BROADCAST #15
AIR DATE: 04-04-06

Hello Fanatics! I do hope you enjoyed the show tonight. Below is all the stuff we heard. If you want to download this show, http://www.rollins-archive.com/ is the place to go for that. I have done a 16 hour day and I am no good to anyone at this point so I will be signing off now. Good to be back on the radio and good to be back with all of you. Until next week. Hang in there and thanks for listening. Henry

Babs Gonzales – Dem Jive New York People: From Sunday Afternoon With Babs Gonzales At Small's Paradise. I was at the record the other night and walked by the Babs Gonzales section and stopped. It had been awhile since I checked to see if there was anything I hadn’t checked out before. I came upon the CD we checked out tonight. I have never heard any Babs I didn’t like so I went for it. What a cool record. Babs the great bop poet jazz man. He never really got all that famous but hung in there. I get the feeling he got by because he probably always had a line. We listened to him do Capitolizing on the 2004 show. You might be able to find his Weird Lullaby record online. Check out his book I, Paid My Dues. It’s not easy at all to find but it’s one-of-a-kind. Whoa! I just found a site with excerpts from the book, here ya go!: http://www.liquidatorgraphics.com/culture/ipaidmydues1.htm.

Konono N1 – Kule Kule: Engineer X, with his excellent taste in music taste in music, turned me onto Konono N1 from Kinshasa Congo. The band rocks hard with rudimentary gear with the main instrument being the likembe, or thumb piano. The likembe is put put through amplified distortion and the sound is like nothing I have ever heard before. X lent me their album Congotronics, which is a great racket of rhythm, whistles, singing and distorto thumb piano. It’s full-on! Hearing this record made me curious which lead me to check out their other album Lubuaku, which we heard a little of tonight. A perfect way to get out of the misery of Nascar Guy!

Metal Urbain – Lady Coca Cola: A room clearing device! I remember buying the Metal Urbain singles around the same time I discovered a split off of the band, Doctor Mix and the Remix. I really liked the singing and the harshness of the music. It was a great time in music for me. It was strange growing up listening to FM radio and my mother’s records, all good but all sonorous in their own way and then finding bands who went out of their way to make noise that some people would find repellent. I went right for that! I think I got the Metal Urbain Hysterie Connective and Paris Marquis singles at the same time I got the Doctor Remix No Fun single. Later on, I found the Lady Coca Cola single and the album. While in Europe in 1987, I think I found their L’age D’or LP set and the
Les Hommes Morts Sont Dangereu album, which are both compilations as far as I can tell. Then I found a CD version of one of these and then the good folks at Acute records put out the Anarchy In Paris CD recently and that’s what our playback source was tonight. Early and influential electo aggro! Sounds bon, non?!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – She Fell Away: From the Bad Seeds Your Funeral My Trial album. Nick and the band have done a lot of records over a lot of years and one is bound to favor some over others. Up until the mid 90’s, I saw a show from every tour these guys did and then at one point, I got really busy and couldn’t see them as often as I wanted to. I saw the tour they played a lot of the Funeral songs on. I think I saw a few shows of that tour. These songs were amazing live. Jack’s Shadow, Stranger Than Kindness, etc. Really strong stuff. I remember the first time I saw them play Stranger. I was working on the Hot Animal Machine record in Leeds UK and we took the night off to drive to Manchester and check out the Bad Seeds. It was a great show with a fantastic, drunken version of The Carnival Is Over at the end of the set. The LA show was interesting but not as good. This is one of my favorite periods of the band’s work. I saw them play twice last year. It was SO good. This record really takes me back.

The Cramps – The Mad Daddy: From the band’s first album Songs The Lord Taught Us. Mad Daddy is a tribute to one of the maddest of the mad, The Big Bopper. The first two Cramps singles, Human Fly and The Way I Walk and this album, all feature Bryan Gregory on guitar. To me, this is when they had their classic sound. The album that came after, Psychedelic Jungle had Kidd Congo on guitar and it’s great, just different. I saw the Bryan Gregory line-up play at least three of four times. Some of the best gigs ever. What a band.

The Big Bopper – Little Red Riding Hood: In case you didn’t know, J. Perry Richardson, aka The Big Bopper went down in the same plane as Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens on 02-03-59, known as “the day the music died”. In 2004, we listened to his songs Big Bopper’s Wedding Day and White Lightnin’. http://www.officialbigbopper.com/

Bowie – Helden (Heroes): This may have thrown you a little. Chances are, you’re familiar with the “regular” version of this song. This is the same track but with DB putting the vocal over in German. You think they would have put this as a CD extra on the actual Heroes album but they didn’t. Not on the Ryko release and not on the Virgin re-release. I was thinking about this song the other day and couldn’t remember where I had heard the German version. I remembered that it was on the Bowie  Sound + Vision box set. So, here it is, a familiar song that may sound a little new to you this time around. If you have never heard the Heroes album in its entirety, it’s one of Bowie’s best I think. That Bowie-Eno combination—not to be missed!

Air Miami - Special Angel: From the Me Me Me album on Teenbeat. By now, you now that I love this label. We have heard a lot of music from them. Flin Flon, Olympic Death Squad, Fontaine Toups, Mark Robinson, etc. Bridget Cross and Mark Robinson from Teenbeat band Unrest pair up for this album of cool pop music. I don’t know how many times I have played this one. Great in the headphones on long trips. Teenbeat info: http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/

The Adverts – Back From the Dead / Television’s Over: I want to play an entire single every once in awhile and not just a single song. This was one of the first punk singles I ever bought. Adverts vocalist and principal song writer is one of my favorite lyricists. Television’s Over has one my favorite lines of TV’s, “Are we being deserted, or let loose?” If you have never checked them out before, you should see if you can locate the ist album Crossing the Red Sea. There’s a single compilation as well as a record The Wonders Don’t Care, which comprises all their radio sessions. I also like their 2nd album Cast of Thousands. One of my favorite all time bands. Here’s some info: http://punk77.co.uk/groups/adverts.htm

Jimi Hendrix & Black Sabbath – Blue Suede Shoes: Two different workouts on the Carl Perkins classic. There’s a few versions of Hendrix doing this song. I like the one I found on the Loose Ends album. There’s some great chatter at the beginning where Hendrix and the band get the song together that’s pretty cool. The Sabbath version is from the Beat Club TV broadcast that can now be watched on the Sabbath Box on Warners / Rhino. The Sabbath version is great with Iommi rippin’ it up and Ozzy going nuts.

DNA – Egomaniac’s Kiss: From the DNA On DNA CD. New York No Wave. This CD ties up their single, compilation cuts and adds further rare tracks from their short career. Arto Lindsay, who played guitar in DNA has done a lot of great work over the years. His band the Ambitious Lovers were great and he’s worked with all kinds of people, Zorn, Eno, Sakamoto, etc. Melvin Gibbs who played in the Rollins Band has played on his records. Drummer Ikue Mori has worked with some ridiculous musicians like Marc Ribot, Susie Ibarra, the late Robert Quine, John Zorn, Mike Patton and Zeena Parkins. Lindsay and Mori work relentlessly it seems. DNA were part of a great and very influential period of music in NYC. They were one of the bands who made the blueprints for so many noise and avant bands that came later. When you see the people Lindsay and Mori have worked with, it reads like a who’s who of eclectica. There’s some laughable pretenders who were influenced by DNA but they pale in comparison. There’s a great thing that happens in periods of music where the bands don’t know what they are and for a time, things are wide open and very real. Then an awareness develops and it’s not the same anymore. The DNA stuff captures the beauty of that thing that doesn’t know it’s a thing yet.

The Tokens – Doom Lang: From the Time’s Square Records series. Another shot of Doo Wop. I know I put you Fanatics through a lot of this stuff but the songs are short! 

Oil Tasters – What’s In Your Mouth: Finally the Oil Tasters album is on CD. A great band from Milwaukee. For a long time, their material was some very hard-to-find vinyl but their stuff has been re-issued on this CD. Back in the early 80’s, the one track that got some college play was their song That’s When The Brick Goes Through The Window. That’s a great one but so is this one. If you liked this song, the rest is worth checking out.

Roky Erickson – The Interpreter: One of my favorite Roky songs. Roky’s doing better and better. I sure hope there’s an album in the works. I know we listen to a lot of Roky on this show. He’s one of my pals and one of my favorite musicians of all time.

Sort Sol – The Interpreter: The very mysterious Sort Sol from Denmark. In their orginal incarnation they were called The Sods and they put out a great album called Minutes To Go which is great. After that, they became Sort Sol. The sound expanded and the music went more in the pop direction but without losing any power. In fact, I think they got better. There’s something about them, perhaps it’s the sheer distance they have from busier parts of the world, the extreme weather, I don’t know. They do something to me though. Their albums are not the easiest things to find as I think none of them are made in America. I have been a fan for a long time and am in Denmark fairly often so I keep my eyes peeled whenever I’m in the record stores there. This song, a cover of the great Roky Erickson song can be found on a few Sort Sol records: Fog Things, Everything That Rises Must Converge and on a single with Blood On The Saddle on the other side. My favorite record of theirs is probably Dagger and Guitar.

The Controllers – Another Day: The Controllers, a short lived but really cool punk band from the beginnings the LA scene. Their singles were some of the first punk rock records I ever had. Their singles and compilation cuts have all been put on one CD called The Controllers on Dionysus Records. Easy to find online and worth it I think. I got this the other day, not knowing it was out until I somehow crossed paths with it online. Rocked it at the office as soon as I got it out of the box. Here’s a Controllers site: http://www.thecontrollers.net/.

The Fall – Bonkers In Phoenix (alt. version): From the greatly anticipated re-issue of 1995’s Cerebral Caustic. This edition comes with a 2nd CD of cool stuff including the Peel Session from this period but more interesting, it includes most of the album in rough mix form as well as alternate versions of One Day and Bonkers In Phoenix, which is the one we’re hearing here. This is one of my favorite songs on the album and it’s really cool hearing this alternate version. This is great stuff for Fall fanatics and this is a great Fall album. The new mastering sounds good. I got this on my day off in London the other day. Hopefully I will get time over the weekend to really sit down and listen to the rough mixes carefully. The Unofficial Fall site address: http://www.visi.com/fall/

Dead Meadow - Lady: From the first album Dead Meadow. Joe from Fugazi put this out on his label Tolotta years ago. Joe put out some great records on his label so I meant to play it but It kind of got buried in the pile and I went back out on the endless tour. Years (!) later, Keith Morris was over and he was looking at my CDs and he asked me why I didn’t have any Dead Meadow. The name immediately registered and I remembered that the CD was on this shelf of stuff I have not played yet. I went over and pulled it out. I asked him if this was was what he was talking about. He said yeah and why the hell had I not played it yet. So, I put it on and we checked it out. What a great band. Several days later, we were on tour and in a record store and Keith pointed out that the new DM record Shivering Kings And Others was out. I picked up and it was great as well. Kinda stoned Zeppelin / Hawkwind / Sabbath in feel but they are on their own. I looked around online and apparently, their first two albums on Tolotta are not all that easy to find. Hopefully Joe or someone will put them back in print. http://www.deadmeadow.com/.

Killing Joke – Complication: I remember when I was working at an ice cream store in 1980. We had a girl from England working there. I don’t remember her name. She had the thickest Cockney accent. She had to repeat herself all the time to make herself understood. She was really cool and had great taste in music. Killing Joke was her favorite band. I had not heard them at that time and only heard a few songs on the radio in the many years following. At one point I picked up their first album thinking it must have been the one she was really into. I like it a lot. I got some other records of theirs that are cool but this first one is my favorite. I don’t follow them really, played with them once 15 years ago and they were really intense but I never talked to them or anything but this record’s pretty cool.

Sado Sluts on Smack – Night Of The Living Dead: Steve from the Sado Sluts gave me his CD in 1996 or around then and I thought it was a really cool Thunders style workout. I looked around for info on this NYC band but didn’t find anything. Just one of those cool records you pick up on.