Bear With Me, or Continue to Enjoy This, Whichever You're Doing: Transmission 209, 2015 May 31

Every year, as soon as both of our colleges have held their commencements, Ithaca hosts this mean-spirited little festival celebrating what is "special" about itself, as though being host to an Ivy League school plays no part in the specialness and as though Ithaca, left to its own devices, is somehow a nicer place than one of the nearby financially- and culturally-impoverished rural hellholes you've read about in the story about racist Google searches. As a station we were partnered with this carnival of solipsism this year, such involvement being its own "black hole," as a source close to BOMBAST tells me. But this is my website and I can say what I please about this four-day endurance test--I hate it and prefer to stay indoors. So here I am, spinning some records.

The "Factory Sound" being pretty far from what the Ithaca Festival is about, and this being Martin Hannett's would-be birthday, the show went to some predictable but nevertheless awesome places, segues be damned [I'm looking at you, Slaughter and the Dogs]. Of course the Martin compilation would have been "Physical Evidence," but someone decided that all of Manchester punk needed to be Spotified while I wasn't looking, so I was out of luck. I'm feeling pretty defeated with this whole thing! Anyway, this was a "FTS" program and it came off well.

Somewhere in this archive I spat out some words about Joy Division sounding better live than on record--oh yeah, there it is--but I think I'll go in a different direction here. You could do a lot worse than having to listen to a repeating playlist with "Flight," "Ceremony," "Atmosphere," "Dirty Disco," "For Belgian Friends," and "Transmission" on it. Also, since this was a historical fork in the road, I would prefer it had Factory spent whatever money it would have taken to placate Martin Hannett, so we could have more records, rather than dumping all that money into the Hacienda. And no, I'm not bitter or biased just because I never got to visit.

BOMBAST playlist, 2015 May 31, 2100-2300

1. "Nostalgia" | The Chameleons | John Peel Sessions | Blue Apple
2. "There Is Only Now" | Souls of Mischief | There Is Only Now (Remix) | Linear Labs
3. "Right Here" | Tricky | Adrian Thaws | False Idols
4. "Code Ext" | John Tejada | Dramamine | Palette
5. "Winter Hill" | A Certain Ratio | To Each... | Universal Sound
6. "Voyager" | Rival Consoles | Odyssey / Sonne | Erased Tapes
7. "That Girl Suicide" | The Brian Jonestown Massacre | Tepid Peppermint Wonderland Volume 2 | A Recordings
8. "Erzulie" | Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart | Redux - Anthology 1978-2015 | 30 Hertz - Cherry Red
9. "Rackets" | Royal Family and the Poor | A Factory Quartet | Factory
10. "Suspended Sentence" | John Cooper Clarke | Martin | Factory
11. "Echtrae" | Lakker | Tundra | R & S
12. "1974" | Joey Anderson | 1974 | Dekmantel
13. "Gyal Circuit" | SEEKERSINTERNATIONAL | Gyal Circuit | Boomarm Nation
14. "Cranked Up Really High" | Slaughter & The Dogs | Martin | Factory
15. "Atmosphere" | Joy Division | She's Lost Control | Factory US
16. "When Thanksgiving Approaches, I'm Usually In My Third Week Without Release" | Exploring Jezebel | On a Business Trip to London | Blackest Ever Black
17. "Nix" | Dawn of Midi | Nix | Erased Tapes
18. "For Belgian Friends" | The Durutti Column | A Factory Quartet | Factory
19. "Atmosphere" | Brian Harris | Behind the Mask | self-released
20. "Phantom" | The Sisters of Mercy | Alice | Merciful Release
21. "Barrage" | Blind Idiot God | Before Ever After | Indivisible
22. "This Could Be the End" | The Legendary Pink Dots | Asylum | Jnana

next time: an audience with the Queen of Siam. Enjoy the music! --kid catharsis