3:00 PM Deadbolt Watongo
2:54 PM Swans Little Mouth My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To the Sky Young God
2:49 PM Metz Negative Space Metz Sub Pop
2:48 PM Tom Waits 2:19 Brawlers Anti-
2:48 PM Tav Falco’s Panter Burns Come On Little Mama Behind the Magnolia Curtain Rough Trade
2:46 PM The Vibes Off the Cuff On a Night Like This Whittier
2:39 PM Protomartyr Jumbo’s No Passion All Technique Urinal Cake
2:31 PM The Knitters The Call of the Wreckin’ Ball Poor Little Critter on the Road Slash
2:31 PM X Hungry Wolf Live at the Whisky A Go-Go on the Fabulous Sunset Strip Elektra
2:19 PM Genesis Land of Confusion Invisible Touch Atlantic Records
2:06 PM Rachmaninoff (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor, Gary Graffman, pianist) Second Piano Concerto Rhapsody on a Theme from Paganini, Second Piano Concerto Columbia
The similarities between Flipper and Jonathan Richman may go deeper than their at-the-time contrarian nature, but I’m happy that I was able to play them back-to-back.
Just an hour today, pretty quick. A coincidentally Russian string of requests; the Prokofiev was the only thing I wanted to play for sure. The third and fourth movements of his Symphony No. 1 are incredible. The 3rd is also featured as the foundation of the gavotte in his wonderful ballet, Romeo and Juliet. I might like the chunk in the ballet better, only because it’s a little longer. I appreciate the brevity of the first symphony, but the melody is too nice not to splash around in for a while. The energy of the fourth movement of the symphony is a great testament to the young composer’s brilliant vision.
From the ballet:
From Symphony No. 1:
I have to say, the Marianne Faithful was sort of a mistake, but the Magnetic Fields song is nice.
Heaps of requests came in for this one. Lots of tracks out there about all sorts of days. See below for playlist and mp3s of the show.
The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry featured one of the songs today; on it was written “Best debut ever? Yes!”, which seems slightly dated. Some replies written on the LP sleeve over the years were pretty comical.
Some of the not-quite-creative replies:
Hendrix’s debut is better
The Clash’s was better
Pretenders’ was better
REM’s was better
Gang of Four’s was better
Run DMC’s was better
Joy Division’s was better
and, finally, a zinger;
Guess what it’s NOT their debut. 3 Missing boys . . . was and it’s much better.
I played a song by John Hartford. He used to look different than he used to look. The song, Back in the Goodle Days, is off 1971′s Aereo Plain.
I mentioned a Butthole Surfers interview from September, 1984. You can read it here. Saw them a few years ago, and what a ball they have on stage! Pranking each other, fiddling with all sorts of looping and delay effects; all while the most extremely horrific B-movie gore scenes played on repeat on the screen behind them. The one that stands out in my memory is of a man standing still while two gigantic mallet things – like really gigantic, maybe the size of one of those big rolls of hay you see in fields sometimes – swing down in symmetry and explode the poor (by then) mannequin’s head. The fact that it was a faked scene was, by about the 30th viewing, the scariest part.
I mention that the Grass Widow song, Landscape, sounds a little sped up at a few parts. Not the whole thing, but enough to notice. Possibly some strange tape-related stuff going on maybe. Either way I’m glad I was wrong when I thought my LP was warped.
Thanks for the requests; my favorites may have been Wall of Voodoo (pretty funny) and Blur (pretty good; tasteful use of British horns, little cheesy on the change of pace, though).
Brian McCorkle, Valerie Kuehne, and Esther Neff made this a really special show! Brian, an old friend, and his fellow travelers put on a show at the Far House last night. They had some time before their next show in Cincinnati, so they were keen to get into CBN for a performance.
Performances by Brian and Valerie, and a brief interview at the end of the show highlight what talented and inspired individuals these folks are.
The three live in the Panoply Performance Lab in Brooklyn and regularly curate multidimensional performance art exhibitions. They are currently touring the Midwest. Brian and Esther went to school at UM and it was a real joy having them back in the CBN studios.
Brian and Esther’s operas incorporate a distinct idealogy. From their site:
Brian McCorkle and Esther Neff have been collaborating as “Panoply Performance Laboratory” or “PPL” for the past 6 years on work that combines conceptual music, sculpture, and performance art. Each site-and-context-specific performance theorizes compositional and constructive systems, ideological structures, modes of production, and epistemic geneologies via precise, viscereal actions. PPL perform barefoot, employing extended vocal techniques, using home-made instruments of sound and labor, manipulating sculptural objects stuffed with analog electronics, and operating crude wood/rope/plastic contraptions. Often participatory and created in the moment with a collaborating audience, PPL performances swing violently between the hyper-structural and the indeteriminate, dealing with causation, reaction, conception, cognition, and active human practices of construction and reality- projection.
I wish them well on their travels! For information on their various projects, see the links below.
Why does sad music make us happy? Not all of it does, of course, but I think some incredibly sad songs generate a great deal of joy because of our tendency to appreciate art that is truthful. There is no better example than Elliot Smith, whose intense suffering and eventual suicide deeply affect how his music is interpreted. His absolute genius at melody and song structure give to the listener a beautifully unique experience. For me, knowing that Smith tragically stabbed himself in the heart (a highly disturbing thought) makes this music incredibly and undeniably real. Genuine sadness that can make us happy to be alive.
The subtlety of some of the songs from today makes all the difference, and while sadness in art can certainly bring us down, appreciating the brilliance of its effect can be a great source of joy, just like Beethoven’s 15th String Quartet, written just after he recovered from an illness he thought surely would kill him.
A special show today; Craig “Harry” Harrison stopped in on his way back to Queensland and played two hours of all Australian music. It was a good mix of styles and I had a ball listening. Hope John and Lilly get to listen!
Freeform with Karl today, all Aussie music! 1-3pm on @wcbn_fm
One hour of radio seems like nothing! Rite of Spring is playing this Saturday at Hill Auditorium. Both are 100 years old. The Mariinsky Orchestra with Denis Matsuev on piano. Valery Gergiev conducting.
One of Frank Zappa’s favorite albums was the “World Wide Orchestra’s” recording of Rite of Spring. Turns out, it was Vanguard Records’ way of getting out of copyright honesty, and the recording was actually the San Francisco Orchestra with Pierre Monteux conducting – the conductor who premiered Rite of Spring in 1913 at which the piece nearly incited a riot.
