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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.

982. adjust me

As stipulated in the liner notes for Hawkwind’s second album, “The spacecraft Hawkwind was found by Captain RN Calvert of the Société Astronomæ (an international guild of creative artists dedicated in eternity to the discovery and demonstration of extra-terrestrial intelligence) on 8 July 1971 in the vicinity of Mare Librium near the South Pole.” The album in question was In Search of Space and it clarified a key point. Hawkwind were not just tripped out hippies mucking around with echo chambers and whatever, but rather genuine explorers of the vastness of all eternity. And Lemmy was playing bass.

Hawkwind-live1971

983. street parade

Second of two in a row from side five of Sandinista! (the Clash’s longest album, if not its best). “To say it was a hard sell to many of their early fans is the definition of understatement. It Was Hated (and still is by some) for being all the things that was truly great about it, which is to say, driven by the ultimately punk attitude of saying f*** it, London Calling’s made us bigger than we ever dreamed of being, let’s see how far we can push things by just diving into the music, all music, anything that interests us, the whole mad street parade. In my particular case, the arrival on the local Terminal City scene of some genuinely strong and clean LSD probably assisted in my seeing things in this regard.” (Philip Random)

984. Kingston advice

First of two in a row from side five of Sandinista, the Clash’s largest album if not its best. London Calling gets all the glory, of course, but there is a serious argument to be made that Sandinista is every bit its equal if only for all the tangents it explores – dubs, re-dubs, versions, visions. As if these four guys (and their various studio compadres) somehow managed to digest the whole weird, wild, primed-to-explode world of 1980 and jam it into six long playing sides of vinyl – not world music so much as what the world actually sounded like. Must be a clash – there’s no alternative.

clash-1981Bonds

985. woman drum

“Krautrock weirdoes Guru Guru get as close as they ever got to a normal rock and roll song in what appears to be an attempt at an actual radio friendly single. Nice try, guys. It would’ve been new to the world in around 1973, but I didn’t heard it until least ten years later. Punk and then post-punk had to blow through, eviscerate all my suburban preconceptions before I was ready for such an elevated strangeness.” (Philip Random)

986. James Bond

The Selecter being one of one of a rash of party strong 2-Tone ska revival bands to hit the UK scene in the late 1970s. James Bond being a killer cover of the famous movie theme – sort of.  Steal the riff and run with it is more like it.

Selecter-live

987. the dream

You had to love the cover of Tupelo Chain Sex’s Spot the Difference. Little punk kid sporting a Ronald Reagan Adolph Hitler t-shirt, getting pulled two ways at once. But the real treasure was the music. Not just another hardcore band from LA, these guys had former Frank Zappa alumni Sugarcane Harris in their midst (not to mention a guy named Stumuk blowing a monster sax) and thus were brilliantly all over the place. Reggae, dub, ska, jazz, rockabilly, hardcore – everything, with lead off track The Dream (an extrapolation on an old Cab Calloway hit) serving as a whip smart intro to what remains one of the great (mostly) forgotten albums of any era.

Tupelo Chain Sex - Spot the Difference