Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for October 28, 2017

I may promise unpopularity, but I see only now that I've programmed both Body and Soul and Autumn Leaves, two of the most popular songs ever, but in obviously transformed interpretations. But there's also some old and new jazz, blues, Brazilian, some odd-meter pop, a bit of Reggae, some bits of high-modernism, and a token Halloween number from Frank Zappa, presented with an assortment of smooth and high-contrast transitions.

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see for yourself after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for October 21, 2017

After immersing myself in Monk last week, the temptation to make this week's program out of last week's leftovers was rather strong. The temptation became even stronger as the time and energy to assemble a new program was getting shorter. So while there's one leftover, we have a somewhat arbitrary assortment of jazz, afro-pop, electronic, film music and a contemporary classical extravaganza.

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Plus, if you love bass solos, well the second set is for you.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for October 14, 2017

Today we commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thelonious Monk, one of the singular jazz pianists and composers and a personal idol of mine. If pressed to bestow such a ridiculous title, I would say he's my favorite musician ever.




However, thanks to our old friend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we cannot play more than four tracks credited to any one artist in the time allotted for the webcast, so, as with our Ornette Coleman tribute a couple of years back, we necessarily focus on Monk the composer.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for September 30, 2017

Today we have the kind of subdued program that seems to occur whenever I assemble the playlist wile it's raining. We have an array of jazz stylings, a bit saxophone-centric, but that's OK. The second hour has a late-20th century piano classic, and an electronic embellishment of what should be another. We also have a few bits of odd-ball pop music

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See for yourself after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for September 23, 2017

I feel fine

The world not having ended, we present today a jazzy first hour followed by a somewhat more contemplative second, keeping in mind the jazz hour is not without contemplation, nor is the contemplative hour without jazz.

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Contemplate the playlist after the break...

Hal Willner has lived the life I wished I had

Well, maybe not the pharmaceutical cocaine, but a lot of everything else.

The "extravagant, cross-genre" tribute albums are certainly an influence on the webcast. Although being in the next generation after his, I suppose, I do still have heroes, and he's one of them.

I was also a kid who went around talking to himself, locking myself in my room with a dream world, retreating into television and records. The apartment pictured above would be a dream space for me.  I'm terrible at meeting people, which probably explains the different paths of our lives. I suppose I'm also a watcher, not a doer. But Willner actually is a doer, and I'm envious of many of the things he's done.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for September 16, 2017

As I said, I had three weeks to put the show together, but didn't finish it until almost 11.

The usual mix of jazz and what-have-you, with a few pop songs in the middle. The Cassini space probe is mourned, as are John Abercrombie, Grant Hart (through a third party) and the Cambridge nightclub Nightstage (which actually closed decades ago.) Plus "a genuine example of Socialist Realist 'machine music.'"

Mixcloud, for some reason, is not accepting my playlists when I enter them. I tried twice only to have them rejected because of unspecified errors, throwing all the work away. Sorry. (I'm not trying to drive extra traffic to the blog.)

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playlist after the break...

Webcast info for September 2, 2017

The Somerville Media Center is closed for Labor Day weekend, so unfortunately you will not be able to rest your weary weary bones to a live presentation of Unpopular Music.

Update: It was a big "if."

If all goes as planned, the episode from October 03, 2015 will be rebroadcast. This is the same one which was to rebroadcast back in July, but didn't due to some studio renovations taking place that day.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for August 26, 2017

This week my habitual walking around shuffle play music brought up a few things that made me want to go back and take a closer listen, as it often does. And as it often does, that led me to add them to the potential Unpopular Music playlist. However, this week some of those tracks were really long.
The instinct was not to do this. But otherwise lacking inspiration (again, this week, I know...) I went ahead.

Is it too lazy to do this? Why not, it's your program. They're all music that rewards the attentive listener, so, yeah, three tracks for the second hour.

I'll be off the next two weeks, so hopefully I'll use the time to recharge. (or at least stack up some music to play.)



See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for August 19, 2017

When I came around to put the week's program together, I really wasn't up to it. So the first half of the program is a what played on my phone's shuffle play this past week. It also skews a bit towards the "difficult listening" side of things.

The second hour stands as my contribution to the voices against today's "free-speech rally" on Boston Common. It's mostly culled from previous episodes where I felt the urge to make a statement through other people's music, like my pre-election program, 4th of July etc.

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See for yourself after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music webcast - August 12, 2017

A set for (or rather, from) a hot lazy day. A bunch of long tracks in the first hour. More or less normal in the second. I wish I'd kept that metallic percussion segment going a little longer.

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See for yourself after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for August 5, 2017

Is it just me or does August always look like it's misspelled?

A mostly jazzy, somewhat lazily-compiled set today, although with a couple of curve balls.

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See for yourself after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for July 29, 2017

Mostly the program prepared for July 15, so I could get to bed early last night.

A pretty jazzy first hour leads to a freeform second hour with a few poppy things, followed by a trip through the renaissance and then to a bluesy ending.

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The archive will be posted later than usual this weekend,

see the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for July 22, 2017

In a program completely reassembled this morning, we try to break up the usual formula. So on offer we present, among other things, tracks from two of the essential jazz albums of 1993, summer jams (and remember these are my summer jams (one of which breaks the Unpopular Music Manifesto, but also is the Unpopular Music Manifesto)), some early music, and some electronic doo-dads.

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See for yourself after the break...

Webcast info for July 15, 2017

Due to some problems with the computer at BFR central control, there will be no webcast today.

Webcast info for July 8, 2017

Please note - this is not my family, nor am I in France. There are cows nearby though.

Update: or not. As you were.

There's a family to-do out of town this weekend, so today we are presenting an episode from the archives, specifically the episode from October 3, 2015. The original posting described this program as "quite possible to enjoy"

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for July 1, 2017

No festive holiday programming for 4th of July (or Canada Day for that matter, not even Paul Bley), just the usual jazz and other for the last full day of the first half of the year.

We do pay a brief tribute to the late Geri Allen, who unfortunately is one of those musicians who always impressed and intrigued me, but whose work I've never gotten around to exploring in depth.

There is some accidental continuity throughout. In most of the first set selections, fours and eights are traded with the drummer in various ways. The selections for the second hour's set feature many quotations.

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See the playlist after the break...

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for June 24, 2017

So this is the episode where I break one of the primary rules of programming Unpopular Music. It was a situation where I was looking for a track of a certain length of a certain character and it was a FM classic rock staple that ended up fitting the bill.

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Otherwise, we have a wide ranging program featuring some of the tracks I felt didn't fit together two weeks ago, now joined by more compatible music. The jazz is somewhat front-loaded, the second hour is a bit string heavy, before acquiring a quasi-African vibe. More in the Unpopular Music tradition we have musicians from the jazz and early-music worlds jamming on common ground, a punk band with a jazz drummer sitting in playing an Ethiopian song, a jazz interpretation of a baroque aria, free-jazzers playing a hard bop classic, and more.

See the playlist after the break...

Webcast info for June 17, 2017

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Due to a work obligation, and the closure of the Somerville Media Center (located at the bottom of Prospect Hill) for Bunker Hill Day, we will be rebroadcasting the episode from February 27, 2016.

Playlist for the Unpopular Music Webcast for June 10, 2017

Take two.

A kind of chaotic morning. Then when I get to the studio, instead of a film crew blocking the studio door, there was a large gathering of preteen girls filling the Somerville Media Center for some sort of event put on by the Nepali Women's Global Network.

As for the show, it's okay I guess. Mostly jazz, with a few curveballs, I didn't have a lot of time this week to work on the show, and what I had left in my "holding pen" playlist didn't really hang together. Hopefully this show hangs together well enough.

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See the playlist after the break...