brian dewan

I don't know why Brian Dewan's not a superstar, especially now that the kids are all into this so-called "freak folk." This zither-playing, musical-instrument-constructing, multi-media art-producing, enthusiast of arcane americana is freakier and folkier than most. Dewan is probably best-known for for his various collaborations with They Might Be Giants and his quirky police-killing tune, "99 cops." I highly recommend tracking down his two wonderful albums and seeing him perform live if you ever get the chance. Featured here is one of his 2 rare EPs from John Flansburg's Hello Cd of the month club. It's got three great original tunes and a "traditional" song (probably dating from the 19th century) which uses smoking as a metaphor for human mortality. Unfortunately, I don't have his other Hello EP or his songs from the Hello holiday album, but perhaps someone else out there does...

re-upped!

Also, someone from WFMU requested I email them George Martin's 1962, "Ray Cathode" 7" so it could be posted on their music blog (which I assume you're familiar with). I'm of course happy to oblige, but wasn't able to email the files because of a spam firewall. So I'll just re-post them here:

Ray Cathode single