Thursday, August 20, 2009

The Toilet Paper Museum travels to WMAS

For this brief moment in time, press has been falling into our laps like a succession of dominoes.
After having had our toilet paper collection on the web for over 10 years, the Smithsonian Channel filmed us talking about our collection for an upcoming episode of their series "Stories From The Vaults". Using that domino, we sent out a press release. The local paper, the Springfield Union, thought the story interesting enough to feature our collection as a cover story to the great delight of many of our friends who report their first reaction at seeing our faces in color on the cover of the newspaper out on the news stands was to fall over laughing.

But they weren't the only one's to see the article. So it came to pass that Lopez from WMAS 94.7 invited us to their station for a quick interview on the collection. One cool thing about this is the location. WMAS studio is in the Basketball Hall of Fame building. For once a destination that's hard to miss - The building is in the shape of a basketball. http://www.hoophall.com
Once we got there, the first stop of course is to get some toilet paper from the bathroom so we can get Kellogg Krew D.J.'s signatures.
What should I see on entering the bathroom than this electric hand dryer in the shape of a basketball. And people make fun of our collecting obsession? Really?


Once in the studio we get to meet Chris Kellogg, Dina McMahon and Lopez. We had a fun though brief interview. I guess there's no point in holding up signed toilet paper to show a radio audience, so the listeners would have to trust that Chris, Dina & Lopez would be able to verify that there was no sleight of hand happening.
As I said, it was fun. - but our adrenaline was in overdrive and we could have gone on talking for a long time, which thankfully they didn't let us do. It's always great to see DJs at work. When they're on the mike it seems as if their brains shift into gear. They know just what to ask and when to keep it moving. From our perspective, being in front of a microphone in a radio station is almost the complete opposite experience to recording music in the studio, where everything is measured and precise. Anyway, the Kellogg Krew were great and they were gracious enough to sign some tp for us afterwards.



Most likely, they'll be broadcasting our segment either Friday 8/21/09 or Monday 8/24/09 on their show which airs from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. (E.S.T.)
You can listen live at:
http://www.947wmas.com/article.asp?id=538543


Finished! Pressed! Printed! We've got it - we're psyched! TagYerit's new
CD "Shimmer" is in our hands. It's been a long wild road from the inception of each song to this little package. It's like a Song Mixvah! For us, it represents years of creative play-work. So now it's another exciting moment for the songwriter (that's us - Rich & Flo) ...will the music reach out and 'strike a chord' with you, the listener? Touch you? Transport you? Crack you up?
We've been working in a vacuum, so the "Listener" is the other
important part of the equation.

Since we're not exactly your love-song-pining-over-relationships kinda
songwriters - here’s some of the subjects we’ve explored:
- There's an examination of ‘collection’ addiction and hoarding as
expressed in "Neat Junk". - OK, we admit it, it could be just a touch
autobiographical ...
- You'll run into the strong willed "Pirate Bride" who's damned tired of
being stuck ashore - She deeply longs to rule the High Seas herself.
- In "The Trick or Treat Trials" Flo recounts the Halloween fixation she
and her best friend Sylvia (and others) had as they meticulously planned
their costumes & plotted out their routes in their attempts to amass huge stockpiles of chocolate. Things didn't necessarily turn out as they had hoped..
- And who was the mysterious carver on Mt. Katahdin who left the beautiful but anonymous words etched there in stone? These words inspired the song "Mt. Katahdin" and became its chorus.
- You'll also share in a rather disconcerting chance meeting in the woods
with a dryad that Tolkien might have suspected was a Close-Encounter-of-the-Entwife-Kind.
- ... and more ...

There's plenty of humor, true-life mishaps, reflection and melodic story
telling. - and then there's the rousing return of the "Vulgar Boatmen"
(originally heard on our "Heavy Construction" CD) as they add their
unique blend of voices to yet another song.

If you're interested in getting a copy (No presha, pal!), it's available
for $10 (plus $3 s&h) for CD ($7.50 for digital download) at
http://www.tagyerit.com/music.htm

Saturday, August 01, 2009

A video of The Whole World Toilet Paper Collectors

As part of a news story on our toilet paper collecting, the Springfield Union photographer also took this short video. I'll post the article when they put it up.

Toilet Paper collecting video