August 2008 Archives

Please note: Due to illness, there was no new show for the week of August 25th, so the first hour of episode #31 was replayed instead before abruptly cutting to salsa?? Barring any unforeseen prolongment in my ability to stay awake longer than two hours, I'll be back next week. Thanks

This type of show tends to my favourite, whereby the songs chosen for the playlist accidentally coalesce into little groups with themes that I wouldn't have of intentionally detected.

The first three songs gelled like a parfait, though I had to take the added step of the language warning at the beginning right before the Girl Talk song, which forced everyone in the studio to nod their heads and sing along (Henry's show had a guest co-host, much like Gavin's did after my show). Seriously: if you haven't heard Feed the Animals yet, especially fist-pumpingly loud and with friends, your 2008 has been deprived.

From there, the hip-shaking set scuffed its shoes as the songs got dirtier as one Baseball Fury became another. As the noise shifted to rhythm, particularly the long-queued but finally played Pixeltan track, ambience set in, which lead to another highlight: David Byrne and Brian Eno, together again on their new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. I had another song chosen from their 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts selected before choosing one from the re-release: the abandoned Qu'ran, which has a fascinating history with modern parallels. I'll look into playing it in the future since it is quite gripping, but I wanted more disjoint sounds, hence Mea Culpa.

Otherwise, blowing through some of my soul led to Marvin Gaye and his score for Trouble Man (with its grim yet unintentionally hilarious trailer). I only heard about this film recently and have been warned about its dodginess. Still, I didn't know about Gaye's interest in Hollywood before and there appear to be a few other soundtrack pieces to hunt down.

The show wasn't flawless, mostly as more equipment in the studio has become faulty and other people toy with the settings. The iPod couldn't go off its usual channel for some reason, which knocked the second CD player offline and messed up Gavin once he took control. I forgot at one point about the channel change, hence the bit of silence at the onset of the Baseball Furies set. News of the apparent problems with the half the turntables doesn't help matters, though as the school years grows closer, the drive to get all this hardware fixed hopefully accelerates. But everyone's loose and having fun whilst summer has a few weeks left.

Oh, the playlist, it follows.

As you no doubt heard, Isaac Hayes died on Sunday.

In light of the news, the show I was setting up for this week was junked to make way for a full-length tribute to the Black Moses himself. On a prior flll-in for Shake a Tail Feather, I played a good chunk of songs from the Truck Turner soundtrack, which has easily become one of my favourite scores over time. Rather than dip too heavily from that earlier show, there was a track or two I hadn't played before, which fit right in.

I tried looking for a mix of well-known and lesser heard tracks with a good flow, along with picking up a fresh copy of Hot Buttered Soul. Digging through the Stax collection of songs he wrote, I was floored by how many bona fide hits he wrote, even before he became a star on his own. No Chef, sadly; though you can hit up YouTube for What's a Prostitute? and Love. The official version of Chocolate Salty Balls remains elusive.

Here's some additional video:

• Isaac Hayes at Wattstax and introduced by Jesse Jackson (bonus footage: Richard Pryor on what Wattstax meant).
• The Look of Love and Never Can Say Goodbye from a live show in Atlanta 1973.
• Isaac Hayes on "The Rockford Files".
• And for silliness, Shaft as performed by a Ukulele Orchestra or by Father Ted.

And in one of those additional facts about Hayes I never knew: he was part-owner of the American Basketball Association's Memphis Sounds for a year or so. The team sported some of the funkiest uniforms ever, though the rest of the ABA teams could hold a similar claim.

Rest in peace, Duke of New York.

Playlist follows:

The show aimed for a charmingly sinister vibe and mostly pulled it off. There was a few recursive themes throughout the show, as I opened and closed with a combination of records I've searched for based on MP3's I've held tight for years. The DJ Food/Ken Nordine opener was a 10" gatefold I found recently with at least one additional gem on side D I should play later on. The Gordon's War soundtrack was recently re-pressed and includes the mighty Hot Wheels/The Chase, which I played in a lossy digitized format during one of my soul show fill-ins back before I had the wax.

Another bit of recursion included Mylo's and Diplo's tunes that loving sampled Kim Carnes' defining take on Bette Davis Eyes. And wedged in the middle were the early Daft Punk songs, which sound like they ruled 1994 with an iron fist and sound a wee bit, well, daft now. That set was bound by a song that they've sampled and a song that one of the Punks recently produced.

Hopefully I didn't sound too out of breath at the beginning since I was (pardon the Ontario slang) givin' 'er to the station in the rediscovered summer heat after working BC Day and stopping by to see the friendly rematch of the loosely affiliated CITR softball team versus the Vancouver Public Librarians. I even managed one at bat before zipping away: a solid single up the middle before getting a force out at third.

The mysterious gremlins that precede my show once again changed the settings on the console, which accounted for the moment of silence after the Mylo track. At least I know what the Program Mono buttons do now; put sound from device to mixer. I could insert the standard argument about people not resetting the equipment to as they found it, but those people likely have mothers already to remind them.

Playlist followeth: