Dig Set Spike

Published on August 28, 2009

Start off with a piece from the creepy-ass soundtrack to the creepy-ass movie, The Descent. Move onto the intro to “Caledonia” by Crogmagnon (a favorite record of 1969 psychedelic nonsense of mine). Then, coincidentally, also from 1969, Gilberto Gil’s “Volks, Volkswagen Blue.” Then a couple things smushed together from Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Great Escape (why not). Then a nice piece from the score to whatdyacallit, that Errol Morris/Robert MacNamara documentary. Then “Tuba Concerto II” (which you can totally follow even if you didn’t see the first Tuba Concerto) by James Gourlay on the British Tuba Concertos album, but I don’t need to tell YOU that.

Couple of notes: first, this escape inspired the movie The Great Escape. They of course, made it an allied escape. And, having produced this episode, I can relate: not only does no one want to sit through an hour and a half about clever Nazis, I found it a little weird empathizing (for the purposes of writing the podcast) with homesick members of the Third Reich–but I just love the thing about the river. I love that they screw themselves. Other thing: the captain in the story was eventually caught in Phoenix, though he lived successfully on the lam for some time. The kicker, however, is if you drank a St. Pauli beer back in the heyday of their questionable/skeezy “you never forget your first girl” ad campaigns with the buxom german barmaid, you helped pay Captain Wattenberg’s salary. He was the head of the St. Pauli brewery for decades.