(Mat 2023) Episode 497 is FU MANCHU, a stoner metal band out of Southern California with a sound that perfectly evokes the skateboard, dune buggy and El Camino on their album covers. The tempo and the vocal style convey a rock-n-roll attitude, with the heavy fuzz of the guitars giving it the stoner label. The later albums come closer to straight hard rock, but still pretty good.
Episode 496 is the VIOLENT FEMMES. Their first album is the soundtrack to my college dorm years, providing drunken sing-alongs for students trying to get real-life affirmative answers to the questions in “Add It Up.” The Femmes were alt music a decade before we started using that term. They’re labeled folk-punk but I’d call it geeky neo-skiffle. There’s a clear resonance with Jonathan Richman, but I hear parallels with They Might Be Giants (and a bit of Talking Heads, not surprising given their association with Jerry Harrison). I stopped following them after the second album and expected a drop-off from there, so I was pleased to find out they generally kept it fresh and fun over the decades.
(May 2023) Episode 495 is THE AMBOY DUKES. Known primarily for the psychedelic gem “Journey to the Center of the Mind” and for being Ted Nugent’s first band, they made some good recordings covering the range of late 60s/early 70s sounds: blues rock, psychedelia, groovy rock, prog. Overall it is an uneven affair, within and across albums, never solidifying a musical identity. They eventually did when, amidst personnel changes, Nugent full took over with his guitar-frenzied boogie rock, with which he transitioned seamlessly to a successful solo career.
(May 2023) Episode 494 is RADIO BIRDMAN. An early and energetic punk band from Australia. Their version of punk derived from the garage-band lineage, particularly the proto-punk sounds of the Stooges and MC5, which is not a surprise given guitarist Deniz Tek grew up in Michigan. They didn’t last long (there was one reunion album) but what they did was great.
(May 2023) Episode 493 is JELLY ROLL MORTON. As a pianist, composer and bandleader, he was one of the original jazz giants, from an era where recordings were a rare thing. His music is a very period-piece invocation of “old timey jazz,” the New Orleans flavor of ragtime and Dixieland. The music interests me in a historical context but it’s not something I would sit and listen to. Later in life he sat for Alan Lomax, and these Library of Congress recordings provide an interesting window into his approach and style.
(May 2023) Episode 492 is HARRY PARTCH. A composer, music theorist and inventor, he broke ground in the field of just intonation – the tuning of instruments to intervals between the 12 standard tones in Western music. He composed in a scale of 43 unequal tones and created unique instruments to play such works. To the uninitiated ear, it sounds like a bunch of out-of-tune instruments. It’s not music to chill by. But spend a little time getting to know the theory and the labor behind it, and it can be fascinating.
Recommendation: The album “The World of Harry Partch” is a good introduction, as it includes Partch describing what, how and why he is doing on various pieces.
(May 2023) Episode 491 is KATATONIA. A band from Sweden named Katatonia should give reasonable assurance of quality death metal. Alas, not at all. The first couple albums are decent doom metal. But then the singer had to give up the growl and they adopted a more accessible but rather mundane rock sound, with album after album of mushy prog metal that doesn’t deserve the label “metal.” So boring.
(April 2023) Episode 490 is NEU!. Krautrock! What Neu! Lacked in output and commercial success, they made up for in influence. Comprising a duo spun off from Kraftwerk, Neu! is credited with creating “motorik,” a spare yet mesmerizing beat that propels the music forward with German efficiency.
(April 2023) Episode 489 is THE FLAMING LIPS, the durable indie/alt band out of Oklahoma that constantly reinvents itself led by the creative weirdness of Wayne Coyne. Their initial sound was very much 80s college radio, evolving into fuzzy guitar-driven psychedelic music, when they got their 15 minutes of pop fame through MTV’s play of “She Don’t Use Jelly” and a guest appearance at the Peach Pit on 90210. Starting in 1999, though, they shelved the guitars in favor of synths, creating a lush and heavily-processed sound, which bored me. Coyne’s weak voice, while fitting on some songs, is a liability in the heavier tunes, although this is “fixed” by the later processing, for better or worse. Kudos to them for recording (with mixed success) reinventions of Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper’s, a quadrophonic experiment, several concept albums, and even a Christmas disc.
(April 2023) Episode 488 is HIGH ON FIRE. After the demise of Sleep (Episode 454), Matt Pike continued the low and thick sonic assault with High on Fire, at least initially, but with a more aggressive bass and drum. Over time their sound morphed into a more conventional thrashy metal sound. It’s not bad, but I still prefer the purer stoner metal sound of their earlier albums.
Opus Project 