Today is a birthday, they're smoking cigars: 8/31 show

Hey, people, it's my BIRTHDAY, and I get to be on the radio. Woooot.

On my 17th birthday, or maybe 18th or even 16th, I called my favorite local station (WBRU) to request "Birthday" by The Sugarcubes, in honor of my birthday. But did they play it? Noooo. So today is my birthday and I get to chose my own birthday songs, and I chose to start it all out with "Birthday". "Today is a birthday...." Yes it is. Damned appropriate. Meanwhile, at WLUW we do in fact usually play people's requests, but with the album Life's Too Good not in the catalogue, a request for "Birthday" would be met with an apology, and in its place a selection from "Stick Around for Joy" (their last album). I had to bring in my own copy.

In fact, I played a lot of selections from my personal collection today, much more than usual. Most are CDs that I think should be in the collection, and eventually I will get them in there.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch — the soundtrack. We have the tribute, "Wig in a Box", but the actual soundtrack is notably missing. It's a great soundtrack, and a great musical. The songs are all rock songs, of various styles, and good for radio play.

(Conversely, today I brought in Little Shop of Horrors, as I have done before, and decided not to play anything from it, as I have also done before. In terms of musicals, aside from my frequent playing from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I have played a couple of songs from Hair, stage version and at least one song from Cabaret, movie version, and one song from Assassins. As a DJ, I do enjoy giving people some "what the hell?" moments, but I think they should be good "what the hell?" moments, so I tread carefully.)

Martha and the Muffins. It is seriously one of my goals to get as much of the Martha and the Muffins catalogue as I have on CD (which is all but two albums, one of which never came out of CD) into the WLUW catalogue. Mary Nisi has egged me on, though she may well have forgotten. I had intended to play "You Sold the Cottage", which is a great homage to summer cottage life (and since after the show we drove up to Michigan), but I brought the wrong CD. Ah, me.

Red Hot + Blue. I can't say it's a goal to get this into the catalogue, but I do kind of think it should be there. Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop turn "Well Did You Evah" into a real party song.

Uztaglote — La libération des corps. I bought this in France this year, and realized while there that it was a recent independent release, and as such appropriate for the library and even rotation. But though I think the album is quite good, I didn't do anything about it, and getting it into the library is not at all a priority for me. I did get a called asking about the song, though. I had to spell the name for him carefully. I forgot to mention that he could find the playlist online.

Shirley Bassey. Yeah, that's right, Shirley Bassey. You got a problem wit' dat? This is not one I plan on getting into the collection. The story behind this CD is that I saw it in a store, and bought it as a lark. I figured it would serve any Shirley Bassey needs we might have for the rest of our lives. Then, to my surprise, I found it to be a very enjoyable album. Bassey sings with high drama, and once she'd done "Goldfinger", you can detect a tongue-in-cheek quality to everything she sings. She's having fun, and I love it.

My interest in Shirley Bassey, while it does in some sense begin, as so many things do, with The Muppet Show, really dates from the late 90's and the song "History Repeating", by The Propellerheads featuring Miss Shirley Bassey (as the credit reads). I bought a single of it, containing three very different versions of the song. I considered buying the whole Propellerheads album (which only feautures Miss Shirley Bassey on one track). I listened to bits of it online, and realized that the awesomeness of that song lies not with The Propellerheads (though they are good enough), it lies with Miss Shirley Bassey. She brings an amazing dose of cool to the song. Certainly she benefits from good producers and quality backups (as did, for example, Johnny Cash in "When the Man Comes Around"), but at the core is her interpretation of the song (as can also be said for Johnny Cash in "When the Man Comes Around"). (Maybe Shirley Bassey needs to do an album with Rick Rubin, who produced "When the Man Comes Around".)

Eurythmics. I don't think the station really needs any Eurythmics in the catalogue, though they are one of my favorite bands. In any event, 1999's Peace was a little, oh, not what I wanted it to be. Not adventurous enough, too light-rock-ish. But the songs "Forever" is really great. I got a call about it, too; the listener was surprised to hear what it was. Eurythmics never got all that much play in the US after their early hits. They were too alternative for mainstream radio, and too mainstream for alternative radio. In the UK, though, their fortunes apparently only increased, with 1989's "We Too Are One" being, I think, their highest seller (though I find it to be very much a second-tier album).

World 2003 is an album I bring in and play from occasionally, though I don't think it needs to be in the catalogue. "Youm Wara Youm" is a excellent dance track.

Meryn Cadell is another artist whose entire catalogue I intend to get into WLUW's catalogue. I have all three of Cadell's albums on CD. "Secret" is from the first album, and it's a gorgeous, spare, 1-minute song. Meryn Cadell is still writing but not singing, in part due to the havok on vocal cords that is wrought by taking testosterone as part of sex change. (I do not know the best way to talk about this. "Sex change" is the common way to say it, but not the preferred way. "Transitioning" seems to be the term of art, but it's a little ambiguous. Suffice it to say, Meryn was a woman and now is a man.) I do hope that one day he'll be able to sing again.

Benny Goodman ended my show. This was from a CD put out by the Smithsonian that I bought cheaply at the WLUW record fair last spring. Does it get any better than "Sing, Sing, Sing"?

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Sugarcubes	Birthday	Life's Too Good	Elektra
Hedwig and the Angry Inch	Random Number Generation	Hedwig and the Angry Inch	Atlantic
*Balkan Beat Box	Joro Boro	Nu-Med	JDUB
*St. Vincent	Human Racing	Marry Me	Beggars Banquet
W.W. Lowman	Batie	Plain Songs	Arbouse
Uztaglote	Je vair mourir jeune at seule	La libération des corps	R100
*Architechture in Helsinki	Heart It Races	Places Like This	Polyvinyl
David Bowie	Wild is the Wind	Station to Station	RCA
Sufjan Stevens	For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti	Michigan: Greetings from the Great Lake State	Sounds Familyre/Asthmatic Kitty
*Bat for Lashes	Trophy	Fur and Gold	Echo
*Aesop Rock	None Shall Pass	None Shall Pass	Definitive Jux
Martha and the Muffins	Boys in the Bushes	Danseparc	One Way
Zerostars	Like the Daylights	Self-released www.zerostars.com
Debbie Harry & Iggie Pop	Well Did You Evah	Red Hot + Blue	Chrysalis
Shirley Bassey	Big Spender	Goldsinger: The Best of Shirley Bassey	EMI Records
*Imperial Teen	Sweet Potato	The Hair, the TV, the Baby, and the Band	Merge
*Frisbie	Lather	New Debut	Appendix
Canasta	Chicago Slow Down	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
Eurythmics	Forever	Peace	BMG
Haale	Floating Down	Paratrooper	Darya
*Justice	Waters of Nazareth	†	Ed Banger/Vice
Samira Sa'id with Cheb Mami	Youm Wara Youm	World 2003	Narada World
*Datarock	See What I Care	Datarock Datarock	Netwerk
*Mirah and Spectratone International	Love Song of the Fly	Share This Place	k Records
Meryn Cadell	Secret	Angel Food for Thought	Bongo Beat
Quasar Wut Wut	Thankful Hank and the Guzzard	Taro Sound	Glorious Noise
Benny Goodman and his Orchestra	Sing, Sing, Sing	Big Band Jazz Vol II	The Smithsonian Collection

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 3:19 PM | 0 comments

I see by your outfit that you're boring. Let's all be boring.

Our friend and neighbor Emily has a very distinctive car, and whenever we see it, we say, look, there's Emily's car.

This week's Hitched

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:13 PM | 1 comments

From his eye spring fireflies: 8/24 show

Among the songs on todays show was a three-song tribute set to Ernie:

First came "The Gal from Joe's" by Nina Simone, an old recording that I have always interpreted to be about death: "She's leaving, and folks are feeling so low | They're grieving, and they're consoling poor Joe [...] She's traveling down that long last road" (lyrics from memory; may be a little wrong). It has a perky sound, yet it's still moving.

The second song was "Requiescat", by Duncan Sheik, a more recent song that takes an opposite approach to the theme: the lyrics tell their story much less clearly, and more obliquely, and yet the theme is more clearly stated ("requiescat" meaning "may (s)he rest"; neither song directly mentions death). Duncan Sheik's song is soft and sad, but a good deal less heartrending than the Oscar Wilde poem of the same name.

I wrapped up with Holly Cole's version of "I Can See Clearly Now", which is not about death at all. It's a nice, hopeful song, and a good way to raise people out of the funk of the previous two songs. More importantly, I bought the album this is from, Don't Smoke in Bed, in the fall of 1990, just a few months before we got Ernie — I wanted a song to remind me of that year.

I got a call during the set from a listener calling to express his sympathy, and then to tell me how when his cats died (three, all at about the same time), they had them taxidermied. I was trying to think of a polite way to say I wouldn't be doing that, not least because Ernie was already cremated, but I didn't have to — I couldn't get a word in edgewise. So it was an odd call, but I appreciated it, or at least the spirit in which it was made.

I got a lot of calls this show; I don't know why there are more some days than others. One was an enthusiastic "Tony! Where have you been?" (Because I've been alternating weeks this summer.) It was a caller whose voice I know, and I wanted to ask him his name, but I had to get off the phone and id my songs, so I didn't. He requested Jens Lekman, an artist I like but don't know well, so I was happy to play the request.

Another called asked for something pretty obscure: David Bowie's "Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola," which is an Italian version of "A Space Oddity." I know in high school my sister had a copy of this on vinyl, on the aptly-named compilation Rare; it's probably still in Providence, unless I've got it here. In any event, we didn't have it in the studio, so I played another selection by Bowie.

Finally, I got a request to break a rule: play an artist that I had already played. And normally I really wouldn't have done it, but the guy was sick in bed, and it was They Might Be Giants, who I'd played at about 6:15am, when a lot of people were still asleep. Sure, it was only about an hour and a half earlier, but still I relented. Apparently I'm a sucker. It did help that the song he requested was short — about 10 seconds. The album Apollo 18 has about 20 short, short tracks near the end, ranging from 5 to 30 seconds long; I played about 10 in succession, and it was probably just over a minute total. Which was fun.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Siouxsie and the Banshees	The Killing Jar	The Best of Siouxsie and the Banshees	Polydor UK
Sponsors In and Out of Love	Yellow Pills: Prefill	The Numero Group
*Datarock	Fa-Fa-Fa	Datarock Datarock	Nettwerk
*They Might Be Giants	The Mesopotamians	The Else	Idlewild
Laurie Anderson	Poison	Talk Normal: Anthology	Rhino
The M's	Plan of the Man	Future Women	Polyvinyl
*Dirty Projectors	Gimme Gimme Gimme	Rise Above	Dead Oceans
The Magnetic Fields	Kiss Me Like You Mean It	69 Love Songs Vol. 2	Merge
Zerostars	Fearless	The Good Can't Escape	Self-released (www.zerostars.com)
*Billy Harvey	Kaleidoscope Gun	Bearsick	Gold Recordings
*Justice	D.A.N.C.E.	†	Ed Banger/Vice
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult	Do You Wanna Get Funky with Me	Gay, Black, and Married	Ryko
The Go! Team	Bottle Rocket	Thunder Lightning Strike	Memphis Industries
Ghislain Poirier	Breakupdown	Mic Diplomat feat DJ Collage	Chocolate Industries
XTC	Ballet for a Rainy Day	Skylarking	Geffen
Leonard Cohen	So Long, Marianne	The Best of Leonard Cohen	CBS
Edith Frost	It's a Game	It's a Game	Drag City
*Ulrich Schnauss	Shine	Goodbye	Domino
*DJ 2Tall Presents Dudley Perkins and Georgia Anne Muldrow	A Tall	Beautiful Mindz	Eclectic Breaks/Amalgam Digital
(r)Jens Lekman	Pocketful of Money	Oh You're So Silent Jens	Secretly Canadian
The Specials	Ghost Town (12" version)	The Singles Collection
*Frisbie	I Speak Your Mind	New Debut	Appendix
(r)David Bowie	Sons of the Silent Age	Heroes	Virgin
*Caribou	Melody Day	Andorra	Domino
Konrad	Canyon Blue	First Disguised as Last	Radical Turf
*Coltrane Motion	Twenty-Seven	Songs about Music	Data Was Lost
(r)They Might Be Giants	Fingertips + various unnamed short tracks	Apollo 18	Elektra
Camper Van Beethoven	Take the Skinheads Bowling	Reissue Sampler	spinART
X-Ray Spex	Oh Bondage Up Yours	Germ-Free Adolescents	Caroline
The Noisettes	Don't Give Up	What's the Time Mr. Wolf	Universal/Motown
*The Gore Gore Girls	Fox in a Box	Get the Gore	Bloodshot
Nina Simone	The Gal from Joe's	My Baby Just Cares for Me	Duchesse
Duncan Sheik	Requiescat	Phantom Moon	Nonesuch
Holly Cole Trio	I Can See Clearly Now	Don't Smoke in Bed	Manhattan
Rufus Wainwright	Sanssouci	Release the Stars	Geffen
Kaspar Hauser	Glass Case Full of Dead, Stuffed Birds	Quixotic/Taxidermy	Backwardmasking
*Patrick Cleandemin	Days without Rain	Baby Comes Home	Ba Da Bing
*Office	Suburban Perfume	A Night at the Ritz	Scratchie/Newline
*Against Me!	New Wave	New Wave	Sire
Dick Brave and the Backbeats	Walk This Way	Dick This CD
Stereo Total	Ta Voix au Téléphone	Paris-Berlin	Kill Rock Stars
Las Malas Amistades	Hay Zombies en la Playa	Jardín Interior	Psych-O-Path
Morrissey	The Last of the International Playboys	World of Morrissey	EMI

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 2:39 PM | 0 comments

Update (mourning)

Thank you everyone who contacted us — via blog, IM, text message, or good old fashioned telephone — to express condolences. We are both doing better.

I posted to this blog Tuesday morning shortly after we found Ernie.

I had planned not to go into work that day anyway (though I did work from home in the afternoon), and that was the right decision. Feeling out of sorts, Eric and I decided to take a walk before doing much else. We stayed home long enough to contact the vet and cancel the appointment, figure out what to do about burial, and put Ernie into a box. Then we walked all the way down to Julius Meinl where we decided to have breakfast.

Two Austrian breakfasts later we headed back to the house. We did not have a regular vet, which is how one normally arranges cremation. We didn't want to bury Ernie in the yard, because we don't know how long we'll be here. I said, we could bury him in the front yard and plant a rhododendron over him as a memorial, but then what if we moved, and came back years later, and the rhododendron was gone?

So we found a pet cemetery in the suburbs, all the way out by Hinsdale, that offered (among other things) "Memorial Cremation", which meant he would be cremated in a small group, and the ashes scattered around the cemetery. It seemed like a nice idea, and I couldn't help but feel that a 45-minute drive each way would feel somehow appropriate, like a ritual act.

I sealed the box up, and Eric and I each put a flower on it, and we loaded Ernie into the car and drove off.

They had everything you can imagine available at the pet cemetery: urns, caskets, plaques, stones; you could even have the ashes compressed into a diamond. "Memorial Cremation" is the simplest option they offer. The woman there asked us if we wanted her to take Ernie out of the box and put into something nice for a last viewing, but we said no. We'd already had a last viewing, and we'd spent a long time with him the night before talking to him and saying goodbye before bed. We didn't need an open viewing. Plus, I didn't want to see him again. I didn't want to remember the skinny sad thing he'd become, I wanted to remember the cat he used to be. (Eric felt the same way; we found that we agreed on everything, and even things we didn't discuss, we later found out we'd agreed on for the same reasons.)

We did sit in the little viewing room for a moment before saying goodbye one last time. We cried some more, and we drove home crying some of the wjavascript:void(0)ay. But I haven't really cried since then. I'm still sad, but I think the ritual helped. Monday night, Tuesday morning, I was afraid I might never stop crying, but pain does pass.

I miss my little kitty, but I'm OK.

Rupert misses him too. He's a bit needy, but we snuggle him a lot and he seems to be getting better. Which is good: I think we need the snuggles too.

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 10:16 PM | 1 comments

When the lights go out...

I managed to create a Finn and Charlie comic this week, though it's a blackout style comic. Still, enjoy!

Finn and Charlie are HITCHED!

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:44 PM | 0 comments

Goodbye Little Ernie

Ernie died last night in his sleep. We thought he might. He was so sick, so weak, so unhappy that we'd actually made an appointment to have him put to sleep this morning. I'm glad he died on his own, though.

We spent an hour or so with him last night, stroking him and talking to him. I held his head in my hand, which he always liked. I kissed him on the head and said goodnight. We both cried a lot. This hurts so much more than I thought it would, and I knew it would hurt.

This isn't the best picture of him, but it's sweet, and recent.

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 6:47 AM | 1 comments

More office hijinks

It's hot here in Chicago, and I've dressed Finn and Charlie appropriately. New comic up now!

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:53 PM | 0 comments

We'll laugh at that old bloodshot moon: 8/10 show

I recorded this week's show, as I often do as a way of monitoring myself. How am I doing? Do I talk too much? Do I mumble? Anyway, after the show I drove up to northern Michigan, and listened to the tape on the way. Beyond being a good way to self-monitor, it's a nice way to revisit the songs I've played, especially the newer stuff.

I took a moment to really listen to the lyrics of "Train from Kansas City", Neko Case's cover of the Shangri-La's. I've heard the song many times, and just enjoyed the quality of Case's vocals, and the tune itself. But if you really listen to the story behind it, it's sort of moving in that way that pop from the 60's can be. She sings to the man she loves, telling him that she's gotten a letter from a man she used to know, who's in love with her and coming in on the train from Kansas City, and she has to go to the station to break his heart. Mary Weiss of the Shangri-La's, who was a teenager at the time, had a unique way of conveying emotion while sounding intimate and personal. Neko Case's gutsy vocals cover some of the same range; she's a worthy successor, and I think her version may even be better.

And a side note... after listening to a number of songs by the Shangri-La's, I think it's a shame that they are best known for "The Leader of the Pack." Of course, I like the song — who doesn't — but it comes off as a novelty song, not something serious, and so the group comes off as a novelty group. What about something like "Out in the Streets"? A heartfelt story of teen angst in the rough parts of town.

And speaking of novelty songs, we've got new They Might Be Giants in the studio. I admit I played the same song that's gotten the most play at the station, "Take Out the Trash," but it's a real standout track. It rocks with a 50's flair, and has clever lyrics about ending a relationship. It's not a quirky "Birdhouse in Your Soul" or "Particle Man"; it's more like "Don't Let's Start" (a song which is now about 20 years old; how about that?).

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Tom Waits	New Coat of Paint	The Heart of Saturday Night	Asylum
Bebel Gilberto	Bring Back the Love (Bombay Dub Orchestra Remix)	Bring Back the Love Remixes	Six Degrees
*Balkan Beat Box	$20 for Boban	Nu-Med	JDUB
*Mark Ronson feat. Kenna	Amy	Version	RCA
Lady Sovereign	9 to 5	Public Warning	Island/Def Jam
*Chromeo	Opening Up (Ce Soir On Danse)	Fancy Footwork	Vice
Michael Nyman	Prospero's Curse	Prospero's Books Soundtrack	London
Nina Simone	Ne Me Quitte Pas	The Best of Nina Simone	Philips
*Billy Harvey	I May I May	Bearsick	Gold Records
Neko Case	Train from Kansas City	The Tigers Have Spoken	Anti-
Andrew Bird	Scythian Empires	Armchair Apocrypha	Fat Possum
*Patrick Cleandemin	Hollywood	Baby Come Home	Ba Da Bing
Haale	Morgue Sahar	Morning	Darya
The Velvet Underground and Nico	Run Run Run	The Velvet Underground and Nico	Polydor
The B-52's	Give Me Back My Man	Wild Planet	Warner Brothers
*Bonde do Role	Dança do Zumbi	With Lasers	Domino/Mad Decent
*Of Montreal	Du Og Meg	Suffer for Fashion	Polyvinyl
Mucca Pazza	Habibi	A Little Marching Band	Self-released
Gal Costa	Habib	New World Party	Putomayo
*The White Stripes	300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues	Icky Thump	Warner Brothers
*Copperpot feat/ Prince Po	WYLA?	WYLA?	EV Productions
The Wolfgang Press	Mama Told Me Not to Come	Everything is Beautiful	4AD
Fear of Pop	I Paid My Money	Fear of Pop	550 Music/Epic
Canasta	Microphone Song	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
Divine	Walk Like a Man	Native Love	Disco Classics
*YACHT	See a Penny (Pick It Up)	PDX Pop Now! 2007	Self-released
The Saints	(I'm) Stranded	(I'm) Stranded /
Luxury	Green Hearts	Yellow Pills Prefill	Numero Group
(r)The Stooges	Search and Destroy	Raw Power	Columbia/Legacy
*Thge Might Be Giants	Take Out the Trash	The Else	Idlewild
Marilyn Monroe	Heatwave	Divas Exotica	Capitol
Deee-Lite	Party Happening People	Dewdrops in the Garden	Elektra
*Justice	One Minute to Midnight	†	Ed Banger/Vice
*Tack, the Boy Disaster	Paris	Oh, Beatrice	Self-released
The Smoking Popes	Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart	The Party's Over	Double Zero
*Keren Ann	Lay Your Head Down	Keren Ann	Blue Note
*The Budos Band	Adeniji	The Budos Band II	Daptone
OK Go	A Good Idea at the Time	Oh No	Capitol
The Noisettes	The Bridge to Canada	What's the Time Mr. Wolf?	Universal/Motown
Paul Weller	Down in the Tube Station	Hit Parade	Yep Roc
Las Malas Amistades	Necesidad (Electro Mix)	Jardin Interior	Psych-O-Path

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 11:06 PM | 0 comments

When boring things happen to good people.

This week's Finn and Charlie.

I drew this week's cartoon in a larger size, which should be more forgiving and look better. Let's hope.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:58 PM | 0 comments