Monthly Archives: March 2018

001. The Final Countdown*

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Installment #1 of The Final Countdown aired Saturday-March-10-2018 (c/o CiTR.FM.101.9).

Tracks available on this Youtube playlist  (not entirely complete or accurate).

The Final Countdown* shall be our longest, most random and (if we’re doing it right) relevant countdown yet. Which is rather a long of way saying, we’re not one hundred percent sure yet what it’s all about – just the end of result of a long and convoluted process that finally evolved into something halfway tangible this past February. Which is itself rather hard to explain, so it’s probably best to just to listen to the radio show one week at a time (most weeks anyway) for as long as it takes, and it will take a while.

FINAL-01

Installment #1 went as follows:

1297. Percy Faith + Orchestra – Theme From a Summer Place
1296. Cut Copy – Future
1295. Brian Eno – China My China
1294. Bullion – I just wasn’t made for these times
1293. BGM – People Got to Be Free
1292. Gabor Csupo – Nomad Rap Shadow
1291. Dr. John – big chief
1290. 2 Badcard – Noise Polluters
1289. Genesis – in the beginning
1288. Air – dirty trip
1287. Residents – nice old man
1286. Scott Walker – Montague Terrace (in blue)
1285. Mashmakhan – Letter from Zambia
1284. Creatures – ice house
1283. The Do – Tammie
1282. Ellen Foley- torchlight
1281. Bob Dylan – million dollar bash
1280. Terry Edwards + the Scapegoats – version city
1279. Cosmic Invention – ryugin
1278. Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete + Friends – star song
1277. Lee Scratch Perry + Mad Professor – dub those crazy baldheads
1276. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – earth the circle [parts 1+2]

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

 

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497. carry on till tomorrow

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“The Badfinger story didn’t end well. But let’s not hang on that. Let’s focus instead on how glad I am that they existed, how superb so much of their music was. And for many, that started with Carry On Till Tomorrow (epic and sad and the definition of Beatlesque) running through the opening credits of The Magic Christian – the one where Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr join forces to prove (over and over) that everyone has their price.” (Philip Random)

Badfinger-MagicCROP

498. dancing with the moonlit knight

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“It’s true. In 1973, Genesis were the definition of sophisticated, underground cool. Certainly too cool for local Vancouver radio which barely played them. But you heard about them anyway from various cool older brothers and sisters, or saw an occasional photo in something like Creem magazine. It was always about the live show, like Alice Cooper but completely different, not for teeny bops. And then I finally heard them and it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. How could it be? It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. So delicate and then not. So powerful and strange. The album was Selling England by the Pound. The first song was Dancing with the Moonlit Knight. Like dropping the needle into a dense and beautiful dream that you probably weren’t ready for, but here it was anyway. Something to do with England being in big trouble. The Pound was falling, the empire was fading, it was the worst of times, it was the very best of music.” (Philip Random)

Genesis-1973-GabrielLiberty

499. done changed my way of living

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“It says 1968 on the record jacket but this Taj Mahal stomper is pure 1998 for me, serving as a personal anthem while I scaled back certain extremes of lifestyle, making that decision that most of us make as we see our forties looming – to not just burn out, but to change, because change is good, certainly the kind you choose to make. Like maybe opening your mind, maybe starting to actually ‘get’ the blues. Not just the obvious stuff, howling and mean. No, the real stuff, or real enough anyway, whatever Taj Mahal was digging up and dealing out way back when.” (Philip Random)

TajMahal-1968-withBIRDS

500. guns of Brixton

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“More than any other track, I’m thinking Guns of Brixton is what hooked me to the Clash. Because as much as I’d enjoyed their punk and powerful raving and drooling, this was obviously something else. Reggae, I guess, but not really. Because there’s way more going on here than just some white people ripping off Jamaican sounds, making it all sound like tourist music. Nah, Guns of Brixton is dangerous. What do you do when the cops bust in?” (Philip Random)

Clash-1979-room

501. 16 tons

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The album title Wereldsuccessen says it all (a Dutch double vinyl compilation that I grabbed one day at a yard sale). Because by 1970, Mr. Tom Jones was an international monster, a force of passion and life that had more or less conquered all comers be they hip or straight, cool or absurd, and all by taking none of it remotely seriously. Except maybe when he took on 16 Tons, the old mining song, his Welsh blood rising, giving voice to who knows how many ghosts.

TomJones-1970-cookingSteak

502. country death song

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The Violent Femmes‘ debut album tends to get most of the hype, but the follow up Hallowed Ground is better. It goes deeper, rocks harder, bites more fiercely, covers more ground. And it kicks off with Country Death Song, a murder ballad that gets all the more harrowing when you realize that Gordon Gano was still in high school when he wrote it.  The opposite of a feel-good unless you just can’t enough of that those toe tapping backwoods American myths and legends and brutal truths.

violentFEMMES-1984-promo

003. reSEARCH – courage + yarbles

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Installment #3 of what we’re calling The Research Series aired Sunday, March-25-2018.

The third of a planned forty-nine movies, each forty-nine minutes long, featuring no particular artist, working no particular theme, pursuing no particular agenda beyond boldly going … who knows? Or as Werner Von Braun once put it, “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” And we definitely have no idea where all this will take us.

reSEARCH-03

003. reSEARCH – courage + yarbles

Boards of Canada – geodaddi
Amorphous Androgynous – swab
Pink Floyd – the narrow excerpt
Skip Spence – books of Moses
Bob Dylan – Visions of Johanna [live]
Holger Czukay – boat woman [excerpt]
Jon Hassel – courage
Randophonic – MASH immaculate
Fall – to nkroachment/yarbles
Beans – all planets
Grandaddy – he’s simple he’s dumb he’s the pilot [part 2]
Led Zeppelin – Bron-Y-Aur

Further installments of the Research Stuff will air most Sundays at approximately 1am (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options usually available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

 

503. I Travel

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“Back in the very early 1980s, before they became huge, absurd and even stupider than their name implied, Simple Minds were pretty darned cool. Smart modern beats and grooves that weren’t afraid to be dance-able. Lots of pumped up sonics, often machine driven, but hinting at an inner light. And they were strong live. I’m guessing I Travel was about being on the road, not that I ever bothered to study it. Just did what it was telling me, which was hit the dance floor, shake off the ghosts, be glad I was alive in interesting times.” (Philip Random)