Radio Gen1us

It’s IRON DJ time again! Which means that a bunch of people are going to upload themed mixes and try to compete with me! Unfortunately for them, not only do I have unbeatable taste in music, but this time around I even have the IRON DJ theme going for me: GRADUATION YEAR.

The idea is to put together a mix where the theme is the year you graduated high school.  I graduated in 1988, and there was so much good music made that year that I could have made 3 mixes that would blow your mind.

But instead I made this one.  It’s semi-autobiographical, in that for the most part, the songs are played in the order in which I discovered them.  Not all of this is music I’d have listened to back in 1988, but it’s all great.  I hope you dig the mix, and whether you do or not, leave me some feedback in the comments please!

1. Danzig – Mother

2010 was a milestone year–among other things, personally, it was the year my 13 year old son grew to be taller than me, which is a reminder of mortality if anything is (I mean I have to crane my neck to yell at the boy now! crazy!)–and it was a great year for music too.  It’s January now, and 2010 is in the bag, which must mean it’s time for my annual year-end best albums mix!

Hooray! Let’s get right to it!

This guy puts out an album every year, and you’ve heard me talk about him before since it seems like they always end up on my year-end lists. This album represents a further maturation of his sound, marrying disparate elements–country but urban, sad but upbeat.  Move Over Mama is a rollicking honky-tonking good time of a song about a woman who takes up too damn much of the bed.

A crushing sludgy Chicago thrash band and a perennial favorite of mine, Lair of the Minotaur has tightened up their sound from the epic bloody thrashfests of their album The Ultimate Destroyer, which I loved, through the (to me) less-focused and inferior War Metal Battle Master, and now here, they’ve distilled their brand of brutal Greek Mythology influenced fantasy metal into sharp chugging 2 minute bursts that say everything they have to say and are done.

Soul poetry? Immediate, revealing, intimate even, the man who told us the revolution would not be televised lays himself bare, with bleak songs and poems about growing up in a broken home, about disease and self-destruction, all very minimalistic but made raw by the power of Scott-Heron’s voice and words.  This song is a cover of an old soul song, originally recorded by Roy Hamilton but covered by everyone from Elvis Costello to Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees.  After this, I’ll never think of it as anything but a Gil Scott-Heron song.

First full-length from NYC metal quintet is a grab-bag of extreme metal influences. I expect even better things from this band in the future but this album hits almost every note I want to hear out of my metal.  Ichor is a song about the Vietnam war, which isn’t a terribly common subject for metal but why shouldn’t it be?

Just some joyful, upbeat, jangly and noisy pop that brings to mind early Pixies.  As their lyrics and most of the information about the band are all in French I can’t really tell you much about them, but it’s all terribly catchy stuff.

Jeb, the singer/guitarist/driving force of Dear Astronaut is a friend of mine. This, their final album, was years in the making due to production issues, and by the time they had the album release party they had to relearn the songs since they hadn’t been playing them in so long. But this album marks their full transition into the heavy-hitting sludge sound that takes better advantage of their talents than the earlier mad circus folk had. So while it’s sad to see them go, at least they went out on top.

Black Breath is a Seattle band playing heavy and loud as hell sludgy crossover thrash/death metal with plenty of hardcore influence as well.  Escape from Death is a death metal song, appropriately enough, about the undead, craving human flesh, from their own point of view.

This is a compelling piece of garagey punk/post-punk from a band that’s been kicking around Seattle for a while.

A thrashier sound than their previous strict technical death metal, with speed metal and cock rock leanings.  The album is a group of songs revolving around the guitarist/singer James Malone’s battles with an eating disorder, and “Beyond Forlorn” is about the depression and loneliness that come with it.

This is a sprawling civil-war-themed concept album featuring exotic instrumentation, repeated themes, and some extended jams. It’s also a punk rock record. Somehow it manages both.

This newest release from the longterm Norwegian Viking/Black metal greats features driving thrashy black metal punctuated by melodic clean-vocalled segments.  Less meandering and progressive than previous efforts, the songwriting is perhaps simplified, but also more focused.  This song, Ethica Odini, which leads off the album, is a prime example.  It opens with a wintry but razor sharp riff that drives through the harsh-vocaled verse until the clean vocals of the chorus hit and tumble it apart into something beautiful but forbidding.

Arty punk that at times brings to mind Husker Du, with melodic guitars and raspy vocals that still manage to belt out singalongy choruses.  If I were to make one complaint about the album it’s that there are a few songs in which the singalongy choruses take on a kind of sameness, but this song avoids that, and all are well worth hearing.

A new album from this fiery NYC indie band, which I consider to be every bit as good as their previous efforts.  The main criticism people seem to be levelling against it is that it’s very much like those previous albums, but when “more of the same” from these guys involves more of their edgy, angular rock, aggressive and antic, well I can live with it.

Trampled by Turtles are a “progressive” bluegrass band from Minnesota and, put simply, they shred. The high points of this album feature musical instruments that seem on the verge of spontaneously combusting.  This song leads off the album with a great fiddle melody exploding into a bloody-fingered ripper of breakneck… is bluegrass punk a genre? It is now I guess.

Murky low-fi falsetto pop that is really well done, its sound at once barebones and lush, owing as much to fuzzy psychedelia as it does to country and folk music . The songwriting is what shines though it also hints at depths that the band doesn’t fully plumb here, perhaps teasing us with the potential, but that is also part of the appeal.  Death Rattles is a atmospheric mood piece full of eery sound effects and high-pitched minor key crooning, with an unsettling result.

Soulful workingman’s southern rock, just the kind of thing for a beer and a shot and maybe even some troublemaking, ’cause as they say in this song (which brings to mind Billy Joel’s Only The Good Die Young but in a good way I swear), “Honey there’s gotta be some hell somewhere waiting to be raised”

Superchunk are indie giants who’ve been around for decades but hadn’t released an album since 2001. Then this album dropped and reminded everyone why this band was the best thing anyone had ever heard 20 years ago. Non-stop infectious power pop perfection.

I know some people had some issues with the production of this album–it’s less murky and bottom heavy than previous albums, but the high end comes out cleaner and you can hear the lead guitar better so I think it shreds regardless.  The songwriting continues to be excellent, with urgent pummeling drums driving a blistering guitar assault and Matt Pike’s throat-destroying roar coming through more clearly than before.  With a few songs though, including this one, they slow their usual gallop down a bit and if anything are even heavier and more menacing as a result.

This album of dreamy shoegazy irresistable space rock came out early in the year, and was one of my most-listened albums all year long.  Expect falsetto vocals with Beach Boys style harmonies, elements of 70s era prog and power pop, all blended into a package so smooth you could slide on it in your stockinged feet.

JRW&tB plays anthemic fist-pumping piano-driven rock and F@&%ING roll, born in the south but schooled in Baltimore.  With choruses that won’t leave  your head for weeks and an energetic delivery in the best tradition of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, it will make you want to jump on top of something, anything, and start stomping.

Who the hell was Eratosthenes? You may or may not know it, but Eratosthenes was a guy that lived 2,200 years ago that correctly estimated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt using nothing but sticks, his eyes to observe the sun’s shadows, feet for walking measured distances, and his brain. He was the first person to measure the size of a planet, before people even thought it was round. He argued that India could be reached by sailing westward from Spain. He invented geography. He invented a system of latitude and longitude. He correctly estimated the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Let me say that again. He correctly estimated the distance from the Earth to the sun! Long before they even had telescopes. I think about that and just think, “Holy crap.” I can barely pay my bills on time or figure out an Excel sheet.

What do the songs on this mix have to do with this ancient Greek scholar from the third century BC? Not a damn thing. Except that when’s the last time you saw a statue of Eratosthenes? Or flew into Eratosthenes Airport? Or went to go see your favorite football team beat the crap out of another team at Eratosthenes Memorial Stadium? Instead we go see an event in the Viagra Dome or suffer some other indignity. We have buildings named after every jackweed you can think of, mainly politicians and the wealthy people that built the buildings — which is okay, but do we need 15 buildings named after the same person? Maybe name the first one after yourself, then search around to find an opportunity to honor someone else, eh? Why not? We can see when something has some meaning, and when we do we usually stop and read it. Maybe you get your kid to read it, and maybe s/he’s inspired by what they learn. Maybe you take the time to look the person up and think, “Wow, this person really did some great things.”

I don’t have enough monetary value built up yet to build my own giant office building, or airport, or sports stadium and put Eratosthenes’ name on there with a big descriptive plaque. But I do have the feeble and insignificant power of naming my own mix tapes. So blammo — I dub thee “The Eratosthenes Mix” in your honor, Sir, and pledge that if I’m ever in a position to build something, I’ll consider putting the name Eratosthenes on there.

Most of these are from 2010. As usual, lots of songs on here I heard first on Seattle KEXP. Several bands from an Iceland podcast — Iceland has some great bands. I had no idea. They also have a big annual music festival up there, I think it was last month. They have a thing in Iceland where the bands have to sound unique, or people won’t go see them…pretty good standard.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.  If you like a band, please download their songs and support them on tour. And if you check out KEXP podcasts, consider making a donation to support them as well.

The idea behind the Anthropological Series is to capture what the DJ and those around her/him were listening to at the time, perhaps in a particular location or phase in life. RG had posted something about summer music on Facebook, and it reminded me that I had this mix in the works, so I put it together all formal-like. This mix includes some songs that I listened to during the summers of 1986 and 1987, when I lived on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. I worked at a local restaurant/bar/pool/marina complex there as a poolside cook, expediter, barback, dining room oyster shucker, and boat takeout delivery guy. Once a month or so all the restaurant, marina, and bar staff would have a cookout/kegger at night at the pool and play music and water volleyball.  I’d work 12-18 hour shifts Wed-Sat with a shorter Sunday, and hang out with bar staff Fridays and Saturdays after 2AM close. I drove my new used Subaru 4X4 hatchback to work, met lots of fun people, and wound up dating a fabulous lifeguard, much to my surprise. It was a great damn couple of summers! When I put this mix together I was surprised how strongly the music worm-holed me back to those days that I’d mostly put on the memory shelf.

Naturally, the music will not do that for you. However, the other thing is that, as much as we all love new music, old music is still good. Sometimes I forget this. Then I find an old cassette or LP that I forgot about and play it and I’m blown away all over again. However, I’ve also made this “anthropological,” so it’s not scrubbed for just the cool songs I heard then. It also includes a few that just remind me of the time period that symbolize stuff you’d hear at parties or on the radio, things like “I Wanna Be a Cowboy” or “Lean on Me.” So when I first made this mix it was just for me, but then I thought about the music on it, and figured at least one other person would like it, so am posting it.

Plus, with it being anthropological, I’m doing science a huge favor by capturing what a 19-year old was listening to in 1986. Musicologists living in their underground bunkers in 3056 will thank me. I don’t talk on it but threw in some movie and TV samples from the time.

Samples:

Yes, it’s over a month old. It’s been a busy month.  It’s not Jim’s fault — it’s definitely Aaron’s.  That said, before everything got busy, we did try to get another show in before job change chaos ensued.  We did it on William Shatner Day. We were set up to include our first guest on the show, Brian — who couldn’t make it at the last minute.  We also did it while imbibing. Listen to the silly ramblings at your peril.

This show features..

We’ve started a new format on Radio Gen1us.  We’re not ditching our mixtapes — but we’re trying to be a bit more regular about podcasting.  Quite frankly, doing a discussion format is a lot easier to do, and it’s a bit more timely.  So if you’re jonesing for some nerd-out over music, then you’ll like this.

We’ve also consolidated our categories on the blog to channels.  Mixtapes is one, Music Discussion another (this means there may be other channels to come, eventually).

In the meantime, Jim and I had a lot of fun doing this show. We’re definitely going to do this more often (likely every other week) and still, sporadically put out playlists.  So if you like this, please give us some comment love and let us know what you think.  We’re always interested in having others participate and with this format, it’s really really easy to Skype in and rock out.

Music featured on our show today includes:

This is my best of 2009 mix, containing samples from my 20 favorite albums of the last year.  I’m not a professional music critic and I don’t listen to every album ever released by any means, so I’m sure there are plenty of holes, and if you’d like to tell me an album I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

As usual, my listening has been dominated by country/southern rock and metal, but there are a few digressions in there as well. Some pretty strange transitions but as a whole I think it flows pretty well. So give it a listen and let me know what you think! Below is a list of the artists, albums, and sample tracks along with a blurb giving my take on each album. I’m not announcing tracks during the mix (it’s already over 90 minutes) so you may want to follow along below.

But now, to the tunes!

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bonus

[Kevin] Winter’s a great time for a mix of northwest bands. These mostly span Washington and Oregon. Not all songs are what they seem, so before you write something off, give it a listen.

I started off just trying to round up enough Pacific Northwest bands to make a mix, but I ended up with way too many original, insanely good songs and got turned on to a bunch of new bands in the process.  Hope you do too.

We Sing in Time – The Lonely Forest

If you like any of these bands be sure to support them by downloading their music or picking up a CD, and check them out when they tour near you.  Special thanks to KEXP in Seattle for great podcasts…check them out and support KEXP, their releases,  and/or the music you love.