4.28.06

Lovely performance today by Radio Free Earth, a husband and wife folk duo, Josh and Kim Wachtel, from up the road in Plainfield. We decided the best way to go was for them to run for 4-5 songs at a time, which is the best way to go. Me the hell out of the way. They played for an hour; we had the window open in the studio and Myong said you could here them loud and clear out on the street. Cool. Radio Free Earth was fun, smart, socially conscious w/o being stupid about it, and they really sounded great in the headphones. They'll be back, I hope.

Morells, That Mellow Saxophone

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Intro / Like Sonny
Hi-Standard, Tinkerbell Hates Goatees
Daedelus, Just Briefly

Sam Bush, Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)(Randy Newman cover)
Lords of the New Church, Open Your Eyes
Big Walter & His Thunderbirds, Pack Fair and Square

Radio Free Earth performance

Massive Attack, Live With Me
Cliff Richard and the Shadows, Blue Turns to Grey
Nick Lowe, When I Write the Book

Dondero High School A Capella Choir, Fox on the Run (Sweet cover)
The Spongetones, Metal Mother World
The Electric Express, It's the Real Thing, Pt. 1

Ahn Trio, Oblivion (Astor Piazolla arrangement)

Supercar

A reminder that making music videos can still be an artform. Look at these from the band Supercar:

1

2

3

And then there's also this.

04.21.06

Sweet Jesus, what a glorious mess. I spent most of the show trying to revive an ailing laptop so Myong's show (Kimchi Shelter, which runs right after The Splatto Festival) could run off of it.
As it turned out, Myong fixed up an alternative laptop, so it all worked out. But I was highly distracted the whole time.

Sky Smeed showed up to hump his gig in Lenox Saturday night, and played three new songs on the air. One of the songs, all of one day old, was about the GB kid who just got sent to prison for two years on a pot bust. Sky's incredible. Dude knows how to write a song and how to sing a song. Buy his CDs and go see him when he's playing out.

One technical glitch: During the first set (which included a George Bush impersonator reading speeches written by 7-10 year olds) I tried to stream a wonderful Bush parody from the Huffington Post, but the internet connection wasn't cooperating. But you can (and should) listen to what I was trying to play here.

Next week: in-studio performance by Radio Free Earth. And we're working on a live Sibylle Baier performance, maybe in May. Spread the word!

Morells, That Mellow Saxophone

Lumi Sugazawa O'Neill, George Bush speech
rx, Imagine / Walk on the Wild Side (vocals, GW Bush)
Melissa Mongan, George Bush Speech
The Honeydrippers, Impeach the President
Hannah Cohen-Sidley, George Bush Speech

Sky Smeed performance, and a gott-dammed good one, too.

Haale, Again / Baz, Again
Big Audio Dynamite, Rush
Ry Cooder, Three Cool Cats
Donny Hathaway, More Than You'll Ever Know

Seal (w Mickey Dread), Lips Like Sugar (Echo & the Bunnymen cover)
Yann Tomita, Love
The Boxtops, Soul Deep
Patty Larkin, The Letter

Iggy Pop, I'm Bored
Too Much Joy, Clowns
Cheap Trick, Surrender
The Kinks, All the Day and All of the Night (BBC Sessions)

John Lennon, You Can't Do That
John Lennon, Here We Go Again
John Lennon, Peggy Sue
John Lennon, Be My Baby
(all from the 1972 Rock and Roll Sessions bootleg posted at Bigozine)

Sufjan Stevens, The Man From Metropolis Steals Our Hearts (live at the Triple Door, KEXP-FM broadcast, July 23, 2005)
Sibylle Baier, The End

Return to Forever, Song to the Pharoah Kings

04.14.2006

We had Spottiswoode and a couple of His Enemies in the studio prior to their show at Helsinki. From what I could gather from their press and their website, I expected rampant lunacy, a kinetic Marcel Duchamp / Monty Python kind of experience. Instead I had a thoughtful, engaging and funny crew of Spottiswoode, bassist John Young and guitarist Ripley McMahon in for a half-hour of songs and talking. It's a privilege to be sitting there in the cramped studio while a live performance is going down. Sometimes I really lub shobidnid.

The Morells, That Mellow Saxophone

The Doors, Petition the Lord With Prayer (live)
Akira the Don, Clones (hip-hop remix of Alice Cooper version of David Carron's tune)
Sara Ayers, Everyday We Die a Little
Chemical Brothers, Come Inside (feat Sara Ayers)

Roxy Music, If There Were Something (live 2001)
The High Llamas, Easy Rod, Checking In, Checking Out

Spottiswoode and His Enemies, live performance

John Boutte, Why (Annie Lennox cover)
Shonen Knife, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
Del Nileppez/Thomas Dimuzio, Yawriats Ot Nevaeh (quarter note slices flipped backwards for the entire song, terribly beautiful and disturbing)
The Rudds, Something Great

Golem, Nikolev
Dino, Desi & Billy, Not the Lovin' Kind
Tin Hat Trio, Helium Reprise (w/ Tom Waits)
Dusty Springfield, Just One Smile

The Who, Coke Commercial
Neil Diamond, Coke Commercial
Los Bravos, Coke Commercial
Gracie Slick, White Stretch Levis Commercial
Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Coke Commercial
The Iron Butterfly, Ban Roll-on Commercial
(all from www.bigozine.com)

NRBQ, I Want You Bad (live)
Charlie Watts, I've Got a Crush On You (feat Bernard Fowler)
Meat Purveyors, I Want a Tall Boy (from "More Songs About Buildings and Cows")
The Morells, Growin' a Beard

The Rumdummies, Boil That Turpentine

04.07.06

Wow. After hearing of Gene Pitney's death on Tuesday, I started digging around the internet and soon had put three sets of Pitney's music together for the show, along with a bunch of interesting stuff to talk about about the guy. At 1:00 today I had a meeting with a local guy named Gary Leveille, who walked into my office and started talking about Gene Pitney. Turns out he's close to Pitney's manager and was also friends with Gene.

So Gary agreed to come on the radio with me two hours later and help out with my Pitney sets.

He was fantastic, knowledgable, and erudite. He made this show very, very special.

Did you know that Pitney had the first US hit with a Mick and Keith song ("That Girl Belongs to Yesterday"), 6 months before the Stones scored with "Tell Me"? Did you know he wrote "He's a Rebel" and "Hello Mary Lou"? I didn't.

We also featured the world radio debut of The Five Person Quartet, a funk band from San Diego composed entirely of high schoolers. Watch their space.

The Original Symptoms, Hey, Nice Vette

Gentle Giant, Playing the Game
The Left Banke, Walk Away Renee
The 5 Person Quartet, Burning Orb of Monkey Love
Fatboy Slim (with Bootsy Collins), The Joker

Gene Pitney, Love My Life Away
Every Breath I Take
That Girl Belongs to Yesterday
Hello Mary Lou
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
She's a Heartbreaker
24 Hours From Tulsa
It Hurts to Be in Love
Something's Got a Hold of My Heart (with Marc Almond)
Town Without Pity
I'm Gonna Be Strong
Backstage

Valeze, Search and Destroy
Marilyn Kaye, Yeah Yeah No No No
Monty Python, Miss Ann Elk
Dixie Chicks, Not Ready To Make Nice

John Coltrane, Greensleeves

Stream Me, Babe

CRISWELL SEZ:
You can stream the station now!

If you're one of those folks from the UK, Brazil, Limerick, British Columbia, etc., who are checking out the blog, now you can listen in Fridays at 3 PM ESDST.....

Casinos Are My Life

Blotto played its first Indian casino gig last night at the Turning Stone Casino, with The Flashcubes. We played on the same stage as Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Styx and Dennis DeYoung!

It was great, but it sure was weird.