Episode #15: Valentine's Day Special

Yes, it’s that time. Time to be told how to celebrate your feelings towards that special someone. It’s also that time to be told to spend money to prove just how much. Obviously, I don’t care for such contrived forms of expression. However, I thought this would provide a good opportunity to put together a mix that explores the different manifestations and representations of love in music.

With this mix I incorporated songs that boast a variety of approaches to the always-elusive notion of just exactly what love is and how it should be. There is the simple exaltation of the splendors of love and love-making in Big Youth’s “I Love the Way You Love,” The Dynamic Four’s “Let’s Make Love” and Muddy Waters’ frank “I Just Want To Make Love To You.” Also represented is the wary, hesitant reaction to a potential blossoming of love, such as Tom Waits’ “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” and Beck’s “Think I’m In Love.” I couldn’t exclude the quintessential break-up song and I think Sage Francis’ “Rewrite” is one of the best lesser-known ones. Antony and the Johnsons’ “Fistful of Love” shows that love is sometimes (if not always) a painful endeavor. And Common’s classic, “I Used to Love H.E.R.” is a clever extended metaphor about his truest love, hip hop.

I ended the set with Cartola’s “Nós Dois” (Us Two) to illustrate that even without understanding the words you can almost feel what the song is about. I guess this serves to prove that love is something inherent and unique to the human condition and can be expressed in infinite ways.

Give it a listen and enjoy.

Track listing:
1) Think I’m In Love (3:19) – Beck
2) I Love the Way You Love (3:21) – Big Youth
3) Careless Love (3:00) – Dave Van Ronk
4) Love (3:24) – John Lennon
5) Fistful of Love (5:53) – Antony & The Johnsons
6) I And Love And You (5:01) – The Avett Brothers
7) Somebody To Love (4:39) – Barbara & Ernie
8) Killing For Love (3:03) – José González
9) I’m The Man Who Loves You (3:56) – Wilco
10) Rewrite (3:20) – Sage Francis
11) Let’s Make Love (3:08) – The Dynamic Four
12) Skinny Love (3:46) – Bon Iver
13) I Used to Love H.E.R. (4:39) – Common
14) I Just Want To Make Love To You (2:52) – Muddy Waters
15) In The Privacy of Our Love (2:52) – Hot Chip
16) I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You (3:55) – Tom Waits
17) Nós Dois (2:37) - Cartola

Cut of the Week 02/09/10

Rodrigo and Gabriela are an incredibly talented acoustic duo of old-school metalheads from Mexico. Achieving relatively little success there, they moved to Ireland and began busking on the streets of Dublin where they caught the eye of Damien Rice. He invited them on his tour and since then they have enchanted many audiences with their lightning-quick guitar playing and boasting some incredible covers, such as Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Metallica's "Orion." This is "Trivi" off their latest album called 11:11.

FYI - They will be performing at Radio City Music Hall on April 26th.


Rodrigo y Gabriela - "Trivi" download here

Episode #14: Proto-Punk

With last episode (New Wave) exploring the aftermath of the punk explosion, this week I thought it would be interesting to look at what preceded it. Obviously named after the fact, proto-punk was a broad label used to characterize a wide variety of music in the late 1960s and first half of the 1970s. It referred to any music that was difficult to categorize, namely music that was considered avant-garde or on the fringe of popular music.

Here is a fairly representative sampling, ranging from the glam rock of David Bowie, New York Dolls and Brian Eno to more straight-ahead garage rock of The Dictators and MC5. And then there is the godfather of what would become punk music: Iggy Pop. His unbridled (and at times reckless) energy foreshadowed the visceral force that punk would come to embody. And let’s not forget the brooding punk-poets Lou Reed and Patti Smith. While more sonically conventional than, let’s say, The Iggy & The Stooges, their dark and dynamic lyrics are what truly set them apart.

It should be noted that the first and most important band of the proto-punk scene was The Velvet Underground. With their songs depicting the gritty realism of New York’s underbelly of renegade artists, drugs and daring sexual activities, the album The Velvet Underground and Nico is considered today to be one of the most influential rock records of all time as its fingerprints can be seen all over glam, punk, grunge and noise-rock.

Regardless of how you categorize each individual artist/band here, the common thread they all shared is that they challenged the conventional norms of the music of their time by employing new approaches to instrumentation, arrangement and lyrical content (and stage presence, which for some showcased their outrageous sense of style, i.e. New York Dolls and David Bowie). This would provide the fertile ground for punk rock to emerge in the late 1970s.

Give it a listen and enjoy.

Track listing:
1) Kick Out The Jams (2:52) – MC5
2) Down On The Street (3:43) – The Stooges
3) I’m Waiting For The Man (4:37) – The Velvet Underground
4) The Thrill of It All (6:20) – Roxy Music
5) Vicious (3:01) – Lou Reed
6) Panic in Detroit (4:25) – David Bowie
7) Looking For a Kiss (3:18) – New York Dolls
8) The Next Big Thing (4:23) – The Dictators
9) Death May Be Your Santa Claus (4:56) – Mott The Hoople
10) Marquee Moon (10:47) – Television
11) I’m Straight (4:19) – The Modern Lovers
12) Dum Dum Boys (7:13) – Iggy Pop
13) Redondo Beach (3:26) – Patti Smith
14) Here Come The Warm Jets (4:05) – Brian Eno

Cut of the Week 02/01/10

Although the concept of the mashup (combining 2 seemingly disparate music acts together) is now a somewhat tired one, the pairing of artists on the 1993 "Judgment Night" original soundtrack was incredibly innovative considering when it was made. Despite the album results varying wildly (Mudhoney with Sir-Mix-A-Lot??? Yikes), here is one of the clear standouts: De La Soul with Teenage Fan Club, "Fallin'." Enjoy.


De La Soul with Teenage Fan Club - "Fallin'" download here

Episode #13: New Wave

As with all musical genres, New Wave is hard to explicitly define. It is usually considered to have flourished in the wake of punk with some bands borrowing so many elements of punk music that it may be hard to distinguish where punk ended and New Wave began. To simplify matters, New Wave can generally be narrowed down to late 1970s through the early 1980s. There are two main schools that evolved from the punk movement in the mid-late 1970s: post-punk and New Wave. New Wave can be considered the more straightforward, pop-conscious sibling to post-punk’s artier, darker, and more complex approach.

Basically anyone in the early-mid 1980s using a synthesizer was considered New Wave, but this serves to oversimplify things. Hugely influential and talented bands such as Talking Heads, Blondie, The Cure and Elvis Costello arose in the New Wave era and exemplify the high, nervous energy and irreverent attitude of punk while crafting catchy pop songs. However, there is certainly a wide variation within the confines of New Wave. Tinges of reggae can be heard on Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” while synthesizer and other electronic instrumentation are very prevalent on Gary Numan’s “Cars” and Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough.” Then you have more straight-ahead, traditional pop/rock, such as The Pretenders, The Knack and Nick Lowe and the punk-influenced stylings of The Jam and The Undertones.

After the advent of MTV in 1981, many copycat New Wave bands began to spring up everywhere. From that point on, New Wave would be harder and harder to describe as the music splintered into countless sub-genres and became increasingly reliant on synthesizers in an effort to create electronic pop dance music. However, here I try to salute the purest of the New Wave bands and celebrate its heyday.

Give it a listen and enjoy.

Track listing:
1) Uncontrollable Urge (3:11) – Devo
2) My Sharona (4:54) – The Knack
3) A Bomb in Wardour Street (2:38) – The Jam
4) Cities (4:10) – Talking Heads
5) Watching The Detectives (3:57) – Elvis Costello
6) My City Was Gone (5:25) – The Pretenders
7) Age of Consent (5:16) – New Order
8) Respectable Street (3:38) – XTC
9) Maria (4:09) – Blondie
10) Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) (3:05) – Haircut 100
11) So It Goes (2:34) – Nick Lowe
12) Cars (3:31) – Gary Numan
13) Automatic (3:07) – The Go-Go’s
14) True Confessions (1:54) – The Undertones
15) Separate Beds (3:21) – Squeeze
16) I Know What Boys Like (3:13) – The Waitresses
17) Boys Don’t Cry (2:35) – The Cure
18) Just Can’t Get Enough (3:44) – Depeche Mode

Cut of the Week 01/18/10 MLK Day

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. here is one of his favorite songs, performed by a 14-year old Aretha Franklin in her father's church. I think it speaks for itself and Dr. King's lasting legacy. Enjoy.


Aretha Franklin - "Precious Lord (Part 1)" download here