The Fine Art Blog of Daz and Holly

If you don’t like my post you can press fast forward… (interpolating 99 Problems by Jay-Z)

So why is my blog 99daz.com and not 88daz or 45daz or any other combination of two digits?

First of all 99 is a penultimate number, it’s one away from 100 which in terms of percent is perfect or at least complete.

I’m not trying to be humble by saying I’m not perfect, far from it, 99 is a metaphor for being one step away from God, as all of us mortal souls are.

"You asked me for one hundred dollars but I didn’t have but 99" Sonny Boy Williamson

99 happens to appear more often on my I-tunes playlist than any other combination of two digit numbers, some of my all time favorite songs are "99" songs and many of my favorite bands have excellent songs with 99 in the title too!

No, the Toto song isn’t in my playlist, I don’t hate it or anything negative, it just doesn’t make the cut, considering how many songs I’ve heard and the availability of music these days I don’t have to listen to anything but the best!

So here are my favorite songs with 99 in the title. Perhaps you can suggest some I might have missed?

99 Luft Ballons and the English version (99 Red Balloons) by Nena totally rock and the 80′s punk cover by 7-Seconds and, this took me by surprise, the best (in my opinion) version of the song appeared in the 90′s by Goldfinger.

99 Problems by Jay-Z is one of few new school rap tunes I really really love.

One of my favorite bands Social Distortion did 99 To Life which is a brilliant tune that is an homage to the darker side of those home grown American blue grass tunes. "lonely weekends lonely nights the judge he gave me 99 to life"

Sony Boy Williamson uses 99 as a metaphor for the blues in his classic song 99. After all, what is the blues if it’s not a dollar short?

Two more of my favorite punk bands have songs with the title 99 (weirdly enough), The Minutemen and Screeching Weasel, both songs are excellent.

The last song on my 99 list is a cover sung by a local Central Illinios favorite country rock performer Simon Webb. 99.9% Sure, I don’t know who does the original, maybe I should check it out but I really enjoy Simon Webb’s cover!

 20 years ago I hosted my last FM radio show, broadcasting to the students of the W campus in Columbus Mississippi and the whole area all the way up to the air force base which was my designated destination five years earlier. 

I got my lifetime FCC license and loved playing music, taking peoples requests and forming a community. 

Back then there wasn’t a whole lot of media that was "cool" so college FM was a big deal, and while it was flattering to have "fans", it was deeply satisfying to play music that literally had no other outlet.

Today you can hear alternative, punk and rap music on commercial radio but not when I started, and while there were some angry people who stood up for the status quo, the majority of listeners were very open to hearing the things that were essentially underground.

Of course I wanted to be Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati or even a punk rock version of Alan Freed.  I also wanted to play songs by my talented friends such as Biff Brown whom I had recorded many imaginary radio shows with around his original material.

I always wanted to have my own radio station where I’d pretty much do the same thing and now technology has become cheap enough where just about anyone can.

With a little knowledge in setting up a server, several computers for various tasks and VOIP you not only can broadcast a 24/7 stream but even put people from anywhere in the world, live on the air to have them make requests and dedications, just like the dinosaur commercial stations only without any censorship.

One thing that really surprised me in 80′s was how receptive people were to music that was considered too un-popular or dangerous for commercial radio. 

These days bands such as Janes Addiction, The Smiths and even the Misfits are ‘essential’ rather than extreme, and heck, they might even be considered cheesy to the younger generation but there’s one thing that is irrefutable, when you play from the heart and have talent, all you need is for people to listen and you will make it as far as you want to go.

In some ways I am re-capturing the old glory (hell, I’m playing mostly the same bands as I did back then) and my little micro-broadcast  is not going to musically break too much new ground (but I sure will promote the local bands I know!) but it is deeply satisfying to be following the advice of people who I respect.

Thank you Maximum R&R zine, I am DIY. Thank you Jello Biafra, I did become the media. Thank you Sha Na Na, dreams do come true.

Unamed Radio is made possible by the technical genius of Scott "DJ Disaster" Tranchitella, MC Jessica and I’m the DJ called Daz.

Right now we have a FaceBook fan page linked to http://unamedradio.com for the up to date and realtime information (you can request songs there or call our local phone number to request your songs or make dedications on the air). I’ll be hosting live every saturday night from US Central time 6pm to 10pm, and most likely sundays and wednesdays at the same time too. It’s been a big success so far and we welcome you to join us!

Here is my latest oil painting in progress, speaking of music!

The Girl with the Grand Piano, oil on canvas by Darren Daz Cox

whew, well I moved this post to a static page and I’m still not finished but because I worked on this idea I found my personal holy grail of videos, the Ramones on the Sha Na Na tv show! yea! I also figured out how to get the music from Youtube videos to MP3 which is so frickin easy no wonder Youtube was sued for a billion dollars hehe, it’s the glory days of Napster all over again!

I also found out that my favorite Hi-Standard (Japanese pop-punk band) song was a cover of a 70′s Irish pop group who weirdly was pretty much only continually famous in Japan, The Nolans, I gotta pull myself together and stop listening to that song arrrgh!

If you want a clue that these are ‘the end times’ just search for the most obscure song you can think of that only you and maybe a buck tooth girl in Luxembourg were fans of in 1986 and I bet you can have it on your Ipod in a matter of minutes, how amazingly cool is that!!!!

I’d like to make more CD covers for bands! Any band out there want my art on their CD cover?

daz@99daz.com