Pay no attention to your music player!

Podcast: Big Phil’s Love Parade
Dates: August 4, August 11, August 25, 2008
Titles: This Ain’t No Party, This Ain’t No Disco, No More Yankie My Wankie! The Donger Want Food!,The Music Show #10
Download the show: Show 145, Show 146, Show 148

Did you know that some 6,000 people download the Big Phil’s Love Parade podcast each and every month?

These numbers bestow a certain power on a man — the power to build up, or destroy, to change minds, change the course of history, or maybe just change his pants; I don’t know.

And so when Phil slashes with his scathing wit, his blade cuts deep and wide. But that blade also cuts two ways….

Playing the game

Oh, yeah, I knew what I was doing when I first sent Phil my music. I wanted to make his audience (6,000 downloads per month, and counting) my audience. I didn’t record this crap just to file it away in my music folder, which is the place on my computer where I file all my music.

No, I sent Phil my songs, and he played them. Encouraged, I began auditing the Love Parade (I try to time my downloads so as to be the 6000th listener in any given month; perhaps Phil will notice this and mention my name!), and over the course of several dozen Monday evenings, gradually accepted the grim reality that neither mine nor Phil’s lives were ever going to get any better.

I also noticed that Phil displays a certain rough style around the microphone, the kind of mic style a man picks up brawling in bars in factory towns, or maybe those bars out by the harbor, where a man’s always looking over his shoulder while he drinks, less he wakes up with a headache in the hold of a British Royal Navy ship two days out to sea.

Mic hunt

Phil to this point has somehow escaped prosecution for his reckless abuse of recording equipment. He routinely bumps his glass of absinthe into the cheap microphone, and listeners have grown used to the sound of his mouse clicking excitedly in the background.

But that’s his style, and I guess no man has a right to tell another man how to beat up his microphone or abuse his mouse.

I’m not just any man, though. I’m a man with a better idea about whatever it is that you do, and a compulsion to share my opinion.

So, I sent Phil a bumper, recorded through the butt end of a set of airline headphones, ostensibly promoting the Love Parade but in reality, I will admit, poking fun at Phil’s recording technique.

My Man Godfrey

Phil played my bumper, laughed a little bit, and drily suggested listeners “check out [Ken's] tour schedule and all his music. His music has actually been played on the Arthur Godfrey show — that’s a very popular show — and the fabulous Dumont Network.”

Both Arthur Godfrey and the fabulous Dumont Network, naturally, have been extinct for many decades. You mean, just like Ken’s music career? Ouch!

My August gig at Half Price Books in Dallas provided additional fodder. “I believe he has another gig coming up at the Fillmore East…. Oh, also, according to his Web site, it looks like he’ll be appearing at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. So if you happen to be in the New York area be sure to catch those gigs as well.”

Again, the irony was not lost on me. It’s a long way from the book store to the cover of Rolling Stone, isn’t it, pal? Think you’ll make it before you’re as dead as those classic venues? Fat chance!

Don’t laugh!

Ah, but remember what I said about that blade, the one that cuts both ways because it’s sharp on two different edges? Well, it seems that Phil’s offhanded dig at Half Price Books came back to bite him on his rosy, red behind.

That’s red as in socialist, and once a little research hipped Phil to HPB’s committment to literacy, education and the environment (three of Phil’s favorite radical causes), he chastely apologized not just to HPB, but to the Fillmore East, Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, for good measure.

To the swelling strains of Pomp and Circumstance, Phil declared, “Ken should be quite happy to have played a gig for such a socially conscious company.

“CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, the Fillmore East. Half Price Books? Hey, don’t laugh. And don’t think that I’m making fun and considering you a failure, Ken, because I’m not! Ken Turetzky, I salute you!”

During those same recent episodes, Phil also played People I Know, (Jerry Lewis) Fly Me To The Moon and an exclusive, live Big Black Barn from the Half Price Books show.

Ken exaggerates…a little!  (6:02).

Posted in: Podcast Roundup at 1:43 pm Thu, Sep 18, 2008.

One comment

1. 

   Big Phil says:
   Twitter:

   10:40 am Fri, Sep 19, 2008

   You make me sound pretty cool.

   Brawling in factory bars? If only I were that much of a tough guy.

   Reply