The Great British Synth Documentary

Brand new to the U-Tubes. I'm going to just go ahead and embed all ten chapters. This is just really the most urgently important item on your to-do list.

The Elevator Drops: "Be a Lemonhead/ Beautiful Junkie"

Here's a teaser for an upcoming post. The song is "Be a Lemonhead/ Beautiful Junkie." The album is Pop Bus. The band is the Elevator Drops. The year is 1996.

Sunday Video: Taco

Taco Ockerse, upstaged by a handsome young man with an ice cream cone. Nuts.

King Records on Fresh Air

Every once in a while, Terry Gross and the Fresh Air crew rip out a really good music episode. This occurred yesterday, with interviews with James Brown, Bootsy Collins, Seymour Stein, and Jon Fox, author of a book on King Records, King of the Queen City, new from the University of Illinois Press.

King Records was a seminal Cincinnati-based R&B and country label, perhaps most famous for giving James Brown a break with the release of "Please Please Please." But there was a lot of other cool King music as well; as was so often the case with regional labels, many of their tunes were picked up by other artists and became national hits. "Good Rockin' Tonight" was one. "The Twist" was another.

At the end of the interview with Fox, Gross asks him to pick a country song from the King catalog, and he chooses the Delmore Brother's "Blues Stay Away" from me. It was the first time I'd heard this version of the song, which I've known for a few years from the also fantastic Merle Travis version. Coming from Kentucky, Merle spent time at the Cincinnati radio station WLW. I was hoping he'd get a little mention, as he and Grandpa Jones were early musicians for King, and recorded together under the pseudonym The Sheppard Brothers. Alas, it did not come to pass, and I shall meekly await his inevitable discovery by the middle class intelligentsia; which shall surely be followed by a middling biopic and a decidedly milquetoast tribute album for sale at a national coffee chop chain.

True Chip Til Death

True Chip Til Death has a really fine podcast you ought to listen to, exploring the wide ranging Chiptune genre. If you think the genre is merely a nostalgic pursuit rooted in 80's kitsch... allow yourself to be unburdened of that impression.

I've known TCTD webmaster Peter Swimm for a while - I met him in the nineties when we both used to see each other at shows in Chicago. The first one was probably a Man... or Astro-man gig. I'm not at all surprised that he's a central figure in the NYC chiptune scene, and one of its greatest advocates. I've enjoyed making music as a hobby, and often shared it with Peter, but I always knew he was on a totally different level.

Also: check out the new chiptune Beatles tribute, Wanna Hld Yr Handheld Vol. 1. All tracks are available as free streams right now.

Sorry it's been so long between posts. I've been focused on daily updates at the dinosaur blog I launched in July, Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs.

Sunday Video: Bob Brozman & Friends

I was in a record store yesterday - a record store in an outlet mall. I walked in and they were playing some mad noise, seemingly to put off all of the unsuspecting shoppers who wandered in from the clothing store next door. I found a lot of $5 CDs, didn't check out too much vinyl since my turntable is wonky, but I did score some Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Muddy Waters real cheap on CD. When the clerk saw the Muddy, he told me about this guy, Bob Brozman, and showed me the stuff he'd ordered for the store. More here.

Sunday Video: Blur