Episodes
Tuesday Jun 28, 2016
Tuesday Jun 28, 2016
We began a busy June with a busy show. In it, we conducted a good deal of business--Physical Evidence, Listening Parlour, and a couple of "post-punk" birthday observances. We mean them all, even Lady Catharsis, who is really laboring through her introduction to "Work Hard."
It's always the 30th anniversary of something, but this year seems to be the 30th anniversary of quite a bit--or so it seems to a person of my age and sensibility. The Queen Is Dead, released just as school was getting out, was the soundtrack of that summer, the last of Smithdom, and much more. Lady Catharsis does not go for the title tune, but she is nuts.
400 Blows were the soundtrack of that fall, though, "Movin'" blowing my mind just as college was beginning to blow my mind. I paid more attention to the tunes than to classes, I have to admit. The inauspicious beginnings of a mediocre career--but I still have the records, which does not seem like a bad deal.
BOMBAST playlist, 2016 June 1, 2100-2300:
- "The Queen Is Dead" | The Smiths | The Queen Is Dead | Rough Trade - Sire
- "Post Apocalyptic Love Song (The End)" | Johnny Moped | It's A Real Cool Baby | Damaged Goods
- "Little Jewel" | Blackie & The Oohoos | Lacuna | Unday
- "Breakdown" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
- "Kiri" | CB-R | DRSL | Cut Mistake
- "Susan" | The Goon Sax | Up to Anything | Chapter Music
- "Back Side of the Moon" | The Orb | The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld [reissue] | WAU! Mr. Modo - Island
- "Riots Over London" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
- "Scrimshaw" | Anna Meredith | Varmints | Moshi Moshi
- "Protein" | Tropicana | Cosmos #1 | SVS
- "The Charmer" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
- "Nought Marie" | Little Annie | Trace | Tin Angel
- "Enigma" | The Durutti Column | LC [reissue] | Factory Benelux
- "Play For Today" | The Cure | Staring At The Sea - The Singles | Fiction - Elektra
- "Femern" | Matt Karmil | ++++ | PNN
- "Hollow Hills" | Bauhaus | Mask [reissue] | Beggars Banquet - Hostess
- "Etheriel" | Lush | Origami | 4AD
- "Fred Wesley Suffers Spontaneous Human Combustion" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
- "Maersk Recorder" | Matthew Collings | A Requiem for Edward Snowden | Denovali
- "Broken Violin (Afternoon Recording)" | Waterhouse | Empty Gallery EP | Decisions
- "Curfew" | Fatima Al Qadiri | Brute | Hyperdub
- "Work Hard (East End Remix)" | Depeche Mode | Everything Counts (In Larger Amounts) | Mute - Sire | "Listening Parlour"
- "Movin'" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
- "La fin de la guerre" | Dorian Pimpernel & Julian Gasc | Moonshine, Vol. 1 | Born Bad
- "Break Through" | Funkees | Can't You Hear Me? | Now-Again
- "Regular" | The Range | Potential | Domino
- "The Morality of Altitude" | 400 Blows | Look | Illuminated | "Physical Evidence"
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Friday Jun 17, 2016
Wandering Up And Down Those Avenues Of Sin: Transmission 279, 2016 May 18
Friday Jun 17, 2016
Friday Jun 17, 2016
Again we've reached a point where the website is shamefully out of date. Friend of Bombast Mateu says he has run out of things to listen to, so like an arthritic tortoise I spring into action. Here is a Medway Night that happened nearly a month ago.
I recall things beginning well enough, and then somewhere the segues just stopped working. With (The(e)) Milkshakes it is always this way. I managed to fulfill an Antibalas request, about three weeks late, but I have no idea whether Drummer John was listening, or if he has internet. Maybe someone reading this can tell him it happened.
Thanks for listening.
BOMBAST playlist, 2016 May 18, 2100-2300:
- "And We Begin" | Loose Capacitor | The Delaware Road | Buried Treasure
- "Green Hornet" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Around the World with the Prophets" | The (Hypothetical) Prophets | Around the World With | Infine
- "ROM" | Thug Entrancer | Arcology | Software
- "Uprising (Parts 1 & 2)" | Antibalas with Jojo Quo | Africafunk: Return to the Original Sound of 1970s Funky Africa | Harmless
- "C'est de l'or" | Forever Pavot & Dorian Pimpernel | Moonshine, Vol. 1 | Born Bad
- "Stones for Throwing" | Cavalier Song | Blezard | God Unknown
- "Dark Entries" | Bauhaus | 5 Albums | Beggars Banquet - Hostess
- "You Did Her Wrong" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Patience" | Lifetones | For a Reason | Light in the Attic
- "There Is So Much Static (feat. Eivind Aarset)" | Tortusa | I Know This Place: The Eiving Aarset Collages | Jazzland
- "It's You" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Leaves Me Cold" | Lush | Origami | 4AD
- "My Zippo" | King Snake Roost | Dope, Guns & Fucking In The Streets: 1988-1998 Volume 1-11 | Amphetamine Reptile
- "Wise Ol' Man (edit)" | The Fall | Wise Ol' Man EP | Cherry Red
- "Transgalactic World Eater" | BLOWN OUT | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
- "Don't Love Another" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Uwe" | Tobias Schmid | Hamburg Elektronisch 3 | hafendisko
- "Bardo" | Fontan | Babylon EP | Hoga Nord
- "General Belgrano" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Coming Home" | Wells Fargo | Can't You Hear Me? | Now-Again
- "Cruising Central Ave" | The 4th Coming | Strange Things (The Complete Works, 1970-1974) | Now-Again
- "Brand New Cadillac" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "To Believe" | K-X-P | III, Pt. 2 | Svart
- "Dreamt Person v3" | Venetian Snares | Traditional Synthesizer Music | Planet Mu
- "Ambassador of Love" | Milkshakes | 19th Nervous Shakedown | Big Beat | "Physical Evidence"
- "Over It" | Junior Boys | Big Black Coat | City Slang
- "Helena" | Yndi Halda | Under Summer | Big Scary Monsters
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Friday Jun 03, 2016
A Presence Conjured From Thin Air: Transmission 278, 2016 May 14
Friday Jun 03, 2016
Friday Jun 03, 2016
Another successful journey to the "Exterior Realms" (at least I think so) gives me the opportunity to go "off-topic" and give you a more general update. I promised last time that I would share another story from the Senior Catharses' visit as well. Fortunately we can put our hands together in this case.
Grandpa Catharsis asked me why I hadn't done any interviews latey, pointing out that the Hall of Legends specials were one of his favorite things about this program. That's nice! (In my tradition of turning every compliment into a negative, I started wondering what might be wrong with regular, non-interview programs like this one.) It just so happened that we drove down to DJ Segundo's crib for a short visit and HE asked me the same thing, so clearly we are facing a wavelength with room for more than one person.
Very well--let's talk about the Hall of Legends and why it has been dormant. Turns out there is no legitimate reason except What Is Going On With Me, so I'll discuss that. [REMEMBER: this is my diary, so GTFO if you are not entertained.]
Sometime around the HOL interview with the great Breathless I experienced a personal trauma that was as serious as it was ridiculous. In a way I couldn't actually believe it was happening, in real-time, and didn't read much significance in my immediate response to it. Surveying the damage in retrospect, I stopped going to the gym (which for me substitutes for depression meds), gained weight, increased my alcohol consumption, and generally became very angry.
"But Breathless was not the most recent Hall of Legends special," I hear you saying. (I do not actually hear this, except in an imagined conversation with the Platonic Ideal of a Regular Listener.) It's true. Three months later we spoke to the legendary Vini Reilly, but I literally can't tell you how long that was in the planning, and it just kind of happened one day. A little over a month after that, we did the Heidi Berry interview. But that was "in the pipeline" when the Breathless thing was happening, because the legendary Ari was prescient enough, and kind enough, to ask if I'd like to be placed in contact with the legendary Heidi and I wasn't a big enough idiot to say "no." So because I am a PROFESSIONAL (albeit an unskilled and unpaid one) I held it together long enough to see that through. And then we stopped.
MEANWHILE I was supplementing my permanent half-time sinecure with temporary half-time sinecures that filled me with despair. I continued to do the job of Program Director at WRFI all by myself although there were nominally two of us; there were negative aspects of that which were practical, personal, and racial, none of which helped with my demeanor or general outlook. When I "quit" that position last June I somehow found ways to become more angry, more bitter, and more destructive. I KNOW: I am special this way.
Amazingly, last (summer? fall?) I did get up the nerve to contact a Legend In Waiting, and we had a promising dialogue in some etherspace or other. Something was going to happen, and then it fell through, because I have become a flake. I also received an assurance from one already-Legend that something could be arranged with yet another Legend In Waiting, but this never happened because the person in question never uses the internet. At least that is why I'm telling myself it never happened. I am capable of protecting myself sometimes.
Thus, out the window flew one possible way of spending my newfound free time as a non-management type at the radio station. Other possible hobbies went unexplored as well. I was, as I concluded, using alcohol at night to self-medicate. It is very good at killing feelings! How anxiously I looked forward each day to the murder of my feelings.
In October I came around to thinking that maybe this was a bad idea, that this daily homicide wasn't taking me anywhere good, so with Lady Catharsis's help I stopped altogether. But the Feelings, which I had decided I needed to feel, were so awful, and the lack of medication so excruciating, that I filled the void not with productivity but with food. Because of course I can't just suffer from depression and PTSD and anxiety. THAT is boring. I must also have Binge Eating Disorder and Body Dysmorphia in my life to keep things interesting.
(It's funny to think that, all the while, I've been doing this ridiculous little program on the reg, cracking up at my mistakes like nothing relevant is actually happening around it or me. But this has saved, and is saving, my life, as LC tells me, so there's that.)
I started having suicidal "ideation" --if you know how that might differ from "thoughts," please explain it to me--in November of last year, and I was able to keep them at bay only by telling myself "you wouldn't just kill some random kid's dad, or some random woman's husband, so how can you do anything to Catharsis Junior's dad, or Lady Catharsis's husband?" Meaning that I had to get outside my own self to see me as something worth preserving, in the abstract. I figured that maybe the time had come for me to talk to somebody, so I did.
Things are not miraculously better--it has taken work--but some healing is taking place. I can "containerize" the feelings and set standards and boundaries for myself--these are novelties! My work situation has improved in ways that it could not have done for 2015 me. So, yeah.
Anyway, were I a Legend I would not have wanted to talk to this community radio jackass in a bad mindframe (there's something to add to the ol' email signature) for any amount of time, much less for the amount of time I demand from people, MUCH MUCH LESS the TWO times poor Andrew Gray was subjected to the experience.
So that's why the Hall of Legends hasn't had anything happen in seventeen months. But things are revving up again. I have to convince that one Legend that I am not actually a flake. Maybe I will send them a link to this. I have a feeling they might understand.
I sincerely hope that if you need to talk to someone, you find a person. Or that if you need something like an amateur radio hour to keep you tethered to this world, you find an outlet. Maybe we can be that outlet. It's working for me.
Thanks for listening.
BOMBAST playlist, 2016 May 14, 2100-2300:
- "Jah I" | Lee "Scratch" Perry & The Upsetters | Mr. Perry I Presume | Pressure Sounds
- "Blackhole" | Deviant Amps | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
- "What a World!" | Parade of Sinners | Domestic Landscape, Vol. 2: Underrated Synth Classics 1982-1990 | Domestica
- "Bubble" | Stabat Stable | Ultrissima on the Junk's Moon | Cache Cache
- "Angora - Fairmont Remix" | Ricardo Tobar | Ricardo Tobar - Collection Remixes Pt. 1 | Cocoon
- "R-Type" | Anna Meredith | Varmints | Moshi Moshi
- "She Wore Lilacs in Her Hair" | Magic Castles | Starflower | A Recordings
- "Head Body" | Not Waving | Animals | Diagonal
- "Shanpan" | Roger West | En Asie | In Paradisum
- "The Wheel" | PJ Harvey | The Wheel | Island
- "Sequencer Roll" | Baumann / Koek | Baumann / Koek | Bureau B
- "I Had A Dream (instrumental)" | 5 Revolutions | Can't You Hear Me? | Now-Again
- "Macka Talk" | Mabrak | Drum Talk | Dug Out
- "Foxtits Funkdrive" | Zach Christ | Sonic Doucheclap | Husoptageiser
- "Aokigahara (feat. Tobi)" | Asian Psilocybe Foundation | Water Vein EP | Mental Groove
- "Galacticon" | Ummagma | Frequency | Moon Sounds
- "break glass actions" | Cavern of Anti-Matter | void beats / invocation trex | Duophonic
- "Powers of Ten - Marco Plex & Shall Ocin Remix" | Stephan Bodzin | Powers of Ten (remixes) | Herzblut
- "Comin' Home Baby" | Booker T. & The M.G.'s | Green Onions | Rumble
- "The Shag" | Trouble & Strife | The Delaware Road | Buried Treasure
- "Thousands Below" | 12z | Trembling Air | Other People
- "Always" | Flying Saucer Attack | Chorus [reissue] | Drag City
- "The Sombre" | Shallow Sanction | Without Light | Alter
- "Numbered" | Wire | Nocturnal Koreans | Pinkflag
- "Earth (Gaia)" | The Orb | The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld [reissue] | WAU! Mr. Modo - Island
- "Bestandteil" | Irmler | Bestandteil | Klangbad
- "Favourite Descending Intervals" | The Durutti Column | Amigos Em Portugal | Durutti
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Tuesday May 31, 2016
Don't You Roll So Slow: Transmission 277, 2016 May 11
Tuesday May 31, 2016
Tuesday May 31, 2016
a propos of nothing, I have a thought I'd like to share, since I can't remember anything about this particular program except that the tunes were good and that Lady Catharsis chose one. My thought is about elitism as it pertains to music. Maybe it is about wilful obscurity, and maybe it is about both things, and maybe it is halfway coherent. We try.
This past week the Senior Catharses were in town, and one of them asked us about the local music scene, about which I suggested that it is kind of nice that we have a thriving underground without anyone being "too big" [though we could maybe do with someone who was Thin White Rope-sized, but that's just a personal preference.] Then Lady Catharsis brought up that somewhat local band, X Ambassadors--they of the "Renegades" song that has aired so many times in a Jeep commercial that I never want to hear it again--not that I would have found it enjoyable in the first place, but you get "the picture." (I suggested that they don't count but LC insists that they do).
Anyway, THIS IS HOW WE GOT HERE: it really is about my never wanting to hear your song again. I don't care that you've made money from a commercial. Congratulations. Whether you are successful enough at art to quit your day job is not my business; I wish you the best. I would not recommend poverty to anyone or wish it upon anyone so harmless as an artist. (Except Billy Joel, but then he is not harmless, so my point stands.) So: knock yourself out with underscoring deals, that's part of your freedom. I may have to move on from fandom, but that's part of my freedom too. Universal balance restored.
But that other part of success--growing an audience--gave me some thinks too. I don't think, pace occasional friend of the program Alex, that social snobbery informs one's decision to move on when a favorite band "breaks." To me it is more like a response to gentrification--the cool kids are moving in, and I need to find a more reasonable neighborhood until the next cultural shift happens. Some of us like things cheap, low-key, and not crowded. No personal judgement involved.
If you would like to exercise personal judgement here, like perhaps thinking--even commenting--that it's a dire rhetorical move to liken, say, hurt feelings over a band's major-label contract to losing one's house, that's part of YOUR freedom. Yay, freedom.
More grandparent updates next time!
BOMBAST playlist, 2016 May 11, 2100-2300:
- "Mad Dog" | Spider King | Shot to Pieces | Finders Keepers
- "You Can't Sit Down" | Booker T. & The M.G.'s | Green Onions | Rumble
- "Temp" | Trux | Trux | Office Recordings
- "Stripping at the Nail" | Secret Boyfriend | Memory Care Unit | Blackest Ever Black
- "Mob Hand" | The Fire Dept. | L'Oeuf D'Or | M'Lady's
- "Circle IX (Treachery)" | Pact Infernal | The Descent Chapter II | Samurai Hero
- "Alpine Evening" | The Orb | Alpine | Kompakt
- "Nine Regal" | The Dandelion Set | The Delaware Road | Buried Treasure
- "Leger Leger" | Julien Gasc, Forever Pavot & Chassol | Moonshine, Vol. 1 | Born Bad
- "Building a bridge to you from the roof of a disused supermarket in Budapest" | Jumble Hole Clough | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
- "Generique debut" | Pierre Vassiliu | Ils (Bande originale du film de Jean-Daniel Simon) | Born Bad
- "Slow" | Olof Melander | The Path | Project Mooncircle
- "4'32"" | Inventing Masks | Inventing Masks | Error Broadcast
- "Souvenir" | Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark | Dazzle Ships (Live at the Museum of Liverpool) | White Noise
- "Standing Stone" | Flying Saucer Attack | Distance | Domino
- "All Leave Cancelled (X)" | The Fall | Wise Ol' Man EP | Cherry Red
- "Solo 3" | Nicklas Sorensen | Solo | El Paraiso
- "Young Mountain" | Gain Stage | Elevated Noise | Portals Editions
- "Camino" | H.O.S.H. | Cilanthropy | DIYnamic
- "Hate Week (vox dub Dark Outside)" | Security | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
- "Hi Fu" | Tiefschwarz | Left | Watergate
- "EYES (Feat EazyLee RIP)" | Trinity Lo Fi | A Warmer Welcome | digitalDIZZY
- "Nom" | Benny Boeldt | 8 of Cups | Carpark
- "Poor Magic" | Brandt Brauer Frick | Holy Night & Pure Magic | K7 / Because Music
- "The Other Me" | Laila | Laila | DEEWEE
- "Nine Pound Hammer" | Merle Travis | Hillbilly Music... Thank God! Vol. 1 | Bug / Capitol | "Listening Parlour"
- "Poor Connection" | Blackfoot | Can't You Hear Me? | Now-Again
- "Exoplanet" | ASC | The Farthest Reaches | Auxiliary
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