BROADCAST #45
AIR DATE: 11-06-07

Good evening Fanatics! Tonight is the last of the pre-taped shows that Engineer X and slaved over during the summer months. I have a ton of interesting music to drag in and broadcast for your astute and perspicacious ears in the weeks upcoming. Please dig tonight’s cool single album spotlight and the normal mix for the 2nd hour. I think many of you are already fans of the album we’re listening to tonight. Wire’s Pink Flag is one of my desert island discs for sure. Has been since the day I heard it. A stunning piece of work. Get ready to go live next week, Fanatics, it’s going to be a great one! STAY FANATIC!!! –Henry Rollins

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.

E-Mail address for me: Henryontheradio@aol.com

Tonight in the first hour, we are going to listen to the masterpiece that is Wire’s first album called Pink Flag. In short succession, the band released three very different and excellent albums: 1977’s Pink Flag, 1978’s Chairs Missing and 1979’s 154. All three albums were produced by Mike Thorne, who is very much a part of the band’s sound and structure on these albums. Thorne met first saw the band at The Roxy where he was recording bands for the famous Live At The Roxy album. Thorne brought them to EMI and they were signed and almost immediately went into the studio. Thorne has said that the band barely knew how to tune their instruments when they made Pink Flag. To this day, Pink Flag is one of the best albums I have ever heard. That they were able to get such cool pop hooks and interesting melodies at the same time, batter the listener with one of the best recorded guitar sounds ever. This is where the band really wins with Mike Thorne, only took the band to better and better sounds as the three records took shape. Pink Flag could have been the start of diminishing returns had the band attempted to write in this vein again but Wire seemed to morph almost overnight and by the time they recorded Chairs Missing, the traces of Pink Flag were all but gone. What took place of the ripping guitars and sparse vocals were replaced with brilliant arrangements and smart vocal melodies and again, Thorne’s brilliant studio work. I don’t want to talk too much about Chairs Missing as we listened to Pink Flag tonight but it only makes things more interesting to me that the band just kept changing and it was all good, as they say. From reading Thorne’s very informative online self-written essay on Pink Flag, he reports that all but two of the vocals were done live. Wire took an extended break after 154 to do many solo projects, I mean a lot of projects and I don’t know what else but they started putting records out again in 1986 I believe and have been writing, releasing and touring on and off ever since. I got The Snakedrill EP in 1986 but have not kept up with all their stuff since and there are quite a few of their post-reformation albums I have never heard. I have heard 2002’s Read & Burn as Keith Morris gave it to me as a gift. Pink Flag is one of the best uses of 35 minutes and 26 seconds I have ever heard and is perhaps one of the most influential records of the Punk – Post Punk era. If you see how many bands have covered songs from this album, you start to get an idea that it has had some impact. R.E.M.’s cover of Strange and Minor Threat’s version of 12XU immediately come to mind but there’s others. The Bad Brains also covered 12XU, The Insect Surfers covered Ex Lion Tamer. Tonight we listened to the recently re-mastered version and it is by far the best sounding version on CD I have ever heard. And now, on with Pink Flag!

Reuters
Field Day for the Sundays
Three Girl Rumba
Ex Lion Tamer
Lowdown
Start to Move
Brazil
It's So Obvious
Surgeon's Girl
Pink Flag
Commercial
Straight Line
106 Beats That
Mr. Suit
Strange
Fragile
Mannequin
Different to Me
Champs
Feeling Called Love
12 X U

Great, right?! Hope you liked that. Here’s what else we got into tonight:

Frank Wright – Being: From the Uhuru Na Umoja (Freedom And Fraternity) album. This album makes me happy. I know that’s a strange thing to say but I am on my second listening today and that’s what it does to me. If you like the euphoric states that Ayler achieved in some of his best work or what Coltrane was doing towards the end of his life, then you might want to check out this album. Recorded in 1970 in Paris and released in a limited edition on CD at present so you might want to check out sooner than later. I read that Coltrane asked Wright to be a part of the Ascension sessions but Wright backed out fearing he couldn’t handle the level of playing. Before this album, I had only heard Wright’s ESP recordings, which are great as well but more sparse instrumentally than this one. Wright passed away in 1990.

The Buzzcocks - Love You More / Noise Annoys: From the Singles Going Steady CD. This single was recorded at Abbey Road Studios 03-13-78 and released 06-30-78. I know of pressings made in The UK, Holland and Germany and I have also seen an A-label promo out of the UK.

Witch - Black Saint: From the Witch album released on Tee Pee Records. J Mascis plays drums in this band so I was already interested but just because he’s on the album doesn’t necessarily mean it’s automatically going to be good but I checked it out with great interest nonetheless and not to my surprise, it’s a great, heavy album of ten ton riffs and wondrous stonerescence. I guess J is busy with Dinosaur Jr. so I don’t know if these guys play out at all or if this is a one off endeavor.

The Gun Club - Port Of Souls: one of my favorite tracks from the Mother Juno album released in 1987. I saw a few shows from this tour and the band and its leader, Jeffrey Lee Pierce were in fine form. It was so great to see JLP be lean and mean with such a great band. The previous studio album, The Las Vegas Story was also very good but the live performances were erratic due to JLP being in bit of an intoxicated state. I would watch shows from that era and get frustrated knowing how good he really was and how he was burying that talent under the toxins but he really turned it around on this album and the one after, Pastoral Hide And Seek. We listen to The Gun Club a lot, I know but I think they were such a great band and I think their songs sit so well in with all the other stuff we listen to. I don’t want people to forget the man or his music, that’s the bottom line.

Wigwam - Must Be The Devil: From the Psychedelic Phinland: Finnish Hippie & Underground Music 1967-1974 2CD set. This is track is not all that psychedelic as much as it’s just a laid back, cool song. It sounds like what was happening in America in the 1970’s. It’s a little trippy in the middle section and the lyrics are interesting. The repeated chants of “Must be the Devil in your mind,” are cool. I am still getting into this album but for the most part, it’s been very good so far.

The Horrors - Count In Fives: From the Strange House album. Engineer had an extra copy of this and thought I might like it. I like the organ driven sound on this album. They are from the UK and are getting quite a bit of hype from the likes of NME and they’re still good anyway. Hopefully they’ll stay weird. I can hear other people’s music in their music on some tracks but I think that’s going to happen a lot nowadays, still, I think they’re good.

Dion & The Belmonts - Lonely World: From my one and only Dion album, a best-of I bought many years ago after meeting the man and hanging out with him for several minutes. He had great stories about touring with Sam Cooke. He is perhaps most well-known for his song Runaround Sue.

The Pop Group – Justice: from the We Are All Prostitutes album. This album pulls in singles tracks and stuff from the We Are Time and For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? albums along with other tracks. I wish I wasn’t always so late to hear about stuff so much of the time. I was late to get into this band and had I heard them when they were making these records, I would have played this stuff a lot. The band’s singer, Mark Stewart, is a great lyric writer and these songs are insane. Again, the promise of Post Punk makes good.

Mark Robinson - French Good Looks: What a surprise, we’re listening to Mark Robinson. As you know by now, Mark was in Unrest and is still in Flin Flon and has made many records under different names that are released by his label, Teenbeat. This is from the Tiger Banana album, released in 2000. I like the mood Mark sets up on his solo records. They are very quiet and close. I take all his stuff on tour with me and I have played it in many hotel rooms on nights off. Many of Mark’s different musical manifestations are some of my favorite night off listens. You can check out audio of all his stuff on Amazon.com. You can go here to check out the Teenbeat world: http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/

Kas Product - Underground Movie: From the Try Out album. I don’t think we’ve listened to Mona Soyoc and Spatsz, the duo who are Kas Product, for a few weeks. I believe we listened to their track Pussy X last time. Mona wrote me earlier in the year and told me she had been working on solo tracks for an album but I have not seen anything of it yet. Kas Product was active in the early 80’s Mona on vocals and guitar and Spatsz on synth and can be considered French Post Punk, or Cold Wave. I first heard them when I was advised by Engineer X to check out the So Young But So Cold CD comp. of underground French music 1977 – 1983 that featured a song of theirs that’s also the title track. I really liked it, got curious and checked out some of their stuff. I just got another one of their albums called Ego Eye, that I haven’t checked out yet. You can go to Mona’s site, she’s at Monasoyoc.com and check out a solo track, you can also check out Kas Product stuff on YouTube.

The Cravats – XMP: From The Land Of The Giants 2CD set on Overground Records. I hope that this show isn’t turning into some kind of broken record for you Fanatics. I hope the playlists reflect the amount of time spent really trying to keep this thing moving in all kinds of ways. That being said, I can’t help but refer some of my favorite bands with some frequency. The Cravats are one of them. I think some of the best music that came out of the UK, came out right after Punk Rock cooled down and the smoke cleared. Many of the bands that survived and sprang up afterwards are of great interest to me. If you liked this track, you would probably like the rest of their stuff. Here’s their site address: http://www.thecravats.com/. The band later recorded under the name The Very Things, that stuff is really cool as well.

XBXRX - Track 04: From the Clear EP. This is a great band and this is one of my favorite of their releases. This was produced by Ian MacKaye in 2002.