Today we have a Velvet Underground tour de force. Death of Samantha play a cover of Rock And Roll in our Live in Cleveland segment, Danny And The Darlean’s play a pre-Velvet Lou Reed tune You’re Driving Me Insane. Also Natural Child participated in the Burger Records tribute to White Light White Heat. That album also saw a deluxe reissue with a lot of previously unreleased material, so we check out one of the songs. Talking about Natural Child, they also have a new record Dancing With The Wolves, which is about to come out. Other good new stuff come from The Cry!. We also check out The Moldes from Peru.
Today’s show is dedicated to a wonderful singer-songwriter and a poet from Ljubljana, Tomaž Pengov who recorded some of the greatest music in the former Yugoslavia. He passed away last week in the age of 64. His music influenced yours truly in many different ways.
Boykot Fur – Sister Ray;
The Cry – Seventeen;
King Tuff – Kind of Guy;
Canned Heat – Evil woman (Blues Alphabet);
Natural Child – Saturday Night Blues;
Natural Child – White Light White Heat;
Danny And The Darleans – You’re Driving Me Insane;
The Velvet Underground – I’m Not a Young Man Anymore;
Death of Samantha – Rock and Roll (Live In Cleveland);
The Moldes – Tres Malade;
Steve Wynn – She Came;
Kim Simpson – Prisla je;
Tomaž Pengov – Danaja;
Tomaž Pengov in Mladi Levi – Oda Ireni;
Phil Angotti – My Life And Rhymes.
We got some sad news this Sunday. Lou Reed passed away. When it comes to rock’n’roll, there are not many musicians that are greater than Lou. He managed to take the Bo Diddley rhythms and put them in the context of urban New York underground art movement. He was a street poet and he consciously enhanced the lyrical potentials of rock’n’roll music. We will dedicate our entire show today to him. We begin with two tunes that are direct dedications of other artists to his musical direction. Then we hear some other bands trying out their abilities by performing Lou Reed tunes. Two of those bands are from Yugoslavia (my former country), where Lou Reed was extraordinarily influential. Then we hear one live recording of Velvet Underground which was recorded in 1968 in Cleveland, where I live now. Again, it turns out, Cleveland was one of the rare places where VU was welcome back then. And then we close things off with an ambitious medley of songs by Lou Reed about death. He was obsessed by that topic and wrote a lot of songs about it, especially in the past 20 years. And now, he’s gone too. Lou, Lou, Lou… it’s the end of a great adventure.
Folks, one of the weirdest episodes ever here at the Little Lighthouse… There is a whole bunch of reissues these days with live music. So, we started off with the new live reissues of Lou Reed, Rolling Stones and Giant Sand. Twilight Singers have a new live album out, so we check out that as well. Our good friend Damien Youth reissued his studio album Sunfield on vinyl. It’s a lovely double LP. And then we played the new band for Chris Eckman from Walkabouts, called The Frictions, which he put together over in Ljubljana where he lives these days. They played a cover of Suicide, so “naturally”, the rest of the songs were about suicide as an act, not as a band. So, very happy ending today… Check it out, but don’t do it.