BROADCAST #29
AIR DATE: 07-17-07

Fanatics! What the hell is going on?! I hope you liked the show tonight. As you so quickly noticed, this is a pre-tape but not a repeat, Engineer X and I burned lean tissue on this one! The broadcast is a few hours away as I write this. I am in Damascus Syria at the moment. I got in here a few hours ago from Paris. I started out from London several hours ago. Why Syria? People gave Nancy Pelosi so much shit for going, I figured I had to do it. So far it’s great. I just got back in from walking around on the streets. There are some music vendors on the street playing some wild stuff. I will see if I can get some of these jams tomorrow night. Last night I was onstage with The Ruts for the benefit show. What a night. We finished with In A Rut and we had Captain Sensible, Charlie Harper and many others onstage with us and the audience was singing along. I can’t tell you how great it was to work with this band. It was a relief to finally get onstage and do the show. I was in London almost a week to do that show. It was great to practice with The Ruts, it was like a dream. Last night, we had such great bands on the bill. Tenpole Tudor was there, Max Splodge, TV Smith, Tom Robinson, The Damned, The UK Subs, Misty In Roots, John Otway. It was a great night. But today was a different story. My bag was again lost in Paris and will hopefully show up tomorrow. I will have to taxi out the airport and back to get it. That will be a solid 2+ hours of my day. That’s how travel is. Anyway, here’s some great music. I’ll be back with you live very soon. Until then, STAY FANATIC, FANATICS!!!  --Henry

For you Fanatics who can’t live without hearing this show again or if the original broadcast time is too hard on your sleep cycle here’s the re-broadcast schedule: USA: Fridays: 0200 – 0400 hrs. PST / UK: Fridays: 1000 hrs. – 1200 hrs./ Continental Europe: Fridays 1100 hrs. – 1300 hrs./ Australia: Fridays 2100 hrs. – 2300 hrs.

Alan Vega - Station Station: Out first time checking a track from the new Alan Vega album, Station. I don’t know if this one is out in America yet and I don’t know if it will be released here. It’s not a cheap record, that’s for sure but it’s Vega so I had to shell out. Vega is half of NYC legends, Suicide with Martin Rev being the other. As far as releases go, Vega is a lot more active than Suicide, who released a pretty good album a few years ago called American Supreme. I just got this new Vega CD so I am still checking it out but so far, I am liking it.

Epsilons - Stronger Than Dirt: From the new Killed 'Em Deader 'n A Six Card Poker Hand album on Retard Disco. The album came out on the 26th of last month. The members just graduated from highschool. I wish I was in a band like this when I was in highschool, I would have been all the better for it. I really liked this band’s 1st album, Epsilons and am liking this one as well. What a fuckin’ racket! Brought to you by the good folks at Retard Disco, a label that’s doin’ it for all the right reasons. http://www.retarddisco.com/.

The Buzzcocks - Promises / Lipstick: Both of these gems can be found on the Singles Going Steady album. These two songs were released as a single on 11-17-78. As far as I know, the single was pressed in the UK, France and Ireland. I have seen an A-label promo out of the UK. Many of you Fanatics are familiar with the bridge section of Lipstick, right? If you notice, you’ll find the same bit of music being used in the next track we listened to tonight, Magazine’s Shot By Both Sides. More below.

Magazine - Shot By Both Sides: This is from the first Magazine album Real Life, released in 1978. This is the first time we have ever listened to a Magazine track on the show. As you all know, Magazine’s leader, Howard Devoto, left the Buzzcocks after recording the Spiral Scratch EP. Devoto co-wrote Shot By Both Sides with Shelley, who also wrote Lipstick so I guess that Shelley used one riff on two songs is ok. I have to check out the Magazine catalog again. I have given it two passes through over the years and neither time was I able to make the songs stick with me. I know the band is great but I can’t get to the material. It’s been a long time, I will try once again.

Karp - Forget The Minions: from the Self Titled LP CD on K Records. Ian played some songs off this album when I was in DC for a visit some months ago. I thought they were great so I checked out this album. I don’t know what any of their other stuff sounds like yet but I have a couple of their other albums coming in so for now, I wait. From what I’ve read, they were from Washington state and were around from 1990 to 1998. So far, I am really liking this record and am looking forward to hearing more. This album sounds like they heard a Melvins album or two but reflect it in only the best possible ways. I am sure many of you Fanatics are already familiar with Karp but you also know that it sometimes takes me about a decade to catch up to the rest of y’all.

King Crimson - Three Of A Perfect Pair: From the Absent Lovers: Live In Montreal live album that captures the band on tour on 07-11-84 in support of their Three Of A Perfect Pair album. This album was the last of a set of three with Adrian Belew, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford along with Crimson main man Robert Fripp. Of the three albums, Discipline, Beat and Perfect, it’s this last one that I play the most. I was so happy when this official live album came out. I had a few bootlegs of this tour and while the playing was great, the quality was nowhere near as good as it is on this. There are a lot of people who don’t like this line-up of Crimson, favoring older line-ups. I like the John Wetton line-up just fine but I also like this line up just fine. I think on their first two recorded ventures, the band was find themselves and they really nailed it on Three Of A Perfect Pair.

The Pop Group - We Are Time: from the band’s Y album. This album is back in print and easy to get a hold of. It has been remastered so says the info blurb on Amazon.com but I compared this new one to the older one and they sound the same to my ears but thankfully, it sounds great. I wish their other records would come back into print at a price that won’t be so distracting. We have talked about this band before and I think you have all the Pop Group info that I can give you. Like so many bands, The Pop Group was a late discovery but a great one nonetheless. I only wish I could have checked out these records at the time they came out.

Die Haut & Nick Cave - Truck Love: From the Burnin’ The Ice album. I played this one over and over when I first got a copy. An interesting hook up here, Die Haut as many of you Fanatics know, was the instrumental band from Berlin that over time, started incorporating vocals onto their albums. The best example of it to me, is this collaboration with Nick Cave. Nick sings on Stow-A-Way, Dumb Europe, Pleasure Is The Boss and the track we played tonight. The tracks are great. This was a great record for me as I was a fan of the band and the man separately and when I heard that they had worked together, I was so happy and then to find that it worked so well was icing on the cake. I made a CDR of this album about ten years ago, reckoning it would never hit CD. I saw it on bootleg vinyl up until a few years ago and finally it hits CD and sounds great. If you are a Nick Cave Fanatic, you need this one! There’s a good chance you have not heard these fantastic songs.

Essential Logic - Wake Up: From the very interesting Fanfare In The Garden 2CD set. I was always curious about Laura Logic and her band Essential Logic. I knew her from her great sax playing on the very early X Ray Spex stuff. She left the band in 1978, Spex drummer Richard Tee came with her. From time to time I saw her records around and never checked them out. That was a bad move on my part because there’s some great songs on this collection. From what I’ve read, even though they released several singles and EP’s, the audience interest wasn’t there and the band broke up. Kill Rockstars very righteously and bravely released this retrospective set in 2003. There’s a lot to like about that label. I am still getting my head around this record, some tracks I am liking more than others but overall, it’s a good one.

The Need – Seduction: Remember weeks ago when we listened to this band’s track Let Them Eat Valium? This is the song on flipside. I first heard this song over at Ian’s months ago. I can’t find any information on the band but I’ll keep looking. This is not a very easy single to find but you might try Gemm.com, where I have seen it now and then. Very cool Post-Punk stuff, these two songs. I wonder if there’s more out there? If anyone knows anything, let me know.

The Delroys - Bermuda Shorts: Ronald Coleman, the band’s first tenor, came up with the name of the band after seeing an acrobatic group called The Five Flying Delroys on television and decided to name the band after them. This single was released in July of 1957 and the band planned on following up this single with another song called Overcoat. After this one single on Apollo, the line-up started changing and soon enough, it was time to go fight in the war. The group, in an ever changing line-up continued to record and perform into the 80’s. However, this is the only recording of the original line-up. I got this from the Apollo Groups Vol. 4 CD on Relic.

Early Man - Fist Shaker: Another track from the Closing In album. This album came out about a year and half ago but I only heard it about a year ago an it took me awhile to figure out who they were. I heard one of their songs, Death Is The Answer To My Prayer on the radio and tracked down the band’s name and got the record. I like the band and the music but I really like the story behind the band’s origins. Mike Conte and Adam Bennati were living in Columbus OH and were into Metal music. Nothing special there. The fact they were from Pentacostalist families made things difficult and eventually they were kicked out of their families and moved to Brooklyn. They have made two records so far, an EP and an LP. Both kill. Talk about staying true to the Rock!

Antelope - The Demon: From the band’s first full-length release, Reflector. This is our 2nd dip into this album. For those of you who don’t know who Antelope is, they are a DC three-piece that plays cool, minimal Indie music. They are on Dischord and they feature Justin Moyer of El Guapo / Supersystem, we have played them on the show several times as well. I think this is a great album. Info can be found here: http://www.dischord.com/.

Bikini Kill - Jet Ski: From the Reject All American album on Kill Rockstars. What a cool band. Vocalist Kathleen Hanna is now in Le Tigre and bassist Kathi Wilcox was last sighted on another musical project called The Casual Dots, who we have played on this show before but between all the members, there has been a lot of activity since the band’s end in 1998. Bikini Kill were one of the bands who were called Riot Grrrl music. I have never been all that comfortable with labels but followed all this with interest because I thought it was cool to see females with attitude get in bands. All too soon, those labels become a leash and sometimes and albatross. I think this band was able to keep all the bullshit at bay by actually making really cool records. I think at the end of the day, bands like Bikini Kill really changed things for the better. When I saw females getting a scene together and getting vocal with their point of view I was only wondering what took so long.

Lenny Bruce - The Kid In The Well: From the The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce album on Fantasy. This is Lenny in 1958, a few years before he became embroiled in obscenity charges in 1961 that kept him in court, hassled and blacklisted until his death in August of 1966. I liked it when Lenny did “bits” but I really like the material that was getting him in all the trouble. What Lenny Bruce got in hot water for saying, would seem these days as nothing. It’s because Bruce ran this gauntlet of hypocrisy so that others can go undisturbed with not a thought that they will be arrested or in any way detained for saying exactly what they want. Had Lenny Bruce lived, he would be over 80 years old in 2007. I wonder what he would think of things now. Lenny Bruce was is one of the great Americans of the last century.

The Fall - Clear Off!: Are we still listening to these bastards?! Of course. Tonight’s track is from the The Wonderful And Frightening World  Of. . . , released in 1984. This is an album we have not spent any time on really. We played the Peel version of one of the album’s tracks 2x4 but I think that’s as close as we came. The Fall spent about five years on the Beggars Banquet label and it was a fruitful time for the band. A lot of b-sides, two CDs worth, and lot of really great music although I must say, this is the one period of the band that I spend the least amount of time listening to. The records that came before and after are much more to my liking. To see all the records released by The Fall and to get a whole lot of information about the band, you need not go further than this address: http://www.visi.com/fall/

King Sunny Ade - Let Them Say: I have three versions of this song in my King Sunny collection. The studio versions are very cool and we’ll definitely get to one of them but it’s this version Live At The Hollywood Palace CD that I thought would be best for tonight. It’s the version of the band that I like the most—live. If you are lucky enough to see this band play, I bet it will be one of the best shows you will see all year. This isn’t the best possible sound and the CD is out of print but it’s still good enough and it gives you a real feel for just how damned good this band is.

Jesse Belvin & The Space Riders - My Satellite: From the Goodnight My Love CD. I forget how I got into Belvin’s music but I did a little over ten years ago. His most well known song is Goodnight My Love which is great but not my favorite, My Satellite is. He cut this one in December of 1958. I also found out that he is listed as a co-writer of The Penguins hit Earth Angel. Here’s the hard part of the Belvin story: Hours after playing the first ever integrated music concert in Little Rock AR, he and his wife were killed in a car accident. He was 27, she was 32. Brutal.

Black Sabbath - The Wizard: From the first Black Sabbath album that goes by the same name. I was thinking of this song the other night when the DJ played part of the song before Tortoise went onstage the other night at the El Ray. It’s one of my favorite songs off this album.

Bootsy - Countracula (This One's For You): From The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away album. Bootsy plays bass, guitar, keyboards and drums on this album. He’s not alone of course, a lot of the gang you know and love are here like Maceo, Bernie, Fred, Kush, etc. This 1982 album was the last Bootsy release for about 6 years. From 1976 to 1980, Bootsy released a record a year and it’s those that he is perhaps best known for but this one’s great as well. It’s a little smoother than some of the earlier albums and if you have no Bootsy albums, you might want to check out Ahh…The Name Is Bootsy, Baby! Or Bootsy? Player Of The Year albums first. Hell, they’re all pretty damn great. Not all of them are in print though so you might have to do some searching around.

XBXRX – Suffocation: Fuck it! More XBXRX! Another track from the Wars album and we say goodnight!