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MODERN INTERNET RADIO SUPERSTARS

My best ideas for what to listen to and play on my own radio show/podcast are likely stolen from the curators and tastemakers of today whom I follow and listen to regularly. There are only a few who meet my exacting standards. Let’s meet them.

SECRET MEANING OF THINGS – A way-leftfield dose of 80s postpunk esoterica and 45rpm obscurities from Seattle’s streaming-only Hollow Earth Radio. I believe the DJ’s name is Brittnie Fuller, but she tends to lay pretty low and let her weirdo, “mutant sound” record collection do the talking for her.

WHATEVER HAPPENS NEXT – This one’s a little more difficult to get, since it’s not podcasted (yet), and requires that you listen online to KWTF’s stream on Tuesdays from 10-11pm Pacific. You’ll be glad you did. I’ve known host Chris Selvig since we were both better-looking, and his collection of psych, long avant-rambles, New Zealand noise and African jook jams will get you gazing at your navel and drooling with glee for the hour that it’s on. (Update! He’s started a SoundCloud account and is uploading his shows. DH’s patented passive-aggressive nagging gets results)

STONED OUT OF MY MIND – Whenever I need to know what the rawest, loudest and most gonzoid garage punk and straight-punk records sound like, I head over to this San Diego-based hour-long podcast and allow my ears to bleed profusely. Sure, “Debaser”’s bar for quality punk rock is set a little lower than mine, and at times his back-announcing very much lives up to his show’s name, but I find myself coming back repeatedly. Where else is one to discover The Sleaze and Hank Wood & The Hammerheads?

RIBBON AROUND A BOMB – I get the feeling the DJ La Lengua (pictured) might be running out of steam a little, since she’s only posting her shows once in a coon’s age. Maybe you should download like 30 of them right now and tie up the entire internet for hours, and she’ll get with the program again. It’d be good for you and good for humanity, since this KCSB alum (like me!) has superlative taste in female-fronted punk rock and postpunk, and a deep collection of oddities from around the world. Her on-air schtick is quite fetching and guaranteed to keep you listening for the next wild 45 or comp track from Kleenex, Sin 34 or Rutto.

EXPRESSWAY TO YOUR SKULL – I write about Erika Elizabeth’s show all the time, and she’s now the main other contributor to the forthcoming Dynamite Hemorrhage print ‘zine. So I’ll go light on the praise this time, for once. If you haven’t heard her WMUA show or new podcast, you need to.

If I’m missing any other fantastic shows, won’t you please do me and us all a favor and let me know about them?

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I just got hipped to the brand-new howler from Columbus, OH’s SEX TIDE, and I’m pretty goddamned impressed. Their debut LP with the pleasant and very safe for work title “Flash Fuck” just came out, like, last week. The drummer and singer’s name is Aurelie. Whoa.

My first listen and a half through this thing unearths many markers of quality – the shambolic fuzz-command of The Scientists; the thudding 60s riffs of Pussy Galore; and a general loose-limbed aesthetic that comes either from lack of sleep, lack of practice or a studied improvisational nonchalance. I’m all over it. Maybe you will be too – check out “Laudanum” from the new LP here.

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I’m a little late sharing this gem from Waitakere Walks with the people, but check out this photo of the harmonizing 1977 LA punk rock barbershop quartet, “The Four Perps”. (I just made that up, riffing on JB’s write-up on The Four Preps).

Left to right, we have Kristian Hoffman from THE MUMPS; John Denny from THE WEIRDOS; Bobby Pyn from THE GERMS, and Tomata Du Plenty from THE SCREAMERS. Apparently they’re backing up Black Randy & The Metrosquad at The Masque. Maybe you were there?

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I don’t know if any of you were hoping for more early 80s Dutch punk in your life this afternoon, but for those of you who were, here’s the stunning “Van Agt” from RAKKETAX, a terrific loopy and raw female-fronted monster. Comes from the 7" comp “Utreg-Punx”, which neither you nor I currently have in our collection.

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Man, I used to love the GIBSON BROS, everything about them and then some. The bloom has only come off the rose a little in two decades, and I say that mostly because I played them to death in the 80s and 90s, making me far less likely to listen to them now.

Review from my Superdope #4 fanzine, 1992.

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I wrote the liner notes for the BETTER BEATLES’ “Mercy Beat” LP a few years back; just listened to their amazing “Penny Lane” this week and thought I’d post it – and the liner notes – for you here. I also did an interview with the band that you can read here.

Historians, record nerds and armchair musicologists are just now extensively excavating the dark crannies of American do-it-yourself whatsis that emerged from the bloom of punk in the late seventies and early eighties. Some of the treasures found in mildewing crates and from deceased moms’ closets speak volumes about the energy and inventiveness of the USA’s bored youth at the time, giving rise to a sub-subculture that found its calling in twisted, art-infused noise & jagged-edge rock, not in “punk” per se – all original, all cleanly cleaved from the past, and often capturing a strange zeitgeist that popular media reckonings of the era seemed to have missed.

Then there was Omaha, Nebraska’s Better Beatles. They sported no originals – just savagely wacked, detuned, deadpan readings of Beatles material in a manner than no one save The Residents could have imagined in 1980. Sure, bands all over the US and the UK were making oddball 45s out of analog synthesizers, primitive recording techniques and decidedly arty leanings at the time, but few approached the deconstructivist beauty of The Better Beatles’ one and only single, the self-released “Penny Lane/I’m Down”. To hear this glorious single in the 21st century, as an increasing number of partisans have (a number sure to blossom with the release of the disc you’re holding), is to still stand agog that a group could go to such unforced, random-sounding lengths and not come off in the least as some dumb-ass, Dr. Demento-lite yuk band. The Better Beatles single isn’t even “funny”. It’s dark and at times transcendent, and it simultaneously lifts the Beatles’ unparalleled songcraft to new and even better heights, while destroying the mythos around the band just the same, in as snotty & underhanded a manner as the rottenest rotten punk you can conjure.

And to think – there was a whole tape’s worth of weirdo recordings of this ilk just sitting around all this time! You’ll probably be the best judge of whether the Beatles’ legacy can survive these covers intact, because different aural cavities are going to hear these unique sounds in all sorts of funny and ultimately polarizing ways.