Obscure recordings, eating the leftovers of others, and sex ed puppetry for kids… on the Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard

On our very first show, a young boy called in from Ann Arbor to proclaim, somewhat inexplicably, “I have no regrets.” Well, unlike him, I do have regrets. This week, mistakes were made. I won’t list them here, as doing so would be both painful and tedious, but I did want to acknowledge that lessons were learned during the most recent episode of The Saturday Six Pack with Mark Maynard, and assure you that changes will be made as a result. Most notably, I’ve come to accept that there’s an inverse relationship between the amount of beer that I consume during the course of the show and the ultimate quality of said show. Surprisingly, it took four episodes for this to become evident, which I guess is a good thing… Yes, from now on, I pledge to do a better job of sharing my beer. That won’t solve everything, but I think it’ll put us on more stable footing going forward. Also, we’ll make sure to play records at the correct speed in the future, and I’ll try to keep my prerecorded bits shorter. Oh, and I’ll make sure to have more women in the mix, beginning with next week’s Valentine’s Day show. There are other things too, but that’s a much as I want to get into right now… Here, if you’d like to listen to the most recent episode of the show, as it was broadcast over AM 1700 last night, is the whole thing on Soundcloud. If you’d like, you can also download the podcast from the Apple iTunes store.

Based on how I started the post, I suspect you probably think the whole thing was just a chaotic mess, and that’s not the case at all. There was a lot to like about this week’s show, starting with the interview I did with local artist Jason Wright… Here’s Jason, telling us about his role in putting out the incredibly rare, very much sought-after first EP by Shortwave Mystery in 1985. [All photos courtesy Kate de Fuccio]

The interview with Jason starts right at the beginning of the show, just after our new intro song, and runs until the 54-minute mark. (The new intro song, by the way, was written by Linette’s cousin, Andy Wong. And I think it’s beautiful.) While Jason and I do talk a bit about public art and the beauty of community radio, for the most part, we discuss his memories of young adulthood as they related to Shortwave Mystery, an early American response to the electronic music of the European avant-garde. We heard about Jason’s old friend Greg Scoggin, who had composed the whole thing while sharing a bedroom with him in Isla Vista, California just after high school. We discussed how the record came about, and how it was that Jason came to be dressed as a cowboy in the photo on the album cover, and in the “band” that would occasionally stand on stage, pretending to perform, as the recorded tracks played.

If you’re at all interested in the origins of electronic music in the United States, or just find yourself a little curious as to what kids were doing with synthesizers and early sampling technology in small town America in the early ’80s, I’d encourage you to check it out… Here’s the record, which is known to sell for as much as $1,000 at auction. (We listened to one side of the EP at the 29-minute mark. And, at the 47-minute mark, we listen to a more recent song released by Greg, who, unfortunately, passed away just recently in California as a result of a motorcycle crash.)

[This is the most valuable record, I’m sure, to ever play on the AM 1700 turntable.]

And, we followed that with a taped discussion with Peter Larson about the image that he’d sent in from Kenya of my face on a poster in Nairobi. It’s a long, rambling call, but I’m glad that we kept going, as it ended somewhere really interesting… with the idea that Pete could release one last album on Bulb Records – a compilation of Bulb covers performed by Kenyan musicians. (The thought of Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink, Couch, Andrew W.K. and Quintron covered by folks like The Refuse Stealing Kukana Kuba Band, makes me absolutely giddy with excitement.)

At 1:16, David Anthony, a comedian from Arkansas, drops by the studio with his twin brother. To my knowledge, this is the fist instance the word “twincest” was used in Ypsilanti.

At 1:25, the Hungry Collectors (Cre Fuller and Chris Sandon) came in to bid on people’s leftovers. Three people came in with leftovers to be bid on. Here’s Cre haggling over a piece of Dos Hermanos taco brought in by Marty Flint.

At 1:54, we played Pete Larson’s most recent song from Kenya. (He’s sent us a new song every week since our second episode.) Here’s the song, in case you missed it.

At 1:57, Patrick Elkins comes in the perform his new shadow puppet show, “Escape from the Return of the Curse from the Night of Disappearing Pants,” in the window of the studio facing Pearl Street. Patrick said his intent, through this piece, was to demonstrate to the young people of Ypsilanti that, “love making is both science and art.” And I think, judging from the faces of the people outside the studio, that he succeeded. (If I’m not mistaken, this was the first instance in human history of shadow puppetry broadcast over AM.)

At 2:10, we discussed the future of the show as things descended into madness.

Oh, and this week’s six pack was New Belgium Rampant.

Stay tuned for details on next weekend’s special Valentine’s Day show.