THANK YOU!

Hi folks,

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who gave so generously last week to keep my show on the air at CIUT! It was our most successful fundraising drive yet! We raised over $600 for the station.

Also big thanks to Matt Kupfer, Heather Gilroy, Alex Nursall, Navi Lamba, Vita Carlino, Tom Cardosso, Alex Simion and, of course, my mom for being on the show last week to help promote the drive.

Thanks all! I look forward to producing more great radio for the foreseeable future.

-Chris

Fall Friends of 89.5 Fundraising Drive!

Hi everyone!

So as many of you already know, this week is the fall fundraising drive for Electric Boogaloo's home radio station, CIUT 89.5fm. The station is community-run and not-for-profit, meaning we need all the financial help we can get!

There are a couple of ways to help CIUT and Electric Boogaloo:

1. Got to ciut.fm and click on 'Donate'. That way, you give easily through PayPal or your credit card.

2. Come by Electric Boogaloo's Cheap Cake Brunch. This Friday, from 11am to Noon, I will personally be giving cake and prizes to anyone who donates $5 or more to CIUT! (Please note: I only have a limited supply of cake) We are located in the Map Room of Hart House, at 1 Hart House Circle.

3. Call in during my show Friday! From Noon to 2pm this Friday (November 6th), you can call in and donate to the program. The pledge line is 416-946-7800. Fun!

Please, if you are able to donate, I would really appreciate it. Hundreds of volunteers help with CIUT every week, and none of use are compensated. It's a huge vote of confidence to see people show how much they enjoy all of our hard work. My show, and the station, need your help!

Thanks everyone, and I hope all is well,

-Chris
Host and Producer, EB

Playlist - Oct. 30, 09 - Halloween Spooktacular 3!

This week: it's the Halloween episode! Spooky! Scary! As such, Haligonians Ghost Bees (Sari and Romy Lightman) stop by to help pick they favourite scarifying tunes, and I talk to Mira and Reuben from Ladytron about the people behind the robots. Full podcasts of each hour are available here.

Playlist
Ghost Bees - Sinai (from Tasseomancy)
Jex Thoth - Obsidian Night (from Jex Thoth)
Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem (from Wind's Poem)
YACHT - The Afterlife (from See Mystery Lights)
Goblin - Tenebrae (from Tenebrae)
Fever Ray - Stranger Than Kindness (single)
Ghost Bees - Tear Tassle Ogre Heart (from Tasseomancy)
Peaches - Trick or Treat (from I Feel Cream)
No Kids - For Halloween (from Come Into My House)
Elvis Costello - Spooky Girlfriend (from When I Was Cruel)
Suicide - Ghost Rider (from Suicide)
Timber Timbre - Demon Host (from Timber Timbre)
Andre Williams and The Sadies - Pardon Me (I've Got Someone to Kill) (from Red Dirt)
Ladytron - Ghosts (from Velocifero)
Ladytron - Seventeen (from Lights and Magic)
Bauhuas - Bela Legosi's Dead (from Bela Legosi's Dead)
Tracy Jordan - Werewolf Barmitzvah (from the 30 Rock OST)
Jonathan Coulton - Re: Your Brains (from Thing a Week Two)

Check it out!
Ghost Bees
Jonathan Coulton
Werewolf Barmitzvah

Next week: It's the CIUT Friends of 89.5 Fundraising Drive! So strap in, and get ready to be pitched to!

EB Winter Schedule - BASEMENT JAXX - THE FIERY FURNACES - GWAR

Hi everyone,

I've finalized the rest of the year at Electric Boogaloo, and at least a couple of my (fairly recent) dreams are coming true! For one, I have interviews with Basement Jaxx, and Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces. And I'm going to meet Onderous, lead yeller for monsters-from-outer-space metal band GWAR. And there are lots of other neat people coming on the show too, including:

-Brooklyn's Crystal Antlers, as interviewed by EB correspondant Sean MacKay!
-Stephen Harper's new favourite band (I kid you not) The Rural Alberta Advantage
-The 2009 Year in Music show
-Local hotshots Little Girls, Parallels and Daniel Gray
-And, as previously announced, an interview with Daniel Johnston.

Yeah!

So keep listening, I will have even more updates soon.

-Chris


Schedule for rest of 2009

11/6 - FUNDRAISING DRIVE - please donate to CIUT today!
11/13 - Daniel Johnston, Parallels
11/20 - The Fiery Furnaces (Eleanor Freidberger)
11/27 - Little Girls, Crystal Antlers

12/4 - Gwar, Daniel Gray
12/11 - Basement Jaxx, Rural Alberta Advantage
12/18 - Year in Review Roundtable
12/25 - Christmas Day, so, likely no show.

Calvin Johnson Interview

After months of battling with my hard drive over the files and footage I took at Sappyfest, here is one of the many things I shot, an interview with Calvin Johnson, founder of K Records, outside an art gallery in Sackville, NB.

Paul F. Tompkins Interview

There's a good reason that Paul F. Tompkins (performing at the Rivoli Sunday at 7pm, and again at 9:30) is widely considered one of the funniest comics working today. Whether it's through his distinctive stand up, Mr. Show reruns, his hosting duties on VH1's Best Week Ever (though there is some bad news about that in the interview...read on!), or his recent turn as a frequent guest on Comedy Death Ray Radio, Tompkins is virtually everywhere. We talked about kid's movies, podcasts and why all Canadians are liars. (Questions in italics.) (Audio of this interview will be up on the podcast site soon. This is a transcript of our radio interview that aired Oct. 23rd)


So, you're coming to Toronto to do two sets...

I'm going to be doing two completely diffrerent sets Sunday night. So if people want to come to both shows, I don't blame them.

Where are you right now?

I'm in New York doing John Oliver's standup show. And since I'm going to be on that side of the continent, it just seemed to make sense. The thing that actually brought me to Toronto is a Facebook group. I was in Atlanta recording a DVD in this tiny theatre that seats 74 people, and I was having trouble getting tickets sold. I was saying, you're having trouble getting 300 people in a major city to come out and see me? So, I started on Twitter saying 'I need 300 people to come to this show, spread the word'. So people retweeted it, and it happened, I got the amount that I needed. And in the midst of this happening, someone said 'when are you going to come to Toronto?', and I said 'get 300 people to want me to'. So this guy, I believe his name is Bob Kerr, started this Facebook group and got 300 people on the group, and that was it, so I booked a show.

Thanks for coming back to Canada! I know you had a rough time the last time you were here.

Oh God, Vancouver.

What happened exactly?

I just did a show as part of the global comedy festival. You know, the global comedy festival, the one that the whole globe participates in. I love doing festivals, and Vancouver is historically nice, but we did a show at Yuk Yuks, which was the absolute worst.

Yuk Yuk's is kind of Canada's big, mainstream chain, so that might have been part of it.

That's all we have here. You think Canada is going to be different because Canadians are so polite, but where I'm getting this thing is from Canadians. What is ruder than lying about being polite?

Maybe the rudeness was circumstantial?

I am, of course, joshing. I am joshing all of Canada when I say that. No, that's what you get in comedy clubs. It was a late show, and I was on dead last, so people were drunk. They had been talking pretty much through the whole show. And I had decided that I wasn't going to do any material, just stream of conciousness riffing. Which I think I, and maybe six other people in the audience, really enjoyed. Others were either confused, angry or sleepy.

I guess there's kind of an odd tension for a show that has you, and Tig Nitaro, and so on doing a show in a middle of the road type venue. Do you run into that kind of contradiction a lot?

Oh yeah, it's out there. Even in non-traditional venues. I'll go to places that are rock clubs, and you'd think, 'oh, just because this isn't a comedy club, this is going to be great.' But, there are plenty of people in there who've never heard of me and don't care about what I do. I think any time the emphasis is on drinking rather than on the show, that's what you're going to get. When the idea is that it's a party - it's not a party, it's a show. There's a different kind of participation.

I'd heard an interview with members of The State recently, where they talked about their early shows. In one case they were opening for a roller derby. The interviewer asked if they would do something like that again if they could, and they said absolutely not.

I'll tell you what, I am glad to hear that. Some people like to embrace those venues - 'non-traditional venues' - but those places aren't supposed to have shows. I don't want to perform in a place where there isn't supposed to be performing. It's like everything about it is telling you you're not supposed to be here.

This interview is a for a music show, and I always like the ask comics about the intersections between music and comedy. There's of course the old adage that musicians think they're funny and comics think they're rock stars.

Oh yeah, that is age old for sure. Everybody dreams of something that they can't really do. We're no different, my musician friends and I. I wish I could sing better than I can do it. But I was only given so many gifts. I think the biggest overlap is that, with songwriters and comedians, you're writing what you know. You're sharing your personal thoughts with a group of people, it's just that musicians hide behind instruments, where they know people have to applaud at the end. With comedy, because it's conversational, audiences feel like, if they don't like it, they have the right to talk about it. That's wrong by the way. That is incorrect, audiences. That's the reason it's called a mono-logue.

You're a prolific Twitter-er.

Oh yeah.

Do you think comedy has been changed by Twitter? It seems like comedians are the new royalty on Twitter.

Yeah, it makes sense because it's jokes. I'm not really a joke guy, my act is more long form than one liners, but it's certainly how comedians think, in jokes and observations. It's just natural that it lends itself to that form of expression. One hundred and forty characters or less, it's a couple of sentences. If I can't be funny in a couple of sentences, I guess I should hang it up.

Do you feel that Twitter has changed your writing at all?

There's the possibility that there would be more jokes in a piece than I would have written before because I'm thinking in shorter verse, but I don't think so, I haven't seen any evidence of that yet. I do enjoy the challenge of Twitter, of getting a comedic idea across in so succinct a manner. It's a lot of fun to try and figure that out and to try and get it that close to the idea in your head with those restrictions in mind.

I was a bit surprised to see you in The Informant!

Me too! I have no memory of filming that. I thought it was a guy that looked like me, and then I checked the credits.

There are all these long scenes in the movie where it's you have a conversation with Patton Oswalt or Joel McHale, and Matt Damon isn't even onscreen. What was the casting process like for the movie?

Yeah, and there are probably a lot of comedians that you might not recognize filling in the supporting roles. When I got the audition, I was very exciting. I had never been called into Steven Soderbergh's casting office before, this was very exciting. How did this happen? Maybe because I was in There Will Be Blood for two seconds? Was this going to lead to more two second film appearances?

You were also in a cut scene from Magnolia.

Exactly. The guy looked at my resume, saw I had two PTA movies in there, said 'bring him in!' Then I saw all these guys that I know there, all these other comedians. And I ran into someone I knew, and he said 'oh yeah, they're casting comedians in all of the supporting roles, so it's Matt Damon and then all these comics, some kind of subtext thing that Soderbergh is going for.' And for a moment, I was crushed. I thought I was called in because I was good. I might as well have had red hair. 'Call in all the red hair guys! Doesn't matter if they stink, doesn't matter if they've never acted before. Just guys with red hair.'

I liked that about the movie, though. I was a bit surprised that the whole movie was basically Matt Damon being funny, and juxtaposed with all of these straight-men who are comics. Did it surprise you to see that?

Not when I read the script, because that story is so crazy! And this really happened. I read somewhere that people were complaining that they would have rather seen a straight telling of that story. First of all, that was The Insider, the Russell Crowe movie, so that already happened. Also, the story is nuts! There's no way you could have made that serious. When he keeps revealing more lies, if they were doing that as a tense drama, you would have been laughing anyway. It probably would have been funnier because of the absurdity of it.

So, Best Week Ever went off the air earlier this year.

Yes.

We actually still don't get it here.

Yeah, I don't know what the Best Week Ever embargo is with Canada. I'm sorry about that, Canada!

It's ok - we get clips and pieces here and there. What is the status of the show at this point?

It's gone back to the panel, roundtable format. So I guess I was the only thing about the show that was cancelled.

I thought you were the only reason it was still on television!

No, no, I was the only reason it got taken off.

Have you found it an odd adjustment going from doing this weekly show to being a stand up full time again?

Oh, for sure. Having a place to go everyday is great. As much as, with any job, there are times you would rather be somewhere else, it's nicer to have a place to go than to not have a place to go. I really enjoyed doing that show, and the people I worked with. And I'm proud of the stuff we did on that show. We did some smart, fun comedy, and as far as commentary goes, I think we did more than just make sarcastic comments about things. I do miss that. That said, I was never a pop culture junkie, so I don't miss talking about the Kardashians. I don't weep any tears over that. But, I would do a show like that again, I love performing comedy, and I love performing comedy on television. So yeah, I do miss the gig.

With basically everything in our culture, when something is supposed to be 'funny', especially if it's oriented towards children, people just throw in references that adults will understand in place of humour. Are you more aware of that, having done a pop culture show?

Yes, I guess now that I know who the people are, I don't care for it. I would rather be blissfully unaware. I never liked that stuff anyway, it's just so cheap man. With Pixar movies, they're great, and they never rely on cheap stuff, there's no potty humour, it's just fucking smart, funny and feeling. You want to make something that's suitable for parents? How about quality! But with so many other 'kids movies', they say 'you would have to be a dumb child to enjoy this, so we better put in references to porn actors so parents will enjoy it'? I mean, Paris Hilton did a sex tape. Why else would we know who she is, really? That's what cemented her fame. Is it worth it? Why don't you try a little harder, guys.

Where the Wild Things Are worked for adults because it was made to hold up well. The problem with these other things are that they don't hold up for any time at all.

Yeah! Because it's not designed to, and if you care about something, it's going to hold up. With Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze did as great a job with adapting that as anyone could have, because he streamlined it and made it about the emotions of the book.

At the same time, I don't feel like Where The Wild Things Are was made for children, necessarily.

I feel like it depends on what age you're talking about. In a certain sense, probably a movie like this wasn't made for kids, because it's easier for kids to deal with pictures of those creatures rather than seeing them walking and talking. They're scary, as big-eyed and round-headed as they were, they were pretty alarming. If these things were real, you would be fucking terrified of them. A certain age would probably not like this. There's a narrow age range of kids who would enjoy it. But I think that it's for more kids than people would think it might be, the age would be younger than people might imagine. Because it is very simple and it's about feelings. There's no big words you can't understand.

Changing gears a bit, many people say it's a golden age for movie comedies. It used to be that all comedies were lowest common denominator, and now we have a promising comedy maybe once a month.

Yeah, now it plays to the middle denominator. You know, it's grown men who play video games too much, that demo.

They have this golden ticket to make movies now.

There's definitely a lot of talented people making comedy right now, and it's nice to see. I say see because I'm never invited to participate in any of them.

I find that curious.

Oh, do you?

Yeah!

Imagine how I feel. No, I've always been kind of the edge of that scene, there are people I kind of know or who kind of know me. I just never really fell into that group. I don't know. I'm an awkward person. I'm not good in social situations like that. I always thought that I was, but it turns out I'm not.

I just heard the episode you hosted of Comedy Death Ray Radio - it seems like radio is a natural habitat for comedians.

Yeah, I'd say so. It's kind of the conversational nature of standup. And when comedians get together, there's a lot of riffing, there's a lot of back and forth. It's something like that, but with sitting down with microphones. I'm trying to figure out how to do more of that. I want to do a podcast where I interact with people, because I really do enjoy doing it. And I probably got the best feedback from guest-hosting CDR radio, but I would like to do more.

Was broadcasting ever something you had considered or practiced, or is it something you're coming to now?

You know, it's really just started in the last few years, especially since Best Week Ever. I like hosting, I like being on TV, and I think it's something I resisted for a long time. But when I was young, I always imagined myself being the guest on the talk show. I always imagined being the host on SNL instead of one of the cast members. Because they make it seem like it's so special. I have this variety show that I do in this theatre called Largo in Los Angeles, it's comedy and musicians and sketches and stuff like that. My number one dream would be to do that kind of thing once a week, being in a room with people I like and making jokes, and at the end of the week to make a show. I would love nothing more than that.

Paul F. Tompkins, it's been a real pleasure to talk to you.

Chris, it's been a pleasure to talk to you!


Paul F. Tompkins plays the Rivoli in Toronto Sunday, October 25th at 7pm and 9pm. You can order tickets here.

Playlist - October 23, 09 - Balloon Boys

This week: Tim and Kyle from Toronto's The D'Urbervilles return to help co-host the program, and we just end up talking about Balloon Boy for, like, an hour. Plus, Ben from School of Seven Bells stops by for a quick hit, an interview with comedian Paul F. Tompkins, and new music by Tegan and Sara and We Are Wolves. Oh, and Bob Dylan's terrifying Christmas record.

Playlist
The D'Urbervilles - National Flowers
Shotgun Jimmie - Mind Crumb
The D'Urbervilles - Magic Arrow
Bob Dylan - I'll Be Home for Christmas
Tegan and Sara - Hell
Evening Hymns - Broken Rifle
Golden Isles - You Look Good
Land of Talk - May You Never
Most Serene Republic - Catharsis Boo
Videotape - Night Lights
Little Girls - Growing
We Are Wolves - Dreams
Le Loup - Beach Town
Mocky feat. GZA - Birds of a Feather
School of Seven Bells - Wired for Light
Neu - Hallogallo
You Say Party! We Say Die! - Heart of Gold

Check it out!
School of Seven Bells
Golden Isles
Bob Dylan loves Christmas (don't say I didn't warn you)

Next week: the third annual Halloween Spooktacular! Featuring the two most scare-ifying bands I could think of, the UK's Ladytron and spooky Haligonian twins Ghost Bees! Boo!

Playlist - October 16, 09 - Can Con

This week: Chris is in Ottawa, so Matt Kupfer (pictured above) from CIUT's Take Five, fills in. Matt played a selection of Canadiana from the last twenty years, and an interview with Ryan Edwardson, author of Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music. This episode will be available as a podcast here shortly. Thanks for filling in Matt!

Playlist
Stompin' Tom - Big Joe Mufferaw
Thrush Hermit - The Day We Hit the Coast
Stephen Harper and Yo Yo Ma - With a Little Help From My Friends
The Guess Who - Share the Land
Joni Mitchell - Raised on Robbery
Grand Analog - I Play My Kazoo
The Other Brothers - Progress
Jean Leloup - Ballade à Toronto
Alfa Rococo - Les jours de pluie
Les Cowboys Fringants - Plus Rien
Second Hour
Black Mountain - No Hits
Shotgun Jimmie - Drunkeness
Pink Mountaintops - While We Were Dreaming
Neko Case - Buckets of Rain
Great Lakes Swimmers - I Will Never See the Sun
Rural Alberta Advantage - Edmonton
Teenage Head - Let's Shake
The Inbreds - Any Sense of Time
The Inbreds - Dopefiends and Boozehounds
Stephen Stanley and Carla MacNeil - Take Me In Your Hand
The Rheostatics - My First Show (Massey Hall 3.30.07)
The Rheostatics - Dopefiends and Boozehounds (Massey Hall 3.30.07)

Next week: Chris returns, with The D'Urbervilles and Ben from School of Seven Bells!

Playlist - October 9, 09 - Green Streets

This week: Guelph dance party band Green Go pick some of their favourite tunes (marked with a * below), and a 'classic' interview (i.e., a rerun) with newly minted 'Monstser of Folk' M. Ward. You can hear the M. Ward interview in podcast form here.

Playlist
Los Campesinos! - There Are Listed Buildings
Green Go - Cash Money Gremlins
*The Magic - No Sound
*Richard Laviolette - Media Song
*Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees - You Don't Miss Me
Gentleman Reg - We're in a Thunderstorm (Green Go Remix)
*Peaches - Boys Wanna Be Her
Green Go - Brains for Breakfast
Sea Wolf - The Orchard
Giant Hand - Coming Down from the Mountain
The Hidden Cameras - In the NA
Devandra Banhart - Baby
Why - Even the Good Wood Gone
Monsters of Folk - Temazcal
M. Ward - Rave On
M. Ward feat. Lucinda Williams - Rave On
Conor Oberst - Roosevelt Room
The Flaming Lips - Silver Trembling Hands
Do Make Say Think - Do

Check it out!
Green Go
Monsters of Folk
Richard Laviolette

Next week: Chris is in Ottawa, so Matt Kupfer of CIUT morning show Take 5 fills in.

Playlist - October 2, 09 - Fall Album Preview

This week: Rob Duffy stops by to co-host the first show in CIUT's brand new studios! To celebrate, we discuss the most anticipated upcoming records of the fall, the Olympics, and whether Bob Dylan is ruining Christmas. Also, an interview with UK grime star Lady Sovereign, and Haligonian rennaissance man Rich Aucoin stops by to play a game of Great or Bad. Podcast of the full show will be online soon here.

Playlist
Florence and the Machine - Dog Days Are Over
Basia Bulat - Gold Rush
Islands - Switched On
Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching
Two Hours Traffic - Weightless One
Julian Plenti - The Fun We Have
Julian Casablancas - Eleventh Dimension
Kurt Vile - Beach on the Moon
Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, feat. Jason Lytle - Every Time I'm With You
Monsters of Folk - Say Please
Rich Aucoin - Behold the Lamb! (Muffled by the Noise City)
Rich Aucoin - 10,342 Cuts for the Us
Vivian Girls - When I'm Gone

Check it out!
Rich Aucoin
Kurt Vile
Lady Sovereign

Next week: Guelphian dance-rockers Green Go help Guest DJ the program!