Yellow Brit Road

This week on the Yellow Brit Road, new indie, Martian fallacies, and those big gay hands.

We opened this week with Joni Mitchell's dive through the archives. She released a radio performance of her covering "House Of The Rising Sun" at the CFQC AM Radio Station in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1963 - the earliest known recording of Joni Mitchell.

Our second song, David Bowie's Life on Mars? prompted an investigation into the state of extraterrestrial exploration—and its latest advancement, the discovery of life on Venus! ...or is it?

We had new music from Supercolour, Newmaj, Rhys E, The Loft Club, TV Face, Dream Nails, Slap Rash and Denise Chaila. Find all these artists online (linked above) and give them some love!

Exciting news, this month has been the return of Britpop-era band the Doves! We a track from them.

Our masala chai for the week was freshly brewed with local water... new music from PUP (who have a new EP out next month) and Partner (album out November)!

Find the streaming playlist for this week's show here. As always, I am honour-bound to remind you: streaming's all good, but do try and support  music directly!

To get in touch with the show, email [email protected], or tweet the show @YellowBritCFRC. I appreciate the feedback!

On this week's Yellow Brit Road, old music, new music, unsigned artists who should be stars, crazy headlines and much more!

Bringing you a multi-genre show, we delved into the best that's new and underground with unsigned artists from across the country. Find Lord Kagemusha (North Yorkshire), Kynsy, We Cut Corners, Somebody's Child (Dublin, Ireland) and Amaroun (South London) on this week's playlist.

Catch our all-new segment on music journalism, Music News You Didn't Need To Hear, why Pete Doherty makes the strangest headlines, and listen to some of British indie's most influential artists!

This week's Masala Chai was brewed by Edmonton, Alberta-based indie-pop duo The Civil Union. We also had a submission in from Californian synth-punk artist Violent Vickie!

This week's playlist can be found here.

To send submissions or feedback to the show, email [email protected] or tweet @YellowBritCFRC.

Catch the Yellow Brit Road live on air on cfrc.ca every Sunday from 8 PM EST!

This week on the Yellow Brit Road, we had another album listen!

Oasis' stellar debut album Definitely Maybe turns 25 this August, and for that and many other reasons, it is an album that deserves a revisit. We talked a bit about the recording process and the history surrounding the album, and listened to stone cold classic sounds.

Definitely Maybe a good show!

Catch the Yellow Brit Road live on air each Sunday from 8 PM on cfrc.ca for your weekly fix of good music! Email [email protected] or Tweet @YellowBritCFRC to get in touch.

This week on the Yellow Brit Road, Decolonise fest, live music, Peel sessions and more!

We heard new albums from Jehnny Beth and the Fratellis, whose album Half Drunk Under A Full Moon is out in October.

Decolonise Fest, a music festival in London "by and for punks of colour", ran its 2020 edition online with performances that can be found on their Twitter and Bandcamp. We listened to DeLila Black, who played the festival this year, and from 2017, Art Trip and the Static Sound's unique afropunk sounds, and London pop punk feminist trio The Tuts.

We had some live music from British multi-instrumentalist Georgia, performing at SXSW festival in 2019, and digging through the archives for some classic John Peel sessions from the 90s by PJ Harvey and Mogwai.

We had dance folk from Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Cinnamon, post-punk music from Northern Irish band Gender Chores, and a submission from Sunderland's Brass Monkey! Submissions can be sent in to [email protected] or through Twitter to @YellowBritCFRC

This week's Masala Chai was graciously provided by Mozambique's influential alternative band 340ml, and Kingston's very own The Wilderness. Listen to the Kingston Live! podcast on kingstonlive.ca.

This week's playlist can be found here. As always, I am honour-bound to remind you, support local artists directly if you can.

Catch the Yellow Brit Road on your dial at CFRC 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or on cfrc.ca, each Sunday at 8 PM!

If you wanted to know what it takes to recreate one of the largest music festivals in the world for the radio masses, for the lockdown generation, this is the bonus content for you! I answer some questions about the production and polishing of the show, as well as the bill (so many brilliant acts to choose from!)

The Yellow Brit Road returns Sundays from 8 to 9 PM on CFRC 101.9 FM in Kingston, or on cfrc.ca! Join me for your weekly dose of British music, fresh off still-ringing guitars, and riffs that never age. Full shows can be listened to in the archives 3 months from broadcast.

This week was August bank holiday weekend, which means ordinarily, it should have been the weekend that the Reading and Leeds festival, one of the longest running and largest music festivals in the world, took place.

While the physical festival was called off for 2020 owing to health concerns over COVID-19, the Yellow Brit Road managed to secure passes to a very special edition of the festival: one that let us go back through the years and relive the best of live music at Richfield Avenue, Reading (and Bramham Park, Leeds)!

We experienced some of the best the festival has to offer over the past years, or as much as we could in a single hour. We jumped into the crowd for enthralling performances and walked into some of the strangest interviews from the weekend. From Penetration and Sham 69 in the 70s, all the way to the Marsicans, Kid Kapichi, LION and Kofi Stone in 2019; from Slaves in the Pit to Wolf Alice, CHVRCHES and Bloc Party on the NME and Festival stages, we went over everything in time to catch our personal weekend's headliners: Arctic Monkeys, Rage Against the Machine, and Muse. Call that a weekend?

Watch the performances again here!

Catch the Yellow Brit Road live every Sunday from 8 to 9 PM on cfrc.ca! Full shows can be listened to in in CFRC's program archives for up to 3 months from broadcast.

John Reith, the famously uptight director of the BBC in the 1930's, took it upon himself to be the upholder of Britain's morality as director of the nation's airwaves. As we heard in the Lancashire episode from earlier, Lancastrian actor, comedian and musician George Formby often fell afoul of the BBC's standards under Reith with his cheeky and playful lyrics. 

In time, the often unreasonable principles to which mostly harmless creative content was held, has come to be referred to as Reithianism. So, what does the defender of British decency sound like? 

In this outtake from the show, talking about Reith's reaction to Formby's hit The Window Cleaner, I took a stab in the dark at what the redeemer of rectitude might sound like, ultimately failing miserably. As a quick Google search went on to show, this is really what John Reith sounded like.

Follow the Yellow Brit Road live on air every Sunday from 8 to 9 PM on cfrc.ca! Get in touch with the show through email or Twitter, whether you have feedback, criticism, song requests. or are a musician wanting to get your music on air, email [email protected] or tweet the show @YellowBritCFRC.

This week's Yellow Brit Road follows the rise of the Thin White Duke, in our first-ever album listen!

We listened to David Bowie's seminal art-pop album, Hunky Dory. Cutting a portrait of a young Bowie in 1971, on the brink of stardom, a year before 1972's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars catapulted him firmly into the public eye, Hunky Dory gives us a glimpse of Bowie setting out his plans in stone, still figuring his persona out.

We talk about the circumstances of the album, as well as its lasting impact and legacy.

Catch the Yellow Brit Road live on your dial every Sunday from 8 to 9 PM on cfrc.ca! Shows are available in our program archives for 3 months after broadcast.

Get in touch with the show! Email [email protected] or send in a tweet to @YellowBritCFRC.

This week, we followed the Yellow Brit Road all the way up to the north of England, to the county of Lancashire. Between old music, local dialect, accent, culture (and chips) and poetry, this was possibly the most fun show I've ever done, and I hope you enjoy it too!

The artists played this week were Lancashire folk bands The Houghton Weavers, Oldham Tinkers, Lancastrian actor, comedian and musician George Formby, Lancaster based 90's feminist punk band Angelica (whose lead singer Holly Ross now plays in psychedelic punk duo The Lovely Eggs), and new bands TV Face, and Ivy from Preston.

The dialect poem read on the show was Eawr Sarah's Getten A Chap, by Sam Fitton. The Oldham Tinkers set the poem to music, which can be heard here.

This week's Masala Chai artist was Young Guv, the pop rock project of singer-guitarist Ben Cook, better known as lead vocalist for Canadian hardcore bands No Warning and F*cked Up. His song Cold In The Summer can be heard here.

This week's (mostly complete) playlist can be found here.

Catch the Yellow Brit Road live on radio or cfrc.ca every Sunday from 8 to 9 PM. Have feedback, suggestions, requests or want to submit your music? Email the show at [email protected] or tweet @YellowBritCFRC.

This week on the Yellow Brit Road, we dive through new music and old, discuss guitaring faux pas, and talk about identity.

We opened with a solid set by Siouxie and the Banshees, and in a curveball for this show, American singer Andy Williams. His version of Can't Take My Eyes Off You can be heard here, and Muse's jazz cover for a BBC performance in 2002, here.

Rock music is not dead, and this show will testify to that! We heard indie music from Gaffa Tape Sandy, Beach Riot, SuperGlu, Billy Nomates, Big Joanie, and Ailbhe Reddy. Billy Nomates' debut album releases in August.

We had some math rock from Clever Girl, an album recorded globally on tour by Delta Sleep, and pop excess (excuse the pun) from Rina Sawayama (with her song XS), who the Mercury Prize deemed "not British enough" on passport grounds, in spite of being one of Britain's most exciting young pop musicians. The podcast discussed in the show, United Zingdom, by journalist Zing Tsing, can be heard here.

This week's Masala Chai was straight from Toronto, Canada and featured a dash of lime as we listened to the Seams' sublime Lemonade and Partner's Hello and Welcome. Their album Never Give Up releases in November.

Consider supporting your favourite musicians directly by buying their music and merchandise!

Listen live on your dial at 101.9 FM in the Kingston area, or on cfrc.ca, Sundays 8 to 9 PM! (Full shows are available in the archive for 3 months from release)