
46 Bliss – Inner Sensation – 46 Bliss
Nic Paton – Midday Moon – The Middle of It All
David Sylvian – Orpheus – Everything & Nothing
Rusted Root – Cruel Sun – Evil Ways (Live EP)
Martyn Bates – The Twa Sisters / Minorie – Folklore of the Moon Vol. IV –
Full Strawberry Moon EP (Hand/Eye)
Hush Arbors – Where The Black Bear Hides In the Sky – MP3
String Cheese Incident – 45th of November – One Step Closer
Lowlights – The Way You Were – Dark End Road
Pearls Before Swine – I Saw The World – Balaklava
Damon & Naomi – The Earth Is Blue – The Earth Is Blue
Smell of Incense – Magick Brother – 10” EP

800 kHz

Why I hope some people are reading this blog … and why I hope some people aren’t

It’s true. Writers don’t write just for themselves. They write to be read by others; even if it is one other person. This blog is a way of sharing some of my off-center interests with you … yes you! You in specific! If you’re reading this blog, then my hope is you have at least some interest in one of the following topics: indie music, free radio, pirate radio, community media, freedom and democracy, the earth we live upon, the moon and stars, art, cool ideas, and making the world a better place (however you define that) ...

However, if you’re not reading this blog, I’m even more pleased. The fact that you’re not connected to the internet is awesome. Yes, technology is wonderful in appropriate doses and usages. Yet neither technology nor information are going to save the human race. Only we can do that, by the grace of the gods and goddesses. It comforts me to no end to know that somewhere someone is listening to old 78’s on a record player … or tuned into a shortwave radio … or writing / sketching in a leather bound paper journal … or telling a story to children … or pulling weeds in the garden … or writing a real letter with textured paper and pen ... or publishing a handmade zine or chapbook … I don’t want the world to be totally technologized, owned by corporations, branded, etc. When we teach our children and grandchildren about the world, it should be about human experiences, ones we can touch and taste and smell, not about a world full of laptops and cell phones and tivo. So thank you, thank you for not reading this blog.