New and Classic

Old classics with new twists, new news, the politics of old, at a new time, in the same place, yet even stranger.

PLAYLIST
The Marimba Belles – In The Hall Of The Mountain King
Rafael Lukjanik – Flight Of The Bumblebee
Antonín Dvořák – Humoresque in G Flat Major, Op. 101, No. 7
Camille Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre
Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet – Lux Aeterna
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Promenade/The Sage – Pictures at an Exhibition
Stuart Hamm – Dr. Gradus Ad Parnasum
Tomita – Arabesque No. 1
Charles Mingus – Adagio Ma Non Troppo
Bob James – Night on Bald Mountain
Victor Wooten – Classical Thump
Pink Martini – Ravel’s Bolero
Johannes Brahms – Hungarian Dance No. 5
The Flow – Toccata
Jeff Beck – Greensleeves
The Electric Prunes – Kyrie Eleison
Paul Schwartz – Ave Maria
Deodato – Also sprach Zarathustra
Walter Carlos – Suicide Scherzo (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, 2nd Movement) – A Clockwork Orange
Walter Murphy – A Fifth of Beethoven
Béla Fleck – Adagio sostenuto – Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven)
i-doser – nitrous
John Cage – Sonata II (prepared piano) – Steffen Schleiermacher
Frank Zappa – In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky
Love Sculpture – Sabre Dance
The Books – Excess Straussess
Mason Williams – Classical Gas
Joaquín Rodrigo – Fandango

Stranger in a Strange Land 2012-04-13: New & Classic by The Stranger on Mixcloud

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone!

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net

“Zig, zig, zig, Death is striking a tomb with his heel in cadence. Death is playing a dance tune on his violin at midnight. The winter wind blows, and the night is dark. From the linden trees come the moans. White skeletons move across the shadows, running and leaping in their shrouds. Zig, zig, zig, each one gives a tremor, and the dancer’s bones rattle. Hush! they suddenly leave off dancing, they jostle one another, they flee – the cock has crowed!”

Reading List

Some of my top favorite authors and titles as per my Good Reads profile.

A tumblr follows the publishing industry, retail books, the e-book revolution, libraries and other bibliographical, bookish-type things at Likely In Store!

By Genre

Classics & Fiction

Poetry

Drama

Mythology

Paranormal

Science

Business

History

Philosophy

Media Theory

Humour

Horror

Crime

Science Fiction

Children’s

Art

Graphic Novels

Favorite Authors

Douglas Adams

Isaac Asimov

Philip K. Dick

Hunter S. Thompson

Kurt Vonnegut

Mark Twain

Status Impossible

I have long thought about the status bars in my life, and the appropriate relative comparisons made to video games like the Sims and Grand Theft Auto. And beyond some simple Tetris effect, as we enmesh with technology even more concretely, these descriptions become even more applicable and important.

Jesse Schell (When games invade real life) has made some excellent points about this, as well as NY Times technology blogger Nick Bilton, in his book I Live in the Future & Here’s How it Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted.

Game achievements and status completion in games can reflect what we do in our newly augmented reality; downloads of content, how much of the entertainment you have consumed, work progress, to do lists, all of it can be broken down into percentages and infographic representations. At one point, I even made little bars for my bookshelf, so that I could be reminded how many of those books I had read, and how many I still needed to crack open.

At the same time I think about my purposefully created memories in this temporary experience:

I have formed my memories by accident.
Though some I have made my own.
They stick out in a swampish sea floating like bouys against a throng
A waving flag in front of the Federal building
As I was about to sign my life away
The yellow halo of a girl’s auburn hair
knowing she could never be mine but in that moment didn’t care
The evening I lost my virginity, the look in her eyes
And not knowing the role I would be doomed to reprise
Stuck in a ditch on a field trip, mud sucking at my shoe
hoping to not get caught, my friend not knowing what to do
A tree during recess, its sun-dried leaves pockmarked and empty
the hard carcasses of bugs left as the wind grew cold and wintry
A stolen toy, an unfelt guilt, a growing phobia, unheard accusations
Maroon and brown, like wood grain,
pulpy wet and bright, popping, blaring pain, light.
Or perhaps I’ve never remembered them, but simply a broken reference link,
I’ve fooled myself into remembering that I did remember them.

and how your free-roam experience in sandbox games is sometimes enhanced most by mere urban exploration. And though the work of these video game designers today is mind-boggling, it still pales in comparison by many orders of magnitude to the level of detail still available “IRL”. Geocaching, foursquare, and yelp are all allowing us to interact in new ways with terrain, businesses and environments that may have previously been background, to see more of the NPCs that make up our cities and staff its shops and restaurants.

With the nearly endless number of businesses, buildings, and public spaces in your metropolitan area, how could you ever hope to traverse them all (of those allowable), or even provide a statistic or percentage? Subdivide your map and think about how many you might reasonably explore and learn, so that when you walk by them in the future, they may each hold a particular experience or fleeting memory of this experiment.

Could you traverse or trespass every square foot? How long would it take you to fill that bar? To get that achievement?

Because after all, it all may turn out to have been a video game experience all along…

BLUE

2010-11-06

Chill out, reflect on the news and lower your blood pressure.

PLAYLIST
Billie Holiday – I Can’t Get Started – Lady Day
Charles Mingus – Mood Indigo – Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife
Jelly Roll Morton – Sidewalk Blues – jelly roll blues
R.L. Burnside – You Gotta Move – Mr. Wizard
Ella Fitzgerald – When I Get Low I Get High – Ella Fitzgerald
Gene Krupa – Feelin’ High and Happy – Big Band Classics
Thelonious Monk – Bemsha Swing
Willie Dixon – Walkin the Blues – Blues Legends
Muddy Waters – Goin’ Down Slow – Chicago Blues Kings
Otis Rush – It Takes Time – Blue On Blues
Jack Kerouac – Charlie Parker – The Jack Kerouac Collection
Charleston Chasers – Wabash Blues – Jazz Mad: Hot Dance, Jazz & Instrumental Blues 1925-1930
Annette Hanshaw – There Myst Be Somebody Else – Art Deco: Sophisticated Ladies
Bessie Smith – Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out – Baby Won’t You Please Come Home
Sonny Boy Williamson – Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide – Mississippi Blues
Memphis Slim – Frisco Bay – Rockin’ This House: Chicago Blues Piano 1946-1953
James Moody – Heritage Hum – The Doors of Perception
Elmore James – It Hurts Me Too – Dust My Broom
Buddy Guy – Ten Years Ago – Buddy Guy: The Complete Chess Studio Recordings
B.B. King – Guess Who – B.B. King & the Kings of Blues
Dinah Washington – If I Had You – Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Sun Ra – Intergalactic Motion – Outer Spaceways Incorporated
Quincy Jones – Hikky Burr – Smackwater Jack
Blues Brothers – Rubber Biscuit – Brief Case Full of Blues
Willie Dixon – Insane Asylum – Blues Greatest
John Lee Hooker – Goin’ Mad Blues – Born With the Blues
Ziggy Elman and His Orchestra – Butterfly Strut – 1947
Frank Sinatra – Send In the Clowns – My Way

Stranger in a Strange Land 2010-11-06: Blue by The Stranger on Mixcloud

The Stranger leaves you with sweet nothings, embarking on a hiatus with Ze Black Waffle to fight the Robot War for the Future.

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net
“parting is such sweet sorrow.”

The Stranger’s Superheroic Four-Hour Show

A double-wide feature for you listeners this week, as I unsuspectingly find myself filling time, while putting the finishing touches on the Superheroic Stranger in a Strange Land! Four hours of music, experimentation, and news!

For Psionic Dehiscence I pull out some lightly seasoned tapes, the Frank Zappa Crossfire debate, Michael Hedges, the great William F. Buckley/Noam Chomsky debate, and the Firesign Theatre.

Lionel Hampton – Glad Hamp – Jazzmaster
Clatworthy Saunders – In Your Own Sweet Way – All That Jazz
Cannonball Adderley – Moanin’
Louis Armstrong – Let’s Do it (Let’s Fall in Love)
The Firesign Theatre – The Ralph Spoilsport Mantrum – How Can You Be In Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at all
Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington – It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Don’t Have That Swing
Michael Hedges – Because its There

On The Stranger in a Strange Land we battle back the forces of evil, do the Batusi, ponder powered musician battles, super-politics, and every agency from the cia to the x-men.

SRC – In the Hall of the Mountain King
The Bagdhdaddies – Wonder Woman – Katchyazafta
Al Hirt – Green Hornet – Kill Bill Soundtrack
David McCallum – Batman Theme – Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 13: TV Town
Jan & Dean – The Joker is Wild – Meet Batman
Paul McCartney & Wings – Magneto and Titanium Man – Venus and Mars
Mel Tormè – Sunshine Superman – Ultra-Lounge: On the Rocks
Sun Ra – The Bat Cave – Batman (Original Motion Picture Score)
Sun Ra – The Penguin Chase – Batman
Sun Ra – Penguin’s Umbrella – Batman
The Apostles – Super Strut – Acid Jazz Story
They Might Be Giants – John Lee Supertaster – No!
Moe. – Captain America – Warts & All
Spin Doctors – Jimmy Olsen’s Blues – Pocket Full of Kryptonite
Weezer – In The Garage – Weezer
Sun Ra – Batman and Robin Swing – Batman and Robin
Sun Ra – The Riddler’s Retreat – Batman and Robin
Goldfinger – Superman – Hang-Ups
The Aquabats – Powdered Milk Man! – The Fury of the Aquabats!
Fastball – Human Torch – Make Your Mama Proud
Serge Gainsbourg – Comic Strip – Love and the Beat
Jelly Roll Morton – Wolverine Blues – Doctor Jazz
Black Sabbath – Iron Man – Reunion
Entombed – Wolverine Blues
Apollo 440 – Spider-Man Theme
Roam The Hello Clouds – Geoff As the Hulk – Near Mises
Deacon the Villian – X-Men
Dangerdoom – The Mask feat. Ghostface Killah – Mouse and the Mask
7L & Esoteric – Incredible Hulk Rap – Egoclapper
Lee Hazlewood – Batman – Batman and Robin
Gil Scot Heron – Ain’t No Such Thing as Superman
Wesley Willis – I Wupped Batman’s Ass

Stranger in a Strange Land 2010-04-03: Timefill/Superheroic! (Psionic) by The Stranger on Mixcloud

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net

“It’s just words.”

The Rain Show

2010-02-27

If the heavy rain and dense fog has you stuck indoors in the San Francisco/Bay Area, or anywhere in time and space for that matter, kick back and gently drift to the lulling sounds of pounding rain, moist musical selections, DJ C-Foo’s readings of SPAM haiku, and the comforting knowledge that you are warm and dry and somebody else isn’t.

PLAYLIST
Vangelis – Tears In Rain – Blade Runner Soundtrack
Tom Waits – Make It Rain – Real Gone
Sonic Youth – Rain On Tin – Murray Street
Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Elvis Presley – Kentucky Rain
Led Zeppelin – The Rain Song – Houses Of The Holy
Credence Clearwater Revival – who’ll stop the rain – Bad Moon Rising
Jack Guthrie – the clouds rain trouble down – As Good As It Gets
Little Charlie & the Nightcats – Rain – Captured Live
Charles Mingus – stormy weather – Mysterious Blues
Sun Ra – the rainmaker – fate in a pleasant mood/when the sun comes
The Average White Band – stop the rain – AWB
The Dramatics – In the Rain
The Temptations – I Wish it Would Rain
Cosmic and Optimus Rhyme – realrain – Relative
Dinah Washington – Come Rain or Shine
Madeleine Peyroux – California Rain – Half the Perfect World
Nancy Holloway – Sand and Rain – Dusty Fingers Vol. 10
Incognito – black rain – No Time Like the Future
K-os – the rain – atlantis
Gnarles Barkley – Storm Coming – St. Elsewhere
Astrud Gilberto – The Gentle Rain (RJD2 Remix) – Verve Remixed, Vol. 3
Jill Scott & Will Smith – The Rain
Nuttin But Stringz – Thunder – Struggle – the Subway to the Charts
Gentleman June Gardner – It’s Gonna Rain – new orleans funk
Annette Hanshaw – I Get the Blues When It Rains – Volume 6 1929

Stranger in a Strange Land 2010-02-27: Rain Show by The Stranger on Mixcloud

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net

The Hunter S Thompson Tribute Show

2010-02-20

Readings, reflections, recordings and ravings of a mad Southern gentleman and his friends, enemies, fans and musical infleunces and influencees. The Stranger gets gonzo on the air with DJ C-Foo and a whole lot of audio psychotropics as tribute to the late, great journalistic genius, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Because when the going gets weird*, the weird turn pro.

PLAYLIST
Tom Waits – What’s He Building In There – Mule Variations
Big Brother and The Holding Company – In the Hall of the Mountain King
Booker T & MGs – Time is Tight
James Booker – Gonzo
Sonny Boy Williamson – Bring it on Home
Flying Burrito Brothers – Sin City – Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Cadillac Angels – Outlaw Beatnik – 16 Tons of Twang
Hermann Thieme – Dirty Drugs – Hard Hitting: Wewerka Soul Jazz
Brewer & Shipley – One Toke Over the Line
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Long As I Can See the Light – Cosmo’s Factory
Steve Earle – Devil’s Right Hand
Laurie Anderson – Language is a Virus – Talk Normal
Elvis Presley – Promised Land
Lucky Starr – I’ve Been Everywhere
Doors – Alabama Song – Doors
Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
Hugo Montenegro – Jilly’s Joint – Lady in Cement
Modulo 1000 – Animalia – Nao Fale Com Paredes
Steppenwolf – The Pusher – Easy Rider Soundtrack
Dick Dale – Banzai Washout – Big Surf
Lee Hazelwood – Muchacho
Ralph Steadman, Hunter S. Thompson, Mo Dean – Weird and Twisted Nights – Gonzo
Cowboy Junkies – Sweet Jane
Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns & Money
Green Willis – Whiskey Before Breakfast
Norman Greenbaum – Spirit In the Sky

Buy the ticket, take the ride:

Stranger in a Strange Land 2010-02-20: Hunter S Thompson Tribute by The Stranger on Mixcloud

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net

*”It never got weird enough for me.”
-Hunter S. Thompson

“Graffiti is beautiful, like a brick in the face of a cop.”
-Hunter S. Thompson

Everything I’ve seen needs rearranging…

6/6/9

As the massified masses amass like molasses, as they slowly physicalize and collectivize into a central computer bank, as the computers become collectively conscious, as big business, government, special interests and the military-industrial complex also merge to compete against the proles for their roles as progenitors and inheritors of this digital renaissance, we consider the pros and cons of professionals and convicts, of technological and luddite oddities*, of nationalization and privatization, whether the opinions of the masses are worth considering, and the merit of run-on sentences.

Strangers passing in the street, by chance two separate glances meet, and I am you and what I see is me. And if I were you, I would call in tonight 415-341-1199. There is no screening process, just high hopes and low standards. Of course, if I were you then you’d be me and I’d use YOUR body to climb this cliff!

PLAYLIST
Hall Of The Mountain King – Big Brother & The Holding Company
White Panther – Arcesia
Freedom – Wizard
Baby Please Don’t Go – The Amboy Dukes
Whipping Post – The Allman Brothers
The Transmigration of Hop Heads – Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
If You Want To Be A Bird – The Holy Modal Rounders
A Day In The Life – Les Demerle
The Higher I Go – Otis Waygood
Freakin’ At The Freaker’s Ball – Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
25 Minutes To Go – Johnny Cash
Life Is A Carnival – The Band
Waves Within – Santana
The Wizard – Black Sabbath
Mysterious Traveller – Weather Report
Sheep – Pink Floyd
You Set the Scene – Love
The Hands On My Clock Stand Still – Now
Malagua – Alexander Rabbit
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother – The Hollies
Benny the Bouncer – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Laugh, Laugh – The Beua Brummels

The Stranger in a Strange Land 2009-06-06: Everything I’ve Seen Needs Rearranging by The Stranger on Mixcloud

~The Stranger
thestranger@earthling.net

*Air Mail is socially correct!

>:-(

Monday, July 21, 2008 6:05 PM

From:

“Chmielowiec Feltes” <starlight@metronik.co.yu>

 To:

thestranger@earthling.net

Nei Ho,

How to keep your girlfriend happy … Click here Found that all my men were safe, but that they over with
beaten butter. If you will have the the smoke denser, and
now and then, as he crawled you locked up. Poirot shook
his head. I do not beautiful crystals were to be found in
abundance any cement, they were joined together and i cannot
said, passing me the letter and wandering into he was many
minutes older. There were many soldiers her profession and
all it meant to her in the plantlouse, sent to the academy
his volume of more thanmore than we will be. Tell me the
poem. Nose, strong, dark eyebrows shading hard, glittering
the country of the shah. The persian lower classesparticularly
nay, sir, what i wish to know is about adam bede. Now concluded
that it was some artist or amateur.

Fraught With Peril

I haven’t been updating this; in fact, this is the first time I’ve posted a playlist. This is because a lot of the music changes on the fly, reflecting the news items, callers, or mood of the Strange Land at that moment.

PLAYLIST

1. The Phantom Patrol – Aeolian Piano Roll (1903 Wizard of Oz)
2. Kids in the Hall – America 
3. America – Horse With No Name
4. Parliament – Om
5. Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight
6. Supertramp – The Logical Song
7. Warren Zevon – I Was in the House When the House Burned Down
8. Captain Beyond – Myopic Void
9. J-Dilla – Sunbeams
10. Gogol Bordello – God-Like
11. RJD2 – Smoke & Mirrors
12. Tangerine Dream – Tiger
13. Harry Nilsson – Me and My Arrow
14. Frank Zappa – Mud Shark
15. Nick Cave – Mutiny in Heaven
16. Billie Holiday – April in Paris

Where* has our valiant (and at that quite salient) hero been O these past few months? Bored or boycotting Myspace? In a politically-charged controversial coma/self-induced media blackout/circus? Zoning out listening to late 60’s/early 70’s Psychedelia? Alcoholics Anonymous?  Perhaps he hadn’t gone anywhere, but simply skipped ahead in what you myopically call the ‘timeline,’ but what he prefers to call his own ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Novel.’

I don’t think my mild-mannered employers would have mild-minded that too much at all! And in these engrossing times, the Revengerists have seen every goal completed quietly, thoroughly, awesomely (needless to say), and without the ostentation of one ‘Will Ferrell.’ Having fulfilled its purpOses, and with a lease paid through to 2012, (as the Mayans foretold: ‘yea when all leases shall summarily end’), the Revengerists compound sits, secure and yet absolutely vacant. All but for the occasional janitor, tour group, haunted spirit (built upon a Civil War battleground as it is), or junior members who don’t check their text messages lost in its expansive labrynthine corridors, it echoes still in the night, or the day… depending on the time… that it is… when.. it echoes…

I can tell you one thing, I definitely did not go to Studio 54.

Now, having uncovered an insidious plot of the powers that be effecting the very atoms that make up the whole of our being, I go where none may accompany me. No beloved sidekick, grizzled old vizier, or that cute couch-surfing chick who wanted me to help her with her novel… No. Through a combination of radical research and development, subversive culture-jamming, motivational speaking courses and my uncanny powers of antiphysics, only I can prevail against this slithering hidden evil. As it was writ in Ancient Sumeria, so shall it make for a most excellent riveting dramatic speech of departure…

The Demon of Thought
I Fought, But Not
Armed With Sword or Rapier
With Zeal I Sought and
Peril Fraught, I Brought
His End with Pen and Paper

~The Stranger

*Everything is nice in Smileyland; and when it isn’t, they kill it with their lasers. Something is rotten in the state of Smileyland.