Hello, is this thing on?

Life has been in the way and I have let the blog go. I'm going to try and get back on it. I've been doing a column for the Fenway News. The new editor is friend of mine and he was astounded how little music coverage the paper was doing given that we are surrounded by music schools. So if you are in the neighborhood, pick up a Fenway News and read more of my ramblings.

I had two recent shows that were lots of fun to put together. Two weeks ago I did a show about Cities. All songs had to have a city name in the title. The trick was that I didn't want to repeat any cities and I also had a 3 hour show that day, as I was filling for Chuck U. and his Free of Form show.I made two exceptions--I did 2 NY songs, after all it is New York, New York and the opening song was the Talking Head's Cities. The funny thing was I had such indecision on my Boston song that I kept holding it back and never got to it, as I ran out of time. Here's the playlist
for your perusal.

As always I tried to find interesting songs not the same ones that everyone puts on this types of lists. Some of my favorite discoveries were NRBQ's Paris, The Avett Brothers Pretty Girl From Annapolis and a great little Bix Beiderbecke recording, Baltimore.

I want to thank my friend Clay for making some great suggestions.



Yesterday's show was in honor of the Oscar's coming up Sunday night. I'm not much of an Oscar person, but it seemed like a good excuse for a theme. So it was all songs from movie soundtracks, songs about movies and even some movie scores. There's some really rich music involved with movies and I really love directors that can make the music a seamless part of the film.

Some of the fun discoveries here-- John Lurie's music for the film Manny and Lo, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (from Dirty Three) haunting score to the Assassination of Jesse James and the border music of John Sayle's Lone Star.

Here's the playlist

Hopefull, I will be able to keep up on this better. See you soon.

Bingo Show Instrumentals

The May 18th show was all instrumental. I had been wanting to do this show for awhile. I used some soundtrack stuff, jazz, some experimental rock and whatever I could find that was interesting and had no lyrics. I allowed some voice, as long as it was not in the form of traditional lyrics. So we had some la-la-las and humming and even some voice samples. The rule was the voice could be used solely as instrument.

A perfect starter was the wide screen technicolor sound of Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Seven Theme, this easily bled into Dirty Three's western crazed violin and Calexico's Mexican border sound. The first set ended with Luz Mob, which has been described as "hip-hop for the ballroom dancing set", Luz Interpretaions is full of very cool instrumentals that cover a broad range of influences.

The next set started with Richard Buckner's brief guitar duet Pico, followed by a rare Dylan instrumental Wigwam. Another beauty was the Melissa Swingle (from Trailer Bride) track off Searching For The Wrong-eyed Jesus soundtrack. A haunting version of Amazing Grace done on the saw, in the woods of West Virginia. Another soundtrack piece with West Virginia roots was John Curtis doing a solo mandolin La Bella Noche for the Matewan soundtrack.

A couple of guitar geniuses in the next set-- Ry Cooder's work from the Paris Texas soundtrack and Bill Frisell's Nashville tribute, Gimme A Holler sandwich Palaxy Tracks' haunting Cedarland.

For the Cover-all - we start off with Cover-all fave, Friends of Dean Martinez doing their version of Wichita Lineman. Gary Burton takes a crack at Dylan's I Want You and we hear John Zorn's version of the James Bond Theme. Local jazz legends the Either/Orchestra do a nice medley of Monk's Nutty and Ode to Billie Joe and finally Devandra Bandhart does a John Fahey song Sligo River Blues off the tribute album I Am The Resurrection.

Carl Stalling is a unique voice in American music, he did most of the music for the Warner brothers cartoons. Instrumental insanity and maybe the first sampler. I wanted to follow Stalling with Birdsongs of the Mesozoic's version of the Theme to Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I couldn't find it at the station. So I did their song Transformation of Oz. Kid Koala's crazy Drunk Trumpet fit right into the cartoony mood of this set.

I bought the CD Cash Cow Best of Giorno Poetry Systems many years ago and I still love it. The short intense Secret Solo from Phillip Glass is on here and I led off the last set with it. Explosions In The Sky, an Austin, TX band,
took us through one of their rich evolving instrumentals Your Hand In Mine. And we ended the show with the post punk surf music of the Alabama band-- Man or Astroman? and their song Song Of The Two-mile Linear Particle Accelerator, Stanford University, Stanford Ca. Yeah it's a mouthful.

I would have liked to get in some bluegrass, more jazz and many others, but not enough time. I'd love to hear your comments on the show and any suggestions for a future instrumental show.

Catching Up

I'm falling behind here a bit, so bear with me. Due to some scheduling conflicts there were two Bingo Shows in a row (April 27 and May 4)

The April 27th show was called "Songs I Bet You Never Heard" . I'm sure some have heard some of these songs, but what I was going after was songs and artists that are severely underplayed/underappreciated. I even wanted to do a few obscure songs from well known artists.

Now, some would say most of the stuff I play on any show is stuff no one's ever heard. True, to a point, but I was looking to go beyond even that.

I started off with the late 70's experimental San Francisco band Tuxedomoon and their song The Stranger. The Residents seem to get all th SF art band hype, but Tuxedomoon are interesting in their own right. They are a hard band to define - thier songs pick up influences from all over, they call themselves gothic post-punk experimentalism. But there are classical and jazz influences here and even some funk thrown in (they do a cover of I Heard It Through The Grapevine).

Henry Flynt is an interesting cat. He's played with the Velvet Underground and Yoko Ono; he's a philosopher and artist (below: Spirit World Painting #1); and for our purposes-- an excellent fiddle player. We did a cut off Backporch Hillbilly Blues Vol 1 called White Lightening that showcases his wild man avant garde fiddling.

I'm not going to describe every song and artist played, just try and touch on some of the more interesting ones.

I discovered the band Torrez doing one of my On The Town gigs. I loved their sound and the haunting vocals of Kim Torrez. The song Lush Twilight is a great example of this under-rated band. I always wondered what became of them- so I did some research and found that one of the main members- Sydney Alexis - is now Alexis Hotel-- and Tiger Saw covered one of their songs on my most recent OTT show. Boston can be a small world sometimes.

Speaking of Tiger Saw- Heather from Tiger Saw asked me to play the song Arizona by Rooftop Suicide Club. The New Bedford band's song has become one of my new favorites.

What's Bob Dylan doing here? Well, I bet you just don't hear much from Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid- a very cool, atmospheric album, that was kind of ahead of it's time. Also, Dylan instrumentals are rare too.

Humanwine is a band to watch out for. Another local Boston band, they revel in the same kind of Eastern European cabaret type atmosphere that the Dresden Dolls. A little more political, perhaps.

I had a request for Fink-- who I had never heard of, but knew the Canadian label Ninja Tune, from Kid Koala and Mr Scruff. I was expecting the DJ thing that Ninja is know for and was surprised to hear a bluesy, stripped down, acoustic sound, but with just a touch of the Ninja influence-- good stuff.

The last 2 bands I played were bands I found through Bazooka Joe's excellent Small World Podcasts, which I highly recommend ( An interview with Joe is coming soon). Pistolera and The Luz Mob. Pistolera is at the forefront of the NYC based Latin alternative movement and Luz Mob does some great instrumental stylings, that mix jazz, hip hop and a very urban Latin beat.

Check out all the artist on here-- I only had time to go over a few, but it would be nice to see all these artists get more recognition. And keep scouring those used record bins for more gems and let me know what you find.

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.