Interesting premier in this show is the New Multitudes album, which marks this year as a 100 years from when Woody Guthrie was born. It’s another project where the Guthrie’s estate hands out his old unseen lyrics to modern day artists to write new tunes to the old words. First project like that was back in 1998 when Jeff Tweedy and Billy Bragg joined forces on Mermaid Avenue. It’s interesting that the Guthrie’s estate approached old Tweedy’s friend from the Uncle Tupelo days, Jay Farrar. He then also approached Will Johnson from Centro-matic, Yim Yames from My Morning Jacket and Anders Parker from Varnalinen to help him out in the completion. The whole thing turned out very well, Farrar’s singing wasn’t this good in ages and tunes fit the lyrics like a glove. Starting with this show, we will begin with a new segment, Live in Cleveland, which will feature live recordings from various bands on their Cleveland shows. We start with a new song for the Cleveland roots rock band Jack Fords, the band which also premiers at the Little Lighthouse today. Whitehorse is a duet from Canada that consists of singer-songwriters Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland and we feature them for the first time at todays show. Their self titled album is full of well crafted songs. Today we have John Wesley Coleman again, this time with a new solo album Last Donkey Show. Chrome Cranks are back with the new album Ain’t No Likes In Blood. And sadly, today’s show is dedicated to Davy Jones, one of the Monkees, who passed away on February 29 this year after a sudden hear attack.
Bootsy’s Rubber Band – Vanish in Our Sleep;
The Monkees – Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow);
The Monkees – Star Collector;
Whitehorse – Broken;
Jay Farrar, Yim Yames, Will Johnson and Andreas Parker – V.D. City;
Billy Bragg and Wilco – California Stars;
Green On Red – This I know;
Jack Fords – Covers Blown;
Jack Fords – Turn It Up Louder;
Smrts – Balga Promenade;
Endless Boogie – Pack Your Bags;
John Wesley Coleman – Misery Again;
Gibson Bros – Lone Wild Bird;
The Chrome Cranks – Way-Out Lover;
The Chrome Cranks – Living Dead.
Today’s show is dedicated to Michael Davis, the original bass player of the loudest band on earth MC5. He died on February 17 this year after liver failure at the age of 68. We also catch up with another legend Andre Williams who has a new record out. Bruce Springsteen also has a new one out. English new wave legends Wire have a live record out and John Wesley Coleman teamed up with Morgan Coy for a strange little extended play which features new songs in full studio arrangement and also in more stripped down acoustic style.
Julian Cope continues with his steady concept of putting out double albums with songs obsessed by the middle east and politics. Listening to that stuff is a learning experience. The new record is called Psychedelic Revolution. We also have the new album for John Larson, who we know from the Marlowes. We used to play them few years ago when they were active. Larson now has a new record, also a concept album, all songs are about music. Free from the Rolling Stones baggage Bill Wyman plays standards with his new band Rhythm Kings and we check out their new live record Live Communication. The new names today are The Good And The Bad. Their concept is numerology. The new record is called 18 to 33 and all songs are numbered from 18 to 33. PG Six are also a new band, they hail from Brooklyn and they don’t have a particular concept, other than sticking pretty strictly to the retro psychedelic sound. Royal Baths come from the San Francisco garage punk scene, but they all relocated now to Brooklyn.
We have a lot of new stuff this time. Let’s start off with the new albums for the bands that we know very well already. Chuck Prophet (ex Green On Red) has a brand new album Temple Beautiful lovingly dedicated to his home town of San Francisco. Heartless Bastards from Cincinnati are also here with a new record. It’s simply called Arrow. Besides his new album One Thought Revealed, Bill Fox also has a cassette tape out with some rare recordings that he made over the years. It’s called Before I Went To Harvard. Tav Falco reissued his legenrady Behind The Magnolia Curtain and The Cramps put together a compilation of their earliest singles. New names this time are all over the map. We have The Riffbrokers, a roots rock/power pop band from Seattle, The Dark Rags from the hometown of rockxs.com, Athens Greece, Blackbox Revalation from Brussels, Belgium, Calibro 35 from Milan, Italy and Janey and The Ravemen from London, England.
Today’s podcast is a podcast about another podcast. Radio Free Song Club is one of the most exciting musical websites that I stumbled upon last year. It features a loose collective of mainly New York based singer songwriters that gather together about once a month to put together a mixture of intimately recorded set of songs usually specially written for the show. There are also occasional cover versions and tributes. It’s all absolutely free on their website. The atmosphere in the sessions is breezy and the sound is very competent. If you like my selection of the best performances at the club, go to their site and check out the rest. http://radiofreesongclub.com/
We have several new things this week. Daniel Kroha from Gories has a new solo ep in blues style called The Folk-Blues Stylings. The Sky Drops is a new band at the Little Lighthouse that comes from Delaware. Their new ep Making Mountains is exceptional. Natural Child is another new band that comes from Nashville. We introduce them here. Mark Lanegan’s new album Blues Funeral is just about to come out, so we sample it in this show with one new song. Holly Renee Allen is a folk/rock singer from Virginia with a wonderful voice. She teamed up with Martin Kearns on her new album Red Dirt Soul. Leonard Cohen also pulled out an excellent album called Old Friends. We also have a brand new song by the swam-pop zydeco musician Rosie Ledet.
Kevn Kinney used to be in the band called Drivin ‘N’ Cryin, but now he has a solo careers quite in the past decade. His new album A Good Country Mile is a collaboration with Anton Fier. Terry Adams is not the only remaining original or classic line up member of NRBQ, but the record is still very nice and worth checking out. Legendary Bill Fox from Cleveland has a new record out called One Thought Revealed. We also have reissues for Reatards and Eddy Current Suppression Ring today. New band for today is Slow Animal from New Jersey. This show is dedicated to Etta James.
The Nuns was one of the first punk bands from the San Francisco rock scene. One of the punk pioneers from that era was Jennifer Anderson, better known as Jennifer Miro. This beautiful woman sadly died alone in New York last December and it took several weeks for the news to spread around. She was 54. Today’s show goes to her. We also have one new band today, Happy Thoughts from Indiana. The instrumental band Smrts from Australia have a new record out called Smrts Have Friends and Visit Them At Night, which will be an vinyl only release available in February. Wooden Wand also has a new record called Brairwood, which he recorded with a combo of several experienced musicians from Birmingham, AL. Evan Dando’s hotel room recordings from 1993 are out as a new Lemonheads release called Hotel Sessions.
Rock’n’rollers don’t spare themselfes. Their lives are intense. They pack a lot of action in their lifetime and often leave young. These people inspire us and entertain us. We learn from them too. The past year saw the passing of many great ones: New Orleans vocalist Benny Spellman, original bass player of The Shadows Jet Harris, rock’n’roll promoter from Cleveland Steve Popovic, the saxophonist from the E Street Clarence Clemons, Gerry Stuck-in-the-middle Rafferty, Rundgren’s keyboardist Moogy Klingman, the songwriter Jerry Leiber, Polly up-yours Styrene, the original guitar master Hubert Sumlin, his disciple Gary Moore, drumming wizard Keef Hartley, singer-songwriter Bill Morrissey, John Walker brother and the jazz giant from Zagreb Bosko Petrovic… we remember all of them today with a show dedicated to those that left us last year. And 2012 didn’t start the right way either. She already took Tom Ardolino from NRBQ and one of my favorite writers ever Josef Skvorecky. We will remember them with deepest respect.
The third part of our “Best of 2011” series brings you the best short forms in the past year in the first half of the show. I mean by that eps, singles, mini albums and so on. The second half of the show is all about reissues and albums that were issued last year, but were recorded much earlier. The absolute stand out in that batch last year was in my mind one of the last recordings (if not the last recording) of Rainer Ptacek mere weeks before his death back in 1997. Best short forms and reissues are otherwise lined up in a random free-form order. I did not attempt to chart them.