Air Modern

Reader Bryan Chandler sends me the following message:

Check out my historical Blog of Fresh Air Progressive Rock Program on WKSU BEFORE terry gross stole the name…

I strongly advise that you drop what you’re doing a go visit his amazing blog. He has compiled an amazing array of  interviews with artists from the golden age of when Prog rock collided with New Wave. Some highlights:

• Peter Hammill
• Laurie Anderson
• Bob Mothersbaugh of DEVO
• Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk

and many, many more!

Go there now. 

Curious Vid from Fripp and Summers

Circa 1982.
Girls dance around in what appear to be diapers and diaphanous coverings while two very serious guitarists play what sounds to these ears to be a variation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”.

Andy Summers (from The Police) looks even more serious (to the point of looking cartoonish) than the always reserved Fripp, which is an accomplishment, of sorts.

This album eludes me to this day.

I am a huge Robert Fripp fan. This was in an era of fruitful collaborations with many others and probably near the end of his ‘popular music’ era, wherein he appeared to be seeking to establish some kind of mainstream beachhead with his various acts (King Crimson, League of Gentlemen, etc.). It’s apparent from this video that he has always had a unique idea of what was marketable or commercially viable. This is one of the reasons why I like Fripp’s music so much.

Kill Ugly Radio Presents: Stranger Than Fiction II: Equinox

This is the follow-up to my personal nostalgic romp from February. As tag-team partner to Mr. B., the other half of the so-called Octave Doctors, Equinox would take over the board at 3:30 AM or so and would play a mix of space-rock, ambient and prog-rock until the sun came up. His mostly-instrumental mix made a great soundtrack for my all-night drawing binges. It made it easier for me to visualize some of the bizarre, otherwordly stuff I’d dream up in the trance-like state that type of music was capable of. It was also the first time I was aware of the power of mixing music together to form a new composition. Eno would blend into Van Der Graaf Generator, which would morph into Peter Gabriel. Whoever the mysterious Equinox was, he certainly knew how to warp space and time with his musical selections.

Here’s an iTunes mix that I’ve been listening to for a while that is very evocative of the kind of music he would play. For the complete effect, I like to listen to this immediately after the previous STF mix when I’m desk-bound in long projects (now you know why part one ends with an intermission bit).

Playlist:

1. Kraftwerk - Nachrichten
2. Gong - Magick Mother Invocation
3. Steve Hillage - Activation Meditation/The Glorious OM Riff
4. Arthur Brown - 2024
5. Kraftwerk - It’s More Fun To Compute
6. Brian Eno - Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch/Baby’s on Fire
7. Godley and Creme - Flood
8. Peter Gabriel - At the Powerstation
9. Robert Fripp - Watermusic I
10. Peter Gabriel - Here Comes the Flood
11. Robert Fripp - Watermusic II
12. Eno and Cluster - The Belldog
13. Vangelis - To The Unknown Man
14. Jean Michel Jarre - Equinoxe Part 1
15. OMD - Architecture and Morality
16. Godley & Creme - Art School Canteen
17. King Crimson - The Sheltering Sky
18. XTC - Jason and the Argonauts
19. Talking Heads - Drugs

Download ( 90 mins. 80 megs.)

Kill Ugly Radio Presents: Stranger Than Fiction

Around 1980 I discovered that, late Thursday nights, some DJ was playing strange, alien music. My appetite was whetted by Devo, Pink Floyd and strange bands I had read about in Heavy Metal magazine (having nothing to do with the genre of music that would later take its name) and I wanted more. The discovery of KBOO’s Stranger than Fiction completely opened the door to new, exciting music for me, and I’ve never looked back. The hosts of STF - the enigmatic Mr. B and Equinox - played a combination of New Wave, skinny-tie pop, novelty music (Barnes and Barnes, Bonzo Dog Band, etc.) and lots of acts that straddled Prog and Post-Punk (Gabriel, Fripp, Hammill). Thier show was like a complete education in alternative music and it really saved me in those lost years of being a weird, alien-feeling teenager, even if it meant that my friends would never let me play my mix-tapes at parties.

Eventually, Mr. B and Equinox expanded the program to handle early and late shifts, Mr. B starting at 1:00 AM, playing mostly newly released import singles and Equinox taking over duties at 3:00, playing lots of ambient music, prog and space rock until morning. I used to go home from school on Thursdays and go right to sleep so that I could stay up all night drawing comics while the show was on. I even taped a lot of it, but the tapes sound horrid now. As the eighties gave way to rock video, STF’s programming went a little too mainstream for my tastes and I was getting into hardcore punk by then. I don’t even recall when they finally went off the air.

the tracks I chose for this mix were songs that were either played often on their show, or played once and really made an impression on me.

I dedicate this mix to all late night DJs out there, playing new, weird music for alienated kids.

Playlist:

1. Godley & Creme - Freeze Frame
2. XTC - Senses Working Overtime
3. Lene Lovich - Lucky Number
4. The Normal - tvod
5. Robert Fripp - Disengage
6. Fad Gadget - Ricky’s Hand
7. Karel Fialka - The Eyes Have It
8. The Fabulous Poodles - Mirror Star
9. Gary Numan - I Dream Of Wires
10. Robert Palmer - I Dream Of Wires
11. The The - This is the Day
12. Peter Hammill - Now More Than Ever
13. The Silicone Teens - Memphis Tennessee
14. Fred Frith - Dancing In The Street
15. Hawaiian Pups - Baby Judy
16. Midnight Oil - Tin Legs and Tin Mines
17. Public Image Ltd. - Pied Piper
18. M - Pop Muzik
19. Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers
20. Boomtown Rats - Whitehall 1212
21. The Psychedelic Furs - Pulse
22. Laurie Anderson - Sharkey`s Day
23. Morgan Fisher, et. al. - Excerpt from Miniatures

Download (90 mins. 82 megs.)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Tertiary Phase: Episode 1
BBC Radio 4

Fit the thirteenth

Arthur Dent awakes to find that he has spent the last four years on prehistoric Earth, alone in all that time save for five minutes with an infuriating alien called Wowbagger who arrived, insulted him, and left. Reunited with Ford Prefect, Arthur discovers that the Hitchhikers Guide he threw in the river still works - and is being updated. Rescue appears in the form of a sofa caught in the Space-Time Continuum and Arthur and Ford disappear in a fashion which would cause stern looks from the Campaign For Real Time.

A Vast Pile of Buttholes

Were you aware of this?

Chances are, if you are a regular vistor of either WFMU’s Beware of the Blog or Archives.org, you may already know that there is a treasure trove of live recordings of The Butthole Surfers. Some of them date back to the mid-eighties, thier peak era. All are in the FLAC format, though. I might download and convert some and pass them along if worth it. Link right here.

Also, at the formerly mentioned WFMU BotB, some kind poster put up that funny Thai song that is in the middle of Locust Abortion Technician (Kuntz). It’s nice to hear it in its unadulterated form, although weird not to hear it looping and pitch distorted. My memories of that song are watching the Buttholes play at the Pine Street Theater in Portland on Halloween night in ‘86 or ‘87 - several people tripping hard - and that song playing on the house system while the band took a break. Paul Leary came out on stage and took his break, smoking the biggest joint I’ve ever seen outside of a Cheech and Chong movie - seemingly oblivious to the crowd.
Another was playing that song very loudly at the factory I worked at at the time (the Butthole’s doctored version of it anyway) and putting it on nearly every mix tape for nearly a year. Go get it here.

That is all.

Oblivion Seekers

Snake Eyes
Tim Kerr Records

This Portland Oregon band has been around for two decades and has been a virtual revolving door who’s who of P-town musicians from Napalm Beach, The Jackals and even a member or two from Poison Idea. They play a mix of rockabilly, sixties soul and most predominately, punk. If I had to describe them using other bands (a supposed rock-critic no-no), I’d describe them as X meets Roy Orbison. I realize that that sounds kind of horrifying, but this album is the one that the formula really works. I’ve owned more than a few Oblivion Seekers albums, but for many reasons, this one remains a favorite. This album (from 1994) was bassist/vocalist-and sole constant throughout the band’s long life- Mark Sten’s keyboard-driven, girl backup singer concept of the band. I saw this configuration open for The Cramps back in the mid-nineties and it was really great. I fell in love with the incredibly cute singers (and the girl that kept grinding her ass into my playground throughout the Cramps set) and the band was really hot despite the mellowness of the songs. That was one of the best bills I think I ever attended; The Oblivion Seekers, The Doo Rag (Yeah!) and The Cramps during their Flamejob tour. Ahhh.. Memories. Wish I coulda found that girl after the Cramps set.

Snake Eyes

Tom Waits

Nighthawks at the Diner
Elektra/Asylum

Nice live in the studio by album by seventies-era singer/songwriter Tom Waits. This is long before Waits became the hoarse, surreal croaker he is now; equal parts Howlin’ Wolf (vocally), Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac (lyrically) and Harry Partch (instrumentally). Tom had recorded three critically acclaimed, yet obscure albums for Asylum. His style was that of a beer-soaked piano man or a jazzbo, bebop speaking grifter or even a sensitive guitar playing singer.
Here - backed by a top-notch minimal jazz unit - he spins yarns about long-lost loves, the virtues of single life, eggs and sausage, phantom truck drivers and the goings-on of a fictitious county that would prefigure Garrison Keillor’s schtick by a year or two.
Waits really knows how to engage an audience and his between song banter takes up nearly half of the album. His portrayal of his stage persona and the characters he introduces us to are closer to a tragic, yet beautiful Diane Arbus photograph than Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks , the album’s namesake. After this album Waits became artier and more surreal, fianlly leaving Asylum for Island records where he continued to explore more fertile grounds artistically and lyrically with his wife, playwrite Kathleen Brennan.
This is probably my favorite Tom Waits album from his early career.

Download