Don Howland is an underground rock-n-roll legend, shredding eardrums with his tinny ax and garage-punk high-lonesome vocals in such bands as Wooden Tit (from Asheville), Bassholes, Gibson Bros., and Great Plains for about 3 decades now. He’s coming all the way from his home in West Asheville to spin records and shoot the breeze on the air with Greg during “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, Friday 2-4 pm. Don’s going up to Columbus, OH, later this summer to record another Bassholes album, so he’ll be talking about that, the Columbus music scene, and god knows what else. If you miss it, catch up by listening to the archive!

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
July 4, 2008

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

Notes:

– Independence Day! The Feelies reunited and played Hoboken and New York this week, and as we were doing this radio show, they were probably playing live in Battery Park, opening for Sonic Youth in a free show. In lieu of actually being there, I played a live set by the Feelies. I always think of July 4 as a day to see–or at least listen to–live music (remember those Beach Boys shows on the Mall in D.C.?), so I hope everybody enjoyed it.

– Next week I will be having a special co-host, namely DON HOWLAND! Very exciting. Don lives here in Asheville and has graciously agreed to come in and spin some records with me. So tune in!

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
June 27, 2008

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

Notes:

– Big thanks to Dan Ruccia, my former colleague at WPRB in New Jersey, for coming in to spin records with me! Dan currently has a radio show called "A Bit Stranger" at WXDU, Durham (where I also previously worked) airing Wednesdays 4-6pm. Check him out! For the most part Dan and I played the "you play one, I play one" game, but I’m not going to tell who picked what, partly because on some of these, we were in complete mind synchronicity.

– Shaina, who is winning the co-host-athon sweepstakes, was also on the mic this week. You can catch her show here at WPVM, "The Invisible Worm," Thursday nights 11-1. Do it!

– All three of us were still aglow from the life-changing Brothers Unconnected show last night at the Grey Eagle. Alan and Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls played acoustic guitar versions (together, as opposed to the announced and flawed idea of them playing separtately) of classic SCG songs and also some solo stuff. The tour is in honor of the third Sun City Girl, Charles Gocher, who passed away last year. The evening started with a crazy art film that Charles had been working on for a long time, and then Alan and Richard came out and sat down with a little table between them and went straight for the musical jugular, doing SCG instrumentals and their faux-Asian madness for the first 45 minutes, followed by another hour or so from the so-sick-it-hurts English-lyric SCG corpus. The Grey Eagle was set up for a sit-down show, and sitting front and center were clearly two of the Bishops’ biggest fans. I don’t know if they were following the band around on tour, but they certainly knew all the words and would shout out the lyrics in unison. When things got seriously intense, they would do the two-fingered horn-symbol metal salute with both hands and bow down to the Bishops. You knew things were cookin’ with gas at the end of the show when one of those dudes (the one who looked like a young Eugene Chadbourne) pulled out his lighter and made out like we were all at a Van Halen concert. There was a curious moment in the middle of the show when Alan Bishop opened a jar that was sitting on the stage-set table, got up, and walked around the audience sprinkling dust on the crowd. Were those some of Charles Gocher’s ashes? Dan suggested that sublime notion. Having seen the SCG in Chapel Hill in 1992 (I believe) when they mocked the crowd mercilessly, I was apprehensive of Alan walking around baptising people with whatever it was, but now I wish I got sprinkled as well. I could write another several pages about this show, but I’ll sum up by saying that it was no doubt one of the greatest shows I will ever experience. Thank you to Matt and Mark at Harvest Records for bringing them here!

– Greg Cartwright and Reigning Sound also played a free show late last night at West Asheville’s coolest watering hole, The Admiral, and we went right over there after the Bishop brothers were through. It was packed and sweaty by then, and I think we missed half the set, but by the end I had made the transition and was rockin’ hard along with everybody else. It was almost too much, though, for one night; how can anybody or any town (especially of Asheville’s population) be worthy of such bounty?

– When I picked up the Love Is Love compilation on Mississippi Records and dropped a needle on it, I had this sinking feeling of "My god, did I already buy this record?" And so I searched the recesses of my memory and finally realized that in a way, yes, I did already buy this record. The first five tracks are also on a compilation called Africa Dances on the Original Music label, 3 of them in the same sequence. The rest of Love Is Love is from elsewhere (don’t ask me, as I don’t know); the collection is pan-African (sub-Saharan) in scope, with tracks recorded anytime in the 1950s-70s. Not much information from Mississippi Records, to be sure. The Original Music compilation has pretty nice notes, by the way. I’m glad that Mississippi is making this extraordinary music available (Original Music stuff is way out of print), but as I wrote a few weeks ago about another of their African re-issues, I don’t know exactly what I feel about the ethics of the whole thing. Plus, I like information in liner notes–a whole lot–but maybe in the end, all that ‘locating apparatus’ (to make up some pseudo-academic jargon) takes away from my concentration on the music. Food for thought. One thing I do know: these Mississippi records are flying out of hipster record shops like crazy.

– Lot of good new records: I picked up the new Factums, featuring Matthew Ford (who also drums for the Intelligence), along with another one on Sacred Bones Records by The Pink Noise, a French Candian band that reminds me of both Cheveu (garage punk) and Ariel Pink (lo-fi aesthetic, muffled vocals, great hooks). The records are good, although the vinyl pressings sound really distant to me. This is a current pet peeve of mine, as I mentioned on the air that Reigning Sound’s Too Much Guitar! (2004) also sounds kinda muffled and crappy on vinyl compared to the CD release, which is a damned pity. Another LP I bought recently with this same malady is the Cheveu debut on S-S (which has no CD version to compare with). All these labels–and records–kick ass, by the way, even if their vinyl pressings do not. I’m not sorry I buy the vinyl (I MUCH prefer vinyl to CDs), but I think LP mastering and pressing is a lost art. And it’s not my needle or turntable, folks. Trust me on that one. Don’t get me started on the myth of 180g vinyl… OK, I’ll stop now.

– Two great new CDs on that hazy line between jazz and rock, i.e. fusion that doesn’t suck: 1) Elephant9 from Norway on Rune Grammofon are a organ/bass/drums trio that play a proggier, more rockist, less funky electric Miles Davis groove; and 2) Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, which Ribot claims is a rock band but honestly sounds a lot like… a good Marc Ribot record (which means it’s some mix of jazz, Latin, rock, and downtown avant-garde slight weirdness).

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
June 20, 2008

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

Notes:

– Had a nice impromptu German-themed set. It started with the German label Ata Tak, which put out the Fix Planet compilation from 1981, featuring the Spanish band Esplendor Geometrico, which you can found about here. Then some Ideal, a poppy Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave) band, followed by nice lounge-kitsch from a recent compilation, The In-Kraut Vol. 3: Hip Shaking Grooves Made in Germany 1967-1974. We ended that segment with some 60s garage rock from the Nuggets-like series, Prae-Kraut Pandaemonium, about which there is a dedicated website. Actually, the set ended with "Booby Trap," a 60s UK pop-psych gem, but that’s not German.

– Thanks to all who called for tickets to see The Brothers Unconnected: Alan and Richard Bishop (of Sun City Girls) at the Grey Eagle Thursday, June 26, presented by Harvest Records. I’ll certainly be there.

Playlist for
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
June 13, 2008

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

Notes:

– Two major themes this week. First and by far most important is the upcoming Asheville appearance (Thursday, July 26 at the Grey Eagle, courtesy of Harvest Records) of Alan and Richard Bishop as "The Brothers Unconnected." The Bishop brothers are 2/3 of Sun City Girls, and this tour is to be an homage to the other third, Charles Gocher, who passed away last year. So I played a bunch of Sun City Girls to get revved up for the show.

– Theme two was the "My First Record" segment. Shaina brought in the first LP she ever bought, Steeleye Span’s 1976 Rocket Cottage. Not a very embarrassing choice, I must say, especially when compared to mine: the Disco Duck Dance Party (Peter Pan Records), also from 1976. Sure, Disco Duck sucks, but I rather liked the second song from the album, the disco Beethoven "A Fifth of Beethoven"–notice the indefinite article, a pun that was obviously beyond my wee head when I bought the record (or had the record purchased for me, as the case no doubt was). My second album was KC and the Sunshine Band Vol. 3. I feel a lot better about that one.