DOWNLOADS NOW AVAILABLE (OR ALMOST NOW, ANYWAY)

I'm offering free downloads of the show to anyone who posts about it on Facebook and tags me. Note- the tagging is crucial, because that's how come I'll know you posted about it.

Pret-ty exciting features of the downloaded episodes include--

Rewind and fast forward functionality. Did you miss a witty line because your girlfriend or boyfriend was trying to talk to you? This is now easily solvable.

Car listening made easier, less dependent on wi-fi, etc. This means that commuting can be much less unpleasant.

Less carnivorous tendencies regarding your device data.

SONIC YOUTH VS. GRATEFUL DEAD

I'm doing research for a Hot Plate episode where I'd like a little input from friends. I'm planning a Grateful Dead vs. Sonic Youth episode. My premise, at least right now, is that both bands 
1. are dedicated to rock improvisation, even though they both have some standout compositions 
2. expanded the instrumental and ensemble language of rock, but for those who don't care for the results of their experiments, they're more likely to be described as crap. In other words, they're wildly overrated by their partisan fans, but unfairly dismissed by people that hate them. If you'd like to weigh in, please PLEASE follow my directions.

SOMETIMES THE CHILDREN HAVE TO REMIND US THAT HATRED DOESN'T HAVE TO BE ABOUT RACE, SEX, OR POLITICS

  I'm at a diner with my son, eating grits. I'm reading the opinion pieces, and I notice that George Will is writing about baseball, rather than his usual topic, which is how painful it is for him when young leftists don't love free speech the way conservatives do. 

  Despite being exposed to baseball more than I'm exposed to sunlight, I still don't really feel comfortable weighing in on the Great American Pastime. So I figure I'll just tell my son to read the Will piece. And I'm about to tell him about it, prefacing my remarks with a little background on George Will. Then it occurs to me: not only is it not really fair to Mr. Will to prejudice my son against him right off the bat, so to speak, it's actually more interesting if I don't open with "here's what this erudite douchebag has to say," and instead allow Max to make up his own mind. Besides, George Will knows a lot about baseball, and how could his political leanings even be relevant here? Jesus, maybe I'll even learn something. So I read a few excerpts out loud with no preamble. 

  Max thought for a second, and then said, "Basically, George Will can go fuck himself." 

  

EPISODE THREE, THE FABULOUS CAREER OF FRANKIE "HALF-PINT" JAXON

EPISODE THREE, FRANKIE "HALF-PINT" JAXON

(For a free download, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com.)

In this, the third episode of Hot Plate! The 120 Minute Radio Hour, we "rub up against the mores of modern mores," as America's Announcer Damon Hildebrandt puts it in his introduction. 

 SWINGING FEMALE IMPERSONATOR

The bulk of the episode follows Karl and sassy co-host Candy Berberian as they assess the storied cIn this, the third episode of Hot Plate! The 120 Minute Radio Hour, we "rub up against the mores of modern mores," as America's Announcer Damon Hildebrandt puts it in his introduction. 

  

 THE MYSTERIOUS FAROFF LAND OF SCRATCHY OLD 78s

Karl and Candy will attempt to decipher the scratchy old 78s unearthed by the beloved Document record label. Hot Plate encourages you, as always, to buy some of this marvelous music so you can hear it without Karl and Candy yammering over it. 

(Click here to go to Document. They toss Karl Straub a bit of the money if you buy stuff from them, helping to offset the vast expenses incurred by Hot Plate. 
 https://thedocumentrecordsstore.com/?ref=144)


That message is always implied, but this time it's more explicit, because the Document label has performed a monumental public service for people who care about American music, and moreover they got screwed recently by a distributor in a set of circumstances we won't get into here. They can use all the help they can get, and they richly deserve it. Sometimes the Hot Plate Archive appears to be about 90% Sun Ra and Document reissues, and there's so much good stuff on Document that it's fair to say if you don't own any of their releases, your understanding of American cultural history has some gaps. Their stockpile includes lesser known work by important artists, and virtually unknown work by artists who made important contributions but are largely forgotten. 

  If you already are a fan of early jazz, you'll be happy to hear the music on this episode has some hot trumpet work from Henry "Red" Allen, some of Barney Bigard's best non-Ellington recordings, some of Lil Hardin Armstrong's best piano playing anywhere, and Big Sid Catlett behind the drums, which is always good news. 

  

  DAGNY COLEMAN, KID TERMINATOR, etc. 

You'll also hear News Reader Dagny Coleman's ads for Sandwich Coven (featuring Denise's Shimmying Ritual of Purification)

I SAW LON CHANEY WALKING WITH EARL SCRUGGS

  I heard my son singing "I saw Lon Chaney (slight pause) walking with the queen--" and I thought, what the hell is that? Is he trying to sing "Werewolves of London"? But the rhythms and accents are off. I asked him about it, and he said he was trying to mix "Werewolves of London" with Bill Monroe's "Heavy Traffic Ahead." 

    Ladies and gentlemen, I give you-- 2017.

TO SIR, MITT GLOVE

  You may believe this is Summer we're in right now, but at my house it's Glove Season; this means round-the-clock baseball glove activity. Mostly the action takes the form of an ongoing glove-smacking parade, which you can catch from many vantage points. There's almost no bad place from which to view it. 

  Some like to watch from a couch, or a chair, but my favorite spot for parade viewing is the kitchen counter, the same place where I used to read the newspaper each morning. I still like to stand with the paper open under me, but it's just for old times' sake. From this spot the visuals really pop; you can easily see the tween pacing around the room, regularly pounding the glove with a baseball that's been duct-taped onto a bat. And you really feel like you're part of the action, too; because of the room's famous acoustics, you can hear the contact of ball and leather as if it's right next to your head. 

  And by the way, if you decide to drop by during Glove Season, don't make the mistake of using the word "mitt" out loud. You're likely to trigger a longish lecture from the Parade Master about the difference between a mitt and a glove. In my younger days, I once made this mistake myself. Ah, youth! I often chuckle to myself at how naive I was back then. 

  The mitt lecture I received was notable for its impatience, but also for a kind of deliberate gritted-teeth quality one might adopt when explaining what stop signs mean to a village idiot. While that wasn't exactly enjoyable for me to experience, it was like conversing with a Wal-Mart greeter compared to the wall of hostility I encountered a few years back, when I mistakenly referred to a soldier's helmet as a "war hat."

DON'T TAKE ADVICE FROM A SONGWRITER

The following (no, not "flowing," damnable autocorrect) is a comment I typed in response to a colleague's plea for advice from other artists. Others gave advice that struck me as nurturing the ego rather than the artist, the very sort of advice that I hold to be contraindicated. 

  When you're an artist, "getting back to work" is often taken to mean getting back to creating. And I'm well aware that "write write write" as the way to learn to write is generally the best advice. 

However-- 

This business of ego taking a bruising following criticism complicates matters. I write material all the time for my hot plate voice-over staff to read, and it's consistently brilliant (in my mind). But a process has emerged where my minions are pretty relaxed about constructively criticizing the material. I'm talking about during recording sessions. This means that I have to think quickly, as we are on the clock; I have to evaluate their criticism, and either reject it, or rewrite on the spot while they sit there chatting, or worse. Sometimes they are literally calling out suggestions while I'm trying to think. It's not always fun for me, but I know several things. 

NO COMICAL TITLE THIS TIME

Years ago, I was sitting in a theater-style classroom at a sparsely-attended lecture. The kids who'd skipped the class that day were missing a lecture about the importance of going to class. As a guy who regularly showed up, I got to hear this lecture.
  This morning, I had an experience that reminded me of that.
  And yet--
  I set this piece up this way, because it's what I feel. But it's self-serving, and it's not the whole story. I thought hard (not long and hard, just hard) about whether I should say anything online about this.
Even as I'm typing this, I'm considering not posting it. I guess if you're reading this, I decided to take the stupid way out and post it.
  There is no possible way to discuss this without looking bad, so I figure the best thing is to be honest and let people make up their own minds. If the facts here are going to make anyone feel they've had enough of me, so be it. Maybe they're right.
  As I posted yesterday, my latest brilliant idea was to join a Facebook group that Facebook was nudging me to join. The group name caught my attention, as it suggested that the Left is anti-Semitic.  I assumed the group was a right wing group, and this turned out to be wrong.

SOUNDS LIKE FACEBOOK GROUPS ARE JUST DRUNK TANKS FOR DOUCHES, BUT OK

  Facebook asked me if I wanted to join a group called "Sounds like the left hates Jews, but ok." 

  Let us attempt to "unpack" my reaction to this. 

  My first and foremost thought is this-- I hate, hate, hate the "but ok." I have zero tolerance for passive-aggressive language, and we even have a rule in our home banning the use of the word "whatever." I am disgusted by the proliferation of language idioms designed to inoculate the speaker against criticism in the wake of some douchery. I say, if you're going to criticize, just own it. If you're willing to risk being called a douche, then I know you stand by whatever you're saying. (Yes, I know I just used the word "whatever." Please don't slow my roll.) 

  So, I object to the annoying language regardless of my feelings toward the group itself. 

  I posted on Facebook, mentioning this group. Ha ha. Case closed. But then-- it kept bugging me. 

  I searched to see if there were other Facebook groups with similar names-- the "sounds like the left is yadda yadda but ok." There are. I got tired of looking at these groups after I read ten or twelve group names like that. 

  Then I thought-- say, aren't you the guy who's always preaching about the hypocrisy of the left, even though you self-identify as left wing? Guilty. So I did a similar search for left wing groups with names like that. Bingo. There are tons of them. 

  In multiple cases, there are several different groups with the exact same annoying name. 

  So, I did what any red-blooded American would do in a situation like this. I joined all of the groups. 

THE GHOST OF HOT PLATE FUTURE

The Hot Plate staff got on a roll this week, laying down enough crazy material for four episodes. I'm tempted to tell you about all of it, but that would be promotional suicide, so I'll just pass along a few tantalizing highlights, all of which will appear on upcoming episodes. 

90 minutes of Karl and Candy Berberian playing (and yammering about) some of the nuttiest and sleaziest early jazz 78s. 

Karl's epic on-air reunion with a girl from his second grade class. SPOILER ALERT: in the interim, she's grown up and become a lady. 

A fuzz-drenched guitar duet with Karl and Australian Jeff Lang, crammed into the middle of a Straubinical song about suburban evil. 

(All this, plus Karl's intern Rhonda Marvell sings a poignant number about the difficulty of being a small town girl in the big city, with 147 slackjawed employees slaving away under you.) 

SHIRLEY MACLAINE: A TRIBUTE THAT ENTIRELY AVOIDS MENTIONING HER THOUGHTS ABOUT REINCARNATED EMPRESSES

  Americans are all talking about the Comey testimony. There was so much to say about it that my morning Washington Post experience became physically awkward; quote-packed stories leaked below the fold again and again, causing structural instability when I folded the paper and tried to balance it on the tippy top of a Jenga-like pile of cookie pans so I could stand up straight whilst reading it. Standing up straight is what we Americans must remember to do, now more than ever. As harrowing as that game of chicken I played with gravity was, I was generally able to keep my cool during the whole ticking-time-bomb situation. Not so with my perfunctory thumb scroll through the day's Guardian headlines. A current TV program was described ominously as "Breaking Bad meets Steel Magnolias." I tried to remain unflappable in the face of the facts on the ground, but it was a losing battle. Did we not all agree, just a few short years ago, to keep those two intellectual properties from meeting? I don't care for the term "cockblock," because of my Richter-Scale-measurable amount of good taste, but perhaps "schlockblock" will serve. I liked Breaking Bad, but Steel Magnolias was the kind of film that gives chick flicks a bad name. I thought there had been a collective agreement to give SM the Jane Eyre treatment, by which I mean locking it up in a windowless room and sliding table scraps under the door periodically, when Olympia Dukakis is overheard grumbling.

POSNIT DUNKELWATZKI'S BREADLINE REDUCTION POLICY

Dagny Coleman reads News Crunch about Posnit Dunkelwatzki's policy approaches in the benighted protectorate of Bratiswonka. From pilot episode. (for more Hot Plate audio excerpts, see TAB for HOT PLATE SHORT AUDIO CLIPS)

CANDY BERBERIAN, "HOT PLATE AFTER HOURS" (SNEAK PEEK)

This is the first appearance of late night DJ Candy Berberian's new segment, "Hot Plate After Hours." Candy reads a Takoma Park listserv post on the air as a public service. Mrs. Alfred Bumstead of Takoma Park is putting gently used crap on the sidewalk in an attempt to curtail clutter.

Please note-- this piece has not yet aired on the actual podcast. Background music is very early Stan Getz, his version of "Yesterdays." You can find this recording on the indispensable "Complete Roost Recordings" collection.