Random Propaganda IX

I haven’t done one of these in ages – and there have been way too many obituaries in this space lately – so here goes the music spinner…

8:38 pm… Rolling Stones * A Bigger Bang – ‘Rough Justice’ is a pretty good song, but the lyrics are just ridiculous. As a knighted, 65 year-old man, Mick Jagger probably oughtn’t be singing about his package so gleefully…

8:42 pm… Rakim * Book Of Life – The MC of Eric B & Rakim inlcuded the greatest hits disc The 18th Letter (that’s ‘R’ for those of you with counting/spelling issues) with the release of his album Book Of Life. Hearing ‘I Ain’t No Joke’ – fine vintage beats and rhymes. This never, ever gets old… fine wine etc…

8:45 pm… Mark Lanegan Band * Bubblegum – I never been any kind of Screaming Trees fan, but I think Mark Lanegan’s solo stuff is uniformly excellent. It’s got a doom-laden, frayed cloth quality that I just can’t get enough of.

8:48 pm… Radiohead * In Rainbows – Yeah, ok, I didn’t pay anything for the cd copy – somebody passed it along on CDR (thanks Tony N). But I did shell out fifteen bucks for the LP version of the album, so there. I was surprised by how accessible this album is… I thought Radiohead had moved into an incomprehensible netherworld of burbles and blips, but this one was a welcome return to something approaching normal song structure.

8:52 pm… Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson * Ain’t That A Bitch – The title track. This album comes up every time I roll out a random propaganda. Johnny obviously has a nose for the spotlight. The cover of this LP is one of the low-taste moments in the pantheon of album art. This album is two parts sleaze, one part funk, and one part disco. Shake well and enjoy…

8:57 pm… Trojan Ganja Reggae Box (Disc 2) – Some sort of stoney, dubby thing going on here… I think this album just set itself on jamaican auto-pilot. FYI, this box set is medicinally legal in the state of California, and works particularly well for glaucoma.

9:01 pm… Dave Alvin * Live at Freight & Salvage, Berkeley CA, 6/28/07 – Incredible show. Here he’s covering Moby Grape’s ‘8:05′, a lovely version of a lovely song. According to Alvin, “There’s a rule in the musician handbook that if you play a Moby Grape song, you have to follow it with a George Jones song…”

9:05 pm… Yello * One Second – These guys were pumping the sound of 90’s electronica smack dab in the middle of the 80’s. They’re most well known for the song ‘Oh Yeah’ (which was featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), which is too bad, because that song only hints at some of the inventive sounds that these guys were throwing off way ahead of the curve… dark, exotic rhythms peppered with strings and electronic noises, featuring singers of many flavors – sounds to me like the playbook for any number of latter day electronica acts…

9:10 pm… Kleptones * 24 Hours (Disc 1) – The mashup maestros… great track here that features T. Rex’s ‘Ripoff’ laid over an instrumental version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. It’s funky, fun, and pretty weird – in other words just like most of their other mashups. Available free online at www.kleptones.com – help yourself to plenty.

9:13 pm… David Byrne * Rei Momo – Excuse me while The P and I do the rhumba…

9:17 pm… Don Letts presents The Mighty Trojan Sound – We’re back on Jamaican auto-pilot, spinning off into dubby dubby dubstuff. Don Letts is widely credited with introducing reggae and punk camps to one another…

9:20 pm… Ali Farka Toure * The River – Potent African Blues.

9:25 pm… George Pegram * George Pegram – Raggedy Country Banjo.

9:28 pm… The BellRays * Grand Fury – The album title really sums this up. Frontwoman Lisa Kekula is a force of nature, as I mentioned here. The BellRays are definitely one of those bands that need to be seen live to be fully appreciated.

9:31 pm… Gene Clark * Flying High (Disc 1) – And now for something completely different. Clark was a founding member of The Byrds, and one of the most talented songwriters to go through that band. ‘Feel A Whole Lot Better (When You’re Gone)’ is up, which I believe is a Byrds track. This set is a two-disc career spanning best of.

9:35 pm… Various Artists * Club Ska ‘67 – This uptempo ska collection from the Luv&Haight label is a crowd pleaser. Lots of jaunty horns and happy little grooves.

9:38 pm… Doug Martsch * Now You Know – The solo debut from the lead singer and guitar god of Built To Spill sounds an awful lot like… (wait for it)… Built To Spill. Which means, actually, that it sounds pretty good.

9:41 pm… Various Artists * Zabriskie Point Soundtrack – A very strange mix of artists on this soundtrack to an obscure Italian movie. John Fahey, Pink Floyd, Youngbloods, Patti Page, Grateful Dead, Kaleidescope… oddly eclectic in its own way. Currently hearing the Fahey track, a solo guitar blues thing like what he does so well.

9:44 pm… Paul Weller * Paul Weller – Self-titled solo album from the former frontman of The Jam and The Style Council. The Jam – HUGE in the UK – never got their due in America, and may actually be more popular today in the states than they were in their heyday. Meanwhile, Paul Weller has just continued to crank out one great album after another. The guy is worshipped like a god in Britain, but most music fans here don’t have the foggiest idea who he is. Go figure.

9:50 pm… [silence]… [silence]… [silence]… oh I see… this Paul Weller album has one of those ‘12 minutes of silence and then a hidden track’ gimmicks… perhaps this is why Mr. Weller hasn’t gone over so well in the good ol’ US of A… [fast-forwarding]

9:51 pm… Joe Maphis * Fire On The Strings – Mr. Maphis will provide the soundtrack for the closing credits for tonight’s program, with his distinctive brand of finger-picking, down-home, country-guitar, instrumental-delights.

From the P and I… so long and goodnight…

Tags: Ali Farka Toure, Built To Spill, Club Ska '67, Dave Alvin, David Byrne, Don Letts, Doug Martsch, Eric B. & Rakim, Gene Clark, George Pegram, Joe Maphis, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Paul Weller, Radiohead, Random Propaganda, Rolling Stones, The BellRays, The Kleptones, Trojan Ganja Reggae, Yello, Zabriskie Point Soundtrack