Today’s show is dedicated mainly to my favorite reissues this year. The two comps I enjoyed the most were Mojo’s Heavy Nuggets III and Numero Group’s Warfaring Strangers Darkscorch Canticles, as a roadmap to the new band on some cool underground hard rock from the seventies. There were some excellent power pop reissues as well. Anyway, dive into today’s show for a complete list. Also, about a third of today’s show is dedicated to songs from some cool albums which did not make our top 20 albums, but were still cool enough to mention. This concludes our year end review, and we go back to our regularly irregular programming starting next week.
Il Sogno Del Marinaio – Stucazz;
The Tunes – Fits Like A Glove;
Epicycle – Biological Reaction;
Nikki Sudden – Stereo Baby;
Josephus – Crazy Man;
The Flsh Eaters – Cyrano De Berger’s Back;
Paul Westerberg – A Few Minutes of Silence;
Grant Hart – Remains To Be Seen;
Morgen – Welcome to the Void;
Wrath – Warlord;
Amen Corner – Hello Susie;
The Wigs – 180 Degrees;
Blues Pills – High Class Woman;
James Williamson (feat Mark Lanegan and Alison Mosshart) – Wild Love;
Chris Cacavas and Edward Abbiati – Me and the Devil;
Leadfinger – You’re So Strange;
The Forty Nineteens – Falling Down;
Ben Vaughn – Heavy Machinery;
Nowadays, singles and eps come out in various different forms. The old vinyl and CD, but it also can be a download, a video… So, it’s not easy to navigate through this mess. So, all singles and short albums up to four songs are what I call “short form”. Todays list compiles a list of my favorite singles this year. The second half of the show is dedicated to some of the albums that I liked last year, but that somehow did not end up on the top 20 last week. Happy new year everyone!
The two records that are subject of this review have something in common. They are seamlessly reintroducing hard rock into the garage-rock club scene and it’s an incredibly welcoming and rejuvenating moment in the newer rock’n’roll history. These two bands do it with pride.
Cover albums are a fad of this millennium. They give an artist a chance to show off their interpretive abilities and taste. Will Oldham’s new record is also an exercise in interpretation, but Oldham doesn’t go back to other people’s songs. He goes back three years behind, to his own album Wolfroy Goes To Town.
Every musical outlet out there has a year-end list. Little Lighthouse is not an exception, although the order should be understood conditionally. It does not rely on objective measurements, it simply compiles feeling towards albums that preoccupied my attention through 2014. Number one is Sweet Apple. Yours truly marginally participated in making of that record, and perhaps there’s a strong bias towards it for me. You would be right about that. But this particular record is a fun collection of songs without much pretension. What more can you ask from an LP? OBN IIIs and Liquor Store are great new bands which made ambitiously sounding records that rock. They even bring out a long forgotten idiom of hard rock, back into the modern rock’n’roll dictionary and it made me realize how much that sound is missed in the music world today. Together with some important reissues, these two albums mark the revival of that lost musical genre. Those two records are so rich with sounds and ideas that live performances of these two bands must be stripped down to a skeleton. Outragous Cherry has an astonishing return, with one of their best records ever. First Base and Strungs go back to the basic three chords and short songs – a formula that oh so often works great. Lydia Lunch calls out the ghost of Jeffrey Lee Pierce like no other artist before. Doug Gillard attempted to make a good easy listening record and ended up with a timeless masterpiece which will be remembered well in his opus. Billy Childs makes a loving tribute to Laura Nyro which borders madness and saccharine. Who’d have thought those two “lands” share a border? Kelley Mickwee and Haden Triplets show interesting ways to keep bluegrass alive and it trips my mind how most folks out there think negatively of this wonderful Haden Triplets record. Bonnie Prince Billy takes some old songs and brings in a new life to them with an incredibly focused interpretation… and so on. All the best in 2015, actually 2014 wasn’t that bad musically as it may appear on the surface.
Friends, a couple of new things this time. King Khan has a new band called Gris Gris and we hear a tune from their new record Murder Burgers. The Shivas are also back with a new record called You Know What To Do. We introduce Groovy Uncle from Britain, Ivory Deville from LA, and a new band from Partibrejker Cane, called Å krtice. They rock – we rock!
December 2 and December 3 of 2014 were two devastating days for rock’n’roll. We lost two true greats, Bobby Keys and Ian McLagan. McLagan started in Small Faces, continued with Faces had some amazing solo records, toured with his Bump Band. Bobby Keys played saxophone and greatly contributed to the golden period of The Rolling Stones – their Sticky Fingers and Exile of Main Street. Ian and Bobby crossed paths several times, on Faces, Ian’s solo records and the most recently actually in Cleveland – for the Rolling Stones tribute organized by the rock hall. This show is dedicated to the two of them. Their sounds are part of the very fabric of rock’n’roll. Thanks comrades!
This time, we review some of the best live performances in Cleveland in the past year. We have a segment called Live in Cleveland every week in which we feature some of the recent or historical field recordings from the live shows in this town. Today, we review all the shows from the past year and feature some tunes that we did not play yet at The Little Lighthouse. This how is dedicated to the bands who play their hearts out often in front of the sparse audience and to the live halls that persistently keep Cleveland as one of the most important stops on every band’s itineraries. Beachland, Now That’s Class, Happy Dog – you all rock!
We have a couple of new things today. Miss Destiny from Australia are three ladies and one dude: Harriet Hudson, Harriet Stewart, Annie Llewellyn and Brett Bevege. Also from Australia, in Perth, Night Signals have a new EP called Animals. The new single they have on Hozac is on our program today. Rich Hopkins has a new album with his Luminarios, called Tombstone, two years after his great effort Buried Treasures. Also, check out John Murry playing on of his new songs live in Cleveland. We hope to be a soundtrack of your Thanksgiving holiday this year!