June 2008 Archives

This episode veered to the random side of quality for a few reasons:

• I was relying on a few albums in the library to flesh out the middle of the show, which I had previewed during last week's fill-in show. However, two of the three I had elected to go with were missing, misfiled or mistakenly selected. Fortunately, I had a song by one of the acts, Adam & the Amethysts, lined up on the trusty iPod — they're a fine band from Montréal with inspiration from my hometown of Thunder Bay. I had hoped for one of the Lakehead-themed songs, but I'll have to bear that in mind for a future show. Fortunately, Elizabeth Shepherd was still in place, allowing me to give some exposure to the Vancouver International Film Festival. Fortunately, I brought some extra music with me, mostly in the form of seven inches, though I only spun Bobbie Gentry.
• With the recent death of comedian George Carlin, I felt the need to find a bit or two of his that was suitable for broadcast. Thankfully, I found a video of his classic Stuff and one of his more linguistic and faux-jingoistic tracks from one of his recent albums, Life is Worth Losing.
• Gavin Walker, host of The Jazz Show called early on the show to let me know that he wasn't coming in that night, so I had to cue up one of his past shows on the computer. I had to place him on hold briefly so I could do one of my segues, though I didn't check the levels so I sound distorted for the first few segments.

Otherwise, 'twas a breeze. A couple of songs I had in reserve for a long time were finally brought to light, including that brilliant song from the Awesome Tapes from Africa blog. As well, I condensed some of my earlier sketched soundtrack profiles into an Italian-based theme involving "dolce", including the classic score to La Dolce Vita plus the soothing sounds from the film Così dolce... così perversa and yet another majestic Ennio Morricone score, this time from Il Grande Silenzio.

I ran a little past 9pm with everything I was trying to do, which normally never happens since Gavin runs the tightest three hour show I've seen. Nevertheless, the show had a lot going on, so spillage was bound to happen.

Playlist follows:

Another fill-in for Shake A Tail Feather, the soul and R&B show, on CITR, which airs Friday nights from 10:30pm to midnight. This time around, there was a week's notice instead of a couple hours, so I was able to sketch out this show well in advance, along with picking up a few new albums to flesh things out.

In an effort to combat any possible sluggishness – mostly due to a broken smoke detector somewhere in my building awakening me for two hours the night before but partly due to the creaky studio chair – I did this show standing up. My informational content spoken word bits sound different as a result; I'll say they're more brash than usual.

I kicked the show off with DJ Shadow's This Time (I'm Gonna Do It My Way), which is an aberration on his recent hyphy-inspired album The Outsider. After that, it was into Here Come Da Judge and mostly seven inches that I've collected on my iPod.

I caught up with DJ B-Fad and his show Rainbow Groove before airtime; we know each other through mutual friends and in fact, he used to work at the company where I started recently. Also bumped into Jonathan of Shameless, who was preparing some interview material for his Sunday show. Still haven't met Chris, the host of I Like the Scribbles, who is supposed to start at midnight (and by the time I biked home, I did wind up hearing him on air, so I spun until about 12:20am, mostly playing Isaac Hayes' astonishing soundtrack to Truck Turner, which I picked up on vinyl a few weeks ago and was floored to finally figure out it was the source of three of my favourite samples (including a brief bit in my promo, which I gave a quick spin). (And if you haven't seen it, here's Truck Turner meets the animated Star Trek.)

One highlight was a prolonged call from a listener, who was asking about half of what I played, including the Bay Area Funk compilation and the Twinight Records track from the Numero Group. He pointed out a few labels I need to check out soon, including Ace Records and a defunct subsidiary of theirs called Kent.

This was a commanding show and hopefully you get to enjoy listening to it as much as I had bopping around to it.

Playlist is as follows and I quote:

Happy Bloomsday!

Somehow, this show didn't completely go silly, though it definitely broached that territory. Part of it was tied to having most of this setlist ready early, which may be comforting from a planning perspective but that doesn't make the show all that fun if it's all pre-progammed for days. Another part was that I was recovering from a busy schedule over the past few days, so I was getting punchy. Mildly punchy however, though there were points where I was ready to leap in and be a brat.

Were there errors during the Vivian Girls' song? Yeah: I was going to play another track I found, called Where Do You Run To which sounds prettier but I was surprised to find that the station had a physical copy of theirs lying around. I also switched which Women track played after seeing the recent addition of that Calgary band's album to the active station playlist; I was going with the shorter Cameras originally.

One thing you can try to listen to during the show is the faint singing from a rehearsing choir in the ballroom across the corridor from CITR. There were points towards the end of the show where I would hear the hundred plus singers in the background with the orchestra bits I was playing. I'm sure that would've been fantastic to mix together for you, the listening audience, but it would get tricky and I became distracted helping Gavin sort out some computer issues.

The playlist follows.

For a moment, I thought that was I going to have one of those frantic shows whereby I had too much music to spin in my time slot. Things turned out differently; despite the fact I was running late, I wound up playing earlier than usual since the usual host ahead of me was gone, leaving one of the gravest sins radio can have: dead air (unless you're on a John Cage or Pootie Tang kick).

As I scrambled to get something on air quickly, I wound up starting a bit early after playing a boatload of cart material as I set up, diving into the Disco Italia track as I dug up the other albums queued up. After doing some quick math, I located two additional tracks to fill out the extra time: Crystal Castles and a track from the Canadian Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective compilation.

Otherwise, the show was heavily electro, starting off with Steinski (check out his WFMU playlists), an artist I'd never expect to find anything outside of low-bit MP3's passed from filesystems. Big props to Illegal Art for compiling his works together, and if you've never heard of them, your gateway artist is Girl Talk, then dive further into musical re-appropriation.

I could've easily devoted more time to the various soundtracks and scores to the film Children of Men. The first soundtrack features more of the pop tunes, though I'm more tempted to say the secular music when compared to the might of the original score, which is so overwhelmingly emotional, it can get a bit heavy. Of course, I couldn't ignore John Tavener's work, including the 15 minute Fragments of a Prayer – a holy, stirring work you probably won't encounter elsewhere on the radio. I recommend finding both albums if you can, just to contrast the rage of Jarvis Cocker's Running the World and Krzysztof Penderecki's contemplative Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima.

Meanwhile, here's this episode's playlist:

Covers can cast too wide a range of range of choices; do you go with the transcendent versions of classic songs? The forgotten gem that takes on new life? The bombastic tune that gets knocked down a few pegs? The ironic castaway?

In many ways, I tried them all and it still felt like I gave short shrift to the songs I wanted to include, which could mean a possible revisit in the future. I stayed away from the really obvious choices, meaning the likes of the Shatner and whoever wound up an Idol nowadays remained piled by the woodshed for a future fire.

After starting with the old CBS Special Presentation blipvert, the Mylo-involved electro take on the Guns'n Roses staple seemed nice, especially in contrast to the decidedly earnest, recent Taken By Trees version. Things sorta hopped around in the synthetic space before taking the bossa nova Pastel Vespa route to the actress set.

...which was mostly an example of weaker covers. The Scarlett Johansson album sounds so non-essential, and I can't tell if it's the production being too gauzy, Scarlett's voice not fitting in or just being nondescript. She (Zooey Deschanel) & Him (M. Ward) turned out all right, though the live performances I've heard show a bit more variety than the album. Milla Jovovich tackling one of Lou Reed's finest songs? It gets a bit hammy toward the end but there's a nice little vibe going on there.

After some reinterpreted rock, both classic and independent, I finally got to play a bit from one of my favourite discoveries: the fill-in Inuit janitor at a CBC station during a strike. This is a bizarre snapshot of true radio performance and if you haven't heard either the clips or the full half hour excerpt, there's gold up in the tundra.

I had to fade a few songs short to fit in a quick tribute to the now late Bo Diddley. The Jazz Show's Gavin talked to me during the track and floored when he told me that he played with him thirty-odd years ago for a couple of sets in town. Hopefully he mentioned that during his show since the story he told was dynamite, and I wasn't going to steal his thunder. I'm glad I was able to find at least one Diddley record in the station archives, since someone already had grabbed all the CDs but didn't return them. And thankfully, that album included You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover.

Playlist follows: