I first learned of Wayne Butane back around 1995-1995 when he was listed in the Arizona section of the “Book Your to own F*ckin Life” indie music / DIY directory. I really got my money’s worth out of that booklet, having used it to locate all sorts of unsuspecting small time labels and zines to send my cassettes to (and occasionally receive hate mail in return.) I would scan through the cities for anything that didn’t seem like it was some cliche vegan / soc justice / anarchist label or mag. “Book Your to own F*ckin Life” also provided what seemed like endless toilet reading material.
Anyhow, the name Wayne Butane always stood out to me. I remembered that he made sound collages or something. A few years ago I was curious about him, and it’s great to see that he’s still around. He has a really great music podcast, called Jukebox Jihad. One of Wayne’s old releases from the 90’s is Dead Monkey Arcade. It’s basically a sound collage of a lot of different audio recordings: everything from obscure radio commercials to tv show sound bites to random clips of music. He puts it together very cleverly though, constructing a very entertaining and strangely musically enjoyable recording. This sort of thing would have been much more labor intensive to make back then, using analog gear like 4 tracks, record players and cassettes. Computer programs like Audacity which allow you to cut, paste and rearrange thousands of samples were not really available back then (or if they were I certainly didn’t know anyone who had them.) Dead Monkey Arcade is an absolute classic. This “song” is always stuck in my head, and I have annoyed my girlfriend quite a few times by repeatedly reciting quotations from this record. “We care about you, and that’s the reason for this recording, because we care about you.”