The hills are alive with the sounds of teenage romance

The saga continues...

Go read Finn and Charlie

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 12:00 AM | 0 comments

Oh God of Progress, have you degraded or forgot us? - 1/25 show

It's no secret that one of my favorite artists is Sufjan Stevens, though I suppose I don't play him on the radio as much as I could. He got a name for himself by announcing plans to make an album for each state of the US, beginning with his home state of Michigan. So far, he's made two, and the second one was Come On Feel the Illinoise!. Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State was better, perhaps because it was more personal, but I do like Illinoise. The title track has an epic quality (it's written into two parts: "Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition" and "Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream"), but it's also fun and upbeat.

Incidentally, a year ago or so, one of the DJs at our station, Mary, got involved in a MasterCard "Priceless" YouTube campaign. She was asked to talk about Reckless Records, and in the course of her video (shot at odd, unflattering angles), she jokingly pronounced "Illinois" as "Illinoise", referring to Stevens' album. The YouTube comments were scathing and rude — people asserting that she probably wasn't a DJ (she is), and probably not even from Chicago if she couldn't pronounce "Illinois". While it is true that she didn't chose her subject, the vitriol in the comments was astounding to me. Honestly, who takes the time to leave a comment like "I hated your video so much I didn't watch it?" Rule of thumb: never read YouTube comments; they are almost uniformly asinine.

It's been cold and snowy in Chicago, and cold snowy days make me want to listen to Martha and the Muffins' This Is the Ice Age. It may be just that I got the album in the winter of my freshman year of college, and listened to it over and over again, so that it's indelibly associated with winter in my mind. In particular, though, it's the slick, icy title track (as opposed to the antic "You Sold the Cottage", which of course makes me think of summer).

Two new albums in recently, that I think bear a closer listen. Saint Bernadette's In the Ballroom is a bit jazzy, with gutsy vocal provided by Meredith DiMenna. (DiMenna is, as it happens, the vocalist behind Chunky Pam, though not the actress who protrays her; in any event Saint Bernadette is nothing like Chunky Pam.) Yeasayer's All Hour Symbols is dense, and complex, with a psych-rock edge.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Sufjan Stevens	Come on feel the Illinoise!	Come on feel the Illinoise!	Asthmatic Kitty
Lilly Allen	LDN	Alright Still	EMI
Zerostars	Sleeping In		Self-released
*Bob Mould	Shelter Me	District Line	Anti-
*Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden	Saturday Night	Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden	Red Valise
Martha and the Muffins	This Is the Ice Age	This Is the Ice Age	EMI
Annie Lennox	River Deep, Mountain High	Walking on Broken Glass Single
*Mise en Abyme	Father Shore (Trilobites)	The Second Marriage Records Compilation	Marriage Records
*Saint Bernadette	Sidestep	In the Ballroom	Exotic
Amy Winehouse	Back to Black	Back to Black	Island
Dan Deacon	Okie Dokie	Spiderman of the Rings	Carpark
*Food for Animals	Bulk Gummies	Belly	Hoss
Laurie Anderson	The Day the Devil	Strange Angels	Warner Brothers
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists	Shake the Sheets	Shake the Sheets	Lookout
Fazzini	Dell	Sulphur, Glue the Star	Locust
(r)The Books	Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again	Thought for Food	Tomlab
*Hello, Blue Roses	Coming through Imposture	The Portrait Is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty...	Locust
*The Hidden Mitten	Marry Up	Roma! Roma! EP	Self-released
*The Mary Onettes	Still	The Mary Onettes	Labrador
The Futureheads	The Hounds of Love	The Futureheads	Sire
Lene Lovich	New Toy	Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits of the 80's Vol. 3	Rhino
*Yeasayer	Sunrise	All Hour Symbols	We Are Free
Josephine Foster and the Supposed	Jailbird (Hero of the Sorrow)	All the Leaves are Gone	Locust
Jean-Claude Vannier	Mort du Roi des Mouche	L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches	B-Music/Finders Keepers
Califone	Pink & Sour	Roots and Crowns	Thrill Jockey
*Dengue Fever	Mr. Orange	Venus on Earth	M80
U2	Night and Day	Red Hot + Blue	Chrysalis

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 10:42 AM | 0 comments

Myspace?

Finn and Charlie has been updated. Go read!

Also, I've just added ads to my site via Project Wonderful, which offers a system of bidding on ads. Currently ads on my site are free. Any takers?

I'm also going to start advertising my site... but I have to create the ad first.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 10:58 PM | 2 comments

E Glassala Tuffm I Zimbra! - 1/18 show

The lyrics to "I Zimbra" by Talking Heads are nonsense words — or more accurately, they are meaningless words taken from a dadaist phonetic poem (Gadji Beri Bimba). And if you buy the record, you'll find the full lyrics to this song printed there on the sleeve with the other lyrics. The song, meanwhile, is a great dance song, with energetic African beats.

New in the studio this week was Dengue Fever's new album Venus on Earth, which I reviewed for the station. Dengue Fever is doing something no one else in the U.S. is doing, as far as I know: Khmer-language surf-rock. It's common in Cambodia, which was introduced to surf-rock by American G.I.s during the Vietnam war. In any event, foreign-language rock is just my kind of thing, as a linguist-and-music geek. Unusually, though, my favorite song on the album is "Sober Driver", a duet sung in English. The song has a slow, smokey groove, and the lyrics are in the form of a conversation. The verses are sung by the Cambodian lead singer, Chhom; she (as the character in the song of course) is drunk, out late at a party somewhere, and trying to get a ride home from the man she's called. His lines (sung by Zac, guitarist and one of the two American brothers who founded the band) are the refrain, as he complains about being used by her for free rides. Chhom does an excellent job of portraying the girl who flirts and coos to get what she needs from people; she seems helpless (she doesn't know where she is or how she got there), but you get the feeling she's not really all that helpless. Zac, meanwhile, sings his lines almost like a mantra, to remind himself of why he should not give her a ride; he wants to pick her up, but he doesn't want to be used. The song doesn't really resolve the story, leaving you wondering what happens next.

Eric asked me to play "Small Town Boy" by Bronski Beat for him. I didn't think the studio had a copy, so I looked for my own last night and found a 12" remix that I acquired from somewhere. This version is 9 minutes long, and begins much more spare and melancholy than the regular radio cut. The song is very much a product of the late 80's environment for gay rights. The small town boy of the song leaves his small town home to search for love and acceptance in the big city (a story which certainly still plays out even today). The lyrics are really very melancholy: "You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case"; "You never cried to them just to your soul" — but the melancholy is counterbalanced by the upbeat dance music underneath. This speaks to the trope of the era, in which a young gay boy comes to the city and finds what he's looking for at the gay dance clubs: the music frees him. So this 9-minute version changes the song a little, by starting with real melancholy, and then coming back again at the faster tempo. Eric and I have decided we prefer the radio edit.

Speaking of melancholy, today I finally got around to playing a song I find very sad: "Soldier's Things", as covered by Holly Cole. I haven't yet heard the original Tom Waits version; some of Cole's Waits covers are very true to the originals, while others are real reinterpretations. I suspect this one is close to the original, because I can't imaging singing this any other way than Cole's slow ballad. Lyrically, it sounds like a song from a musical; it wouldn't be out of place in Les Miserables. (Interestingly, Waits' version appeared recently on the soundtrack to the movie Jarhead.) It's the last lines of the song that get me every time: "Oh and this one is for bravery |And this one is for me | And everything's a dollar | In this box".

Is it the saddest song I played today? You be the judge. There are some others there that give it a run for the money. And it wasn't all sadness today, of course: "Manteca" and "Danger! High Voltage" are nothing but fun.

The playlist:
*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Talking Heads	I Zimbra	Once in a Lifetime (Box set)
Dizzy Gillespie	Manteca (The Funky Lowlives Remix)	Verve Remixed²	Verve
*Vampire Hands	Opium Typhoon	Virgin Dust American Lips	Freedom-form
*Bonnie Prince Billy	I Came to Hear the Music	Ask Forgivemess EP	Drag City
Pajo	Oh No No	Pajo	Drag City
Holly Cole	Soldier's Things	Temptation	Alert
*Dengue Fever	Sober Driver	Venus on Earth	M80
Bronski Beat	Smalltown Box	12" Remix	MCA Records
(r)The Electric Six	Danger! High Voltage	Fire	XL
Malcolm Middleton	We're All Going to Die	A Brighter Beat	Full Time Hobby
Ben Folds	In Between Days	Supersunnyspeedgraphic: the LP	Attacked by Plastic/Epic
The Fiery Furnaces	Egyptian Grammar	Widow City	Thrill Jockey
*Mira Bilotte	As I Went Out One Morning	I'm Not There OST	Columbia/Sony
Johnny Cash	Give My Love to Rose	Live from Folsom Prison	Columbia
Woody Guthrie	Black Jack Davie	Worried Man Blues	Special Music
Amália Rodrigues	Não Quero Amar	Lisboa a Noite	Planet Records
*Cass McCombs	Pregnant Pause	Dropping the Writ	Domino
*The Aluminum Group	Headphones	Little Happyness	Minty Fresh
The Other Two	Selfish	The Other Two and You	Qwest/Reprise
Canasta	Busride	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
*Karl Blau	If I Died on You	The Second Marriage Records Compilation	Marriage
The Tourists	Circle Fever	Reality Effect	Epic
Patti Smith	Dancing Barefoot	Land (1975-2002)	Arista
*The Vandelles	Swell to HEaven	The Vandelles	Safranin Sound
*Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble	Cause and Effect	Black Unstoppable	Delmark
Kronos Quartet	El Llorar	Nuevo	Nonesuch

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 1:56 PM | 0 comments

Ancient Chinese Curse

Are those ancient Chinese curses real? Or were they made up in a fortune cookie factory in Santa Monica?

Who knows.

Anyway, yup, it's time once again for Finn and Charlie are Hitched

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:40 PM | 0 comments

From station to station - 1/11 show

I specifically had wanted to play the song "Icky Thump" by The White Stripes as my first song today, just so that I could use the line "you can't be a pimp and a prostitute too" as my blog entry title. However, that song was a big single from that album, and the review pasted on the case specifically said not to play it, so instead I played the very amusing song "Conquest" later in the show. "Conquest" adds a Mexican/​Southwestern flavor to the White Stripes usual spare hard rock sound. The horn part is produced by cheap synthesizers, which must have been on purpose; it gives the song an odd quality [actually, I just listened to the song again, and the horns are in fact real; sometimes they sound like cheap synthesizer, which is even odder]. The lyrics tell a story that is essentially sexist, but in an amusing way. A man treats a woman as "just another conquest" — a sort of sexual prey. Then, when he succeeds, he becomes the prey himself to her conquest for a husband (which she succeeds at). So it's a sort of even-handed sexism, and tongue-in-cheek. [Update: apparently it's a Patti Page cover. For true! Compare the original with the White Stripes version. Thank you, Gems and Purls.]

Muscles' album did not make it into my top 12 of 2007, but it's awfully fun anyway. It's dance music, but has a raucous, off-kilter quality, very much like what The Mighty Mighty Bosstones brought to Ska music. The lyrics are mostly stupid-fun. The refrain of "Ice Cream" features such lines as "Ice cream is going to save the world" and "I just want to dance with my shirt off". (That last line always makes me think I should be listening to this in the summer; well, the band is Australian, so I guess it's summer there. Right now I hardly want to do anything with my shirt off.)

Speaking of odd and fun lyrics, today I played one of my favorite Throwing Muses songs, "Fish", from the 4AD comp Lonely is an Eyesore (the title of which is in fact a line from "Fish": "Lonely is as lonely does / Lonely is an eyesore / The feeling describes itself". The lyrics are poetic and odd; you understand them on a visceral level without them actually making much sense. "I have a fish nailed to a cross on my apartment wall / it sings to me with glassy eyes and quotes from Kafka"; "I have a man who follows my hips with his hands"; "The girl behind the counter sees a fin". Apparently, Hersh had (has?) a form of epilepsy in which the seizures come in the form of music, which explains the hallucinatory quality of her lyrics. (I had some trouble finding good confirmation of this online, but I recall reading it in an article years ago.) In any event, the success of this song is not just a matter of the lyrics, but also the excellent drumming that propels the song forward, plus the singing, the spare bassline, and the rhythmic guitar.

In general I think today's was a good show. I tried to rock a little harder than usual. I got three requests, which is a little more than usual. I don't know what it is that causes people to request more music. Is it my remembering to reel off the number at each break? Is it something in the weather that makes people more introspective and attentive to their radios? Is it something in the music that makes people want to participate?

Do you call into radio stations with requests? When and why?

Today's playlist:

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Kraftwerk	Trans-Europe Express	Trans-Europe Express	Capitol
Saint Etienne	Mario's Cafe	Travel Edition 1990-2005	Sub Pop
*Cex	Cocceesville	Exotical Privates	Automation
*Richard Youngs	No Edge	Autumn Response	Jagjaguwar
Kate Bush	Never Be Mine	The Sensual World	Columbia
Josephine Foster and the Supposed	Who Will Feel Bitter at the Day's End	All the Leaves Are Gone	Locust
Deee-Lite	Try Me On, I'm Very You	World Clique	Elektra
*White Williams	In the Club	Smoke	Tigerbeat6
*Joe Lally	Tonight at 10	Nothing is Underrated	Dischord
The Dials	Dead Beat	Sick Times	Self-released
The Smiths	Still Ill	The Smiths	Sire
The White Stripes	Conquest	Icky Thump	Warner Brothers
Ex-Ray Spex	Oh Bondage, Up Yours!	Germ-Free Adolescents	Caroline
*Wiley	50/50	Well Deep: Ten Years of Big Dada Recordings	Big Dada
Dizzee Rascal	Showtime	Showtime	XL
Patti Smith	High on Rebellion	Easter	Arista
The Throwing Muses	Fish	Lonely Is an Eyesore	4AD
(r)Man Man	White Rice, Brown Heart	Man Man	Ace Fu
Fiery Furnaces	Tropical Iceland	EP	Rough Trade
*Cass McCombs	Lionkiller	Dropping the Writ	Domino
Muscles	Ice Cream	Guns Babes Lemonade	Modular
Canasta	Microphone Song	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
Gruppo Romm Dracula's	Jampara	Gruppo Romm Dracula's	Romm
(r)Gogol Bordello	Harem in Tuscany (Taranta)	Super Taranta!	Side One Dummy
*The Dragons	Cosmosis	BFI	Ninja Tune
Sean Lennon	Photosynthesis	Into the Sun	Grand Royal
*Iron & Wine & Calexico	Dark Eyes	I'm Not There OST	Sony/Columbia
(r)Dan Deacon	The Crystal Cat	Spiderman of the Rings	Carpark
*Wire	Our Time	Read & Burn 03	Pink Flag

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 1:48 PM | 1 comments

Syllogism?

Based on a real conversation at work, this week's Finn and Charlie are Hitched!

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:21 PM | 1 comments

Redesign!

I finally completed a redesign of my blog and personal web site. I started in months ago; you know how it goes.

So what do you think? Too purple? Not purple enough?

Labels: personal

posted by Tony at 1:28 PM | 2 comments

Goodbye to the Brixton sun - 1/4 show

Best of 2007 show today...

1) LCD Soundsystem / Sounds of Silver
* Nine tracks' worth of awesome. Good dance music, but also a little deeper than that. More consistent than the previous album.

2) Patrick Wolf / The Magic Position
* It still surprises me how much I like this one. Sort of a cross between Marc Almond and Rufus Wainwright.

3) New Pornographers / Challengers
* A solid yet varied pop album. Probably the secret ingredient is Neko Case.

4) Haale / Paratrooper/Morning
* Two simultaneously- released EPs rather than one album, actually. I discovered this one last spring, and it bowled me over. Music for people who thought Dead Can Dance would be better with electric guitar.

5) The Polyphonic Spree / The Fragile Army
* Up till now I haven't been all that impressed with the Polyphonic Spree... maybe I just didn't give them a fair chance before. Anyway, this album grabbed me and made me listen, and you know what? It's real good.

6) The Noisettes / What's the Time Mr Wolf?
* The Noisettes grabbed me, knocked me around, threw me against a wall, and made me listen. This is the hardest rock album of the list. Lead singer Shingai Shoniwa has a fantastic voice.

7) Battles / Mirrored
* I use 30% more of my brain listening to Battles compared with other indie rock. Patterns on top of patterns, slightly psychedelic: Battles makes the whole Math Rock genre less annoying.

8) Cass McCombs / Dropping the Writ
* This man has a great voice, and has put together a well-varied, solid album.

9) The Earlies / The Enemy Chorus
* Mix prog rock with electronica and Sugar-era Bob Mould and this is what you get.

10) Air / Pocket Symphony
* When Charlotte Gainsbourg's album came out this year, and all the music was by Air, I thought I liked it better than Air. But after a few months I realized that Pocket Symphony was the better album. It's a little bit like a warm bath. In a good way.

11) Jens Lekman / Night Falls over Kortedala
* Our favorite Swede has been studying 60's pop. The orchestrations are sometimes over the top, but hey, I like them anyway.

12) Rufus Wainwright / Release the Stars
* I wanted Rufus to give us a great album this year, and I didn't really get it. It is, however, good, and I know I'll be listening to it for years to come — maybe just not as much as Want One or Poses.

Honorable mention — albums I also thought were notably great but for one reason or another dropped out of my top list:

Mavis Staples / We'll Never Turn Back
Andrew Bird / Armchair Apocrypha
Office / A Night at the Ritz
Mirah and Spectratone International / Share This Place
St Vincent / Marry Me
Uztaglote / La liberation des corps

I'll admit I dropped Office from the top dozen because A Night at the Ritz is nearly identical to last year's self-released Q&A, which was #9 on my 2006 top list. It is, however, a great album, and one of the new songs makes my list of top songs for 2007.

Top Songs of 2006:

Architecture in Helsinki / Heart It Races
LCD Soundsystem / Someone Great
Iron & Wine / Boy with a Coin
The Polyphonic Spree / Section 29 [Light to Follow]
The Earlies / Burn the Liars
Aesop Rock / Coffee
Jens Lekman / Postcard to Nina
Office / Suburban Perfume

And now, today's playlist:

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
The Clash	The Guns of Brixton	London Calling	Epic
Laurie Anderson	From the Air	Talk Normal Anthology	Rhino
*The Stone Roses	She Bangs the Drum	Selections from the Brit Box	Rhino
*Daft Punk	Da Funk/Daftendirekt	Alive 2007	Virgin
*White Williams	New Violence	Smoke	Tigerbeat6
The Aluminum Group	A Boy in Love	Plano	Minty Fresh
The Postal Service	Such Great Heights	Give Up	Sub Pop
The Magnetic Fields	When My Boy Walks Down the Street	69 Love Songs Vol 2	Merge
*Vampire Hands	Opium Typhoon	Virgin Dust American Lips	Freedom-form
*Ween	Blue Balloon	La Cucaracha	Rounder
Rufus Wainwright	Do I Disappoint You	Release the Stars	Geffen
Jens Lekman	Sipping on the Sweet Nectar	Night Falls over Kortedala	Secretly Canadian
Air	Left Bank	Pocket Symphony	Astralwerks
The Earlies	No Love in Your Heart	The Enemy Chorus	Secretly Canadian
XTC	The Man Who Sailed around His Soul	Skylarking	Geffen
Michelle Shocked	Street Corner Ambassador	Mercury Poise: 1988-1995	Mercury
*Sufjan Stevens	Ring Them Bells	I'm Not There (Original Soundtrack)	Columbia/Sony
*Tokyo Police Club	Box	Smith EP	Paper Bag
The Cells	Grocery Store	Self-released EP	Self-released
The Pixies	Levitate Me	Come On Pilgrim	4AD
*Joe Lally	Tonight at Ten	Nothing is Underrated	Dischord
*Cass McCombs	Full Moon or Infinity	Dropping the Writ	Domino
Battles	Race In	Mirrored	WARP
The Noisettes	Count of Monte Christo	What's the Time Mr Wolf?	Universal/Motown
The Polyphonic Spree	Section 22 [Running Away]	The Fragile Army	TVT
*Moving Units	Dark Walls	Hexes for Exes	Metropolis
OK Go!	Antmusic	OK Go! EP	Self-released
Björk	Big Time Sensuality	Debut	WEA Elektra
Danger is My Middle Name	Sidecar One	Myspace
The Jam	In the City	Beat Surrender	Karusell
*The Hives	Return the Favour	The Black and White Album	A&M
*Malcolm Middleton	We're All Going to Die	A Brighter Beat	Full Time Hobby
Public Enemy	Welcome to the Terrordome	Fear of a Black Planet	Def Jam/Columbia
*Pedro	Spools	You, Me & Everyone	Mush
Haale	Morgue Sahar	Morning	Darya
The New Pornographers	Mutiny, I Promise You	Challengers	Matador
Patrick Wolf	Accident & Emergency	The Magic Position	Tomlab
LCD Soundsystem	Time to Get Away	Sound of Silver	DFA/Capitol
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy	I'm Loving the Street	Ask Forgiveness EP	Drag City
Zerostars	The Good Can't Escape	The Good Can't Escape	Self-released
Os Mutantes	Preciso Urgentemente Encontrar Um Amigo	A Divina Comedia Ou	Omplatten
*The Dragons	Sandman	BFI	Ninja Tune

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 9:26 AM | 0 comments

Happy New Year's from Finn and Charlie.

Ching-ching!

Finn and Charlie

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 12:00 AM | 0 comments