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.

857. kill for peace

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“Motron was right. I was wrong. It turns out the Fugs were the first genuinely Underground American outfit, certainly of psychedelic 60s. I was arguing hard for the Mothers of Invention, but no, it turns out the Fugs beat them to it. They weren’t as good as the Mothers, but that’s a different argument. Kill For Peace (from the Fugs’ Second Album by which point the Mothers were in the game) certainly set things straight about what was going down over in Vietnam: if you don’t like foreigners and their strange habits and customs, then kill them, for peace, because if we don’t, the Chinese will. It stands to reason.” (Philip Random)

fuggs-1966

858. no killing

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“The first two Violent Femmes albums were so strong that The Blind Leading the Naked was always going to disappoint. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t give us a few cool nuggets, most notably No Killing, a charged number that felt infused with all the evil sh** we were hearing out of various lost zones in Central America (or perhaps Milwaukee) – CIA trained death squads on the roam, doing their worst so tinpot el prezidentes could maintain power, and the good ole Yankee dollar forever flourish. Same as it ever was.” (Philip Random)

violentfemmes-blindleading

859. all the way from Memphis

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Mott the Hoople at peak glam let it rip with one of those ain’t-life-on-the-road-a-drag raveups that makes it sound so damned fun you want to quit everything and join the first half-assed band that crosses your path, and never return, just go-go-go … at least as far as Memphis.

mott-live1973-2

860. there goes my gun

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“I heard the Pixies pretty much right out of the box. I even liked them. But for some reason, I just didn’t care that much. Blame hip-hop, I guess, which was kicking seriously hard at the time, ripping shit up all over. Guitar based rock music just didn’t seem that relevant anymore, regardless of how tight, explosive, intense, poetic, funny it was.  I was wrong, which I finally figured out once Doolittle showed up.” (Philip Random)

pixies-doolittle

861. custard pie

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A Led Zeppelin rocker from 1975’s Physical Graffiti, but for Philip Random, it was more of a 1988 record. “A pivotal year for me. At the time, it was just something to be endured, one of those phases where the winter winds never stopped howling, even in the middle of summer (figuratively speaking of course). The Winter of Hate we ended up calling it. Aliens with a hunger for human flesh had taken over all the world’s governments and the only thing worth laughing about was that nothing was funny anymore. Musically, this manifested in a lot of pure raw noise as even punk/hardcore wasn’t really fierce enough anymore. Or maybe I was jonesing for some honest, raw, nasty blues – the kind of stuff Led Zeppelin had in ample supply on their biggest, longest, last truly great album. Man did it sound right!”

ledzeppelin-1975

862. Key

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“In which Canada’s The Guess Who, on the verge of genuine BIGness (they’d be outselling the Beatles in 1970), smell the wheat and get cosmic, reference the Bible and otherwise lay down the elusive truth for all god’s children. Seriously, note the title. It’s not The Key, but simply, significantly, psychedelically KEY.” (Philip Random)

guesswho-1969