Not strictly Beefheart related, but I thought I'd let you know that WFMU's fund-rasing marathon is now on and I'd urge any of you who ever enjoy WFMU to support the station and make a donation to keep them going another year.

If any of you haven't ever enjoyed WFMU then it's about time you started. It's entirely listener-supported, no advertising, no government grants and so they play exactly what they want to play - the broadest range of specialist, adventurous, odd and downright fun music available anywhere in the world.

Beefheart related items from the WFMU archive:

• The Golden Birdies comic
• 2002 Don Van Vliet birthday special and extensive interview with Gary Lucas
• Philip Johnston and Gary Lucas' Beefheart project Fast and Bulbous live in 2004

If you know of any more WFMU Beefheart specials please let me know and I'll include links here.

If you fancy something more general, you can just listen live or dive into the most recent archives to hear all WFMU programmes whenever you want. My personal favourites are:

• Downtown Soulville (outrageously funky soul)
• Greasy Kids' Stuff (especially great if you have any youngsters in your household)
• Sinner's Crossroads (gnarly raw gospel)
• Transpacific Sound Paradise (music from around the world)
• Irwin Chusid (wrote the excellent book about outsider musicians Songs In The Key Of Z which includes a chapter on Beefheart)
• Gateway To Joy (all-African on the first Friday of the month, still great the rest of the time)
• Music of Our Times (different themes from week to week, always fabulous)

There's so much more than just this though. A lot of the website looks like crap but the shows are magic. Sometimes I just can't believe my luck that something so good exists.

Posted by Graham Johnston at 6:08 PM - post a comment