Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast, February 28, 2015

I'm writing this at around 1AM Saturday morning and I know already this is going to be a hard show to do.

Unpopular Music - February 28, 2015 by Unpopularfred on Mixcloud

I was set for an upbeat show to mark my imminent 45th birthday, perhaps with some tongue-and-cheek curmudgeonry thrown in. But Friday afternoon I got word that BFR program director and host of Morning Soup (the show which precedes mine) Doug Ashford had died.

Doug had been very encouraging and supportive to me in the almost year that I've been doing the webcast, face-to-face, and on his show, and around BFR, nominating me for the music show award that I've been too embarrassed to mention here or in the webcast. It meant a lot, seeing as he was a seasoned radio pro and I'm a complete novice.

This is perhaps the better approach

From the Somerville Patch -

 

“This snow is bringing out the worst in people,” she told the Boston Globe, asked what inspired her to create and distribute the green “Stop and Think” signs around Somerville earlier this week. “I was hoping that we could reel them back into sanity."

All you can do is sing

 

If the recent weather is giving you an existential crisis, I recommend you head over to MB(ecket)TA for images of Boston's snowy condition captioned with quotations by Samuel Beckett to help you go on. (You must go on, you know) Just so you're prepared, this is one of the more positive ones.

Album of the Year

Calling all artists, you have ten months to try and top this.

Courtesy of the Onion A. V. Club - Vincent D’Onofrio and Dana Lyn’s Slim Bone Head Volt , due out on mine and Robyn Hitchcock's birthday. It really has to be hear to be believed. Listeners to the webcast know I have a soft-spot for jazz-poetry, the nuttier the better. This is some of the nuttiest I've heard in a while, but I have no idea how serious this is supposed to be or if it's deliberately ridiculous or over the top or what. It's many hoots and several hollers and I've had to stop it at least once to regain my composure. To be clear I mean this as a compliment. These poems. let's call them, are quite funny and hit several nails on their heads. Things calm down a bit towards the end, and D'Onofrio's lament that being a man, and a rather large one at that, keep him from being able to play Blanche du Bois is downright touching..

Let's not talk about the wheel.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast, February 21, 2015

From the land of the ice and snow (no midnight sun or hot springs, unfortunately (nor Led Zeppelin for that matter)), here's this week's playlist ...

Unpopular Music - February 21, 2015 by Unpopularfred on Mixcloud

Webcast info for February 14, 2015

Since BFR's headquarters at the SCATV compund is closed for the Presidents' Day Weekend, today we are presenting repeat of the October 25th webcast, one of my own favorite episodes. Enjoy.

And just as happenstance, the program begins with Peter Gabriel, who turned 65 (!) yesterday.

Number One for February 13, 2015

Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps as performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic

 

The famous January 20, 1958 recording which Sony Classical had kept slightly out of view for too long before giving it a classy reissue for the Rite's centenary in 2013. Ironically, I just got around to acquiring it while killing time at Newbury Comics, waiting for the ever more impatient rush hour crowds at the bus stop to thin out (and chill out) in our snow addled present state.

Tom Lehrer on BuzzFeed

I stumbled upon this BuzzFeed article about the great Tom Lehrer and thought I'd pass it along.

For many years I worked in the classical department of a CD store in Harvard Square where Lehrer was a semi-regular. He was most friendly with one employee, an older Harvard man himself, but was always genial and good for a laugh or two. Once, when buying an album of light opera and show-tunes by a famously inarticulate opera singer he remarked "Eight of these songs are in French, but one is in English. The party game is to guess which one."

Explaining my references

 

In yesterday' webcast, I made a comparison of the sounds of the Union Square traffic jam outside the Boston Free Radio studios to the Jean-Luc Goddard movie "Weekend". I couldn't find an embeddable video, but here's a link  to the scene in question at the Turner Classic Movies site.

It's just such an outrageous scene, I needed to share.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast for February 7, 2015

Well, this is one of those shows (but, I keep saying that, so therefore I guess it's a typical show). It covers so much ground it verges on (and perhaps attains) incoherence.

The first hour has a set contemplating our current frozen existence. The second brings us on a musical journey to places somewhat warmer.

Unpopular Music - February 7, 2015 by Unpopularfred on Mixcloud

Face unafraid, the playlist I made after the break ...

No. 1 for February 6, 2015

Mr. P. C. by John Coltrane

from the Giant Steps album of 1959, as heard on WMBR's Coffeetime w/ Angelynn Grant

Man, I hadn't heard this in a long time and man, it's good. The whole band is good. Trane, of course. The song's namesake Paul Chambers on bass, Tommy Flanagan on piano and Art Taylor on the drums. I was listening to this at work, and somehow managed to get stuff done.