radiobombast

Bless me, listeners, for I have sinned! It has been 575 days since my last post. And to paraphrase the world’s most famous TERF, I solemnly swear I have been up to no good.

Serendipity and dialectics: as I embark on a mission of piecing together the past, I find that this show performs a feat of alchemy, in piecing together various fragments of shows that I had planned on doing before the Great Lockdown, and yet striking me as “a little too perfect.” That’s what my notes from the time say, and I have no standing at present to second-guess them.

Early on, I feel like this program “makes no sense” and is “too retro”; it doesn’t seem to get into gear until about 20 minutes in, when we go from African Head Charge to TNT Roots to Breathless. And that’s just it, as pleasant and weird as this strikes me, I’m still struggling for content in this early-COVID period when the old can’t die and the new struggles to be born. I’m running on the fumes of old staples like The Blog That Celebrates Itself (RIP). Sometimes a thing is playing (let’s say Jay Glass Dubs) and it sounds like “my show” as I currently understand it and sometimes a different thing (I don’t want to name names here, but let’s imagine a band with a name that sounds like “Octo Fins”) and it just doesn’t sound like me. 

I could never have guessed I would be here, but here I am. Thank you for hearing my confession.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 April 1, 2100-2300:

• "Kuff Dam" | Happy Mondays | Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) [reissue] | London

I am pickled, I am done

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Now it can be told! Methods and agendas disclosed in this week's blurb. It's all here.

To begin we have to go back to the very early days of this program, when I decided (a) my library was not enough and (b) I had to chase the ghosts of my past and prove that I could follow the "rules" of my old radio station from undergrad days, which I was never good at doing. There's a lot to unpack there but I'm sure somewhere along the way I have referred to what I often do as LARPing and that is basically the jist of it.

We used to have this rule about "currency," according to which your playlist was supposed to be 30% "current" records. This meant playing discs from the "current" bin, and what was in there had been added by the station (NB: not necessarily "released," just acquired) within the last 3 months. To the extent that I was ever successful at this, it was only just: early on I had a lot to learn from the past and somewhere along the way I decided that the present (at that moment) wasn't up to my standards and apparently I wasn't open to many new experiences. I look back on this as a failure that I have to correct. For whom? The voice in my head of course.

So, anyway, in 2013 or so, when this show was less than ten programs old, I was auditioning lots of new releases on Spotify and building my playlists that way. I would often call this "radio magic" or whatever, but it was a kind of fraud. It helped, but didn't help, that at some point we got this software at the station called DeejayPro that could incorporate Spotify into your broadcast (controversially, I guess).

This created a couple of messes: one was the general fakeness of many programs, even though I was sharing music that I genuinely liked--not to mention the use of that awful, unethical app--and the technical issue of playing those supercompressed mp3s (evident in last week's disaster).

Apparently it took a global pandemic to force me to reconsider, but on this broadcast I said goodbye to the old ways. I would only use actual sound files in my possession, currency be damned--this meant using what I owned and what I was buying, which also meant a deeper commitment, which I consider a good thing. It also meant the return of dynamics and crazy levels, which I guess is also a good thing because it's teaching me to embrace imperfection even though I hate it.

So this particular show features a lot of material I picked up on the very first "Bandcamp Friday," five days prior, as well as things I'd bought recently. But, I have to say--it also included a lot of promotional freebies (including yet another cringeworthy Membranes track--what is it with them?), plenty of channeling 1985 and 1986 (so what else is new), and, let's face it, a big focus on the white past and not the black future. I don't know how it's possible to do a show that's "honest" and at the same time "in bad faith" but I manage.

That said, I really miss old R.E.M. and I did love the then-recent viral video of Michael Stipe singing along to "Underneath the Bunker."

I also miss Richenel and I miss the days when that This Mortal Coil cd blew my little mind; now it's all wrapped up in guilt and regret. Here's hoping someday it will sound fresh again.

Since this program was broadcast, 410 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 55 times. I have delivered 54 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. That gives us a lot of time to work through my issues, and there are many of them.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 25, 2100-2300:

• "Yahweh The Redeemer" | TNT Roots | Raw Dub Creator | Bokeh Versions

Didn't know it was a song you hated to sing

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There is a weird symmetry to this post, as it comes (seemingly) at the end of the pandemic era even as I am trying to make sense of how it began. Maybe there was a point in dragging my feet all this time. Increasingly I think things happen as they are meant to, when they are meant to. My brain must be getting old, soft, and smooth.

Everything shut down very quickly in the second and third weeks of March 2020. By the time of this broadcast New York State was under a lockdown. I knew in advance that I would not be able to do this program "live," and I foolishly went ahead with the show that I had planned anyway.

(Ironically, on the night, I was unable to connect remotely to the airplay computer to do my weekly programming tasks, so I ventured down to the station only to find out that I--and everyone else--was literally locked out. So this was how things were going to be.)

"Going ahead with the show that I had planned anyway" meant basically digitally recording a Spotify playlist and uploading that digital recording. The results are--well, here they are. Listen for yourself. For me, every segue is perfect (timing-wise if not conceptually), every song sounds crushed. It's a travesty but I am committed to posting everything, even the travesties. "Dododo (Ekassa No. 1)" is such a great recording too. I guess I will have to buy that box set after all.

There aren't even enough current tunes here to satisfy that fetish for me. It's tough to know at this point what I was thinking. I was probably just scrambling. How long did I think the lockdown would last? One week, I say at the end. How optimistic was I?

Did I invent the term plaguecasting? I am taking credit for it in any case.

Since this program was broadcast, 416 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 56 times. I have delivered 55 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. I'm not sure any of them sound worse than this one, but miracles are always possible.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 18, 2100-2300:

• "Ire" | The Don Isaac Ezekiel Combination | Nigeria 70: Box Set | Strut

For they knew someday the sun would die

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For months I left my page-a-day calendar on March 10, 2020. At first it was genuine shock and refusal. I probably thought in the beginning that it would just be a few weeks. After a while it was a more self-conscious, pretentious gesture, my own Hiroshima clock. God knows what I must have been thinking on the day after society stopped, but this program is a real "twilight" show, the first dispatch from the new world in which we found ourselves, and the final example of the "old way" of doing things.

In a real example of not appreciating what you have while you still have it, I sat in the Kenny Ritter Memorial Studio for the last time, mostly pushing buttons to play music I didn't care much about. "I don’t understand why I play things like Snow Ghosts," my notes say. I must have heard it weeks before and not hated it, which is about as much positivity as I could muster. I don't even like "quiet rituals." I want loud ones. The segues, early on at least, were abysmal; what even was the concept?

To the extent that I mention events in this program, I shouldn't have, because I couldn't be sure they were going to happen, and I'm almost positive that they didn't.

Since this program was broadcast, 411 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 55 times. I have delivered 54 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. The future is here. We're soaking in it.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 11, 2100-2300:

• "Ajoyio" | Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey & His International Brothers | Nigeria 70: Box Set | Strut

Progress gives way to a fiction

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A great show awaits you, and in even better news, it's my show! The only element missing is Lady Catharsis, who has arrived by and by at a grudging respect for The Fall, tonight's featured artiste.

Here is yet another posthumous Hall of Legends induction, since I lazily made the band charter members and then for whatever reason never asked to talk to the man himself. I need to start talking to people again.

Anyway, I guess this is where the origin story goes but once again there really isn't one. I have a weird memory of being 17, and being driven by my mother to a halloween party (I didn't get a driver's license until age 25), insisting on listening to KDVS in the car, and hearing a very distinctive song that stuck with me for about a decade before I figured out it was "Barmy." In my early days deejaying for that same station I would play "Hey! Luciani" and whatever the U.S. equivalent of Bend Sinister was. Jeremy, Friend of the Program, had a copy of In: Palace of Swords Reversed and we all loved "Marquis Cha-Cha." I had a copy of the Steve Barker compilation Bugs on the Wire and still think the version of "Wings" on that is the best one. In the waning days of the record store at which I worked, I gave myself a very special discount on the 458489 A Sides cd compilation, which tided me over until graduate school, during which time all the Beggars Banquet albums were reissued on cd and my obsession really began. Mark E. Smith used to say that Fall fans were the salt of the earth; as with Coil, there's no great explanation why this cishet black guy with a doctorate is among them; life just bounces!

Recommendations: the two best three-album runs are Perverted By Language > The Wonderful and Frightening World Of... > This Nation's Saving Grace and The Real New Fall L.P. > Fall Heads Roll > Reformation. If for some perverse reason you must own only one thing by this band, make it the Peel Sessions box set. That is the real story, right there.

I feel like I have to address this: by several accounts Mark E. Smith is a first-class asshole and an easily cancellable person. I know this. As a recovering abuser myself I give him a certain forbearance. That is all.

Anyway, "Why Are People Grudgeful" goes crazy on the turntable but winds up sounding alright. Otherwise I think the show is a technical success. It's a perfectly fine but random selection; at least I manage to play things I have not played before, unlike the Coil program from a week ago.

I don’t know why I had to remind people that it was a live show? Was it because I hadn’t spoken for a while? Or because I made some embarrassing error that has been memory-holed by post-production magic? Editing was so long ago.

Since this program was broadcast, 415 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 56 times. I have delivered 54 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. "It's a living," I would say, if it were a livelihood and if I were truly living. Maybe someday.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 5, 2100-2300:

• "Bombast" | The Fall | This Nation's Saving Grace | Beggars Banquet

Winter lives in my heart

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One week to go before time stops.

I guess this particular outing is a "grower." It seems forced early on; Kristin Hersh and Mogadisco don’t really go together nicely, for example, nor does Vanitas

I may not be the 20-year old idiot who used to play the same handful of Cocteau Twins records every week, but "growth" is overrated. I have settled into a different kind of groove . It’s feeling kind of pointless.

But it could always be worse--there’s a strange urgency to this program that I can hear in the recording. I swear it’s not memory playing tricks on me, because at a baseline level I can barely tell one current show from another at this point. I can only attribute the urgency to this show’s unfolding in real time, with a fiery crash always just around the corner. There is something more than content to these experiences—it’s the capture of a live singularity that’s important, not *what* I play per se.

Or maybe it's just because the records can skip, like the Legendary Pink Dots disc that I play here. "Thanks for sticking with us," indeed.

Since this program was broadcast, 413 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 56 times. I have delivered 53 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. Only two more episodes "like this" to go--one to treasure, and one about which you can definitely say, "that happened."

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 March 4, 2100-2300:

• "Tempus Fugit" | Closed Loop | Shepherd Drift | Kahvi Collective

Now you know our truth

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The pandemic has made me extra-fond of this episode, because it's one of the last "specials" I did before the lockdown, but I think this episode might be suitable for the pantheon in any timeline. I had of course already inducted Coil into the Bombast Hall of Legends, in four stages, to go along with their "equinox" / "solstice" series. Early days! But here I wind up with airtime on what would be Peter Christopherson's birthday, so it's a "proper" chance to devote the full two hours to their music (and other things, with apologies to Jhonn Balance).

I pronounce PC's surname like "Kristofferson" although I don't really know if that's correct--I become wistful about the Dif Juz HoL induction, triggered by that very question. How lucky I was that at least two of them are alive to answer the question. But not in this case. This program is for the spirits, and for the fans, and for the uninitiated.

There is no cool or interesting origin story for me and my Coil records. I'm sure that Jeremy, Friend of the Program, used to encourage me to play Scatology late at night on the radio, many years ago. And there was a kind docent at the local record store, Alex, who insisted I take home The Unreleased Themes for Hellraiser 10-inch. I'm not a pagan, I'm not into male-only onanistic rituals or anything, I'm just a black cishet guy who loves music that is unusual and good and unusually good. My tastes are probably almost as boring as I am.

I guess I stuck with Coil over the years because they were prolific and restless, building a catalog that is almost self-sufficient--not merely a "desert island disc" but a desert island body of work. In that ridiculous hypothetical, you'd hardly need anyone else's records. Also, there are only a handful of “industrial “ artists who (to me) are unproblematic. It’s a depressingly short list--Coil, Cabaret Voltaire, Chris & Cosey, Test Dept., Bourbonese Qualk, Einsturzende Neubauten, Nocturnal Emissions, Zoviet France, I'm not sure whom I'm forgetting...Everyone else seems too close to Alain Jourgensen, too close to Douglas Pearce, or is actually Genesis. This last bit is less trivial than it sounds--Coil's presence on a compilation is a really good indicator of quantity. I've "discovered" a lot of good sounds just picking up the various "various artists" records on which Coil appeared. And I take the willingness to do comps as an indicator of niceness in a person--easygoing, plays well with others, etc.

So I guess that's it.

It was a lovely evening sitting in the studio and letting the music flow through me, loudly, though I couldn’t seem to say anything correctly when it was time to speak. There is a certain magic(k) in the air whether you listen to this in blinding sunlight or at nighttime as intended.

Since this program was broadcast, 418 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 57 times. I have delivered 53 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. I am most definitely biased but I have to say that none of those episodes are better than this one.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 February 27, 2100-2300:

• "First Dark Ride" | Coil | Unnatural History III | Threshold House

Everything is good and divine

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Wednesday is my day of healing: first therapy, and then this. My therapist thinks my dj hobby is creativity. I think it is self-expression at best. I have never believed that djs are artists or that spinning and mixing records is a performance. I have done art and I have done performance; I may do these things again, god help us all. But for reasons of trauma those are in the past.

There is plenty of new trauma unfolding in the present. Work was not going well at the time of this broadcast. I was feeling inadequate and afraid to show up as myself. Little did I know what kind of blessing the pandemic would be in this regard.

The program is my one arena for seeming and feeling competent. Listening back to the programs from this time, I do wonder what any of it has to do with "the self." I think that has gotten better, but you'll have to wait.

Since this program was broadcast, 416 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 58 times. I have delivered 53 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. At long last I have set up my voice-over mic and preamp in my new house. I am accepting the new reality by and by, probably just in time for it to end.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 February 26, 2100-2300:

• "The Feeling" | Orlando Voorn | The Feeling | Bosh

I've killed everybody, now what

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"Who’s listening?" I wonder out loud in my notes to this program. So much of the time on the radio I actually want to be "alone," at least left to my own devices. Sometimes the isolation gets to me and this must have been one of those times. Was I having some kind of premonition, or advance feeling of what the next 14 months would be like?

Strangely this program seems "authentic" even though it is heavily Spotify-driven. It saddens me on a couple of levels to listen, but perhaps it will do you or someone else good.

Looking at the playlist very little of it connects or makes sense or reflects commitment, except for Primal Scream covering Roky Erickson of all things. And how many times can I play that?

Since this program was broadcast, 420 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 58 times. I have delivered 52 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. It's getting easier to do this again, a bit less embarrassing as I pick through the mess.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 February 19, 2100-2300:

• "Slip Inside This House" | Primal Scream | Screamadelica | Creation / Sire

Maybe getting somewhere doesn't seem like a lot

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Shockingly I had stopped drinking, at least for this week, and had been working very hard at the gym with nothing to show for it. On this day I wrote down that I'd had a four-hour training at work just to be the backup to a backup on some issue or other. I had scribbled something less-than-profound, I'm sure, about the ongoing Democratic primary, but let's face it, I was done caring.

Anyway, "a conceptually and technically perfect show?" Is this really what my notes say? It isn't true, though this one gives me pleasure even now, confirming that it has not all been a waste. And I even got props from drummer John over the phone, who was playing with a cat while waiting for his friend to wake up and give him a toke. I had always hoped that this program would be a soundtrack for positive experiences, so achievement unlocked.

Since this program was broadcast, 425 days ago now, I've gone "on the air" 59 times. I have delivered 52 pre-recorded episodes on account of the pandemic. I wonder if it is a victory just to tread water at this point; it is certainly "funny" to hear myself say during the program that I am "only" thirteen programs behind on this site. I could just give up, but then that would only prove right the people in my life who say I don't take ownership of anything.

New York just legalized marijuana, so I am looking forward to more altered states of my own in the near future. I've been told by more than one person that I need this, so it must be true.

BOMBAST playlist, 2020 February 12, 2100-2300:

• "Music" | Henry Turner's Crystal Band | Music | Kalita

No now, no then

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