Broadcast October-20-2012 - 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.
379. St. Che - be my power station I've always connected this with the Bhopal disaster. 1984, Bhopal, India -- gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant sends an invisible cloud of poison into the surrounding shanty towns, kills thousands, injures half a million. It's the BBC sounding voice on the sample. "Bodies lay stretched out on the streets." Hell, maybe it was just a war zone, or a terror blast, or one of those nightclub fires (everybody trapped inside because the fire marshal was on the take). Pure horror regardless with corruption at the heart of it. Yet you could dance to it. No surprise that there's a connection to Adrian Sherwood, On-U-Sound, the Tackhead crew.
378. Midnight Oil - power and the passion I remember seeing them in a big hall show, 1990 probably, when they were as big as they'd ever get, saving the world from ecological ruin one concert at a time (and I even half-believed it possible). They introduced Power And The Passion as a surfing song. Which makes perfect sense, because there's nothing more powerful or passionate than a big wave, all that planetary evolution and movement coalescing 'cross four thousand years of ebb and flow and yin and yang to make for this thing which can be ridden. And then the horns come roaring in at the end and seal the deal.
377. Clash - magnificent seven For me, this always felt like a riff on Bob Dylan, subterranean and homesick, definitely New York City in all its turn of the decade corrosion and despair ... and yet crazy fertile anyway, not unlike the world as a whole, even my own useless suburb a continent away. The acid helped in this regard. I feel I should I apologize for this, all the acid references that seem to pop up whenever some kind of broader view is required as to what really went down in the 1980s (my angle on it). But should one apologize for telling the truth? Fuck that. The Clash never did.
376. The Band - when I paint my masterpiece I prefer this to the Dylan version, feels more road weary, earned, a rainy night in Rome by way of deepest darkest Arkansas or perhaps rural Ontario, somewhere vast and pointless, and all those million miles in between playing rock and roll, because it had to be done.
375. DOA - war in the east DOA saved my life any number of times through the 80s, mainly through their live shows. There was never anything pretty about it but it was always beautiful anyway, from the back of auto body shops to abandoned boys clubs to my old high school to the Arts Club on Seymour (the best damned club the Terminal City ever had, certainly in the 80s) to at least two sold out Commodores, to some impromptu acoustic messing around off the edge of a movie set. And I'm pretty sure they did War In The East, their only reggae tune, every time, because it slowed things a bit, clarified a few key points. Fighting one another - killing for big brother. Same as it ever was.
374. Grand Funk Railroad - inside looking out It's like the classic Spinal Tap line. There's a very fine line between genius and stupidity, Grand Funk being an outfit that spent most of its time wallowing on the stupid side. But they do nail it here. Notice the use of the present tense. That's what genius does. It transcends time, surfs impermanence, negates all previous and subsequent stupidity. Particularly when it's delivered as loud and proud as it is here.
373. Velvet Underground - the murder mystery The raw pure simplicity of the Velvets is one of the foundation blocks of everything that has mattered since 1965, and I'm not just talking music. But their story is not remotely complete without a chapter or nine devoted to their avant edge, their thirst for derangement and NOISE in the service of ... truth, I guess.
372. Guess Who - guns guns guns Lorena, now officially my lawyer, says this is way too high on the list, but then she's got no time for guys with mustaches. Motron, on the other hand, says it's not near high enough, but he was born in Winnepeg. What it is, is Canada's own Beatles past their chart topping glory ... but still rockin profoundly, proving they are both a world class band, and godamned poets as they chase it up and down the north side -- that giddy sense of freedom that a superlative groove offers. And then you've got Burton Cummings, just drunk enough (or perhaps drugged) to not be an embarrassment, laying down some of the finest vocals this planet will ever hear, sad and true. Godspeed mother nature, Godspeed.
371. Neutral Milk Hotel - two-headed boy What can I say? It's early 2001 as I write this, still winter, and Neutral Milk Hotel's The Aeroplane Over The Sea is the best album ever in the history of anything. I have no perspective on this, of course. I just heard it for the first time maybe a month ago, but holy shit, I'm hooked -- young man (Jeff Mangum by name) with a whole new way of turning breath to voice. Soul music for sure.
370. Electric Light Orchestra - boy blue When I was fifteen and ELO's Eldorado was new, it was all about the story, the big concept -- perfect for my still growing brain and imagination. The Dreamer, The Unwoken Fool. He starts out high on a hill in El Dorado, heads down into the world, gets caught up in a war, a tornado in the desert, Sherwood Forest, a lost kingdom, the south seas, some painted ladies, and so on ... finally ends up on top of another hill, this one in Avalon, still a dreamer, still unwoken, a fool. I'd listen to Eldorado beginning to end at least five days out of seven. I remember me and Gord Stewart who lived down the block (he was also so hooked on it), deciding we needed to put a stop to it, take a break at least. One month. No Eldorado. Like kicking a drug habit. And then I'm not sure what happened. I guess I got into Yes, or maybe ski season finally started. Or just girls and alcohol. Whatever it was, Eldorado got put aside for more than a decade. Until one night, 1987, high no doubt, probably a sliver of LSD in the mixture, I'm picking through the dregs of my vinyl (the un-essential stuff not filed on a shelf, just piled in various boxes) and the cover catches my eye. A still from an actual film frame from The Wizard of Oz -- Dorothy's contentious red slippers, the wicked witch of wherever trying to zap them off. I put the album on and man, I can't help but smile. It's just so big and fun. Not serious anymore, I couldn't care less about the Dreamer/The Unwoken fool. But the melodrama of it, all those strings and choral overloads, and horns -- that's eternal. Like in Boy Blue where everything's revving up to an obvious sort of b-movie climax, but it doesn't go there. Not yet. Just waltzes into this beautiful string bit, plucked cellos, I think. And then it goes for the obvious climax.
366. Neil Young - will to love For years, I just thought I had a shitty copy of this, all hacked and crackled. Actually, it was a shitty copy, victim of way too many nights left out of its sleeve, bits of ash and hash-resin and spilled wine gumming up the grooves. But Will To Love was supposed to sound like that anyway, like your lying next to a fireplace, letting the warmth of it sooth you, while your thoughts go long and deep with the crackles and hisses. It's 1977 and punk rock may be erupting, but Neil Young's gone ambient here, for one song anyway.
365. War - gypsy man It's the way it creeps up like a distant storm howling in that catches the moment for me, 1973, I'm maybe fourteen -- the Watergate thing, the Vietnam thing, the ongoing end of the 60s thing, all the bright colours fading, stench of garbage on the breeze. But at least radio was still good in 1973. You could actually hear Gypsy Man on CKLG-FM, the whole thing. Because the great corporate screwing hadn't happened yet. But it was about to. The consultants had filed their reports. There was stupid money to be made on the FM waves, and all of this visionary art and truth-telling crap -- it was in the way, babe.
Broadcast October-13-2012 - 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.
399. Human League - hard times Times are always hard. It just depends where you're sitting, or in this case, dancing. Because that's the point. You can always dance. Even if you have no legs. I've seen it done. At a David Bowie concert, 1983, way at the back of the stadium, a section reserved for folks in wheel chairs etc. Let's Dance was pounding away (not my fave so I'd taken a bathroom break) ... but holy shit, suddenly it was my fave, evidence that music can't so much cure any affliction as transcend it, because all those folks were finding a way to move. Human League, of course, isn't David Bowie ... but I'm sure he did inspire them and more to the point, Hard Times does transcend, beautifully.
397. Clash - lost in the supermarket This one never had more currency than the summer of 1984. We dropped a lot of acid that summer, in our mid-twenties by then, old enough to know better, of course, or maybe just go further, through the high and deep complexities of the ever corroding western world whose edges and holes and voids we were compelled to explore. This meant imbibing strong (yet controlled) doses of the ole lysergic, then going public with it, malls, video arcades, downtown streets, fair grounds, fireworks nights in English Bay -- getting lost in the Supermarket we called it. Shit yeah. We could handle any weird thing, even if we were still living with our parents.
396. Brian Eno - St. Elmo's Fire Another Green World is a perfect album title (pretty much perfect album too). Put it on and you get transported to a very liveable, very agreeable, very different place. Alien even, but oh so green and achingly beautiful, like a dream, vaguely remembered, with St. Elmo's Fire an actual song easing from the mists halfway through side one, deepening the mystery. And there's a superlative Robert Fripp guitar solo.
395. Pink Floyd - see Emily play Quoting something I wrote back in early 1981 (my own personal psychedelic spring, except it was January, but I was getting there finally, understanding the early Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett still at the helm) "... at the peak of London's psychedelic spring, 1967, touching the edge of the pop envelope with a nice little number about a girl named Emily and the free games for May she played. And it's perfect, even if moments later Syd Barrett would fall off the edge, get lost forever in shadows. Because the previous moments were eternal, like something out of Greek myths. They could never die, just continue, beautiful forever, beautiful now, all these years later."
394. Elvis Costello - green shirt David Lee Roth's an ass but he has given us a few good lines. Money won't buy happiness but it will buy you a yacht that will let you cruise up next to it. That's one of his. Also, rock critics like Elvis Costello so much because rock critics look like Elvis Costello. Which is my way of saying, I don't feel compelled to load this list with Elvis C stuff. He's had his due already from the critics. But Green Shirt from 1979's Armed Forces. That deserves special mention. Because it's just so tight, so sharp, so pop smart, and mostly overlooked, unheard, un-allergenic.
393. Flying Burrito Brothers - sin city It's Los Angeles, 1968, rumours of earthquakes, impending armageddon, the whole city of angels falling into the Pacific, such that even on the 33rd Floor, beyond the gold plated door, the Lord's almighty flame will find the wicked. Meanwhile, country rock is getting invented by a curious crowd of drugged out hippies in cowboy suits.
391. Steppenwolf - sookie sookie Malcolm Cale was in my class in Grade Seven. I guess you could call him a bad kid, because he smoked and, rumour had it, he'd even gotten drunk a few times. But he was small, quiet, didn't pose much threat, and anyway, we both walked home from school the same way, so we ended up hanging out a fair bit in his big house, which was almost always empty after school. No parents or brothers and sisters around to stop us digging through his dad's Playboys, sneaking a beer, cranking the stereo loud. But like pretty much every other kid I knew at the time, he lacked cool records. Maybe a few Beatles albums, some Rolling Stones, CCR. And definitely Steppenwolf, their first album, and best, the one with Born to be Wild on it and The Pusher, God Damn him -- we loved that, actual swearing on record. But the track that stands up best now is Sookie Sookie, funky and strong and cool as John Kay's shades.
390. Fleetwood Mac - hypnotized There is no Steely Dan on this list, mainly because you've heard all the good stuff already. And also, past their first album, I never found much to love anyway. Too smooth, too easy to listen to (even if it was hard to play), too mid-70s soft rock and sophisticated. But I always loved Hypnotized, one of those songs that seemed to capture it all, even if I didn't necessarily like what was getting captured, because it was rendered beautiful anyway. Except I could never find the album. Because it wasn't a Steely Dan song. It was Fleetwood Mac, wandering through their vague middle period, somewhere between the 60s psychedelic blues and mid-late 70s cocaine Hollywood. Hypnotic.
389. Steve Miller Band - the beauty of time is that it's snowing [psychedelic B.B.] Because that's just how things went in those delirious latter 60s days. Songs broke down, evaporated into seagulls and drones, found some bluesy riff, evolved into profound and visionary choruses, ended up getting titles that had nothing to do with anything you'd actually heard. Maybe you had to be there, but, of course, we all were, in our way, still are, we the children of that dazzlingly hopeful past's glowing future.
387. Nektar- the dream nebula + it's all in the mind Two in a row from a 1972 album called Journey to the Centre of the Eye, but damned if I've ever been able to find it. So these actually come from Nektar's 1978 double compilation called Thru the Ears which is okay, but The Dream Nebula and It's All in the Mind are by far the best cuts. Full on epic space rock that manages to be progressive and strong and not stupid in any way, mainly because it's not really about outer space, it's about the inner kind, so you feel these guys have actually been there, to the dream nebula, right through the centre of the eye, all in the mind anyway.
385. Isley Brothers - summer breeze The version of this song I grew up with was the Seals + Crofts original, which was cool at the time, better than average radio fodder. But the Isley Brothers take things way further, a much hotter breeze, feverish even, yet eminently cool in a latter day psychedelic-funk sort of way.
384. Screaming Blue Messiahs - wild blue yonder Lest there be any doubt, the mainstream 80s sucked. All those Power Stations, Duran Durans, Huey Lewises -- proof that sadists sat at the controls of the music and radio industries. Because they did have other options in 1986. They had Screaming Blue Messiahs who were everything their name promised, loud, proud, mad and fucking good. But nah, Van Halen was somehow more important, with their new lead singer, Sammy Hagar.
383. Nick Drake - northern sky I had a good friend kill himself when I was nineteen. It sucked. There was nothing romantic about it, no great mystery at the heart of it. He just wasn't up to life and the shit it was throwing at him. So he bailed, left a pretty nasty note. Long story short: I didn't really get over it until I got angry at him, dissolved the friendship as it were. How Dare You Fucking Bail! Which goes a long to way to explaining my general suspicion of the culture's various death cults -- the Ian Curtises, the Kurt Cobains, the Jim Morrisons. I just think it's life we should care about, rolling with it, dealing with, not ending it, intentionally or otherwise. Which gets us to Nick Drake. Yeah, I've got a few of his records, original vinyl, likely worth a pretty penny, and nice songs and all, rich with a sort of melancholic folkish soul. But is any of it really that different than Donovan in his more reflective moments? And he's still kicking, last I heard, weird and true. Anyway, there is one Nick Drake song on the list. A cut called Northern Sky, selected because it predates the death cult. True he was long dead by the time I heard it in around 1985, but I didn't know that. It was just there on an obscure compilation called the Great Antilles Sampler, an integral part of the very cool flow. Folk, experimental, avant-garde, pop, free form jazz. An album well worth looking for. And living for.
382. Sensational Alex Harvey Band - the man in the jar I saw these guys in 1975, warming up Jethro Tull. They had all kinds of props and costume changes, and there seemed to be a story being told. Maybe concerning the Man In The Jar, which I only got around to hearing (on record) maybe ten years later, bored, picking through a pile of old albums a friend was getting rid of. The Impossible Dream was an instant keeper, and not just for the one song, the whole album, a sort of sleazy back alley opera about who knows what? Some kind of impossible dream, obviously. Which are always the best ones.
381. Fred Frith - gravity excerpts [rando-EDIT] This dates back to 1980 but it was deep into the 90s before I ever gave it a proper listen. Music that was standing the test, no doubt about that. Or more to the point, music that had confidently showed the way to the cool future we were having. Rock and jazz and folk and all manner of exotic elements all humming along very nicely together, not world music but the world actually sounded like.
380. Led Zeppelin - in the light I remember being fifteen or sixteen, hearing this on the radio and thinking, okay, this is serious shit. This is about something. Because by 1975, the music you found on the radio was less and less about anything. It was just predictable gruel, programmed to fill sloppy gaps between advertising. Not that I was sophisticated enough to voice it as such. I just knew something was fast slipping away, all that cool, significance that had been so prevalent way back when in 1972 and 3. Because you just don't know when you're that young, twelve-thirteen-fourteen, that that's how the world works -- that it's precisely the best, most beautiful, cool, dramatic stuff that THEY consciously seek to destroy, eviscerate, EAT (and that includes you, you're sweet young flesh). But you are at least beginning to suspect something.
