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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.

815. rambling on

“I came across Procol Harum‘s second album (Shine on Brightly) sometime in the teenybop blur of my very early teens. My friend Joseph had it, grabbed from his older sister who’d lost interest. We played it a lot, getting off on the ‘out there’ lyrics and the not too shabby songs that gave them room to move. The rather aptly titled Rambling On concerns a guy who sees a Batman movie and decides he can fly, which doesn’t make sense because everybody knows that Batman can’t fly. Eventually the guy comes crashing to earth but doesn’t get hurt, just tears his underclothes. Not exactly on par with Bob Dylan’s symbolist offerings (which is how people were thinking of these guys at the time) but good, solid psychedelic fun regardless.” (Philip Random)

816. not to touch the earth

“I didn’t really twig to this track until I saw the Doors movie, which I realize I’m not supposed to like (or am I?), the whole thing just being so absurdly over the top — Val Kilmer chewing not just the cheap studio scenery, but great chunks of the Mojave desert as well. Except it’s true, all that excess. The psychedelic 60s were that weird, eruptive, wild, kicking into overdrive by 1967, blowing through to the darkness beyond the ozone by 1968, which is where Not To Touch The Earth comes in. You’re so high you’re not sure if you’re worm or a god, or maybe just some long dead Indian who snuck into your eggshell skull during a thunderstorm in the desert when you were still a small boy.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

817. ever fallen in love

In which the Buzzcocks unleash a short, sharp fever of pure and beautiful pop with punk in its soul.  Or is it the other way around?  One thing is clear. They were one of (if not the first) bands to have it both ways, and we’ll forever love them for that. Just because you’re mad as hell doesn’t mean you can’t be pretty, too.

Buzzcocks-1978

818. Alphabet Street

 

Alphabet Street being the lead off track from the last truly great Prince album, 1988’s Lovesexy. “We didn’t realize it at the time but he really did have to reign things in, else there would have been no reason for humanity continuing, God’s own paradise of peace and love and f***ing having been achieved here on earth by Prince Rogers Nelson’s unstoppable cavalcade of genius.” (Philip Random)

(photo: Lynn Goldsmith)

819. the perfect cut [piece of meat]

Wherein suburban tape pirates Negativland get busy with pretty much every oversweet MOR pop song and radio jingle from the 1970s, (and the tapes that prove the brain control conspiracy at hand) grind everything together in an overripe mush and leave us all laughing at the fact that nothing is really funny anymore. Shut up. Stop complaining. Have another piece of meat.

meatboy

820. ambitious

“Speaking of Wire, I finally paid attention to them in 1987 when, after more than seven years doing various solo and other things, the four original members recombined with the The Ideal Copy (and some dynamite single-only releases). Ambitious gets the nod here because it’s more or less the title track, and it does a sharp, tidy job of touching on all manner of essential 1980s topics such as paranoia, the Cold War, competing intelligence agencies and, of course, the ever present end of the world.” (Philip Random)

wire-1987