713 Songs

Go to SXSW.com right now and get your free 713 songs. It's incredibly easy to do (I mean, I did it), I've been listening to them all week, and they're amazing. The songs come as 128 bps MP3s, not my favorite things to listen to, but the quality of the songs & performances is so good and the diversity of styles is so wide that we can overlook the lame & skinny format. Not only is the music great, the list demolishes my current theory that the great art of naming bands has died. In just the H's alone are the bands Hurts to Purr and Healthy White Baby.

SPLATTO'S MOVING TO FRIDAYS

That's right! We are moving to Friday afternoons at 3 starting next week! The Splatto Festival will run from 3 to 5 (got my hour back!) and then Kimchi Shelter will go from 5 to 5:30.

02.23.06 Justin Mather Special

Today we had the great local singer-songwriter Justin Mather on for the entire hour. He played 6-7 songs live in the studio and we listened to a handful of tracks from his new CD "One Pillow." It's amazing how good these performers sound with nothing but two mics straight into the board.
And of course it helps when there's a great performance, like Justin's. I really ought to figure out how to podcast this one.

Anyway you can check him out at justinmather.com There's a few songs to download on there; but the whole CD is really, really fine.

02.16.06

The highlight of the show was during the third set when The Phat Man called me on the studio line. We had a brief conversation, then I realized I hadn't shut the mic off. D'oh! DJ's worst nightmare! Luckily, we had a short, clean conversation, half of which went out over the air. I also had to bleep Willie, who uses the F-word on the last verse of the song, albeit in a non-sexual way. Bleeping Willie made me feel dirty.





The Morells, That Mellow Saxophone

Hartz Mountain Company, Parakeet Training Record
Willie Nelson, Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other
Handsome Boys Modeling School (feat Cat Power), I've Been Thinking
The Buzzcocks, Ever Fallen in Love
Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, I'll Keep You Satisfied

David & David, Welcome to the Boomtown
The Bangles, Where Were You When I Needed You
The Kinks, Waterloo Sunset
Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band (feat Jack Bruce), Theme For An Imaginary Western
Justin Mather, Riverside

Jeff Buckley, Je N'En Connais Pas la Fin
Gerry & The Pacemakers, I Like It
The Strawbs, Hero and Heroine

NEXT WEEK: Justin Mather live in the studio!

Bob Balogh's stunt double

I filled in for Bob Balogh yesterday (Wednesday) from 9 AM to 11 AM. I ran a bunch of lengthy sets off the computer and worked on work stuff through the morning. As Bob tends to do these hysterical rambling Garrison Keillor on acid monologues, I bought in the Firesign Theater's "Don't Crush That Dwarf" LP as a Bob-proxy; it was cued up and I was in the process of introducing it when I noticed on the liner notes the statement "You might not want to play this record on the radio because of the FCC." Yikes! Ix-nay on the Iresign-fay! I yanked it. If anybody knows what is so objectionable on that record (I don't recall anything, but then I was never at my most cogent while listening to the FS) please let me know.

Sufjan Stevens, In The Devil's Territory
Herman Brood and His Wild Romance, Saturday Night
Lambchop, The Book I Haven't Read
Haale, Again/Baz
Rilo Kiley, Always
Los Super Seven (feat. Joe Ely), Let Her Dance
Them, I Can Only Give You Everything
Counting Crows, Carmelita
Richard and Linda Thompson, Wall of Death

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Hole in One
Jane Siberry, The Life is the Red Wagon
Mitch Elrod, Real County Dark
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Suspicion
Matisyahu, Lord Raise Me Up
The Knickerbockers, Lies
The Producers (Soundtrack), Love Power

Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, Blues For Nothing
Nellie McCay, I Wanna Get Married
Jackie Trent, 7:10 to Suburbia
T. Bone Burnett, Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
Jellyfish, That is Why
The Temptations, Papa Was a Rolling Stone (DJ Jazzy Jeff Mix)
Chad & Jeremy, The Progress Suite Editorial
The Guess Who, Hand Me Down World
Bert Jansch, In The Bleak Midwinter

Handsome Boys Modeling School (feat Cat Power), I've Been Thinking

02.09.06 All-vinyl show

I hadn't done an all vinyl show in months.

PFM, Cook (LP), Celebration
Ronnie Spector and the E Street Band, (promo 45), Say Goodbye to Hollywood
The Rubinoos, (LP), Rock and Roll is Dead

Devo, (Stiff Records 45), Jocko Homo
Devo, (Stiff Records 45), Satisfaction

Crack the Sky, Classic Crack (LP), Nuclear Apathy
David Werner, (LP), Can't Imagine
The Tremblers (feat. Peter Noone), Twice Nightly (LP), I'll Be Taking Her Out Tonight
The Searchers, (LP), Hearts in Her Eyes

Doll By Doll, Gypsy Blood (LP), Stripshow
Ben Colder, Wine, Women, and Song (LP), Great Men Repeat Themselves

Bet you can't say howdy!

After doing this radio show for 9 months, I figured that maybe it's time to post some playlists. WBCR-LP is a low-power FM station in Great Barrington MA, in the Berkshire Mountains. We're all volunteer programmers, and every show is different than almost anything you'll find anywhere else. On my show, THE SPLATTO FESTIVAL, what is played is based on a combination of my mood that day and what music I remember to bring to the studio. I've played avant-garde Chinese opera, free jazz, hip hop, Latin church music, sugary pop, and the occasional parakeet training record. Usually a show is either all vinyl, all CD, or all run off my computer. I've had several guest artists show up to talk and sing, which is a blast and incredibly easy, because I don't have to do anything but sit there and ask questions.

The show's only an hour long; it was originally two hours, from 4 to 6, then the station decided to start running Democracy Now at 5:30, and then my partner Myong-hwa took over the first half-hour, from 4:00 to 4:30 to host Kimchi Shelter, a Korean music and talk show which is incredible and you should really listen to it. So I'm not complaining, although one day oon I think I'll like to get that lost hour back.

The name. It was very early on a Sunday morning in April 2005, and I read in The Berkshire Eagle that the radio station, which had been a rumor for about three years, was in fact up and running. I decided I needed to do a show, so I went to the station's website and downloaded the programmer application form. The fifth or so blank on the form was "name of program." It hadn't occured to me that a radio program needed a name, but I needed a name. So, in the old Indian tradition of naming a kid after the first thing you see, I looked up from my desk and the first thing I saw was a poster from the annual Spoleto Festival, a big hoidy-toidy art festival held each Spring in Charleston, which I had the pleasure of attending in 2001 and 2002. So I bastardized that name, utilizing what looked to me like a sound-effect word from a Don Martin cartoon in Mad Magazine: SPLATTO.

As it turns out, Martin never used the word SPLATTO in his cartoons. He used SPLAT, to denote an egg hitting Robinson Caruso in the head and a hand squishing a spider, and he used SPLOIT, to denote a baby throwing food with a spoon, but not SPLATTO. Don't believe me? Fine. Look it up.