radiobombast

“Our Pandemic Radio Adventure” continues, and I’m back on my bullshit–by that I mean counting the mixtapes I’ve had to assemble for you. What must I have been thinking–that this would end soon? Dear listener, we have eleven months to go!

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 June 10, 2100-2300:

• "Just Feel" | Jessica Ashman | Just Feel | self-released
  

all the lying, all the stealing, all the cheating is working

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It’s been a tough week, hasn’t it? INDEED IT HAS.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 June 3, 2100-2300:

• "The Breathtaking Blast" | Tradition | Captain Ganja and the Space Patrol | Bokeh Versions

public service announcement for all the people out there

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This episode and the next are about clearing the decks, a “before and after” tableau, if you will. They are about how I cannot seem to perform the deck-clearing in a spontaneous, immediate way, and how I compensate (if that’s what I am doing) by making big changes at the level of concept. All of this is a fancy way of saying (as I seem to do with increasing frequency) that it was the end of one era and the beginning of another. I guess this archive is a way of keeping it all straight.

At this time my show was still “airing” on Wednesday nights, but because Covid was keeping us all out of the studio I was required to submit pre-recorded episodes on Tuesdays. This meant that the episode had to be planned, sequenced, and pasted together at some earlier point than that. I’m dancing around the unpleasant topic of May 25, 2020. I have forgotten what I thought about George Floyd’s death in the first 48 hours afterward. Maybe at the time I considered it merely another in a long line of murders (which of course it was), another video I didn’t want to see (which it also was). 

One theory of “how music programs should respond to tragedy” is that they should offer some kind of escape, and I guess this program works in that way, if you want to see it that way. 

You know what, though? I’m through “making sandwiches” and giving a platform to my inner critic. Let him get his own, and let the haters hate (I don’t imagine anyone considers this little radio show important enough to “hate” on it). What can I tell you? I am not 100% consistent and I am always doing my best in the moment. What “my best” is will always be an elusive, ephemeral thing, as I keep re-discovering.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 May 27, 2100-2300:

• "Righteous Vibration" | TNT Roots | Raw Dub Creator | Bokeh Versions

time won't always heal and it eats at my mind

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More sandwich-making: the first few songs of this program provide me with comfort on a chilly fall evening in the Northeast, provenance be damned. Listening to the program I don’t really care where the songs came from, whether the artists are dear to me, whether I cared enough to buy actual records by any of these people, and so on. It’s an enjoyable listen, and at the end of the day do we care about anything else? I honestly don’t know.

The Handle > Throwing Muses segue works surprisingly well. Shades of what I like to call old magic. The Fall > Thundercat was also not as bad as it should have been.The lovely Walt Thisney track transforms beautifully into Fever 103°. I am making the good stuff happen!

The program doesn’t really sound “like me” until Loraine James, about half an hour in. I would say this isn’t a great use of my precious airtime–measured against the potential for self-expression–but it wasn’t really “airtime” in the depths of whatever, so does it matter?

Re. Loraine James–far be it from me, a walking cautionary tale in so many ways, to tell anyone how to manage their grind. But I found Lorraine James’s music at around this time because she’d uploaded an entire album-plus as a “name your price” download on Bandcamp (RIP btw) and here we are, a few years later, with me having just about everything she’s released on vinyl in my collection. IDK, seems like that strategy helps people get into your music? (It’s the same with KMRU, though his music does not appear on tonight’s program.)

Anyway, the “broadcast” is happening “under considerable duress,” I say, but I no longer have any idea why. Blessed forgetfulness, it has relieved me of the knowledge of why this week was worse than average.

“I hope it isn’t too much to ask that you stick with me,” I add. You know, I am really down on myself and I need to stop being that way. It WAS a fine evening, half of hour 1 and almost all of hour 2 were perfectly good.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 May 20, 2100-2300:

• "Pills" | Starry Eyed Cadet | Join A Comp! | fadeawayradiate

we all dance into the fire

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Here is a program that chased my dog upstairs (kudos to Cry Robot for that). Her taste is something of a mystery, though. There is plenty of the sublime to experience in this audio file. Where else are you going to hear Slum of Legs transitioning into Little Richard? That’s right, nowhere.

In the spirit of making what management types call a “sandwich,” though, re. a few tracks in this selection whose producers shall remain nameless: Desperate for digital content and too lazy, I guess, to rip vinyl to .mp3, I play these “name your price” downloads (let’s admit it, they are freebies) at the expense of real music. There, I said it, but again, let’s call things what they are. Taxonomy matters! I will take this conviction to my grave.

I think it was at this point that I got tired of listening to me. Even though there is nothing that bad about this program, just the usual stuff. “And I hope you do” is a phrase I use, like, three times in the episode–strangely, given the chance to be spontaneous, I think I’d be less likely to go on autopilot like that.

I mean, this is thoroughly enjoyable most of the time. It’s a pretty good playlist. Just look at it, for goodness’ sake.

So there we have it. Positive bread, negative filling, positive bread. Abbondanza!

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 May 13, 2100-2300:

• "No Baptism" | Larry Marshall | Jamaica All Stars Vol. 1 & 2 | Studio One / Coxsone

someone hold my phone 'cause i can't hold my tongue

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Honesty time. I dread these programs between the beginning of the lockdown and the death of George Floyd.

Yet somehow this program has my energy. I can’t deny it. Maybe it is inescapable.

I have this thing about noting the passage of musicians into the next life. Not sure where that comes from–possibly some feeling of responsibility, like it is my job to report current events? Sometimes I really feel the loss and sometimes I don’t. It’s somehow insulting to both Peter Greenfield of the Stranglers and Tony Allen that I sort of put them on the same level in this way. Surely there are others at the station who care more about the Stranglers than I ever did. It’s pretentious. But, like I say, my energy.

Another true confession: I don’t like the Mark Mulcahy song but I am lucky enough to have had a true companion during the pandemic who told me to play it. Such are the facts of life.

Change is on the way, but you knew that already.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 May 6, 2100-2300:

• "Once More" | The Wedding Present | Once More | Optic Nerve

the world got time for games with you

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FAM. I am trying so hard to get back on the horse and process the last 39 months. I have to honor the muse when she appears..

I detect a weirdly naive positivity in this program’s energy despite what must have been happening in my life right around this time. Happy Mondays, Pia Fraus and The Room In The Wood seem like vestiges of an earlier sensibility. But who cares? So much of reception depends on frame of mind. I happened to be feeling good the morning I listened back to this, so…

Mrs. Miller seems like self-parody, though, emblematic of a show whose concept is exhausted. 

OTOH I don’t care how many times we play never say never, it will not be enough.

This program was mostly smooth and pleasant, intermittently interesting; not a bad way to spend a hundred and twenty minutes, I guess, but can I not ask for more from these mixtapes?

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 April 29, 2100-2300:

• "ALB19 27" | Loraine James | FYAI Demos + Ditched Album | self-released

why must we wait to do the things we want to do

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From my contemporaneous notes: "I have to say I enjoyed this show, it seems to demonstrate that I had made peace with pre-recording and had found a way to still be good." Wow, just wow. I suppose this is going to happen a lot, but I am just not as keen on this episode as I was at the time.

Listening to these broadcasts from another time always brings up a jumble of associations--what was happening then, what is happening now, etc. You know the deal. Get me out of this dream!, as the wise man says somewhere in this mix.

Even though it often feels inauthentic, there are a few surprise things here that probably shouldn't hit right but do anyway.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 April 22, 2100-2300:

• "What It Does" | Handle | In Threes | Upset The Rhythm

just because I really love you

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Welcome to Eighties night! Are you up for some Cocteau Twins? Shriekback? Breathless? Durutti Column? Crass? The Wedding Present? How about two versions of the same R.E.M. song? "Sure," I can hear you saying. "Sounds tubular." Public life had stopped when this broadcast aired, so why not time itself?

I must say, though--as good as the segues are (some of them are quite good), this show doesn't have a center. My methods may be new but the old shortcomings remain.

There aren't many chances for me to speak (I don't anticipate any complaints) due to the scarcity of instrumentals here, but there are lots of people, seemingly, burying their vocals in tonight's music. I remember this impulse--the vocalist needs to do something on the track but doesn't want to be understood, lest they be exposed, found having actually nothing to say.

I am trying to deprogram myself from these remembered impulses, but I think we'll see it happen on the program before it happens in real life.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 April 15, 2100-2300:

• "Keres" | Mikael Fyrek | Further Asunder | Kahvi Collective

i will love myself

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"I keep falling asleep during this episode," my notes say, "but I assure you it is quite good." Here's hoping you can (a) stay awake and (b) find this assessment accurate. Despite the distance between then and now, it's tough for me to be objective.

I know there are strong tunes here, but the segues seem weak to me. Plus, I just don't sound up for it. Hopefully you can excuse this--I'd had a bad week at work; specifically, I was threatened by a student and then scolded by my superiors for setting a boundary with this person. Prepare yourself for many work anecdotes to come. Things don't get better, despite what you may have heard.

In re. one of the artists on tonight's program, I should have said "Abby Normal" and not "Abe Normal." I had certainly listened to that release prior to playing it, but I suppose not carefully enough, or maybe I didn't retain the experience. Who knows. There is a lot of that to come too.

Sleep well, if it's what you need.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 April 8, 2100-2300:

• "Freedom Fighters" | Delroy Washington | Beyond the Frontline | Front Line - Virgin

hold on like i do

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