BROADCAST #49
AIR DATE: 12-05-06

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.

James Brown - It's A New Day So Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn: The opening track of one of the greatest live albums of all time: Revolution Of The Mind: Live At The Apollo Vol. III. I heard this album the first time when Dez from Black Flag played at SST one day in 1981. I heard it once and was hooked. I got to tell James Brown that this was my favorite live album and he hugged me. I don’t know the one single JB album to check out if you never have as you might want to check out some of the studio recordings before the full-on love experience. The There It Is album is pretty cool, I’m sure there’s a lot of best-of releases but if you want to hear the man and band in completely controlled frenzy, Revolution Of The Mind is the one. You heard the first track of the record, they’re only getting warmed up.

The Fall - British People In Hot Weather: The b-side of the Telephone Thing single, released January of 1990. This came out right before the Extricate album, a great Fall album. The Unofficial Fall Website says that in late 2006 or early 2007, we will perhaps see the re-release of this album with extra tracks. Let’s hope it’s sooner than later. If you were ever wanting to go to a website, you could check this one out: http://www.visi.com/fall/

Eater - Outside View / You: I reckon they were short songs, we might as well take two. Eater, one of the great 1st wave UK Punk Rock bands. Their album The Album, is a classic. Vocalist Andy Blade, put out a pretty cool autobiography called The Secret Life Of A Teenage Punk Rocker: The Andy Blade Chronicles that’s worth checking out. Andy saw a lot intense stuff right up close and calls it as he saw it all those years ago. I have written about this band a lot since we’ve had our show going. Their album and singles are some of the first Punk records I ever had. They were all so young when Punk Rock started, they were little kids running around in a very rough and fast moving crowd, must have been one hell of a ride. Great music.

The Ramones – I Don’t Care (single version): A nice alt. version of this song, it was on a single with Sheena Is A Punk Rocker as the A side and is included on the remastered version of the Rocket To Russia CD. I am a Ramones Fanatic as are many of you. My favorite albums of theirs are all the ones with Tommy Ramone playing drums. That would be the first three studio albums and the live album It’s Alive. If you really break down the band’s music to see what makes it go, it’s a band effort of course but it’s Tommy that really makes it rock. His machine gun ride cymbal and deep pocket really makes that music go. Check it out the next time you listen to the band. Check out anything from the first three albums and then check out the 4th studio album Road To Ruin with Mark Bell on drums. He’s really good but his playing is different and the music lost a little of its lunacy. It’s all about the drums. If you have a drummer in the band at all, that member is the bedrock and is either the strongest part or the weakest. Good drummer, bad guitar player, you can get by, good drummer bad anything else, you can get by. Bad drummer, doesn’t matter what else is happening in the band. That’s from the gospel of Greg Ginn and I think he was right. He was the one who pointed out the Tommy factor to me many years ago. We would talk about the band and he said that he was at all the LA shows with Tommy. He said he wasn’t as interested after he left. I was very young and wasn’t listening to music in that way. I saw The Ramones with Mark and I thought it was a great time. I still think he’s a great drummer but Tommy was exceptional and unique and the difference is clear to the ear. Other bands whose “thing” changed when they got a new drummer: Black Sabbath. Bill Ward out and Vinnie Appice in starting with the Mob Rules album. Vinnie is a fine drummer but Bill Ward . . . damn. Bill Ward is one half of one of the greatest rhythm sections known to man: Bill Ward and Geezer Butler of Sabbath, of course. Now THAT’S a rhythm section! But back to The Ramones with Tommy Ramone, I don’t know how well he and Dee Dee always locked up but Tommy was a very important part of what made The Ramones go.

The Saints - Lipstick On Your Collar / One Way Street / River Deep Mountain High / Demolition Girl: Our EP of the week comes from The Saints, legendary bastards from Australia. This was released as a 4 track single called 1, 2, 3, 4. You get two originals, One Way Street and Demolition Girl, alternate versions to the Stranded album versions as well as River Deep, Mountain High written by Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, and Ellie Greenwich, made famous by Ike and Tina. I wonder how much Spector really had to do with the writing of that song,) and the Edna Goehring and George Lewis song Lipstick On Your Collar.

Beach Boys – I Can Hear Music (vocal overdub): I couldn’t resist the Fanatic potential of this. On our EP of the week, we heard a track by Barry & Greenwich, right? Do you know who those two are?! Brill Building songwriters of extraordinary talent, that’s who! They needed Spector like he needs more bullets. Among the many songs they wrote that define popular music as we know it today, they wrote this song that was done so well by the Beach Boys. Instead of playing the reverb-drenched version found on the 20/20 album and so many BB compilation CDs, we dug out a version from the amazing Unsurpassed Masters bootleg series that has the vocal overdub sessions for this song, which I prefer much more because you can hear just how damn good these guys were.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins – Frenzy: A guy who used to design the books at my company used to work at a printing and copying store where Screamin’ Jay used to come in often to make flyers for his shows. He said Mr. Hawkins was always very intense. I never got to see him play but have a few of his compilation CDs. There’s a few of them and they all have basically the same set of his more well known songs. The Cow Fingers & Mosquito Pie CD is the one I listen to the most of all of them. Some of the compilations are him doing remakes of his songs, there was a lot of that years ago. I rarely like the remakes as much as the originals with the older artists, it’s usually session hacks and the vocals are not always that inspired. This track is about 50 years old! What a wild man. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins passed away in 2000. One website says he left behind over 50 children with different women. Potent!

The Shangri-Las - He Cried: Somewhere, a young man’s heart broke into millions of pieces and The Shangri-Las are were there to rub it in. I don’t know much about the band but from what I’ve read, this song was their version of She Cried, done by Jay And The Americans. Jay had a top ten hit with it, theirs didn’t do as well as the songs they are best known for like Leader Of The Pack. I was tempted to play a song of theirs called Sophisticated Boom Boom tonight but then I came up with this concept of playing this He Cried / She Cried pairing. I let the Shangs take the lead out of respect but Howard S. gets the last word. This track was taken from my one and only Shangs CD: Myrmidons Of Melodrama.

Rowland S. Howard – She Cried: Another track from the Teenage Snuff Film album and the perfect response to the Shangs response to the call out from Jay And The Americans many years ago. Mr. Howard was in some band called The Birthday Party many years ago, you may have come across them at some point in your Fanatic explorations. He is a monster guitar player. If you have all the BP stuff and still want more, this album is full of Rowland S. six-string mayhem. This is like the 3rd song we’ve played off this record since we started the show years ago. We played Sleep Alone several broadcasts ago. This isn’t the easiest album to find so if you liked what you heard and see this one, grab it as I think it’s out of print and I don’t know if it’s coming back. The vinyl version of this one is really hard to find. Earlier this year I was in Australia and was interviewed for a Rowland S. Howard documentary. I hope it comes out soon. Australia has many great musicians that the world doesn’t know enough about. The first few times I went there, I came back spreading the gospel of the Australian music scene and it’s been cool to be able to put some of these bands on our show so we can get the word out. Everyone has heard about Nick Cave and Silver Chair but there’s a whole lot great music down there that shouldn’t be missed. It was great to see the Beasts Of Bourbon play this year when I was at the Big Day Out.

13th Floor Elevators - You're Gonna Miss Me: I don’t think I’ve ever played this song on our show before. As you Fanatics know, The Elevators featured Roky Erickson, someone who we listen to often on the show. I always thought this song, as great as it is, a bit obvious for the show so I held it back. Last night, I was watching the television and heard this song on an advertisement for Dell computers. I thought that was really cool. I remember years ago when I first started hearing bands like The Buzzcocks, The Ramones and The Stooges on ads for cars or whatever else and people would ask me if I didn’t think that was really lame of the bands to “sellout” and let their music be used in this way. I always said that I was happy to hear the music used on television because it would perhaps make fans out of the unsuspecting and that it would get these bands paid. That was always the aspect that was most important to me. So many of these bands get screwed one way or the other. They either sign bad deals or more likely, make the music that the average band copies and gets famous for and the originator gets nothing but a thank you in an interview years later. Fuck that. Pay up. Pay double. Pay now. Stooges on a Nike ad? Pay immediately. “But what about your integrity?!” Go move back in with your fucking parents. But anyway, The 13th Floor Elevators were a great Texas Psychedelic Rock band. If you liked this song, you can find it on the band’s first album The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators. If you like this album, check out the band’s 2nd album Easter Everywhere.

John Coltrane - Jupiter: From the Interstellar Space album. Many of you Fanatics have a short history of the great John Coltrane burned into your mind. The legend made brave, passionate and exploratory music until his death in 1967. Perhaps his most interesting phase of development started when he signed to Impulse Records in the early 60’s. No one knew that the big man only had a few years to live. During this time, his band, what became to be known as The Classic Quartet was dismantled and new players were assembled. Coltrane wanted to take his music in a new direction and needed new players to achieve it. I think the transition started in 1965 when Coltrane started playing with people like Rashied Ali, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and others. Quartet drummer and pianist Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner left in 1965 and from that point until his passing in 1967, Coltrane made his most challenging music. There’s no doubt he lost some of his fans with this move and assuredly drew the fire of Jazz critics. Doesn’t mean the music isn’t good. The difference between fans, who are lightweight, and Fanatics like us, we don’t back off when things get noisy or when musicians make sincere and brave direction changes in their music. It only makes us more curious. Coltrane’s post-Quartet recordings are wild and challenging. It sometimes makes me wonder if Coltrane did indeed know that he had limited time left. If you look at the amount of work he and his last line up of Alice Coltrane – piano, Jimmy Garrison – bass, Rashied Ali – drums, Pharoah Sanders – saxophone amongst others there’s an urgency of some kind there. Perhaps Coltrane was excited at the potential the new line-up allowed. The Classic Quartet is one of the greatest bands ever but there’s no way they could have handled what Coltrane had planned for 1966 and 1967. It’s not better or worse music, it’s just very different. Interstellar Space, Stellar Regions, Live At The Village Vanguard Again! and Live In Japan are wild records. Recently, one of Coltrane’s last performances was released and it’s a great record. It’s called The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording. If you have not yet, you need to check out the late period Coltrane recordings. Anything on the Impulse! label is worth checking out though. Get ‘em all!

Ivo Papasov & His Orchestra - Mamo Marie Mamo: I go to the record store when I can. A guy who works there gave me a copy of this CD, figuring I would like it. I do. He’s a Bulgarian clarinet player and the music he plays, “Wedding Music” which sounds like something you would write off as quickly as possible, will kick your ass! I have only heard this one record, Orpheus Ascending. Not easy to find but worth it when you go. It’s great to still be getting floored by music.

Kas Product - So Young But So Cold: Kas Product are Mona Soyoc are vocals and guitar, and Spatsz who does all the electronics. I have never heard their albums. I found one of them online and since the order form was all in French and I can’t read French, I am not sure if I filled out everything correctly but hopefully I will have a CD of theirs arriving at some point. I only know this one track from the CD comp. of French underground music by the same name. A record I probably never would have heard of if Engineer X hadn’t loaned it to me. I have learned a lot about music from him. More information on this duo when I am avec CD.

This Heat – Cenotaph: From the Deceit album. Finally, all the This Heat material as well as unreleased material is now available in a box set called Out Of Cold Storage. I don’t know how to classify the music of This Heat as they sometimes sound like a different band track to track. The first album sounds like they listened to a lot of Can, Eno, Neu! And bands like that. There a meshing of things industrial and things prog and space. It’s an interesting record. The next album, Deceit is very different. A lot more “songs” and a lot more vocals but still way out there. As you can tell, it’s hard for me to write about some kinds of music. I just don’t know from where to start with this band. On Deceit, again, I hear some Eno and some of the elements of what Einsturzende Neubauten was bringing to their early efforts. If you liked what you heard here, start with the Deceit album and then go backwards to the first album or you can take the plunge and check out the box set. Here’s the Wikipedia page on the band wherein, you will read about a band called Camberwell Now. We’ll listen to them soon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Heat

New York Dolls – Private World: I know, this isn’t a song you have not listened to a million times but I have been hearing it in my head all day and had to throw it on the pile. For the one or two of you that have not heard the New York Dolls self-titled debut album, it’s one of those records you gotta gotta gotta hear sooner than later. I have been playing the band’s new album, One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This a lot but now and then, have to rock the 1st album. I just wrote the engineer of Johanson’s radio show to ask how the man and band are doing and Keith the engineer said that they have been doing shows and people are digging the record and checking out the show. It’s a great one!

Inmates At Angola Prison – I Got A Hurtin’ In My Right Side: My biggest influence and teacher in being a guy on the radio is Deirdre O’Donoghue. We were friends from 1983 until her death in 2001. Her show on KCRW FM was everything a radio show could and should be. She played amazing music, all kinds, she did interviews with everyone from me to Brian Eno, she did in-studio sessions and she was a music Fanatic. I would like to think she would like our show. I learned so much about radio from her, there’s really no aspect of any of this that I don’t owe her a great debt for. In any case, she turned me onto this great album Prison Worksongs, recorded of inmates at the Angola State Prison in Louisiana by Harry Oster. There’s not a bad song on this thing and it’s in print on the very fine Arhoolie label. We’ve listened to this album before. I have every inmate recording collection I have ever seen and they all have songs on them that are amazing. Harry Oster, what a man. He’s the one who recorded Robert Pete Williams at Angola and helped in getting Williams pardoned. He made a number of recordings at Angola. Whenever I listen to these records, it makes me wonder how much more could have been recorded.

Ennio Morricone – The Ecstasy Of Gold: Did you know that Ennio Morricone’s killer soundtrack album for The Good, The Bad And The Ugly was recently re-released in a cleaned up and expanded version? It sounds so much better than the original CD. It’s a must have. I have quite a few Morricone soundtracks and this one is my favorite and this is my favorite track from it.

Parliament – Starchild: I will never forget the way George Clinton lit up when I told him I was from Washington DC. I always felt that Parliament was a DC band in a way. They’re not but it feels that way to me. Same thing with Stevie Wonder and EWF. I guess because they were all on the radio so much when I was growing up and they all had such a strong following where I come from, that’s why I feel that way. This track is from the Mothership Connection album. If you see one of the band’s greatest hits albums, chances are, there’s about half of this album on it. This was the Parliament album that everyone heard. What is hard to get my head around is how the band did all those records in such a short amount of time and kept the quality so high. Also realize that Funkadelic was releasing records in this time as well. Check this out:
1970 Funkadelic - Funkadelic
1970 Parliament - Osmium
1971 Funkadelic - Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow
1971 Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
1972 Funkadelic - America Eats Its Young
1973 Funkadelic - Cosmic Slop
1974 Parliament - Up For The Down Stroke
1974 Funkadelic - Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On
1975 Parliament - Chocolate City
1975 Funkadelic - Let's Take It To The Stage
1976 Funkadelic - Hardcore Jollies
1976 Funkadelic - Tales Of Kidd Funkadelic
1976 Parliament - Mothership Connection
1976 Parliament - Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein
1977 Parliament - Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome
1977 Parliament – Live: P-Funk Earth Tour
1978 Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove
1978 Parliament - Motor Booty Affair
1979 Parliament - Gloryhallastoopid
1979 Funkadelic - Uncle Jam Wants You
1980 Parliament - Trombipulation
1981 Funkadelic - The Electric Spanking Of War Babies
Is that nuts or what?! You think Aerosmith did a lot of cocaine? How many mountains do you think were done by these in this time period? George Clinton inhaled! I went to several sites with George discographies and sometimes the years of release were different here and there but you get the basic idea that there was a lot of work happening in this time. It’s all worth checking out, too. So anyway, back to the Mothership Connection album. Some of the greatest musicians ever are on this album. Bootsy, Maceo, Fred Wesley, Garry Shider, Bernie Worrell, to name a few. It was one hell of a time for music. I wish I could have seen some of those tours when they came though the DC area. I don’t think it would have always gone well for me though. That was a rough crowd.

Death Cube K - Maggot Dream: From the Dreamatorium album on Laswell’s Strata label. Death Cube K is an anagram for Buckethead. This album is basically the Buckethead show. Laswell shows up for bass duties. There are two other Death Cube K albums, Tunnel and Disembodied, the former I have never heard and the latter I have only heard once. He’s an interesting guy. I saw him playing once with Les Claypool and he blew my mind.