Monthly Archives: December 2016

884. Where to now, St Peter?

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Cool and soulful non-hit from Elton John‘s third album, 1970’s Tumbleweed Connection, which Philip Random maintains is his best “… mainly because it preceded the absurd levels of mega-hugeness that so devoured him by mid-decade. Apparently it’s a concept album concerning country themes, cowboys, dust, lust and, in the case of Where to Now St Peter? some heartfelt gospel yearning which truly sets the guy’s voice free. I mean, has any other white man, before or since, ever sung the word blue so thoroughly, completely, rhapsodically …?”

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885. breathing

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“A Kate Bush song (circa 1980) about nuclear horror apparently – even includes an eruption of heat and exterminating light toward the end.  Close your eyes so you won’t go instantly blind, then brace for the shock wave that removes you from time and space altogether. That seems to be the intent. What happens on a metaphysical level when suddenly an entire planet’s worth of souls are cut loose from the mortal coil? What kind of turmoil is there in heaven, hell, purgatory, all the other way stations?  At least that’s how Latetia explained it to me one long night of drinking tea and discussing apocalypse. She’d had these prophetic dreams, you see.” (Philip Random)

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886. killer

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“Some bands flirt with the edge. Van Der Graaf Generator routinely operated as if it didn’t exist. Though routine is probably the wrong word, there being nothing remotely normal about anything they ever released. As for Killer (found on their second proper album), I tend to think of it as a white shark’s blues, concerning as it does the travails of just such a creature, loveless, having never known love, forever prowling, forever hungry, never sated, just keep moving, keep eating – oblivion either way.” (Philip Random)

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23. The Solid Time Of Change

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Part Twenty-Three of the Solid Time of Change aired Saturday November-26-2016 c/o CiTR.FM.101.9.

Podcast (Solid Time starts a few minutes in). Youtube playlist (incomplete and not entirely accurate).

This continues to be Randophonic’s main focus, our overlong yet incomplete history of the so-called Prog Rock era (presented in countdown form) – 661 selections from 1965 through 1979 with which we hope to do justice to a strange and ambitious time indeed, musically speaking.

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Part Twenty-Three of the journey went as follows:

  1. Steve Hackett – ace of wands
  2. Camel – lunar sea
  3. Yes – astral traveler
  4. Led Zeppelin – the rain song
  5. Donovan- roots of oak
  6. Gentle Giant – experience
  7. Gentle Giant – I lost my head
  8. Velvet Underground – the murder mystery
  9. Supertramp – hide in your shell
  10. Frank Zappa – the torture never stops
  11. Grateful Dead – Blues for Allah
  12. Grateful Dead – sand castles + glass camels
  13. Grateful Dead – unusual occurrences in the desert

Fresh episodes air pretty much every Saturday night, starting 11 pm (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook.

887. if there is something

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The post Brian Eno, pre valiumized Roxy Music captured in full live force, taking an okay sort of half-country experiment from their first album and pumping it full of all kinds of delirious drama. Stick with it through the violin solo, the conclusion is as big and rich and mercurial as love itself. From 1976’s Viva! which was in fact recorded on Roxy’s 1974 tour.

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888. a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

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Leon Russell, everybody’s favourite underappreciated genius of the past fifty years, takes Bob Dylan’s surrealized hymn to ongoing apocalypse and renders it soulfully, gospelly, funkily (almost) fun. So much so that Dylan would be following that road himself in a few years through the land of rolling thunder.

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