funk – Synecdoche

SOUNDWAVE : 121 : ROBOCAT

Today’s guest deejay is Sasha Puzan, AKA Robocat.

Sasha’s been on Soundwave twice as protoU (listen to her mixes here and here). Sasha accepted my invitation to guest deejay a third time and shared a mix celebrating Pride. No ethereal mixes on today’s show; we’re all about getting a groove on.

Last weekend I spent the day with my grandkid. We had plans to go to our favorite playground, but there was no parking to be had. I decided to take him to the beach instead. We got caught up in Pride traffic on the way there, which seemed like the perfect time to play Sasha’s mix. People dressed in rainbow gear, butterfly wings, and leather chaps darted between cars as we slowly inched forward. It was a magical afternoon.

Join us next week when our guest deejay will be Hessel Veldman.

See you then.

Charli XCX “Boom Clap (Cahil Remix)”
Dua Lipa “Don’t Start Now”
Domo Wilson “Bisexual Anthem”
P!nk “So What”
Taylor Swift “You Need To Calm Down”
Jefferson Airplane “Somebody To Love (Remix)”
Suvo “Go_A (Shum-) (Suvo Remix)”
Russya “Don’t Stand By My Window”
Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande “Rain On Me”
Kazka “Cry”
Britney Spears “Gimme More”
Madonna “Hung Up”
Icona Pop “I Love It (feat. Charli XCX)”
Britney Spears “Toxic”
Cher “Believe”
Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive”

Your Dream

I’ve been a deejay for more than half my life.

I don’t hear music the way you hear music.

When I listen to a song, there’s always a part of me thinking how that song would work in a mix. What song would go before it? What would go after it? What would be the shape of the mix?

I can’t turn that part of me off.

Today, on a whim, I listened to my Liked Songs playlists on Spotify while running errands. I dug what I was listening to (I did like the songs, after all). And as is my way, I heard songs in the playlist that just felt right together. It’d be a shame not to share it.

So here it is. I hope you like it.

Oh, and you can also find the playlist for today’s show here on Spotify.

Kim Jung Mi “Your Dream”
Yamasuki Singers “Yamamoto Kakapote”
Gaye Su Akyol “Laziko”
Flo Morrissey & Matthew E. White “Govindam”
El Michels Affair “Zaharila”
Kelly Lee Owens “8”
Don Cherry “Malkauns”

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.

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

Weekly Mix 25: June 25, 2017

Before we get to today’s show I wanted to tell you about a game I just started playing called Vampire: The Masquerade. It’s a role playing game like Dungeons & Dragons but instead of warriors and wizards it’s based on vampires. And we’re playing the game with dice and paper and not on a laptop.

I confess, vampires aren’t really my thing but I’ve been having a blast. It’s been ages since I’ve been part of a role playing game and usually I’m the person running the game, so it’s fun to be a player character. I’m also tickled that my girlfriend is playing, too. When I tell her that she is my dream girl I don’t think she understands how much I mean that.

I won’t go into the game too much because I don’t know too much about it myself aside from what I’ve read on Wikipedia. But I’m really digging how the game incorporates the mythology of vampires and also how morality and humanity is also a very important part of the game. What I can tell you is that there are a bunch of clans of vampires and each clan has their strengths and weaknesses. There’s been a murder within the clans that could possibly throw everything into turmoil and me and my fellow players have been tasked to get to the bottom of things. Pretty dramatic, huh?

There are four of us. My girlfriend is playing a Nosferatu-like vampire who is also a hacker. Our friend Becky is playing a corporate-raider type on vampire and our friend Glenn is a biker vampire. Me? I’m playing an effete, club-footed vampire from the 19th century who is a cross between Oscar Wilde and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

I’ll tell you more about the game as we go along. And if you’re listening to today’s show and you also play role playing games I’d love to hear about your own experiences.

Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody (Played by 100+ year old fairground organ)”
Golden Vessel “Shoulders (ft. Elkkle & Mallrat)”
Wolf Alice “Yuk Foo”
Ex Eye “Opposition/Perihelion; the Coil”
Be the Bear “Erupt”
Terror Jr “Come First”
Mary J. Blige “Strength Of A Woman”

Weekly Mix 15: April 16, 2017

Before we get to today’s show I want to wish everyone a Happy Easter. I’m not a religious guy myself but any chance to spend a day with the people I love is okay by me. This Easter we had lunch with our friends Alex and Thelma. We get together with them on a regular basis for outdoor movie nights, Halloween parties and trips to wineries in Ensenada. This time Alex and Thelma had us over for barbecue and it was delicious! With summer around the corner I really need to step up my grill game. Fortunately, I have my Patio Daddy-O cookbook my friend Diana gave me for a birthday present oh, a couple of decades ago. I’m going to pay it forward and give a copy to our oldest for his birthday. Cooking on a grill is a rite of passage for men and having a recipes like Cracklin’ Sugar-Charred Cowboy Steak or Dragonbreath Corn on the Cob in your back pocket is a necessity.

I ate too much at Alex and Thelma’s because later we went to our friends Jason and Tawnya’s for Easter and dinner and I barely had room for another meal. That’s a damn shame because Jason is a chef and he had cooked up some smoked ham; a salad of mint, peas and and beets; and another salad with black carrots. Black carrots, who knew there was such a thing. And Tawnya made a cheesecake dessert that was half lemon meringue. So good! Oh, yeah, and they were plying us with ice tea made with homemade limoncello! I was uncomfortably full and wished I hadn’t eaten so much earlier.

At least I could eat. Our boy Townes had a bout of food poisoning and threw up almost a dozen times during the night. Poor boy! Between me and you, I suspect when my boy throws he calculates how much collateral damage he can do because he seems to throw up everywhere. His bed, the sheets, the floor… I was up at three in the morning mopping up his vomit and washing his sheets.

Anyway, Townes felt terrible and wasn’t up for barbecue or smoked ham or chocolate eggs or jelly beans.

So that was my Easter.

Bernie Worrell “At Mos’Spheres”
Mylene Cruz (Herizen Guardiola) & The Soul Madonnas “Keep A Light In My Window”
Organized Confusion “Open Your Eyes”
Quindon Tarver “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”
Rotary Connection & Minnie Riperton “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun”
David Axelrod “The Human Abstract”
Solange “Cranes in the Sky”

Weekly Mix 14: April 9, 2017

I’m really excited about today’s show because it’s a great way wind down after a busy week. As I mentioned on the last show, last week my girl friend and I drove up to Los Angeles from San Diego to catch a rare performance by The Firesign Theater. A few days later I drove back up to Los Angeles to get fitted for a tailor made suit from Indochino for my brother’s wedding next month. There’s a good chance you heard about Indohchino on another podcast. At least that’s how I heard about them. I could have given Indohchino my measurements online but I wanted to be measured by an actual human being. I have to admit, I was impressed by Indohchino and now that they have my measurements I’ll order more clothing from them in the future. I’ll post a photo of the suit in a couple of weeks on my blog.

Last night my girl friend and my boy drove back up to Los Angeles again for the opening of a friend Mark Casillas’ new office. The name of his studio is Warm & Fuzzy and he and his partners do visual effects and animation for commericals, TV shows and movies like The Avengers and Star Wars. The party was great! There were food trucks, a bouncy castle, a deejay and lot of fun and interesting people to meet. You know, I used to hate Los Angeles but the more I go there the more I love. Except the traffic. I hate the traffic.

And today we took the kids to the Fleet Science Center in San Diego and then I took the kids and our dog to the beach. So, yeah, a busy weekend.

Click the links below to purchase and download the songs you liked from today’s show. You can spare a few dollars and you’ll be helping out the bands and musicians who are pouring out their hearts to touch you.

If you enjoy The Weekly Mix, share it with a friend. I’m looking at you, Ben. I know you like last week’s show.

Okay, time for me to amscray. Enjoy the show. I’ll see you next week!

Swet Shop Boys “T5”
Futuro Pelo “Swamp”
Frankie Reyes “Noche de Ronda”
Sampha “Plastic 100°C”
Yoni & Geti “Lunchline”
Little Scream “Love as a Weapon”
Hite “Light”

Weekly Mix 13: April 2, 2017

Before we got to today’s show I want to welcome Blumenkraft from the pnut social media platform to the show. I actually know Blumenkraft from App.Net, which was a great social media platform that was ad free but unforutnately shut down last month. Anyway, I promoted my recent show on Pnut and Blumenkraft really enjoyed it and went back to download prevous episodes of The Weekly Mix. Blumenkraft, if you’re listening, welcome aboard and I hope you dig today’s show.

The other thing I wanted to chat about is the trip my girlfriend and I made to Los Angeles last Thursday to see The Firesign Theatre. You probably don’t know who they are but they are extremely important to me. The Firesign Theatre was a comedy group from the 60s who recorded these really complex concept albums. When I was a boy, about four years old, my dad would play them all the time. The Firesign Theatre had a lot of TV and radio commercial skits that confused me because at that age I was still struggling to distinguish reality from fantasy. They sounded like commercials but I knew something was not quite right. The Firesign Theatre shaped my own sense of humor and when I got into radio I would insert bits from their albums into my shows.

Last Wednesday I was talking to my friend Taylor about working on another show I produce called Pop Culture Intelligentsia. We were catching up with each other when he mentioned that he was going to provide sound effect for a life performance from The Firesign Theatre. Taylor only had a vague idea who they were and cetainly had no idea how important those guys are to me. I asked Taylor if he could get me into the show because those guys are senior citizens now, in fact, there are only two members still alive. I’d regret it if I didn’t see them. Taylor was kind enough to get me into the show and I even got to ask Phil Proctor, one of the founding members a question!

Okay, enough out of me. Enjoy today’s show.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweat “I Need Never Get Old”
Shirley Bassey “Spinning Wheel”
Portugal. The Man “Feel It Still”
Lauren Sanderson “Alotta Me”
Yaeji “New York 93”
Naadei “Not Nice”
o k h o “Hey The House Is On Fire”

Weekly Mix 9: March 5, 2017

There’s a lot of tools I use to put these shows together and I thought I’d share one of them with you today. It’s called Pinboard. It’s a social bookmarking service that’s a lot like Delicious, if you happen to remember Delicious. It’s okay if you don’t because Yahoo pretty much killed Delicious when they purchased the service. Killing services is something that Yahoo seems to excel at.

Anyway, the way Pinboard works is that when you come across a website or article or blog post that you want to go back to later, you can bookmark it on Pinboard. You can also tag your bookmarks, include a summary of what your bookmarking and search all your bookmarks or any of the bookmarks others have saved to Pinboard.

Some people use Pocket or Instapaper or Evernote for bookmarking and I use those, too, but Pinboard is pretty much where I save everything.

So why am I talking about Pinboard on today’s show? Because I bookmark everything that I might want to reference on each episode of The Weekly Mix. If there’s anything that comes up on The Weekly Mix that you’re even remotely curious about, you can find it there. Bands, labels, interviews, videos, all of it is on Pinboard. You can click the link to my Pinboard account on today’s show notes or go directly to bit.ly/WEEKLYMIXPINBOARD

Thanks for indulging me in my nerdery.

Jim’s Big Ego “Feelin’ Groovy”
Francis and the Lights “It’s Alright to Cry”
Erik Blood “The Attic System”
El Michels Affair “Tearz (feat. Lee Fields & The Shacks)”
Bishop Briggs “River”
Kojey Radical “Gallons (feat. PW)”
Dawn of Midi “Io”

Weekly Mix 5: February 5, 2017

Today’s a special show because this will be The Weekly Mix’s first broadcast on Bondfire Radio!

Bondfire Radio is an internet radio station our of Brooklyn. I first heard about the station when Macedonia from the Both Sides of the Surface podcast started spinning there a year or so ago. Macedonia has exquisite taste in music so I figured anything he was involved in and was passionate about was worth listening to, so I tuned in. And loved what I heard. So much so that when I launched The Weekly Mix I approached Keisha and asked if she’d be interested in carrying my show. I’m thrilled that I’ve been invited to be part of their family and rather than try and tell you what Bondfire Radio is all about I thought it would be easier, and more fun, to have Keisha talk about the station.

You can tune into my show on Bondfire Radio every Friday at 11:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time.

Hope you enjoy today’s show. See you next week!

Interview with Bondfire Radio’s Keisha Dutes
US3 “Tukka Yoot’s Riddim”
Grant Green “Sookie Sookie (Live) (Remastered)”
David Cutter Music “Just Start Clicking”
Mulatu Astatke “Tezeta”
SoDown “Same Same”
Post Malone “Feeling Whitney”
Xinlisupreme “You Died in the Sea”

Weekly Mix 4: January 29, 2017

Every day I post a song to Twitter and Facebook (#songoftheday) that I think is so amazing and so great that I am compelled to share them with you. Some of the songs are new, some of the songs are old, but you really, really need to hear them.

At the end of the week I gather those songs into The Weekly Mix. When possible, I accompany each song with a brief introduction by the featured band or musician. Previous shows have included introductions from hip hop recording artist Tall Can, UK country singer Yola Carter, gospel singer Phyliss McKoy Joubert and Dick Valentine from Electric Six.

This week, I’m sad to say, will feature no introductions. I’m not suprised. This is only the fourth episode of The Weekly Mix and I’m still growing my audience and the show’s reputation. Frankly, I’m surprised I got as many people to participate in the show as I have and I’m thankful for their generosity.

If you enjoy the show and you would like to have more bands and musicians joins us each week on The Weekly Mix, you can help. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Just tell a friend or co-worker, or anyone, really, to give The Weekly Mix a listen. The more people who listen to the show the more clout The Weekly Mix will have, which will attract more musical guests.

I’ve done it before. When I was producing my small WORKD talk show I was getting something like 40,000 listeners a month, and when I was producing solipsistic NATION, my electronic music show, I was getting 14 million listeners a month. All I need is your help. So please tell anyone you know who loves music about The Weekly Mix.

See you next week!

Kweku Collins “Ego Killed Romance (feat. Jamila Woods)”
Moses Sumney “Incantation”
Pavel Dovgal “Nibiru”
Max Cooper “Seed”
Call Super “Puppet Scene”
The Bad Plus “The Beautiful Ones”
Cymande “Bra”