April 2008 Archives

No other remedy for a day full of Scotch mist than my first full-length theme episode: South America. Most of this show involved Brazil, both modern and old, involving acts like Bonde do Rôle and Cansei de Ser Sexy, which was fortuitous timing on my part since they posted their latest single on their website earlier today, which I planned for by leaving a little gap in the show to plug it in once it became available.

From there, there was plenty of hopping around both time and space, mixing the sixties' sounds of bossa nova with the aural haze of the seventies soft pop, the post-punk of the eighties with this decade's baile funk. I tried keeping it mostly Brazilian, though the Peruvian bugalu heard on Vampisoul's ¡Gózalo!: Bugalú Tropical Volume 2 could not be skipped after a recent record store binge.

The end of the show featured music from City of God, a fantastic movie that I utterly recommend to watch and I need to go see the sequel/spin-off City of Men. It looked like I was going to run into overtime, hence the need for me to talk over the heavy dance track before the supple sounds of Onda.

I had glorious help with the Portuguese pronunciations from a co-worker, though I definitely mangled a few when I wasn't paying attention to my notes. The Spanish bits were definitely easier to pronounce, though that's only because I knew about the certain tricks like the double L's sounding like Y's. The Portuguese M/N blur toward "ng" vexed me greatly and I drifted toward my usual Finnish fallback, though a mix of French finesse and Polish curviness made me sound somewhat less loopy.

No concert listings this week, I'm afraid; go to Quinn's blog if you need to figure out shows are upcoming. (If you have Cut Copy tickets, do want!) I also scaled back on my Canadiana, so expect next week's show to beat the northern drum a bit more.

Playlist follows:

A sharp blast of Yukon-chilled air brought a taste of winter back to the Lower Mainland, including a bit of Friday night flurry action that caught me somewhat unawares and completely soaked as the monster-sized snowflakes fell furious. Thankfully, listening to the African middle of this episode helped keep me mentally warm and otherwise thermally bewildered.

I was really hoping to have my homemade kalimba ready to play a bit during this episode, but finding out my Japanese-toted construction kit included a difficult mix of softwood, hardwood and tiny nails that smashed the former when it couldn't penetrate the latter thwarted that minor ambition. Originally, I was going to include more tracks featuring the little thumb organ but the twenty or so I wound up using sufficed.

Other than blowing the background music to this week's concert listings (obtusely labelled as Green Street Intro and taken from Beastie Show Breaks, which is something I want more information on), which means I can recycle that for another purpose (maybe as my show intro?), the show went quite well. It drifted more on the experimental side, but I trust I guided you, the gracious listener, through all the peaks and valleys.

If you're curious about Jodorowsky's plans for his version of Dune, read on. As well, I'd recommend listening to the Wojciech Kilar's theme to the film Salto on a stereo since headphones didn't really give that piece as much justice as the studio's monitors did. It's actually quite groovy.

One last drag: I hosed part of my blog's layout, so now there are bad colours and weird things sticking out in ways I'm still figuring out how to repair. I may have to rebuild from scratch, except ditch the strange double stylesheet issue and then really sit down and figure out all the modules, widgets and other bizarrely documented code fragments that get my goat. I know what I want it to look like; I'm getting stonewalled from anonymous points.

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A groovy yet sorta sloppy show, mostly from a scripting angle since quality control was compromised after some shoddy proofreading lead to a few unreadable passages. I knew trouble was down the line after I found a few uncommon typos. The full plunge occured when the Department of Redundancy Department kicked in with the soundtrack to the movie soundtrack arose. Ick. The headbutt to the microphone midway didn't help.

However, after a little Venture Brothers action, the show started well with the double vinyl combination of The Constantines and The Zoobombs (keen listeners can hear the turntable startup on the latter track).

The main feature was on Jerry Goldsmith, specifically for his work on the original Planet of the Apes movie from 1968, which starred the late Charlton Heston (who had a mini-tribute in the previous week's episode). Goldsmith's soundtrack was sampled obviously on the U.N.K.L.E. track that followed the feature, though I played the obviously sampled version as my first track ever on the first episode of the show, so I opted for the remix by Cornelius, which fits in its own way thematically.

For those of you curious about the Indie Rock Chess Federation, you can check West Indian Girl's site for more information.

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Did another fill-in, again in the Friday late afternoon slot after the news, though with sports done for the year, there's 90 minutes to fill until the start of African Rhythms.

Nothing spectacularly ambitious here, just some good tunes well-timed for the start of full-on spring. As luck would have it, it was also the last day of classes at UBC, so the student population was set to let loose, particularly with the nice weather and the move of the AMS Block Party to the "Grassy Knoll" by the Bus Loop, where a few days ago there was a protest against its possible redevelopment. There were thousands of partiers soaking up the vibes, with a concert, a mini donut factory and the ever-popular beer tent keeping everyone happy.

The mood in the station was ebullient as well. It was the interim station manager's last day in the office and for a lot of students, it was the last full week of some shows. The music director was prepping for a major trip to Europe and some Stanley Cup playoff action was playing in the news room. There was beer and pizza lying about, with a good view of the action down in the Grassy Knoll.

My show was fun and relatively loose, since it was sketched out the night before. The only error was that the second last song was wrong, though I can't blame the iPod/iTunes tag team when I wrote down a sequence wrong. So instead of Digikid-84, you in fact heard Air as remixed by the Teenagers, who swing into town April 18th at Richard's on Richards.

Playlist follows:

Not to give indication on how off-kilter this show was, but the clock on the wall is about three minutes ahead of my watch, three minutes behind the mixer and maybe two minutes behind the podcast server. Add to the fact the computer leapt ahead another hour and getting the time right is as accurate as a blind dart throw.

The show started off oddly, as you can surmise from the podcast upon listening. The show before me every alternating week, the gloriously twisted Radio!! Radio!! was operating single-handedly by Long John Tanner, who was without his compatriot Nimrod this week. So, for the last ten minutes or so, I sat in, kept mostly to the background though Long John did a little bit involving a classic Dr. Demento bit and inviting me in on this fancy audio wine party. The podcast actually starts towards the end of that show since that permits me a moment of grace.

Grace was replaced with ineptness when I failed to check that my subtle little input was activated before I started to play my iPod, leaving some godly-sized chunks of silence as I scrambled to figure out whiskey tango foxtrot happened.

From there, my quickly assembled tribute to Charlton Heston, which shoved aside part of my original introduction. I found the Chuck Hestons as part of a quick search for some soundtrack music from some of Heston's films, mostly since I messed up the name of the composer for the one soundtrack I do have (and will be next week's feature): Jerry Goldsmith for Planet of the Apes.

Otherwise, the back end of the show held up as planned with Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn's work together for the movie Ravenous. Nyman's minimalist compositions make for a great backdrop, since the repeating textures over time form into a drone or dirge, with brief bursts of sound that surprise. Albarn's work away from Blur has been an utter delight, with Gorillaz being the obvious highlight though unexpected when you consider how dark some of the ideas behind the songs are.

The mini-feature on Bradford Cox from Deerhunter and Atlas Sound worked out quite well, though I was actually hoping to add another set focusing on Constellation Records and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, though I was unable to find another suitable playlisted track in time (then I screwed up one of the record labels; Pas Chic Chic are on Semprini, another great Montréal label) so I went tangential with Do Make Say Think. Those sounds are a well worth returning to.

I might drop some more thoughts later, but let me get the playlist up now before I collapse from exhaustion (something I have to get used to, since my days now begin before 7am, and I usually get this update ready by midnight).

Would you believe that all the acts with black in their name were unintentionally lumped in together at first? No, I wouldn't either, but there they all were: Black Mountain, The Black Angels and The Black Lodge Singers. I didn't plan it that way, but there's something to be said about the idea of the colour black and heavy-sounding music. Ladytron's Black Cat could sorta fit in with that theme, but no, they were paired with Ladyhawke.

This episode was fairly commanding overall, especially when compared with last week's show, both in song selection and whatever I happen to bring to the ceremony. Naturally, when it comes to blackness, nothing compares to Black Belt Jones, which has been one of those movies I tormented visitors to my place, though I don't have a VCR to play that VHS tape on anymore. I don't think it's out on DVD yet (one of the sequels, The Tattoo Connection, is but not the funky original, WHY?!) but do I have a DVD player right now? Or a TV even? Don't ask.

I've been intending to start and end a show with the same cover, since most other shows I listen to that tackle covers tend to play them together. I do have a version of Björk covering You Only Live Twice, though the audio quality is quite spotty and Björk herself has dismissed her version as inferior, so Nancy Sinatra opened and Sex Mob closed with that, one of the lovelier James Bond themes.

The ten second clip of the first ever recorded song (with reasonable audio quality) can be found through First Sounds. You can also discover more about the instrument that did the recording: the phonautograph. Be thankful that I didn't sing the entire French verse for Au clair de la lune I wrote out, or unthankful since I was in tune finally after practicing out of my register most of my time. And, as mentioned during the show, Powwow Radio is your source for online streaming of Native American drumming. Finally, if you want to dive into the messy history that is the Goonies' soundtrack, start with this petition.

The only major error which I ran into was a failure to update the iPod with the running order after the concert listings (backing track: Georges Garvarentz with Nues Dans L'eau). Originally, it was going to be the Goonies' track, then the Bollywood theme before ending with the song from The Party. At one point, I thought about playing Fratelli Chase after the Black Belt Jones set, which itself was supposed to skip the first version of the main theme for the sound effects laden version used in the opening titles, but I wasn't sure how much of the record I was going to play. Didn't mind the repetition myself but after whatever happened with the podcasting PSA, well, it's sorta fitting.

I got the feeling like a machine, and that ain't no way to feel.

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