Revolutionary Plastics Hour

Okay, I’ve been playing a version of this set for the past three or four weeks; this past week, it actually, finally recorded successfully. So now you can enjoy it!

The songs are definitely on the scrappier, punk rock end of the spectrum; with only a couple of exceptions (at the beginning & end, coincidentally enough), this could easily have been a playlist from my college radio show (1992-1995).

But don’t write it off, if you’re not a punk fan—there’s a lot to love here. & have no fear; the Revolutionary Plastics Hour is committed to variety & diversity. Coming weeks will definitely see a return to the forgotten country, rap, crooner & pop music that I’ve been playing all along.

Either way, stick around till the end (or skip ahead, if you can’t wait) to hear J.R.R. Tolkien reading from The Two Towers over some very atmospherically complementary music by Earth. Fun stuff. Enjoy!

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-Six

Tiedye—Fisherman’s Bend (A Mountain of One remix)

This episode leaps right out of the gate with a scorching introductory number, courtesy of Honeycone (no idea), called “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.” it also features disco-ish versions of classic rock tunes (Floyd, Zep, T. Rex & T. Petty). I also did a “double-shot” of songs I don’t care about that were remixed by people I do like (NIN vs. El-P, Britney Spears vs. Justice). That’s a gimmick, right?

Oh, & you have to listen for the song “Heartstones,” which has been living in my head for a few months now. It’s a sorta contempo-throwback dance track with a sax part that tips my love-hate relationship with that instrument firmly into sweet, sweet puppy love.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-Five

Honey Cone—One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show

Okay, this is kind of a Twofer-Tuesday deal. Not only are there back-to-back hott traxx by Ryuchi Sakamoto (featuring Robin Scott of “Pop Muzik” fame, & Iggy Pop of “Iggy Pop music” fame), & a sweet lyrical segue from Billy Paul (“I got my head on straight/I got my mind made up”) into a Bunny Sigler song called “I Got My Mind Made Up” (come on, that’s nifty; should count as a twofer, right?), but also, it’s part one of a two-part (or “double-shot,” as long as we’re going all radio lingo up in this M.F.) pair of shows, with this one flowing right into Volume Thirty-Five.

So stick around for the end, because you don’t want to miss the beginning of that dynamite Honeycone song—not to mention the song Bruce Springsteen gave the Pointer Sisters (apparently a very early one of his, from the Asbury Park days). They do it up real nice…!

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-Four

Danger Mouse & Jemini—The Only One (instrumental)

Punk’s not dead, right? I don’t know why you would even say that. What are you, some kinda square? See you at the mall, grandpa!

Anyhow, whether or not punk’s dead* is a topic for another day. Today, we’ll be enjoying some examples of its illustrious history, selected at whim & at random. The show begins with a couple of laid-backish type numbers, then we roll right into it without a break until pretty close to the end. Top-to-tail classics, folks; if you heard it here first, you’re welcome! All from the original vinyl, as usual. Record-collector snobbery isn’t dead, either, apparently.

& yes, in case you’re wondering—looks like we’re back in business, over here. So tomorrow’s show should be up in your grill by midweek, as usual…! Hard to believe. The bitrate for this one is 156, not the usual 192, but I’m hoping to fix that tomorrow night; in the meantime, try to enjoy this stuff despite the dip in aural quality. (Oh, also, start playing at 1:35 if you want to skip the overlap; usually I don’t make a big deal out of it, but it’s a little jarring/lengthy this week.)

Thanks for all the inquiries & encouragement—you people are the best. Really, the best.

* I doubt it, but I haven’t checked with “the kids” lately. They’re all playing their Skrillex too loud to hear me, anyway.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-Three

Mr. Len—Take Yo Ass to the Store (instrumental)

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It’s been a while since the last one & it may be yet longer till the next one. Thanks for sticking with this. Technical difficulties have gone forth & multiplied, so who knows what the future holds.

In the meantime (while we wait for the future), I give you the most recent Revolutionary Plastics Hour, from May 4 (if my math/memory is right). I managed to eke this out of a three-hour automated recording (under someone else’s name!), but I haven’t been so lucky since, so let’s count our blessings.

We start everything off with a few songs in the memory of MCA, led by Ritchie’s pick & moving into the deep-crate rare stuff I brought along. From there on, it turned out to be a fairly funk/soul/disco/rap-oriented show, yet intriguingly “racially diverse,” as we like to say. Hall & Oates, with their blue-eyed Philly soul cred, get a pass, as does NYC indie-rap impresario El-P, & the Beastie Boys were friends with RUN-DMC, so they’re okay. Hard to say who wins the white guy title for this show—Chet Atkins would seem to have it in the bag, but is there any soul to Jon Anderson at all?

I leave it up to you. Votes will be accepted at the usual address, tallied & archived appropriately. Mind your chads.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-Two

MCA RIP tribute set:

Hello again! As you may have noticed, this podcast has been a bit on the quiet side for the last few weeks. I assure you, this has not been due to laziness or apathy on my part, but rather to illness & technical difficulties.

For example, the technical difficulty that is lodged inside the automated recording software on the station’s computer, which is currently refusing to record my show in its entirety. This week’s podcast, for example, is half the usual length; preceding weeks have netted less than even a quarter of that running time. WTF, HAL?

So, despite being unable to provide a podcast that, shall we say, performs to completion, I didn’t want to sit back for another week’s worth of radio silence. With that in mind, here’s the first half of last week’s show. The second half was really good, too; I’ll have to replay it when this glitch is chased out of the system.

Quick wrapup: The “I Who Have Nothing” versions are intriguingly different, the disco Pink Floyd version is nicely done, and, yes, that is Britney Spears down there; I played it because I like Justice & thought you might enjoy their take. It was an early breakthrough for them; a pretty high-profile slot for a pair of laissez-faire Frenchmen. Sadly, no instrumental version on the 12″.

It’s a fun half hour! Go on, give it a shot. What do you have to lose?

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-One Point Five

Metropolis—I [heart] NY

This week’s show has a lot of movie-related stuff going on. I’m not sure why—I swear, it wasn’t intentional (at least, not consciously; what my subconscious does is no business of mine). Songs from cult/popular/crap eighties movies (one each), plus a Disney movie tune, because, well, why not? Maybe everybody does want to be a cat. Or, you know, vice-versa.

There’s also the usual assortment of covers & quirky WTF-type numbers; Nazareth (“Love Hurts,” “Hair of the Dog”) does a song by Crazy Horse (Neil Young’s backup band—whose impressive levels of scraggly scruffiness make Neil himself look clean-cut & debonair), Johnny Cash sorta covers/re-composes a Ramblin’ Jack Elliott song, & Rotary Connection (who you might remember from last week) do their version of “Soul Man,” which inspires nothing so much as the question, “But—wait, huh?”

Finally, loyal longtime listeners (& if you’re in the Triple-L Club, this week’s password is in the knothole of the third tree from the left next to where they used to keep the bikes) will note that not only have I found yet another song by Indeep (which, I think, will be the last; not counting an instrumental B-side which I’m sure will get its turn someday) as well as, gallingly enough, another version—in my own collection, no less; a criminal oversight, conceptually speaking—of “If You Go Away.” & I think this might be the first Moroder-free week in a while. Not that I’m tired of him (far from it), but I guess we all need a break from time to time.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty-One

Nazareth—Beggar’s Day (Crazy Horse)

Shorter tracklist—longer songs. Vintage Donna Summer. St. Etienne tackle Neil Young (well, less “tackle” than “touch,” to stretch the metaphor), with the assistance of Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez & “Little” Louis Vega. Rick Rubin “ruins” Justice. Tata Vega speeds up Ned Doheny. SA Smash jiggifies Led Zeppelin & Howie B electronifies Robbie Robertson.

Oh, & three groups just flip the Reverse switch & run the tape backwards. Whaat? Yes, it’s true. A trio of backwards versions, created & released by the artists themselves. Why? Who knows; slowed-down music is enjoying some popularity, but taking songs & running them from back to front doesn’t seem to have caught hold with the music-loving public. Still, one man’s trash is another man’s hsart, I suppose.

Hey, you can take the effort out of clicking this site’s link every week by subscribing to the podcast, btfw. Click here, then click the blue “View in iTunes” button on the left & just do whatever the computers tell you to do. It’s the best way, really.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Thirty

Rotary Connection—Memory Band

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Staring at the threshold of the Thirties, this latest episode has twentysomething written all over it. It’s still living at home with its parents, it won’t even consider accepting a job where it can’t check its Facebook page at least once every quarter-hour, & it doesn’t understand why putting Oliver North on TV is “tragic or whatever.”

I admit, I didn’t expect this show to turn out as well as it did. The assorted, scattered elements I cobbled together really came together in a way that I had hoped would cohere successfully, but really had no idea if they would (or, honestly, any reason to expect them to).

That said, I hope you’re in the mood for pre-House of Pain era Everlast (in his first incarnation as an affiliate of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate crew), a Sarah Jones back-in-the-day classic, a charming Stone Roses b-side, some acoustic & country-tinged gems, plus the (by now) usual allotment of Giorgio Moroder-related synth-pop. Oh, & Kenny G. Did I mention Kenny G? Also Kenny G.

The mic levels are once again a little “hot,” as we say in “the biz.” Sorry about that; it’s the price you pay for quality of this caliber.* Also, I promised Johnny Cash but didn’t deliver, due to a (literally) last-minute timing-based switcheroo. No worries; the Man in Black will be back.

Have enjoyment with the songs of this!

* & you get what you pay for

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Twenty-Nine

The Woody Herman Band—I Got the News (Steely Dan cover)

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Whuuurrraaaahh, uurrrhhhh, I’m still alive.

The above quote is a ham-handed reference to rock stars who die at twenty-seven years of age.* The phonetic approximation of the chorus from Pearl Jam’s biggest hit serves at once to celebrate this show’s survival past that landmark & to note the innate insignificance of that “achievement.” Did I struggle as much over the course of my august twenty-seven volumes as, say, Kurt Cobain did with his stomach pains & unfathomable fortune? Hard to say. Only my diary knows for sure—& it can’t be bought. (Well, not on your budget; trust me.) Anyhow, it’s in a locked box, under the care of my trusty native bearer, Carl, who has strict instructions not to open it until exactly one hundred years after my death.

It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

Why all this fretting over the passage of time? Well, probably because Friday’s my birthday. No, no, shush, you couldn’t be expected to remember. I’m just thinking, as I always do at this time of year, about mortality, nostalgia & the future…

Ew, gross! Moving on: This week, you’ll hear Frida (of ABBA) singing songs by Bryan Ferry & Giorgio Moroder, plus Gregg Allman & Cher singing songs about how it feels to be in love for just about as long as it takes to make a record. I’ve also got more answers to the microcosmic musical questions I can only imagine are inflaming your curiosity even as I write this, such as:

• You know that classic rap song, “Roxanne, Roxanne,” by UTFO? What else did that label release?

• Did Frank Sinatra ever do a version, arranged by Gordon Jenkins, of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”?

• Hey, are there words (written by the legendary Sammy Cahn) to the Odd Couple theme song?

• What about Lenny Kaye, from the Patti Smith Group & the Jim Carroll Band—did that guy ever make his own record?

If you will engage the mousian locator on your webular browse-a-tron with the hyperlink at the end of this post, you will be rewarded with the answers to all these questions, & maybe even one or two more. Who can say?

Enjoy the show! I swear it’s going to be worth all this.

* Amy Winehouse: rock star? Tough call.**

** (not really)

Note: There seem to be some technical glitches in the MP3 uploading/downloading process this week; it seems to work, but might take longer than usual. Hoping to sort out why, but for the moment, just act natural.

Revolutionary Plastics Hour: Volume Twenty-Eight

Neal Hefti—The Odd Couple (lyrics by Sammy Cahn)

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