Planet LP

Planet LP host Ted Asregadoo welcomes Danielle Jennings to the pod to talk about relationships and how romantic, friendly, familial, and even business relationships can be complicated -- and how those complications often get expressed in songs. The first part of the episode centers on dating and what Danielle has learned about relationships through The 90-Day Relationship Experiment by the Tantra Institute. In the music-talk part of the episode, Ted and Danielle talk about codependent songs, songs about toxic or dysfunctional relationships, and songs where flipping the perspective will give one wholly different view of a love song.

Artists Featured

The Who

Consolidated

Tanya Donelly

Madison Cunningham

Bruce Cockburn

Taylor Swift

Radiohead

Robyn

Lady Gaga

Miley Cyrus

Toni Braxton

Trisha Yearwood

Death Cab For Cutie

System of a Down

Etta James

Frank Sinatra

Bonnie Raitt

TLC

Sia

In this episode, it's old home week as Ted Asregadoo welcomes Popdose founder Jeff Giles to the pod to talk about the music of Gordon Lightfoot in the first segment. In the second segment, Popdose writer Keith Creighton returns with the New Music Report for May 2023 -- and a discussion on the Class of 2023 in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the spotlight with new music releases are:

The Heavy

The Damned

The Smashing Pumpkins

Jessie Ware

Bebe Rexha

Softee

Ian Hunter

Dropkick Murphys

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

Josie Cotton

On August 1, 2015, Rush played their last show at the Forum in Los Angeles. Five years later, Rush's drummer and lyricist Neil Peart passed away from cancer. The band is no more, but the endurance of Rush's music among its fans is not fading. In this episode, Ted chats with Steve and Gerry of the Something for Nothing podcast that, after 175 episodes, hit the pause button on new episodes. While that podcast is on hiatus, Steve and Gerry visit Planet LP to talk to Ted Asregadoo about Rush's music, how they became fans, and to rank order the final track on each of Rush's 19 studio albums.

1. Working Man (1974)

Ted Asregadoo and Popdose writer Keith Creighton talk about new music releases for April 2023 on the monthly Planet LP feature, the Popdose New Music Report. This month is an incredibly voluminous time for new music. In this episode, Ted and Keith delve into the latest by:

Orbis Max (and interview Dw Dunphy from the band about their latest song, "R U Okay")

boygenius

Everything But The Girl

Peter Gabriel

Metallica

LA Guns

Extreme

Ghost

Electric Revival

A Certain Ratio

Peggy Lee

Louise Burns

Robocop Kraus

Assassins

Iress

Melanie Martinez

Sunny War

In 1982, The Joneses were starting to make a name for themselves in the LA music scene. While getting good press from the LA Weekly and LA Times, and playing to big crowds in the club circuit, the leader of the band Jeff Drake found that as The Joneses grew in popularity, so too did his addiction to heroin.

Jeff's story of his years as a musician, his addiction, and how a bank robbery led to him serving three years in a federal prison is chronicled in his book, GUILTY! My Life in The Joneses, A Heroin Addict, A Bank Robber, and A Federal Inmate, published by HoZac Press. In this interview with Planet LP host Ted Asregadoo, Jeff recounts growing up in Orange County in the LA area, his move to the central valley city of Merced, the various bands he started, his move back to LA, and the rise and fall of The Joneses -- a band that Guns N' Roses, Poison, and others borrowed heavily from.

GUILTY! My Life in The Joneses... is available to buy at HoZac Books, and The Joneses' entire catalog is available to purchase at their Bandcamp page.

Popdose writer Keith Creighton makes his monthly stop to Planet LP to visit Ted Asregadoo and brings along a boatload of CDs to recommend to listeners.

This month, the guys start with a deep discussion of U2's latest release, "Songs of Surrender," the documentary on Disney+ "Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, with Dave Letterman," and close out the segment by spotlighting the lastest release from Inhaler -- a band fronted by Eli Hewson...who is Bono's son.

The second segment starts by tackling the massive 4 CD box set curated by Steven Wilson, Intrigue: Steven Wilson Presents Progressive Sounds in UK Alternative Music 1979-1989. Other box sets include Musik Music Musique 3.0 – 1982 Synthpop On The Air and 1981 • All Out Attack.

Then we're off to the races by spotlighting music by The Waeve, Gorillaz, Metal Marty's Greatest Hits, The Ragged Jubilee, Mimi Webb, Brix Smith, Adam Lambert, Chris Church, Fernando Perdomo (Broken Sound), The Semi-Supervillains, Bad Hombres, and Peter Gabriel.

Plus, this month see the release of expanded CD editions from Flogging Molly, Sabrina Carpenter, Meghan Trainor, and Fletcher.

See? It really is a boatload of music.

In this episode, Ted Asregadoo welcomes back Michael McGauley to talk about the pros, the cons, and something in between when it comes to cover songs. In the first section, the guys talk about why bands and artists cover music by others. The second section delves into the question of cover songs as gateways into exploring the music of other artists -- often the artist who originally created the music. In the third section, it's a good old-fashioned Top 10 list of favorite cover songs that has some intriguing twists and turns.

Featured artists:

Cowboy Junkies

Mark Ronson

Amy Winehouse

The Zutons

Patti Smith Group

Devo

Aretha Franklin

Kate Bush

David Bowie

Ike and Tina Turner

John Coltrane

Jimi Hendrix

Bob Dylan

The Rolling Stones

John Lennon

Duane Allman

Solomon Burke

The Who

Manfred Mann

Train

Bruce Springsteen

An epic episode with lots to talk about for the month of February. Ted Asregadoo and Popdose writer Keith Creighton talk about the Grammy Awards, why Pitchfork's takedown of the new Maneskin album Rush! misses the mark of music criticism, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees for 2023, and new music releases for February 2023.

New Music Releases Discussed in This Episode:

Maneskin

The Smashing Pumpkins

Ladytron

The Church

New Order (reissue)

Shania Twain

Holden Laurence

Unloved

The Nils

Lil Yachty

Peter Gabriel

Lana Del Rey

U2

In this present/past episode, Ted Asregadoo digs deep into "Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story" by the lead singer and lyricist for U2, Bono. Bono's memoir is a love letter to his wife Alison, his bandmates in U2, his children, his father, mother, brother, and God. It's a deeply moving story of how rock and roll, faith, and love saved him from despair. However, despite the fact that the book is very well written, and there are many powerful moments of his life recounted, it falls short in some ways. Ted explains why.

The second segment is one from the audio archives. Ted features a 2009 interview he did with country-pop singer, Jessica Harp. Jessica and Michelle Branch fronted the short-lived group The Wreckers -- which only had one studio and one live album before the band called it quits. In 2009, Jessica released a solo album entitled "A Woman Needs." Her PR firm contacted Ted (who was writing a lot for Popdose at the time) about doing an interview to promote the record -- which, of course, he agreed to. This interview features clips from the album -- which had not had a full release yet -- so some of the songs were heard for the first time on this recording. Despite generally good reviews for the album, Harp announced that she was done performing and would be focusing on songwriting going forward. "A Woman Needs" has many solid tunes like "A Boy Like Me," the title track, and "Love Letter" and shows that country music in 2009 was continuing to inch closer to pop music than going back to its roots for inspiration.

The full interview of Bono talking to NPR's Rachel Martin is on NPR's YouTube Channel. A portion of that interview was used in this episode to illustrate U2s deep faith and how it affected the band's songwriting.

Gen X is a generation born between the years 1965 and 1980. Sometimes called the middle child generation -- as they are sandwiched between Baby Boomers and Millenials -- they are anything but when it comes to pop culture. In this episode, Ted Asregadoo welcomes back two of his Popdose colleagues, Dw Dunphy and Beau Dure, to talk about the music of Gen X.

Episode Highlights

In the first segment, the guys talk about what songs, genres, artists, or bands best exemplify Gen X. Beau starts with alt-pop, alt-rock, and artists who were on early MTV. Dw, notes that MTV (in the early years) was very Boomer-heavy in terms of artists featured. However, when Madonna burst onto the scene, she was the first MTV star to really stand out from the standard Boomer rock. He also notes that in addition to MTV, modern rock radio became a hallmark of Gen X's music taste. Ted says that hip-hop and rap were truly revolutionary in upending the status quo. If there was a genre that really says "Gen X," it's hip hop. Grunge was more of a remix of hard rock and punk, while hip-hop remixed pop culture into a musical form that was unlike anything that came before it.

The music of Deftones takes us into the second segment where Dw asks Ted and Beau about chord modulation in music. Specifically, why "the big finish" that was so prevalent in the music of the past is mostly absent nowadays. Dw notes that TikTok may be a contributing factor to the lack of chord modulation. Beau talks about the Canadian group, Alvvays (pronounced "always") and how their music does incorporate chord modulation into a kind of dreamy '90s-era throwback sound. He also notes that other Canadian band, Metric, and even Taylor Swift are very much in the tradition of trying different things in their music that includes chord modulation and crossing genres. With Taylor Swift, Ted notes that Jack Antonoff has helped Swift try new things, but his production elements tend to be limited -- with some elements getting recycled from "Masseduction" by St. Vincent in 2017 onto Taylor Swift's "Midnights."

In the third segment, St. Vincent's "Hang On Me" (produced by Jack Antonoff) takes us into a discussion about generations being analogous to astrology. Beau, notes that there are shared experiences that can be unique to a generation. Dw says that these generational boxes aren't really embraced among Gen X and Millenials, but he sees the generational identity strongest among Boomers. The conversation then moves onto rock and alt-rock bands that tend to be embraced by Gen X; bands and artists like Pearl Jam, U2, Talking Heads, The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, Belly, Sonic Youth, X, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Blink 182, Smashing Pumpkins, Simple Minds, and Tears for Fears...just to name a bunch.

Finally, the episode concludes with the guys talking about two soundtracks: "Reality Bites" and "Singles." Both movies and their soundtracks were supposed to represent Gen X. And while both soundtracks did a fairly good job doing that for rock and pop, the movies were kind of hit or miss -- with "Reality Bites" really missing the mark.