Hooting Yard: Scrofula and Penitence in the Middle Ages

Scrofula is the Latin word for brood sow, and it is the term applied to a tuberculous infection of the chain of lymph glands in the neck, creating swellings between the angle of the jaw and the top of the breastbone. It has been known to afflict people since antiquity, and during the Middle Ages was known as “the King’s Evil”, because it was thought that the monarch’s touch would cure it.

We may scoff at such naïveté, especially given the rather disturbing personal habits of kings and queens past and present. An early scoffer was Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1666), a Cromwellian soldier during the English Civil War. In the revolutionary mood of the time, he correctly surmised that God could act through himself as well as through the royal personage, and did his own scrofula-healing by gently stroking his patients. He also applied poultices made from carrots, although it is unclear whether these were divinely inspired.

  • Introduction: Scrofula
  • Dream: The Glove of Ib
  • Glib Hatter
  • Waxy Insensibility
  • Saint Mungo
  • Poppy Nisbet’s Music Tips
  • Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
  • Stakhanov, Coleman (and Ronald Colman)

Audio Adventures: VLF

Very low frequency or VLF refers to radio frequencies (RF) in the range of 3 to 30 kHz. Many natural electrical phenomena such as storms and lightning produce VLF emissions, and these can be recorded and enhanced using simple radio receiving equipmment.

The Exciting Hellebore Shew: Rambling Special

Pilfering through the voices of today’s logicians… First Broadcast on October 23, 2003.

  • Begins with nose-picking complaint, instructing listeners not to listen to the Hellebore Shew.
  • ‘Bring me a hail of slow-motion on a plate please (followed by the aerial bombardment of your head)’ – Ray Stispozeille, an atempt to subvert the ‘think before you talk’ ethic. Unintentionally tedious.
  • Commentary: The rights and wrongs of tape-dropping fodder.
  • Ripe, Ripe Vegetable
  • Intermission by poet and musician Mr Legge, in which he interrupts his own performance with an ad-hoc poetry one-man convention.
  • Makeover – recorded betwixt the 20th and 21st centuries in Hertfordshire.

Epistaxis Time: Overdose Pie

This episode begins with an exciting yet depressing techno number about alienation, arrest and imprisonment. Our host bakes and eats a pie containing miscellaneous prescription drugs. First broadcast on September 14th 2005.

Hooting Yard: Curd

Back in the days of Stalin, it was a brave soul who mocked the Comintern. Uncle Joe and his myrmidons tended to get attacks of the vapours when ridiculed. Svetlana B was not particularly brave, however. For one thing, she mocked the Comintern from the comparative safety of a radio shack hidden in a village in the English fens, which she pronounced “fence”.

This fun-packed episode of Hooting Yard was first broadcast on the 26th January 2004.

  • A letter of complaint from an Aztec Fundamentalist.
  • Five Tiny Birds
  • Crime of the Century
  • Blodgett’s Fiendish X-Ray Plot
  • Bilingual Comintern Mocker
  • Quotation from Ignatius Donnelly, “Atlantis : The Antedeluvian World”
  • Mrs Gubbins’ New Publish Venture
  • Curd

The Exciting Hellebore Shew: Bush Special

First broadcast on November 19th 2003, this episode of the Exciting Hellebore Shew celebrates George W Bush’s visit to London. It’s dedicated to the American president, and also to bushes in general. The highlight of the show is certainly “chemical attack”.

  • George Bush introduction.
  • A Recording made from within a bush.
  • Re-constituted tape found within a bush. A selection of distorted and garbled high-NRG tunes.
  • George W Bush poem (by George W. Bush)
  • Blunder Baby (Does anyone want a hamburger?)
  • Chemical attack on the underground
  • The Grandmother

    • Midnight Sex Talk – Sex and Drugs

    Midnight Sex Talk – Sex & Drugs Midnight Sex Talk links up with The Good Drugs Guide (broadcast on Resonance FM every Thursday, from 9-9.30pm), for a seasonal look at most people’s two favourite pastimes, and how they interact with each other. Before you deny everything, we’re not just talking about illegal stuff. From Viagra to wolfbagging via GHB, we’ve covered it all, (OK, as much as we can in an hour), with the help of fearless and highly knowledgeable chemical crusaders Piers Gibbon and David McCandless. Plus: Live drug experiment! Tune in to see who gets wood first!
    Midnight Sex Talk is broadcast on alternate Sunday nights, from 11.30pm-12.30am, on Resonance 104.4 FM. More info about us here.

    Rhythm Incursions Podcast #3

    On this show Waxfactor steps up to the presenter’s chair armed with a fistful of exclusives and wall-to-wall killer tunes for your delectation.
    Tracklisting:
    Waxfactor – Intro
    Heat Sensor – Regime (Remix) [unreleased]
    NMS – Hold The Atmosphere [Big Dada]
    DJ Wally – Out There In Dub Minor [Samz Jointz]
    DJ Rupture – Desplazados [The Agriculture]
    Dabrye (feat Jay Dee & Phat Kat) – Game Over [Ghostly International]
    Sixtoo v Simahlak – Side B [Bully Records]
    edIT – Arbor [unreleased]
    Ambulance Chasers – GrHoCh [unreleased]
    Team Shadetek – She [Shadetek]
    2Tall – Self Doubt [Needlework unreleased]
    Kitimat – Kontent Without A K [Sound-Ink]
    Dday One – Mixing Paint [Needlework]
    Vengeance of Volume – Wax Eldon Piece [NeedleWork unreleased]
    Andrew Thompson – There Must Be Some Kind of Misunderstanding [Lewis Recordings]
    Superdense Child – Bakerman’s Droid Stew [Battlecake]
    Waxfactor – Karma Suture [unreleased]
    Reptiles – Electric Lovesong [Liquid Playthings]