Fourteen years ago, one of the first things I did on this weblog was post the complete 4-LP Wizard of OZ Living Literature box set I remember so fondly from my childhood. With the imminent demise of browser support for the Adobe Flash plugin, I’ve been contemplating editing each of the posts to put HTML5 tags around the MP3 links. Good things come to those who wait, because Greg Ehrbar, a Cartoon Research contributor, has made his own transfer of the audio book and posted it on YouTube.
For the Public Good
Be like tough guy Robert Ryan and wear a mask!
Whatever Happened to Freedom Fries?
And we thought things were bad with 9/11, the Iraq invasion, and the Great Recession.
A Progressive Meal
After my freshman year of high school, until I left for college in Western Massachusetts, I mostly listened to WBCN, the legendary alternative radio station in Boston at 104.1 FM. ‘BCN was where I first heard David Bowie, Ten Years After and Captain Beefheart, along with the comedy troupes Firesign Theatre and Monty Python. Progressive music was well-represented on WBCN, and I remember enjoying this King Crimson record in particular.
Wiseman’s Radio Menace
One of my favorite comic books as a kid was Dennis the Menace. I had a favorite Dennis artist, but I didn’t know his name was Al Wiseman until I was an adult. With the exception of a couple knobs for dials, this is an accurate drawing by Wiseman of a 1924 RCA Radiola AR-812.
The AR-812 is significant, because it was the first set available commercially to include the invention that made radio broadcasting a practical medium — Edwin Armstrong’s Superheterodyne circuit.
I Remember…
… Iron Butterfly, Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. But do you remember BLOODROCK?? “We were flying low, and hit something in the air.”
There’s a really obvious splice in there from where the album version was cut down for the single. If four-and-a-half minutes of somebody being “self-aware” they’re dying isn’t enough for you, here is the classic “D.O.A.”