November 18, 1970
Filmore East, New York

Traffic -
Introduction by Bill Graham
Medicated Goo
Pearly Queen
Empty Pages
Heaven is in Your Mind
Forty Thousand Headmen
John Barleycorn Must Die
Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring
Every Mother's Son
Glad / Freedom Rider
Means to an End
Dear Mr. Fantasy

The glitches during Glad > Freedom Rider are quite annoying, but that's the way it is. Brings me back to my days of working on firetrucks, a period in which I listened to quite a lot of Traffic.

Metro - Mono Messiah

Sometimes when you're looking for stuff that sounds like Métro, you just have to listen to more Métro.

Featuring John Giblin on bass, doing a sort of hommage to John Entwistle, and getting jiggy at 1:38.

Boy George - Girlfriend

Thanks to Ted for the tip on this barnburner. I've no time for Google Image Search today... open your mind and let the pictures come.

Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem - Le Brin D'herbe

available on: this

The Meters: People Say

This reminds me a bit of the brilliant if depressingly prescient If I Lose My Job posted by Emmett moons ago. Stagflation funk.

That Thing - That Thing (American Version)

Shamanistic sleighbells at the 4:44 mark...

Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National: Okwukwe Na Nchekwube (Faith and Trust)

Click here for a short bio and discography on Celestine Ukwu.

Rare Bird - Passing Through

Lenny Williams - Please Don't Tempt Me (How & Why? edit)

This is a jam.

Tears For Fears - Change

Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim: Drinking Water

One from the 1969 Sinatra/Jobim sessions.

Oh, and speaking of Scorcese, he's going to do a Sinatra biopic. Q: Who's to play ol Blue Eyes? A: Leo DiCaprio.

Magnet - Willow's Song

It's kind of amazing that Paul Giovanni actually wrote this; it sounds more like something that would have sprung from the Anglo-Saxon collective unconscious in the 8th century A.D.

Special thanks to Big B for turning me on to The Wicker Man at a legendary viewing party, all those years ago...

Notorious B.I.G. - Everyday Struggle

The Rolling Stones: 2000 Man

"Anderson has a fine sense of how music works against an image....I love the scene in Bottle Rocket when Owen Wilson's character, Dignan, says, 'They'll never catch me, man, 'cause I'm fuckin' innocent.' Then he runs off to save one of his partners in crime and gets captured by the police, over '2000 Man' by the Rolling Stones. He - and the music - are proclaiming who he really is: he's not innocent in the eyes of the law, but he's truly an innocent. For me, it's a transcendent moment. And transcendent moments are in short supply these days."

--Martin Scorcese on Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket

Yes - Big Generator

Jon, Trevor, Trevor et al. going big on this pro-hallucinogen anthem.

FROM THE ARCHIVES
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Aya Mood

Original air date: Condonsday, 2007

Joe South - Cosmos

This is from Joe's 1975 Island LP Midnight Rainbows, which he recorded after a three year sabbatical from the music business, following the death of his brother. From the liner notes:

"I flipped out. I just went completely into the ether in the wake of my brother's death. I just had to get away, so I went out to the Islands, caught Polynesian paralysis and just lived in the jungles of Maui for a couple of years."

"We worked hard on this album. I tried very hard to lay it out there in such a way as to have multiple levels of unfoldment. I also try to keep what I'm saying on a positive level. Nobody likes to hear bummers, although there are enough of them on the air. Bumming people out is one level of unfoldment I just down't want to vibrate."

I'm liking the chord at 2:44.

The Thought - Atlanta Threat

Manhattans: Kiss and Say Goodbye

I won't be able to see you anymore
because of [pause] my obligations...

Jimi Hendrix - Strato Strut

Pop Levi - Blue Honey

I'm liking the overdubs on the second verse.

Available on: this.

December 6, 1969
Altamont Speedway, San Francisco

Rolling Stones -
Jumping Jack Flash
Carol
Sympathy for the Devil (Take I)
Sympathy for the Devil (Take II)
The Sun is Shining
Stray Cat Blues
Love in Vain
Under My Thumb (Take I)
Under My Thumb (Take II)
Brown Sugar
Mindnight Rambler Introduction
Midnight Rambler
Live with Me
Gimme Shelter
Little Queenie
Satisfaction
Honky Tonk Women
Street Fighting Man

Low quality throughout. Strictly for historians.

Built to Spill: Time Trap

Just because, on this Friday afternoon, this is what I really want to hear.

Terry Riley - In C

BONUS BEATS

Beulah: I love John, She Loves Paul and The Battle Cry of the West

Two from the late, lamented Beulah. The first from their debut album, 1997's Handsome Western States, the second the B side to the "Popular Mechanics for Lovers" single.

Breee-eeeeze...

Arvo Pärt - Spiegel Im Spiegel

Hey party people - our latest show for Viva Radio premieres today at 2 PM. This week's show features a lot of new-to-me stuff that I've been enjoying lately, plus a few classics from deep in the archives. Featured artists include Cheap Trick, The Katzenjammers, Automatic Man, Jermaine Jackson, Eye To Eye, Desmond Dekker, Joe South, New Order, and more! Remember that archived shows can always be accessed here.

The photo above is of yours truly circa 1985-ish (thanks to my sister for digging it out of the archives). Chillingly, pretty much my entire future is foretold in this photograph. Trivia Question: can anyone identify the record in the foreground? (Hint: it's the back of the record, not the front.)

The Beatles: Martha My Dear

January 14, 1969 - "A/B Road" session tapes also known as The Nagra Reels.
More info on the "Get Back" sessions here. (All these "aka's" can make one dizzy.)

Moby - Grace

FROM THE ARCHIVES



Satwa: Allegro Piradissimo

Original air date: 3/27/07. For eleven January evenings in 1973, the Morroccan sitar of Lula Cortes and the 12-string of Lailson de Holanda Cavalcanti haunted the northeastern shores of Brazil. When the fire died down and the body finally cut loose the duo went their separate ways. Here is the third track from the first published independent album in Brazil.

Jake Fairley - Frantic

The Parallax View: Keep your fingers on the box and Antisocial Tendencies

Jürgen Paape - Fruity Loops 2

December 1, 1976
Roxy Theater, Los Angeles

Lou Reed -
Jam
Sweet Jane
I Believe In Love
Lisa Says
Kicks
She's My Best Friend
Waiting For The Man
Sheltered Life
You Wear It So Well
Claim To Fame
Walk On The Wild Side

With
Marty Fogel - sax
Michael Fonfara - keyboards
Michael Suchorsky - drums
Bruce Yaw - bass
Don Cherry - trumpet

Aphex Twin - Wet Tip Hen Ax

Tony Bennett and Bill Evans: Some Other Time

It's raining and I'm off to see Death of a Salesman. So here's a song for a rainy night, courtesy of The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album. The image is a sketch of Evans by Bennett which appears in a tiny reproduction on the inside of this album and as the cover to Blue in Green. Who knew Tony Bennett was such an artiste?

Brian Eno - Bell Study with Distant Delay

M83 - Gone

Steely Dan: The Caves of Altamira

Off of The Royal Scam. Becker and Fagan write of the cover art - "before long we find ourselves staring into the maw of the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none, (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill). Why are those buildings turning into reptilian horrors or vice versa? What squalid back alley of the human condition is meant to be invoked by this contused nightmare palette? What manner of man - ill-shod, unshaven - dares sleep peacefully through this fearsome and repulsive protomorph?"

The cover reminds me of Ghostbusters, I'm slightly ashamed to say.

Thomas Fehlmann - Schöne Grüsse

Neil Young: Motion Pictures

Well all those people think they've got it made
But I wouldn't buy, sell, borrow, or trade
Anything I have, to be like one of them
I'd rather start all over again

At some point we'll post, track by track, all of On the Beach. Because this album, called "one of the most despairing albums of the decade" by Rolling Stone when it was released, is that good. For me it might even beat out Tonight's the Night (to say nothing of Trans) as my favorite Neil Young album. Currently, this is the song I'm coming back to. Ruminative, confrontational...a bit like Mike, actually.

Slide guitar courtesy of Rusty Kershaw. He also hand wrote very odd liner notes to the record.

Joachim Spieth - You Don't Fool Me B1

Grant Green: I Can't Stop Loving You

Grant Green's take on the Don Gibson standard, off of Goin' West, an album recorded in 1962 but not released until 1969.

The lineup:
Grant Green, guitar
Herbie Hancock, piano
Reggie Workman, bass
Billy Higgins, drums

From Nat Hentoff's liner notes:

"Grant Green's tone--warm but strong, flowing but controlled--is fused into "I Can't Stop Loving You" so that while the song remains pulsating with sentiment, it does not become awash with sentimentality. The performance also illuminates the ruminative lyricism of Herbie Hancock who also--as on every track--demonstrates the considerable art of unfailingly tasteful accompaniment. And as for Mr. Higgins, his brushwork is a joy to the more subtle senses."

Indeed.

The Doors: We Could Be So Good Together

"The Doors were different, The Doors interested me. The Doors seemed unconvinced that love was brotherhood and the Kama Sutra. The Doors' music insisted that love was sex and sex was death and therein lay salvation. The Doors were the Norman Mailers of the top forty, missionaries of apocalyptic sex."

From Joan Didion's great essay on the end of the 60s "The White Album," where she writes, amongst other things, of visiting The Doors in the studio during the recording of "Waiting for the Sun." She also mentions Morrison's 'black vinyl pants' at least four times in as many pages.

Yo La Tengo - The Race Is On Again

Grateful Dead - If I Had The World To Give (outro)

Recorded "live" inside the pillowy acoustics of the Cleveland Music Hall, Monday, November 20th, 1978. Arguably the best part is at 0:27.

...and speaking of thanatos, in case you missed the mix we did in December '07, it's back up again at non-collective, with a brand new title! Loads of other great mixes available there as well. Get thee thither.