There’s a lack of equipment where we are hiding in the cave networks on the edge of Burma. But we made a new show – against the odds! The director is not pleased.
This week there’s music from Chavez, Kurt, bEnt, Warhammer 48k, The Freeze, Tera Melos, Jeff Fox, Bee Vamp, Dreamies, Space Negros, Electric Deads, Secret Snack, Private Dicks, Spycker, Larval and Suspiria.
Incidentals taken from the Church of the Sub Genius Hour of Slack.
Listen right here or Mixcloud, Stitcher, Apple, Amazon…..all those cool places I guess.
Say goodbye to your buffoons in power. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Highly curated, carefully selected and specifically ordered* for your listening edification by world-renowned DJtenzenmen, who has over 1 year of experience in this business.
This week there’s music from beNt, The Incredible String Band, One Step Shift, Poison Idea, Hoover, Voivod, Redness, MDK, 5uus, Pee, Big Black, Estradasphere, Modds, Bl’ast, Love, Countdown to Putsch, Septic Death and NWA.
Intro and background music by Utotem, Phantom Tollbooth, Daniel Striped Tiger and someone else I forgot. Incidentals taken from the Church of the Sub Genius Hour of Slack.
Find us on Twitter and Facebook too. Tell us if you like it, tell us if you don’t. Listen right here or Mixcloud, Stitcher, Apple, Amazon…..all those cool places I guess. * ie totally random.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the cooler weather and the bottle of Kavalan that Lekky bought for me a couple of years ago. I finished it last night and felt very good. I don’t feel too bad this morning either. I am so happy and grateful for this first coffee this morning. It’s mixing really well with the leftover taste of whiskey from last night and reminding me of the good time I had last night listening to music
The hottest pile of burning money on the internet as voted by everyone, everywhere. Hotter than the POTUS on fire.
Highly curated, carefully selected and specifically ordered* for your listening edification by world-renowned DJtenzenmen, who has over 500 years of experience in this business.
This week there’s music from No Babies, My Dad Is Dead, Saccharine Trust, Neos, Charming Hostess, Landowner, The Fall, Art Bears, Jimi Hendrix, Pigment Vehicle, Andy Partridge, Renaldo and the Loaf, The Let Go!, Eat Avery’s Bones, Midori, Luff, Satanique Samba Trio and The Obits.
Intro and background music by Utotem, Phantom Tollbooth, Daniel Striped Tiger and someone else I forgot. Throw in some Hawkwind. Incidentals taken from the Church of the Sub Genius Hour of Slack.
Find us on Twitter and Facebook too. Tell us if you like it, tell us if you don’t. Listen right here or Mixcloud, Stitcher, Apple, Amazon…..all those cool places I guess.
* ie totally random.
Weight: 79.3kg
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the opportunity to sit next to the pool overlooking the ocean and drink champagne. I still can’t get used to it when I think back to my past.
Highly curated, carefully selected and specifically ordered for your listening edification by world-renowned DJtenzenmen, who has over 50 years of experience in this business.
This week there’s music from Flower Travellin’ Band, The Spy From Cairo, Autechre, Incredible String Band, Delmonas 5, Eat Avery’s Bones, Bukkake Moms, Et Cetera, Montreal, Present, The Hold Steady and The Dismemberment Plan.
Intro and background music by Utotem.
Incidentals taken from the Church of the Sub Genius Hour of Slack.
PLAY IT LOUD!
Find us on Twitter and Facebook too. Tell us if you like it, tell us if you don’t.
Listen right here on Podbean or Mixcloud, Stitcher, Apple, Amazon…..all those cool places I guess.
26th Sept 2021 – It feels like nothing much has happened in the intervening year but it also feels like doing the podcast was more than a year ago. I have discovered much more new music to enjoy in the last 12 months but find myself reading books more often these days and I don’t have the brain power to do both at the same time anymore.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to have a guitar again. I’ll never be a great player, maybe not even a good one, but I can enjoy playing and practising at my own pace.
This week there’s music from Estradasphere, Generation X, Hanadensha, Ken Boothe/Stranger Cole, Cat Power, Tipographica, The Monkees, Hayvanlar Alemi, Phleg Camp, 3D’s, The Fall, Keukhot, The Sneer-Towners, Sex Clark Five, Annihilation Time and The Nipple Erectors.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to have so many choices for entertainment in my home.
This week there’s music from Volcano Suns, Universal Totem Orchestra, The Controllers, The Piranhas, The Hollywood Squares, Rhun, Off Band, The Stains, Dead Milkmen, Ex Models, Dexys Midnight Runners, Dino Valenti, Unknown and Goblin.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for my man cave. Last night we had a problem with our electricity so had to sleep in my room which was cooler and still had aircon.
To-do list
Don’t say anything negative or put people down ½
Relax and enjoy – there’s nothing that NEEDS doing ½
Enjoy what you are doing – savour it ½
Scan some photos today? ½
Ask Bee about photo printing ✅
Another easy and pleasant day. I feel like I could do the things listed but didn’t fully invest myself in them.
*Amy interrupted my writing and I didn’t get back to it in the end – so, now it’s Monday.
With nothing to do at work now it’s becoming challenging to stay focused. Still, we’re getting paid and not being asked to work. It’s okay for now; enjoy it while you can.
Sleepy day at work after drinking two beers last evening. Probably not eating enough at the moment either. Would like to stay under 80kg if possible but think I may need to increase my calorie intake if I try to do much/any exercise. Should drink more water too. I never drink enough water.
I’ve been considering what content I can put here as some of my personal thoughts and feelings about this particular place I am now living (and enjoying) could cause me trouble. It’s funny how Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles but often times it feels like the Land of Fake Smiles. Having a couple of years experience here now, I understand these reasons but cannot fully support a positive attitude towards it. This is the balance I am trying to find in my world.
Perhaps that balance has always been there even in the other places I have lived but I haven’t noticed it so much and oftentimes found myself in difficult or at least odd situations. I don’t ‘play the game’ very well still but I’m getting there. If this sounds like generalised waffle, I apologise. I will try to make an orderly composition of my thoughts at some point.
Out of one of the most difficult times I’ve had in Thailand I found myself keen to focus some energy into something personally (and somewhat selfishly) fulfilling. In what little downtime I had when I was pushing myself too hard preparing lessons for my grade 5 English class I would throw my iTunes playlist on shuffle and found myself quite enthralled at the collection of digital music I collected.
The randomness reminded me of those late school nights furtively listening to John Peel’s radio show under the covers, falling asleep as I lay hoping to hear the latest and greatest punk tunes in amongst all the other genres being pioneered. This exposure to many different styles of music laid the groundwork for events many years in the future when I was organising shows for bands in Sydney and subconsciously decided on mix billed being the best way for people to hear new music. Never a way to a successful financial business model, it kept my brain satisfied and able to calmly appreciate music I didn’t particularly enjoy, anticipating music that I would.
So it was that iTunes on shuffle kept popping up a classic tune (classic to me), a dodgy old punk demo, an experimental noise soundscape and a 60s garage rocker, with many things in between. Nothing really modern mainstream though. It’s amazing some of the music from my youth was considered mainstream back then. It shits all over what is mainstream now.
Anyway, digging this vibe I even ended up downloading a bunch of reggae and African music that Peel always used to play – just to try and get that reminiscence in full force. Things I may not listen to as a full recording of suddenly make a lot of sense squished in between things I was more familiar with. I ended up down many paths of discovery of experimental music from around the world – as opposed to ‘world music.’
With need of some distraction, I decided to put together a ‘radio’ show and upload the result to the Mixcloud platform. I mostly take the tracks as they were shuffled through iTunes and do a bit of back announcing. I also decided to play around a little with some of the songs and introduce some moments where I could read a paragraph or two from books from my shelves.
To give this odd mix a little focus I decided to target my audience to the university students at the local uni which is less than a kilometre away from where I am. I roped in a few of my student friends from there and also from my favourite local coffee shop, to do a bit of speaking and to have their pictures taken. So was born The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour and the push for musical world domination.
Gus, Mink, Nu and Aing – in the music library.
Understanding that my tastes are almost niche beyond niche I would not expect a huge audience for what I’m doing but really that is not the purpose. I do it for myself. I really enjoy putting it together and messing around with things, trying to come up with some new ideas for presentation. I’m contemplating how to do this mix in a live setting and finding a place to do it but I don’t have much time to practice that part as well as not having a completely reliable equipment setup. A new laptop is a little out of reach at the moment.
So, if you’ve read this far you may be curious to hear what these shows sound like? Or scared to find out. Either way, it seems like this is a good vehicle to post links to each show and also force me to write at least once a week as new episodes appear.
“Remember life on earth is but a flash of dawn And we’re all part of it as the day rolls on”
Music from Ween, Magic Mushroom Band, No Babies, The Ebonettes, goat, Andy Partridge, Acanthus, Banned, Hebosagil, The Yellow Payges, Bad Brains, Daniel Striped Tiger, Martin Archer, Teenage Depression, Mudhoney and Donovan.
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful that I could do so many things yesterday and keep going even though I was so tired by the end of the evening. I kept a good attitude and wasn’t so anxious about things that I wanted to do compared with some things that I had to do.
Did it list
Encouraged Fern to learn to make my coffee at Utopia.
Got my haircut.
Uploaded TCRAH podcast.
Recorded new TCRAH podcast.
Prepared and executed a quick fun game for my two students today.
Got through a little of the never-ending sorting of music, on computer and CDs.
Wrote another blog post and enjoyed the process of writing.
Got passport photocopies done.
Rosie offered to do quick drawings and send them out as postcards. What an awesome idea so I asked her to do Jochen, Lachlan and Kyaw Kyaw.
Music from Lifter Puller, Thinking Plague, Ozric Tentacles, Built To Spill, Unknown, Shellac, Parliament, Naked City, The Fall, fordamage, Boredoms, Pink Floyd and Dexys Midnight Runners.
14th Feb 2021 – Around this time things were getting very difficult for me with the school I was working at, which led to me leaving at the end of the semester – I forget exactly when perhaps late September or early October. I’ll write more about that at some point.
Anyway, with the stressful situation, I decided to adjust my focus to making a music podcast. I would often sit and marvel as my music library would be set to shuffle and so much great music just kept popping up, so I started keeping track and then making recordings of those songs. I eventually settled into a rhythm of doing one episode per week, often working 3 or 4 weeks in advance.
It was a really enjoyable habit, to focus 3 or 4 hours per weekend to put an episode together. It kept me sane until, of course, it drove me insane. As usual, I developed more ideas as I went along and refined and improved things (I think).
As with this blog, I only made the shows for my own pleasure and didn’t really care whether anyone listened or not and was happy when one or two listeners became comrades. Only after seeing that a million others were doing the same thing and not many people were listening to them either, I decided to bow out and not add any further to the noise of the internet for a while.
When I was in my mid-teens I would blast crazy music out of my bedroom window in the weird hope that people might be intrigued enough to come in and discover more about this mad world of music that I existed in. But living in rural Dorset with only the odd farmer and stray cow or dog passing by, no one ever came to enquire – or even to complain.
1994ever 