BROADCAST #47
AIR DATE: 11-21-06

Alright Fanatics, here’s all the music we listened to tonight. I do hope you liked the show. I am looking forward to the Nymphs show on Monday and I sure wish I could get out to the Midwest this weekend and see Pere Ubu play live. They were great when I saw them the other night. Tonight’s show went by really fast I thought. We had the music cranked pretty loud in the studio, it was sounding so good. It’s always over too fast for me. Next week’s show is a good one with all kinds of stuff from Sinatra to Blonde Redhead. Please tune in if you can. Thanks for listening tonight and STAY FANATIC!! --Henry

For you Europeans, Australians and New Zealand Fanatics, there is a re-broadcast time of Friday mornings, 0200 – 0400 hrs. West coast time so you all can check out the show and not have to set your alarms to too rude an hour.

* The Nymphs Live*
Monday, November 27th
At The Key Club
9039 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles CA
11:00 PM

* PERE UBU PERFORM LIVE *
Wed., 11/22 at Knitting Factory in New York, NY
Fri., 11/24 at Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, OH
Sat., 11/25 at Abbey Pub in Chicago, IL
Sun., 11/26 at 400 Bar in Minneapolis, MN

Robert Fripp – Exposure (alternate version): The personnel on Fripp’s solo album Exposure reads like a who’s who of great musicians. Eno, Gabriel, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Tony Levin, Peter Hammill to name a few. In 1983, Fripp remixed the album and up until now, this was the version available on CD. A few months ago, Mr. Fripp saw fit to release exposure as a 2CD set with both mixes as well as some outtakes with Hall on vocals. A great booklet of Fripp-ness is included. Tonight we are again listening to the title track. We have played this track before but tonight we listen to the original mix, a noisier, far less friendly mix than the re-mixed version. There’s a lot of noticeable differences, drum sounds and levels stand out and at the beginning of the track, J.G. Bennett’s spoken line “It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering,” is used only once. A great re-release. It’s Fripp approved, consume with confidence. “Fripp has always been a bit of a jerk, but over the years he's figured out what to do with the talent that goes along with his affliction.” –Robert Christgau from his 1979 review of Exposure. What a douche bag!

Daniel Johnston – Dream: That many records come out without my knowledge is nothing new. Bands come together, record several great albums, tour relentlessly and break up for one reason or another and I find out when their best-of comes out years later. A lot gets by me. This is nothing new. When I was putting together our Halloween broadcast recently, I went to the Daniel Johnston site to see if there was anything new in his world that I could write about since we were going to listen to Don't Play Cards With Satan that night. When I went to the CD section, I saw there was a handful of rare recordings on CD that I had not seen before. I don’t know how long they have been there without me knowing but like I said, a lot gets by me. Good thing I’m not the president. I was pretty current up to the White Magic album but didn’t know about the additions. There’s The Lost Recordings Vols. 1&2, The What Of Whom, Retired Boxer/Respect and Don’t Be Scared. Not perfect sound quality but the quality of the work itself more than makes up for any sonic limitations you will encounter. Tonight’s very brief track is from 1985’s Respect album. http://hihowareyou.com

Clara Rockmore – The Swan: Recently I was talking with Mike Patton when he and his newest project Peeping Tom were taping for my IFC show. We go to talking about this and that and I don’t remember how, perhaps talking about his Fantomas group doing the soundtrack album, The Director’s Cut and we got onto the topic of Leon Theremin, the instrument, the documentary, etc. For those of you who have not seen this brilliant piece of work, run do not walk to that one. In any case, there’s a woman in the documentary, who was, I guess you could call her Theremin’s protégé, named Clara Rockmore. There’s old footage of the two of them when they were young, (She was born in 1911, he was born in 1896.) The documentary details the impact of the instrument by interviewing several musicians such as Moog, Brian Wilson and Todd Rundgren. Finally, near the end of the film, Theremin is found in Russia, brought to America and re-united with Ms. Rockmore. She plays her Theremin for him and it’s a very nice ending. Ms. Rockmore is interviewed in the film and talks about her love of playing classical music on the Theremin. I swear, this is leading somewhere. Mike, who has an extremely wide range of musical tastes and is one of the more quick-witted people you’ll encounter asked if I had ever heard her recordings. To quote The Cruiser in Stripes: “There was one?” Anyway, when I got back to the office, I secured a copy and it arrived the other day. It’s pretty great. The CD is called The Art Of The Theremin and this what the source was for tonight’s selection. If you don’t check out the CD, you should at least check out the documentary Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey. It’s one of the more compelling documentaries I’ve seen. Here’s an address for some Clara Rockmore info: http://www.peterpringle.com/clara.html

Bernard Herrmann – The Magnetic Pull: Hello? Mr. Theremin? Do you have Prince Albert in a can?! 96 seconds of anxiety from Bernard Herrmann’s great soundtrack for the 1951 shocker The Day The Earth Stood Still. Hermann is perhaps best known for his soundtrack for the Hitchcock thriller Psycho.

Bernard Herrmann – The Murder: Unfortunately, the original soundtrack for Psycho, the version done by The National Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Herrmann on Unicorn-Kanchana is long out of print. There’s a version of the score done by Danny Elfman, I think we can give that one a miss and there’s one done by Joel McNeeley and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. These are not so easy to find and neither one are worth it. I heard this many years ago on LP and I borrowed it and made a tape of it. I was in Germany in 1989 and found the CD that we played tonight. I went online and looked all over to see if I could find some more copies in case any of you Fanatics wanted to hear the whole thing and try as I might, I can’t find another copy of this version except one that was on Amazon.com for over 100 bucks. Why it’s out of print, I don’t know. I have learned my lesson with soundtracks though. It seems that not many are made and they are collected with great interest so if you see one that you like, you might want to grab it before it’s gone for good.

Thor – Rock And Roll Nightmare: From the soundtrack of the film of the same name! It was like ten Christmases and the Bush Administration under indictment all at once when I saw that Thor’s Rock And Roll Nightmare groundbreaking film had been released—unleashed is a better term, onto DVD along with the soundtrack CD. Too good to be true?! Believe it! It was a toss-up between this song and another called We Accept The Challenge, which as many of you know, is the music used when Thor’s character Triton fights that plastic demon and eventually sends the prop back to Hades!

The Fall – You Haven’t Found It Yet: It’s been a week since this station broadcast a song by The Fall so we better rectify that. This track is from 1991’s Shift-Work. I believe this is the third time we have played something from Shift-Work this year. Shift-Work is the 2nd album of the band’s Cog Sinister/Fontana era. It falls in between 1990’s Extricate and 1992’s Code: Selfish. All three albums have a lot of mid-tempo numbers. Of the three, I think Code: Selfish is the best one as it seems to be the conclusion of what the two previous albums were working towards. All three are worth checking out of course. From the Unofficial Fall site: “Universal Music is to reissue Extricate, Shift-Work & Code: Selfish late 2006 or early 2007 with bonus material from the relevant Peel sessions & non-album singles tracks.” Looking forward to this. http://www.visi.com/fall

Wire – Mannequin / Feeling Called Love / 12XU: Our EP of the week is a three track, all of the tracks can be found on Wire’s groundbreaking Pink Flag album. It’s a great excuse to play three tracks from this album. Pink Flag is one of those records which I can listen to pretty much any time. If you go online, you will find many people writing about the virtues of this album. I cannot add anything new to what’s been written but I will say that there’s a good reason that so much has been made out of an album that’s only about 35 minutes long. Perhaps the best way to appreciate this short masterpiece is to also listen to Wire’s 2nd and 3rd albums, Chairs Missing and 154 right after you listen to Pink Flag and be knocked out by how rapidly the band evolved and changed. We’ll have to play this one all the way through at some point.

Rachel's - Egon, Edith & Wally Meet: Beautiful piano music from Rachel Grimes and company. From the Music For Egon Schiele album on Quarterstick / Touch & Go. For many years, I only had the band’s first album Handwriting. I played quite a bit and wanted to check out more. I am a fan of Shiele’s paintings so I figured I should check out this album. It’s a lot more stripped down than Handwriting and I like it more because of that. Handwriting is very fleshed out instrumentally, this album is more intimate. There’s a few more albums the group has done but I have not heard them. I think I know the person to ask about Rachel’s and that would be Engineer X, he knows everything. I’ll see if he has any of the other records for me to check out.

Eddie Head And His Family - Down On Me: A worthwhile purchase from John Fahey and Dean Blackwood’s labor of love, the Revenant label, are the American Primitive Vols. 1&2. Between the total of three CDs and 76 tracks, you get music from 1897 to 1939 and it’s all great. Tonight’s track is taken from Vol. 1. Some of the names, like Charley Patton and Bukka White will be familiar but there’s plenty here that might be new to your ears. One of the greatest things to happen to the world was the 78 rpm record. Without them, we would be without sets like these.

Janis Joplin – Down On Me: From the Joplin In Concert album I first got this album in 5th grade. It was my mother’s and she let me have it. Joplin In Concert Janis playing with two different line-ups. Big Brother And The Holding Company and The Fill Tilt Boogie Band. I much prefer Big Brother because of those guitars. Some of the best tubes on fire sounds I have ever heard are on Joplin live recordings. Listen to how hard this band is playing and think of what passes for “Rock” these days. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. I figured we’d have some fun listening to two very different takes of this song.

The Nymphs – Sad And Damned: I am looking forward to this show. The Nymphs was Inger Lorre’s big ass Geffen band. They were cool but I think she wrote better songs after this band was over. I don’t know why all of a sudden they are playing again. You might remember Inger did those great vocals on the version of Slip It In we did for the Rise Above album. Unless something drastic happens, I will be at their show on Monday. I don’t know how far this band ever got as far as touring and all that. I was on tour all the time when this record came out. I have known Inger for over 20 years now. I have produced music for her and spent a lot of time hanging out with her. She very talented and I hope she makes some new music soon.

Nico – All Tomorrow’s Parties: You Fanatics know that Nico often sang this song a capella. There are several versions on bootlegs and posthumous releases but I don’t know if you have heard this one. Many years ago, when I was trading a lot of tapes, I traded a lot of tapes with a guy named Peter in Germany. He supplied me with Birthday Party and Einsturzende Neubauten live tapes. It was a great way to get music, everything took weeks. When the package would arrive, it was a big deal. At one point, I wrote him and asked if he had any live Nico stuff. He replied that he wasn’t really a fan but he’d see if any of his friends had live tapes. He ended up sending me three. I have never seen them on any record or on anyone’s list. I was listening to them lately as I have been thinking about Nico a lot and listening to her music quite a bit and thought it would be cool to bring in a track that has most likely never been played on the radio or heard by many people. The performance was from 10-14-84 Frankfurt at a place called the Batschkapp. I’ve played there.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – All Tomorrow’s Parties: I remember a few centuries ago, I was talking to a friend of Nick Cave’s about what Nick was up to and he told me that he had just finished an album of cover songs and one of them was By The Time I Get To Phoenix. I was very intrigued. I don’t remember exactly when the album, Kicking Against The Pricks finally came out but it was really great and a lot of the songs on the album I had never heard the original versions of anyway so it was just another great Nick Cave album to me. One of the tracks on the album was a great cover of All Tomorrow’s Parties by the Velvet Underground. I knew I was going to play Nico’s version and figured what the hell, let’s throw on Nick’s version as well. A small bit of trivia: This is the first CD I ever purchased. I bought it on 10-31-86 at Rhino Records on a lunch break. I was working that day, loading in the Rat Sound PA at UCLA for a show that night which was Guns And Roses, The Dickies and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, in that order. It was an interesting night.

The Soul Flutes – Try A Little Tenderness: From The Soul Flutes: Trust In Me album. My mother has one of the more articulated palates for music and literature of anyone I have come across. In the apartments we roomed in across the Washington DC area in the 60’s and 70’s, DJ Iris kept it lively and eclectic. Off the top of my head: Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Sonny Rollins, Miriam Makeba, Barbara Streisand, Carol King, Wagner, Bartok, Hendrix, Joplin, Miles, Coltrane, Isaac Hayes, Glen Campbell, The Doors, Sonny Rollins, Strauss, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, music from Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Chorus Line, etc. This album was also in the mix and it’s the only reason I know of its existence because no one has ever mentioned it to me and I’ve never seen it referenced anywhere. Doesn’t mean it hasn’t been of course, I’m just saying I have not seen it. The LP itself is one of those thick, unbending discs that you could frisbee through a door and it would still play. The jacket is a beautiful but pointless gatefold of heavy stock. They really made ‘em to last back then. Liner notes by Ira Gitler. Recorded at Van Gelder Studios 1968 Feb. 21 & 22, Mar. 13 & 18. Players on the track we heard: Ron Carter on bass, Paul Griffin on organ, Grady Tate on drums, Bucky Pizarelli on guitar, Henry Watts on vibes and marimba, ensemble flutes and piccolo: Joel Kaye, Romeo Penque and Stan Webb. Two tracks feature Herbie Hancock. It’s an interesting release. If you go to this site: http://www.amcorner.com/cti and scroll down, you’ll see that this album seems to be the 2nd release with a lot of the same players, producer, cover photographer.

Jimi Hendrix – Cross-Town Traffic: Heard this one before?! I threw this one on the stack for no other reasons than I am constantly in that brand of traffic in this town all the time and much more importantly, it’s one of the most impossibly cool songs I have ever heard. Perhaps it’s Jimi reflecting upon the R&B he cut his teeth on and that perhaps got him out of the sideman business and into the frontman aspect of things. I have never heard a live version of this song. It was released as a single with Gypsy Eyes in April of 1969 and only reached #37 on the charts. Jimi Hendrix is the man, charts are lame. This track is on the Electric Ladyland album where it sticks out in a way and sometimes strikes me as a concession to radio-friendly demands. If a slightly more primitive version of the track was on Are You Experienced? It would have fit right in with the rest of the collection. In his mid-twenties when he recorded Cross-town Traffic, Hendrix was more man than anyone on stage years his elder. You can hear it in his voice, his playing, his whole deal was beyond description and category. I have been listening to Hendrix since I was in 1st or 2nd grade and the power of his work only grows with time, especially when you hear for what passes as “genius” these days. Give me a break! It’s always telling when no one can out do an original version of a song when they cover it. No band does a Stooges song better than The Stooges and no one does the world any favors when they cover Hendrix. Seeing the Meat Puppets do Little Wing once was pretty amazing and Rod Stewart’s version is very tasteful and great, Sting should steer clear of anything that requires balls, SRV’s version of Voodoo Chile is a great and ridiculously skillful tribute but none of these and any of the others I have not listed hold a candle to the genuine article. Hendrix covered Dylan. Respect. Dylan doesn’t cover Hendrix does he? Let’s hope not.

Eno / Wobble – Unusual Balance: I bought this album when it came out just out of sheer curiosity. It’s one of those ideas you have on a long plane ride. “If Brian Eno and Jah Wobble recorded, what would THAT sound like?” Overall, it’s a very cool experience. It’s a bit like a Bill Laswell excursion on the easily self-satisfied aspects of some of his releases but all the same, it’s very Eno and very Wobble and that’s not a bad thing at all. It’s the method used to make the record that I find the most interesting. From Eno’s liner notes, he says he composed his bits alone and then send it all to Jah and let him take it from there. Jah plays along, chops, processes or whatever else he sees fit to do. The music was originally intended as a soundtrack for what ended up being Derek Jarman’s last film Glitterbug which, unfortunately, Jarman never got a chance to see the release of as he passed away in February of 1994 and the film was released later that year. I went online and saw that All Saints has re-released this album. I wrote the label and asked if it had been remastered. If they choose to get back to me, I’ll let you know what they say.

Tel Aviv – I’ve Met A Writer: Have not played any Tel Aviv for quite a few broadcasts and I think this particular track goes well with what we just heard. Tel Aviv released two albums on Teenbeat. 193 and The Shape Of Fiction, from which we pulled tonight’s track. I really like both these quiet and interesting albums. The band is Andy Comer and Jay Kraus. Andy is in The Prosaics, which we heard Now The Shadow Of The Column on Broadcast #20. The Teenbeat site says both records are in print even though they are about ten years old now. http://www.teenbeatrecords.com

Woody Guthrie - I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore: This is from one of the bestest collections ever: The Library Of Congress Recordings Of Woody Guthrie. It’s 3 CDs of music and conversation with Woody conducted by one of the greatest American historians, the one and only Alan Lomax. As you know, Woody, father of Arlo, was a big influence on Bob Dylan and countless other musicians. Back when I was young, we used to sing his songs at school and summer camp. In the liner notes of the CD set, Lomax tells of having Guthrie stay at his house and how Guthrie at his meals next to the sink and wouldn’t sit at the table and slept on the floor of the guest room they provided. “I don’t want to get softened up. I’m a road man.” Damn! Check out the picture on the very well maintained Guthrie site and think of Joe Strummer. http://www.woodyguthrie.org

The Last Poets - Just Because: From the self-titled first album. There’s so many other Last Poet tracks I wanted to play before this one. I like this track just fine but it wasn’t my first choice. When The Revolution Comes was my first and I can’t remember what my second was, Two Little Boys, something, but the Last Poets insist on cussing and I can’t take the heat from the FCC and endanger the station so they limit themselves as far as what I can play. This is a track of theirs that’s great where they don’t curse and we can let it rip. The Last Poets are righteous, angry and when you consider this track is about 36 years old, timeless.

The Evens - Dinner With The President: Another track from the brand new Evens record Get Evens. I’ve written about this one and I know if I put down too many more words on this album, why you’ll, you’ll . . . .!

Skip & Flip - Cherry Pie: Listen to the lyrics and it’s either gross or really gross, depending how much you’re into questionable appetites. Seeing how things are with some politicians and under page, I mean under age people, this song is a warning to the evil that lurks all around us. The Dio has some songs about this, I’m sure you’re well aware. Look out!!