Trouser Press Tuesday: Robert Wyatt

ROBERT WYATT
The End of an Ear (Columbia) 1971 (UK CBS) 1980
Rock Bottom (Virgin) 1974 (Blue Plate) 1990 (Thirsty Ear) 1998
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (Virgin) 1975 (Blue Plate) 1990 (Thirsty Ear) 1998
Rock Bottom/Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (UK Virgin) 1981
Robert Wyatt (It. Rough Trade) 1981
Nothing Can Stop Us (UK Rough Trade) 1981 (Gramavision) 1986 (Thirsty Ear) 1998
(…)
Having first come to prominence as founding drummer/vocalist with Canterbury’s Soft Machine, Bristol-born Robert Wyatt is one of the English art-schools’ most notable (and best-loved) musical alumni, retaining that genre’s spirit of musical adventurousness without indulging in the bloated pretensions that sidetracked many of his contemporaries. In the unselfconscious experimentalism of his post-Softs work, the political commitment of his later material and his determination and dignity through a tragic physical setback, Wyatt has served as an inspiration for a new generation of socially conscious British artists (…)

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Since 1974, Trouser Press has been covering the Other Music beat and currently resides on the web at www.trouserpress.com

I will be posting a random link from Trouser Press on every Tuesday until I just flat out forget.

Kill Ugly Radio July Flyer

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Show from 6/25/09

Yep. The King of Pop is no more. The news hit mere minutes before my show, after hours of rumors of his passing, his miraculous return from death and then back to being dead again. The collective consciousness of Twitter had it right before the traditional media, after all.
But, hard to believe for me as it is, I ended up playing some Michael Jackson un-ironically.
You couldn’t have grown up in the seventies and not heard some of The Jackson Five. I used to watch their cartoon as a kid and found playing tracks from them kind of sad. Michael was a complicated guy. He probably never had a change to be a child when he was young. I have a funny feeling that history will be kinder to him now.

The rest of the show? I played some Material, some guitar-driven rock by Sonny Sharrock, Eugene Chadbourne and MX-80 Sound. I played some funky Marc Ribot, some Soviet-era Russian funk and disco and a big chunk of Frank Zappa playing The Grand Wazoo live.

I think I’m going to stop posting a detailed playlist. It’s too labor-intensive and really, you could listen to my back-announcing.

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Trouser Press Tuesday: Cucumbers

CUCUMBERS
Fresh Cucumbers EP (Fake Doom) 1983
Who Betrays Me … and Other Happier Songs (Fake Doom) 1985
The Cucumbers (Profile) 1987
Where We Sleep Tonight (Zero Hour) 1994
Total Vegetility (Home Office) 1999
All Things to You (Fictitious) 2004
OVER THE MOON
Over the Moon EP [tape] (self-released) 1991
ROCKDOWNBABY
Love&Sex&Rock&Roll (Life Force) 2006

Deena Shoshkes (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Jon Fried (guitar, vocals, keyboards), who subsequently got married, launched the Cucumbers during the early-’80s surge of musical activity in Hoboken, New Jersey, and — with numerous bassists and drummers — have been at it, with improving creative results, ever since. On the four-song debut, Fresh Cucumbers, Shoshkes’ lead vocal on “My Boyfriend” is Brenda Lee magic set to a dB’s-like tune; elsewhere, the blend includes more edgy guitar work (by Fried) and less fizzy charm. The other three songs sacrifice some catchiness for added complexity, but all of them are plenty likable(…)

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Since 1974, Trouser Press has been covering the Other Music beat and currently resides on the web at www.trouserpress.com

I will be posting a random link from Trouser Press on every Tuesday until I just flat out forget.

Show from 6/18/09

No real plan tonight. I am busy getting ready for a big event and didn’t have time to plan a concept or show. I just randomly played a lot of stuff that I’ve been listening to lately.
I started off with some Balkan music (Balkan Beat Box, Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra and Goran Bregovic), some Cheater Slicks and more.
No playlist. I’m too busy and left my notes at the station while fleeing. Listen to the show and my back-announcing, why don’t you?

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6/12/09: Weatherman Show

We made an historic link up with the notorious Weatherman (voice of many classic Negativland recordings) up in Seattle, where he and his visiting friend Active Ingredients supplied a steady barrage of found-sounds, police scanner radio and electronic gadget noises. On our end in KBOO studios, Tommy Hollywood supplied ambient keyboard sounds and selections from his voluminous collection of field recordings. I ransacked my own collection of found tapes and sound-bites and played distorted ethno sounds through my laptop. All this was ably co-engineered by Devin, who manned an additional mixer to bring together the arsenal of laptops and effects units. The air-room was overrun by equipment and cables.

(l-r)DJ ManRich and multiple laptops, The Weatherman and Active Ingredients.

The original conceit of the show – that being the cleaning of The Weatherman’s house in conjunction with the cleaning of KBOO studios – wore away, as both parties were more concerned with getting this complicated undertaking on the air than doing impromptu radio theater.

We did it and made chaotic noise for the better part of three hours. We both learned a lot about making this kind of collaborative radio over vast distances. I liken it to the historic Apollo/Soyuz dockings, only with silly noises and samples from bad porno movies.

Listen:

(3 hours, 244 megs. @ 192kbps)
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We plan on doing it again soon, now that we know how to do it. Perhaps we’ll do it when Active Ingredients returns home, making it a Tri-State radio Massacre; with him being in Northern California; the Weatherman being in Seattle WA; and us being in Portland Or. Who knows?

This all went down on KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland. Listener sponsored community radio.

Trouser Press Tuesday: PAUL MAROTTA

PAUL MAROTTA
Agit-Prop Piano (Do Speak) 1983
STYRENES
Girl Crazy (Mustard) 1982
HUDSON-STYRENE
A Monster and the Devil (Tinnitus) 1989

On his solo album, Marotta — a very early leading light in the Cleveland underground scene with such bands as the Poli Styrene Jass Band, which also contained future Pere Ubuites Anton Fier and Jim Jones — plays acoustic piano in a thickly overlapping, improvised mesh of ambient sound that can be considered either as serious avant-garde music or a hypnotic drone for trancing out. The two long pieces, much like Glenn Branca’s work on guitars, go nowhere, but do something aurally seductive while getting there(…)

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Since 1974, Trouser Press has been covering the Other Music beat and currently resides on the web at www.trouserpress.comI will be posting a random link from Trouser Press on every Tuesday until I just flat out forget.

Show from 6/11/09

Tonight, after some technical difficulties, I paid tribute to Hugh Hopper, bassist with late-Sixties Canterbury Scene standouts Soft Machine and Robert Wyatt. I also played as much of the new Cassetteboy album as college radio would allow and finished off with the entire A-side of Gods and Demons of Bolivia, a weird, old Vanguard album I found in a thrift store yesterday.

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(Artist/Track/Album)
Century 21 – Classic Oldies Format – Steamroller
Walter Murch – George Lucas – What’s Wrong? THX-1138 OST
Consolidated – College Radio – Friendly Fascism
Bongwater – Great Radio – The Power of Pussy
Reni Santoni and Rod Steiger – You Radio, You Mother – The Pawnbroker
Francis Dhomont – Allegro – Frankenstein Symphony
TM Productions – Tomorrow Radio
Bell Laboratories – Filtered Music and Speech – The Science of Sound
Conversa-Phone – Lessons I-IV – Round the World Swedish
Fred Chalenor – The Hughest Hopper – Cyber’et PDX
Soft Machine – Pataphysical Introduction Pt. I – Volume Two
Soft Machine – A Concise British Alphabet Pt. I – Volume Two
Soft Machine – Hibou, Anenome And Bear – Volume Two
Soft Machine – A Concise British Alphabet Pt. II – Volume Two
Soft Machine – Hulloder – Volume Two
Soft Machine – Dada Was Here – Volume Two
Soft Machine – Thank You Pierrot Lunaire- Volume Two
Soft Machine – Have You Ever Bean Green?- Volume Two
Soft Machine – Pataphysical Introduction Pt. II- Volume Two
Robert Wyatt – The Last Straw – Rock Bottom
Hugh Hopper – Miniluv – 1984
Robert Wyatt – Alifib – Rock Bottom
Robert Wyatt – Alife- Rock Bottom
Cassetteboy – Brokeback Building Site- Carry On Breathing
Cassetteboy – The Skilling Bike- Carry On Breathing
Cassetteboy – Reading Pain In The Face Of A Duck- Carry On Breathing
Cassetteboy – All The Forks, Forky Fork- Carry On Breathing
Cassetteboy – Standupsitdowngetupfaffaround- Carry On Breathing
Cassetteboy – The Lead Thief- Carry On Breathing
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood – Sand – Nancy & Lee
The Weatherman – Swat the Succubus – Weatherman and Wobbly
Pepa Cadona & Tito Yupanci -Tracks I – VIII – Gods and Demons of Bolivia
Klaus Schulze – Bayreuth Return – Timewind
The Children’s Starlight Chorus – E.T., I Love You – E.T., I Love You and Other Extra-Terrestrial Songs

Trouser Press Tuesday: PURRKUR PILLNIKK

Again, hopelessly obscure, but randomly fun:

PURRKUR PILLNIKK
Ekki enn (Ice. Gramm) 1981
Tilf EP (Ice. Gramm) 1981
Googooplex (Ice. Gramm) 1982
No Time to Think EP (Ice. Gramm) 1982
Maskinan (Ice. Gramm) 1983

A quartet of bratty minimalists featuring future Sugarcubes Einar örn (vocals) and Bragi Olafsson (bass), Purrkur Pillnikk was the most successful band formed in the early-’80s days of Iceland’s post-punk revolution. Although together for only seventeen months, the group recorded lots of material, hit the Icelandic Top 10 with its first album and even toured England with the Fall, their most obvious musical influence.

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Hugh Hopper 1945 – 2009

Hugh Colin Hopper (born 29 April 1945, Whitstable, Kent, England, grown up in Canterbury; died 7 June 2009) was a progressive rock / (fusion) jazz bass guitarist and composer. He has been a prominent member of the Canterbury scene.

Hopper’s role with Soft Machine was initially as the group’s road manager, but he already composed for their first album The Soft Machine and played bass on one of its tracks. In 1969 he was recruited to be the group’s bassist for their second album, Volume Two and, with Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt, he took part in a recording session for a solo album of Syd Barrett’s (formerly of Pink Floyd, with whom the early Soft Machine had regularly gigged [2]). Hopper continued with the Softs, playing bass and contributing numerous compositions, until 1973. During his tenure the group evolved from a psychedelic pop group to an instrumental jazz-rock fusion band. In 1972, shortly before leaving Soft Machine, he recorded the first record under his own name, 1984 (named after George Orwell’s novel). This was a decidedly non-commercial record featuring lengthy solo pieces using tape loops as well as shorter pieces with a group.

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