Wednesday, August 29, 2012
oops! some Randophonic podcasts M.I.A.
Due to a
major malfunction at CiTR radio, a few of the more recent Randophonic
podcasts are temporarily missing in action. The three most recent shows are fine as is everything before June 29th. CiTR is working to rectify the problem soon.
Countdown #32 - gut feeling
Broadcast August-25-2012 - podcast available here. All comments are from Philip Random's notes
(with some editorial diligence). Links are not necessarily to the
exact same recordings we played on-air (but we tried). Nor is every
record represented here. To hear them all, you've got to actually listen
to the podcast. The full countdown list (so far).
503.
504.
Devo - gut feeling
Devo were impossible
to ignore when the various singles first started hitting in about
1978. Because there had NEVER been anything like them, even
remotely. Even I got that. But being the genius I was in
my late teens, I found them pretty easy to dismiss. Fun, but
just a gimmick. I mean, they weren't actually a good band or
anything. Then one day I was hitchhiking, caught a ride with a
punk sort of guy who had the first album on, playing loud. Gut
Feeling came on as we were crossing the Second Narrows Bridge, and
let's just say, I realized I was wrong, yet again.
503.
Simple Minds - I Travel
Back in the very
early 1980s, before they became huge, absurd and even stupider than
their name implied, Simple Minds were pretty cool. Big, tough
beats that weren't afraid to be danceable. Lots of pumped up
sonics, mostly dark, but hinting at an inner light. And they
were kickass live. I'm guessing I Travel was about being on the
road, not that I ever bothered to study it. Just did what it
was telling me, which was hit the dance floor, shake off the ghosts,
be glad I was alive.
501.
Tom Jones - 16 tons
Album title
(Wereldsuccessen) says it all, a Dutch compilation that I grabbed one
day at a yard sale. Because Mr. Tom Jones was an international
monster at his peak, a force of passion, good humour, not to be taken
remotely seriously. Except maybe when he took on 16 Tons, an
old mining song, his Welsh blood rising, giving voice to who knows
what ghosts may have been lingering.
500.
Clash - guns of Brixton
Yet another monster
from London Calling. More than any other song, I'm thinking this is
what hooked me to the Clash. Because much as I'd dug their punk
and powerful raving and drooling, this was obviously something else.
Reggae, I guess, but not really. Because there was way more
going on here than just aping that popular Jamaican sound. Nah,
Guns of Brixton was intense, rife with scattershot noise, full-on
revolutionary. What do you do when the cops bust in? Face
them down like the enemy they are with any means necessary.
499.
Taj Mahal - done
changed my way of living
It says 1968 on the
record jacket but this is pure 1990s for me, serving as a personal
anthem for a while, as I scaled back certain extremes of lifestyle,
making that decision that most of us make as we see our forties
looming – to not just burn out, but to age, to CHANGE.
Because change is good, certainly the kind you choose to make.
Like maybe opening your mind, starting to actually like the blues and
hot just the heavy howling LOUD Led Zep style stuff.
498.
Genesis - dancing with
the moonlit knight
How different were
things in 1973? In 1973 (with Peter Gabriel still the front
man) Genesis were the definition of sophisticated, underground cool.
Way too cool for local radio which barely played them. But you
heard about them anyway from various cool older brothers and sisters,
saw the occasional photo in Cream magazine. But it was always about
the live show, like Alice Cooper apparently, except way more mature.
So when I finally heard them, it wasn't what I was expecting at all.
How could it be? It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
So delicate and then not. So powerful and mysterious. The
album was Selling England by the Pound. The first song was
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight. Like slipping into a dense and
beautiful dream that you weren't ready for, but here it was happening
anyway.
497.
Badfinger - carry on
till tomorrow
I've mentioned the
tragedy that is Badfinger already. Two suicides, the two guys
that wrote this song as a matter of fact. But let's not hang on
that. Let's hang on how beautiful it is, how accomplished.
And how glad I am they gave it to the culture, the world, me
ultimately. Because I always seem keep carrying on.
Doesn't seem to be any other option.
495.
Byrds - everybody's
been burned
Because it's true.
If it hasn't happened to you already, it will. Love will find
you, fill you with heavenly light and eventually burn you, maybe tear
you apart.
494.
Aztec Camera -
jump
It's difficult to put into
words how much I hated Van Halen when they were at their peak.
So maybe just let this cover speak for me, the way it takes the piss
out of the monster hit that was Jump, and yet improves on it by
serving it up as soft rock, and then it all explodes anyway.
Beautiful.
493.
Deep Purple - lazy
[randoEDIT]
Memories of John
Masterson, friend of my older brother, definitely a wild one.
He had a souped up Datsun 510 that he loved to bomb around in, so
he'd give me rides places just to have an excuse to open it up, burn
rubber, go fast. And I swear he always had the same 8-Track
playing, Deep Purple Made In Japan, and it was always the same song.
Not the obvious one, Highway Star. Nah, John Masterson was
hooked on Lazy.
492.
The Edge + Sinead
O'Connor - heroine
Interesting that
this gem came out in 1987, before Joshua Tree. Inspires
thoughts of an alternate pop-history of the last fifteen or so
years. The Edge falls for Sinead, splits U2. And the two
of them go on to overthrow the Pope, take over the Vatican, end up
ruling the world. Bono meanwhile has nothing to better to do so he
joins Van Halen after David Lee Roth bails. Satan retires,
moves to Calgary. A thousand years of peace ensue.
491.
Wall of Voodoo - lost
weekend
As I remember it, Wall of
Voodoo started out wanting to make movie soundtrack music, but
somewhere along the line, they just started making their own movies,
in the form of songs. I mean, Lost Weekend may be only four of
so minutes long on record, but it's feature length where it matters,
in my soul. Smoke a little dope, pour yourself some Scotch and
you can see the whole thing play out.
490.
Wings - let me
roll it
Apparently this one was
written at John Lennon, part of an ongoing feud that had been
going on since before the Beatles split. Lennon's attack songs
tended to be full-on nasty, like bitchy little swipes at a former
lover. But Paul was nice. He never really sank to that
level. Instead, he tended to just do a "John", spit
out some generic bile in a John sort of way. Which in the case
of Let Me Roll It gave us one of the truly great post-Beatles Beatles
songs.
489.
Van Morrison - snow in
San Anselmo
The experts seem to
have pegged this album as a disappointment. Not me. I
remember it as Side B of the Van Morrison cassette I found in the
closet of my new place, 1983, standing on its end on the windowsill,
like the previous tenant was offering it as a gift. And it probably
was. Side A had Moondance on it, which I already knew (sort
of), various selections in fairly steady rotation on radio through
the 70s. But not Hard Nose. Hard Nose was all new to me
when I finally got around to playing it, totally on a whim, coming
down off some okay acid, early morning hours, too exhausted to do
anything, too wired to sleep. And there it was (on a different
shelf now), cued to Snow in San Anselmo. Like an offering from
God, or just some friend I never met.
488.
Alice Cooper -
hard hearted Alice
It occurs to me that
there are three selections from Muscle of Love on this list, not that
I'm apologizing. They're all damned good with Hard Hearted
Alice ranking the highest, so it must be the best: moody, cool,
yet not afraid to show a few fangs. But I guess the audience
was growing up at this point (I know I was), getting less fascinated
with all things gory, gothic, gruesome (other things that start with
G), maturing into the likes of Elton John, Electric Light Orchestra,
The Eagles (other things that start with E). Because Muscle of
Love was definitely the end of something. Yeah, there would
still be Alice Cooper albums for some time, but the group was
finished. That is, Mike Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway,
Neal Smith and a
guy named Alice (who sang lead, sometimes wore dresses, and was known
to smash baby dolls to pieces) would no longer make beautiful-ugly
music together. Now it would be just Alice (and various
industry pros) and not much to get excited about.
487.
Orb - earth [gaia]
You've probably
noticed there's not much stuff on this list from the 1990s even
though the cut-off date is 2000. That's because I generally
didn't buy new vinyl past about 1989. Is this fair to the
1990s? No. And I'm sorry about that. Sorry,
decade. This list is not fair. This list does not do you
justice. This list is not definitive. Yet it does have
some Orb on it, from 1991's The Orb's Adventures Beyond The
Ultraworld, because I had to have that on vinyl, all four sides of
it, something I could look at BIG, while it played BIG, not unlike
the known (and unknown) universe.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Countdown #31 - hanging around
Broadcast August-18-2012 - podcast available here. All comments are from Philip Random's notes
(with some editorial diligence). Links are not necessarily to the
exact same recordings we played on-air (but we tried). Nor is every
record represented here. To hear them all, you've got to actually listen
to the podcast. The full countdown list (so far).
524.
Stranglers - hanging around
Tough number about that most essential of
human endeavours: hanging
around. I remember seeing these
guys in the mid-80s when they were trying to soften their sound, less punk,
more aural sculpture. But the
audience wasn't having it, or better yet, the mob. Because the Stranglers had that effect on people. The aggression they inspired was
downright ugly, serious stomping going at the slightest provocation. Good thing I was thwacked on MDA at the
time (ie: Ecstasy, before marketing wised up, changed the name and doubled the
price).
523.
Can - Vitamin C
A song about who knows what? Including the singer, I'm pretty sure,
Damo Suzuki from Japan, hanging out in Germany trying to work in English
because that was the thing in those days.
And it works to abstract, dadaesque perfection. A song about whatever you want it to be
about, although I'll go with my friend Thomas's interpretation. It's about that dissipated feeling you
get when you've wasted all your precious vril energies on complex, yet
pointless pleasures. You're
losing – You're losing …
522.
23 Skidoo - G.I. Fuck You
Take a sample from the Do-Long Bridge
sequence from Apocalypse Now, lay down some heavy funk, all manner of delicious
percussion, and voila! It must be
1984, almost ten years since the Vietnam War officially ended, but you could
still feel its dark vibrations and heat, and horror. Even in the suburbs.
Pop it in the Sony Walkman, take the parents old dog for a walk down cookie-cutter
streets. Welcome to the
jungle.
521.
Suicidal Tendencies – institutionalized
Universal anthem of the pissed off,
headbanger teenager, who though he may lack subtlety, has an excellent
point. If I went to your schools,
your churches, ate at your restaurants, watched your TV shows and movies, read
your book, and still got all fucked up in the head – well, maybe I'm not the
problem. And so on. Society's to blame. Society doesn't care. Society's agenda does not include your
sanity and/or autonomy.
Also, this was a seriously radical sound in 1984 (care of the Repo Man
soundtrack). Heavy metal licks,
punk anger and insight (for lack of a better word), more rapped than sung – way
ahead of its time.
520.
Clash - safe European home
The Clash's second album Give Him Enough
Rope may not be their best, but it sure delivers with Safe European Home,
the-only-band-that-mattered captured at peak ferocity, moving beyond punk into
a realm that is best thought of as superlative.
518.
Connie Kaldor - Maria's place [Batoche]
Why do Canadian school kids not know where
Batoche is? How do we get past
Grade 10 without fully grasping the tragedy of what happened there, May 1885,
and how, in spite of our ignorance, it still colours our souls (and our
blood). So yeah, I play this song
at least once a year (the only Connie Kaldor song I could even name even though I've got the album). Every Canada Day. Because my French may suck utterly, but
je me souviens anyway.
517.
Bryan Ferry - a hard rain's a-gonna fall
It doesn't look promising on paper. Mr. Suave takes on Bob Dylan's 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis
world's-gonna-end-tomorrow-so-I-guess-I'll-just-write-all-my-songs-tonight
apocalyptic masterpiece, turns it into a funky sort of dance number with a big
arrangement. Yet it works, ten or
so years after the fact with the
missiles and warheads still in position (as they remain even now), total species annihilation mere
minutes away, every minute of every day.
Might as well dance to it, I guess.
516.
Kate Bush - the jig of life
Kate Bush pretty much had the world in her
hands by 1985's Hounds Of Love, and she made excellent use of it. Side One was the pop side, the songs
we've all heard. Side Two was
deeper, richer, stranger, with The Jig Of Life kicking in toward the end, a
force of pure and powerful pagan nature.
515.
Nina Simone - Suzanne
I was just a kid when this came out in
1969, but even ten years later, 1979, I wasn't near cool enough to get something like Nina Simone covering Leonard Cohen. Hell, I barely got Leonard Cohen. No, Ms. Simone would take another
decade and a half to penetrate my thickness. The mid-90s.
Grunge had gone horribly wrong.
We were slipping into sophistication, sipping cocktails, realizing our
parents had been right all along.
Sort of. Anyway, it was
Amy's parents who had this album, not mine, tucked way away in the dusty far
reaches of their collection ...
just waiting for us, some enchanted evening.
513.
Velvet Underground - who loves the sun?
The Velvets go for full on pop but still
can't help dis-respecting the mighty and magnificent and beautiful orb which
gives all life, inspires much of the world's religion and spirituality. Which is why we love them, of
course. Because the best sweets
always have some bitter.
512.
Neil Diamond - coldwater morning
From the 1970 album Taproot Manuscript
which made it very clear, Mr. Diamond wasn't just some fresh-faced popster
anymore. He was an artist, pure
and true. Yeah, the hippies were
sneering at him because his jeans weren't faded and/or crusty enough (and he
probably used cologne), but who really cared if he could deliver a song as
perfect as Coldwater Morning?
Particularly that high note he hits in the chorus. That's the kind of thing that stops
time if you're twelve or thirteen and just starting to figure out what passion
really is. How deep it all goes.
511.
Bob Marley - midnight ravers
For old friend James who got traumatized
the summer he spent tree planting by all the hippies who dominated his camp. All they wanted to do after a long day's
work was smoke marijuana and listen to Bob Marley, maybe bongo along. So he ended up hating all the great
man's music. Except Midnight
Ravers. For some reason, he could
never quite give up on Midnight Ravers.
509.
Einsturzende Neubauten - haus der luge
Berlin 1989. The new buildings are collapsing. The house is on fire.
Might as well panic, run wild, tear shit up. Except then the wall came down. Who saw that coming?
The historians now seem to give Ronald Reagan all the credit. Fuck that shit. It was Neubauten all the way. Music that dissolved concrete, melted
barbed wire, scared the hell out of the World Communist Conspiracy, set all
mankind free.
508.
Goose Creek Symphony - talk about Goose
Creek and other important places
Drink a little wine, maybe mix it with
other weird concoctions outa the holler, such that an easy little country blues
devours itself, goes all psychedelic, stumbles off into imponderable
dimensions, other important places.
507.
Black Sabbath - N.I.B.
I remember reading what N.I.B. refers
to. Except now I've
forgotten. "Nebulous Inner
Blackness," said Motron when I asked him, but he was just snatching that
out of the air. Anyway, it's from the first Black Sabbath album and it seems to be about the Dark Lord himself, Lucifer, but he just wants you
to take his hand, be his friend.
Another lonely guy stuck in all eternity. Which is what Black Sabbath always were -- just another blues band, playing for keeps.
505.
David Bowie - across the universe
The thin white duke at the thinnest,
whitest, most cocaine psychotic point in his career, takes a careless swipe at maybe the Beatles great psychedelic hymn to transcendence,
eternity, higher meaning. And at
first, it's a sloppy, god damned blasphemy, but then something very cool
happens. It finds its soul. The memory is of being
drunk, maybe twenty-one, singing my head off to this while very, very
alone. Feeling somehow saved. I believe I was driving at the time,
which is nothing to be proud of. I
didn't crash.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Countdown #30 - the way of the world
Broadcast August-11-2012 - podcast available here. All comments are from Philip Random's notes (with some editorial diligence). Links are not necessarily to the exact same recordings we played on-air (but we tried). Nor is every record represented here. To hear them all, you've got actually listen to the show. The full countdown list (so far).
538.
Max Q - the way of the world
Yes, that is Michael Hutchence laying out
the bleak hard truth care of his "other" band, the very short-lived
Max Q, which co-existed with INXS but only briefly. One album, no tours.
But it found me anyway.
Must've been the lyrics: You
are born into this world - Looking down the barrel of a gun - And those who
hold the gun - Want you to work fast and die young - And if you don't work - If
you don't obey - They'll make you live in fear till your dying day. And that's
just the first half of the first verse.
537.
Maggie Bell - wishing well
Wishing Well is one of those songs I was
aware of for a while without actually being conscious of it (if that makes any
sense) percolating around in the background, never too loud, never
overplayed. But that was Free's
version, the original. It took
Maggie Bell's cover to make me pay attention, ask the essential question. Why the hell haven't I heard more
Maggie Bell? I'm still wondering.
536.
Chris + Cosey (CTI) - the need
Mysterious live performance from somewhere
in Europe, 1983. Chris + Cosey
(late of Throbbing Gristle) exploring strange sonic regions via the nebulously
labelled CTI - European Rendezvous album.
This was the kind of thing you'd record off the CITR late at night, the
DJ never telling you what it was, or who was doing it. Then maybe a decade later, a friend
would put it on, and, "Holy shit!
Who is this?"
535.
Doors - [love hides] five to one
I had a copy of the Doors Absolutely Live
kicking around for years before I actually listened to it, inherited from
somebody or other. I guess I was
just going through a long phase of
not being into Jim Morrison and his bullshit, poetic and otherwise. But finally, early 90s maybe, I put it
on and got blown away. What a hot
band! Singer had something too –
not remotely afraid to howl the truth, however ugly it seemed. In the case of Five To One, it seemed
to have something to do with death and war.
534.
Assembly - never never
Feargal Sharkey (ex of power pop heroes the
Undertones) teams up with the guy from Yaz and slays the pop universe with a
lovely little lack-of-love song.
They called themselves the Assembly, like they were a band, and maybe
they were, but I never heard another song from them. Which makes Never Never pop perfect. Talk about not overstaying your
welcome.
533.
XTC - Jason + the Argonauts
Five albums into their career and XTC were
ready for something big. And big
was definitely the word for 1982's double album English Settlement. Yeah, there were a few singles, but the
songs worked best together, all in a flow. Probably because of the sound, the way so much of it had an
acoustic edge at a time when everyone else in the biz seemed to be going
electronic, usually badly. And no,
there's nothing remotely bad here.
531.
Wall of Voodoo - tse tse fly
The album's called Dark Continent and the
song's called Tse Tse Fly (both references to Africa) but it's all really about
America. It's always about
America. The jangly guitars, the
cheap drum machines and scrapyard percussion bits. And all that shadow around the edges. What could be more American?
530.
Gram Parsons - 1000 dollar wedding
Guilty as charged. I was that kind of asshole when I was
younger – happy to tell you how much I hated ALL country music. I was wrong, of course. Hating all of any kind of music is like
hating a part of your soul.
Because in what other form but Country could you take a simple song
about a simple wedding gone wrong and turn it into something epic – not remotely
maudlin, sentimental, greasy.
529.
REM - Cuyahoga
I gave up trying to figure out what Michael
Stipe was singing about very early on.
The first few albums, he was mumbling anyway, which made it easy. But then, starting with Life's Rich
Pageant, he was suddenly enunciating.
So you could hear the words – they just weren't adding up. Except maybe Cuyahoga. Because I'd read about the Cuyahoga in
a National Geographic as a little kid.
It was the issue all about pollution, and how man was poisoning the
world in a million different ways.
And the Cuyahoga was the river that actually caught fire, Cleveland,
Ohio, 1969. Who needs meaning in
the face of something like that?
528.
Violent Femmes - kiss off
If you were halfway cool in 1983, you were
hip to the Violent Femmes first album.
No, none of the commercial radio stations were playing it, but you'd
long ago given up on them anyway.
They didn't tell the truth about anything, except maybe how much they
hated you. Unlike the Femmes, who
couldn't not be blunt, horny, mad, honest – sometimes annoyingly so. But not with Kiss Off. Kiss Off hit it all just right, particularly
the part where Gordon Gano counts them all down:
his ten points of rage, frustration, spite, EVERYTHING.
527.
Jethro Tull - wind up
Christmastime 1972, a party at family
friends. I'm thirteen and barely
old enough to be hanging with the big kids. Just shut up and sit in the corner. And then they all go outside to smoke a
joint. They even invite me along,
but no way, not with my parents barely fifty feet away. Which leaves me alone with the record
that's playing – Aqualung by Jethro Tull, getting to the end of Side Two, a
song about religion and adult bullshit, which I had no problem agreeing with,
particularly the part about God not being a simple toy. You didn't just wind Him up once a
week, say few prayers and then get on with your weekly evil – lying, cheating,
stealing, business as usual. Nah,
if there was a God worth giving a shit about, He or She or It had to be way bigger,
more complicated and powerful than that.
The same still holds.
525.
Blurt - gravespit
Maybe you had to be there. Mid-80s, the Winter Of Hate in full
ugly bloom – the kind of cultural moment where a nasty, spiteful little ditty
about spitting on somebody's grave wasn't just vaguely acceptable, it was
exactly what the world required.
Because twenty years previous, the Summer Of Love was just chugging into
gear with all its bullshit. Thus
was the cosmic balance finally restored.
524.
Yes - the gates of delirium
I remember being fourteen or fifteen and
hearing this get played on one of the commercial radio stations, all 20-plus
minutes of it. I remember my jaw
dropping. It would've been late
1974, maybe 1975. Little did I
realize that an era was fast ending – that very soon the men in black who who decided such things would have no
use for crazy, cosmic, dense, intense side long epics about mystical warriors
in mythical lands busting through great gates of delirium. Or whatever Gates of Delirium was about. It was definitely about war, burning
children's laughter to hell.
Although I remember a few years later, a friend saying, "But it's
really about everything. That's
the problem with Yes. Their songs
aren't really about anything. It's
always everything. Which is always
another way of saying nothing. But
fuck, they can play."
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