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.

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