Top 5 for August 26, 2014

Haven't done this in a while, but, you know, ... last refuge, blah, blah, blah.

Red Planet  - Eric Dolphy 

from The Illinois Concert, 1963  with a young Herbie Hancock on piano and an Africa Brass type brass ensemble.

Abe Lincoln - Best Friends Forever

from their self titled album. Always intrigued by this band's naive and rough vocals (some dawgs would call it pitchy), but really tight instrumental skills and arrangements.

Top 6 for March 11, 2014

Sister Marie by Harry Nilsson from Ariel Ballet

A surprisingly edgy tune with heavy beats and guitar effects that stands out from the rest off this otherwise mostly pleasantly poppy album.

Led Zepplin – Irwin with the Hoof and Mouth Sinfonia

From the finale of WFMU's 2013 Fundraising Marathon, this group of middle-aged DJ's play this tribute, originally by the group Carey's Problem, which was delivered from the point of view of a swooning teenage girl (one of series of songs portraying a contrived premature decadence that gets old fast) over a tricky 5/4 groove. I'm intrigued by the absence of any reference to Physical Graffitti, both in the verse that ticks off the Zeppelin albums otherwise in sequence, but also in the list of song titles that makes up the majority of the lyrics.

No. 1 for March 3, 2014

The Joy of Noise by RIAA as heard on Do DIY with People Like Us on WFMU

A mash-up of Bring the Noise by Public Enemy on top of Joy by Apollo 100, and that only begins to describe it.

Happy Birthday Robyn Hitchcock!!

Top 3 for March 2, 2014

4^th Time Around by Robyn Hitchcock from Robyn Sings

“One of Uncle Bob's”, this performance gives the listener a glimpse at how the singer interacts with the lyrics. Robyn (who turns 61 tomorrow, by the way) replaces the line “I asked her how come” with the “and when she did come” from later on in the song and initially continues on from that later point before he realizes he's in the wrong place, stops and asks the audience for help, and continues on from where he left off. It's one of Dylan's more convoluted and dense lyrics, one that justifies the poet label that's sometimes too automatically placed on him.

Top 6 from November 5, 2013

Rock & Roll – The Velvet Underground from Live MCMXCIII

Even after the amputation you can dance to a rock & roll station.

A lot of folks put down this album. It is the Velvets playing in the style of a 90's Lou Reed album, but frankly that's a better idea than trying to recreate the 1969 live album, and these were good years for Lou anyway. You can still dance to it, you know. It's also sort of is Sterling's valedictory.

Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue - Duke Ellington from Live at Newport 1956

Yeah, the solo, but, the tunes are pretty good too. Two sides of Duke's early style - contrapuntal, busy swinging, trying to cram in as many notes as a side of a 78 could hold, the frenzy of the audience providing the underlying energy that the super-fast revolutions of the turntable once did.