Friday, April 28th, 2006
... 6:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. ...
KZSU, 90.1 FM
Subbing for new DJ Natalie and her indie-rock show, "The Top Shelf."
Feels like I haven't had a pop/rock show in forever -- always great to
exercise this side of my brain.
Exhausting, too. As you can imagine, a body accustomed to nine-minute
jazz songs has some adjusting to do when programming a bunch of
3- and even 2-minute tracks.
Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
* Andy McWain, Albey Balgochian, Laurence Cook -- "Ceremonial Moon" -- Vigil (Fuller Street, 2005)
Tinkly abstract piano-trio jazz to warm up the airwaves. Because
I'm the first show of the day (i.e. dead air before me), I have to figure
no one's listening prior to the start of the show. So I always start with
a fairly long track, give myself time to amass a couple of listeners before
kicking things into gear.
? Oranger -- "New Comes and Goes" -- New Comes and Goes (Eenie Meenie, 2005)
Great local band; if you haven't heard them, go out and, uh, hear
them. Here's an interesting irony: This CD sounds (to me) more polished
than their past stuff ... but their strategy here was to learn the songs
and bang them out quickly. Past albums had the band playing tunes they'd
perfected in live shows, and they wanted to recapture some spontaneity
this time.
* Sunny Duval -- "La Nuit S'a Corde a Linge" -- Achigan (Proxnett, 2005)
Sarge -- "Beguiling" -- The Glass Intact (Mud, 1998)
A gem of a CD from my earliest days at KZSU. The band is no more,
but lead singer Elizabeth Elmore is still banging it out with her new
group, The Reputation. I love this track for its wistful chords,
driving beat, and the cascade of manically rhyming lines.
* Film School -- "Pitfalls" -- Film School (Beggars Banquet, 2006)
* The Glass Family -- "Stop Dead in Your Tracks" -- Sleep Inside This Wheel (I Eat Records, 2005)
* Flipron -- "Raindrops Keep Falling on the Dead" -- Fancy Blues and Rustique Novelties (Tiny Dog, 2004)
From the U.K., fun theatrical stuff, like if Tom Waits' universe
had marshmallows instead of booze.
Electrelane -- "Take the Bit Betweeen Your Teeth" -- The Power Out (Too Pure, 2004)
More U.K. stuff, this time an aggressive all-female quartet
verging between no-wave rock and synth-pop, sort of.
* Summerbirds in the Cellar -- "Behold the Wolf" -- With the Hands of the Hunter It All Becomes Dead (Slow January, 2005)
* The No-Nos -- "The Damage Done" -- Tinnitus (Animal World, 2000)
Female-fronted rock quartet with quirky, reed-thin guitar sounds
and a bouncy, almost no-wave beat. Whenever I do a show like this, I
try to discover something new in the KZSU library -- this time, this
was it. Not great stuff, but still interesting and fun. I love finding
air time for forgotten discs.
? Paper Moon -- "String of Blinking Lights" -- Broken Hearts Break Faster Every Day (Endearing, 2006)
From Winnipeg, in central Canada. Great airy-guitar pop with female
vocals. The Endearing label puts out some great unnoticed stuff (a twee
band called B'ehl was a fave of mine; one member of that band shows up
in Paper Moon).
The New Pornographers -- "Twin Cinema" -- Twin Cinema (Merge, 2005)
Quasi -- "Under a Cloud" -- Field Studies (up, 1999)
The duo of Sam Coombes and Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss.
This track's a great set opener for its big, dramatic, ascending chord
intro.
* Paige -- "Go Figure" -- Whiskey Was the Medicine
Bluesy/jazzy singer-songwriter from the Bay Area. Nice stuff, but
its placement here was a miscalculation on my part -- looking for
something to lead into Sondre Lerche, I popped in this disk but
didn't end up with time to properly preview it. This track has a
dragging tempo -- great for that dark-bar atmosphere but not what
I wanted between the upbeat Quasi and the sunny Lerche.
* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library
-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.