“Diy” (Used 20 times)

Radio may be old fashioned, but it's still powerful, connected, and intertwined with the dreams and revolutionary power of the Internet. WFMU's Radiovision Festival brings together innovators who are doing things right now in radio, on the internet, and sometimes both.

This year's keynote speaker was one of those innovators, Mark Frauenfelder. He is the founding editor of Make Magazine, the founder of BoingBoing, editor at Wired Magazine from 1993-1998, and the founding editor of Wired.com. He is the author of Made by Hand: My Adventures in the Land of DIY. He also hosts Boing Boing's podcast called Gweek.

Here's the audio of his keynote talk as heard on Radio Free Culture, and a transcript of his talk lightly edited for readability.

Today what I'm going to talk about is do-it-yourself. Do-it-yourself media and do-it-yourself physical things. Making your own media, and making your own 3-D things. And I'm going to talk a little bit about things haven't really changed much in the last hundred years, how they've really changed dramatically in the last two or three years, and, looking to the future, how much more it's going to change in really exciting ways. 

Just a little bit about what I do. I started BoingBoing with my wife as a zine in 1988. The first issue came out in 1989, and the reason that I started it was because I wanted a magazine that I wanted to read. I think that's a really good recipe for creating your own media—imagine getting something drop-shipped to you that is the perfect thing that you want to read, or use, or have be part of your life, and then make that happen.

Severed Lips Recordings was a cassette label which operated out of a basement in Ringwood, NJ from 1992-2000. Somehow, their catalog of horror garage gems from an incestuous roster of artists has managed to stay under the radar, a rare feat in the "information age."

The fascinating story of Severed Lips Recordings is inspiring to anyone who's been involved in a fringe DIY community. I had the pleasure of hearing it straight from William Hellfire, the mastermind behind SLR's operations, via email.

First off, how did the label get started?

I started Severed Lips Recordings with Scott Beattie, aka Agent 78, in 1992 when we were 19 years old. Scott and I had just started playing music together and called our band Gerbil Church. The music we played was just our two Vantage guitars blasted through crappy, failing vintage amplifiers, no drummer or bassist.

I was also reworking a small set of Big Black-inspired noise rock songs and through an old band mate met Eddie Blade, whose solo agro/industrial recordings were amazing by any 4 track demo standard. I invited Todd and Eddie to learn the songs and record with me over at my basement HQ. When they got to my place, they popped a hit of LSD in my mouth. The session didn't go as planned-- instead, it was hijacked by a brand new creation, "DISCO MISSILE." Scott and I decided to take all the boom box and live recordings from these bands as well as the new Disco Missile cassette and start releasing them. We made our first release with personalized covers consisting of retro wrapping paper, string, ink, oregano, cinnamon all kinds of bits and bobs, Xerox, pen, crayon. I think we may have sold and given away about 20 or so in total.

December 1992 was the initial release party. I had also created releases out of recordings of an acid trip I took in my room with my cat and my friend Ruby Honeycat’s childhood audio tapes with her friends, which consisted of a bunch of 5 year olds talking about dinosaurs and singing kid songs that made no sense. Anything I could find with original audio on it, I just made up a band name and cover for and tried to sell it.

My friends and I were very small-town and naive, and in that naive thinking had come a lovely purity. The sensibilities were childish and devilish, sweet and sadistic; we were naive anarchists not just rebelling against the political establishments but the whole ideal of reality and the homogenized art world, the corporatized social structure. Around 1989, everything started to go bad. There was very little happening and the stream of consciousness was getting thinner and thinner.

It was "mall culture" and MTV, and the minute something good would squeak its way in, there were corporate clones of it. Punk rock, the last stand of decency in the world, was being homogenized for the mall market. It was getting hard to breathe. We had to entertain ourselves--create our own music, our own culture and our own fun.

Severed Lips Recordings cassettes were $4 each. Basement shows were $2-3 bux donation, and we rented out a legion hall in butler for--get this--$65 bux! $3 dollar admission. Can't beat that. We baked cookies and made Jell-O, served coffee with cassettes and played noisy and fuzzy caricatures of psychedelic punk rock. Then in 1996, SLR started going outside the legion hall and basement and began to frequent Connections in Clifton NJ, Continental, Coney Island High and CB’s NYC.

Severed Lips Recordings was a cassette label which operated out of a basement in Ringwood, NJ from 1992-2000. Somehow, their catalog of horror garage gems from an incestuous roster of artists has managed to stay under the radar, a rare feat in the "information age."

The fascinating story of Severed Lips Recordings is inspiring to anyone who's been involved in a fringe DIY community. I had the pleasure of hearing it straight from William Hellfire, the mastermind behind SLR's operations, via email.

First off, how did the label get started?

I started Severed Lips Recordings with Scott Beattie, aka Agent 78, in 1992 when we were 19 years old. Scott and I had just started playing music together and called our band Gerbil Church. The music we played was just our two Vantage guitars blasted through crappy, failing vintage amplifiers, no drummer or bassist.

I was also reworking a small set of Big Black-inspired noise rock songs and through an old band mate met Eddie Blade, whose solo agro/industrial recordings were amazing by any 4 track demo standard. I invited Todd and Eddie to learn the songs and record with me over at my basement HQ. When they got to my place, they popped a hit of LSD in my mouth. The session didn't go as planned-- instead, it was hijacked by a brand new creation, "DISCO MISSILE." Scott and I decided to take all the boom box and live recordings from these bands as well as the new Disco Missile cassette and start releasing them. We made our first release with personalized covers consisting of retro wrapping paper, string, ink, oregano, cinnamon all kinds of bits and bobs, Xerox, pen, crayon. I think we may have sold and given away about 20 or so in total.

December 1992 was the initial release party. I had also created releases out of recordings of an acid trip I took in my room with my cat and my friend Ruby Honeycat’s childhood audio tapes with her friends, which consisted of a bunch of 5 year olds talking about dinosaurs and singing kid songs that made no sense. Anything I could find with original audio on it, I just made up a band name and cover for and tried to sell it.

My friends and I were very small-town and naive, and in that naive thinking had come a lovely purity. The sensibilities were childish and devilish, sweet and sadistic; we were naive anarchists not just rebelling against the political establishments but the whole ideal of reality and the homogenized art world, the corporatized social structure. Around 1989, everything started to go bad. There was very little happening and the stream of consciousness was getting thinner and thinner.

It was "mall culture" and MTV, and the minute something good would squeak its way in, there were corporate clones of it. Punk rock, the last stand of decency in the world, was being homogenized for the mall market. It was getting hard to breathe. We had to entertain ourselves--create our own music, our own culture and our own fun.

Severed Lips Recordings cassettes were $4 each. Basement shows were $2-3 bux donation, and we rented out a legion hall in butler for--get this--$65 bux! $3 dollar admission. Can't beat that. We baked cookies and made Jell-O, served coffee with cassettes and played noisy and fuzzy caricatures of psychedelic punk rock. Then in 1996, SLR started going outside the legion hall and basement and began to frequent Connections in Clifton NJ, Continental, Coney Island High and CB’s NYC.

Hillstock is a 3-day music festival in Brooklyn, New York, now in its fourth year. The festival's organizers invite about 50 acts of varying genres to their neighborhood of Brooklyn to perform at one of three shows during a weekend in early June. Each band plays a 30 minute set, and bands play back-to-back Friday through Sunday. The goals of Hillstock are to promote great local music, build community, and provide an affordable and fun atmosphere for people of all ages to experience new music. (via.)

Hillstock 2012 is happening from TODAY! through Sunday, June 24th in backyards, living rooms, and more across the neighborhoods of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy. In addition to homemade snacks, there will be sets from some bands who have material on the FMA. Check out selections below!
(image via.)

Dans l´cul Danku! is a 3 day Festival held at the Sub071 Multipleks squat in Leiden, now on its second edition. Unfortunately Noise Problems couldnt attend but to celebrate and spread the good word we posted last year gigs from Theme of Laura and Les Louise Mitchels that we managed to record amidst all the DIY madness.

In their own speak Dans l´cul fest "is a DIY (do it yourself) and non benefit fest. The only purpose of this fest is to share and meet together in happiness with concerts, infostands, workshops, eat & cafe and whatever. All money done are only to cover general costs as electricity water, food, drinks, materials and cover a maximum gazcosts for the participants (bands, people giving workshops)..."

There were good vibes and good music, good food and good movies!!! It was awesome and indeed happiness was ever present. For the this years edition line-up check out the new site. From last year Theme of Laura is screaming emo-punk from Strasbourg. Les Louise Mitchels are free-rock jazz-punk from Paris. Oh la la! Dans l´cul danku!!!

And I don't care about what the prying eyes can see, i'll keep on walking without pants in the middle of this school of fish that never stop screaming; keep on dancing to not die in a life where death has more place than the laughter of fools. I'll not cry anymore and my hatred torn of my veins, thrown to the sheep, i prefer to live too much until a soon death, rather than die slowly on my shit. One more or less, you can tell about me what you want, soppy, silly, crazy, in the twisted right way or not, I would stay at attention under the banner of fools, flag I will burn before to run into the storm."