Author Archives: Randophonic

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About Randophonic

For now, I'm best thought of as a radio program. Sometimes it may seem I'm all the work of one person, other times many. What matters is the program.

604. For Calvin + his next two hitchhikers

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“Everybody’s got that Frank Zappa track which, for whatever reason, hooked them into realizing, holy sh**, this guy’s way more than just a hippie weirdo with a dirty sense of humour. For me, don’t ask me why, it was For Calvin and His Next Two Hitchhikers. Maybe it was the relaxed yet deranged bigness of sound, because The Grand Wazoo was definitely a big sounding endeavor. Maybe it was the oddly incomplete story being told concerning the two dudes in the back of the car. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Did they find a sandwich? Did they eat it in the dark? And why do I care? Maybe it was that leakage from the drain in the night. Early 1980s sometime. There were probably psychedelics involved.” (Philip Random)

zappa-1973

605. just like Tom Thumb’s blues

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“The people I feel sorry for are the ones who try to make definitive sense of a Bob Dylan lyric, particularly the stuff from his pre-motorcycle-crash-peak-amphetamine (and whatever else) period. I mean, take the first two lines of Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues. When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Eastertime too – And your gravity fails And negativity don’t pull you through. You can go anywhere from there. Or nowhere. Which is the whole point, of course. Maybe. What I mean is, I first heard it when I was maybe fourteen, three decades ago now, and I’m sure I’ve heard it hundreds of times since, but I still couldn’t tell you what any of it’s actually about. Not a single line. And I don’t care. It takes me regardless, maybe nowhere at all. And if you don’t get the appeal in all that, then there’s someone you need to meet. His name is Mr. Jones.” (Philip Random)

dylan-1966-03

606. revolution blues

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As the story goes, Neil Young had a peripheral connection to Charles Manson. They weren’t exactly buddies, yet there was a sort of passing amity that perhaps could only have existed in the old hippie days of 1960s Los Angeles, the weird scenes up Laurel Canyon in particular. That was before all the slaughter, of course. After which Mr. Young found a way to get his impressions into at least one song, in particular the part about getting armed to the teeth, hopping into dune buggies, then swarming down the canyon, exterminating everyone they saw, particularly all the hippie rock star types who hadn’t let Chuck join their club. Which was a scheme that he never got around to executing. There were a bunch of those.

NeilYoung-1974-2

607. Telegram Sam

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“I did hear Telegram Sam at least once way back when, and my immediate teeny bop take was, ‘this sounds exactly like that other T-Rex song‘. And I was right. But ultimately, wrong. Because what I was really referring to was T-Rex‘s groovy, funky, rockin’ one in a trillion sound. Which I didn’t really get for at least another decade, which is when Bauhaus’s rather raucous take on Telegram Sam nudged me into paying attention again. Pop for the ages, glamorous and forever cool.” (Philip Random)

T-Rex-crowd-1972

608. friction

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The title track from Television’s Marquee Moon is such a monster that it’s easy to forget the rest of the album, none of which is remotely average. Friction makes the list for the title alone, being such an apt description of the Television sound — that shrill, gleaming thing that happens when you rub two other things together that maybe you shouldn’t, and then you rub them a little harder and it gets even better, tearing a hole in the reality barrier that can never be fully mended, and a good thing too.

Television-1977

609. Rudy can’t fail

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“It took me a while to properly discover Rudy Can’t Fail – probably because I wasn’t playing side one of London Calling that much. Because I’d already heard the lead off title track a pile by the time I actually owned it. And it’s not as if there was anything lacking on the other four sides, The Clash being at the absolute peak of their attainments. Anyway, a summer day, 1984 I think, a mostly empty beach on one of the local islands, me and a few friends and a ghetto blaster. All of us rich kids (sort of), none of us remotely rich, all of us at that point in our lives where we were having to start think seriously about our futures, our careers. Go to law school. Go to business school. Get into real estate. Get a job at a bank. Do whatever our dads did. We were smoking a little dope, drinking a few beers, and suddenly Rudy came on care of the current mixtape, and it was exactly what my universe needed. Something to do with freedom and art having a way better groove than f***ing economics. It’s been on the personal playlist ever since. And I never did find a career.” (Philip Random)

clash-1979-2