July 23, 2012 - New Music

We were supposed to have a show last week but John wasn't feeling well and cancelled the show. That pushed back what I had planned for last week until this week. We've been doing this for over a month, and I had not played much in terms of new releases. So this week I decided to play nothing but songs released in 2012.

John had no guest scheduled for the first hour of the show, so instead he played music and rambled on for an hour like only John Campbell could. Then at 9pm he brougth me on. I had promised Lou Luca that I would play a new song that he has been working on, called Happy. John, however, didn't have the song downloaded before the show. It took him about 20 minutes to get everything working, but he finally did play the song, albeit and abbreviated version of the song. I think it's a great song and I hope to play more "works in progress" from the upcoming Luca Boys release in the coming week.

So, what exactly did I play? Here is the list. Drivin' N' Cryin' - REM Onward, Soldiers - Monsters The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Where's The Rock Alejandro Escovedo - Common Mistake Jack White - I'm Shakin' The dB's - I Didn't Mean To Say That Rhett Miller - Love Grows The Luca Boys - Happy Flying Colors - Love Is What I'm Waiting For Jellyfish - Calling Sarah (Live) Guided By Voices - Blue Babbleships Bay Squackett - Divided Self

What have I got in mind for next week's show? I think I'll go back to one of the old stand-bys. I'll do an entire hour of songs with a girl's name in the title. How does that sound? Hope you'll listen next week......oh who am I kidding? No one is reading this blog. I'm doing this strictly as a record of what I've been playing. Maybe someone will stumble on it some day and check out some of the songs. Anyway, thanks for stopping in!

July 9, 2012 - John interviews Kurt Reil, etc.

Now that I'm actually updating my blog again, I'm going to try to update it each week in a timely manner. We'll see if that actually happens, or if I get lazy again!

This week's show included John's interview with Kurt Reil of the Grip Weeds. During the interview he played three songs from the brand new live Grip Weeds cd, Speed Of Live. The songs that he played were Salad Days, The Law and Close To The Sun. I had a couple Grip Weeds songs lined up to play, but it was decided to go in a different direction.

When I was putting the music together for this show (which was actually about three weeks ago), I wasn't sure if I liked my selections. I thought I could have done better. Then after not thinking about these songs for almost three weeks, I went into the show thinking the same thing. Once the show started, I liked my choices more, but John told me I picked some great stuff this week. Does the fact that John Campbell liked my selections mean that I was correct in my original thinking? Maybe! Anyway, here are the songs that we ended up playing:

The Rooks - Down The Doughboys - Nobody's Girl Guided By Voices - Roll Of The Dice, Kick In The Head The Bongos - The Bulrushes The Rooks - Do You Have God? Richard X. Heyman - Branded In The Sky The Wyld Olde Souls - Give It To You Butterfly Jones - Wonder Throwback Suburbia - Setting Sun The Oohs - Saturday Morning Dream Possum Dixon - Executive Slacks Black Hllies - Paisley Pattern Ground

Originally, the Wyld Olde Souls song was supposed to be I Talk To The Wind (the King Crimson cover), but John misplaced that one so we played Give It To You Instead. I also suggested to him THREE TIMES that we playe Mr. Sad from the band True Love, but that never happened either. Maybe later in the summer these will see the light of day.

We do have a show next week. I know, it seems like we haven't been on two weeks in a row. We've only had 3 legitimate shows in our first 6 weeks back. But next week we will be here and we should be here for the rest of the summer. To change it up a little bit, I'm thinking of playing nothing but new stuff. Tune in next Monday to see if I follow through on that. Hope to see you then!

June 25, 2012 - NO SHOW TONIGHT!

We were all set to do tonight's show. John had an interview with Kurt Reil. I had some good tunes picked out to play. John got to the studio and the board was not working. I guess some things never change. So instead of doing the show, John went home in a rather unpleasant mood. We were both looking forward to the show and we were going to have many Grip Weeds fans tuning in. Next Monday, John will be in New Jersey and I will be on my way back from Ohio (where I will be seeing PSYCHODOTS for the first time since 1994), so there will be no show on July 2nd. Our next show will be July 9th and we hope to air our planned show from tonight on that day. Enjoy your July 4th Holiday!

June 18, 2012 - Cover To Cover

Tonight's show took place on Paul McCartney's birthday as well as John Campbell's birthday. One of them turned 70 and the other one turned 43. A couple years ago we did a show on my birthday and now John gets his due. As a special treat, Paul Weller recorded a version of The Beatles Birthday and made it available for purchase for just that one day. I told John that he should be honored to have Paul Weller do that for his 70th birthday. Then John reminded me that it was that OTHER GUY who turned 70. Oops! My bad. Either way, it was kinda cool to be able to play this song on the day of its release.

I had a couple songs that I wanted to play and they turned out to be cover songs. To make it easier on myself, I decided to play nothing but cover songs. It wasn't as easy as you might think. I started out with about 90 songs. I whittled that down to 50, and then took it down to 20. Of those 20, we played 16 of them. We got that many in because we ran over about half an hour. Here is a list of what we played, with the artist and song, along with the original artist in parentheses:

Paul Weller - Birthday (The Beatles) The Continental Drifters - I Can't Let Go (The Hollies) Blood Sugar - Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix Experience) Def Leppard - Rock On (David Essex) Eddie Money - When I Come Around (Green Day) Styx - Find The Cost Of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash) Whip - White Wedding (Billy Idol) The Wallflowers - Lawyers, Guns & Money (Warren Zevon) Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Second Hand News (Fleetwood Mac) Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy & Randy George - Lido Shuffle (Boz Scaggs) Juliana Hatfield & Tanya Donnelly - Josie & The Pussycats (Josie & The Pussycats) The Knack - I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock & Roll) (Dave Edmunds/Rockpile) Damone - Just What I Needed (The Cars) Pat DiNizio - For No One (The Beatles) Michael Carpenter & The Cuban Heels - Nature's Way (Spirit) Johnette Napolitano - Hurting Each Other (The Carpenters)

Next week John will be interviewing Kurt Reil from The Grip Weeds. I'm sure I'll come up with a few things that are directly related to Kurt and some other stuff that just sounds good. Hope you can tune in!

June 11, 2012 - Our First New Show of the Summer that COUNTS!

After last week's fiasco, things could only get better, right? John made sure to avoid the same problems by putting everything he was going to use onto cd's. That included his interview with Lori Diamond and Fred Abatelli and all the music that I sent him for the week.

I was told the show went well. We were back to our familiar roles. John being a complete idiot and me having no tolerance for him. Isn't that what good radio's all about? The music that I played was the same basic stuff that I had planned for the previous week. Here's what we played.

dada - Dorina The Red Button - Running Away The Luca Boys - Sunset Island Music Flying Colors - Kayla The Atlantics - Lonelyhearts Pousette-Dart Band - Amnesia Nancy Sinatra - Run For Your Life Frank Ciampi - Little Girl The Sugarplastic - Radio Jejune The Deadbeat Poets - The Truth About Flying Saucers

I was very happy to be able to play a new song from The Luca Boys and can't wait until they have more for me to play. After that, it was a hodgepodge collection of new and old, going all the way back to the "interesting" Beatles cover from Nancy Sinatra.

Next week John's interview will be Doug Yowell and I will be playing something, but I have no idea what that will be. Things are starting to feel normal again so hopefully next week will be good too.

June 4, 2012 - False Start!

Welcome Back (if anyone is actually reading)! It's been 15 months since John and I have done a show and yes, we did actually miss it. A lot has happened in those 15 months, but most importantly, John decided that we should resurrect the show for the summer of 2012. After a couple half-hearted threats, I agreed to continue the show with him and we decided that June 4th would be the 1st show. John went to the studio in May and was excited about the brand new board and the other "upgrades" that had taken place in the previous 15 months. June 4th arrived and we were ready to begin again.......... Unfortunately, the first show was a complete trainwreck. John couldn't get anything to work. He could only play music from cd's. His interview was unable to be played and none of the music that I selected was able to be played. I thought about letting him suffer, but I decided to call in and share in his misery. We played off each other as good (or bad) as ever. John played some music, but it wasn't anything that I picked. I don't even remember what was played. I'm pretty sure there was some Foo Fighters and some Chris Richards but other than that, I've tried to block it out. It's really too bad that we had a fairly large audience for our first show back and they didn't get to hear what we are all about. Oh well. With a start this bad, we can only go up, right? Please tell me we can only go up! See you next week!