DJ Kees became an Amsterdam legend [but also an untouchable forever] when at age 14 he jammed police radios with a mocking mix of debilitating frequencies & musical mayhem during the 1980 Coronation ceremonies of the queen. DJ Dutch Cheese [Kees] flees Amsterdam under mysterious circumstances with teen daughter-narrator, Alouette. A new life in Greenpoint, Brooklyn leads to tragi-hilarious havoc in the shady alt scene & at radio WOOF [an embarrassingly transparent replica of WFMU]. The DJ world is ruled by 5 drugs: vinyl obscurity, the magical segue, the perfect mix, music trivia, & ephemeral-imaginary adulation. ...
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15 Memorable DJ Dutch Cheese Radio Shows I can name many radio shows papa is proud of. A memorable one was: “The Sirens to Readjust the Concept of War: 3 May 1999.” The Autonoom Centrum of Amsterdam described it as a “siren-happening by sound-artists in solidarity with the people of Kosovo on the free radio stations of Amsterdam: Radio Patapoe, Radio 100, and Radio de Vrije Keyzer with the program signal rebroadcast across Amsterdam using participating listeners who placed their loudspeakers in windows facing out into the world.” To prepare, papa had months earlier positioned himself under an 18-meter pole on the edge of Amsterdam West, holding a microphone in outstretched arm to record the air raid siren [one of 4283] that sounds for 1 minute and 26 seconds every first Monday of the month at exactly noon all across the Netherlands as a test of the emergency alarm system that warns Dutch citizens of a natural or other disaster. During the show, with one speaker in the left window, I sat in the right windowsill of René’s studio holding the other on my lap in the right windowsill aimed at rush hour passersby. The sirens, according to some, could be heard throughout Amsterdam, and beyond, for one hour. I held up signs to people stuck in going-home traffic to honk their horns in solidarity. And that they did. Bicyclists speeding past rang their bells. Papa mixed in various peace demonstration chants, excerpts from the Before The Rain soundtrack plus siren samples from Varèse’s “Amériques,” the Chemical Brothers’ “Song to the Siren,” Arseny Avraamov’s Symphony Of Factory Sirens, Durutti Column’s “Street Fight,” Mark Stewart & The Maffia’s “As The Veneer Of Democracy Begins To Fade,” and Authentic Stereo Sound Effects LPs for tornado, air raid, police and emergency sirens. The radio loyalty ritual continued in the USA and included his departure for Jersey City by subway and PATH every Thursday, dragging his wiggly, funky audio transport cart to do his overnight show on WOOF – Thursday midnights to 3 AM and then sleep on the thin mat on the office floor using his rolled up pants for a pillow. Papa, whose sleeping on the station floor had become legend, is as vain as any of them: Ignatius the Threadworm, TKFoe, Rob World, Leila Loopez, DogBreath Bluez, Enricka Erreur and Glenn-Tom Joans. When he returns from WOOF, papa will tell a funny story involving the DJ before him, DJ Schmallski, a wannabe stand-up comedian who took on Howard Stern in a public Diss event at Radio City Music Hall and did OK in a boy’s pissing contest, actually “roasting Stern’s nuts” a couple of times. He likes to play Barry White, Roberta Flack, and Marvin Gaye, strip down to his jockeys and bandana and talk on-air filth to his female listeners – clit piercing, orgasm squirt contests, all while traipsing around the studio slugging Colorado Bulldogs [Seagram’s vodka + coffee liqueur + Yoohoo]. He gets suspended every three months or so. Papa jokes that the station mice asked how I was. He describes how these mice chewed on LPs in certain genres: symphonic metal [The Final Countdown, Europe] country rock, bad TV sit-coms [Homeboys in Space], and arena rock [Knee Deep in the Hoopla, Starship]. This inspired him to do a show where he selected the LPs that the mice preferred based on the evidence: little snippet mounds of album cover cardboard left behind – “rodent I Ching” creating a dense haywire mix of almost-anything-goes.☉ |
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14 WOOF DJ Shyboy’s Strategy
Did people compare me to the Beatles with Suki playing the Yoko character and papa as Lennon? Who am I? Brian Epstein? WOOF DJ and Fist of Facts bassist Shyboy Thrumbosis complains to DJ Leila LoopEZ: “On top of that there’s Suki, and there’s negative vibes that put us all on edge. Dutch C and Suki put themselves out on a limb. I don’t think he wants to hang out with us anymore, and I think Suki’s pushing him out of the WOOF gang cuz the feeling is she doesn’t want him hanging out with us.” Shyboy is putting away his LPs and forgot a stack of CDs. Papa takes a quick photo of the stack to later transcribe the titles of the CDs to analyze: Can Landed, Can Tago Mago, Camberwell Down All’s Well, California Guitar Trio Invitation, John Cage 62 Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham, John Cage Sonatas and Interludes, Robert Cacciapaglia Sei Note in Logica, Butterfield Blues Band East-West, Kate Bush The Dreaming, Warren Burt Harmonic Colour Fields, Craig Burk Text for Solo Voice, Sandy Bull E Pluribus Unum, Roy Budd Rebirth of the Budd, Tim Buckley Happy Sad, B Shops For The Poor, Bruire Les fleurs de Léo, The Lenny Bruce Originals, Jack Bruce Things We Like, Thousands on a Raft, James Brown In The Jungle Groove, Brown/Oliveros Music in the Air. One day I see him staring at the photo, trying to make sense of it. Suddenly an A-ha moment; he has figured out the secret of DJ Shyboy’s eccentric playlists: He chooses a letter from the alphabet and then limits himself to artists in, for example, the B section of his collection. ☉ 23 Misophonia as Related to The Eagles & Billy Joel
Papa’s hatred of the Eagles and Billy Joel [in fact, all atrocious music that is unredeemable, even using post-modern strategies] is maybe something to not blame him for, but something to help him overcome. “Papa, what harm has bad music ever done to you?” “You know – it offended me with its bad taste; it is like cancer.” The results in the Journal of H/Earing reveal that the part of the brain that joins senses with emotions is called the anterior insular cortex, which is overactive in misophonia cases. |
The anterior insular cortex (AIC) is the suggested seat of a broad range of conditions and behaviors, from bloated by gas, orgasm, cigarette addiction, maternal love, to decision making, insight, and subjective feelings that influence awareness and actual consciousness. The AIC of those afflicted with misophonia goes into overdrive when they hear their own specific trigger sounds, to which they react with anger, disgust, dismay, and disappointment that others are insensitive or oblivious to these particular sounds. It may manifest as feelings of claustrophobia as if the noisemakers, the wrongdoers are taking up too much space, space claimed by the afflicted one. The victim may feel an encroachment of undesirable audio stimulation. People may become nauseous. There is no cure for the “preoccupation with specific aversive sounds that trigger impulsive aggression.” The introduction of an obvious situation like the breakfast table can stimulate hypervigilance and hypersensitivity to violating sounds, which commonly leads to anxiety – “negative anticipation”.
I return to the school library to research sonic warfare. I know papa is fascinated by how audio is abused by governments, commercial radio stations and TV advertisers – everyone trying to be heard in a crowded space of increased loudness. The Bible describes the Walls of Jericho that came tumbling down when a concerted trumpet blast and loud voices make it collapse. It is not a miracle because sound is a known tactic for destruction. Annoying sounds or even songs leave people vulnerable, trembling. Certain sounds above [ultrasound] and below [infra-sound] what we can hear is probably most effective but irritating songs can also immobilize the overly sensitive. It is warfare between those who insist on us hearing it and those who cannot bear hearing it. It is a battleground – consume or be consumed.
... The Eagles, Billy Joel, and many others are powerful weapons too – papa is right – and we are NOT alone, I can tell you!!, there is WhyEvery1HatezTheEagles.com, IHATE-BillyJoel.com, 50WorstBillyJoelSongs.edu. This music can have the same effect as infrasound: disorientation, concentration problems, disrupted breathing, arhythmic heartbeat, premature ejaculation, nausea, dysphasia, misophonia, irritability, break down in social skills, of motor skills leading to social discomfort. WOOF DJ Irwin Corey described atrocious music as “treacle that cannot be converted into honey, tears that cannot be distilled into laughter. Unretrievable sounds that drift forever to the dark side; boredom becomes the devil’s left hand and Billy Joel, Chicago after album IV, Nickelback, Meatloaf, Starship, James Blunt, ad nauseum; I am right now reaching for a Zofran just to be safe.”
Corey once assisted DJ Mookie “Spindle” Balustrade on research and production of Komar & Melamid’s famous “The Most [Un]wanted Song,” two songs produced using extensive polling to incorporate the general public’s favorite and least favorite sounds in two songs. Result: the annoyance level of the “most wanted” is even higher than that of the “unwanted”. Further evidence for papa, who devoted a whole show to “UNwanted” music, that our world is just one long, melting, scratched repeat-groove LP. BTW: this show almost got him suspended from WOOF. He got off with a stern warning from the board.
“I will tell the US government to contact Billy Joel – ‘workin’ too hard can give you a heartattack-ack-ack-ack’ – Oh My Fucking Niet-Bestaande God and add the Eagles, they will win the war against terror.” ...
☉
I return to the school library to research sonic warfare. I know papa is fascinated by how audio is abused by governments, commercial radio stations and TV advertisers – everyone trying to be heard in a crowded space of increased loudness. The Bible describes the Walls of Jericho that came tumbling down when a concerted trumpet blast and loud voices make it collapse. It is not a miracle because sound is a known tactic for destruction. Annoying sounds or even songs leave people vulnerable, trembling. Certain sounds above [ultrasound] and below [infra-sound] what we can hear is probably most effective but irritating songs can also immobilize the overly sensitive. It is warfare between those who insist on us hearing it and those who cannot bear hearing it. It is a battleground – consume or be consumed.
... The Eagles, Billy Joel, and many others are powerful weapons too – papa is right – and we are NOT alone, I can tell you!!, there is WhyEvery1HatezTheEagles.com, IHATE-BillyJoel.com, 50WorstBillyJoelSongs.edu. This music can have the same effect as infrasound: disorientation, concentration problems, disrupted breathing, arhythmic heartbeat, premature ejaculation, nausea, dysphasia, misophonia, irritability, break down in social skills, of motor skills leading to social discomfort. WOOF DJ Irwin Corey described atrocious music as “treacle that cannot be converted into honey, tears that cannot be distilled into laughter. Unretrievable sounds that drift forever to the dark side; boredom becomes the devil’s left hand and Billy Joel, Chicago after album IV, Nickelback, Meatloaf, Starship, James Blunt, ad nauseum; I am right now reaching for a Zofran just to be safe.”
Corey once assisted DJ Mookie “Spindle” Balustrade on research and production of Komar & Melamid’s famous “The Most [Un]wanted Song,” two songs produced using extensive polling to incorporate the general public’s favorite and least favorite sounds in two songs. Result: the annoyance level of the “most wanted” is even higher than that of the “unwanted”. Further evidence for papa, who devoted a whole show to “UNwanted” music, that our world is just one long, melting, scratched repeat-groove LP. BTW: this show almost got him suspended from WOOF. He got off with a stern warning from the board.
“I will tell the US government to contact Billy Joel – ‘workin’ too hard can give you a heartattack-ack-ack-ack’ – Oh My Fucking Niet-Bestaande God and add the Eagles, they will win the war against terror.” ...
☉