(December 2025) Episode 696 is ROGER MILLER. I’ve always admired his “King of the Road” as an exceptional feat of songwriting — concise storytelling, simple yet tuneful. His style gets him labelled as a country artist although he made his mark with novelty songs like “Dang Me!” His voice was plain but could be subtly wry, putting some charm into his honky-tonk flavor.
(November 2025) Episode 695 is THE (English) BEAT. One will observe the lack of 80s pop/rock acts in the Project. This is because I spent my teens rejecting music popular with peers while adhering to classic rock orthodoxy. The Beat is an group I didn’t hate, but I didn’t listen to them because others did. Their new wave/ska mixture is very distinctive for its time and place but, as the three Beat albums in the last decade by, separately, Ranking Roger and Dave Wakeling show, it does not sound dated. By the time they morphed into GENERAL PUBLIC, the obligatory 80s synths and gated drums were added, which turns me off.
(November 2025) Episode 694 is KITTIE, an all-female heavy metal group from Canada. Their first album (1999) has a nu metal feel but they move into punishing death metal, except for their fourth album which is a departure in a more melodic direction. Vocalist Monica alternates between clean singing and throat screaming. It’s simultaneously intense and fun music.
(November 2025) Episode 693 of the “opus project” is SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON II, a harmonica-playing blues musician in the Chicago Blues mode whose career included playing with both Robert Johnson and Jimmy Page. Born as Alex Ford but at the urging of his sponsor he performed under the name of an older bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson and (perjuriously IMO) kept it, so is thus identified in the literature as SBW II. Based on his recordings in the 1950s-60s, this is what many people will hear as standard blues, historicism aside. He toured Europe several times, helping popularize the genre there.
(November 2025) Episode 692 is CHARLIE PARKER. I’ll use this occasion to commit heresy. First, I admit I don’t like bebop, to the shame of all the jazz people I grew up with (including my father). To me it comes off as noodling for noodling’s sake, in the same way I react to jam bands. It doesn’t provide the emotional response I seek in melodic lines, hooks, or sonic textures and mood. Second, I’ve never really liked Charlie Parker; there’s a reason he slipped all the way to episode 692. This goes way back as part of a trumpet player’s reflexive aversion to the saxophone. I appreciate his legendary skill and immense influence on jazz music. But what I hear is music that makes virtuosity an end in itself rather than a means to a musical whole (not entirely unlike an Al Di Meola or Yngwie Malmsteen) which has limited appeal to me. I know I border on sacrilege here, but just being honest.
(November 2025) Episode 691 is The FRATELLIS. This Scottish indie rock’s first two albums from the 00s offer poppy, peppy songs full of melodic hooks. You may recognize “Chelsea Dagger” from its get-the-crowd-singing use by sports teams, including as the goal song for the Chicago Blackhawks. But thereafter, each successive album gets less interesting, devolving into typical 2010s shiny pop-rock where over-production substitutes for creativity.
Episode 690 is DEFTONES. I make a habit of launching an episode when I visit an artist’s city or country. And so I started Deftones while in Sacramento (our mutual hometown). I was disappointed. They are rooted in metal, as their first groove/nu-ish album showed. But the emo-vocal alt-metal style they settled into is not to my taste. It’s like Coldplay with distorted guitars. I saw someone describe them as “the Radiohead of metal.” Well, invoking the old Simpsons gag – I like nuts and I like gum, but I do not like them together.
(October 2025) Episode 689 is THE MANHATTANS. An R&B outfit distinguished more by its longevity than by its creative contribution, IMO. Their career followed a common path from 60s doo wop-style R&B to 70s smooth soul, some funk and a bit of disco, then 80s synth soul, through to the current decade. To my ear, The Manhattans offer mostly basic and formulaic soul, although I found some enjoyable funky songs in their mid-70s peak. Their biggest hits were “Kiss and Say Goodbye” (1976) and “Shining Star” (1980).
(October 2025) Episode 688 is IGGY POP. This provides a case study (as with Lou Reed) into whether an extended solo career derives from evolving musical creativity or riding on the fumes of fame earned as frontman with an iconic and seminal group (and image cultivation). With Iggy Pop it’s both. Arguably the strongest are the first two albums done with David Bowie on retreat in Berlin. But that’s followed by a decade and a half of weak offerings including an attempt at new wave. But 1993’s American Caesar was a return to raw power (!) sound that continued through the Stooges reunion in the 2000s. The 21st Century saw experimentation with spoken word and European pop. Overall I’ll say Iggy Pop has proven his stature.
(October 2025) Episode 687 is LAMB OF GOD. They are considered among the vanguard of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal of the late 1990s and 2000s. As such, their music is an amalgam of thrash, death and hardcore metal that transcends efforts to confine them to a category. Throat-screamed vocals (with relative lyrical clarity), speed and groove are prominent features, with the technical precision of an expert clockmaker. Always powerful, never boring. This episode includes the two albums released as BURN THE PRIEST.
Opus Project 