Frisky

So, due to travel this week, I needed to do a single-panel comic, which sort of interrupts the storyline I was working on. This is not how I originally intended to introduce this character, but here he is: enter Kevin. And as introductions go, I kind of like it.

I was patted down by the TSA not too long ago, and I received a speech something like this one. (I did not respond this way, mind you.)

Go read it.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 12:01 AM | 0 comments

Me and My Mistress the Princess - 4/25 show

I finally got the Zerostars new album, Basement Stories — hot off the presses, I might add. I've been looking forward to it, and it does not disappoint. There are some great new tunes on it; I particularly like the moody, folky "Family Tree", which is something of a departure for them. The song I played today is more in their usual style, which is power-pop leaning toward chamber-pop. The song ("Uptown") also feature a great rock-out break toward the end.

Next week is my sister's birthday, so I played a song for her today — The Kinks' "Come Dancing". It's a song we both loved in the 80's. It's also a song written about an older sister, from the point of view of a younger brother, and it's probably partly for this reason that the song will forever be linked in my mind with my sister. She listened to my show on the internet today, so she could hear the song (she knew I was playing something, but she didn't know what). It was the perfect song.

It made me try to think about other songs about siblings. Yoko Ono's "Sisters" is more about metaphorical sisters — women in general. Juliana Hatfield's "My Sister" is a good example of a song about siblings, as is Kate Bush's "The Kick Inside" (though it's best not to think too hard about the meaning of that Kate Bush song). The Mortal Coil covered a song called "You and Your Sister", though it's more of a love song, incidentally mentioning a sister. Aside from "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" (covered excellently by Rufus Wainwright on the Zoolander soundtrack), I can't think of another song about a brother, though I'm sure there are some.

Any suggestions?

Meanwhile, my playlist:

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Rufus Wainwright	Foolish Love	Rufus Wainwright	Dream Works
The Aluminum Group	Post It	Little Happyness	Minty Fresh
*She & Him	I Was Made for You	Volume One	Merge
*DeVotchKa	Along the Way	A Mad and Faithful Telling	Anti-
*The Heavy	Brukpocket's Lament	Great Vengeance and Furious Fire	Counter
Chin Up Chin Up	The Architect Has a Gun	We Should Never Have Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers	Flameshovel
Kate Bush	The Infant Kiss	Never Forever	EMI Manhattan
*Elf Power	The New Mythology	In a Cave	Ryko
Nina Simone	My Baby Just Cares for Me	My Baby Just Cares for Me	Duchesse
Koop feat. Cecilia Stalin	Baby	Waltz for Koop	Quango
*The Kills	Getting Down	Midnight Boom	Red Meat
The Judybats	Being Simple	Pain Makes You Beautiful	Sire
The Kinks	Come Dancing	State of Confusion	Arista
Spanky Wilson & the Quantic Soul Orchestra	You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover	I'm Thankful	Tru Thoughts
Michelle Shocked	On the Greener Side	Mercury Poise: 1988-1995	Mercury
David Bowie	Fill Your Heart	Hunky Dory	Virgin
The Postal Service	We Will Become Silhouettes	Give Up
Camille	La douleur	Le fil	EMI
Neko Case	Soulful Shade of Blue	The Tigers Have Spoken	Anti-
*Why?	The Hollows	Alopecia	Anticon
*REM	Man-Sized Wreath	Accelerate	WB
Balkan Beat Box	Joro Boro	Nu Med	JDUB
*Haale	All These Miles	No Ceiling	Channel A
Scotland Yard Gospel Choir	Broken Front Teeth	Scotland Yard Gospel Choir	Bloodshot
Laurie Anderson	Baby Doll	Talk Normal (Anthology)	Rhino
(r)Wilco	Heavy Metal Drummer	Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	Nonesuch
*Zerostars	Uptown	Basement Stories	Self-released (zerostars.com)
*Make Believe	Wearin' Torn	Going to the Bone Church	Flameshovel
The Husbands	You Know What Sadie?	There's Nothing I'd Like More Than to See You Dead	Swami
Bonde do Role	Solta o Frango	With Lasers	Domino/Mad Decent
Saint Etienne	Spring	Foxbase Alpha	Warner Brothers

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 8:46 PM | 0 comments

You did what?

This week's Finn and Charlie is up now.

I've officially been doing this for two years! I've also been a DJ for about the same amount of time. Hmm. I didn't realize I'd started two big new things in the spring of 2006.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:59 PM | 0 comments

No Time to Think about What She's Done - 4/18 show

There was an earthquake today! This is exciting news in Illinois, where this sort of thing never happens — especially since no one was hurt. It woke me up about 7 minutes before my alarm was to go off, though I didn't know what had happened. It wasn't till I heard the news later and found out the exact time it happened that I realized why I'd woken up to early.

One called made a request in honor of the event: "Of Pressure" by Mirah, which is a song about an earthquake. (Mirah's last album, last year, was a concept piece in which each song was about a different kind of insect.) During the song another caller called to ask if I was playing the song because of the earthquake. Yes. Yes I am.

Not that I would have had any better ideas without the call... "I Feel the Earth Move" by Carole King? Boy, I bet that got a lot of play on other stations today...

EMI did not apparently send a copy of the new B-52's album, Funplex, to the station, but they did send an album of remixes (which are still being reviewed). So I bought my own copy — of course, how could I not — and today I played my favorite song from the album, "Eyes Wide Open". Now, any time a DJ plays their favorite song from an album, they hope to get a good response (and to be fair, when I got to the office, Julio commented that he'd heard it and liked it). But this time a caller (actually the same caller who requested Mirah) said she though the song was too much like Madonna... or at least she found the lyrics too much like Madonna, though she liked the music. I dunno. I still like the song.

Meanwhile, DeVotchKa's A Mad & Faithful Telling is officially my favorite album of the year so far.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Talking Heads	And She Was	Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set
Bobby Conn	Punch the Sky/Anybody	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
*Goldfrapp	Happiness	Seventh Tree	Mute
*REM	Hollow Man	Accelerate	Warner Brothers
Jacques Brel	Les Bourgeois	Ne Me Quitte Pas
Kate Bush	All We Ever Look For	Never Forever	EMI-Manhattan
*Herman Dune	I Wish I Had Someone That I Loved Well	I Wish That I Could See You Soon EP	Everloving
Phillips & Driver	Oh Starsky	Togetherness	Bar None Records
*Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks	We Can't Help You	Real Emotional Trash	Matador
Amy Winehouse	Some Unholy War	Back to Black	Island
Mavis Staples	99½	We'll Never Turn Back	Anti-
Grace Jones	I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)	Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions	Island
*Crystal Castles	Alice Practice	Crystal Castles	Last Gang
Deee-Lite	What Is Love?	World Clique	Elektra
Happy Mondays	Dennis and Lois	Pills 'N' Thrills and Bellyaches	Elektra
*The B-52's	Eyes Wide Open	Funplex	EMI
Les Négresses Vertes	Les Mégots	Trabendo	Virgin France
(r)Hot Chip	Baby Said	Coming On Strong	Astralwerks
*Elf Power	Fried Out	In a Cave	Ryko
*DeVotchKa	Transliterator	A Mad & Faithful Telling	Anti-
Chin Up Chin Up	I Hope for Tumbleweeds	We Should Never Have Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers	Flameshovel
*Haale	Ay Dar Shekasteh	No Ceiling	Channel A
The Fiery Furnaces	My Egyptian Grammar	Widow City	Thrill Jockey
*The Heavy	Set Me Free	Great Vengeance and Furious Five	Counter
Frank Zappa	Uncle Remus	Apostrophe'	Rykodisc
(r)Mirah	Of Pressure	You Think It's Like This but It's Really Like This	K
Antietam	The Hold	Victory Park	Carrot Top
Man Man	Mister Jung Stuffed	Rabbit Habits	Anti-

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 10:49 PM | 1 comments

Hyperbole

A little late posting tonight because I unexpectedly had to work very late. But it's all good.

Finn and Charlie are HITCHED is now up.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:28 AM | 2 comments

Yo Te Quiero Infinito - 4/11 show

Have I said this before? Is there a better song that so completely mangles Spanish as The Clash's "Spanish Bombs"? Honestly, I didn't even notice it was Spanish until the guys from Sound Opinions pointed it out. "Yo te quiero" ("yoh teh KYEH-roh") is sung as "yoh teh KEWH-ra". I sing along when this song is on, and I pronounce it right, and well, it makes it all easier to take. It is a great song, after all, and mostly in English.

I tell you I am no Oasis fan, and not even really a big Ryan Adams fan, but Ryan Adams's cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall" is excellent — spare and sort of spooky. "Wonderwall" is a great song. I've liked every cover of it I've heard, including the 60's pop parody by The Mike Flowers Pops (spot-on enough to make me think for a moment that Oasis had covered a song from 30 years earlier).

So this week's show as in anticipation of the CHIRP Record Fair, and I played a number of songs on vinyl, including some b-sides. I played Kate Bush's haunting cover of the traditional song "The Handsome Cabin Boy", as well as the spacy-funky "Monkey Monkey" by Eurythmics, the b-side to "Love is a Stranger." It was fun. There were other things I wanted to play but more or less couldn't — for example, ELP's "Baba Yaga's Revenge", a piece they composed for their version of Pictures at an Exhibition, but I found that the tracks on that album flow together and it would have been murder to cue up. But I listened to it at home the other night, so that was fun. I probably wouldn't have dragged it upstairs and played it without this impetus.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
The Clash	Spanish Bombs	London Calling	Epic
The Shangir-LA's	Out in the Streets	The Myrmidons of Melodrama	RPM
Laurie Anderson	O Superman	Talk Normal Anthology	Rhino
Kate Bush	The Handsome Cabin Boy	This Woman's Work (b-sides disc II)	EMI
*Haale	Off-Duty Fortune Teller	No Ceiling	Channel A
*DeVotchKa	A Blessing in Disguise	A Mad & Faithful Telling	Anti-
Ryan Adams	Wonderwall	Love is Hell pts 1&2	Lost Highway
Neko Case	Soulful Shade of Blue	The Tigers Have Spoken	Anti-
*Why?	Song of the Sad Assassin	Alopecia	Anticon
The Aluminum Group	The Mattachine Society	Plano	Minty Fresh
*Headlights	Market Girl	Some Racing, Some Stopping	Polyvinyl
Martha & the Muffins	Teddy the Dink	Trance and Dance	DinDisc/RTC
*The Apples in Stereo	On Your Own	Electronic Projects for Musicians	Tep Roc
Wilco	Pick Up the Change	A.M.	Sire/Reprise
The Folk Implosion	One Part Lullaby	One Part Lullaby	Interscope
(r)The Cure	The Edge of the Deep Green Sea	Wish	Elektra
*Faceless Werewolves	Couldn't Believe It Blues	Pardon Me, Are Those Your Claws on My Back?	Super Secret
*Crystal Castles	Courtship Dating	Crystal Castles	Last Gang
Toshinori Kondo	Shosuke-san	(Taihen/Shosuke-San single)
*The Mae Shi	Young Marks	HLLLYH	Team Shi
Luxury	Green Hearts	Yellow Pills Prefill	Numero Group
*The Breeders	Bang On	Mountain Battles	4AD
The Husbands	B.I.L.L.Y.	There's Nothing I'd Like More Than to See You Dead	Swami
The Tourists	So Good to Be Back Home Again	Reality Effect	Epic
*Vampire Weekend	Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa	Vampire Weekend	XL
Eurythmics	Monkey Monkey	(b-side of Love is a Stranger single)	RCA
Os Mutantes	Panis et Circensis	Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis	Universal
The Futureheads	Skip to the End	News and Tributes	Star Time/Vagrant

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 10:42 PM | 0 comments

Oops

Finn and Charlie is up

It's late and I'm tired.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:59 AM | 0 comments

The Hi-Fi Test: Vinyl vs. CD

My post is up at the Chicago Indie Radio Project site.

I took some time this past weekend to compare vinyl and CD versions of “Oh What a World”, from Rufus Wainwright’s 2003 album Want One, and “Hello Earth”, from Kate Bush’s 1985 album The Hounds of Love.

Go read the post!

Interestingly, a previous post (by someone else) provided a link to compare two MP3 files at different levels of quality. I confess I failed the test... the first time, I took it using cheap headphones at work; the second time, I fed my computer into my home stereo to test it. I couldn't tell the different — but I'll say this, both versions sounded tinny and weak to me, especially on my home stereo. It may be related to the way my computer does audio output.

Oh, and speaking of CHIRP web site posts, this one is too funny.

Labels: music

posted by Tony at 12:21 PM | 0 comments

The Truth Is I Was Shocked - 4/4 show

A word about Frank Zappa: it always impresses me the extent to which he was both brilliant and weird. "Montana" is a good example: musically, a good song -- well constructed, good melody, etc -- about moving to Montana to grow dental floss. ("Raisin' it up / and waxin' it down / in a little white box that I can / sell uptown".) This is par for the course in the land of Zappa. And other people have written absurd music, but I don't think anyone has done it as well.

I'm afraid I don't have anything more to say about music this week... I spent a good chunk of my energy writing a blog entry for the Chicago Independent Radio Project, which should be up there soon.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
LCD Soundsystem	Time to Get Away	Sound of Silver	DFZ/Capitol
Nina Simone	Sinnerman (Felix Da Housecat's Heavenly Houxe Remix)	Verve Remixed²	Verve
Bobby Conn	Twenty-One	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
*Headlights	Get Your Head Around It	Some Racing, Some Stopping	Polyvinyl
*Meat Number 5	Fresh City	Meat Number 5	Anodyne Electric Company
Frank Zappa	Montana	Overnight Sensation	Rykodisc
Yaz	Midnight	Upstairs at Eric's	Sire
Fats Domino	Whole Lotta Lovin	The Best of Fats Domino	EMI
*She & Him	Why Do You Let Me Stay Here	Volume One	Merge
The Deltholz!	Mister Electricity	Who Are...	Vortecs
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians	Little Miss S.	Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars	Geffen
*Beach House	Some Things Last	Devotion	Carpark
Ratatat	Wildcat	Classics	XL
Laurie Anderson	Credit Racket	Talk Normal Anthology	Rhino
The Magnetic Fields	Washington, D.C.	69 Love Songs Vol. 2	Merge
The Ponys	1209 Seminary	Turn the Lights Out	Matador
*Bauhaus	Adrenalin	Go Away White	Bauhaus Musik
(r)The Pixies	Levitate Me	Come On Pilgrim	4AD
Arms and Sleepers	Black Paris 86	Black Paris 86	Expect Candy
Canasta	The Model	Find the Time	Broken Middle C
*The Apples in Stereo	Shine (In Your Mind)	Electronic Projects for Musicians	Yep Roc
Blops	Esencialmente Asi No Mas	Del Volar De Los Palomas	Shadoks/Normal
Henry Padovani	Y a plus de saisons	A croire que c'était pour la vie	CIA
Yma Sumac	La Molina	The Ultimate Yma Sumac Collection	Capitol
*Singer	Oh Dusty	Unhistories	Drag City
*The Heavy	Coleen	Great Vengeance and Furious Fire	Counter
*The Mae Shi	Young Mark	HLLYH	Team Shi
Alice Smith	Love Endeavor	For Lovers, Dreamers and Me	BBE
Scritti Politti	Road to No Regret	White Bread Black Beer	Nonesuch/Rough Trade

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 9:56 PM | 1 comments

Just say no!

Last week an anonymous reader pointed out that "yenta" does not mean "matchmaker", even though Yente was the name of the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof Which is something I kind of knew but forgot. Any way, there you go.. I listen to comments.

This week's cartoon is up now.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 12:01 AM | 2 comments