Lots of indie in this week's new music, from BITE! to Wake the Nations, Orchards, Indor Foxes, plus new singles from Los Lonely Boys, Childish Gambino, Sweet, Ghost Party, A Short Walk to Pluto, Vulfmon, Body Count, Gacharic Spin (think Band-Maid with a keyboard player) and much more. Enjoy!
ALBUM SHOW NOTES
For once the Spotify Biography (quoted above) is pretty accurate. JonoJono is really a mix of many styles, without it becomming a mess. I rather enjoy his new album "I'm cool... I guess" and will be playing this album on this week's show.
The Album Show will plays on Thursdays at 9am and 9pm Pacific Standard Time.
RFC 2428
For those of you who stay away from Spotify the current week's additions will be played on Wednesdays. This is a change from prior programming: what we're going to do going forward is just play the music added this week only. Every other day will be the usual rotation, but we set aside Wednesdays for just the new additions for the week. This week that's 45 songs, which we will play in the same order that they're in on the Spotify playlist of the same name up at the top of this post. So if you tune in at just about any time on Wedmesday you will hear the whole playlist.
10 at 10
One last programming note: Every Saturday at 10pm and again on Sunday at 10am and 10pm we will feature our show "10 at 10", where we play 10 (and sometimes 11 or even 12!) songs from a year we pick at random. Again, all times are PST. I usually don't give you any heads up about what I'm going to play, but this week is different and I'm going to tell you right off the top that I'm going to play songs from the year 1985.
The reason for this is that its rare that I get to tell you a story about the very first song you hear on this week's playlist - featuring the guitar of a man named Ryan Hedgecock. Back in 1985 I was working at what we used to call a Record Store, although at that moment in time most of our sales were CDs, which had by then been around for a couple of years. It was the Warehouse Records on Westwood Boulevard, about 1/2 mile south of UCLA where I was a student. The store was slowly (and then very rapidly) converting from a music store into a video rental outlet, which was the new craze (VHS Tapes) and quickly outpacing record sales. I didn't work there very long (I found a better paying job) but what I want to tell you about is one of my co-workers, The previously mentionened Ryan Hedgecock.
We weren't friends, just co-workers. I made fun of his taste in music and he made fun of mine. I liked jazz and prog rock while he was into country and rockabilly. I tried to turn him on to Todd Rundgren and he tried to turn me on to The Blasters - we both failed, but we picked up a few things from each other and both kept on trying to introduce each other to music the other hadn't heard. I soaked up a lot more than he did I think, because I was still so new to the world of music beyond the town where I grew up (save for jazz, which I had a LOT of exposure to as a kid). He was a guitarist and had his own band and would sometimes have a guitar with him. I heard him play and he played stuff like I had never heard before; a mix of pop, rockabilly and country that was very different from the standard rock guitar I could play at the time. I don't think my playing impressed him very much but he impressed me. I was still learning the instrument and it would be another two years before I co-founded ASK (my L.A Band) but he was on the scene right then and had been for a couple of years. In fact, his band had an indie deal (and a couple of self-released albums before that) and he would sometimes be away from work recording it.
I never met any other members of his band, and half the time I couldn't remember the name of it.
He came into work the day the album was released, bought a copy of the record on vinyl, and promptly quit his job. His band was a big deal in Los Angeles and they were getting some big gigs. I never saw him again. I quit not long after that.
I also bought a copy of the album, and I liked it. But the band didn't hit big until their next album, and by then Ryan had left the band. I have no idea what happened to him after that. His picture is on the first album, and not on the next one so you can probably figure out which one he is. I understand he lives in New York now, still doing his country/rockabilly/pop thing. I haven't spoken to him since 1985, and he'd at best remember me as the scrawny kid with the long hair who could talk classical with the customers and the unnatural affection for Suzanne Vega's first album. More likely he wouldn't remember me at all. I don't think of him very often - expect when I'm revisiting 1985, like this week.
The band went on to big things, and there's a good chance that if you're my age you've heard them. I'm not going to tell you who they are - you need to tune into the show - but the very first sound you will hear is Ryan's guitar. They became more pop after that release and the lead singer eventually went her own way - as she was probably always destined to do. But 1985 was their first big release and I'm going to play my favorite song from that album to start off this week's 10 at 10, and I hope you tune in.
As always, you can go to https://global.citrus3.com:2020/public/radiofreecalifornia to listen to the station, and there is an imbed below. And did you know the station is available as an app? It's only for Google Play (sorry iphone users - Apples terms and conditions were too restrictive for me) but you can listen on your phone at your convenience too.
I have another story from my Warehouse Records days. Because of our location we got a lot of movie and TV people in our store; mostly behind the camera people and not actors. We got the occasional musician we'd recognize, but for the most part they all went to Tower Records. But there is the one day a group of Producers from the TV show Miami Vice came into the store looking for new music. Several of us went to pitch our favorite bands of the time. I got to talking with one producer, a man in his early 30's and talked to him about Suzanne Vega, some Jean-Luc Ponty, but also Todd Rundgren. I was REALLY REALLY into his music at that moment.
I don't remember the guy's name, but I remember him walking out of the store with several of Rundgren's records, including the album "Healing" at the top of the pile. For those of you who remember the show, two songs from that album (Tiny Demons and Time Heals) wound up featured in multiple episodes of the show in its third season.
Yeah, that's my doing. I told a member of his band from the "Only Human" tour that I met that story (I met the whole backing band one night at a party I was invited to), but I've never met Todd himself. I wonder sometimes if he knows that a 20 year-old kid in a music store is the reason he got those royalty checks.
Cheap shots:
I'm going to say this every week until and probably after the election in November: Project 2025 is the most Un-American idea to come along in quite a while. I'ts dangerous and if you support it you might as well tattoo a swastica on your bible. If you vote Republican in this election you're a Fascist.
Ronan Farrow has a shockingly accurate track record when it comes to this sort of thing.
If you support Project 2025 you're a fucking Nazi.
There is hope. It's just all overseas at the moment.
Taraji P. Henson for the win! (Normally I go to HuffPo for entertainment newws adjacent stuff like this but at the moment I am boycotting HuffPo - until they calm the fuck down about Biden's one bad day).
What is the phrase again? Ah yes. Fuck your feelings.
You know it's a valid point. Yes, Biden wasn't good that night, but Trump was much worse.
So when is Trump going to drop out of the race?
Remember, this idiot was a Full Bird Colonel in the JAG Corps.
And because I love you, here's one of my new favotie bands, with a song I'll be adding next week:
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