Pastiche - On the Airwaves with the Pirates of KAOS Radio

On Saturday we visited the The Smooth & Demented Show while they were broadcasting live from their carport. Their show is typically on Tuesdays from 9-11, but these purveyors of "insurgent country and outlaw bluegrass" had a weekend spot available for some live performances courtesy of Blackeyed Vermillion, Scott H. Biram and Whiskeydick.

"We take anything that is country music but is outside the Nashville sound, that's got an edgy, urgent quality to it. Things that are just made for the love of music," says El Demento, the aliases of one of the DJs behind the The Smooth & Demented Show. The gregarious, ponytailed Demento expounded on different subjects in quick succession, from the conservatism of Lubbock to seeing Green Day for three dollars years ago. His foil is fellow DJ James C. Smooth, who by comparison is equally as passionate about radio but, hidden behind sunglasses and a hat, came off as reserved and even wary. Together, they've been doing their show on KAOS for seven years.

The genesis of the show started out from political activism. Explains Smooth, "The station had been running for about two months when we came on. I was involved with organizing protests back then, you know, against the coming war. I kept asking a friend of mine to plug the protests that we were organizing on his radio show, and one night he just said: 'Listen. I'm going to be out of town next week, so why don't you come and figure it out and get your own show so I don't have to do it on my time.' I did, and we've been doing it every Tuesday night ever since."

This column has already visited a yard-based radio broadcast before, but this tangling with pirate radio was a new experience. But instead of a group of pale, paranoid people huddled around a transistor radio in a basement, we instead were greeted by a group of pale, chilled-out folks sipping Lone Stars and enjoying live music in someone's front lawn. But El Demento assured us that there was nothing legal about the FM portion of KAOS radio. "The FM broadcast is basically taking things into our own hands and broadcasting them outside of any regulation. I guess the way I would put it is that radio broadcasting in this country has become out of the hands of the public. For myself and I think for a large populace - at least at KAOS radio - we feel that the radio waves don't belong to someone else, they belong to the people. And in the event that you're not going to allow us grounds within the FM field, we're going to take it ourselves." We pressed the two for a little less ambiguity, and Smooth responded in turn. "In 1996 there was a law passed by Congress saying that community involvement has to be considered when drafting FCC licenses," he explained with surprising detail. "And there wasn't any real system set up for drafting those licenses, so by 1997 there was a 20,000 application backlog. Basically, it resorted to the previous system, which is highest bidder gets the signal. It's our opinion that due to modern technology, you're actually able to pick up more defined frequencies, and the government shouldn't interfere. We aren't dealing with the government, or else we wouldn't be able to play the music that we play or do the show that we do."

The internet feed began in 2003, and now you can tune into KAOS through your radio transmitter or internet hookup. Their live spots began humbly, but the setup is much more sophisticated these days. "Dave Fossa (of the KAOS show Vinyl Vengeance) is an incredible sound person who has upped our game" says El Demento. "He definitely improved our high-tech profile when he came on," continues Smooth. "For years our show was just one microphone, and the band would have to all play around one mic. We would usually do acoustic music, but even when we had electric bands, we pointed all the amps at the one mic and recorded it that way."

Walking to the broadcast, we were quick to pick up on the boom of Blackeyed Vermillion digging into their set. Situated next to a huge modern house still under construction, Smooth and Demento surprisingly haven't had much trouble doing their broadcasts from home. "The neighbors are all very cool. We have wind issues occasionally, and if it rains, that's a problem. And because of that, since December we've been doing it from the Nomad, a neighborhood bar. It was getting cold and we asked if we could come in there to do a live show like once a month, and they told us to bring it in every week," says Smooth. Tonight they'll be recording Darren Hoff live, and next Tuesday they'll be featuring the band Rattlesnake Deer.

The performances on Saturday were really a treat. It was different and wild to see Blackeyed Vermillion playing in the middle of the day, outside, when they're clearly more of a juke-joint sort of band who prefer the darkness and gloom of your favorite dive bars. The band played with energy and anger, throwing covers by the likes of Captain Beefheart and Lemmy Kilmister, whose vocal styles are more than suited to lead singer B.E. Vermillion's ragged delivery. The country-metal hybrid also took on a song "Box O' Pine" by the Tombstones and finished their set with "Fare Thee Long," a song Vermillion said is about "when the town you love is the town you hate."

Stripping down to just two members, Blackeyed Vermillion became Whiskeydick, with guitarist Fritz taking on lead vocals with one Rev. Johnson accompanying him with a second guitar. Their short, compact set approached typical outlaw themes like jail, getting drunk and the like, though the group's intimate acoustic and electric approach was refreshing and sincere.

Scott H. Biram had been "doing nothing but playing video poker for the last two months," and his return to the stage (or patio, whatever) was clearly a highlight of the day for the gathered crowd and Biram's fellow performers.

Vermillion introduced Biram by explaining they had met at a brothel and subsequently fought over the same prostitute, but Biram's set was less blood, boozin' and broads and more about subtlety and delivery. Often performing with an electric guitar and drum set, Biram just played acoustic guitar, and covered "What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul" by the Monroe Brothers, "an old gospel song, since it's close enough to Sunday, anyway." He also took on a Leadbelly tune and performed a few cuts off of his newest record.

We're used to live performances accompanied by the incidental soundtrack of bottles breaking, doors opening and closing and people yapping, but this set had just the wind stirring up some chimes or blowing occasionally into the mic, the squeal of a baby, the crunch of grass and the flick of a lighter. It felt like a rockabilly picnic.

The Smooth and Demented show doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon, especially when artists have been so happy to stop in to record a live spot. "We have found so many people are just absolutely receptive to coming in and doing something like this," says Demento.

This Tuesday, The Smooth and Demented show broadcasts from Nomad from 9-11 with Darren Hoff. See their website for more details.