We of with two new interesting records form two ladies. Hayley Thompson-King kicks off with a surprising mixture of americana and europeana, and Lilly Hiatt who steadily provides great sounding records. Tall Juan is a new name from Queens, New York City, and in some ways, it does pay a tribute to the original pride of Queens, The Ramones. Lost Baloons come from Wisconsin and they had an excellent show in Cleveland, so we hear them in our live segment and we also check out their new album. Smog Veil record label mailed me a big box of records, and sifting through them, I picked The Prisoners and The Robert Besnick Band for this show. And, as an exclusive preview, we hear a brand new track from Cheese Borger and his Cleveland Steamers. Today’s show is dedicated to Holger Czukay of Can and Walter Becker of Steely Dan, to guys that indebted rock’n’roll in great, although very different ways. They died within two days from one another in early September.
Elope – Real Grim;
Hayley Thompson-King – Lot’s Wife;
Lilly Hiatt – Trinity Lane;
Lilly Hiatt – Jesus Would’ve Let Me Pick the Restaurant;
Part-Time Lover – Out Of My Control;
The Prisoners – Society’s Bitch;
Cheese Borger And The Cleveland Steamers – Maple Leaf Girl;
The Robert Bensick Band – AfterThe Ball;
City of Cool – Controlled;
Tall Juan – I Wish I Knew;
Lost Balloons – Not My Time;
Lost Balloons Live in CLE ;
Needles Pins – Pressure Points;
The Forty Nineteens – Another Day;
Minutemen – Dr. Wu;
Steely Dan – Peg;
Can – Outside my door;
Can – She Brings the Rain.
A lot of new names for us this time. We start off with Jon McKiel of Canada. We also introduce Bonny Doon from Detroit, Cory Branan from Mississippi and Beth Bombara from St. Louis. Rob Clarke and his Wooltones sent us their brand new single, Hills from Sweden are here with the new record and Jeff Beck’s singer Imelda May has a new solo record. CJ Ramone, a man who once replaced Dee Dee Ramone in the Ramones has a solo album with The Adolescents as a backing band.
Secret star of this episode is Neil Young. Two of his songs recently saw inspiring covers. Kent State murders are having a 45 year anniversary this year. Neil wrote a song about the event and this year, Cleveland band Obnox recorded a cover. A totally different sounding Colleen Rennison’s new album is named after a Neil Young song See The Sky About To Rain from On The Beach. King Khan is very active these days. After his album with Gris Gris, he reunited with Mark Sultan in a new duet Bad News Boys. We also have Miriam Linna, once a member of Cramps and nowadays boss of Norton Records. She’s back into the “business” as a performer and has a solo album Nobody’s Baby. Howlin’ Rain led by Ethan Miller also has a new album Mansion Songs.
The First Base LP review of any length would probably end up being too long. To state it very simply, First Base is a band from Toronto that writes simple two minute catchy melodies in the best traditions of bubblegum punk. Songs of unacquainted love, cool harmonies and unpretentious production will win your heart and have you play this record on repeat. Imagine if Ramones recorded an album where all songs were like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend – the result would be something like First Base. First Base doesn’t want to be your dog, First Base just wants to be in your record collection. The purest fun record this year again comes from Hozac label.
This is one devastating month for the world of music. We lost some of the really great ones recently. Tommy Ramone is the most recent one, until now, the only remaining original Ramone, writer of Blitzkrieg Bop and producer of The Replacements Tim. His most recent musical effort was a bluegrass duet Uncle Monk, and one touching song which I recorded live in Cleveland from that era finishes our show. We also review some of my favorite Gerry Goffin and Carole King songs. Goffin passed away and left behind an incredible pioneering work in rock’n’roll lyricism. Bobby Womack, who was born in Cleveland OH by the way, also passed away last month. Rock’n’roll audience probably knows him the best as the author of the Rolling Stones first no.1 hit It’s All Over Now, but he was also a great singer in his own right. The we say goodbye to two great jazz bassists. Charlie Haden was definitely one of the greatest in the world. Incredible list of collaborators will never be surpassed. For instance, we check out his most recent album with Keith Jarrett called The Last Dance. It came just one month before the news came about Haden’s departure. MiÅ¡a Blam is the second bassist that passed away recently. He is not very well known outside of the borders of former Yugoslavia, but back home, he was regarded as the greatest one. And finally we also mention the passing of Paul Mazursky, definitely one of my favorite movie directors.
Today we begin with two obituaries. Arturo Vega, art director and logo designer of The Ramones passed away on June 8 this year. Alan Myers drummer of Devo passed away on June 24. After we pay respect to the two of them, we continue with some new music. King Louie’s Missing Monuments have a new single, Calexico covers Replacements on the new EP and Mama Rosin joins forces with Mick Collins and Matt Verta-Ray for a Marvelette’s tune Please Mr Postman. Mark Ribot’s Ceramic Dog has an exceptional new album and Lisa Mychols is back with the new album too. Finally, we have a reissue of the Shoes first LP One In Versailles which is finally widely available.
Jesse Lee Smith is a fellow that hails from the Atlanta rock’n’roll scene that gave us many interesting garage rock bands in the past few years. One of the bands that started it all was the Ramones influenced quintet The Carbonas and Jesse played bass in it. He had a somewhat more complex vision on what his music should be, so he started a solo career with a rotating line up of musicians simply referred to as “his men”.
We have some new names today. Kitten is a new band, lead by Chloe Chaidez, consisting mainly of teenagers and very young people. They are picked by a big label and sound really great live. Us older folks in the audience were taken by their faithful covers of Joy Division and Stooges. The Spits come from Seattle, they have this classic Ramones sound and they have several records out already. Their fifth LP just came out. Jamie McLean is a guitarist from New Orleans. He was associated with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and now he has his own band and a new record called Time of My Life. We have another new singer songwriter in our show today, his name is Israel Nash Gripka. Although he is from New York City, his sound is very traditionally oriented. We also have Thee Oh Sees and Ian Moore with new releases. Nick Lowe is back with a new album and his old band Rockpile released some live recordings from 1980 on a new CD.
Today’s show is all about vinyl records in honor of the International Record Store Day, which was officially last Saturday. I stopped by the Blue Arrow Records and bought a couple of used vinyl. I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the special Record day releases, so you won’t find any of those in today’s show. The only brand new thing in today’s show is the B side of the new Fleshtones single which the band dedicated to The Ramones. This show is in honor of the vinyl and also we can only hope that the new records are as good as those that came out in the past. Perhaps I’m just hopelessly nostalgic for the old era, but in any case, it was fun to do a vinyl only show.