May 18, 2009 - Girls, Girls, Girls.....songs!

Last Friday night I was talking to John while he was on his way home. On the way he stopped for a 6-pack of beer and a couple Barbie coloring books. One of those things was for him and the other was for his 5-year old daughter. I'm still trying to figure out which one went to whom. Because of the Barbie books, I brought up the John Hiatt song, The Wreck Of The Barbie Ferrari. That song got us on to the topic of "girl" songs. Because of that conversation, I decided that this week's theme should be songs with girls names in the title. Since the guest this week was Julie Peel, it all sort of fell together. Unfortunately, Barbie didn't make the cut. I'm saving her for a different show.


On Saturday morning I started pulling music out to send to John and after about five minutes, I already had over 40 songs to send. If I delve deeper into my collection, I'm sure I could come up with a couple hundred more songs, but with 40+ songs to start, I'm sure I will be revisiting this theme several times in the near future.

The Julie Peel interview was pretty interesting. John, as usual, had technical problms at the beginning, but fortunately, everything was worked out and the interview went well. Because the school year has finished, that guy whose name I won't use will not be on the air after us. That means we can run past 10:00pm if we feel like it, and we did. We started with Glen Burtnik about 9:15pm and ended with Frank Zappa around 10:25pm. I got to play 11 of the 15 songs that I sent for the week, which is pretty good. Here is what I played:


Glen Burtnick - Here Comes Sally
The Men - Goodnight Sally
The Spongetones - Lana-Nana
Brian Charles - Christine
Psychodots - Stella
Don Dixon - Helen
Jason Falkner - Wicked Annabella
The Pursuit Of Happiness - Carmalina
Steve Wynn - Carolyn
Richard X. Heyman - Pauline
Frank Zappa - Sharleena


Last week, John threw out a song lyric and asked if anyone knew who it was. It was from Come Dancing by The Kinks. I thought is was too easy and I knew that if anyone in my family was listening, they would get it immediately. My sister Debbie was listening and she agreed that it was too easy. Because of that, I had to play Jason Falkner's cover of the great "unknown" Kinks classic off one of the best Kinks album ever: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society.


I've also been threatening for a year now to play some Frank Zappa. Tonight seemed like a good time to finally do it. Frank recorded two versions of Sharleena. The first one came out in 1970 on the album Chunga's Revenge and the remake came out in 984 on the album Them Or Us. I chose the newer version because it featured a guitar solo by a then 14-year old Dweezil Zappa. Now that Dweezil is touring the world playing Frank's music, it seemed fitting. It was also the last song of the night, so who knows if anyone was still listening at that point. I will be playing the 1970 version at some point in the future.


My very first show was May 19, 2008, which means that I have now been doing this for a year. There will be no show next week because next Monday is Memorial Day. So, on June 1st we will officially celebrate my 1st anniversary on the show. John has told me I get the whole show again and I will most likely head down to Virginia to do the show live with him once again. I've got a few ideas what I want to do for the anniversary show. You can count on some music by some of the bands that I feature regularly, including The BB's, Psychodots and Don Dixon. Other than that, I'm thinking of going back to my mid to late 90's NYC music past an playing some of the bands that I saw regularly like Cheater, Grummer, Valentine Smith, Blood Sugar, Julia Greenberg, The Gravel Pit and others. Hopefully I can get some of those people to tune in and listen on June 1st. It should be a good show. I'm definitely looking forward to it. See you in two weeks!


(instead of posting pictures from the artists that I played this week, I chose to keep with the theme and post pictures that I have taken of several of my female friends. If they see their picture, then at least I know that they have checked the blog out at least once. What kind of comments will I get? Probably none, but you never know...)

Update- I changed one of the pictures at their request, so now you are stuck with my face in here too. Sorry about that!

May 11, 2009 - New Things

After last week's show, I asked John Campbell if he had any suggestions for this week. He told me that I should choose songs from some of the most recent cd's that I have picked up. I had just picked up new albums from The Smithereens, Cracker, Steve Wynn and The Milk & Honey Band, plus reissues from The Dukes Of Stratosphear. Then, later in the week, I heard from Lou Luca that The BB's had just released a new song called Carrie. That gave me the last song that I needed for the week.


Carrie was written by Ron Cianciaruso as a tribute to his mother, who passed away in 1988. Lou Luca added beautiful music to Ron's lyrics and sang his heart out on the song. Ron sent me a little spoken word intro that we played along with the song and playing it the day after Mother's Day seemed very appropriate.



As for the other stuff for this week...
The Smithereens have just released the latest installment to their "re-recording the classics" series. This time they have covered The Who's Tommy. They cut it down to 13 tracks and about 43 minutes of Classic Who rock, Smithereens style!

Last week Cracker released their 11th album, Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey. The Milk And Honey Band has a new album called Dog Eared Moonlight and Steve Wynn And The Dragon Bridge Orchestra have just released a live album and DVD, Live In Belgium. On top of that, John managed to dig up the Donohue theme song which I thought he had lost (he had, but now has found). Anyway, here is what was played:



The Smithereens - Go To The Mirror
Joe Marra with The BB's - Donohue Theme
The BB's - Carrie
The Smithereens - Sensation
Steve Wynn - Slovenian Rhapsody (live)
The Milk And Honey Band - Just You
Cracker - Time Machine
The Dukes Of Stratosphear - You're My Drug
Cracker - Darling One
The Dukes Of Stratosphear - Shiny Cage

There was no show to kick us off the air, so we ran a little over. That meant I got close to an hour, which was very cool. Next week we get to do it all over again and then on June 1st, we will have a special show for my one year anniversary. I'm definitely looking forward to that one!

May 4, 2009 - Richard X. Heyman, Tommy Keene & Matt Keating

This week started out with bad news and good news. The bad news was that Don Dixon made the announcement that he would no longer be touring because it just wasn't cost effective any more. But the good news is that Dixon has agreed to be a guest on the show. I can't wait for that to happen since he is one of my all-time favorites (which you probably know if you have been reading this blog). John managed to see Dixon and The Jump Rabbits last month in Virginia. It was his first time seeing him and he was impressed. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the show in Long Branch and after Don's announcement, I'm very upset that I couldn't make it to the show. But at least I saw them last June and I got to see Arrogance back in March, which were both great shows. Now what to play for this week?


Several months ago, I had decided to spotlight Richard X. Heyman. I pulled out all of his cd's and started to figure out what I wanted to play. Then at some point while I was putting all of this together, I had new inspiration and went in a completely different direction. I figured I would use Heyman at a later date. A couple weeks ago, when Chris Arduser was on the show, he mentioned to John, off the air, that he should check out Richard X. Heyman. John told me this and I said "yes you should". I decided at that point that now was a good time to finally get to RXH. In addition to him, I decided to include two other solo artists that I am a big fan of: Matt Keating and Tommy Keene.

All three artists are big favorites of mine and I wish more people knew who they were. I've seen Heyman live twice but have never seen Keene and Keating. Hopefully one day. I managed to get nine tracks played during my 45 minutes. The more music I get to play, the better it is. Here is what I played.


Richard X. Heyman - Too Little Too Late
Richard X. Heyman - Civil War Buff
Richard X. Heyman - Hoosier (Girl)
Richard X. Heyman - Sidetracked
Tommy Keene - Places That Are Gone
The Keene Brothers - Evil vs. Evil
Tommy Keene - Don't Sleep In The Daytime
Matt Keating - Emily
Matt Keating - Pull Some Strings (demo)

I thought we were going to play The Doughboys version of Too Little Too Late, but John played the solo version instead. Maybe we'll play the Doughboys version on a future show.



One interesting note. Tommy Keene was mentioned in the George Pelecanos novel The Sweet Forever. One of the main characters went to see Keene perform live in the book. Pelecanos is a very good crime novelist with great taste in music and if you don't know who he is, check him out at http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/georgepelecanos/index.html