EDWYN COLLINS on The Christopher Laird Show

THE CHRISTOPHER LAIRD SHOW
26.September.2011
Featured Artist: EDWYN COLLINS

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN - Darklands
FRIENDS - I'm His Girl
ROONEY - When Did Your Heart Go Missing
ORANGE JUICE - Rip It Up
THE STONE ROSES - Standing Here
DATAROCK - Fa-Fa-Fa
THE JAMES VALENTINE QUARTET - Under The Milky Way
BRENTON WOOD - Gimme Little Sign
EDWYN COLLINS feat. Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy - Do It Again
MAIA HIRASAWA - Boom!
ORANGE JUICE - Out For The Count
ALLOY ARK - Blue
COCTEAU TWINS - Heaven or Las Vegas
EDWYN COLLINS – A Girl Like You

Ruby's Chicky Boil-Ups: Telepathy

Telepathy – Lene Lovich
I Can Tell – Bo Diddley
Strange Strange Feeling – The Chiffons
Dance of the Dream Man – Angelo Badalmenti
Fortune Teller – Bettye Lavette
I Can See for Miles – Lord Sitar
Strange Feeling – Billy Stewart
What Presence?! – Orange Juice
Body Language – Róisín Murphy
Premonition of Love – The Divine Comedy
You Just Gotta Know my Mind – Karen Verros
Fortune Teller – Benny Spellman
Mind Reader Blues – Bertha Lee
Sense of Doubt – Philip Glass

Hip Auntie 24.September.2011

Fatback Louisiana – Tennessee Ernie Ford
The Black Bottom – The Temperance Seven
Dishes – The Flares
You're The Top – Ella Fitzgerald
Little Grass Shack – Leon Redbone & Ringo Starr
Heartbeat – The Detroit Cobras
Foolish Frog – Blind Blake
No Matter What – Badfinger
Saturday Night At The Movies – The Drifters

Dérailleur - 22 September 2011

A Warm Front, Coming from the North - Warm Digits (2011)

Need You - Darkstar (2008)

Get To France - Mogwai (2011)

Les Metamorphoses Du Vide - Chapelier Fou (2010)

Faut Savoir - Les Intrigantes (1965)

Poison Lips - Vitalic (2009)

Red, Gold and Green - I-Roy (1973)

Booty Slammer - Velour (2010)

Rain On - Woods (2009)

Buried In The Black Snow - Birdengine (2007)

Different Strokes - Syl Johnson (1968)

Generation - Liturgy (2011)

Voodoo - Bassnectar (2011)

They Shoot Horse Don't They - Quickspace (2000)

A goodbye to some old friends

The news of R.E.M.’s demise yesterday brought a sigh of relief, yet at the same time made my eyes a bit misty. Growing up in Omaha in the 1980s was pretty dire when it came to having any decent radio to listen to, or gigs to go to. It was a heaping dose of Top 40 and country, and my concert highlights to date had been relegated to the Nebraska State Fair and Rosenblatt Stadium with my family to see the likes of The Statler Brothers, Johnny Cash, Huey Lewis and the News, and The Beach Boys (the odd thing is how cool some of those names have now become again in recent years as well as my renewed appreciation of them). That is why when I heard Chronic Town for the first time in my early teens it really did change my life as far as music was concerned. I had found something that I really connected to musically. At the time I was a nerdy trumpet player who desperately wanted to be in a band, but deep down knew was never going to be in anything other than jazz bands and orchestras. Maybe it was Peter’s arpeggio guitar riffs or Michael's mumbled lyrical delivery, or perhaps the arty sleeves that looked like nothing else on the record shelves of the time that drew me in. They somehow fused the good bits of country & folk with the good bits of pop & post punk. They well and truly sounded like NOTHING else around at the time. I spent hours trying to decipher the words of Mr Stipe as there were no lyrics sheets included with their records and NO INTERNET in those days. How did we ever survive? Go on! I dare you to try and sing along to their first few records without the aid of the world wide web!

I became news editor of my High School newspaper my senior year, and that meant being able to pick and choose what I wanted to write about a bit more freely. I was delighted that I was going to be able to cover R.E.M. at Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln and possibly even meet Michael Stipe. When I told Lisa (our Editor-in-Chief) who I was going to meet and what I was planning to review, she said ‘WHO? R. E. What?’ Luckily, one of the other reporters, my friend Cindi, was a fan and suggested we go together. Being a R.E.M. fan in those days meant you were considered a bit of a weirdo, the type that wore lots of black, eyeliner, and was secretly plotting to kill your gym teacher, because, well, R.E.M. fans in those days weren't star athletes, if you catch my drift. All the cool kids were listening to a hefty diet of Madonna, Poison, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Mötley Crue, Rick Astley, Whitesnake & Bon Jovi. Whereas us R.E.M.er’s were into more uncommercial (at the the time) stuff like Joy Division, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Camper Van Beethoven, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, The Replacements, and The Sisters of Mercy. Cindi was so much cooler than me - stripy tights with short skirts, spiky hair that was very shortly cropped on the sides - and then there was yours truly, an Alex P. Keaton facsimile. ‘Nuff said. Amazing how you can connect with people through music, eh?

I remember it was a crisp late afternoon in November when Cindi dropped by my house to pick me up. To this day I cannot think of that whole episode without thinking of her first encounter with my mother going something like this: ‘Hello Cindi, don’t you look darling, can I get you some chili before you go’...(wait for it) ...‘because its chilly out there!’ As we headed down I-80 to a pre-gig house party in Lincoln, I asked Cindi if we were REALLY going to get to meet Michael Stipe and if we could still get tickets (yes, those were the days when you could still get an R.E.M. ticket the day of the show!) Oh, and yes we did get tickets...naturally, but no we didn’t get to meet Michael :( The show was amazing of course, they really could do no wrong in those days. I think the trick is that they wanted it, they worked f**king hard with years of non-stop touring, they were truly original, sounding like no one else, and, oh yeah, they were just really REALLY good. Cindi was absolutely shattered after the show and I recall not feeling too well. She asked if I would drive us home. I agreed and said a quick prayer that I wouldn’t crash her car (a far nicer car than my ’73 Pontiac Catalina) and kill us both as I was pretty tired as well; it was a 50-mile drive back and we both had school the next day. I remember she nestled up and fell asleep in my lap on the way back, not in a creepy Clark Griswold kind of way, but in that innocent way that only happens in your youth. It was a pretty fantastic evening with R.E.M. and my friend Cindi.

Since I’ve lived in the UK, the topic of R.E.M. with my British friends has often been a contentious one. You see, most of my US friends would concur that their finest body of work was on the IRS label, whereas most friends in the UK tend to prefer their major label output from Green onwards. For me the cracks in the framework started when you were able to begin to understand Michael's lyrics. It’s The End of the World was fun, Stand was questionable, but Shiny Happy People was just downright unforgivable - and don’t even even get me started on Everybody Hurts! But hey, I’m not here to bad mouth them. R.E.M. of course carried on for many more years, and as they did all of us fans grew up, got married, had kids. But now that they are gone, it makes me feel old - I feel like my youth is also well and truly gone. The great thing about music is that it means something very different to everyone but still has the power to connect us all, and the magical thing about records is they can bring you back to a particular moment in time. I’m not sure whatever became of Cindi, but whenever I put on Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables, Pageant, or Document, she and I are 17 again, my Mom is still alive, we have a belly full of chili and the world is still ours for the taking.

Thanks Berry, Buck, Mills & Stipe for some pretty wonderful memories!

With love
Christopher

The Library of Sound 21 September 2011

The Library of Sound 21 September 2011

This month Rachel has been browsing the library shelves marked 'Britain'.

1. Laura Gibson - La Grande

2. The Strange Death Of Liberal England - Flagships

3. Treetop Flyers - It's About Time

4. Scroobius Pip vs. Dan Le Sac - Great Britain

5. Tiny Ruins - Pigeon Knows

6. Acrylics - Molly's Vertigo

7. The Victorian English Gentlemens Club - Bag Of Meat

8. Fanfarlo - Replicate

9. Babyshambles - Killamangiro

10. Real Estate - It's Real

11. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

The Doggone History of Country Music - September 2011

The Doggone History of Country Music
brought to you by Piney Gir
17.September.2011

Turkey In The Straw – The Pleasant Family Old Time String Band
Tell It To Me – The Grant Brothers
The Prisoner’s Dream – The Allen Brothers
Dupree Blues - Willy Walker
Single Girl/Married Girl - The Carter Family
Sleep Baby Sleep - Jimmy Rodgers
At The River - The Tennessee Mountaineers
Christian Soldiers – The Sacred Harp Singers
Randy Hughes – Tappin’ That Thing
Eskimo Nell – Cotton Henry and His Oklahoma Hillbillies
Tattooed Lady – Skeets McDonald and Johnny White
Maui – Frank Ferera
Wreck of the Old 97 – written by Fiddlin’ John Carson as performed by Johnny Cash
Cindy In The Meadows - Aunt Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis
Chris Lively and Wife – Blind Alfred Reed
The Sinking of the Titanic - Richard Rabbit Brown
The Mighty Mississippi – Kelly Harrell as performed by Earnest Stoneman
On The Road Again – Willy Nelson
Johnny Come Lately – Steve Earle

The Doggone History of Country Music

Piney Gir was born in a thunderstorm in the middle of May in Kansas City, Kansas. It was tornado season, the sky was green and angry; in a bath of blood out she popped.

A Midwest preacher’s daughter she was; and she had the sheltered upbringing of a very good girl, but one could not escape the tear in my beer mutterings of Hank Williams at every truck stop, the piping of Patsy Cline through the isles of the grocery store after midnight and constant get rhythm of Johnny Cash on Grandma’s radio. Without even knowing it, Piney was hooked on country music.

When Piney uprooted and moved to London, England she discovered that she actually missed the country twang that she thought she was running away from, she missed it so much that she wrote a country song every time she got homesick. She looked to her country heroes for support, to cheer her up and give her a sense of natural habitat in a foreign land cue: Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Porter Wagoner, early Elvis Presley, The Carter Family, Wanda Jackson to site the tip of an iceburg.

Join Piney and RadioNowhere in exploring the Doggone History of Country Music from early Americana to now. We’ll be joined each show by our resident roady Andy Washington on his global on the road again adventures.

Tune in and listen up for quirky, country stylings to tease your ears and get stuck in your head; it’s a long strange, twang-riddled journey, put on your spurs and here we go!

PINEY GIR on The Christopher Laird Show

THE CHRISTOPHER LAIRD SHOW
12.September.2011
Featured Artist: PINEY GIR

THE BEACH BOYS – Getcha Back
DUM DUM GIRLS - Bedroom Eyes
THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS - Older Guys
LA FEMME - Sur La Planche
PINEY GIR - Outta Site
POMPLAMOOSE - September
PORTER WAGONER & DOLLY PARTON - Love City
THE PINEY GIR COUNTRY ROADSHOW - Master/Mistress
TANYA DONELLY - Days of Grace
THE REPLACEMENTS - Achin' To Be
PINEY GIR - Oh Lies
CHRIS ISAAK - Except The New Girl
VERONICA FALLS - Bad Feeling
THE PINEY GIR COUNTRY ROADSHOW - Forever Young

In Memoriam

Tim Ten Yen 10..September.2011

Tim Ten Yen's 'Hospital Half-hour'
10.September.11

The Fireballs - 'Vaquero'
From the Not Now Music album 'Surf's Comin''

Massive Attack - 'Fake the aroma'
From the Go Disc's album 'Help'

Ryuichi Sakamoto - 'Plastic Bamboo'
From the Decca Records album 'The thousand knives of...'

(with excerpts from Michael Morpurgo - 'Kensuke's Kingdom' read by Sir Derek Jacobi - Harper Collins)

Everything Everything - 'Photoshop Handsome'
From the Geffen Records album 'Man Alive'

Paul Simon - 'Duncan'
From the Warner Bros REcords album 'Paul Simon'

Pet Shop Boys - Email
From the Parlophone Records album 'Release'

Simon Bookish - 'Carbon'
From the Tom Lab Records album 'Everything/Everything'

MC Solaar - 'Clic clic'
From the Sentinel Quest Records album 'Chapitre 7'

FILMIC SEPTEMBER 2011

Here's the playlist for Sept's Filmic in order of track/composer-artist/film.

Prologue, Anvil of Crom/Basil Poledouris/Conan The Barbarian
Did I Get Frank Killed?/Cliff Matrinez/The Lincoln Lawyer
Easy To Be Hard/James Rado/Gerome Ragni/Galt MacDermot /Hair
Harvest/Ennio Morricone/Days Of Heaven
Main Title Dirty Harry//Lalo Schifrin/Dirty Harry
Voldermorts End//Alexandre Desplat/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Main Theme: The Call of the Faraway Hills/Victor Young/Shane
These Boots Are Made For Walking/Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra/Full Metal Jacket
Suite From Ed Wood Part 3/Howard Shore/Lydia Kavina/Ed Wood
La Valse D'Amelie/Yann Tiersan/Amelie
This Is My Lucky Day/Henderson-DeSylva-Brown/A Perkins
Jake Lonergan/Harry Gregson-Williams/Cowboys & Aliens
Compulsive Promptness/John Barry/Masquerade
The Cavern/Brian Reitzell/Red Faction Armegeddon
The Swarm/Brian Reitzell/Red Faction Armegeddon

That's it, done - so I am off to the movies.
Ley

Jessica 6 in 1990

Jessica 6 in 1990
6 September 2011

Groove Is In The Heart – Deee-Lite
#2 UK singles chart, #4 US Billboard Hot 100, #1 US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play Chart
Featured on debut album World Clique (Elektra)
#14 UK album chart, #20 US Billboard 200

Unbelievable – EMF
Debut single, #3 UK singles chart, #1 US Billboard Hot 100 (1991)
Featured on debut album Schubert Dip (Parlophone (UK)/EMI (US))
#3 UK album chart, #12 US Billboard 200

Right Here Right Now – Jesus Jones
#31 UK singles chart, #2 US Billboard Hot 100 and #1 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart (1991)
Featured on second album Doubt (Food, 1991)
#1 UK, #25 US Billboard 200

X Y and Zee – Pop Will Eat Itself
#15 UK singles chart, #11 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart
Featured on third album Cure For Sanity (RCA)
#33 UK album chart

Little Fluffy Clouds – The Orb
#87 UK singles chart
Featured on debut album The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (Big Life, 1991)
#29 UK album chart

Loaded – Primal Scream
Single version
#16 UK singles chart, #19 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart
Featured on third album Screamadelica (Creation, 1991)
#8 UK album chart, #31 US Billboard 200

The Ship Song – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
#84 UK singles chart
Featured on sixth album The Good Son (Mute)
#47 UK album chart

This Is How It Feels - Inspiral Carpets
#14 UK singles chart, #22 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart
Featured on debut album Life (Cow Records through Mute)
#2 UK album chart

Any Way That You Want Me – Spiritualized
12” version (Dedicated) - #75 UK singles chart

Beers, Steers and Queers – Revolting Cocks
Released as a single (I don’t think it charted)
Featured on second studio album Beers, Steers and Queers (Wax Trax!)

For more Wax Trax! goodies, listen to Christopher Laird’s two-part Wax Trax! special with special guest Julia Nash (founder Jim Nash's daughter) - available now from the Podcasts page at www.radionowhere.org

Kool Thing – Sonic Youth
#81 UK singles chart, #7 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart
Featured on sixth album Goo (DGC)
#32 UK album chart, #96 US Billboard 200

Stop! – Jane’s Addiction
#1 US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart
Featured on second album Ritual de lo Habitual (Warner Brothers)
#37 UK album chart, #19 US Billboard 200

Next month I'll be in 1966 - if you would like to submit a request, contact me via Twitter

Enjoy!

BEARSUIT hijack The Christopher Laird Show

THE CHRISTOPHER LAIRD SHOW
5.September.2011
Special Guest Hosts: BEARSUIT

BEARSUIT - A Train Wreck
WIRE - Outdoor Miner
SALEM – King Night
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING - Photoshop Handsome
tUnE-yArDs - Gangsta
POISON CONTROL CENTER - Church On Mars
NANA MOUSKOURI - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
UNWOUND - Scarlette
BURIAL - Archangel
BEARSUIT- Jim's Henson's Creature Workshop
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS - Pretty In Pink
THE MOCHA BEANS - For Cat Lovers Only
METRONOMY - Corinne
SANDY NELSON - Let There Be Drums
BEARSUIT - Princess, You're A Test

Christopher and the 5 Bears

Here’s a little teaser to give your ‘grape an ache’ whilst you listen to your favourite Norwich 5 piece spin some choice tunes for your lovely earholes. See if you can identify the 5 ‘delightful visual misunderstandings’ in the above photo.

BEARSUIT - Princess, You're a Test

They conquered forests & tore over streams, now Bearsuit will hijack Christopher’s show TONIGHT at 21.00 BST - Join them as the play some of their favourite records just for you?

Love Action's Friday Fix - See You In September - 2.09.2011

Love Action's Friday Fix - See You In September

2.Sept.2011

That's it. The Summer's over. Whether or not you're mourning or loving the return of the shorter, colder months, I bring you a Love Action's Friday Fix that celebrates Autumn's arrival.

On the show:
See You In September - The Happenings
We're Not Happy - Wales Wallace
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl - The Yardbirds
High School Sweater - The Heat
School Days- The Runaways
Shake The Shackles - Crystal Stilts
Red Tan - The Raveonettes
Some Candy Talking - The Jesus & Mary Chain
King Of The Beach - Waaves
I Want Some Of That - Kai Rai
Funnel Of Love - Wanda Jackson
You Better Run - Randy Hobbs
Storm Warning - Mac Rebnack
The Summer Is Over - Gisela & The Spirits
When The Party's Over - Tony Sales & The Tigers
Keep An Eye On Summer - The Beach Boys
Seafarer - Tennis
Something Changed - Pulp
Bumper - Cults
September Gurls - The Bangles


Background music was Rolley Polley with Blue Rumba.
Enjoy! And please feel free to send on requests - especially your guilty pleasures - for next month's show to: jessie@radionowhere.org! and of course you can follow me on twitter at twitter.com/jessieluvaction