Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
It’s easy! So long as you have iTunes installed if you click on this link it will do the rest for you.
http://wfmu.org/podcast/PL.xml
Also you don’t need an mp3 player/ipod to play a podcast – all it is is an mp3 that gets delivered to your computer as soon as it’s available – how about that?
If you’d prefer to just listen to archives you can listen here in just SO many ways. We’ve even got a fancy pop up player –
http://wfmu.org/playlists/PL
Install iTunes for both Mac and PC here
Codpaste – People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz’s podcast from 2008 is now available in mp3 form!
http://ubu.com/sound/plu_codpaste.html
Codpaste was later developed into the album Rhapsody in Glue.
You can purchase in higher quality at Bandcamp:
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/rhapsody-in-glue
We are very pleased to announce that DO or DIY with People Like Us will return to the radio waves and internet tubes every Wednesday evening starting June 24th, right through the summer to October 7th inclusive, bringing you All Things Avant Retard.
The show will be on after the fantastic “Seven Second Delay” (with Ken and Andy) – between 7pm and 8pm NY time. That is midnight Wednesday evening in the UK.
Generally we do a live playlist and enable live commenting so do watch as well as listen if it’s not too much of a distraction from the beeauutiful music. If you live in NY/NJ you can listen on the radio at 91.1fm in New York and 90.1fm in the Hudson Valley. If you’re on the internet then listen anywhere by clicking on Live Audio Stream links at the top of WFMU.org.
For those of you unfamiliar with People Like Us’ radio show, or indeed if you just fancy another listen, move your mouse over to the DO or DIY archives at WFMU.
We’ve also made a number of “Best of” compilations available since 2003, including these two from 2008.
DOwnloadable DO or DIY 1
DOwnloadable DO or DIY 2
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People Like Us and many others have remixed The Inaugural Poem, because we felt that the first one needed improving. Take a look at and listen to the entire project, initiated by Kenny G at WFMU, thanks!
Download at UbuWeb
Kenny G’s Inaugural Poem Remix show on WFMU.
The Inaugural Poem Remix project on the Poetry Foundation website .
People Like Us “An Induction Is A Draft Is A Gust Of Air”.
People Like Us “Adjournment-Poem”.
Downloadable DO or DIY, Volume 2
Just like last week, but this is the LAST DO or DIY of the season and People Like Us will be taking the next season off. So here is VOLUME 2 at the WFMU Blog – grab yourself the Best of DO or DIY for the past year’s broadcasts.
Zip file (everything: MP3s, cover art jpgs, tracklist)
1. It’s Just Amazing
2. More Noice Noise
3. Dancing On Hot Coals
4. Bringing You The Best In 1970s Rock
5. Tijuana Frog Trot
6. Put The Hammer Down
7. Wouldn’t It Be Noise
And at UbuWeb
It’s that time of the year again, when DO or DIY zip up their bags and… send it right over to you! Indeed, for the two final weeks of the WFMU Summer Season, DO or DIY with People Like Us are giving you an album sized chunk of all things avant retard – a lovely noisy collage, complete with artwork. So listen in live to DO or DIY at 7pm NY Time (that’s midnight UK time) Monday evenings, then go over to the WFMU Blog and grab yourself VOLUME 1 of the Best of DO or DIY for the past year’s broadcasts – or get it below.
Zip file of all tracks, atwork and playlist
or get it separately…
1. Sung Song Glue
2. I’m A Star In NY
3. O Wo Is Mio
4. I Am That I
5. All The Screamers
6. MupPet Sounds
7. We Don’t Go Too Far
8. Tweety Takes A Holiday
9. Look What You’ve Done
Also at UbuWeb
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/11/radio.digitaltvradio
Mention in the Guardian (UK) – Click That Dial! (August 11 2008)
TouchRadio
Touch, an independent arts organisation that turned 25 last year, is home to artists such as Christian Fennesz, Biosphere and Chris Watson. Touch Radio features challenging and entertaining material, including field recordings, interviews and live performances. There are audio diaries from Chris Watson, where he illuminates his work as a wildlife sound recordist in the Galapagos Islands, taking in the Alcedo volcano. If you are truly tired of words by this stage, you will find an antidote in Touch 10: The Bits In Between by Vicki Bennett, whose own show on WFMU, a glorious mashup (peoplelikeus.org), will leave you in a spin. touchradio.org.uk
Pascal Wyse
WFMU-FM 91.1 FM
Home to an acclaimed country and western show hosted by singer Laura Cantrell, WFMU describes its output thus: "Rock’n’roll, 78rpm records, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, gospel, exotica, R&B." And, if that’s not enough, there’s "Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtracks in languages other than English".
Alexis Petridis
We are pleased to announce two brand new downloadable tracks from People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz, available to the web exclusively from WFMU’s Free Music Archive and Beware of the Blog. The Music to Run Fast By digital 7” is based around the idea of “The Chase”, where Vicki and Ergo sourced from and collaged as many fast moving sounds as they could possibly think of! This music was originally conceived for a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay’s film “Screen Play”, performed by WFMU’s delightful duo in London last year. It was then developed into “The Chase” episode of their “Codpaste” podcast on WFMU. Check out more very fast music from People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz in the Codpaste archive at http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25405
Download the mp3s at the WFMU Blog .
If you own a horse then do take this on your ipod next time you go out for a trot.
Documentation of the People Like Us Retrospective at alt.gallery
alt.gallery (entry via alt.vinyl) 61/62 Thornton Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4AW.
http://www.altgallery.org/
16 May-12 July 2008
alt.gallery is pleased to announce the first retrospective exhibition of work by People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett).
ARTIST INFO
For the past seventeen years British artist Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. The exhibition will focus on the concept of collage, showing an edited selection of her work, including twenty album releases, numerous singles and remixes, live sets, seven films and over a hundred and fifty radio shows. These collages mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. Â People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, and have made work using footage from the Prelinger Archives, The Internet Archive, and A/V Geeks. In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Center and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘Do or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
MEMORY STICKS
Every week during the exhibition a different collection of special downloads from the People Like Us archive will be available from the gallery, bring your memory stick along for a free take away!
ESSAY BY DR DREW DANIEL
A specially commissioned essay by Dr. Drew Daniel of Matmos accompanies the exhibition. Download pdf here. Drew’s essay can also be linked to here
Download a larger version of this flyer here
Download the poster (featured top right) here
The exhibition also included a framed essay by Rick Prelinger on The Virtues of Preexisting Material. Here is an excerpt:
On the Virtues of Preexisting Material
© Rick Prelinger 2007
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License
1 Why add to the population of orphaned works?
2 Don’t presume that new work improves on old
3 Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4 The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5 Dregs are the sweetest drink
6 And leftovers were spared for a reason
7 Actors don’t get a fair shake the first time around, let’s give them another
8 The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9 We approach the future by typically roundabout means
10 We hope the future is listening, and the past hopes we are too
11 What’s gone is irretrievable, but might also predict the future
12 Access to what’s already happened is cheaper than access to what’s happening now
13 Archives are justified by use
14 Make a quilt not an advertisement
Download a pdf of the full text here, or link to the essay here.
The exhibition will also launch a new CD curated by Vicki Bennett for Sonic Arts Network called ‘Smiling Through My Teeth’, a compilation of humorous music and sound art.
SPECIAL EVENTS
People Like Us Special on WFMU
Thursday 15 May, 11pm-midnight (UK time) www.wfmu.org/playlists/ER – To celebrate the exhibition opening Ergo Phizmiz hosts a People Like Us Special on his show ‘Phuj Phactory’ on WFMU, both on terrestrial radio and live internet stream.
People Like Us Talk and Screening
Friday 16 May, 7:30pm
Star and Shadow Cinema, Stepney Bank, Newcastle
Vicki Bennett presents a selection of films by People Like Us.
The Late Shows: Smiling Through My Teeth CD Launch
Saturday 17 May, 7pm-11pm
alt.gallery
www.altgallery.org
The Late Shows form part of NewcastleGateshead’s world-class festivals and events programme. www.thelateshows.org.uk
Many thanks to Rebecca Shatwell for inviting us to do this retrospective, it was great fun to work together. Rebecca is now director of AV Festival.
Continue reading “Documentation of the People Like Us Retrospective at alt.gallery”
If you missed it at the time, listen to the wonderful job that Ergo Phizmiz did interviewing Vicki here (will download a Realplayer link).
Online-only album
Released 15 May 2008 through bleep.com PLURGO1
Following the success of the critically acclaimed “Perpetuum Mobile” CD of 2007, renowned UK collagists / composers People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz reunite for “Rhapsody in Glue”, a cycle of bricolage-ballet-music, skewed-waltzes, and skewiff-pop.
There is a story behind every album, and with “Rhapsody in Glue” we find a unique approach to constructing a record. Both long-term contributors to New York radio station WFMU, People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz decided to publicly tear apart their respective practices and create an album “in the open”, presenting on a seafood-filled-platter the process of collaborative collage composition – informally discussing and jabbering nonsense to one another, resulting in the “Codpaste” free podcast series. “Rhapsody in Glue” is the culmination of the ideas explored in the podcast series.
“Rhapsody in Glue” continues in the bizarre ballroom vein of their previous efforts together, however, increasing the sonic palette into textural depths previously uncharted in their work. If “Carmic Waltz” is an expressionist painting by aged ballroom dance teacher who’s eaten the wrong kind of mushrooms in her soufflé, then “Gary’s Anatomy” is a slice of pure absurdist pop shot through with slabs of exotica and Ethel Merman. Recurring through the record is an apparent obsession with Prokofiev’s “Troika (Sleigh Ride)”, which merges and mashes with Burt Bacharach and Queen on “Snow Day”‘ and lapses into pure fantasy on the almost entirely acoustic “Withers in the Whist”, jarring with Ergo’s strange, Victoriana obsessed lyrics. Then on “Dancing in the Carmen” we discover what happens if Nana Mouskouri is thrown into a pot with Peggy Lee and let simmer for 10 minutes, whilst “In The Waking” shimmers along on multitracked guitars, meandering melodies, and music boxes.
REVIEWS:
Rhapsody in Glue – Liability (March 2009)
Rhapsody In Glue review – Goute Mes Disques (November 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – Blow Up (September 2008)
Rhapsody In Glue review – Pop News (September 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – O Dominio Dos Deuses (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue/Smiling Through My Teeth Review – Incendiary Mag (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – Octopus (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – Skug (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – D-Side (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – Choices Cologne (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – The Wire (July 2008)
Rhapsody in Glue review – Titel-Magazin / CD of the Week (June 2008)
Music To Run Fast By – 2008
We are pleased to announce two brand new downloadable tracks from People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz, available to the web exclusively from WFMU’s Free Music Archive and Beware of the Blog. The Music to Run Fast By digital 7” is based around the idea of “The Chase”, where Vicki and Ergo sourced from and collaged as many fast moving sounds as they could possibly think of! This music was originally conceived for a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay’s film “Screen Play”, performed by WFMU’s delightful duo in London last year (link). It was then developed into “The Chase” episode of their “Codpaste” podcast on WFMU. Check out more very fast music from People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz in the Codpaste archive at http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25405
Download the mp3s at the WFMU Blog
A Chase Posthaste (mp3)
Hot Suit in Hot Pursuit (mp3)
If you own a horse then do take this on your ipod next time you go out for a trot.
