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Weekly Mix 28: July 16, 2017

A lot of new listeners tuned in to last week’s show and one of them was Jon Fine, who played with David Grubbs in the band Bitch Magnet. Jon was really excited to hear Loving Six on last week’s mix. He had heard about Loving Six and had been waiting to hear their music for almost 30 years. We got to talking and it turns out that Jon has also written a book called Your Band Sucks: What I Saw at Indie Rock’s Failed Revolution (But Can No Longer Hear), which has been described as a cult favorite musician’s memoir. Jon said his book touches on some of the things Chip and I talked about on last weeks show. You should go buy it because I’m going to read the Your Band Sucksand have Jon on the show in a couple of weeks to talk about his book.

On last week’s show I also played a song that was a collaboration between The Bug and Earth. I’ve known about Earth for at least 20 years but had never listened to their music before. I went on Twitter and asked what songs or albums I should listen to and I got a lot of excellent suggestions. Ben Burnham said I should start off with Earth’s album, Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method.Corey Brewer suggested I listen to their songs ”Ouroboros is Broken” or “Old Black” and Holly Carson said I should listen to their Pentastar: In the Style of Demons album. Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll be listening to Earth for the next few weeks and will play them on a future Weekly Mix.

Okay, let’s get to today’s show. See you next week!

  1. Dawg Yawp “I’ll Quit Tomorrow”
  2. Reddish Blu “When I Get Too Sad”
  3. L8LOOMER “Right Side (feat. Doja Cat)”
  4. Kevin Abstract “American Boyfriend”
  5. Devoted To God “Hidden Track”
  6. Kamasi Washington “Truth”
  7. Robert Turman “Veiling Reflections – excerpt”

Illustration: GDBee ©2017

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Weekly Mix 27: July 9, 2017

Last night my girlfriend watched I T2 Trainspotting. I haven’t seen Trainspotting since it was released back in 1996 and I thought it’d be fun to revisit those lovable junkies and hooligans from the first movie. And it was fun. The dialogue was whip-smart and the cinematography was was breathtaking and the actors were fantastic. But it was fun in a Trainspotting sort of way because it you remember the first movie it was about a bunch of Gen X kids who use heroin because they’re lives have been hallowed out by Thatcherism, consumerism and boredom. In T2 Trainspotting we get to revisit those characters except this time they’re older, a little thicker in the middle and they’re nostalgic while at the same time they’re considering they’re mortality.

I’m a Gen X kid. I’m older. I’m a little thicker in the middle. I think about my mortality. But I’m not nostalgic. The 90s were just another decade for me and then I moved on. Each decade had it’s peaks and valleys and some friends dropped out of my life but they were replaced by new friends. But the 90s were special, special to me, anyway, because I was a young man with a bright future ahead of me and my life was so vivid because I was experiencing everything for the first time. I got to fall in love as an adult for the first time. I also got to experience my first heartbreak as an adult. I got to meet friends for the first time that I’ll probably know until the day I die. Or until they die. Hopefully they go first.

And I was always listening to music and the first five songs you’ll hear on today’s show were part of the soundtrack to my life at that time. The stuff is heavy. As usual, I listened to a lot of different kinds of music back in the 90s, everything from hip hop to avant-garde jazz, but hardcore and industrial was the music that I really responded to. Can you blame me? America was fighting in the first Gulf War and it was clear that it was going to come back and bite us in the ass further down the road. The Republican and Democratic parties were just starting to become recalcitrant and hyper-consumerism was becoming a cultural value.

I’ll see you again next week. I promise it won’t be as heavy as today’s show. See you then!

  1. Godflesh “Love Is A Dog From Hell”
  2. Bastro “(I’ve) Ben Brown”
  3. Loving Six “U.S. World”
  4. Gore “Mean Man’s Dream”
  5. Head of David “Dog Day Sunrise”
  6. The Bug & Earth “Dog (feat. JK Flesh)”
  7. Pale Sketcher “Plans That Fade (Faded Dub)”

Illustration: GDBee ©2017

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Weekly Mix 26: July 2, 2017

I subscribe to several newsletters but I usually delete them as soon as they hit my inbox because they’re uninteresting or sharing links to other articles. The only newsletter I read from start to finish is Bob Lefsetz‘s newsletter. Lefsetz is a music industry analyst and critic and the reason I read his newsletter while I delete the rest is because he always has a fresh take on things, whether it’s music, politic or sports or just talking about his life.

Recently Lefsetz wrote a response to an article on the Washington Post about the decline of electric guitar sales. In short, rock is dead. Or on life support. As Lefsetz pointed out, rock is still around but it has all the relevancy of jazz or folk music. Why? Because rock has been so thoroughly corporatized that rock has been de-fanged. It’s no longer dangerous. Songs are no longer crafted, they’re manufactured on spreadsheets and ProTools and and any spontaneity left over is autotuned out. Not only that, rock has nothing new to say. It’s an exhausted genre. Furthermore, rock is reductive. It simplifies more complex music like blues or folk or Cajun music, etc. But now rock is reductive of rock music. It’s become pablum.

The only thing fresh and exciting happening in music today is hip hop and electronic music. It’s taking chances. It’s experimenting. Even the stuff you hear on the radio (who even listens to radio these days?) is more inventive than what passes for rock these days.

The electric guitar is dead. I mourn it’s passing. But to put things in perspective, there was a time when the accordion was huge. Now it’s an instrument regarded as hokey and old-timey.

  1. Oumou Sangaré “Kamelemba”
  2. Gordi “Heaven I Know”
  3. Crooked Man “Coming Up for Air”
  4. John Moreland “Sallisaw Blue”
  5. Amelia Payne “Down”
  6. Army of Lovers “Crucified”
  7. DJ Cummerbund “Earth, Wind & Ozzys”

Illustration: GDBee ©2017