GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #4: THE ORANGUTAN RECORDING

A few years back we discovered the 365 Days Project, an incredible year-long audio endeavor that posted a new bizarre, obscure and/or outsider recording every day in 2003 (with a follow-up edition in 2007). On March 27 of that year, contributor Greg (The Librarian) McCarthy posted a recording called Orangutan. McCarthy recorded it from the airwaves on WBZ Radio Boston in the early 1970s while listening to a Friday-night call-in program called the Larry Glick Show. You can read the full story of its origins here.

The recording features a man from North Carolina who called in to read a local newspaper item about an orangutan who went berserk on his hapless owner. The story follows the general contours of Great Moment in Simian Violence #2: Run Red Run, but this piece is all in the telling. What starts as a routine radio call-in turns into a demented laughing fit straight out of a weirdly infectious hell – I swear, I have never heard two grown men struggle through such helpless hysterics in my life, especially when talk of blood and bite wounds is involved.

If you’re remotely interested in anything, ever, you should check out the 365 Days Project, which is currently housed at the invaluable UbuWeb as well as wfmu.org, the site of the world’s best radio station. A broader span of the vagaries inherent in the Audio Age can hardly be imagined. Another thing for people interested in things is Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury – being a dance-theater piece, however, a radio version of it would lose something in the translation, so you should buy your tickets to check it out at The Brick. It opens TOMORROW NIGHT, for Pete's sake!