Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
October 31, 2008

Hosted by Greg Lyon on FRIDAYS 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:

– Halloween AND the Fall 2008 WPVM Listener Fund Drive AND Dr. Filth of WPVM’s The Replacement Party all converged on The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to create a rippin’, fiendish, ghoulish, creepy, sick, and totally fun radio show. Dr. Filth has a monstrously huge Halloween-themed record collection, and of course we barely touched the surface in two hours, but we definitely got in some treats.

– My favorite cut was Jimmy Cross’s "I Want My Baby Back," a classic Teenage Death Song which hit #95 on the Billboard charts in 1965. It describes a guy and his girlfriend coming home after a Beatles concert and having a head-on collision with "the leader of the pack." I’ll give you the lyrics from there:

Well, when I come to I looked around,
and there was the leader,
and there was the pack,

And over there was myyy baby.

And over there was my baby.

And waaay over there was my baby!

At the end of the song, our protagonist wants his baby back so bad that he opens up her coffin, gets in, (we hear the coffin door slam shut), and sings the final chorus (muffled) from the grave ("I’ve got my baby back!"). Absolutely brilliant. [The cover image is from a 1978 reissue, but Dr. Filth of course had the original 7" on Tollie Records.]

– The Best Innuendo Lyrics award goes to The Apollos’ "It’s a Monster" (from Pebbles Vol. 13): "All the other girls would like to have it too / It’s the biggest love in the world / And I give it just to you. / My love’s a monster / My love’s a monster." Later, just in case you didn’t get the joke the first time, the singer yells, "It’s a beast! And it keeps on growing!"

– I brought in Tony Snell’s bizzaro-folk ESP-Disk album, "Medieval and Latter Day Lays" from 1973, and played the creepy song "Brownie", narrated by a "lord of the manor" (in best Vincent Price style) who kills his servants with a shotgun and declares "There’s a brownie at the bottom of my bonfire!" again and again. So what the hell is this brownie he’s talking about???? It’s times like these where I break out my trusty Oxford English Dictionary and discover that a brownie is "A benevolent spirit or goblin, of shaggy appearance, supposed to haunt old houses, esp. farmhouses, in Scotland, and sometimes to perform useful household work while the family were asleep." The word is first documented in a text from 1513. But you, dear reader, knew exactly what that meant, right?

– THANK YOU to all the listeners who called and donated to the WPVM Fall 2008 Listener Fund Drive. If you haven’t donated yet, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call up the station this week at 828-258-0085 and SUPPORT WPVM by DONATING! I’ll be sitting in with Dr. Filth for his show this week (The Replacement Party, Thursday 8-11pm) during the Fund Drive, convincing you all to support WPVM some more. And then I do The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the last day of the Fund Drive (we certainly hope), with the great Peter Poffenberger of the Ooze Out! radio program as my co-pilot. WPVM needs your support. We’re completely volunteer-run, and all the money goes towards the bills to keep WPVM on the air. We’re frugal, but we need your help. Join our community by becoming a contributor!

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
October 24, 2008

Hosted by Greg Lyon on FRIDAYS 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:

– Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater was waiting for me at the station when I got there and stayed during the entire show. He brought his banjo and acoustic guitar, sang two songs, ate lunch, and chewed the fat with me on the air on topics ranging from Sarah Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live to some of the positive side-effects of the crappy economy (rosy glasses indeed). We also talked about music, including his take on Shearwater’s opening gigs for Coldplay, the lost world of the early recording era, what he listened to growing up (his parents were heavy on the Bread and Simon & Garfunkel records, and his Episcopal Church choir masters turned him on to Renaissance music), the revelation that he has never listened to a single Jeff or Tim Buckley record in its entirety (future interviewers take note), the lousy current state of the craft of music production and engineering (the disastrous overuse of compression), and the weirdness of the transition to digital downloads in the music industry (Shearwater’s new EP, The Snow Leopard, is digital-download-only), among other things.

– Jonathan also chose some records to spin, including the incredibly depressing Lou Reed track "The Kids" from the 1973 album Berlin, for which producer Bob Ezrin reportedly recorded his own kids crying after he falsely told them that their mother had died. Considering they’re probably about my age, I wonder if those kids ever beat the crap out of their father for doing that to them; I can only imagine the psychic scarring that is so clearly evident in their wailing. Jonathan also brought in one of those Secret Museum of Mankind CDs compiling old field recordings from around the globe, and we played a choral piece from Polynesia with some hair-raising quarter-tone note bends.

– I want to thank Jonthan for stopping by and hanging out–and especially for the beautiful two songs he sang and played for us. I also want to thank Robby Morris at Matador Records/Beggars Banquet for setting up this interview. [The photo above is taken from Matador’s Shearwater website, who in turn credit it to Jalapeño’s flickr.]

– Tune in next week for a special Halloween version of the The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly! It’s the first day of the WPVM Fall Fund Drive, and my special co-host will be none other than Dr. Filth, host of WPVM’s thoroughly ass-kickin’ The Replacement Party. He’s bringing scary music, so get ready to be so frightened and thrilled that you call up and GIVE GIVE GIVE to WPVM!

Background Music: Charles Mingues - The Great Concert of Charles Mingues - Prestige (1964)

Programming Note for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Upcoming Friday, October 24, 2008

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

Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater is going to be stopping by the WPVM studios during "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" this Friday, Oct. 24, sometime between 2 and 3 pm. He’ll be playing that evening at the Grey Eagle here in Asheville. If you haven’t heard Rook, Shearwater’s latest full-length, you should check it out immediately (myspace and Matador Records website). We’re expecting that Jonathan will bring his guitar (and perhaps banjo) into the studio, but we’ve also been told that he likes to spin records, so when he does show up, we’ll talk a bit and hand over the keys to the show. Tune in!

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
October 17, 2008

Hosted by Greg Lyon on FRIDAYS 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:

– I featured a bunch of music today by Scottish percussionist Ken Hyder and his K-Space bandmate Tim Hodgkinson. Ken was in Talisker back in the 70s and Tim was in Henry Cow, and later The Work (often overlooked and great) and The Momes, among other projects.

– My favorite new rock record is by a French band called Gunslingers, featuring a guitarist named Gregory Raimo. This shit is HEAVY, but not in any metal way. It reminds me most of mid-70s proto-punk art-rockers MX-80, which featured another brilliant guitarist, Bruce Anderson. The title of one the tracks I didn’t play, "San Pedro Hallucination," begs for Minutemen comparisons as well, although I don’t really hear it except in the intensity.

– Today’s Japrock sample was from Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffaloes’ 1972 album, Uganda. The album focuses on Ishikawa’s percussion, but the track I played also has a thumb piano (mbira) on it, I’m pretty sure, and when I run across that instrument, I play it. Decision made.

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
October 10, 2008

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

Notes:

– There are at least 3 bands of historical note called The Outsiders. I played tracks by the first two today, both 60s rock. The Cleveland band is best known for their hit "Time Won’t Let Me". I shall assert that the Dutch Outsiders are easily the best of the bunch–and the greatest band of the entire Nederbeat era, and I like a lot of Nederbeat. Their song "Touch" is one of my favorite singles of all time. The third notable band called the Outsiders was a UK punk band from the 70s, and although their music is harder to track down, it’s worth the hunt.

– I played an entire block of music by composers working for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, including a new CD on Trunk spotlighting John Baker and several pieces by Delia Derbyshire, who is most famous for her production and recording of the Doctor Who theme. Plus, I really like the name Delia Derbyshire.

– I’m currently reading Julian Cope’s new book, Japrocksampler: How the Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock ‘n’ Roll, the follow-up to his survey of German music of the same period (late 60s/early 70s), Krautrocksampler (1995). I call these kinds of music books "syllabus books", as they essentially chart a course of listening that will take a good while to complete. Greil Marcus’s book on Dylan’s Basement Tapes is in this genre (originally called Invisible Republic, later re-titled The Old, Weird America). The downside of books like this is that if you don’t listen to the music while reading the book, it won’t mean crap to you. [I could say this about almost all of Marcus’s writing, actually.] A further downside is that often the music is hard as hell to find–and/or expensive, as is the case with the Japrock stuff. But I’m here to help: check out this post on the In the Pines blog. As I work through Japrocksampler, I’m going to feature tracks from albums discussed in the book here on the radio show. So get ready for lots of Japrock. Oh yeah, Cope has a great website up to supplement the book, if you want more information. Today’s Japrock was Far East Family Band - Parallel World (1976), which ranks #4 in Cope’s personal Top 50 Japrock albums, and J.A. Caesar - Kokkyou Junreika (1973), his #5.