As you may know by now, WKNC will be broadcasting a LIVE, localized version of Orsen Welles’ classic radio drama War of the Worlds.  The event will take place Halloween night from 7:00 to 8:00 pm.

Want to take part in the invasion?  Tweet about it! Update your Facebook status!

During the broadcast, the news about the aliens will become more and more severe.  You can do the same with your Tweets.  Be creative.  Tell your friends you’re freaked.  Tell your friends you’re being chased by aliens.  Describe where you’re hiding or what you see.  Help us destroy the Triangle for Halloween!  If you are listening on the Internet somewhere outside the Triangle, that’s great too!  The aliens are landing everywhere!  We’re all doomed!!

Disclaimer: “Help us destroy the Triangle” means, help us pretend to destroy Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and beyond using the radio the Internet, and your imagination.  Please don’t do anything stupid and get arrested.  That would be silly.  (And all liability would fall on you, dig?)

This Halloween night, the Martians are invading the airwaves and striking terror in the hearts of WKNC listeners everywhere.

This live, localized adaptation of the Mercury Theater production of H.G. Wells‘ War of the Worlds is the brainchild of Damian Maddalena, who, as La Barba Rossa, hosts WKNC’s Saturday morning 60s and 70s program, Mystery Roach.  Maddalena, along with his Two Cabbage Radio Players, have worked diligently to season the science fiction classic with local flavor.  Sound effects will be performed by Brian Donohoe, member of the local band Starmount.  AV Geek Skip Elsheimer lends his voice to the production, along with a motley crew of WKNC Djs, NCSU students and community members who share Maddalena’s vision and taste for the unusual: DJs Alex Steinbaugh, Caitlin Cauley, Jacob Downey, Liz Cervantes, and Mike Gray, along with grad student Dave Fallest and Magic Babies keyboardist Brandon Whitesell.

The invasion will take place at 7 p.m. on October 31.  You can get ready for Halloween debauchery to the sounds of the Triangle’s destruction, only on 88.1 FM or streaming online.

Listen to Mystery Roach, Saturday September 12 from 8-10am on WKNC for a discussion with Aly Khalifa and Mary Ellis, two minds behind SPARKcon.   Aly is one of five “bobbleheads” that facilitate the event.  He, along with four others work with the organizers of each individual SPARK to help ideas become reality.  Mary is is the lead organizer of MusicSPARK, the musical aspect of the festival.  MusicSPARK will feature a large, diverse group of  94 Local Bands in 15 Raleigh Venues.

In all, SPARKcon will include more than 1200 performers from gaming to dancing to street painting to poetry reading.  Check the full schedule for details.

IdeaSPARK will kick off SPARKcon Thursday night at 6:00pm at the Marbles Kids Museum with
Pecha Kucha, a rapid fire presentation of ideas where each presenter has 6 minutes and 40 seconds to communicate their SPARK using 20 slides and discussion.  After that, head down to The Pour House, where WKNC will be hosting Local Beer Local Band as part of MusicSPARK.  The show will feature local acts: Bright Young Things, Animals, The Jackets, and Starmount.

Talk to you Saturday morning, and see you at SPARKcon.

-La Barba Rossa

Princess America and Bianca Oblivion of the Carolina Roller Girls will be returning to Mystery Roach this coming Saturday, September 4, 2009. This is their THIRD visit, which means they are now eligible for the Mystery Roach Health Plan, and may or not receive honorary certificates suitable for framing.

Listen for their music picks and for conversation about the upcoming Wicked Wheels of the East tournament, which will be taking place next weekend, September 11-13, 2009 in Raleigh.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask them, post below.

Talk to you Saturday.

-La Barba Rossa

It is time once again for the Mystery Roach Covers Show. This Saturday, August 22, I’ll be playing the original tracks from the 50s, 60s or 70s and then the cover version from any decade and style.

If you have any requests or suggestions, post them here. I will be finalizing the playlist on Friday afternoon.

Below is LAST YEAR’S PLAYLIST to give you an idea of what this year’s show will be like.

Tune into Mystery Roach, every Saturday from 8-10am on WKNC for Progressive, Fusion, Psychedelic, Garage and noise from the 60s and 70s. (This week the 50s are fair game as well.)

Cheers.

-La Barba Rossa

Princess America and Bianca Oblivion of the Carolina Roller Girls will be returning to Mystery Roach this coming Saturday, June 6th. Last time they were in, they brought a heaping pile of Garage and Soul. We had a great time listening to music and talking roller derby.

Tune in for more great music with the wheeled ladies of roller derby. We’ll be giving some tickets away as well. We may even have two members of the visiting Gotham Girls with us.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask them, post below.

Talk to you Saturday.

-La Barba Rossa

This week’s show is going to be a great one! With the help of Jacob, another DJ at the station, the show will focus on the music of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror soundtracks from the 60s and 70s.

Jacob and I will be playing music and discussing the films. If you’d like us to look into a particular movie, please post a comment below. It’s not too late to get on the playlist!!

Some topics include Zardoz, a 1974 film whose bleak depiction of our future includes Sean Connery  and organized human breeding. The Green Slime , a 1968 effort about the negative side of space exploration with a groovy main theme.  Steve McQueen’s battles with a pulsing, man-eating, ever-growing ball of Jell-O in The Blob.  We’ll play compositions by Bernard Herrmann, who has composed for such films as Psycho, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Fahrenheitit 451, several Ray Harryhausen films, and Taxi Driver.  And Godzilla, a giant lizard who needs little elaboration.

These are only a few of the movies.  Tune in this Saturday, February 21st from 8-10 am, and enjoy the show.

Cheers.

-La Barba Rossa

This weekend is the 6th annual Double Barrel Benefit, our annual fund raising concert. We’ve got great lineups for both Friday and Saturday nights. So come down, have a beer, enjoy some great local music, and help support 88.1

Craig from Birds of Avalon, one of the great bands performing Saturday night, will be on Mystery Roach Saturday morning. We’ll be listening to music from his collection and talking about life, the universe, and everything. (No, not the book, but who knows, it might come up too.)

So listen to Mystery Roach Saturday morning from 8-10 am then head on down to the Pour House to catch the second night of The Double Barrel Benefit.

See you there.

-La Barba Rossa

This will be a short post about a short song for a short week.

Point is, with the holiday and the snow day, it was a short week.  Appropriately, the song I got stuck in my head fit the truncated work schedule.

“Liar, Liar” by the Castaways is fantastic.  It was their hit, reaching number 12 on the charts in 1965.

I think, though, it was the video I found on YouTube that caused me to listen to this song so much.  Check it out. Dancing party chicks and everything.

That is all.  Carry on.

-La Barba Rossa

Listen to Mystery Roach every Saturday from 8-10 am for Garage, Prog, Psychedelic, Fusion and noise from the 60s and 70s.

What do you do when bombs fall from the sky?  Who do you call in an emergency?  How should you act in the lunchroom?  All these questions and more have been answered in educational films: the movies you (and your parents) watched on whirring projectors in darkened junior high classrooms and gymnasiums.

Skip Elsheimer (known to some as Skip the AV Geek) has gained notoriety with his huge collection of educational and industrial films from decades gone by.  If you’ve ever been to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences on First Friday to see the Natural Horror Picture Show, Skip is the guy who runs it. This week on Mystery Roach, we will be talking about the music and history of these films and playing music from audio and video compilations he has put together.

Skip Elsheimer founded and maintains the A/V Geeks Educational Film Archive, an archive of over 22,000 educational and industrial films which he screens for audiences across the country. He curates film programs and presents them at such venues at the American Museum of the Moving Image, Coolidge Corner Cinema, Anthology Film Archives, Aurora Picture Show and Chicago Filmmakers. Recently, Skip co-wrote an article with film professor Marsha Orgeron entitled “Something Different In Science Films – The Moody Institute of Science and the Canned Missionary Movement” which was published in The Moving Image – Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. He has released several DVD compilations based on his collection through Fantoma Films and Alpha Video and makes many of his available for viewing online at the Internet Archive and at his website, www.avgeeks.com.

So listen to Mystery Roach this Saturday, January 17th from 8-10 am, where we’ll be talking with Skip and listening to his clips and music for the full two hours.  We will also be doing some giveaways.

Talk to you then.

-La Barba Rossa

UPDATE (1/17/09):  Skip has provided links to a lot of the films discussed on today’s show.  (Some of the films aren’t online.)  Thanks to all the callers.  I’m glad you enjoyed the show.  Thanks again to Skip for coming on and for the links below.

Duck And Cover (Department of Civil Defense)

Crash, Bang, Boom

Drugs Are Like That

Malapakadoo Skip Two

Munchers

Telezonia

Shake Hands With Danger

Live and unplugged version of “Shake Hands with Danger” by the song’s composer, Jim Stringer

Clip of “Shake Hands with Danger” singer, Charles Oldfather, on “The Day After”

Jim Stringer’s website

VD is for Everybody

Lines Are Fun

Magnificent Major

Teeth (ADA)

Skip’s Site (A/V Geeks)

NASA/Space Program site

Skip’s NASA fan site

Gods, in general, seem to have bad tempers.  Seriously, mythology old and new, monotheistic or polytheistic, seems to be filled with countless tales of pestilence, death, and destruction, and for what? Some poor guy somewhere forgot to slaughter a goat? The nerve. One little slip up, and instead of thinking, “Well, they’re not gods after all, I should expect a transgression here and there,” they’re all, “Release the Kraken!” or “I’m gonna dump my frog collection all over their asses!” They act more like little children than all-knowing deities. “It’s my ball and I’m going home, and oh, by the way, I’m gonna kill the first born child in every house. Oops.”

Why do I bring this up? Because one of my favorite songs for this week’s show (1/10/09) deals with an angry god and his desire to rain down fire. It’ll get stuck in your head. You’ll listen to it over and over and over and over. Ask my wife. She’ll verify my claims.

The song: “Fire,” by Arthur Brown, off the album The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

You’ll recognize this song on one level or another. It’s been sampled and re-sampled. It’s been covered and uncovered, and for good reason–it’s a great tune. Let’s call it, “catchy psychedelic lounge.” I donno. Call it whatever you want, just make sure to listen to it. While you’re at it, the rest of the album is worth a listen, too.

Now watch your ass, deities have bad tempers. (And frog collections.)

-La Barba Rossa

Deep in the realm of interesting but somewhat useless information is a list of the correct names for groups of animals. Google it some time. The images these names bring to the mind’s eye makes the time wasted well worth it. A group of barracudas is a battery, a group of ferrets a business, and a group of weasels a gang. Most important to us is a group of roaches: an intrusion.

An intrusion. Perfect. For decades, these songs have been lurking behind pop rock’s radio facade, out of sight and out of mind. Now, on Saturday mornings, the Mystery Roaches intrude. They crawl up your walls. They sample your scraps. These songs hide under your wall hangings and swing on your nose hairs while you sleep. There might be one sucking on your toothbrush at this very moment.

This entry marks the first of what will be a weekly post about Mystery Roach, WKNC’s weekly look at progressive, fusion, psychedelic, and garage rock from the 1960s and 1970s. Posts will be short, and they won’t follow any particular format; they might contain thoughts on a song, album or artist I found or became obsessed with that week. They might contain the text with comments of a call or email from a listener that week. They might contain a story of how I almost spilled split pea soup on my computer as I was putting the show together (which just happened as I was typing this, a cautionary tale to anyone who tries to be thrifty with a ham bone).

You just never know.

Listen to Mystery Roach Saturday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00 am, and check the WKNC blog weekly for posts about the show.

Cheers.

-La Barba Rossa