I like the fact that these guys are all local. They have good taste too. The thing that’s strange on a community level is that there is no way to contact them. Their site just seems broken and their email down. Their myspace is gone too. Odd. Maybe they are freakin about licensing or something. Or it’s turned into a money pit to legally license music.
Anyway keep fighting the good fight if you are out there,
A little history. Apparently during WWII an Australian POW in a Japanese Prison named Cornell, who would have made an amazing hacker, came up with the idea that if you use a Gillette “blue” razor and pencil lead, you can receive radio stations. It works similar to a crystal radio due to the coating they put on this particular razor blade at that time. By touching different parts of the razor you get different frequencies. It was later called a “Foxhole Radio”.
On punk: “Punk became the most important cultural phenomenon of the late 20th century. Its authenticity stands out against the karaoke ersatz culture of today, where everything and everyone is for sale.”
I guess now that the FCC can’t uphold Net Neutrality this is more a strategic move on Comcast’s part. Or maybe a mockery! They own the pipes and there is nothing you can do about it. So there. Forever. It’s kind of like kettle calling the pot black or vice versa. Or even versa vice. Saw this add and clipped it. It has nothing to do with free radio airwaves or does it?
Circa 1984 The Dead Kennedys headlined a mega-show at the Beacon Theater, with opening acts No Thanks, The New York Transplants, False Prophets, and Millions Of Dead Cops. The first ten rows of orchestra seats were removed for the occasion, leaving a vast expanse of bare wooden floor for chaos. The show started promptly at 8pm with No Thanks’s girl singer screeching “Fuckthedraftdon’tregister.” The Transplants’ lead vocalist peeled off layer after layer of clothes until he was down to just pink knickers, shading his eyes the whole time while staring at the sound booth and continually monotoning “Would somebody please turn down the lights?”, even in the middle of songs. I couldn’t tell if this was part of the act or the lights were really bothering him. When No Thanks and The Transplants were done with their brief sets they signed off with ”Good night” and “Fuck you,” respectively, and that was that.
False Prophets were next. Stephan donned a taxidermied moose head that him look like Bullwinkle and ranted about Jean-Paul Marat getting stabbed in the back in his bathtub. Like the deep sea diver’s helmet that rendered a Salvador Dali lecture indecipherable, the moose head muffled Stephan’s voice so heavily that it was all but impossible to hear him. A kid jumped up on stage next to Stephan, thrashed too close and inadvertently banged into him so hard his noggin rebounded audibly off the inside of the moose head, thudthudthud.
Stephan ended his set with a stiff-backed heel-clicking salute on the last note of “Blind Obedience,’ then yelled “God bless America” with what I assumed was sarcasm.
When Jello Biafra suddenly appeared onstage sans fanfare a small wax-paper packet was launched from the crowd, sailed through the air in an arc, and landed with a plop at his feet. He picked the packet up and held it out at arms’ length with as much nose-wrinkled disdain as if it were a sloppy-second trojan. “Oooooooo, how original,” Jello sneered, the same thing happening night after night after night, “a package of Jello!” I saw this same scene, with minor variations -sometimes the Jello was already prepared and set and splatted onstage blob-like- repeated every time I saw the DKs. Jello would -and did- rip his namesake packet open and sprinkle sugary red powder onto the sweaty barebacked human swell pressing against the stage. ”Now you can all be sweet and sticky,” he would -and did- say, just before exploding into Life Sentence: “Used to be/A partner in crime/Now you say you ain’t got the time… Instant Jello, instant pandemonium. I got high-lowed by bodies flying in opposite directions and involuntarily somersaulted onto the base of my skull as more bodies fell on top of me like cars piling up in a multi-vehicle accident, the crushing weight gradually decreasing as they rolled off one by one. I was helped up by a guy twice my size and went back into the maelstrom for more. Bodies slipped, slid and fell as the slick of sweat on the polished hardwood deepened into a puddle, but thankfully I didn’t go down on my skull again…
Interview to soon be published in näkyvyys (Finland)
näkyvyys: Where did this idea come from? J.F. Culhane: The idea for Radio Free Blissville came out of a longer script where a main character Crosswell is living in two separate worlds simultaneously. One of these worlds is a false world, and the self deception proceeds to catch up with him. He finds himself aligning to a pirate radio cult. It is here he finds his true voice.
n: Where is Blissville? JFC:Blissville is actually a small part of Queens near Long Island City that was once apparently a Gypsy village. I believe it’s now the Calvary Cemetery. Strange place.
n: What does pirate radio signify? JFC: The thing about pirate radio which I’ve always been attracted to was that it’s akin to some kind of magic. There is an untraceable voice that is emanating out of the noise. It may be there one day, it may disappear the next. You may think you hear it. It’s instantly mythical. It’s slightly insane. It’s independent of everything you’ve been told. You don’t control it. I suppose there is almost something religious about it, in that anyone who is chosen by god hears voices. There is a fine line between religious fervor and pure madness because it’s all invisible.
n: Are we better off without technology? JFC: The role or dependency technology plays in the modern world is a heavy concept in this short. I wanted to explore what would happen if our methods of instant gratification and overload through technology disappeared overnight. I discovered this Achilles heel though satellites. I realized that if that entire system was brought down and an informational house of cards collapsed, the average modern person would be utterly disoriented.
n: Are the characters supposed to be absurd? JFC: The humor in the short comes out of the fact that people will always survive and adapt. They will always rise above the absurdity and devastation of a situation. They might be in shock, but some people’s instincts are only to survive and not look back. I realized during 911 in New York that after the initial shock wears off of something cataclysmic you really don’t want to discuss or talk about it. Maybe once a year you relive it or memorialize it, but you have to move on. It’s almost a defense mechanism. It exhausts you to stay in a past of uncertainty and confusion. I found that same kind of exhaustion with these characters. They are past talking about the disaster because they are living in it. Carl played by Joe Lihach, is the only one who alludes to it almost mockingly. He’s still angry and slightly worried about it.
n: What were the satellites? How was that done? JFC: Satellites crashing to Earth are such an abstraction, that visually I had to come up with some interesting effects. It’s a lot to explain in the set up. Believe it or not the visuals of the explosions and the streaks in the sky were done with one of those 1970s fiber-optic lamps. A few of my friend’s kids were playing around with the lamp in the dark, and I ended up shooting and processing the images. I then tried to match the colors and explosions in Maya. I gave the strange blue beam a bit of character, as if it was seeking a target although it’s unclear if the destroyer is terrestrial. The music track from rebel: Nickname fit perfectly without having to re-edit the visuals. The distorted electronic music gives the 3d a more organic feel. It makes what happening more sinister somehow.
n: How did you choose the talent for this project? JFC: This project was really a collaboration of many people, some of whom had dual roles. David Reynolds created the titles and also contributed music tracks via his organization the Center for Audio Visual Research. Baqi Shaeed who plays Ernie also contributed the hip hop track via A.B. Dowell towards the end when they’ve been driving for too long. Marina Neary who plays Sonya is also a writer who specializes in historical fiction and playwriting. Everyone on this project seemed to be multi-disciplined in one way or another. Very smart and talented people.
n: Where did Lenox’ character come from? JFC: Lenox’s character was in the original script but we added interesting layers to him in this short tangent. He is a curious character in that his quixotic broadcasts are almost ritualistic. The actor Andrew Hampsas brought a lot to this. We would also do improvisations where he would just improvise as we drove around. Another trait that developed was that Lenox is somehow incapacitated or disabled. He never leaves the car. He is only free when he’s being driven around doing his broadcasts. He needs to do this. He hints about breaking his back, but you cannot tell if he is exaggerating.
In Brooklyn a few years ago I found an entire box of old Shortwave radio QSL calling cards that were all traceable to someone named Vincent Dembowski who had lived in Brooklyn. There were hundreds of cards from all over the world. Back in the 1950’s the goal was to get as many of these cards from people who heard your shortwave broadcasts. On the cards they would write who they were and the actual details of the signal. I get the feeling that a lot of these DIY radio fanatics were ex radio guys from WWII or Korea. That’s how they learned the technology. I also read somewhere that it was a liberating hobby for people who had physical disabilities. They could go anywhere via their radios even though their bodies couldn’t.
n: Why are there different versions of the piece? JFC: I found that I needed a shorter version of the entire project for festivals, but I’m also very interested in the idea of mashing up versions of the narrative and experimenting with deconstructing the events and the set up. Interesting accidents always happen when you step back. This is really the first pure digital film/video project that I look at more like software or one that yields derivatives like traditional storytelling. I see the versions like branches. It would be great to have people contribute their own interpretations and accidents. The audio became experimental in that what we are hearing is triggered by Lenox. Lenox is manipulating his voice or adding echo. He’s constantly tinkering. It gives him and his audio a certain unpredictability which makes anything possible.
J.F. Culhane is most interested in telling modern stories using digital technology. The methods to achieve these worlds include linear and interactive video, photography, websites, viral media, and virtual elements.
The narrative themes J.F. Culhane is most fascinated by include derivative stories and folklore, chance operations, unseen patterns with subtle subconscious influences, impossibly subjective personal labyrinthine journeys, obsessive behavior and rituals, and the meaning of the modern community.
Radio Free Blissville is a short film tangent of a longer feature script. The short sets up the foundation for a world where humanity’s increased dependency on technology has failed, and the perception of remaining technology as a form of magic invent new myths and necessary communications.
Short Media CV – J.F. Culhane
2009 – Radio Free Blissville – Director/Producer
2003 – Glasscapsule.com – Sovereign Media Label and Distribution Network
On punk: “Punk became the most important cultural phenomenon of the late 20th century. Its authenticity stands out against the karaoke ersatz culture of today, where everything and everyone is for sale.”
