Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
December 6, 2007

Hosted by Greg Lyon on Thursdays at 2-4 pm
on WPVM Asheville (103.5 FM and www.wpvm.org)

This show is available for listening as an archive for one week after its airing at WPVM’s Archive Page (click on the STREAM button for this show–under the letter ‘G’)

Notes:

– Went to see Dinosaur Jr. this week (don’t worry, I didn’t pay) and the opening acts stole the show, if you ask me. Local post-punkers the Labiators did their Gun Club meets the Jesus Lizard thing, and I dug it. But then the Detroit-via-Brooklyn band Awesome Color came out and utterly flipped my wig with their Stooges stuff. But what really got me was the drummer’s (that would be Awesome Allison) relentless chug, which reminded me of all the great Krautrock drummers. Thus the Faust lead-in to Awesome Color this week. The beat is pretty damned close. I met Awesome Color after the show. Great folk! The album doesn’t quite capture the live energy, so go see them.

– I keep playing U.S. Maple on my show because I’ve yet to meet anybody in Asheville who has ever listened to them. Of course I haven’t asked everybody I know, so perhaps there’s a Maple underground lurking here just beneath the surface.

– Finally picked up that Kirsten Ketsjer the rock band (yep, that’s their name) album up in New York a couple of weeks ago. It’s really good in an arty, poppy European Velvet Underground way. Reminds me of the Furtips. Remember them? Kirsten Ketsjer are from Denmark. Furtips were from the Netherlands. That flytrap illustration above is the cover to their unpronouncable record ffffoo k tsscch. That’s two flytrap images in two weeks!

– I played a lot of new music today that I really really dug, including the new Wire EP, Read & Burn 03, which comes out of nowhere, four years after their previous offering. The Blast First Petite reissue of Return of the Giant Slits sounds frakkin’ fantastic, and it’s a 2CD deluxe job. And then big surprise of the day, a duo called the Culture Brothers, featuring Karma (from Tibet) and Carl (a Yup’iaq Inuit Alaskan) doing their trans-Bering-Strait version of reggae and other world mutations. Sounds dubious, I know, but you just have to hear it. Several people asked me about that Ed Askew cut (the album has sound-quality issues, but the songs are great). Brooklyn’s noisy post-punk outfit These Are Powers have a full record out, and it caught my attention much like their Silver Lung 7" from earlier this year. And I even liked the Robert Plant & Alison Krauss album.

– Move over Lee Hazlewood and Phil Spector–Jack Nitzsche is my new producer/arranger obsession. You will be hearing much more of him on this radio program over the coming weeks. That’s a promise. Meanwhile, you can check out this great website dedicated to the man.

– Played a Michael Hurley cut in anticipation of his solo gig at Harvest Records later in the evening. That was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a while! It started off kinda rambling but got weirder and more focused at the same time. I left with an emblazoned memory of Hurley doing his best crow imitation. Marvelously creepy!

Background Music: Art Ensemble of Chicago – With Fontella Bass (Prestige, 1972)

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