There is no pound cake and there are no new episodes either... but have some wine (at your own expense) and celebrate with us this blog's 1st anniversary. Today we are 1 and proud: not many blogs have ripen like us. Cheers!
Plonk
p.s.:"Strange Things Happen To The Radio" is on a hiatus right now but it will soon resume its broadcasting activities, so prick up your ears and be ready for more radio action any time soon... or soonish... before we turn 2, for sure! In the meantime, you can delve back into the intoxicating sounds of chapter 1.
you remain completely unaware of everything that is happening inside your body. subconsciously, you just can’t wait to be tuned in to the nightly broadcasts again. your whole body is craving for these infectious radio waves and soon again you will be begging for more radio action.
end of chapter one: "the first broadcast" to be continued...
it all happens on a subcutaneous level so the low frequency hum emanated by your specialized body cells remains inaudible to most foreign anatomies. the secrecy of the plan is secured and their plan of attack won’t be jeopardized, at least not this time.
having finalized their elaborate battle plan, the group lets out an equally elaborate war cry in unison, producing more of the humming sound throughout your body.
the brainstorming session generates some jolly good ideas and proves fruitful in helping your body cells to come up with a plan of action and pick their weapon of choice in the battle against POP.
the strange broadcast has caused a stir inside your body. the rumour about a revolution starts to spread under your skin as subversive information is disseminated throughout your organs.
after so much nocturnal activity, you're ready to sleep like a baby. you go back to bed, feeling a little tired but in peace. you fall asleep as soon as your ears touch your pillow. sweet POP-free dreams to you, sleepy head!
you’re stepping in the land of ecstasy. little you know that you’re still under the effect of the illicit, late night broadcasts. you can’t face it yet but you already have become addicted to this strange fm.
today is monday and monday is your day off work. isn't it marvellous? so tonight you don’t have to report for duty with POP, which means you have the whole day and the entire evening for yourself. this must be the reason why you feel so good right now, you reckon...
audio: music mix assembled by plonk (11m22s). visuals: illustration by plonk 2008, some rights reserved. background image stolen from a vintage comic book.
you do another ear check, this time with the help of a mirror.
your ears are indeed on the same place where you last saw them. a single glance would be enough to confirm this. however, you keep studying yourself in the mirror for a good couple of minutes. something looks different on you, but you can't pin it down.
after gazing at your own image in an investigative-ish, mainly narcissistic sort of way, you finally note the strange smile in your face. it looks really odd and you could swear it wasn’t there before you went to bed.
your hands instinctively search the sides of your head. to your relief they find your ears ok – what a great feeling for a music lover is to know that his ears are safe and sound! it wasn’t this time that POP got round to their horrid mutilation scheme.
you keep touching your hearing organs, failing to notice they feel strangely warm. it’s a clear indication that something did happen to your ears but that is not so obvious to you just yet.
you’re shaking like a leaf and your pyjamas are about to get wet once again. it’s the terrifying fear of having your ears (and other concerning body parts) chopped off by the POP authority as an arguably well-deserved disciplinary action for your nocturnal misbehaving.
those neon thoughts are quickly banned from your mind as you remind yourself that such behaviour might not be approved by the ruthless POP regime. the word POP reentering your pussy brain makes you shiver. fear strikes again and you have a new cause for concern.
what if you were being observed the whole time you were asleep? could your dreams be under surveillance too? and more importantly, is the content of your dreams subject to POP regulation, just like your musical taste is? these new thoughts make you feel uneasy and lead yourself to a mild state of paranoia. you have the feeling that you are being spied on as if there was someone following you wherever you go, watching everything you do. you start believing that POP has planted a CCTV right inside your bedroom to monitor you day and night. it feels like big brother without the prize to be won.
the mystery of the wet pyjamas is solved in your head and you decide not to sweat over this anymore. to know that the fluids you lost overnight were just some body perspiration is quite a comforting thought, so you let out a sigh of relief. but inside the dark spots of your mind, second thoughts start to flash, bright and erratic like cheap neon lights, making you sigh once again. a longer, deeper and louder sigh this time, loaded with resentment over the fact it wasn’t a wet dream. a little orgasm during sleep wouldn’t have been so bad after all…
you quickly check under your blankets fearing for the worse but find no immediate answer. for the first time in your life, you are unable to tell the difference between sweat, urine and other bodily fluids.
the case requires further investigation. you consider 3 possible explanations for your wet pyjamas:
alternative one. the first idea that comes to your dirty mind is that you might have had a wet dream. very unlikely, considering your age. so you move to…
alternative number two. bed wetting. it is true that the fear of confronting POP have made you pee in your pants once before but, according to your nose, this seems not to be the case this time, so your best guess is…
alternative number three, none of the above. you decide that the bodily fluid in question must be of the salty kind and if now you find yourself in a pool of sweat as you wake up, most likely it’s just because you went to bed with one partner, I mean, one blanket too many.
your bed sheets feel wet. the apparent dampness of your bed brings you discomfort and a question. what happened to you while you were asleep? did water invade your dreams and you wet the bed?
the strange broadcast finishes precisely 5 minutes before 6AM. loud static noises from the radio wake you up from your trance. 3, 2, 1... you're back in the room. you've regained consciousness abruptly, so it takes you a few seconds to understand where you are, but you immediately realize how tired you feel. you yawn. the night is over and you had no sleep at all. you yawn again. and again. and again. you slowly understand that something has happened to you, though you don't know what. yawning stops.
the space might be endless and you are having a ball out there, but unfortunately all good things must come to an end. like the spaceman that must return to his spaceship at risk of drifting off into space, you must return from orbit to your POP reality under penalty of having your ears chopped off. you've always feared POP for that. you've heard about the severe punishments they apply to those who do not follow their strict music policy, it scares the hell out of you. at this point you might be courageous enough to defy gravity but perhaps you are not ready to defy POP just yet.
audio: music mix assembled by plonk (12m18s). visuals: illustration by plonk 2008. background illustration by raul mina mora 1963, taken from a vintage science book.
tonight you have experienced something out of this planet. you're into orbit now, dancing among the stars in the vast infinity of space. you might have danced among POP stars before but this is something else! the milky way serves you as a glittered, naturally sparkly dancefloor while you gaze at the mesmerizing beauty of our galaxy. shame you won't remember any of this when you wake up...
you carry on with your dancing, following your very own, improvised choreography enthusiastically. your dance movements have become a little more elaborate, maybe a bit too elaborate for a not-so-skilled dancer like you.
your hands are up in the air and your feet are all over the dancefloor. you've just created a brand new, fully original choreography with fierce yet graceful movements. you would be very proud of yourself, if only you were not unconscious and completely unaware of what you're doing.
you start making strange movements and none of them resemble any of the POP choreographies you've been trained on to exhaustion. maybe they do just partially.
you are in a heavy trance as if you were hypnotized. your mind lost control and your body will only respond to the sounds you are hearing now. this is what it used to feel to be high on music.
you've just got home from your sunday night shift. you feel exhausted so you go straight to bed. you say your prayers to the god of POP. "thank you lord, that i don't have to work tomorrow" you whisper so He doesn't hear this last part. amen. you are in bed now but you can't sleep. your mind is too busy. you need to unwind so you switch on the radio. all you want is a good old song to lull you to sleep. you just don't know that the last POP song of the night has already been broadcasted. strange things are about to happen, but you are not aware. you hear static noises as if you were changing stations, followed by a song you're not familiar with. you check the frequency and wonder what the hell is going on. for once you don't recognize the song that is playing. you are afraid. very afraid. you look at the clock: it's 3:33 AM. you feel a rush down your spine. you want to change the station but the radio button is stuck. panic starts. you try to cover your ears but you're not quick enough. it's too late now. smooth luscious sounds have already found their way into your mind, body and soul. your ears feel warm and cold at the same time. your body sweats - you know you could be arrested for this.
THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THIS BLOG (BUT NEVER BOTHERED TO ASK)
Q: I DON'T GET THIS BLOG. WHAT IS IT ABOUT? A: This must be my 3rd attempt to write a blog and like the previous ones, it's all about the music that appeals to my ears. It's been a long way since I started obsessing about creating quirky mixtapes and sharing them is again the intention behind this project. But this time I've also wanted to have some sort of storyline wrapping together the eclectic music mixes that I make for this blog, so I came up with the idea of having these short mixes as the late night broadcasts of a fictitious pirate radio and created this mysterious narrative that toys with the grim, uncertain future of the music industry. So this blog shall serve as a source of interesting music for its scarce audience as well as a critic to how major labels responded to the ongoing changes in the distribution of recorded music.
Q: CAN YOU ELABORATE FURTHER ON THE BLOG'S NARRATIVE? A: Our story begins the year the music industry goes broke and an alliance is forged between pop artists and the music industry. United, they will do whatever it takes in order to regain control over the distribution of music and maintain the profitability of the music industry. As the plot progresses, the episodes will unfold a society where music lovers are heavily oppressed by a totalitarian regime known simply as "POP". Under the leadership of a feared-by-all tyrant who was once a charismatic best-selling pop star (a cross between Hitler and Madonna), this unstoppable evil alliance takes over the world through gruesome ways (including some dreadful ear-cropping methods) and imposes total control over people's private lives, regulating every cultural experience as well as dictating society's taste for music. Artists and bands who don't commit to the new rules of "POP" are sent into exile. Digital music players are confiscated, music bloggers are prosecuted and internet is banished from this world. In this bleak and apocalyptical scenario, music lovers all over the world, deprived of non-POP music, find solace in the strange and subversive broadcasts of a pirate radio station that only airs in the small hours, when supposedly "nobody is listening". And just like it happens to anyone who comes to listen to these hypnotizing clandestine broadcasts, you are recruited to fight "POP" and join an army of independent music lovers who want their ears back, along the right to listen to good non-commercial music.
Q: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA FOR THE STORY OF A RADIO STATION WHOSE LATE NIGHT BROADCASTS TURN THE LISTENERS INTO CLOUDS? A: I owe the inspiration to a fond memory I have from my childhood, when I developed the habit of sleeping with music on. As a pre-teen, I wasn't allowed to operate my brothers hi-fi or go near his vinyls, so my primary source of music was the radio. Before going to bed, I would kidnap a beaten, discoloured white-going-beige radio-alarm clock that belonged in my parents' bedroom. I remember feeling hypnotized by the red numbers of the digital LED display of the alarm clock and consequently falling asleep as I listened to the local FM station. The radio lulled me to sleep and stayed on throughout the night. I often found myself waking from my sleep, as if magnetized by the strange sounds coming through its tiny speakers in the middle of the night. Soon I understood that the selection of songs broadcasted in the small hours were considerably different and sounded a lot more interesting than the music played on the daytime radio. It was thrilling for me to discover these less commercial tunes on my own. It felt as if I was entering a new dimension. This nocturnal assortment of oldies music, forgotten pop and the odd jazz number, quickly became the soundtrack of my half-awake, half-asleep dreams. There's one song in particular that made me perk up my ears one night and that I still remember. It was "Joe Le Taxi", a song by French popstress Vanessa Paradis. I clearly remember waking up in the middle of the night to this particular song and thinking, "what the hell is going on?" I could certainly recognize the melody, which sounded strangely familiar, but everything else was alien to me, including the language. This was the late 80's and a cover of that French song was a number one hit in Brazil, sung in Portuguese by a popular Brazilian children's TV presenter, so it didn't take me too long to recognize it. I was just not aware that there could be a different version of it, so I was immediately attracted by the strange familiarity of that sound. This combination of recognizable melody and foreign lyrics sounded so obscure and exotic to me, it got me puzzled and hooked at the same time. I think that this Vanessa Paradis incident in my childhood pretty much explains my taste for quirky and exotic music as an adult. Perhaps the weirdest thing about it is that the musical universe that this song made me crave for is referenced on its own lyrics, something I've only found out about recently, with the help of Google translator. The song's lyrics in French describe a taxi driver who works on the streets of Paris at night, listening to Xavier Cougat and Yma Sumac, two exponents of the "exotica" genre, a music type I became obsessed with as I grew up. Joe Le Taxi was definitely a wise man and might as well be my favourite fictional character of all music lyrics. "Strange Things Happen To The Radio" draws inspiration from these personal memories: the image of a LED digital display, the phony tropical sound of a forgotten pop song from the 80's, it all served as inspiration for this blog.
POP is a totalitarian regime that controls all radio stations in the world. to satisfy their musical needs, music lovers have to rely on the strange broadcasts of a mysterious pirate radio FM that only airs in the early hours when allegedly nobody is listening and YOU - who play the main role in this story - should be sleeping.
