Experimental Radio, New Jersey Style

My brother lives in Brooklyn. So does his wife. So do their cats. Why am I telling you this? Because it's true. I visited in 1991, choosing for a traveling companion a remarkably opportunistic and mean-spirited individual who managed to get most of my money away front me and now lives somewhere north of Columbus, Ohio. This was all part of a gradual nervous breakdown which ultimately found me cowering in a friend's backyard garden on the West Side of Ann Arbor, talking to the bees. It was a rough year or Wulfie. Fortunately, even falling apart and losing one's marbles looks great in retrospect. At least that's my take on the issue. The reason I bring it up right now is the remarkable stretch of my wanderings which involved a radio station quite unlike any l have ever gotten inside of.

WFMU could be called the WCBN of the Eastern Seaboard FMU is affiliated with Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey, but somehow does not suffer from some of the notorious frictions which over the years have characterized WCBN's relations with the University of Michigan. It's not inconceivable that eventually they will break free from Upsala, if they haven' t already. I really need to get an update. Sorry I haven't got any fresh information about this. But here's what I saw there five years ago:

WFMU had moved its entire setup into a wood-frame house. A turn-o'-the-century Greek Revival mansion with big white pillars. From the outside it looked like just another large antiquated dwelling. Stepping into the spacious living room, I found I was standing in the main broadcasting facility! Three turntables, several cassette decks and compact disc players. Full-blown noise projection equipment, with a signal drifting well into the corners of several states. Parts of New York City were affected. And this was completely non-commercial, no-holds-barred alternative broadcasting. Cleverly concealed within a sleepy neighborhood in the suburbs of Newark.

A fellow named Ken, former general manager of WCBN, invited me to visit. I had been sending them one-hour radio shows on tape for quite some time previous to the trek. Since that time I've had to abandon the project, as I am grossly overcommitted to radio mayhem here at home. But it was in fact very exciting to produce my very own reckless offering and to know that they'd be blasting my strangest notions through the skies of the Garden State. I called my program The Chrono-synclastic Infundibulum, borrowing the title from Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan. The term describes an elongated, funnel-shaped manifestation which sucks up time and spits it out at irregular intervals. It just so happens that this is my definition of Radio.

The people at FMU were understandably curious as to who exactly had been making those twisted tapes; they were also very hospitable and allowed me to wander all over the house, peering into the back rooms where sophisticated production facilities had been installed. Here, as in the main studio in the living room, the phonographic turn tables were suspended within their pits on what looked to be very large rubber bands. This kept the vibrating floorboards from disrupting the tracking of the needles across the records. Yes! Records! Lots of them! Real radio stations use all extant formats.

I was still getting accustomed to compact discs. One of the first I ever got to play was handed me there in the hallway of FMU's homey house. It was one of several exciting volumes of wacky piano music by Paul Hindemith, dating from the 1920s. Each disc had an illustration on its cover from the doodle-infested notebooks of the composer. My favorite showed a demented monster eating its own foot. I was able to air these and many other forgettable noises when the DJs began to realize that I was willing to cover just about anybody's airshift. So they took time off and let me rave and spin to my heart's content.

Radio-ing in the front parlour of a big old house is an unforgettable experience. (Although I had broadcast from my own living room here in Ann Arbor, with the expert assistance of WCBN's Paul Townsend, Harry Beanball and Sir Thomas Bray. On one occasion, the notorious Dr. Laszlo showed up with a beautiful phonographic cylinder player, and we aired antique cylindrical recordings from my living quarters!) WFMU's living room was sunny and friendly.

There, as at WCBN, I had almost complete freedom to air what I wished. Or anyway as much freedom as the Christian-Capitalist Government allows us. Still, FMU loved to take it to the extreme; not far from the announcer's microphone, along with prerecorded station IDs and public service announcements, there was a clearly- labeled tape of the Robert Kennedy assassination, "carted up" as we say, and ready to air if one felt it necessary to do so. My kinda radio!

I stayed for several days. If I'd been traveling alone I might have stayed a month. They let me sleep in a tiny room upstairs which had a carefully inscribed sign on the door identifying it as The Alan Watts Rejuvenation Chamber. At night the rats in the attic tap-danced and made love, just over my head. Monday morning I stumbled downstairs only to find that the entire station had been taken over by Rabbis! It was like a Woody Allen movie! Nobody had told me they have exclusively Jewish programming on weekday mornings. It was terrific wake-up radio; every conceivable facet of Judaic culture was celebrated. You'd be surprised at how many different types of music have been reinterpreted from a Jewish perspective. Mickey Katz and his Kosher Jammers are only the tip of the Ice Berg. Of course, in New Jersey this emphasis made all the sense in the world.

By far the strongest presence I felt was that of William Carlos Williams, who spent most of his life delivering babies and caring for the sick in Rutherford. Bill loved his home turf and would be saddened to see the industrial wasteland which has seeped out over much of the state. As the afternoon sun came through the kitchen windows and illuminated the steam rising from the vegetarian chili in the cast iron pot, I reflected on our peculiar progress. Some might have gotten bored; that's something I don't believe in. Do you?

In the evenings I crouched and studied the theories of Arnold Schoenberg, who warned against accepting a philosophy based upon comfort. Music, he said, involves searching, not complacency. Always be true to the Search, even when you do not know exactly what it is you are going to find. The book itself I had found while searching (without a specific goal) through a bookstore in the East Village; St. Mark's. This shop had an entire wall of titles under the subject heading: Anarchy. But I went for the Schoenberg text across the room, persevering in the name of the Search.

And as much as I like to wake people up gently on Sunday mornings with traditional Jazz on the Sunday Best, (WEMU Ypsilanti 89.1 FM), I often subject myself for hours to the exploratory surgeons of modem music; Mahler to Webern to Stockhausen to Braxton, cycling back to 12th Century Church Modes and the sounds emitted by insects. Naked, I spread the books and tapes around me on the floor, up half the night and seizing all available pieces of the day, stopping only for filtered water and cat naps. Remember there are no limits, really . Don't let anybody try and put none of that growth regulator on your leaves. You've come to resemble a hawthorne in bloom. Be proud of your lovely thoms. The sun brings a sugar to the resin of your twigs; let that be your own regulation. Look for tomorrow and search for another way. That's what we're living for.