80's Punk Rock

Before there was Schwarzenegger's T2, there was a Punk Rock band from Portland Maine called T2. I recorded this rehearsal in 1982 in my mom's garage. A real garage band.

The song is Bottle Patrol which was about the local bums that walk around collecting bottles and cans for the 5 cent deposit. Jim Lynch fronts this act, Tom Densmore plays bass, I'm on drums, and Chris Horne plays guitar. Chris later formed The Brood an all girl retro punk band. Great stuff.

Any podcast about punk rock has gotta have a poem by Frank's Depression. This one is titled The Day The Sky Died.

We end the show with Eyes On Me by Ghost Walks. Recorded at the Outlook studio in Bethel Maine in 1989. Vocalist Beth Blood, and guitarist George Ripley kept this band together for 12 years. George was also in the legendary punk band, The Stains.

PODCAST - July 28, 2005

Subscribe to our Podcast!

They're All Dead Now

When one collects recordings over 25 years many things come and go. It's strange how much we appreciate a recording once that person is gone. I have many home recordings of people that are no longer in this world. I'd like to think they are somewhere in heaven, subscribed to our RSS, and enjoying the show. I'm sure heaven has a fast internet connection, I mean, it's heaven after all.

In today's image enhanced podcast we start out with Stu Bonney singing the song, The Observer, in the band The Pilots. I have to warn you that The Pilots are terrible. These dorks are all 13-14 and in the 7th grade. This was recorded in 1979. They are the best example of a band being so bad, they're good again.

Stu later in life committed suicide. His wife asked for a divorce and Stu drove his car to his parent's house, parked the car in their garage, hit the remote to close the garage door, rolled down the windows, and that was it for good old Stu. I think he was 26 years old. He was one of the most talented artists I ever knew, and I miss him to this day.

A podcast of dead friends would not be complete without Frank's Depression. When I met Frank he collected wellfare because he had broken his knee. It looked like the patella had migrated south about 4 inches out of place. Just seeing it would make you cringe. He also claimed to have HIV due to sharing needles. With all this one would not expect old Frank Hobbs to last too long, but none of these things killed him.

Instead he was beaten to death by a bouncer in New York City that was fed up with Frank hanging in front of his club selling hand Xeroxed poetry mags. I'm sure Frank did not like to be asked to move along. He died Aug 21, 1996. He was 30 years old.

Another amazing artist that did himself in is Tucker Fucker Katonah! (He always wrote his name that way, exclamation point and all. Tucker is performing in his band, The Boring Films, and the song is, Forget There's A World. I recited lyrics from this song that he wrote at his funeral. The lyrics go: "Forget there's a world, Always speak poetry, Always seeking the new, Celebrate life. No excuses, Live in the present, Forget your fears, and walk freely." One day Tucker took a bunch of tranquilizers, laid down on the beach in Portland Maine, and let the high tide carry him away. Very poetic, don't you think? He was 25 years old in 1990.

And last but not least is San Francisco's cult karaoke performer, Richard McGhee Star Vocalist. This 60 year old man became a famous crooner in the Bay Area. He got the coolest gigs, opening for Smashing Pumpkins, Swell, The Cramps, and other way cool bands. The kids loved him. He suddenly was diagnosed with cancer, and was gone in 3 weeks. Richard died in 1995, he was 63.

PODCAST - July 27, 2005

Story Tellers

Many of my favorite musicians also tell great stories. In today's Image Enhanced Podcast we feature Mitchell Vaillant, our favorite New York City Cab Driver, performing his song, Old Army Cot.

Allen Frost and Dan Hanrahan recorded a nifty spoken word tape in 1992 called, Planet Fishing. The cut, Telephone Joe is the story we hear tonight.

From the exciting Flash animated adventure The S.S. Mopehead, sit back and enjoy The Fish Is On The Move by Mark Harvey from Nobody Records. Be sure to check out the epic Flash animation to see and hear all of Captain's Sinkwrite's search for Sleepy Pete the Ocean Sheep. A very visual trip to be enjoyed by all.

PODCAST - July 26, 2005

Dan Hanrahan & Head Cleaner

Another great home recorded band I have in my cassette tape archives is Dan Hanrahan and Head Cleaner. This image enhanced podcast starts out with a live rockin' song, called Head Burner, that was recorded in Portland ME at Genos. Sound that night was by Jordan Kratz, and it was a great show. The podcast ends with an acoustic tune titled, Without You, that I recorded on 4 Track in Berkeley California, and it's performed just by Danny. Great stuff. Even better - the old Head Cleaner posters have comic book style characters illustrating the lyrics of their songs. We've added the cartoons to the image enhanced podcast, so be sure to listen using iTunes to see the Head Cleaner Comics!

Also on this show is another piece from Frank's Depression. I'm really glad to have found this old cassette tape Frank and I recorded on a Tascam 4 Track back in 1990. We recorded the whole thing in the basement of Beth Blood's place, Suitsmi in Portland Maine.

The 8 Ball Girl pays us another visit answering the world's questions using her mighty powers of prediction. Be sure to email us your questions to be read and answered on the show, and the lovely 8 Ball Girl will let you know what her Amazing 8 Ball says.

Interested in subscribing to our Podcast? Get info here - it's easy!

PODCAST - July 23, 2005

Frank's Depression

Welcome to another image enhanced podcast. On today's show we have the way cool band, Huckaloogie performing the song, Rose Bush, recorded on 4-track at the band's Portland Maine apartment. We also tell you about the delicious chocolate and oatmeal Poodle Turds cookies that I just ate a whole bag of. Mmmmmm. You gotta try 'em!

We also introduce a new feature: Frank's Depression - Poetry by Frank Hobbs, 1966-1996. I met Frank in Portland Maine at a vintage rock and roll clothing shop called Suitsmi. When I moved to San Francisco, I bumped into Frank on the street. No matter where I went whether it was New York City, San Francisco, or Portland Maine, I would see Frank's graffiti on walls and the back of street signs: Franks Depression with the famous frowning "un-smilie". Usually our podcast is very tame, but Frank's poetry is punk rock, so expect a few cuss words, but hey... it's poetry! Frank has been gone now nearly ten years, but his spoken word recordings live on. Enjoy the show!

PODCAST - July 19, 2005

The Beating Of The Child - ABCs

In today's podcast we read you, The Beating Of The Child, a twisted little bedtime story with pictures and everything, so get your Teddy Bear and snuggle up... The song 'Feel' by Strip Karaoke gives us a nice groove, and then Miss Hazel from Modern Wife shows us a fun project, How to make Shrunken Heads from Avocado Skins. Remember to view our podcast inside iTunes, and open the song art window to see our images while you listen! Click below to start podcast.

PODCAST - July 17, 2005

Summer Repeats

In an attempt to get my server configuration to recognize m4b files as AUDIO files, I will now repeat an enhanced podcast to see if it will trigger RSS notification for my iTunes subscribers:

Summer Repeat

iTunes Podcast Problems

The first time I saw an image enhanced podcast I was excited to combine photos and art with audio. It would be like radio with pictures. Mac makes all the software out there possible, so I took the time to figure out the time coded xml needed to get the photos to appear when they should, but now I'm faced with a strange new problem.

For some reason if you subscribe to our RSS feed through iTunes, our subscribers are not receiving our m4a or m4b files. Only our mp3 files show up when one clicks refresh on iTunes. Strange since m4a and m4b files are AAC files, and iTunes loves AAC files.

When we decided to take our podcast into the image enhanced zone, we knew we were leaving a lot of people behind by not being in mp3 format. I thought the advantage of images with links made sense when one considers how many people are now enjoying their favorite podcasts via iTunes. But the fact that subscribers are not receiving notice of our enhanced m4a and m4b files confuses me greatly.

What's a guy gotta do to be heard and seen these days?

UPDATE: I have read and read about the issue of my AAC files not making it to subscribers and I think I have it figured out. I have contacted my web host to see if they would update their server's mime code to treat m4a and m4b files as 'audio'. That way my RSS from feedburner will recognize the audio files when I post.

Crazy... huh?

Maybe in a day or so, it'll all work just fine... stay tuned.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: My incredible amazing wonderful host has fixed the mime type association on my site's server, so now the enhanced podcasts will come through my RSS via feedburner. I have the best host (VISOX), they fixed it on a Sunday no less. To me that is beyond Super, Fantastic, or Ultra. Host your site with them and tell 'em Hoagie sent ya. These guys are always at work, and have fixed any technical issue I've ever had fast and easy. I've been hosting with Visox for about 6 years now, and they are a big part of our success story. You know I must really like them, because the link above is not an affiliate link - LOL!

Summer Home by Rain Station

Today's nifty MP3 has a summer theme because it's so hot here in the Bay Area this week. It's a song by Rain Station called: Summer Home, from the CD, Fancy Fancy. Another great tune brought to you by the kind folk over at Nobody Records.
PODCAST - July 12, 2005

Cooking with Tilly

Now that our Podcasts are Enhanced with photos, we can finally do a cooking show with step by step instructions and images to help you through the process. Hazel is here from ModernWife.com, but I keep calling her Tilly just to bug her. Miss Hazel will be prepairing a big bowl of Tabouli as a cool summertime treat.

Mark Harvey from NobodyRecords.com is here to play his song, 'Somewhere Out' - be sure to check out more Bay Area indie music at Mark's site.

Announcing the Hoagie Look Alike Contest:

Email us 300 x 300 pixel images, 72 dpi of you, your cat, or someone you know dressed up as me, Hoagie Malone, and we'll add it to our next Podcast. Complete details are on the Podcast. Make sure you have the latest iTunes, and turn on the "album art" photo box found in the lower left corner to see the photos of our Enhanced Podcast. Just click the 'Show or Hide Song Artwork' icon to see our photos.

PODCAST - July 11, 2005

Chapter Images on our Podcast!

Hey it's Hoagie. I stayed up all night figuring out how to add chapter images to our Podcasts. I've been working on it all for a couple days, and I'm very proud to say that I succeeded! This stuff is all rather new, so you must have the latest version of iTunes to see the nifty image files down in the lower left corner in the album art area. Our show is now in .m4b (bookmarkable) format, and no longer in .mp3 format so I think you HAVE to have iTunes or QuickTime to see images. In this episode of The Super Fantastic Ultra Show, we bring you the music of New York City's beloved cab driver/musician: Mitchell Vaillant in a live version of: L.A. Song. Click below to start the show:

PODCAST - July 9, 2005

Podcast... XML... RSS... Huh?

So we are doing a little spring cleaning here at the Super Fantastic Ultra studios, our old blog was under attack from Texas Holdum Poker. About every three seconds some spammer would copy/paste a mile long list of links for poker sites into our comments box until the whole blog was filled with gambling links. We just couldn't keep up with it, so we have made a few changes. We have changed our comments links to one big list that we can maintain, but it meant losing all our past comments. Please click our comments link below, and say hello to get it started.

In keeping up with the times we have decided to jump on the Podcast bandwagon, especially now that iTunes has a category dedicated just to Podcasts.

First you have to download the latest version of iTunes.

Once you have iTunes on your computer it's easy to add your favorite Podcast. If you look in the right margin of this page, you will see a red splat that says RSS XML. That red splat links to our RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication). Click the red splat, and when the page loads, copy the url path at the top of your browser.

For example, our RSS feed path is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/superfantasticultra

Once you have copied the feed path, open iTunes, click on the 'Podcasts' link in the left column, then click 'Advanced' and then click 'Subscribe to Podcast'. Paste the RSS feed path and click 'OK'. As long as you are connected to the internet, iTunes will load each of our Podcasts as we publish them. All you do is open iTunes, and listen.

PodCasts are a lot like radio, but you can listen any time you want. Plus the new iTunes has the ability to show photos along with the broadcast, so it's radio with pictures. The pictures can even have clickable links to websites. Podcasts are fun to enjoy on your computer, or if you have an iPod, download your favorite Podcasts to take with you for a listen during your morning commute. However you enjoy them, Podcasts are a new and exciting form of entertainment that has only just begun.

Bus Stop To Hell

Welcome to the Super Fantastic Ultra Show! Today's free mp3 music pick is from the Bay Area's own local punk rock band: Strip Karaoke! This tune rocks, and was recorded at the band's home studio using the way cool GarageBand software. Check out, The Bus Stop To Hell from the kids at: www.StripKaraoke.com

PODCAST - July 6, 2005