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.
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