Radio Free California Episode 2305, a few cheap shots and swears, and a new gin

 

Queue up the end of January with lots of new music! This weeks features Nickel Creek, Maaya Sakamoto, Kiffie, Ergo, Bria (the comma is part of the name), Kimbra, King Tuff, a wild remix of an old Yes song, and much more. Enjoy!

I used to link to the artists in my playlists' social media sites, with a preference towards twitter. Well, twitter is a hellscape (okay, more of one) and I don't really do Facebook, Instagram or TikTok so what I recommend you do if you find that there's an artist on my playlist you want to follow, click on their name and open their Spotify Page. If you look at their bio they usually post their preferred social media spots, with links.Some don't, but most do. Give that a shot.

In my opinion this is one of the better lists of new music I've put together.

Cheap shots:

Tr8or!

He defied a subpoena...

Apparently the windmills are also killing airplanes and oceans now.

And we mourn.

It keeps looking more and more like all the motherfuckers who claim the election was stolen actually stole one themselves.

About fucking time.

A wall, eh? Seriously? What a bunch of hosers.

Scorpion disbanded, arrested, and I notice no police unions are defending these officers. They always seem to do so when the officers are white.

Tr8tor!

Goodbye to the OG, first, and best Wednesday Addams

And he speaks from experience.

Oh by the way, in case you haven't noticed it, COVID-19 is still as bad as ever. Mask up, motherfuckers.

Reverend Bra Cruise speaks.

I must admit, the phrase "This is some Bakersfield B.S." made me laugh.

Ever notice that people who use the word "Woke" as a pejorative are almost always assholes?

California. Picking up the slack when Republicans fail.

Don't call her Shirley. Well, fuck.

And because I love you, here is the very striking video by Kimbra, featured in this week's episode.

Oh and finally - this is not an ad. This is a recommendation. I tried this stuff this past weekend and fell in love with it. You have to buy it online, or buy it at the distillery on Treasure Island like I did, but it's amazing.

Radio Free California Episode 2304

 

Another busy week for new music, from long-standing artists like Metallica and Jethro Tull to indies like AmaltheuS, MOULE,  Benjamin Russell with Rob Stuart, Softcult, The Nude Party and much more. Enjoy!

Most artists post links to their social media platforms in their biographies on Spotify. If you want to know more about an artist, I'd start there.

++++++++++++++++++++++

It seems to me that school kids in Florida aren't going to be able to meet college entrance requirements with just the education they get in public schools.

And because I love you, here is a live performance of one of the tracks from this week's RFC:

Radio Free California Episode 2303, plus my favorite MLK quote

 

The logjam has broken and we have a TON of new music. New tracks from Everything but the Girl, PIL, Prophets of Rage, Fear 2 Stop, The Subways, Billy Nomates, Belle and Sebastian, Daughter, U.S. Girls,  New Town, Babebee and much much more. 50 songs over nearly 3 hours. Enjoy!

It's MLK day today so I'm not going to do cheap shots. I will instead just point out my favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quote, which is about one of the many topic other than race relations that he was pretty liberal and radical about:

"We have guided Missiles and Misguided men"

And because I love you, Bill McClintock has given us another genius mashup of Wham! and Black Sabbath, with a touch of Van Halen thrown in.

Radio Free California Episode 2302, some thanks about the new single, and a few cheap shots

 

Week 2 for 2023 and we have new music from Chris Reed and the Anime Raiders (aka me), Kiffie, Peter Gabriel, The Winery Dogs, Quiet Houses, Somebody's Child, lovelytheband, All Them Witches and much more. Enjoy!

+++++

The opening track is my latest, "Elusive Green". Much to my shock, it's the fastest out of the gate performing single of my career so far. Over 5,000 views of the video, and nearly 20,000 plays of the song in less than a week. Crazy thing is, I've been promoting the radio edit and it's the full-length version of the song - the "album version" in the old days - that's gotten more play.

You can never know which of your songs is going to grab the fancy of the listening public - if you try to engineer it you're almost always going to fail. Today's tendency is towards shorter tracks to fit into TikTok videos and I do not find that appealing. A song is as long as it needs to be. What a song needs to be is honest to itself, and that's what I've always gone for.

This is my first real intentional dance track, and people have been listening/watching. Who am I to argue? Given that I'm not really on any social media platform with a lot of followers this has been a welcome surprise.

So thank you everyone. It's appreciated.

+++++

Cheap Shots:

The Linder Letter, not the lawless right.

Isn't it funny how this story has changed over the past couple of days? "From "6 year-old shoots teacher" to "Teacher shot while trying to confiscate gun brought to school" to "Accident?" Sometimes the immediacy of our news cycle is a grotesque failure.

What's the over/under on how many votes this will take?

Step by step, Inch by inch...

Can some of our thugs be arrested for this insurrection?

I asked a former Tank driver (U.S. Army) and I can pass along that Elon doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

One liar hires another.

Speaker TFG.

So who is this guy really?

And because I love you, here's a song that Led Zepplin never was able to pull off live, done by Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes:

Radio Free California Episode 2301, plus a few words about the new single Elusive Green

 

Lots of indie music to start 2023, including Robot! Attack!, YI, Sirimiri, Kiffie, MOULE, houjean, Kink Artist Big Woman and much more, and oh yes, new albums from Vulfpeck and Weezer, yet another new mix of Tom's Diner, and a whole lot more. Enjoy!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So I may have mentioned that I have a new single out January 3rd. It's leaked in a few places, like Radio FM, YouTube, a number of radio stations in Europe and North Africa, Jango radio in the US but the actual official release date is tomorrow. Let me tell you a bit about it.

This is a dance track originally inspired by the videos of the Japanese dance troupe World Order, and my desire to write a song about environmentalism. 

It was originally planned for summer of 2022, but then I caught COVID. Twice. Recovery took longer than I would have thought, but I finally got back on track just in time for every radio station to start playing Christmas Music and compiling end of year lists. So we pushed it back to January 2023.

Once everything was complete, we realized that we had enough material to make all kinds of different mixes, so we did.

Elusive Green - 1 song 4 mixes

The original mix of the track is nearly 7 minutes. The single mix, which is what's getting the radio airplay, is 2 minutes shorter. There is a 6 minute mix that I call the "Oontz Oontz" mix, which is meant for dance clubs, and the "No Oontz" version, which is just vocals and keyboards.

The video has one more mix, which is basically the single mix with the opening of the original mix added in. If you purchase the single from bandcamp you can get all five mixes but otherwise most outlets will only have the 4.

Please, just follow this link to my linktree and go to the site of your choice. As of the publication of this blog a few sites won't have the new single yet, depending on your time zone.

And because I love you, once again here is the video, full of dancing and raving robots, which already has a couple thousand views.