Playlist Date & Time: 12/27/2009 12:00AM - 3:00AM

Program: Blues in the Night with Jamie Dell'Apa

Unsentimental Memories

Between Christmas and New Years the "looking-backwards" cliche becomes acute schmaltz.  Tonight's show features no Christmas songs, no retrospective list of 2009 events, no manufactured profundity and no recycled clips from previous shows.  There is simply too much ignored music from the trash cana of Americana that has rarely modulated the electromagnetic spectrum.  Music for the post-culture vulture crowd.   

For an unsentimental context, sounds clips of dialog taken from a post-Katrina New Orleans.  Yep, I ran a magnetic pick up head over all that ancient exposed rusty metal and it picked up years of radio and television signals embedded in the faint electromagnetic rearrangement of the iron oxide particles.  All that rusty metal acted like a cassette tape recording our culture history.    

Speaking of trash cana of Americana, how's this for dumpster diving:

As I watch the original War Of The Worlds on television, my unsentimental memories from the months right after Katrina:

1.  The infestation of seed ticks.  I pulled one or two a day off my dog for months and found all over the house and property.  By January they all disappeared. 

2.  The egret that went fishing in background fountains.  My remaining fish hid for weeks and the bird mocked me by leaving fried egg sized droppings.

3.  The coffin flies that flew up through the sewers to devour the rotting food from unpowered refrigerators.  If you weren't careful, they would fly in your mouth.  

4.  The battle between the outsiders who were drawn to post-apocalyptic world with their goofy ideas of authority and victimhood versus local culture that was accustomed to living in a degraded city.  They had no defense against our parades, Mardi Gras or ability to ignore them like the disaster tourists they actually were.  

5.  The swarming press that just needed to twist a local quote fit their pre-conceived story.  

6.  Our need to talk about the storm, the nearness of tears and the hugs between returning locals.  It wasn't about the physical destruction.  We missed our unique culture.   

My thanks to Christy Grimes for helping out again this weekend and for programming the last 30 minutes of the show.   She's got good radio ears.

Box Score

127 Selection over 180 minutes.  Factoring in announcer breaks, each selection averages less than the duration of a typical television commercials.     

348 Number of consecutive outdoor showers I've taken regardless of rain, cold and even house guests.  The latter are the most challenging.

0 Number of prostitutes hanging around my house after last week's show.  Do they have the Christmas holiday off too?

68 interstitials sound clips from:

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Pee Wee

Yosemity Sam

Hal 9000

Comic Book Guy

Fred Rogers

Groucho Marx

Barbara Billingsly

Rosanna Barr

Tattoo (Da Plane, Da Plane - before Up, Up and Away (DC 9 flight)

Fog Horn Leg Horn

Howard Beal

Coach Tom Hanks

Humphrey Bogart

Dr. Zeus

John Huston (China Town - "You see Mr. Gits, in the wrong time and place a man is capable of anythinnnnnggggggg.")

Arnold Schwartzenegger

Bob Vila

BB King

Susan Lucci

Danny Devito

Bill Murray,

and many more... 

Web link of the night:

http://improveverywhere.com/

 Just looks at this site and enjoy.

And tonight, a playlist that eschews accurate sequencing.   

Playlist Tracks