Category: Episodes

543. Bedřich Smetana

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(January 2023) Episode 543 is BEDŘICH SMETANA. I began this episode when I was in the Czech Republic, where he is one of their national musical heroes. He lived and composed in the mid-19th century at a time of national awakening. Harvesting local folk themes, Smetana’s music became both an expression of and inspiration for Czech (Bohemian) nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His compositions had a balanced range from opera to orchestral to chamber to piano. They are firmly in the Romantic style which, to be honest, I am finding rather tedious as I slog through this project. He may be the last Romantic composer I get to for a long while.

Favorite piece (orchestral): Má Vlast

Favorite chamber piece: Piano Trio

Favorite Opera: The Bartered Bride

Favorite solo piano piece: Czech Peasants’ Festival (La fête des paysans bohémiens)

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It’s … fine. But all Romantic composers now sound the same to me.

542. Cat Stevens / Yusuf

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(January 2024) Episode 542 is CAT STEVENS, who has also recorded as YUSUF ISLAM and YUSUF.  I detect four phases of his career. 1967-71: He started out in folky pop before transitioning to singer-songwriter mode with gentle songs and sweet melodies. This era produced his most popular tunes and is also his best. 1972-78: Stevens broadened into pop with more orchestration, but also lost the charm of his peak period. 1995-2004: After his conversion to Islam and two decades away from the recording studio, he made some recordings of religious content. 2006-present: As Yusuf, he returned to secular music and a return to his original form with pleasant results albeit with a time-worn voice (also credit to the guru of comebacks, Rick Rubin).

Favourite album: Teaser and the Firecat

Favourite song: Wild World

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: You can make do with a greatest hits of his first period. But for an interesting diversion, try some albums from the recent decade, like Tell ‘Em I’m Gone.

541. Fats Domino

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(January 2024) Episode 541 is FATS DOMINO, a pioneer of rock-and-roll, although he dismissed the term, noting that he was merely making the same piano-based New Orleans R&B he had been playing for years. “The Fat Man” (1949) is one of the many songs that historians nominate as the first rock-and-roll record. Regardless, he was massively influential on what became rock music. His success in the mid-1950s marked the peak of piano-based rock-and-roll before guitar became supreme. His sound was consistent (but also repetitive) over the years: piano beats in 12/4 time with his easy-going vocal style. I tire easily of early rock-and-roll but I find Fats, who unlike many in the business appeared to be a decent human being, an enjoyable listening experience.

Favorite album: This Is Fats Domino!

Favorite song: I’m Ready (1959)

Favorite later song: Work My Way Up Steady (1967)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Any greatest hits record will do but also check out the two songs listed above which are unlikely to make the cut.

540. Nine Treasures

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(January 2024) Episode 540 is NINE TREASURES, a folk metal group from the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region in the People’s Republic of China. Its members are ethnically Mongolian (calling themselves Southern Mongolian), and the music blends heavy metal guitars and drums with traditional Mongolian musical instruments and throat singing. The fusion is quite enjoyable. And maybe there’s a logic to it. Historians have noted parallels between the warrior cultures and civilizational paths of Scandinavians and Mongolians. And since Nordic mythology and imagery seem a natural fit for metal music, as well as offer an explanation for its popularity in Scandinavian countries, perhaps we can see the same with Mongolians. Nine Treasures’ lyrics evoke Mongolian history, landscapes, legends and mythologies.

Favorite album: Wisdom Eyes

Favorite song: Black Heart

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Try it. I dislike most forms of fusion, but this one feels genuine and instinctive.

539. Meat Puppets

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(December 2023) Episode 539 is MEAT PUPPETS. In a slightly alternate universe, I would have been into the Meat Puppets from the beginning. But maybe because I didn’t hang around the college radio station enough, I never experienced that entry point that many of my peers did (same goes for me with lots of SST and other bands that followed a similar career arc, like Flaming Lips and Butthole Surfers). Coming at this retroactively, I’m not sure how to approach them. Is it through their first punk offering, their odd prog-guitar/slacker-vocal thing from the late 80s, their Nirvana-aided 15 minutes of MTV fame, their later conventional rock and country rock? Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of good music in here. And I appreciate that they evolved and didn’t rely on retreads.  But I can’t figure out what makes their music special enough to make me want to return to it. Maybe my hipper peers can inform me.

Favorite album: Meat Puppets II (1984)

Favorite song: Lake of Fire

Best mid-period album: Too High To Die (1994)

Best late-period album: Lillipop (2011)

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Kinda depends on your preference, given their style evolution (see above). But I’d recommend the first two raw-sounding albums.

538. The Stranglers

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(December 2023) Episode 538 is THE STRANGLERS. I have this odd fascination with the late 1970s UK musical moment, when vocalists chose to assert rather than deemphasize their British accents; Johnny Rotten’s God Save the Queen being a prime example. The Stranglers were among the burst of groups that emerged from the punk or punk-adjacent scene featuring angular and bass-driven beats and think accents: Wire, The Jam, Buzzcocks, The Clash, Gang of Four, the Damned, etc. Lovely stuff. The Stranglers’ first three albums are classics of this style, but they also stood apart, neither political nor in-your-face. Their sound evolved over the years, not chasing fads but also not plowing new ground. They’ve stayed active until the present, and while the recordings are successively less interesting, they’re not bad. “Golden Brown” is both their most popular and most unusual song with its neo-baroque pop sound.

Favourite album: No More Heroes

Favourite song: (Get A) Grip (On Yourself)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Listen to the first three albums.

537. Elton John

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(December 2023) Episode 537 is ELTON JOHN. In third grade, the quiz on the playground was “Elton or Elvis.” I answered Elton, of course, because I wasn’t a loser. This anecdote tells how absolutely huge he was in the mid-1970s, to be put on par with the King. I like Elton John, but never collected his albums or sought out his music; it was always on the radio. His popular songs remain enjoyable classics. But there’s a reason it took 537 episodes for me to get to this megastar. I anticipated I would be bored by most everything after Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And so I was. It seems sacrilegious to say this, but much of his stuff is crap. I’m not drawn to piano troubadour acts, so it’s not a surprise my favorite song of his is guitar-led. Even so, Sir Elton’s music, showmanship and longevity well earn him the title of Elder Statesman of Popular Music.

Note on favorite album choice: Elton’s first recordings in 1968 were psychedelic/baroque pop songs in fashion in the wake of Sgt. Peppers, which explains the copy-cat album title, Regimental Sgt. Zippo. Producers felt this wasn’t the right sound for him and they were shelved in favor of the piano songman approach of his first issued album, Empty Sky, and onward. This early collection wasn’t released until 2021. I list it as my favorite because I happen to love that particular kind of late 60s music. But that album is not representative of the rest of his work and far from his best album.

Favourite album: Regimental Sgt. Zippo

Best album: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Favourite song: Saturday’s Alright for Fighting

Favourite ballad: Love Song

Worst album (among many) Duets

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It suffice to have a greatest hits album of his big hits from the early 1970s.

536. John Williams

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(December 2023) Episode 536 is JOHN WILLIAMS. I am extremely confident in saying that more people have heard the music of John Williams than any other composer since music was invented. Think about it. He wrote the scores to some of the most popular movies of all time, with global reach (Star Wars trilogies, Indiana Jones films, E.T. Jaws, some Jurassic Parks and Harry Potters). Plus, he wrote the themes to NBC’s Nightly News, The Today Show, Meet the Press and Sunday Night Football, heard by millions of Americans every week. Add to that the themes for Olympics and major civic events. Williams got his start playing jazz piano and made some recordings before getting into the theme music business on TV and then later movies. In addition to conducting the Boston Pops, he penned several of his own orchestral pieces that are quite good and more musically ambitious than his scores for general audiences. This was a very long episode: he has 366 soundtrack albums to his name, not to mention all the rest. His amazing prolificacy remains strong after seven decades, composing the score to the recent Indiana Jones film at age 90.

Favorite movie score: Star Wars: A New Hope

Favorite movie theme: Jurassic Park

Favorite concert theme: Olympic Fanfare and Theme

Favorite orchestral piece: Duo Concertante for Violin and Viola

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: You already know the movie themes, so I recommend the orchestral works, especially the Duo Concertante, Violin Concerto No. 2 and Three Pieces for Solo Cello.

535. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

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(December 2023) Episode 535 of the “opus project” is DAVE DEE, DOZY, BEAKY, MICK & TICH, the biggest mouthful of a band name I’ve reviewed since King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (episode 255). They emerged within the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, although they didn’t make a mark in the USA much beyond an obscure reference in a Quentin Taratino film (extra credit if you can name the film). Their sound is on the lighter pop side of the Invasion-era sound (closer to Herman’s Hermits than the Rolling Stones) but it features some nice hooks. Like so many contemporaries, they kept with the fad by recording an obligatory psychedelic-ish album (Fresh Ear), which is my favorite of their recordings but not representative of their sound.

Favourite album: Fresh Ear (as D,B,M&T)

Favourite song: She Was A Raver

Favorite song (of their usual sound): Hold Tight

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Not really necessary unless you like deep tracks of the British Invasion

534. Acid Bath

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(November 2023) Episode 534 is ACID BATH. Continuing my tour of sludge metal bands from the southern USA, we come to Acid Bath from Houma, Louisiana. They were active in the 1990s and didn’t record much before breaking up due to the death of a band member. But what they did is quite good, and it led to a kind of cult following. It’s an unusual (refreshing?) mix of styles for the genre, primarily the low, slow sludge/doom sound, but also speed metal screamers, acoustic heavy mellow, and grooves resembling hard grunge contemporaries Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

Favorite album: When the Kite String Pops

Favorite song: Dr. Seuss Is Dead

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: If you’re not repelled by heavy metal, give them a listen; the variety makes it more accessible than similarly labeled bands.