Tiger Saw Live and Upcoming Show

I had the pleasure of having Tiger Saw live on my On The Town
gig and the engineer called in sick-- so we had to improvise and the Tigers went and got thier acoustic instruments and did a nice acoustic set in Studio A. I also let the band pick songs and Heather went wild playing DJ.

We ended up having a lot of fun and I want to thank Tiger Saw for being good sports and wish them good luck on their tour. Check 'em out if they come to your town.

This week on The Bingo Show the theme will be Songs I Bet You Never Heard. I'll play some of my favorite under appreciated artists and songs. So, you might know some of the bands, but I'll be playing their lesser known stuff. Don't miss it-- Today at 6Pm Eastern on WMFO.

Open Road Show

So- road songs. Songs about driving trucks, driving cool sports cars, hanging out in cars, racing cars, and songs that are just good for rolling down the windows and blaring the music.

We started off with The revved up sounds of Gear Masher, by the Deuce Coupes, to get us in the hot rod mood, Alex Chilton and Big Star took us into the Back of A Car, local faves Mr Airplane Man did a Lonesome Road song, Warren Smith sang about a Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache and we rounded out the first set with The Dictators (I Live For) Girls and Cars. This set shows the incredible diversity of road songs-- a surf tune, power pop, sonic blues, Memphis rockabilly and early NY punk.


There are an incredible amount of Road songs out there-- it was almost too easy-- so I looked for some different types - John Zorn's Two lane Highway from Spillane was an interesting fit, with it's spoken word-noir feel. Kid Koala's Fender Bender perfectly evokes the kind of subdued chaos of a minor crash on a city street-- and you can dance to it! Dirty Three's 1000 Miles, puts a new twist on the "lonesome cowboy trail" song and Nina Nastasia's beautiful Nobody Knew Her is a modern take on the high school car crash victim song.

The cover-all was a lot of fun this week, there were so many songs to choose from. I like to find covers of some of the more obvious songs for a theme-- so here we heard Jim White's version of King Of The Road and Rounder Records' artist Marcia Ball's version of Route 66. I've always loved Trailer Bride's version of The Gun Club's Ghost on the Highway from the Bloodshot Records 5 year Anniversary disc. We also got to hear Giant Sand's version of Wayfaring Stranger with a little Fly Me to the Moon thrown in.

All in all a very fun show to put together. Hope you enjoyed it too.

On The Town Tonight/Upcoming stuff

I"m hosting the On The Town with Mikey Dee show tonight ( April 11) OTT at 9PM Eastern ], On The Town is a local music show on WMFO and there is always a live musical guest. Tonight's guest is a good one and the second time I've hosted them- Tiger Saw. Check out their site here- Tiger Saw. So tune in if you can. The band will be on about 10:30PM EST and will play a 45 minute set.

Also check this site soon for an interview with Bazooka Joe, a former 'MFO DJ, who has his own series of podcasts called the Small World.

And , of course an all new Bingo Show coming up this Friday (April 13th). The theme will be Songs of the Open Road.

The Protest Show 3-30-07

I titled the last show Songs of Humor and Protest as a homage to the poet/artist Kenneth Patchen. Patchen was an interesting guy-- a self proclaimed anarchist, his poems were subtly political. He was also one of the first to read with jazz accompaniment. I tried hard to find a track of him reading his poetry on short notice, but the best I could come up with was a snippet of a track off Kenneth Patchen Reads With Jazz In Canada from Locust Music a label out of Chicago. I also found a recording of my favorite Patchen poem - Street Corner College- done by a Ariel Mahon off the intriguing Astronomy Club Ghost Story out of Sonoma, CA.

I started off the show with the classic "Ohio" from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. This song was written, recorded and released very quickly after the shootings at Kent State. I still think it's one of the most powerful songs in rock history, despite it being overplayed, and that's why i chose to lead off with it. It was banned by most AM radio stations and only "underground" FM stations would play it. I also did a cover version of the song from the Dayton, Ohio band Devo.

Negativland has their own interesting take on protest. They protest our culture, corporate culture specifically, by making sound collages out of random bits of recorded pop culture. They can be hard to take at times, but they have many moments of amazing brilliance. I chose the cut "You Don't Even Live Here" which is a woman screaming to be heard at a public assembly, overlayed with outrageous noise and cheering. It really captures one of those "fighting City Hall" moments.

The African American experience has produced many protest songs. We heard Public Enemy and The Last Poets and some jazz recordings form Charles Mingus with text by Langston Hughes. An interesting interview here with Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets. The Last Poets got 2 songs this show, because I think they were really important in forming some of the more political rap that was to come.

Jib Jab does some really fun animation stuff. I did their version of This Land Is Your Land, but you really need to watch it- Jib Jab

Of course we had to have a Bob Dylan song in there. I wanted to do Masters Of War, but the turntables at the station weren't working, so I had to do Chimes Of Freedom. Luckily, Bob has a pretty big portfolio to choose from. We also did a Dylan cover- Odetta doing Paths Of Victory. The CoverAll was easy to do this week, as there are plenty of great covers out there of protest songs. We did the Dylan and the aforementioned Ohio cover. We also did the cast of John Sayles' Matewan doing the Italian Union song Avanti Populo. Union songs were important protest songs and maybe the first real effective use of songs and protesting going together. I wish I had delved more into this, but ran out of time. The other cover was Cindy Mendenhall, who i don't know much about, but really enjoyed her cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs.

I think of X as the seminal anti- Reagan band. And the song I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts does a nice job of remarking on that era. Not really a proto-typical X song, a little more produced and polished, but it works-- for me anyway.

I bookended some more experimental stuff with two really traditional folk singers-- Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger. The experimental stuff was Sonic Youth, Henry Cow and Captain Beefheart all protesting the horrors of war in their own unique ways.

I really enjoyed putting this show together and wish I had had more time. I will probably revisit this subject again in the future. Look forward to any thoughts you have. If you missed the show you can download it here- Bingo Show 3-30-07 Just click on the "last show" link under the Bingo Show on the schedule. One note-- when I last checked the archive was an hour behind (because of the time change, i think ) and you get the last hour of the show before me. So you can fast forward to the one hour mark and then download the show after me and get the final hour. But hopefully, they have fixed it already.

Easy Ed is in this week with his rockabilly show - Easy Ed, and I'll be back on April 13. Hmm, Friday the 13th. Stay tuned here for more info on the next show.