April 27th - Bands with numbers!

Since the temperature has been in or close to the 90's for the last several days, this picture will try to help cool me off. Thanks to Steve Harris for the photo and for the creation of "Snowhenge" in his back yard over the winter!

John's guest this week was Scottish band The Strike Nineteens. I enjoyed the interview and thought they had some very good songs. Since they were the band of the week, John told me I should pick bands that had numbers in their names. It seemed like the type of challenge that I would be up to. I could have copped out and gone with U2 or The B-52's or Black 47 or a bunch of others, but I could never do that. Instead, I sent John songs by Havana 3am, 801, fig.4, Strontium 90, The Forty-Fives, Dream 6 and Old 97's. I almost sent him music by M-3, The 6ths, The Minus 5 and a few others, but I knew we wouldn't have time.


I sent John a couple songs by a band called Strontium 90. Strontium 90 was a band that Mike Howlett formed after he left Gong in the mid 70's. They never released an album while they were together, but have become famous because the rest of the band consisted of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland. One of the songs I sent (but didn't expect John to play) was a demo version of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, which was recorded in the fall of 1976. John surprised me by playing it.

There was one band that I sent that didn't have a number in their name, but the song had a number in it. The song was 25 O'Clock and the band was The Dukes Of Stratosphear. The Dukes were really XTC and this ep came out on April 1, 1985. I had a story from college to go with this song and if you listened to the show last night, you got to hear that story. The 25 O'Clock ep(including bonus tracks) has just been re-released, along with the 2nd Dukes album Psonic Psunspot(also with bonus tracks) on Andy Partridge's Ape House label. If you like Psychedelic 60's inspired music, then you will love this.

Here is what we ended up playing last night during Donohue's Music Den:
Sting - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (solo demo from the Strontium 90 album Police Academy)
The Dukes Of Stratosphear - 25 O'Clock
801 - T.N.K. (Tomorrow Never Knows)
fig. 4 - Naola
The Forty-Fives - Lost Track Of You
Havana 3am - Blue Motorcycle Eyes
Old 97's - King Of All The World

For those of you playing at home, 801 was a band from the mid 70's that included Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno. fig.4 was an Ohio band from the mid-80's and their leader was Tobin Sprout, who would later join Guided By Voices. The Forty-Fives are a garage band from Atlanta Ga. Havana 3am was a short-lived band formed in the early 90's by Clash bassist Paul Simonon and guitarist Gary Myrick (from 80's "new wave" band Gary Myrick and The Figures). And Finally, the Old 97's are a country/rock band that features lead singer Rhett Miller (who has had some bigtime success as a solo artist).

Next week I will be playing some Richard X. Heyman, because John wants to hear some Richard X. Heyman. In addition to that, I'm not sure. Maybe some Michael Mazzarella or Tommy Keene or Matt Keating or someone else that I haven't thought of yet. Hmmmmmm......

April 20th - Premiere of Take It by The BB's and other things

On this week's show, John had two members of the band Leaving, Tx in the studio. They played several songs acoustically and sounded very good. If you like that alt-country kind of thing, check these guys out.

For my portion of the show, I went with the songs that I had originally intended for April 3rd. That show never happened, because the station was not on the air that week. In addition to those, I decided to play a brand new song from The BB's.

Anyone who has read this blog before knows that The BB's are Lou Luca and Ron Cianciaruso and I will do whatever I can to get their music out to the masses. They just finished recording a new song called Take It and it was my pleasure to be the first person to play this song on the radio. Ron sings lead on the song and Lou adds a killer guitar solo, making it one of the more rocking songs in The BB's repertoire.

Anyway, back to the rest of the music. Here is what I played on Monday night.

Neko Case - Next Time You Say Forever
The Spongetones - Tough Love
The BB's - Take It
Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind
The Decemberists - A Bower Scene
Tommy Keene - Goodbye Jane
Californis Guitar Trio - Music For A Found Harmonium


Every song I played was brand new except If I Can't Change Your Mind, which came out in 1993. The original version was from Sugar's debut Album Copper Blue. This was the solo acoustic version that appeared on the cd single for Helpless. I have had this song sitting waiting to be played for about 6 months and every time I tried to play it, something happened and it never made it to air. This time it finally did.


The Spongetones have a brand new album called Scrambled Eggs that was released a few weeks ago. If you are a Beatles fan you will LOVE The Spongetones. It's another great Spongetones record and you should check them out at www.myspace.com/spongetones.


Tommy Keene is another guy who should be bigger than he is. He's been around for more than 25 years and has recorded several brilliant albums, but most people have no cluse who he is. Several years ago I was reading The Sweet Forever, a George Pelecanos novel that took place in 1986 and one of the characters in the novel went to a club to see Tommy Keene play. To me, that was one of the best intances of a musician mentioned in a novel since a long forgotten horror short story that called The Beat Farmers the greatest band in the world. If only I could remember the name of that story.....

Anyway, next week John will be interviewing Scottish band The Strike Nineteens (also originally scheduled for that April 3rd show). John has suggested that I play music from bands that have numbers in their names. Sounds like a good idea. To find out who I picked, tune in to www.wgmuradio next Monday to find out!

April 13th - Chris Arduser!!!

I thought I had already written and posted this until earlier today when I realized that I still hadn't done this, so better late than never, right?

Monday's show was, in my opinion, one of the best that we've had. John interviewed Chris Arduser from 8-9 and then I played Chris Arduser-related music from 9-10pm. This may have been the best interview John has done in the 13 months that the show has been on. It helped that Chris was very personable, very professional and very quick witted. He answered questions that both Lou and I had given to John and he had some great stories. He was on the air for about an hour but it didn't seem like it was long enough. John even mentioned me (and Lou) several times during the interview, which was very nice of him.



One thing that Chris mentioned is that after being out of print for about 20 years, the first two Bears albums, The Bears and Rise And Shine are both now available digitally. I chose two songs off of Rise & Shine because it was out of print but now that it is available again, maybe people can go to iTunes or Amazon or whereever and purchase these two incredible albums from the 80's. Anyway, here is what we played on Monday night:

The Graveblankets - Reversibilite
The Graveblankets - Victim
The Bears - Safe In Hell
The Bears - Little Blue River
Chris Arduser - Put Her Out Of My Misery
The Graveblankets - Haul That Carcass
The BB's - I See Your Love Is There
Psychodots - When There's Rain
Psychodots - I Hope It Works Out
The Bears - Complicated Potatoes
The Graveblankets - We All Thought We'd Make It Big
Psychodots - Instead Of The Bottle



Yes, I know. There is one song in there that Chris Arduser had nothing to do with. I played I See Your Love Is There because I thought it would go well with the rest of the songs. Lou recorded it after spending an entire week listening to the Psychodots and that influence shows up throughout the song. If I can get one new person to check out Chris Arduser's music because of this show, then I'll be happy. But I will also be very happy if I can get one new person to check out Lou Luca's music as well.

Hopefully Chris will come back with Rob Fetters and Bob Nyswonger (the rest of the Psychodots) later in the year. Having Chris was great. Having all three of them on the show would be amazing!

Here are some websites to check out:
www.psychodots.net
www.thebearsmusic.com
www.myspace.com/chrisarduser
www.thebbsmusic.com



Next week John will be interviewing Leaving Texas and I'm still not sure what i will be playing. Tune in to find out!

April 6th - No show......AGAIN!

Once again, technical problems wiped out tonight's show. The station has been down for several days and it couldn't be resurrected in time for tonight's show. Hopefully everything will be fixed by next week, because next week's interview is Chris Arduser and I am really looking forward to that one!

This week John would have interviewed Scottish band The Strike Nineteens and I probably would have played some combination of music by The Spongetones, Neko Case, The California Guitar Trio, The Decemberists, Mark Olson & Gary Louris, Tommy Keene, P. Hux and Sugar. I'm sure I'll end up using these in a few weeks. Next week I will be playing Chris Arduser music, including The Bears, Psychodots, The Graveblankets, The Raisins and maybe even some Human Darts!

March 30, 2009 - In the studio again

I know I'm a little late getting this up, but I haven't had much free time this week. The vacation is over. I made it to four baseball games, the Jacksonville Zoo, helped change a flat tire and spent time with good friends! I also got to see the BB's rehearse as well as seeing Johnnie Luca's new band rehearse(and those kids are pretty good!). What more do you want from a vacation, right?


I left Jacksonville at 6am on Monday morning and drove 12 hours up to Fairfax for the show. John and I got to the studio and started the show on time. It was about fifteen minutes in when we found out that we were not broadcasting and took another fifteen minutes to fix. The signal went down 2 or 3 more times during the next two hours but John got it back up each time. He also had trouble getting the interview going. Frank Falvo was calling in from Australia and it took awhile to get everything working properly. The technical problems never seem to end when I am in the studio. Maybe I should just stick to doing this thing by phone.

Because I had been on the road, I had no idea what I was going to play this week. Basically I went through the cd's that I had in the car with me on the trip and picked songs from there. I had no cd booklets with me, just discs and most of the discs were not encoded with track listings, so I had to make a guess on what song I was playing. Sometimes I guessed correctly and played the song I was trying to play. Other times I was wrong and played a different song, but it was a surprise either way until the song began to play.

Chris Arduser - Paid For The Privilege
Guadalcanal Diary - Look Up
Morphine - I'm Free Now
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Thrill Me
Par DiNizio - That'll Be The Day
Psychodots - Artichoke
The Bears - Success
Adrian Belew - Adidas In Heat

The show ended up having a decidedly Chris Arduser feel to it as he is also a member of The Bears and Psychodots. Chris will be the guest on the show on April 13th. I decided to end the show with Adidas In Heat for Lou Luca. When he won the Adrian Belew songwriting contest, his prize (besides having his song available as a free download on www.adrianbelew.net) was a painting that was done by Belew. The painting was Adidas In Heat. When Lou moved to Florida, he left the painting with me for safekeeping. I delivered the painting to him when I first got to Jacksonville and now it is back in the hands of its rightful owner. Since he now has the painting (and I didn't have a copy of Happy Guy with me), I decided to play Adidas In Heat.

After I got home from the trip it was off to another El Centro lunch with former New Liners, including Karen Petraglia who I haven't seen in about 9 years and Chris Stadler who I haven't seen in 13 years. Talk about a blast from the past!!

I haven't figured out yet what I will be doing on Monday, but I'm sure it will completely different from what I've played the last few weeks. I guess it's time to get working on Monday's show.