Category: Episodes

623. Strawberry Alarm Clock

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(December 2024) Episode 623 is STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK. The ubiquity of their Summer of Love anthem “Incense and Peppermints” might lead you to think they were a one-hit wonder. But they were a real (albeit dysfunctional) band with three good albums of psychedelic-flavored LA-style sunshine pop. There’s a manufactured intentionality to the psychedelia (I mean, look at the album covers) but it’s still a good hippy trip. The fourth album goes into forgettable proto-boogie rock and there was a reunion album decades later.

Favorite album: Incense and Peppermints

Favorite song: Incense and Peppermints

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Any of the first three albums are a fun trip back to the Summer of Love

622. Los Shakers

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(December 2024) Episode 622 is LOS SHAKERS, the Beatles of Latin America. Yes I know that tag is extremely over-used and usually erroneous. But not with Los Shakers; they were the real deal. These were two brothers in Uruguay who saw A Hard Day’s Night and immediate created a band to mimic that sound. And they did it better than almost any group I’ve heard, even in the Anglophone world.  It’s not just covers (there were a few); their original compositions are expertly crafted songs in the 64/65 Beatles mode. And they adapted along the way, with fuzzy guitars and backwards effects for a psychedelic sound. Their apex was the creative album La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar, called their Sgt. Peppers’ (or Pet Sounds, Village Green or Tommy).  While the song titles were in Spanish, most vocals are in accented English.

Favorite album: La conferencia secreta del Toto’s Bar

Favorite song: Rompan Todo (Break It All)

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: Their recordings are hard to find, but Serie de Oro: Grandes Exitos is available and a decent compilation of their early singles.

621. Flipper

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(December 2024) Episode 621 is FLIPPER. I only ever knew them from a high school mix tape that had “Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly” on it, which seemed like a humorous one-off. But listening all these decades later, I admire what the instruments are doing on the track, building up in a crescendo. And in this you can hear why they influenced grunge and noise rock. The aesthetic is punk but the form differs. Rather than short and fast, the songs are standard length and feature sonic explorations. I can see that they were a big thing in their day, but I did not experience it then, and listening at a distance without nostalgia, it hasn’t aged that well.

Favorite album: Album – Generic Flipper

Favorite song: Sex Bomb

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Album – Generic Flipper or the early compilation Sex Bomb Baby!

619. Celtic Frost

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Episode 619 is CELTIC FROST, a Swiss group considered influential on European heavy metal and extreme metal. They emerged in the mid-1980s with a tasty thrash metal approach, and ambitiously shifted on their second full-length album to what we might call gothic and symphonic metal. The next album went glam which lost them a lot of their audience. Celtic Frost reunited and put out a doom metal album in 2006, which I like the best although it is different from the sound that made them influential. The sonic attack is good, but the vocalist’s style keeps me from loving them.

Favorite album: Monotheist

Best album: To Mega Therion

Favorite song:  A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: An interesting band for learning what was influenced, but not my first choice to dip into these subgenres.

617. Dave Van Ronk

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(November 2024) Episode 617 is DAVE VAN RONK. There’s a frustratingly large gap between his music and influence and the public awareness of him, which included me until recently. Nicknamed the “Mayor of MacDougal Street” for his presence on the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 50s and 60s, where he mentored and befriended some who achieved greater fame, like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. He was a force of nature with his loud, gruff voice, but he could also make it soft and tender, giving an emotional depth to his songs. His style included blues, ragtime, trad jazz, standards and children’s music. But it’s the spare folk songs, especially with his excellent finger-picking style, where Van Ronk excels. While his focus was on interpreting traditional and others’ songs, he was a talented writer of tune and lyric, as shown on Going Back to Brooklyn, his only album of all original compositions.

Favorite album: Inside Dave Van Ronk

Favorite song: Another Time and Place

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger; Just Dave Van Ronk; Inside Dave Van Ronk and Going Back to Brookyln showcase his solo guitar folk songs. Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers and Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Stompers are good ensemble albums.

616. Benjamin Britten

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(November 2024) Episode 616 is BENJAMIN BRITTEN, one of the most renowned English composers of the 20th century. Operas and choral works are his most recognized forms, although he composed in a wide range: choral, voice, chamber, orchestral, film scores. Overall the character of his work is rather normie, a “progressive conservatism” as one critic called it. While he was influenced by Berg, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, his music is not avant-garde and does not defy convention. But there is a much interesting to the ear. Characterizing his own style, Britten said composers should aim at “pleasing people today as seriously as we can.”

Favourite piece: War Requiem

Favorite chamber work: Cello Suite No. 3 (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich)

Favourite choral work: Missa Brevis in D for Choir and Organ

Favourite solo piece: Six Metamorphoses after Ovid

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: War Requiem, his most famous work is a good place to start. I’m not into opera but try Peter Grimes if you are. I like the various cellos works.

615. Big Joe Turner

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(November 2024) Episode 615 is BIG JOE TURNER. Known as a blues shouter, a performer whose booming voice was needed to be heard above the band. Turner’s voice was as big as his girth. His music, a mix of swing, jump blues and R&B, was extremely influential in the development of rock-n-roll. The best example is his landmark “Shake, Rattle & Roll.” Turner’s top period was in the late 40s and early 50s, but he kept making recordings through the 60s, 70s and early 80s, including jazz and electric blues. I admire his music for its influential role, but for me the style gets the formulaic and tends to bore me.

Favorite album: The Boss of the Blues

Favorite song: Roll ‘Em Pete

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: A compendium of late 40s-early 50s songs will do.

614. Gerry Rafferty

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(November 2024) Episode 614 is GERRY RAFFERTY and his bands HUMBLEBUMS and STEALERS WHEEL. This episode exists because of my endless fascination with “Baker Street,” simultaneously a quintessential song of the 70s and one so unique it deserves to exist in a genre of its own. The next song on the City to City album, “Right Down the Line,” was also a deserved hit. A third notable song was “Stuck in the Middle,” recorded with Stealers Wheel in the early 1970s, a Dylan-homage subsequently homaged by Sheryl Crow and made indelible in Reservoir Dogs. He got his start in the late 1960s in a folk-rock duo called Humblebums with future comedian Billy Connolly. In between those two groups came his first solo recording, Can I Have My Money Back?, which best displays his McCartney-esque songwriting talents. Rafferty kept issuing albums through the 80s-90s-00s stocked with not unpleasant but not memorable songs; he had run out of creativity.

Favourite album: City to City

Favourite song: Baker Street

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Try Can I Have My Money Back? with songs that quickly become enjoyable earworms.

612. Throbbing Gristle

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(November 2024) Episode 612 of the “opus project” is THROBBING GRISTLE, considered pioneers of industrial music. A performance art group intent on antagonizing and subverting, Throbbing Gristle thrusts an array of mechanical and electronic sounds at you. It’s not unstructured but is certainly unconventional, and the rhythmic elements keep it from sounding like chaotic noise-making. The vocals, when deployed, are transgressive and dark. Their most accessible (and acclaimed) album, the sarcastically-named 20 Jazz Funk Greats, fits well in the post-punk of the year of its release (1979), bridging the Krautrock and synth-pop eras. But it’s an outlier in contrast to their general anti-musical approach.

Favourite album: The Second Annual Report

Favourite song: Very Friendly

Compared to expectations: same ↑

Recommendation: As if you couldn’t tell, this is not for everyone. Start with 20 Jazz Funk Greats, although I tend to favor the raw rusting factory material.

611. Iron Monkey

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(November 2024) Episode 611 of the “opus project” is IRON MONKEY. This UK-based outfit recorded a couple of excellent sludge metal albums in the 90s and reunited for a third in 2017. This subgenre is not for everyone but it is for me. I think it’s funny that the music platforms attach an “E” warning for explicit lyrics when the words are (intentionally) indecipherable.

Favourite album: Iron Monkey

Favourite song: OmegaMangler

Compared to expectations: same ↑

Recommendation: An acquired taste. The first two albums are more raw, the third more refined.