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This & That
11d
31 Nights of Halloween Tunes
Dusty Springfield - “Spooky”
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One of my favorite tunes for summoning those blessed October/Halloween vibes from the stereo. Springfield’s breezy vocal gliding on top crisp, lounge-y instrumentation will leave you spellbound. As for the lyrics…Dusty, stop letting this goober waste your time. He ain’t spooky, he’s just shifty.
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12d
This & That
Fugazi - "I'm So Tired"
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Shout out to anyone that's tired. Sheep are counting you.
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15d
This & That
Lætitia Sadier
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Sometimes the coolest people in the room are the ones that are gracious, aware and aesthetically sincere (and being mad talented doesn’t hurt, either). Read or watch an interview with Sadier and you'll see what I mean. Even though she is the frontwoman of uber-cool Stereolab and has been named-dropped as an influence by many artistically relevant figures, she has never come across as aloof or detached as far as I'm aware. That said, you also readily get the impression that she's not the type to suffer fools gladly (or at all). As a singer, her voice is immediately recognizable. As a lyricist, she's been a sharp, informed and poetic voice on topics of socioeconomics, art, war, love, greed, history, human experience and beyond for over three decades now. She plays a variety of instruments, but it's always a treat to see her pick up the trombone mid-performance if you ever get the chance to see her play live. Taste level appears to be nigh unmatchable. There are people who are effortlessly cool, and then there are people who are effortlessly cool but still make a real effort to reach others and take a stand on behalf of common dignity. Sadier is the latter sort. p.s., Don't sleep on her solo albums! The Trip is a sure-thing zero-risk starting place if you enjoy Stereolab.
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18d
This & That
John Coltrane - “Dearly Beloved” (1965)
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September 23, 1926 - July 17, 1967 - September 23, 2026 - ♾️
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22d
This & That
Grateful Dead / John Oswald - Grayfolded
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In the mid-'90s, Canadian media artist John Oswald, by invitation of Phil Lesh, sampled and arranged audio from over 100 different live performances of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" to create two sprawling supercut compositions. Grayfolded is not only an aural history of the Dead's mythical jam vehicle, it is also a sonic chronicle of the band's own fabled legacy. Oswald pulled samples from tapes dating back to 1968, when "Dark Star" was evolving into the vast cosmic fields of sound that it became known to be, all the way to the final few iterations in 1993. In doing such, every band member of the Dead from each of its eras is heard at some point in this time-hopping amalgam. Both understanding the assignment and being naturally drawn to experimentation, Oswald often layered more than one audio track at a time (as the Dead had experimented with for Anthem of the Sun in '68!), so you get surprising results of hearing the band in one decade jam against itself in another. What is already supremely trippy on its own gets even further out there; take, for instance, the beautiful eeriness of hearing multiple Jerry Garcias from across the years singing in unison. These intersections are all laid out in the comprehensive "visual time maps" diagrammed in the Grayfolded liner notes that allow the listener to watch for the addition and subtraction of varying "Dark Stars" from the audio. It is surprising to learn that John Oswald hadn't paid attention to what the Grateful Dead were doing for ~20 years when he was granted carte blanche to the band's tape archive. The way he assembled both suites of Grayfolded shows sincere concentration to completing this project with care and fidelity. All of the hallmarks of the ever-changing "Dark Star" experience can be heard here, from appearances of thematic jams (e.g., "La Estrella Oscura" layering performances of the "Spanish Jam"), to freakouts and feedback squalls, to the Phil excursions into deep sound familiar of many 1972-'74 Stars, to the MIDI explorations of the late '80s and '90s, to the ambient expeditions of all eras (see the incredible "Cease Tone Beam," in which you can be forgiven for forgetting what band you're listening to). The pacing and flow of Grayfolded maintains that organic feeling of the Dead charting their course on stage when improvising, and Oswald never makes the playback sound overly busy when interpolating multiple audio sources.
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23d
This & That
John Cage discusses sound (1991)
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The man behind 4'33" is, unsurprisingly, someone who could speak about sound in profound terms. "I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are."
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25d
This & That
The Free Design - "Kites Are Fun" (1967)
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Introverts, this one's for us! Now, I mean this without malice, but if you see a few promo photos of sibling vocal group The Free Design, you might expect it's preppy fodder for the listening diets of squares that they created. The Dedrick family kept their sonic palette loaded with lighter tones, that's for sure, but the way they applied them was with substance and a will to be adventurous. For instance, I'll argue that the wordless vocal arrangement in the final minute of their cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge Song" is one the most purely psychedelic moments in the whole discography of the sixties. Anyhow, when Stereolab dedicates a song to you, you must be doing something right as far as artistic relevancy goes. "Kites Are Fun," title track to their first album, is a good example of what I'm talking about. On paper, it seems like a lightweight affair: pleasant acoustic strumming, a lilting recorder piping away, a three-part harmony singing about, well, kites being fun. But the instrumental melody and vocal lines are whimsical yet unexpectedly a little haunting as well. The way the verses start airy and then pick up like a heart gone racing, as though mimicking the change of the kite from grounded to airborne as you run with it, and the lyrics going from innocent to intimate with that shift is brilliant. The voice of the narrator reveals of themself and their kite, "[W]e'd like to be a zillion miles away from everyone / 'cause mom and dad and Uncle Bill don't realize," then that transfixing bridge, "...kites are fuu-uun." Love it. You can interpret the kite as literal or figurative, but either way, I'll always applaud a song that celebrates being alone, but not lonely, and not caring a whit what others think (because they just won't get it...I mean, we all agree that Uncle Bill doesn't know shit, so why bother). The whole album is a great listen.
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26d
This & That
Donna Summer - "I Feel Love"
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A quick perusal of the RL archives via the Explore search indicates this Summer/Moroder/Bellotte all-timer has yet to be recommended on the platform. Therefore, humbly, please allow me to be the first!
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27d
This & That
Disco Inferno - "The Last Dance"
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In the hypothetical (nightmare) scenario of being limited to listening to no more than 100 songs for the rest of my life, "The Last Dance" would 100% make the cut. Disco Inferno were always an intriguing band, but they were almost never as outright accessible as this (they made plenty of catchy, memorable songs, but they did that on their own terms). It's one of those songs I come back to every so often and find myself completely re-immersed in again. My lazy summary-advertisement of this song is "the best New Order song that they had nothing to do with" (though Michael Johnson, who did loads of work behind the board for New Order, did produce this song). Soaring guitar pop standing on a bubbling bassline, twinkling synthesizers and a drum machine. Lyrically, "The Last Dance" addresses the anxiety of living in the shadow cast from millennia of human invention. In one regard, that's creative invention, the ever-expanding challenge posed to the modern artist to produce something original and worthy without merely rehashing what has come before or been done more capably by the talents of another. In a different sense, it's destructive invention, the continual evolution of warfare that poses a perpetual threat to erase both the creator and their work, or anything else we hold precious, in the devastation of artless, fruitless combat: "And a fear of the future beats so deep in our hearts That they'll all but destroy ourselves Like the centuries-old feuds Being upgraded with high-tech weapons In the end it's not the future But the past that'll get us" But, in the end, a resolution is made to reject fatalism and creative pessimism and push on anyhow: "But now my eyes point ahead / away from the ghosts of the dead."
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29d
This & That
Disco Inferno (band)
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Who made sampling a core part of their sound at a time when many rock bands were still allergic to the practice. In addition to generating their own samples to apply and manipulate in their compositions, these ones that they sourced from elsewhere stand out as notable: -"It's a Kid's World" samples the immediately recognizable "Lust for Life" drum beat. -"A Rock to Cling To" is built over a sped-up sample of Galaxie 500's "It's Getting Late" with a bit of Talking Heads' "Born Under Punches" used as well. -"D.I. Go Pop" loops a snippet of My Bloody Valentine's "You Made Me Realise." -"Lost in Fog" is certainly an unexpected sample, and a grim one at that: The voice heard in the song is the last words of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov during the mechanical failure of the Soviet Soyuz 1 space craft that resulted in his death, the first fatality related to space exploration.
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4w
This & That
Chris Bell - "I Am the Cosmos" b/w "You and Your Sister"
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Pop music of a rare class. Achingly, heartrendingly gorgeous songwriting. A founding member of Big Star who left the group after their first album, Bell recorded these songs somewhere between 1974 and '75. This 7" single was released in 1978, the same year that Bell, 27 years old, was killed in a car crash two days after Christmas. Every night I tell myself, "I am the cosmos, I am the wind," But that don't get you back again.
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4w
This & That
The Nurse With Wound List
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In 1979, industrial music collective Nurse With Wound released their first record, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella. Paired with its BDSM-themed album cover, you'll understand from this Maldoror-quoting title that proximity to the pop charts was not especially high on the list of priorities for the original three performers in Nurse With Wound (Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill, Heman Pathak). They were, however, record-collecting obsessives sharing an impressive knowledge of the avant-garde within their artform. The trio prepared a printed insert to include inside copies of Chance Meeting that listed 291 experimental, boundary-pushing, forward-thinking and just-plain-out-there musical artists they had been inspired by or interested in (they then surpassed 300 entries with a revised edition for their next album). The NWW List was in its time (and today still is) a valuable underground index for adventurously-minded record collectors. It likely did more than most other media resources of the pre-Internet world to foreground musicians of underrepresented genres in a way that continues to inform their curation now. Even by modern standards, you'll be hard pressed to find a media outlet, blog, channel, etc. that is as deep in the know as these three folks were in 1979.
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5w
This & That
Louis Armstrong - "What a Wonderful World"
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Mindfulness meditation. Gratitude journal entry. Sensory detail log. Centering exercise. Appreciation for the ordinary miracles of daily life. Reflection upon the sublime fact of our existence. Egoless embrace of the idea a generation exceeding the bests of those before it should be hoped for and celebrated. Optimism at its most true. A hymn of unburdening. Relief from the intentions of those who seek to seize or lay waste to what is ours to share. Hope in its purest form. All of the above, and one of the biggest wins in all of human history, that's what the two minutes and twenty seconds of "What a Wonderful World" will always be. Introduced to me by my kindergarten teacher who played it repeatedly throughout the school year as we kids sat together on the carpet and learned what beauty and wonder were.
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5w
This & That
Lush - "Ladykillers"
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Fell in love with this song all over again today not once, but twice, after not having heard it for years. Once for rediscovering what a killer song this indeed is, then twice for learning that at least half of the lyrics here make it an Anthony Kiedis diss track.
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5
6w
This & That
Treat them all as no-skip albums
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Save the skips for playlists. If it's an album, put it on and just go with it. One of life's simple but reliable delights is when a tune that at first seemed unremarkable clicks after the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth time hearing it. A song that was an unbearable bore reveals redeeming qualities upon repeated (if begrudging) listens and suddenly starts to make sense. You'll always know which numbers in the tracklist are your very favorites, but let them arrive in their own time. Life is not too short to take pleasure in a song that's just okay even when an all-time banger is one press of the Forward button away. Consider it a low stakes exercise in delayed gratification if you'd like.
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7w
This & That
Pharoah Sanders performs "Kazuko" in a tunnel in the Marin Headlands (1982)
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With harmonium accompaniment. I'll just quote a very-upvoted remark left in the comments section for this video: "i cannot overstate how infinitely and eternally cool this is"
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2
7w
This & That
Magdalena Bay - "Top Dog"
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Yeah, I can be like the girl in Jurassic Park at heart ...at heart
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2
7w
This & That
KKJZ / KJazz 88.1 FM
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Radio is dead? The hell it is! Name anything more vibrantly alive & with it than KKJZ ("KJazz"), my workweek lifeline. 88.1 MHz is the frequency to which the very molecules of my being vibrate. The station, owned by Cal State U Long Beach, maintains a legacy over half a century wide in transmitting jazz and blues over the airwaves to the Greater Los Angeles area (and now globally online). Like that of regional sister station in classical broadcast KUSC, KJazz's programming affirms the beauty of public radio with the whole hour, every hour, being dedicated to music without commercial interruption and with no need to switch the track playing every 3-4 minutes. The station playlists are varied and reliable day to day. The voices of daytime hosts David Benoit, Rhonda Hamilton and Jose Rizo are friends to me every Monday thru Friday. No doubt about it, KJazz is the soundtrack in my classroom whenever we're out of direct instruction mode and digging into the deep learning at hand. In addition to the main station, there is KJazz HD2, "The Bebop Channel," though the programming of the station isn't really non-stop bebop and, in fact, is pretty similar to the main station, perhaps just with a little less vocal jazz in the rotation.
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8w
This & That
Daria: Guide to Every Song Featured in the Series
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Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 In 2010, animation fans cheered with the announcement of the complete Daria series on DVD (at long last!), but there was with that a murmur of discontent: Unfortunately, on account of apparently eye-watering licensing fees, the soundtrack of the show, a panorama of Y2K-era music cuts, would be stripped from its episodes, and generic incidental music put in its place. But, as they say, thems the breaks. Yet memory remains. Thanks to the one-stop Daria hub Outpost Daria, we have a record of every single song featured across all five seasons of MTV's jewel of an animated series when it aired on the station originally. Search your preferred streaming app for a playlist of these cuts. No surprise, a show as fantastic as Daria offered up an incredible soundtrack...like, insanely good. After my brother bought me the DVD series for my birthday back in 2010 (a good fellow, that brother of mine), and I had watched the full series within weeks, I used the Outpost Daria soundtrack list to check out literally every song that was in the series. I'd then imagine, for instance, how rad it must have been to hear Cypress Hill's "I Ain't Goin' Down Like That" behind the Season 2 paintball showdown between fashionista-frenemies Quinn & Sandy (ep2). Anyways, let me close this rec with the iconic theme song from Daria itself, Splendora's godlike "You're Standing on My Neck"...laa laa laa laa-laaaa.
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8w
This & That
DOMi & JD Beck - YOU ASKED!
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I didn't hate the vocals on WHO ASKED?, but this will probably become the definitive version of their second album for me. Nuances in the songwriting stand out in greater relief with these instrumental edits. Critically, the interplay between the chamber instruments and Domi & JD's head-spinning musicianship is now easier to appreciate, and this is the distinction making a number of these compositions click for me where maybe they hadn't fully before. There are some beautiful passages that I feel like I'm noticing with fresh ears all of a sudden.
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8w
This & That
Paul McCartney - "Temporary Secretary"
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2
8w
This & That
X-Ray Spex - "Oh Bondage Up Yours!"
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There will never be enough femme punk anthems in this world, and there certainly will never be enough femme punk anthems with a bleating saxophone part.
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8w
This & That
The Sound - “Missiles” (Live @ No Nukes)
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Adrian Borland in 1982 asking the same question that we are in the 2020s: “Who the hell makes those missiles / when they know what they can do?”
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8w
This & That
Chic - "Good Times"
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Clams on the half shell and rollerskates (rollerskates) 🛼
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9w
This & That
Peter Saville Sleeve Art Archive
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Mancunian graphic artist who ushered in a fresh perspective on the aesthetic language of the record cover starting in the late '70s as the in-house designer for Factory Records. The creator of some of the most eye-catching and iconic sleeves in music history. Saville's official website offers a thorough digital archive of his many works (and, here's a thoughtful touch, integrated links to Discogs pages!) and makes for an appealing Internet gallery to browse through on a hot afternoon.
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1
9w
This & That
Taj Mahal Travellers
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Celestial transmission music. Taj Mahal Travellers didn't so much make music as they channeled astral frequencies using their instruments as antennas, generating experiential soundscapes that prioritize tone, texture and space over melody, rhythm and structure. This enigmatic free-improv collective took shape in Japan during the late sixties and disbanded at some point in the mid-seventies; the group's name is from an actual road trip sojourn to Agra where the musicians explored sonic traditions and instruments of the cultures visited along the way. They are one of the most organically psychedelic groups I am aware of, playing acoustic instruments in non-traditional ways as the sounds they produce are electronically processed to further stretch and recast them into shapes that the depths of your mind will understand when your ears no longer can. There's something about the Traveller's fields of sound that I find helpful for escaping from various kinds of ruts, especially productive and creatives ones. They are also second-to-none for an immersive listening experience if that's your kind of thing (i.e, good headphones or stereo with as little light present in the room as possible). This is my advice for listening to this group (as I'll offer for any abstract/non-linear musical performance): Approach this the same way you would a field recording taken from nature, e.g., birdsong, ocean ambience. Let the sound happen, and you might find yourself someplace else without moving. August 1974: Recommended starting place. A 90-minute expedition through places outside the realm of the visible world. Stream: Youtube | Apple Music (tracks 4-7) | Spotify (tracks 4-7) July 15, 1972: A more ominous experience overall, but that comes with the payoff of the daylight breaking through in the sublime third part. Stream: YouTube | Apple Music (tracks 1-3) | Spotify Stockholm 1971: For experienced travellers only! Stream: YouTube
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2
9w
This & That
[Playlist] Donald Fagen, Walter Becker & Steely Dan After 1980
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Stream: Apple Music | Spotify ** I know it sounds pretty silly to suggest that Steely Dan is underrated by any measure, but if you cover one eye and look only at the what comes after 1980--the two post-hiatus studio albums and the six solo albums between Fagen and Becker--the same popular and critical enthusiasm just isn't there. I've spent some time this year digging into these albums (having only been really familiar with The Nightfly before) despite having loved the classic run of Can't Buy a Thrill through Gaucho since around the time I was starting college. I'll maintain that all eight of these later albums are enjoyable, successful on their own terms and wholly worthy of investing time in if you dig Steely Dan's first decade, especially so if you're big on Aja and Gaucho. For this playlist, I've pulled three tracks from each of the albums listed below and attempted to assemble those selections into something that flows halfway decently. I hope it introduces you to another side of the greater Steely Dan discography if you were not previously acquainted! Here are the selects by album in chronological order: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly (1982): "I.G.Y." "New Frontier," "The Nightfly" Donald Fagen - Kamakiriad (1993): "Snowbound," "Tomorrow's Girls," "On the Dunes" Walter Becker - 11 Tracks of Whack (1994): "Down in the Bottom," "Hard Up Case," "Girlfriend" Steely Dan - Two Against Nature (2000): "Two Against Nature," "Jack of Speed," "West of Hollywood" Steely Dan - Everything Must Go (2003): "Things I Miss the Most," "Godwhacker," "Everything Must Go" Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat (2006): "Morph the Cat," "H Gang," "Brite Nightgown" Walter Becker - Circus Money (2008): "Downtown Canon," "Paging Audrey," "Darkling Down" Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos (2012): "I'm Not the Same Without You," "Weather in My Head," "Miss Marlene"
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1
9w
This & That
Deadhead to Danfan conversion chart
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One of the best things I've found on the Internet, frankly. (a Web 1.0 relic from the looks if it!)
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2
10w
This & That
Kate Bush Fanzine Archive
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You may be familiar with Kate Bush's annual Christmas message to the world, but as I recently found out, Bush has a long history of communicating directly with her fans. Launched in 1978, The Kate Bush Club (KBC) fanzine regularly featured contributions from KB herself, and thankfully, there is a full digital archive of the publication available for our viewing pleasure. Much gratitude to the longtime card-carrying KBC member who runs the excellent blog on all things Kate Bush linked here. Across 24 editions, Bush regularly provided personal updates, answers to fan questions, interviews with the zine creators, commentary on her music & videos and, in an early issue, even book recommendations. Paddy, Kate's brother and creative collaborator, was also often heard from in the publication as well. Outside of the words from Miss B. herself, the creators of the zine offered commentary on songs & albums, promoted fan conventions & photo competitions, recapped Bush's media appearances & music video shoots, coordinated vinyl swaps & pen pal connections, etc. In addition to the often thoughtful and entertaining writing, the issues are a treasure trove of incredible photographs of the always-photogenic Kate Bush dating from Lionheart through The Red Shoes. Whether a diehard or casual fan, there's bound to be something intriguing in the pages of these zines. Personally, I loved the analysis into the creation of the cover artwork for Never for Ever (my fave album of Kate's!) and the inside look on the making of the "Experiment IV" music video. Kate Bush's Rec League in 1979:
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10w
This & That
Marcos Valle - "Estrelar"
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Marcos Valle: Ambassador to Good Vibes, Champion of Summertime, Spokesperson for Beach Bods. Lyrically, "Estrelar" is a workout motivation anthem set to an infectiously funky instrumental (ooh that bassline) encouraging listeners to get their physique good and toned 'cuz summer is near. Key lyrics to muse upon: "Domingo é dia / de um ti-ti-ti a mais e de bumbum pra trás" (in translation: "Sunday's the day / for gossiping and showing off that butt")...just like the good Lord meant for Sundays to be spent! The chorus of this song is pure boogie heaven musical ecstasy and literally cannot be grown tired of. I got to see Valle in concert recently, and at age 82, the man is a portrait of health, so I can only imagine he's been taking his own words to heart for a while. ("Estrelar" is the lead track from Marcos Valle's awesome 1983 self-titled album. The album cover shown above captures the vibe perfectly...saúde, Marcos!)
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