Category: Episodes

643. Ruth Crawford Seeger

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(April 2025) Episode 643 is RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER, following the recent episode on her stepson, Pete Seeger. Composing in the 1920s-30s, she and her colleagues became known as “ultramodernist,” heavy on dissonance. When the Seeger family moved to Washinton DC to work with the Library of Congress on folk collections, she published her “American Folk Songs for Children” which became widely used. Her oeuvre is not large, but it is rather interesting.

Favorite piece: Suite for Wind Quintet

Favorite vocal piece: Three Chants

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Start with her String Quartet (1931), her most famous work.

642. Sepultura

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(April 2025) Episode 642 is SEPULTURA, vaulting to the top tier of my favorite metal bands. In a genre that demands a high level of orthodoxy to the metal formula, Sepultura separates themselves: they create music within the metal idiom. Beyond their skillful navigation within subgenres (speed/thrash, death, groove, prog), they bring in novel elements like drumming rhythms from their native Brazil, notably on the albums Chaos A.D. and Roots when they reached their creative peak. But it’s not a mere meld, it makes part of a whole. Each album has its own personality; they’ll try something new and then circle back to hit you in the face with power thrash.

Favorite album: Roots

Favorite song: Lookaway

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Highly recommend. Chaos A.D. and Roots are their most inventive, but there’s really not a bad album in the lot.

641. Jason Isbell

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(April 2025) Episode 641 is JASON ISBELL. I had conceived this episode within the “country” genre, but quickly realized Isbell performs in that big space variously called Americana, southern rock, root-rock, alt-country. It might conclude signing in a Southern twang (he’s from northern Alabama) is a reflexive signifier. Whatever the label, Isbell is a gifted songwriter for melody and turn of a phrase, and he has gained wide fame because of it. I tend to prefer his solo recordings to the ones with his band, the 400 Unit, especially his most recent, all-acoustic release, Foxes in the Snow.

Favorite album: Foxes in the Snow

Favorite song: Miles*

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Something More than Free, Reunions, Weathervanes, Foxes in the Snow

* not characteristic of most his work, but the opening riff’s homage to Down By the River got me.

640. Pete Seeger

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(April 2025) Episode 640 of the “opus project” is PETE SEEGER along with his early groups the ALMANAC SINGERS and THE WEAVERS. It’s hard to overstate Seeger’s importance in the popularization and dissemination of folk music and musicians, and for helping make folk a medium for social and political causes like peace and the environment. He co-founded the topic-heavy Almanac Singers (which included Woody Guthrie) in the 1940s, but even after changing groups and downplaying the political messaging, Seeger and the Weavers still couldn’t escape political persecution. His solo career was as varied as it was long (he recorded into his 90s). He directed musical attention to children, both in performance and on record. He also made instructional records for banjo and guitar; the album ‘12-String Guitar as Played by Leadbelly’ is a gem of musicology. Not blessed with a strong voice, I am not likely to put on his songs for a casual listening experience. But because of his contribution to music and history, and the fact that he wrote so many songs that have become standards, it is well to know his work. (For me it’s impossible to listen to the Weavers without thinking of their being mockumentary-ized in A Mighty Wind.)

Favorite album: Broadside Ballads, Vol. 2

Favorite song: Which Side Are You On?

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: His ‘American Favorite Ballads’ series on the Folkways label, released in five volumes from 1957-62, is a good collection. And try that Leadbelly homage album.

639. Peter and Gordon

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(March 2025) Episode 639 is PETER AND GORDON. Very like Chad & Jeremy from a couple episodes ago: a UK duo featuring Everly-ish vocals in the early British Invasion. What Peter and Gordon had going for them is proximity to the Beatles, socially and musically; Paul wrote their early hits and dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher. They offered fine, middle-of-the-road 60s pop, but struggled to keep up with trends. Peter and Gordon didn’t go as far as Chad & Jeremy’s full-bore attempt at tudor psychedelia, just venturing into baroque pop. Both duos were done by decade’s end. Peter became a long-time producer.

Favourite album: In London for Tea

Favourite song: A World Without Love

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The Ultimate Peter & Gordon (compilation)

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638. The Gap Band

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(March 2025) Episode 638 is THE GAP BAND. They reached their commercial peak in the early 80s with fun synth-bass funk hits like “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” Their first two mid-70s albums on small labels were typical funk of that period (my preference). But their major label start in 1979 gave a run of albums that closely approximates the Earth, Wind & Fire formula of complex funk and ballads (that’s a good thing). By the mid-80s and 90s they adopted the synth-driven idiom of the time, which is not my kind of soul/funk. Even at their peak, though, they could be repetitious – “Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me),” “Early in the Morning,” “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Party Train” are basically the same song.

Favorite album: The Gap Band (1977)

Favorite song: Knuckle Head Funkin’

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: A greatest hits will suffice (although be prepared for repetition), although I direct deeper divers to the first two small label albums

637. Billie Holiday

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(March 2025) Episode 637 is BILLIE HOLIDAY. One of the most distinctive American voices. She widened the aperture of jazz with the instrumentality of her voice (from horn players she admired like Louis Armstrong) and bringing in lived experience to her songs (from blues singers she admired like Bessie Smith) (also maybe why I liked her “Strange Fruit”). Personally, this style of jazz isn’t my cup of tea, but her signature voice sells it.

Favorite album: Lady Sings the Blues

Favorite song: Strange Fruit

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The mid-50s recordings on Verve and Clef

636. UFO

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(March 2025) Episode 636 is UFO. There’s a category of rock bands that start out with interesting/innovative stuff in the late 60s/early 70s but then descend to decades of boring, rote hard rock. Think Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Status Quo … and UFO. Their first two albums were consummate space rock, followed by two good albums of heavy 70s rock, which was their commercial peak. But then their output flattened out into album after album of the most banal hard rock. I assume this is evidence such pablum sells, but not to me. That part was a slog (I listen so you don’t have to). However, UFO is cited as paving the way for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which is why I did this episode. The only song I recognized from classic rock radio was “Too Hot to Handle,” a cock rock gem.

Favourite album: UFO 2: Flying

Favourite song: Flying

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The first four albums, especially the first two space rock ones.

635. Chad & Jeremy

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(February 2025) Episode 635 is CHAD & JEREMY. Coincident with the first wave of the British Invasion, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde offered light-pop/folk rock songs. “Yesterday’s Gone” puts them in the Merseybeat mode, while their most famous piece, “A Summer Song,” is in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. This approach characterized their 1963-66 recordings, which is fine, but put them out of step with the emergent R&B bands. Chad & Jeremy regrouped with 2 ½ psychedelic albums, a sound that I personally favor, although not it’s representative of what they were known for.

Favourite album: The Ark

Favourite song: A Summer Song  

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Albums: A best-of is fine. But those who dig 60s psychedelia should check out their baroque-pop stylings on Of Cabbages and Kings and The Ark.

634. Parquet Courts

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(February 2025) Episode 634 is PARQUET COURTS. Take equal parts 80s college rock, 90s indie/alt, 00s angular rock, add a pinch of 60s Velvet Underground, and you have Parquet Courts. They were a very welcome find, running counter to my general disappointment/lack of interest in 21st century ‘rock’ bands. Their music is creatively quirky, with clever or snarky lyrics. Their 2018 album Wide Awake! is their most accessible, but that signaled an incorporation of electronic beats that dominated 2021’s disappointing Sympathy for Life. I prefer the off-kilter simplicity of earlier albums.

Favorite album: Light Up Gold

Favorite song: Stoned and Starving

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Albums: Light Up Gold, Sunbathing Animal, Human Peformance and Wide Awake!