Your former glories and all the stories: 6/15 show

This was my pledge drive show, so I tried to play a lot of my favorite songs, and songs and artists I discovered (or learned more about) on WLUW.

I still don't know much about the Nazz (Todd Rundgren's second band), but the song "Open My Eyes" is excellent. In high school, WBRU had a weekly late-night show called "Headphones Only", which featured songs that sounded great on headphones, and generally pushed the envolope more than their typical playlist. It was through this show that I discovered two of my favorite artists, Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson. From time to time I'd tape-record the show as I drifted off to sleep listening to it, so I could listen more carefully later. I only had one 120-minute tape (60 minutes per side, enough for a whole show), and as a result now I still have two old shows recorded. Slowly I've figured out what a lot of the songs are (the DJ was not conscientious about IDing every song), and some day I hope to reconstruct these tapes in digital form. "Open My Eyes" was one of those songs.

Belle & Sebastian is a group Eric and I pretty much entirely discovered on WLUW (though certainly we heard mention of them elsewhere, and my friend Sarah J put one of their songs on a mix for us). Like the Smiths, their early albums feature songs that sound nearly identical to each other; I believe the album Dear Catastrophe Waitress is the first full-length album featuring a notably wider variety of style. The title track is a cute song about a waitress who messes everything up.

Sufjan Stevens is one of my favorite artists. I was referred to him by a webcomic I read (I don't recall which, but it was probably Jeffrey Rowland, John Allison, or R Stevens, all of whom mention music from time to time). Initially I downloaded a handful of outtakes from Sufjan Stevens' web site, and fell in love with them. The only place I've heard his music played outside the internet is on WLUW, though he's getting pretty big, and probably if I listened to other stations, I'd hear him there as well. But at WLUW we love him.

Papas Fritas broke up after their most successful album. That happens. Of course, the female singer was in grad school studying something like Social Services, so one might guess that being in a band was not her first priority. "Way You Walk" is one of those songs I hear on my iPod and then play again as soon as it's done. It's a near-perfect song. It was also featured in a Dockers commercial. (Good for them, I say! It got them some attention and some nice cash; for an indie musician, cash means freedom. Fortunately the song did not turn into — at least not for me — "that song from the pants commercial.")

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Siouxsie and the Banshees	Cities in Dust	Best of	Polydor UK
David Byrne	Glas, Concrete, and Stone	Grown Backwards	Nonesuch
*The Veils	Advice for Mothers to Be	Nux Vomica	Rough Trade
*The Long Blondes	Giddy Stratospheres	Someone to Drive You Home	Rough Trade
The Smiths	Still Ill	The Smiths	Rough Trade
Flosstradamus	Egyptian Love	Myspace Tracks
*Wilco	Walken	Sky Blue Sky	Nonesuch
Neko Case	Soulful Shade of Blue	The Tigers Have Spoken	Anti-
*Jana Hunter	Palms	There's No Home	Gnomonsong
Seu Jorge	Tive Razão: Voltaire Mix	Cru	Wrasse Records
Cesaria Evora	Angola: Bateau Ivre rework by Pepe Bradock	Club Sodade	Bluebird
The Aerovons	Everything's Alright	Resurrection	RPM
*The Jai-Alai Savant	Sugar Free	Flight of the Bass Delegate	Gold Standard Laboratories
Belle and Sebastian	Dear Catastrophe Waitress	Dear Catastrophe Waitress	Rough Trade
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti	Good Kids Make Bad Grownups	The Doldrums	Paw Tracks
The B-52's	Give Me Back My Man	Nude on the Beach: Anthology	Rhino
*Electrelane	To the East	No Shouts, No Calls	Too Pure
Nina Simone	Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair	Anthology	BMG
Kate Bush	Saxophone Song	The Kick Inside	EMI
*The Effigies	Scarecrow	Reside	Criminal IQ
Martha Carson	Now Stop	Get Hot or Go Home: Vintage RCA Rockabilly '56-'59	Country Music Foundation
eX-Girl	Venus vs. Gas Onna	Endangered Species	Alternative Tentacles
*Her Space Holiday	I Luv the Valley OH!	Xiu Xiu: Covered and Remixed
Sufjan Stevens	All Good Naysayers Speak Up or Forever Hold Your Peace	Michigan	Asthmatic Kitty
Beulah	A good Man is Hard to Kill	The Coast is Never Clear	Velocette
The Nazz	Open My Eyes	Open Our Eyes: The Nazz Anthology	Sanctuary Records
*Lavender Diamond	Open Your Heart	Imagine Our Love	Matador
The Aluminum Group	Tiny Decision	Happyness	Wishing Tree
Zerostars	Dad's Dress	The Good Can't Escape	self-released
*David Vandervelde	Nothin' No	Nothin' No EP	Secretly Canadian
Meryn Cadell	Flight Attendant	Angel Food for Thought	Bongo Beat
*Matthew Dear	Midnight Lovers	Asa Breed	Ghostly International
Papas Fritas	Way You Walk	Buildings & Grounds	Minty Fresh
*Art Brut	Pump Up the Volume	It's a Bit Complicated	Downtown

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 9:08 AM