Mid-Valley Mutations

Word Jazz VI w/ Ken Nordine (A “Cheek-In-Tongues,” “Fill-In-Shows,” Installment)

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat (The Digital Salon)

(This show was a last-minute fill-in. As such, our “chat” started at another location, and edited at the Playlist / Chat link above. We started over here:

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat (The Digital Salon, Where We Started this week)

More words of wisdom from Mr. Nordine, as we continue to work our way through the Word Jazz series of radio shows. With word play, music, and a general overview of Ken’s past work, this show is a beautiful example of the possibility of radio, if you are really willing to go the extra mile.

Enjoy!

By The Seat of Our Pants

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat

Fresh off of a few weeks away from home, we present a “catch-up” episode of our program, as we fly by the seat of our pants, and grab “whatever was lying around” to offer a “Feynman vs. Holmes” mash-up that is both fun and funny. We offer a taste of a new circuit-bend item made by univac – The One Hand Jam – and we do our best to return to our usual shenanigans, after having been away for so long. A large chunk of the show – the largest part of it, in fact – contains a selection of live recordings I have made over the years, by different bands that I have had in the studio. It’s a mish-mash of fun a frivolity, and we do hope you spend a little time with it, when you can.

Be Seeing You.

Dimestore Radio Theater #161

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat (The Digital Salon)

In another largely unintelligible installment of Richard Diamond, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat, in, “Eighty Thousand Dollars In Jewels.” Meanwhile, Rocky Jordan is recruited by Sam to help settle a problem with the local government, in “Adventure In Zaqaziq.” We offer our first installment of a new documentary during “Dimestore Revelations,” as we explore Peter Jenning’s “The Century.” Blackstone almost meets a fate worse than death as he tries to perform a very daring trick, in, “Underwater Death.” We close our show tonight with a horrifying tale from X-Minus One of man trying to play God, as a bored and privileged husband decides to create a race of creatures, and teaches them that they came from the stars.

Enjoy!

Mid-Valley Mutations vs. Radio TroUBle / Radio TroUBle vs. Mid-Valley Mutations! (Part II)

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat

Radio TroUBle Archives

Radio TroUBle Playlist

Not only is this the second time that our shows have joined forces – see our previous six our epic – but this time we have new rules that keeps the show interesting, exciting, and certainly in-the-moment!

Premise: There are four DJs: pxe, das, univac & Austin. We are each playing songs, going in a circle, round robin style. This goes on for the entire six hours, natch.

However, each of us has been allowed two “wild cards,” where we can ring a bell, and institute, “Monkey Mutation Madness,” where all four of us are playing sound clips and recordings, trying to create a longer, and more dynamic, piece of radio that could only be done as a group, in person!

With eight wild cards, spread out over six hours and two streaming networks, and with all four of us looking for ways to make the game more interesting, this is one of the more chaotic – and beautiful – radio shows we’ve produced. The music mixes work really well, the Monkey Mutation Mash-Ups are brilliantly executed, and the whole six hours flew by faster than I would have liked. Combining our shows is not only a good idea, but led to getting “Radio TroUBle” on Sheena’s Jungle Room, too, and was a good decision, all around.

I look forward to more collaborations, like the one’s I get to do with Radio TroUBle!

Photos of our shenanigans together. 

Be Seeing You.

Dimestore Radio Theater: Big City Orchestra Takes Over!

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat (The Digital Salon)

In a turn of events that everyone expected, Dimestore Radio Theater has their first-ever guests, as the members of Big City Orchestra take over the show, pick their favorite Sci-Fi broadcasts, and prepare themselves for a live script reading, at the end of the program! While an eye appointment kept Michael from participating, Andy filled in nicely for his roles in the show, and we present to you a very live broadcast, full of chills, thrills, and spills… in every sense of all three of those words!

Before the big performance, we offer an episode of Vanishing Point, where they dramatize the baffling J. G. Ballard story, entitled, “News From The Sun.” We follow that up with an excellent episode of Mindwebs, with their rendition of, “The Pain God.” Lastly, we offer a slice of vintage 50’s radio, with an episode of 2000 Plus, and their ridiculous story, “When The Machines Went Mad.”

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

We close the show with a dramatic, comedic, and downright chaotic reading of a Firesign Theater script, Side B of “Everything You Know Is Wrong,” performed by univac, pxe, Andy, das and Austin, with live music cues, SFX. and dialog performed together, in the room! We react to each other! We slightly flub our lines! We have a great time, and get to do something that everyone used to have to do, all the time, because that’s just how radio was done…

Photos taken during the broadcast.

FULL SHOW

Just “Everything You Know Is Wrong – Side B.”

Enjoy!

UBradio Salon 950 – SquircUBe Chronicles: “Yose-Mite”… 29 Mar 2026 on DFM.nu

Through some mysterious force powered by revenge and the power of will, the occupants of the SquircUBe are transported to the forrest moon of Yose-Mite – along with their ground crew – and they have to survive a villainous plot from an old enemy, Conifer, and perform live without electricity… can our heroes do it, and make it out of the Yose-Mite forest… alive?

This story is part of, “The SquircUBe Chronicles,” series of episodes on UB Radio Salon, written by univac and Austin Rich.

Photos and videos from the show.

Yose-Mite: The Movie

Big City Orchestra – Live From Yosemite (Set 1)

Big City Orchestra – Live From Yosemite (Set 2)

Enjoy!

Stranger Than Fiction w/ Mr. B on Freeform, Portland (29 March 2026) (Edited Aircheck)

Playlist

Mr. B. used two more excerpts from one of my Mini-Mutations on his show again, which means I can make one last push for you to see the Willamette River Basin tour, coming near you, soon!

Here’s more information about this tour:

03 April 2026 in Eugene, Oregon at The Cowfish

04 April 2026 in Portland, Oregon at The Portland Arts Collective

05 April 2026 in Corvallis, Oregon at Manyworld. 

Information about The Cowfish, The Portland Arts Collective, and Manyworld.

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And, this will be on the heels of Austin’s “mini radio tour” of the Bay Area.

Be Seeing You.

In Conversation (Willamette River Basin Tour w/ Scot Jenerik, Don Haugen, Aurora Josephson & Free Static)

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat

A broadcast that went well beyond expectations, and intentions, as it quickly evolved into something more than we had planned. In hour one, we offer a wide range of music from artists that will be performing in the “Willamette River Basin” tour, a mini-tour that myself, Scot and Don are going on, to show off what we do to various folks in the area. Since I only included material by the other artists, I offered more Mini-Mutations on top of their sounds, continuing our dive into, “The Future of When,” a subject that I’ll be exploring in my sets on this tour.

Then, stick around for hours two and three, where we get into conversations with Aurora Josephson, Courtney from Free Static, Scot Jenerik, and Don Haugen, where we all get into the creative process, what we’ll be bringing to these shows, and in a rare bit of turnaround, Scot grills me about radio, and why I keep coming back to it week after week. While there’s no reason to be bashful regarding the work we actually do, I think this particular conversation offers insight into our particular corners of the world of experimental music, and gives you a taste of what each of us is going for, what turns us on, what keeps up interested, and working year after year.

And there’s also music throughout? Not a bad block of radio, methinks.

Be Seeing You.

Missed Connections w/ CG+E on Freeform, Portland (24 March 2026)

Playlist

The wonderful hosts at “Missed Connections” on Freeform Portland were kind enough to interview a panel of people, all of whom are performing at the Portland Arts Collective on 4 April 2026, as part of the Willamette River Basin tour. The first hour of this show contains recordings by all of us, and in the second hour, we we hear a panel discussion with the hosts and all four of us, talking about why we do what we do. You can hear all of it here. Thanks again to the hosts, who were very generous with their time.

Here’s more information about this tour:

24 March 2026 on “Mid-Valley Mutations,” Sheena’s Jungle Room / WFMU

03 April 2026 in Eugene, Oregon at The Cowfish

04 April 2026 in Portland, Oregon at The Portland Arts Collective

05 April 2026 in Corvallis, Oregon at Manyworld. 

Information about The Cowfish, The Portland Arts Collective, and Manyworld.

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And, this will be on the heels of Austin’s “mini radio tour” of the Bay Area.

Be Seeing You.

Dimestore Radio Theater #160

WFMU Playlist & Interactive Live Chat (The Digital Salon)

The jailbreak and subsequent return of a criminal named Ralph Baxter – who Richard Diamond sent to prison when he was an officer – caused the police force to recruit Diamond to help them put Ralph back behind bars. Meanwhile, Rocky Jordan has been dreaming of a Holiday, until he gets drawn into a bizarre circumstance, where he comes between a husband and wife, right and wrong, and must make some decisions that end up mirroring Casablanca in interesting ways. We wrap up our Vaudeville documentary, and Blackstone himself uses temperature to help foil an attempted robbery of a priceless artifact. In our final story from X-Minus One, a group of explorers wind up on a planet with a very interesting local wildlife, and soon need to make a decision about what do do with it, when their food stores are suddenly gone.

Enjoy!