I'm not a poet, I don't have words enough to tell you what it's like...
Well hello again, everybody. Welcome to Flatbasset Radio: Episode #87!
First things first, I want to give a huge thank you to everybody who checked out the last episode. If you'll recall (or scroll down) you'll see that Episode #86 was a completely Minnesota-based episode of the show. No speaking from me, just an hour of straight jams. A bunch of the artists on the show were kind enough to share the show via social media which is huge for me. Pretty much the only reach I have is via social media and every like, share, retweet etc... helps out quite a bit. That's actually a tremendously sad sentence, but that's culture these days.
On a more old-fashioned note, thank you to everybody who scooped up one of the copies I burned and left around town. Hopefully those of you who picked up a copy gave it at least one listen before whipping it out of your car window in a traffic-induced rage. Thanks to Cheapo, Reverie Cafe, & Electric Fetus for letting me hock wares at their fine establishments. Everybody, go to Cheapo, Reverie, & Electric Fetus and buy music & sandwiches. They're the best.
Alright, let's get to the show. No, I haven't put out any shows yet this October. Yes, I've been very busy and/or sleepy. I'm sorry if anybody was waiting with bated breath for a new episode. If that's the case you have my most sincere apologies, however, I'm awfully skeptical that you exist.
I continued my absence from the microphone this week in favor of jamming as many, errrr.... jams onto the show as possible. In all I managed to fit another 19 songs into an hour long show. Since I took most of the month off we have a bunch of anniversaries to acknowledge, some new jams, the Cover Of The Week, and, of course, the Flatbasset Flatclassic!
As always, Flatbasset Radio is completely free. I've finally set up a decent downloading site, so if you'd like to download Flatbasset Radio: Episode #87 (with all the appropriate iTunes tagging), just click here.
If you don't have the time or desire to download the show, just click the Mixcloud player below and you're good to go.
Here's how Flatbasset Radio: Episode #87 plays out:
01. Fountains Of Wayne - Radiation Vibe
Decided to open this week's show with one of those aforementioned anniversaries. Can you believe it's been 20 years since Fountains Of Wayne's first album? Holy Jeebus we're all getting old. While a large chunk of the world remembers them as a one-hit wonder and nothing else I will forever carry the flame for Fountains Of Wayne, the finest power-poppers the post-grunge era produced.
02. Ras Dude - Germ I-Nation
I've played Ras Dude on the show before, but his beats never go out of style. Pulled this one off of his 2013 EP Well Red. It's a fantastically enjoyable beat tape that I would highly recommend for anybody who spends more than two hours each week on public transportation
03. The Dirty Banks - Dardanelles
I've had very good luck in the past with bands who have decided to follow me on Twitter (The Persian Leaps, Brilliant Beast...). Honestly, I'm not trying to be egotistical (I have no idea why anybody follows me on Twitter), but if you give me a follow I'll likely check out your work.
I mention this because The Dirty Banks randomly started following me a few weeks back. I hit up their Bandcamp page and decided to check out their latest single "Dardanelles." As you can hear, it's a delightful little tune. If the Talking Heads had formed in 1996 they might have put out something that sounds like this.
04. Kanye West - Famous (w/Rihanna)
It's not secret that I am a tremendous fan of Kanye West. I've played him on the show so many times I've lost count and I'll probably play him a dozen more times before someone pries my laptop from my cold, dead hands.
I decided to play "Famous" on this week's show because I wanted to mention that I was at Yeezy's show at the Xcel Energy Center (the upper-midwest's finest sports & entertainment complex) the other night. It was a tremendous show. Just Kanye on a floating stage hovering above a huge open pit dropping hits for 95 minutes (with enough bass to move the hair on your forehead). Focus on the Taylor Swift line if you'd like, but for me "Famous" will always be watching the crowd go off when that "Bum-bum..." part kicks in halfway through the song. Yeezy 2020!
05. These Arms Are Snakes - Perpetual Bris
In my years of making mixtapes, mixes, & podcasts I've learned many things. Perhaps the most important of which is to follow monster hip-hop jams with difficult post-hardcore. These Arms Are Snakes album Easter turned 10 the other day and it doesn't feel like it's aged at all. "Perpetual Bris" is definitely one of the calmer moments of the album, but even as a chance to exhale it's still a necessary piece of rollercoaster album.
If you've been following along for the duration of the show you likely know that I"m a huge fan of the Descdendents & All discography. So much so that I'm fully invested in the various side projects that have come and gone in the wake of the band. Goodbye Harry was singer Scott Reynolds first post-All band and even though they only put out two records (with different lineups), they hold a special place in my heart.
"I Don't Mind" comes from their second album I Can Smoke (which turned 20 since we last spoke) and it's an all-time classic in my world. Back when I was in my late teens/early 20's I was just a mess. I'd screwed up enough to drop out of technical college (technical college!), I had no idea what to do with my life, and I was definitely at the nadir of figuring out how to deal with my crippling introversion. As corny as it sounds, "I Don't Mind" came along at a time in my life when I needed it. Scott Reynolds ode to his own inability to cope with life somehow helped me cope with mine.
07. Dosh - Everybody Cheer Up Song
To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Dosh's album The Lost Take I thought I'd dig out one of the lesser known songs from the album. Everybody should cheer up. It could always be worse. Stretch out and enjoy.
08. Porches - Morpha Too
Our Cover Of The Week comes courtesy of Aaron Maine's Porches. By my count this is the third Big Star cover I've played on the show and, while it's curious to hear Big Star minus guitars, there's something enjoyably tossed off about Maine's keyboard-and-microphone take.
09. Joey Bada$$ - Front & Center
Joey Bada$$ is another artist who's made multiple appearances on the show and will continue to make appearances as long as he keeps bringing the heat. While he seems to be easing away from the neo-boom-bap that made me a fan, rapping about having sex over the Narcos theme is a fine direction to take for a one-off.
10. R.E.M. - E-Bow The Letter (w/Marianne Faithfull)
For years and year "E-Bow The Letter" stood as one of the most confusing singles I'd ever heard in my life. And all of that stems from the fact that I was born in 1982.
Let me explain.
Since I was born in 1982 it means I was 12 years old in 1994. Admittedly this may have something to do with the fact that I think 1994 is the greatest year in music history. Now, in 1994 I was just a precocious pre-teen sitting like a lump on the couch devouring a whole summer's worth of MTV. At the time R.E.M. had just released Monster's first single "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" a song that I adored at the time and still count as my all-time favorite R.E.M. song. Now, this being the pre-internet era, "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" made up the totality of my knowledge of R.E.M. I thought they were a sorta-psychedelic, sorta-glammy rock band whose singer had a cool t-shirt with a star on the front and somehow was worse at dancing than I was. That was all I knew.
Fast forward two years later and I'm now 14 years old and sitting like a lump in my room listening to 93.7 The Edge with my fingers on the "Play" & "Record" buttons of my stereo. The DJ tells me that we're about to listen to the new R.E.M. single and that it's called "E-Bow The Letter." Needless to say, I was excited. On faith alone, I pushed down the buttons, sat back, and... became very confused very quickly. What was this? Where are the guitars? Why is this dude just talking? Who's this woman singing? Why is there nothing here for me to sing along with? Why won't Mom let us have pizza for dinner? What time is Simpsons on? It was a real whirlwind.
I spent the whole school year listening to that dubbed tape on my walkman and between the sugar rush of Green Day's "Basketcase" and the emotional heft of Tonic's "If You Could Only See" I always listened to "E-Bow" and I could never figure out why I was supposed to enjoy it.
Obviously both me & the internet have come a long way since then. I now fully grasp how "E-Bow The Letter" fits into the R.E.M. story and that "What's The Frequency?" was the obvious outlier. However, even today, listening to it takes me back to 1996.
11. Earl Sweatshirt - Balance (w/Knxledge)
For the last three years I've spent the spring/summer/fall months playing along with Adult Swim's Singles Program. Every Sunday I download whatever that week's song is and spend the week with it. Some are great, some are not. Whatever.
A couple weeks ago though they dropped this 80 second Earl Sweatshirt jam into my lap. Who knew a rapper could say so much with so little? I've been late to the Earl show for years now (even though everything I hear from the dude is stellar). Are we still saying that Earl is showing tons of promise or have we decided that it's been realized? "Balance" is a jam.
12. The Future Sound Of London - Max
Another 20 year anniversary with this one and I have almost nothing to say about Dead Cities. Four or five years ago a friend of mine sent me home with his copy of the album because he thought I would like it. I don't know. We'd been drinking at the the time. Anyway, I'll bet I didn't play the thing for two years before finally giving it a spin out of curiosity. It sounds like that album cover looks: a dystopian future as imagined in 1996. Acid house & ambient sounds co-mingle for much of the album, but "Max" stands as bright spot. I'll bet this shit was incredible if you were on ecstasy in the 90's.
13. Oasis - Don't Go Away (Demo)
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Be Here Now Oasis is going with a full-on re-issue of their notorious third album. Part of the re-issue is the release of Noel Gallagher's demos for what would become Be Here Now.
Now, I could spent another 500 words talking about Be Here Now and how, while not a "lost classic" by any stretch, it's nowhere near as bad as people would have you believe. It has its merits (bloated and coked out though they may be). I still think it stands as a fascinating album for its time & circumstances and hearing Noel's demo of "Don't Go Away" only adds another layer to the story. As you can here, there is a legitimately great Oasis single here. The hook is there, the guitar is there... I mean, it would have made perfect sense for this to come out after What's The Story? The fact that it was eventually bogged down with strings & more guitars is just so damn bizarre. I like the finished product, but this was gold! How did they fuck this up?!?
14. Lupe Fiasco - Daydreamin' (w/Jill Scott)
It's hard to believe Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor came out 10 years ago already, but hell, if Fountains Of Wayne came out 20 years ago then anything is possible.
Food & Liquor was one of the albums that helped bridge the gap from indie hip-hop to mainstream (at least for me). While "Kick, Push" was the bait, it was "Daydreamin'" that got me on board with the Lupe Fiasco experience. I still think that first verse that works its way from the top of the robot to the bottom is genius.
15. Cheap Fantasy - Fluoresce
Oh shit, waddup! Jordan Bleau may have put the Frankie Teardrop moniker to bed, but he's still kicking out jams. This is his first release under the Cheap Fantasy moniker and it's charming. The guitar isn't buzzing like it used to, but it's glowing like 1980's arcade machine. I've spent the last three years on this blog saying I can't wait to see what Frankie Teardrop does next. Well, let the record state, I can't wait to see what Cheap Fantasy does next.
16. Novak - The Lighthouse
Alright, folks, time for a little bit of crowd-sourcing. I picked up this album a month or two ago at Cheapo just out of curiosity. As you can see if you squint it's titled Beat Oven Volume 1 (Serving Up The Best Of Minneapolis Dance Music). It came out in 1995 and contains this keyboard jam. It's credited to "Novak" and the liner notes say "written by M Daugherty." That's all I've got. Anybody know anything about this? Great jam.
17. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Wail
Now I Got Worry turned 20 and yet Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is still #1 in the USA!
18. The Person & The People - What If I Don't Want To Go Home?
Now, under normal circumstances I try not to play the same artist on two consecutive shows. However, since Ep. #86 our old friends The Person & The People released a new album Unemployment Blues.
Well, sort of. You see, Unemployment Blues is the work of lead singer/songwriter Nick Costa and... that seems to be it. It's a collection of down & out songs sung by Costa with pretty much just his guitar as accompaniment. As you can hear, the hooks are certainly still there (no way Costa could turn off the tunesmith in his head, no matter how tough times got), but everything's been scaled back. I'm hopefully going to find the time to write more about this album in the near future, but it represents an intriguing turn for TP&TP. Pretty much anything is on the table now. They could go back to the jazzier leanings of their early work, crank the guitars back up to Superdrag levels like their What A Drag LP, or revisit the pyrotechnics of last week's show closer "Paranoid And Sleepy." Credit where it's due, these guys definitely keep me guessing.
19. Nirvana - Drain You
I really did want to play that Goodbye Harry songs as the Flatbasset Flatclassic this week, but Nevermind just turned 25! I couldn't just drop "Drain You" into the middle of the set. For better or worse, 25 years on Nevermind still casts such a daunting shadow that it can really only exist on its own pedestal.
There have been plenty of thinkpieces about the album on the occasion of this anniversary and this certainly isn't the place for me to contribute to the pile. I would like to leave this with a couple of thoughts:
1. Even if you prefer Pearl Jam's Ten or Metallica's Black Album (two other albums celebrating 25 year anniversaries this year), I have a hard time believing that either of those albums is as significant as Nevermind. For better or worse, it was the key to the Pandora's box of indie guitar music. Yes, plenty of bands were doing in before Nirvana. Yes, many artists trajectory weren't even affected by Nirvana. However, for the first time since the late 60's, it seemed like money was flowing toward artists as opposed to artists chasing money. Perhaps that's just my comically dated aversion to "selling out" that still lives inside my 90's kid brain, but I feel like Nevermind opened the door for people to be fucking weird on album and have someone support it.
(Sidenote: I may be a 90's kid, but I'll make my peace with the guilt of "selling out" if somebody wants to give me some money. Or a larger platform. Or a sandwhich. Or a Facebook "like.")
2. As an example of Nevermind's looming shadow, it took all of my restraint not to mention the record in all the other anniversaries I wrote about in this post. Can you believe it was only five years from Nevermind to Fountains Of Wayne? How about the five from Nevermind to Be Here Now? It seems like a whole generation should have passed between those two albums.
3. "Drain You" has always been my favorite song from this album. Take away the screaming and the mid-song breakdown and at it's core there's a timeless, strummy pop song in there. Still classic.
There you have it, folks! Enjoy!
For more of my rantings you can give me a follow on Twitter (@TCDroogsma). Previous episodes of Flatbasset Radio are archived on his Mixcloud page. Stop by Flatbasset Radio's Facebook Page & give it a "Like" if you have the time.
