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 start off rocking out to the new band from Japan called The Novice. They have a new single out on Dirtnap Records. Then we move on to an old Kansas power pop band called The Tunes. Their material is recently reissued on an LP called Love Uncool on Cheap Rewards. Plastic Pals from Sweden have an excellent new single and Pat Todd of the Lazy Cowgirls fame is back with the new band called The Rankoutsiders and the album 14th and Nowhere is a sweaty rock’n’roll record. We have some news from The Gories headquarters. Their old bootleg The Shaw Tapes saw a proper release on Third Man Records and their guitar player Dan Kroha has a new band Danny and The Darleans. We also have some news from the Yugosphere. Partibrejkers from Belgrade are back with the new single and Overflow from Koprivnica have a new record which features Mihovil Pavlek MiÅ¡kina’s. MiÅ¡kina was killed in a concentration camp 70 years ago. Jimmy Haber is a new name from the power-pop scene in Australia. His new album New Bondi Hippies has some catchy tunes spiced up with politically conscientious lyrics. Doug Paisley is a singer songwriter from Canada. A lot of people talk about him these days. What I find particularly interesting is that he pulled out of darkness reclusive Canadian singer Mary Margaret O’Hara who has a significant space on his new record. She had a landmark album back in the 80s called Miss America.
Another international edition of the Little Lighthouse. We have new music from Italy, Ireland, Russia, Sweden, Iowa, Louisiana and Texas. Legendary Michael Doucet and his Beausoleil have a new record called From Bamako to Carencro. Then, Radio Moscow from Iowa have a new single. Talking about Moscow in Russia, I just recently heard about a cool garage band from over there called The Cavestompers. Forget Pussy Riot – Cavestompers are a truly spicy rock’n’roll serving. More garage hits come from Austin – new band Loteria and Sweden – The Most. Also based in Sweden is a new band called The Crunch which features former members of Cockney Rejects, Sham 69 and Clash. Five good looking ladies from Ireland are also pretty good songwriters – they called themselves September Girls, after that great Big Star tune. And finally – the title of the most fun record in this year so far goes to Italian glam rock band Giuda.
Today’s show is full of new names from all over the world. We have garage rock Liquor Store from Plauderville NJ and havy rock from Tumbleweed in Australia. Radio Days come from Milan in Italy and play power pop. From the Balkans we have two bands that play instrumental music. Fish in Oil are a jazz band from Belgrade (who occasionally rocks) and Dirty Fuse are a surfing the Aegean sea over in Athens Greece. Hozac records published a nice reissue of a new wave band called Epicycle over in Chicago. And finally, we pay respect to Pete Seeger. In fact, the entire show today is dedicated to this great folk musician who we lost at the age of 94 just a few days ago.
Today we have have nice balance between very young and older bands. From the old guard, we have The Fleshtones with their new album Leave of Talent. Koja and Disciplin A Kitchme are back with a brand new single and a new line up that includes a harmonica. Legendary punk band from San Pedro The Last are also back with their new full length album Danger which has been announced several times in the past seven years and now it’s finally out. It contains some of the older tunes that were planned for their unreleased album Look Again in 1980. In our last show we had John Petkovic with Sweet Apple and Dave Swanson with a live recording with his Rainy Day Saints. Both of them used to be in Death of Samantha. That band (without Swanson, but with the original bass player David James), reunited for several shows in the past two years and now they put out a double lp with entitled If Memory Serves Us Well which is a recording of their band practice before hitting the concert halls. New bands today are Cretin Stompers from Memphis (via Brooklyn) and Caseworker, lead by a nice couple Eimer and Conor Devlin, kind of a mellow California band like Mellow Drunk or American Music Club. Speaking of them, we have two news: Mark Eitzel recorded an album in Ray Davies’ Konk Studios in North London and their original producer, drummer and guitar player Tom Mallon passed away. We pay a special tribute to him today. And finally, we have two very young bands from the Cincinnati/Covington/Newport area – The Yugos and The Debauchees. Dan Stuart from Green on Red gave them some really generous compliments – so we check them out.
Welcome to our first regular show in 2014. After several shows in which we had a year-end review, new records piled up so today’s show is filled with new stuff. We start off with the brand new tune for Games, who we just pronounced as the band with the best record in 2013. We also use this opportunity to learn about some previous bands for Jeremy and Dave in Games. Then we check out the new Apache tune. They have a new single. First Base come from Toronto and they just released a fun debut record on Hozac. We check them out as well. Then we have a relatively new tribute that Ben Deily and his Varsity Drag performed in honor of Wiz (ex Mega City Four and Ipanema). We continue with an exclusive new track from Sweet Apple which is scheduled to appear on their upcoming album Golden Age of Glitter. It sounds a bit like Suicide, so we check out another song that also sounds like Suicide, by a new band Dreamsalon from Seattle. Chris Eckman also has a new record called Harney County. We also check out Rainy Day Saints live in Cleveland. I read in Sanjin Strbac book Token For The Favorite Wurlitzer a quote from Zikica Simic that there’s not enough appreciation for blues these days. So I decided to feature one blues musician that I admire in each new show in alphabetical order. So, in our new regular segment Blues Alphabet, we hear Pink Anderson. Finally, we pay a special tribute to Dick Dodd (ex Standells) and Phil Everly, of The Everly Brothers. Both of them died recently.
This is the third instalment of our “best of 2013″ lists. Today we cover the best short forms, and here we count the best 7” singles, eps, mini LPs and so on. Our list is in no particular order today, we just spin some cool short forms.
Today we review my favorite reissues and various artists compilation records in the past season. This year was particularly interesting because more and more reissues also come out on vinyl, often with extra material. Compilations are also cool, tributes are always interesting, new and old materials equally. I always value carefully crafted compilations from which you can learn new things.
One friend of mine classifies albums that he likes into big and small records. Not according to the dimensions, but according to impact and depth of a concept laid out on the record. According to that classification, Games is a small record. Simple three minute love songs, no impact or concept whatsoever. Still, simple can sometimes be really great. In this case, Games reached a near perfection in my mind. Every song is super catchy and fun. Simplicity of the overall delivery here is disarming.
One of the most exciting and definitely the most monumental come-backs this year is The Bevis Frond latest album White Numbers. This once very productive band lead by Nick Saloman published three records in ’87, and then an average of two per year until the new millennium. They returned in 2011 after seven years of silence with The Leaving of London, just to remind us that Saloman still has a lot to say. But this year’s White Numbers is a masterpiece.