(podcast available here –
originally broadcast Nov-12-2011)
Some highlights from the program.
All comments are from Philip Random's notes. The full countdown list can be found here.
1091.
Kraftwerk - Europe Endless
We drank cheap sweet wine that
night, smoked spliffs with too much tobacco in them, not enough hash, and
talked for many hours, various languages and variants. A Canadian (me), a Northern Irishman, a
Pole, a Croat. We all agreed on
one thing. If you're European, the
20th Century has been a fucking disaster (the first half of it
anyway). Wars and atrocities that
can't really be quantified. Maybe
just call it The Apocalypse – already played out. With mass graves left in its wake, and slag heaps as big as
mountains, poisonous, still killing us.
Life is a veil of tears or something like that. The value of scars is they at least
confirm that something has happened.
Europe is endless, or did I say that already?
1089.
Jethro Tull - beggars farm
Tull were a big deal in the
early 70s, heavy duty underground stuff that couldn't be messed with, even if
the main guy did play flute.
Beggars Farm goes back to their first album, This Was, when they were
still mostly a blues outfit, though the cover suggested something deeper, the
band all got up as old men. Like
they knew something we didn't. All
this youth flower power stuff – it really was kind of dumb.
1087.
Trisomie 21 - is anybody
home? [randoEDIT]
I don't even remember where
this came from. Except there was
some very strong, clean LSD25 kicking around for a while in 1985 … and
somewhere in the midst of it, this thing showed up in my collection. Hideous cover – some
unformed monster gnawing on a female corpse. Moloch perhaps.
And then you've got this singer trying to croon, not really pulling it
off, but the mix is so out there it works anyway. Proof that the 80s were
stranger than anyone gives them credit for.
1086.
Ventures - psychedelic
venture
From 1967, of course. Which means nobody seems to remember
anything about it. And yet we have
this evidence. Gatefold sleeve,
crazy shapes and colours. A few
half-assed covers but it's the originals that stand out – titles like kandy
koncoction, 1999 AD (about the future, man), endless dream, PSYCHED out, guitar
psychedelics, and …
1085.
Bongwater - ride my see-saw
More of that mid-80s lost
decade, winter of hate, psychedelic stuff in which the boy-girl duo of
Bongwater take on the Moody Blues classic and pay it no respect at all. That was just the truth then. The 60s were officially a bad trip and
we (those who actually cared) were doing everything we could to bury
them. Not because we hated the
memory, absolutely. Nah, it just
needed to be dead for a while, so it could be reborn. Out of some caustic storm of superlative noise. At least that's what it felt like.
1081.
Terry Jacks - concrete sea
You've got to trust me on
this. There was a time when the most vilely sentimental fragments of POP poison the current world
knew could cohabit (share album space) with oddly heartfelt little ditties about
urban alienation, the mindless paving over of paradise, the sheer sadness
inherent in being alone and alive in a world that was going poppily to
hell. What was it about 1972?
1080.
Beatnigs - CIA
Before there was a Disposable
Heroes of HipHopracy, before there was a Spearhead, there were The Beatnigs
fronted by a guy named Michael Franti, and a mixed bag in every possible
way. White-Black-Asian, funk, industrial,
punk, powertools, chunks of raw metal, genuine FIRE. It all caught Jello Biafra's attention, and maybe the CIA's
as well. And man did they kick it
live. True grinding of steel. Music that even smelled dangerous.
1078.
Lieutenant Pigeon - moldy
old dough
1972 again. What is it about that year? Monster hit in Britain where they still
seem to remember it. But not over
here. The song itself seems to be
about a certain tendency in medieval times for folks to go mad after eating
bread baked from mouldy old dough, research into which would eventually give us
LSD. This is true.
1077.
Jarvis Street Revue - Mr Oil
Man
I can't even remember the guy's
name. Michael maybe? He was a teenager, lived in the house
behind mine, down some suburban dead end (it doesn't matter what town, all
suburbs are the same, in memory anyway, in 1970 when you're ten years
old). Michael had a band
and every now and then they'd jam in his basement. We younger kids would hop the fence, sneak up and listen,
smell the incense they had burning, no doubt to mask the POT smell. But we weren't that hip yet, just
trading Beatles bullshit, how they broke up because Paul was dead, killed by a
Walrus while high on LSD. Anyway,
this The Jarvis Street Revue, straight outa Thunder Bay, reminding me of what
Michael's band must've sounded like.
Except they were better.
The Jarvis Street Revue, that is.
And environmentally conscious.
1975.
Dali's Car - Dali's Car
It made sense on paper. Take Peter Murphy lead singer of
recently disbanded Bauhaus and put him in a room with Mick Karn, instrumental
genius from recently disbanded Japan – see what happens. What happened was an album that didn't
quite add up. It just sounded like
Peter Murphy and Mick Karn in the same room, but not really getting along. But the lead off track was cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment