Tuesday, October 14, 2008

PLAYLIST - 12/27/08 (WBLSTD 66.6 FM, CHILLinois)

Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra "War Orphans" (Impulse!)
Lee Perry "Kojak" (Trojan)
Roots Radics "Mission Impossible" (Trojan)
Jesus and Mary Chain "Inside Me" (Reprise)
The Leaves "Hey Joe" (Rhino/WEA)
Soup Greens "Like A Rolling Stone" (Rhino/WEA)
Shira Small "Eternal Life" (Numero Group)
B.J. Snowden "In Canada" (Gammon)
Sun Ra and his Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra "Nature's God" (Saturn/Thoth Intergalactic)
Cutty Ranks "Six Million Ways To Die"
Mobb Deep "The Start Of Your Ending (41st Side)" (Loud)
LL Cool J "Big Ole Butt" (Def Jam)
Terminator X feat. Dubmaster "DJ Is The Selector" (Columbia)
Monster Magnet "Nod Scene" (Caroline)
Monster Magnet "Black Mastermind" (Caroline)
Human Puppets "Faces (Behind Walls And Closed Doors)" (Wierd)
Dead Luke "Rohypnol" (Sky-Fi)
Dead Luke "Break Neck/Stab Back" (Sky-Fi)
Dead Luke "The Thermostat Has Shorted Out" (Sky-Fi)
The Boys "On A Night Like This" (Numero Group)
The Lollipop Shoppe "You Must Be A Witch" (Rhino/WEA)
Television "See No Evil" (Elektra)
The Castaways "Liar, Liar" (Rhino/WEA)
Phillippe Laurent "Exposition Partie 5" (Flexi-Pop)
Mi Ami "Clear Light" (White Denim)
Gastr Del Sol "Work From Smoke" (Drag City)
C.A. Quintet "Bury Me In A Marijuana Field" (Sundazed)

"Mission Impossible" by Roots Radics is a very extreme dub, in that the bassline sounds as underwater and low-level as possible, while the snare hits on the 3 of each measure are as loud and crisp as possible, super jarring. About three minutes just a murmur of a vocal is mixed up and then quickly out again.... perfect. This would probably be a good track to explain dub for someone who's never heard it before. Been getting deeper into the 4-disc box set version of Nuggets lately. So many.... nuggets on here, like these sweet regional/underground versions of classic rock standards by The Leaves (from L.A.) and The Soup Greens ("from somewhere in New York State")... the Shira Small track is from the Numero Group's Ladies From The Canyon compilation, and her track really stands out. Not so much a Joni Mitchell style, more of an, um, B.J. Snowden feel, or June Tyson with Sun Ra (both played next for comparison purposes)... playing some old college favorites in here, no not the Cutty Ranks or the Mobb Deep, I wasn't that hip. You probably were, but I wasn't. LL Cool J was more my reach, and even though Walking With A Panther was not really that great of an album, "Big Ole Butt" had a seriously slammin' groove... and the 1991 Terminator X solo album Valley of the Jeep Beats album was incredibly sick for something on a major label and MTV, for example the way leadoff single "Buck Whylin'" opened with Sister Souljah screaming "We are at war!!" and then cut right into a sample from Black Flag's "Rise Above" over an especially turbulent Bomb Squad beat... but I'm gonna go with a deep cut here, the crazy sci-fi dancehall number "DJ Is The Selector"... I'd say that this track and various KRS-One numbers like "100 Guns" were my introduction to dancehall... then came Shabba Ranks, of course, followed by less world-renowned greats from the island like Cutty... once again go to Who Cork The Dance? for a crash course... ah, Monster Magnet and their album Spine of God... I bought this (on cassette!) back in '92 or '93 because it was on a year-end list in Spin Magazine, and that was a very good call. Such a heavy wasted bloodshot-eyed album of malevolent doom swagger... listening to this today I realize why the whole stoner/doom thing of the last 10 years or so has produced almost zero memorable albums for me, because none of them come close to the gauntlet thrown down by Spine of God listened to on headphones at an impressionable age. On this album the band played with dynamics (extended quiet and atmospheric sections that brilliantly set up the loud and heavy sections... unbelievable how few bands seem to be willing or able to do this) and frontman Dave Wyndorf displayed real individualistic personality (also a real rarity among heavy music frontpeople). A cassette by Dead Luke just showed up in the mail, mere hours before air-time... I really don't keep up with all of this post-TermBo limited-edition Blankdoggery but this tape looked cool so I threw Side A on over the airwaves and it worked just fine, aggressive psychotronic one-man-band trash... sign me up for a 7" by this guy... wait, lemme guess, they're all sold out... here's a power pop nugget that came out in 1980 and was therefore too late for Nuggets, "A Night Like This," my favorite song by Lincoln, NE's finest, The Boys... you can hear this and more by them and others on another Numero Group release, the Titan Records It's All Pop! 2CD retrospective... "See No Evil" by Television is a power pop nugget too, right?... The debut 12" by Mi Ami sounds new and different to me every time I play it, especially this slower/quieter/dynamic B-side track "Clear Light." I missed their followup 12" Ark of the Covenant but I'm looking forward to what they do as a newly signed member of the Touch & Go/Quarterstick roster... I could be wrong but it seems like people rarely talk about what a mind-blowing band Gastr Del Sol was 10 or 15 years ago in those heady days just before "Chicago post-rock" had a solidified genre name... "Work From Smoke" from the Crookt, Crackt, or Fly album just popped up on the iPod shuffle, first time I've heard it in a very long time, and my jaw dropped all over again at this 13-minute epic and its unclassifiable flamenco/prog acoustic guitar duelling, abstract poetic melodic vocals, and especially the smoky foggy bass clarinet driven coda... then the iPod took me to a track from an infamous album I had yet to listen to, Trip Thru Hell by the C.A. Quintet... this band was from Minneapolis and are described as some sort of damaged garage rock outfit but this song "Bury Me In A Marijuana Field" is a woozy Cali-sounding country rock ballad... sounded good after Gastr and that's how I'm going to end the show... smoke them if you have got them...

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