truckin', got my chips caashed iiiiin, keeeep truckin', like the doo-dah maaaan
Hello again! It’s time once again for yours truly to hit the airwaves on your favorite radio station, datafruits.fm.
You may have noticed a little mismatch between “the filename of this post” and “when this post is airing.” It sure as hell ain’t May still. Well, this was supposed to be last week’s show, but life had some other plans.
And so, last week – due to me being Out And About (read: behind the wheel of a box truck relivin’ my brief time haulin’ freight and helpin’ some friends move) – we took the opportunity to re-broadcast the first installment in our two-parter on Philly funk-jazz quartet Catalyst. You can check out that write-up–and catch up with what we’re doing this evening–here.
Tonight, we’ve got the other half of that fantastic two-parter for you, along with uh….checks notes Planet Man.
Look, they can’t all be winners, right?
Regardless of the quality (good, questionable, and/or otherwise) of the material, we’ve still got three hours worth of hand-picked and cat-curated material for you this evening. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Talkie Time: Planet Man - Episodes 2, 3, 5, and 6. yeah man it’s planet man alright i don’t know what you want from me here
COOOPPSSS IIIINN SPAAAACEEEE!!!!! ....no, not these cops. different cops. wrong cops
So, usually (with some notable exceptions, of course) we play shows from the old-time radio repetoire that are meant more for adult audiences. Mike Hammer punching some dude in the face, Casey from Casey Crime Photographer getting punched in the face, Nero Wolfe laughing when Archie gets punched in the face, you know. Shows meant for adults. Lots of face-punching, lots of noir. And god forbid any science fiction. For some reason, sci-fi wasn’t considered suitable for mature themes until much later.
But socking some dude in the face ain’t just for the big folk, and whether it’s for kids or not someone’s gotta punch all those aliens. Cue in Planet Man, a show about…well, to quote radioarchives.com, “the golly-gee-whillikers saga of Dantro, an intergalactic troubleshooter for an organization known as the League of Planets - the law enforcement body for peace and justice in the celestial world.”
So yeah. Cowboy Dan in space. Goes out to the spacey station, drinks a space sodie pop and gets mean. It’s camp, it’s got some amusing sound effects, and above all else it’s a cowboy drama for the little buckos, but hits the “echo” filter on the soundboard INNN SPACCEEE.
Like many kiddie shows of the era, this one aired in fifteen-minute blocks instead of the longer thirty, so we’ve got four episodes for you tonight. I’d go in order starting from the pilot; this is a serial after all, so it’s meant to tell a very long ramblin’ story, and while I don’t plan on making a big long listen-through out of this program like I did with Cloak And Dagger once upon a time, it just seems like the right way to do this.
Sadly, the pilot and the fourth episode did not surivive over the decades, and seem to be lost to time, so we can’t quite take this one from the top. But we’ll at least give it a shot. In order, we’ve got episode 2 “Orbit The Moon”, episode 3 “Dantro Explains the Use of the Cosmic Communicator”, episode 5, “Marston of Mars is Planning an Attack on Earth”, and episode 6, “Dantro and Pat Discuss Slats and Marston”.
It’s no Policenauts1 , but it sure is….something. A very campy something, but something nonetheless. Kojima wishes he was this campy.
The Jazz Program And The Case Of The Philly Funk, Part 2: Catalyst’s A Tear And A Smile (1976) / Eddie Green’s This One’s For You (1995) / Benny Carter and Phil Woods’ Another Time, Another Place (feat. Sherman Ferguson) (1996)
About a month ago, we took our first look at the funkiest band you’ve never heard: Philly’s own jazz-funk collective Catalyst. At the time, I mentioned that this particular excursion into jazz history made for a unique first. I could not, for the life of me, find ANYTHING via any of my usual channels for one of the four original members, and I had to track down a physical copy of one of their recordings.
That member was Eddie Green, and as of about a week ago I’ve had a package sitting on my desk, mailed direct from Japan and containing a copy of a CD that, as far as I can tell, does not exist on the Internet save its Discogs entry.
Y’all know I love you.
Tonight, we’re closing out our spotlight on Catalyst with three records, one from the band itself and two from where they went afterwards. First up, it’s Catalyst’s A Tear And A Smile, released on Muse Records in 1976.
Add this one to my list of "albums to track down through other means", cuz I couldn't find this one digitally anywhere, either. Sherman Ferguson's a hard man to find.
After that, we’re tracking down pianist Eddie Green to Japan with This One’s For You, released in LP form in 1994 on Norma and Interplay and in CD form with a decidedly different cover (shown here) by M&I and Interplay the following year.
And finally, we’re following drummer Sherman Ferguson to a live set recorded in 1995, with Benny Carter and Phil Woods’ Another Time, Another Place, released as a double-disc CD set on Evening Star Records in 1996.
We’ve covered a lot of ground here on these two shows, and while this does wrap up our look at Philly’s funkiest, we’ve got a lot of threads, features, and avenues that we haven’t covered. Don’t worry; this won’t be our last stop in the city of brotherly love. We’re bound to get the gang back together at some point. Maybe we’ll have some milk steak or something.
That about covers this week’s show! Next week, no more camp and no more funk. It’s time for feelings. We’ll be wondering why everything happens to us, wandering down the lonesomest mile in the world and humming Manhattan to ourselves.
(Can you guess what we’re playing next week from these clues? This one’s definitely one of the easier clues I’ve written…but if you’ve got a guess, email me at piperbomb (at) protonmail (dot) com if you think you can guess our programming for either The Jazz Program or Talkie Time. If you can, I’ll give you a shoutout on-air!)
If you’re reading this the day of, and you can make it in tonight, you should come hang out in the chat with us on Datafruits! We’ve got a good crowd of folks in the chat every week, and whether you have a suggestion for a future show or just want to hang out and chat with fellow jazz enjoyers, you’re welcome here with us.
You’re all amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you back again next week. Same time, same station: on datafruits dot fm..
Footnotes…
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Given the fact that I’m actively making Policenauts jokes here I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the radio play that does have to do with one of Kojima’s visual novels: Sdatcher, the Japan-only radio drama sequel to Snatcher. Written by my beloved Suda51 of all people. The fine folks from Junker HQ have been working on translating it for a while; you can check out their efforts here. ↩︎