Friday, September 24th, 2008 ... 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

(Return to playlists.)

Covering time during daylight hours. If we weren't a free-form station -- if we had prefab playlists and set times for playing certain "heavy rotation" tracks -- this wouldn't be any fun at all. But we're not, so it is.

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

10cc -- "The Wall Street Shuffle" -- Sheet Music (Phonogram, 1974)

In a week where investment banking as we know it dies, where pure laissez-faire is proven again to be faulty, what better place to start?

Capitalism is fine. But banking isn't like airlines or trains -- if it goes under, the whole system collapses. That means banking and finance carry with them a weight of responsibility that Wall Street frankly chooses to ignore. Instead, the system gets populated with compulsive gamblers placing big bets for the sake of their own egos. When it all crashes down, they've already pocketed big bonuses. They'll step aside to preach hypercapitalistic gospel at universities or high-society dinners, and their disciples will run the next bubble cycle into the ground.

The injustice here isn't likely to be corrected, but at least I'm not the only one sensing the need for change.

Previously noted here.

Junior can dish out the blues like dad does, but he's got a more modern, less starving-artist outlook. To wit: In searching for a blues song about getting beaten down by the job, to continue the Wall Street theme, I came acros this upbeat ditty about a kid who wanted to go to law school, but his girlfriend blew all his savings on blow. Well, as blues evolves, I guess they have to find new hardships to be blue about (and this one isn't all that new, I suppose).

Giving up the lyrical theme, I wanted to close out with something country/folky. Levine is a singer-songwriter, the type doing uptempo tunes that evoke a sadness or longing. Not that that's a hard trick -- just depends on the chords you use -- but it's a sound I've always liked and seemed a fit way to close the set. This is music of the big, open road.

Oh, and then there's "Letter Home." It's a nice, straightforward, rocking tune ... until the story gets to the end, and you realize the "letter" is to a mother, from a daughter who's in heaven after being beaten to death by her drunken husband. How's that for "country."

Interesting twist: While Levine lived in Albuquerque for a time, her roots aren't on the open road. She's a Harvard-educated New Yorker.

? The Bears -- "Zelda Fitzgerald" -- Eureka! (self-released, 2007)

People probably think this band is Adrian Belew's hobby, and that's a shame. The full story is more like this: Once upon a time around Cincinnati, a band called The Raisins did some kick-ass pop tunes that veered between darkly serious and downright goofy. Record labels had no idea what to do with the band, so that was the end of that. But they'd gotten the ear of Adrian Belew, enough that he produced their album. Later, two Raisins members -- Bob Nyswonger on bass and the amazing Rob Fetters on guitar -- teamed up with drummer Chris Arduser to form the Psychodots, which sometimes perform to this day. And when the Psychodots add Adrian Belew on vocals and second guitar, they become The Bears. No, it's more complicated than that. But I'll stop there.

The Bears do serious and grown-up pop, something you wouldn't immediately realize considering their first album opens with titles "None of the Above" and "Fear Is Never Boring." It's bubblegum with a 50-year-old's life wisdom.

Belew does his usual electronics wizardry to add some odd noises and strange solos here and there -- the chameleonic solo on the old single "Aches and Pains," for instance (go see it on YouTube) -- but really, the whole band is open to sounds, and this album in particular is richly produced. Sure, lots of bands use different guitars and basses from track to track, but there's something about the Bears' choices that just nourishes the ear.

In spots, Bears/Psychodots/Raisins music gets too sugary for me, evoking made-for-TV montage sequences, and the lyrics can get stilted. But The Bears' first two albums, on the doomed IRS label, made me a fan for life. It's great to see they're keeping the flame lit.

*

Apologies for not getting the exact ethnicities down. But this is music of Saharan nomadic peoples, and the members of the band are Saharan nomadic people, from Niger, to be exact ... but they also plug in some electric guitars to add swampy Cajun blues licks to the music. It's a great combination. The guitar playing isn't virtuoso, but it's spirited and rocking. Add to that the chanting, call-and-response vocals common to many African musics, and of course plenty of percussion, and you've got quite a tasty stew.

I haven't gotten to explore this three-CD set yet, but it looks like a grand sweep of the popular musics of the day, with that old-timey-radio lo-fi sound, of course. I'd intended to draw from the blues tracks on here, but then I saw this title, and old '20s flapper tune (actually, I'm not sure when it was written). And I decided then and there to give it a spin and follow up with ...

Same song, faster tempo; different lyrics but the same idea. Which, come to think of it, was probably quite naughty at the time, for those who thought hard enough about the lyrics. (I think it's about a young girl dreaming of the day she gets as, um, developed as her older sister.)

Ditty Bops previously noted here, but as with most of these bands, you can learn more on their own Web site.

Richard Wright -- "Cat Cruise" -- Wet Dream (Columbia, 1978)

I've already noted Wright's passing, briefly. Here's his first solo album, an airy and yes, dreamy journey, with simple and almost folky songs with piano backing. More than half the album is instrumental, with a band riffing on simple chord patterns in a nostalgic and not-quite-sad pop atmosphere, a lighter shade of the voice that wrote the music behind "Us and Them" and the major-7ths refrain in "Time."

I was going to play "Against All Odds," a catchy sad little ditty that has no relation to the Phil Collins atrocity. But it's the instrumental "Cat Cruise" that makes me sigh deeply for my old college days, when I was just discovering prog, jazz, and King Crimson. The sax solo is quite cheesy and predicts the awful smooth jazz movement that would flourish 10 years later, but as a requiem to Wright, it's just fine.

Wright's second solo album after a long near-silence and years of being either barely in or barely out of Pink Floyd (I lost track). It's completely different from Wet Dream, with atmospheric, yarning songs and synth-heavy instrumentals that pass like the steely sheen of a city seen from the vantage of a subway rider. It's shaded by dramatic minor chords and lit by those blazing guitars that came from the nineties' uncomfortable attempts to meld new age with rock. (Sinead O'Connor adds vocals on two songs, for an airy, pretty respite.) Some of the moody instrumentals are more sound effects than melody, something Pink Floyd did more than people realize -- think "On the Run." It was great to see Wright recording again, but this album's artifical storminess (there's even a thunderclap to open the album) and new-age tension never manage to convince me.

Rumah Sakit -- "Careful with that Fax Machine" -- Rumah Sakit (Temporary Residence, 2000)

Previously noted here. Pink Floyd in-jokes abound; Rumah Sakit's next album would be called Obscured by Clowns.

? Golem -- "The Rent" -- Fresh Off Boat (JDub, 2006)

Previously noted here. This track has a great melodramatic flavor. The lyrics basically translate to: "The rent is due! Oy, oy, oy! What're we going to do?"

Part of a larger piece called "Cavere," one of three pieces to span this disk. Each piece is divided into short movements that serve nicely as tidbits of their own, partly because of the variety involved: It's sting quartet one minute, William Winant doing a crazy note-bending tympani solo the next. Everything is performed by what Parkins called the Gangster Band, a semi-regular working outfit. She appears herself on the harp, of course, but her more striking work is on the piano, where she floods spaces with angular chords and low-note drilling.

Airy and open indie-rock that takes some experimental byways. Sensitive male or female vocals open up expansive crannies in the music, complemented by atmospheric guitar waves or crashes. Keyboards fall a bit short, tipping everything into the new age swamp once or twice, but the overall album still stands up.

*

Fast garage rock/punk. They've actually got a more experimental track, "Bubble Bath," on side B, and I just might have to give that a spin someday.

? Fuzzy Cousins -- "The Fourth" -- Progress (self-released, 2008)

The smart, prog-inspired duo of Jenya Chernoff (drums, lotsa other stuff) and Matt Lebofsky (keys, guitar, Warr guitar, lotsa other stuff), who perform live in caveman-like vests. Very prog-inspired music, lots of jerky rhythms and heavy, near-metal chording. Their album (and the show I saw) opens with "Overtime Again," a pretty and sad little piano-led song with goregeous harmonies; from there, the King Crimson influence kicks in and you're off to the races. I like these guys and the dark, intelligent pictures they paint. I'm also partial to Lebofsky, who was one of the first creative-music community members I'd met upon diving into this music, and who's got some classic essays up on the Web -- this one in particular.

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Good ol' fashioned rockabilly punk, fast and happy, and with a picture of a woman's legs in the CD art. You've gotta love rockabilly not just for the music, but for the cool band names.

Previously noted here.

One big noise/improv inside joke, and I love it. Half the album is John Zorn on sax, the other half, Fred Frith on guitar -- but they're being sampled, processed, spindled, and mutilated by Ostertag. The result is a stream of 1- and 2-minute tracks full of chaotic blips, violent surges, incandescent bubbling, and the occasional recognizable tint of an actual sax or guitar. Big fun.

Bob Ostertag -- "Slam Dunk" [samples of John Zorn, tracks 11-14] -- Attention Span (Rift, 1990)

* Ry Cooder -- "Johnny Cash" -- I, Flathead (Nonesuch, 2008)

Kind of a fan letter from Cooder to the Man in Black.

Continuing the Johnny Cash theme. The title of course is a reference to Luther Perkins, Cash's lead guitarist. "Late at night when I close my eyes / I see black suits and bolo ties..."

Previously noted here.

* Fleet Foxes -- "White Winter Hymnal" -- Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop, 2008)

An indie-pop band that uses layers upon layers of harmonized vocals for a pretty and airy choir effect. Color me unconvinced.

* Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir -- "Empire State Express" -- Ten Thousand (Shoutin' Abner Pim, 2008)

A deliciously down-and-dirty Son House cover. I don't know if these guys are agnostic; they don't have the choir sound (see Fleet Foxes above); they don't sound like gospel. "Mountain" evokes the acoustic guitar and banjo that show up a lot here.

With all the New Orleans jazz projects that have come out since Katrina, it only makes sense Dr. Michael White would have one, too. Like Dr. John, he's quintissentially New Orleans, although with a sound that's more historian and scholar of the style, as opposed to down in the mud with the alligators.

Previously noted here.

? Bunnytown -- "Disco Pirate Bunnies" -- [Bunnytown TV show] (Disney, 2007)

Taken from the TV show, broadcast to the masses in mono. The song is basically what the title says -- puppet bunnies who happen to be pirates and throwing a disco party. This sort of continued the disco set from Glass Candy. Actually, Bunnytown provided a more authentic retro-disco vibe.

Real disco, from before it was retro. From before it was even that hot in the U.S. mainstream, actually. See here and here.

* Todd Sickafoose -- "Bye Bye Bees" -- Tiny Resistors (Cryptogramophone, 2008)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

St. Vincent -- "Your Lips Are Red" -- Marry Me (Beggars Banquet, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Anthemic college rock. Decent stuff, not too heavy on the testosterone.

Jucifer is a duo that plays harsh, bursting metal but also dabbles in heavy, fast pop music. On this concept album, tracing scenes of the French Revolution, they've also added some soft and quiet tracks. This isn't one of them; "Thermidor" is a 32-second attack of blinding, glass-flying metal. "Window," which I played in the second half of the show, is closer to pop, reflecting the possible thoughts of a humbled Louis XIV after saying goodbye to his family on the eve of his execution.

Continue to PART TWO, which starts with a pretty awesome Ted Leo track.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.