"No matter how wise you think your ass is, life will have its way with you." The Dude hisself joins us on Transmissions to discuss his new archival record, Slow Magic, 1977-1978, plus his counterculture roots, touching on Buckminster Fuller, John Lilly, Ram Dass, Captain Beefheart, and more . . .
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Once championed to eclipse the likes of June Christy and Chris Connor, Beverly Kenney was found dead a few months after the release of Born To Be Blue (1959), wearing only a pink nightgown and surrounded by empty bottles and scattered pills. With this in mind, the album takes on a haunted quality, and Kenney becomes an enigmatic figure whose legacy exists in the twilight of myth and verity. If there were a Mount Rushmore of "Midnite Jazz" artists, Kenney would be on it, her short life as bittersweet as the songs she sang . . .
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In the latest permutation of the adventurous L.A. jazz group SML, guitarist Gregory Ulhmann and saxophonist Josh Johnson are joined by bassist Sam Wilkes, for an album that both deepens and expands the SML project. Looking back to bebop and drifting through post-rock, with pit stops at Jaco Pastorius, Lyle Mays and the Beatles, Uhlmann/Johnson/Wilkes is unafraid to embrace the beautiful, even as it remains committed to experimentation and smooth radicalism . . .
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Guru Guru aren’t the most celebrated of Krautrockers, but this 1971 live recording puts the lie many of the common and naive Krautrock narratives: not motorik enchanters but psychedelic shredders, not minimalists but maximalist noise makers, not anti-American but celebrants of Bo Diddley! It’s a miracle a German radio station was there to capture this killer performance . . .
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Shudder to Think's art rock masterpiece Pony Express Record. With roots in Washington D.C.s legendary post-punk scene the band started out from the onset as a square peg in a round hole. Not unlike Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica there was little to prepare the listener for the band's forward thinking vision of the future . . .
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With Prodigal Son, fingerstyle rambler Liam Grant continues his investigation into lineage and place with quite possibly the rawest, loudest acoustic guitar recording you’ll hear all year. Casting aside delicate precision, Grant offers up unwieldy and elemental excursions that reach from the well-trod terra firma and wreath themselves into a knotty concentric circle inside the heart of contemporary guitar soli . . .
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The winding path that took Maynard Ferguson from Canadian-musical-child prodigy to Hollywood hired-gun, Birdland mainstay to featured performer under Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, to Timothy Leary and Ram Dass roommate on the psychedelic Hitchcock estate in Millbrook, NY, to the grounds of a school founded by the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti in Madras, India led to England. And back to the big band sound . . .
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Pacific rim. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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This week on Transmissions, a return guest, the great comedian, writer, actor, and podcaster Joe Pera. This talk is a blast, covering everything from the beauty of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport to representations of Catholicism in science fiction to Joe’s experience seeing the late Mitch Hedberg live. Close your eyes and settle in: here’s an episode of Transmissions you might be able to doze off to . . .
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Pavement albums often invite their own retrospection. Stephen Malkmus sprinkled the first two LPs with clues to his anxieties around his musical reception, but on their third album, Wowee Zowee, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, Pavement is light on the lyrical breadcrumbs. Contemporary critics so badly wanted to read the album as a self-conscious turn away from success. But in reality, it was Malkmus and co. doing exactly what put them on the precipice of success in the first place: leaning into their own artistic self-assurance . . .
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Sixteen tracks spread over two continents, it's springtime at the Pink Cloud Motel. Hyacinth and citrus with the windows rolled down half mast -- shades of palm fronds, fresh cut grass, 501 cutoffs, Modelo and watery domestics. Late check-outs encouraged . . .
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DeCicca’s records are always good, but this one is especially striking. The writing, the playing, the singing, the arrangements, all work together in an unshowy but very satisfying way. A high note in an already impressive career, these songs interleave the sweet transitory pleasures of living here on earth with an awareness of the unknowable beyond . . .
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Speaking of Will Oldham ... just when you thought ye olde world wide web had become, staid, predictable and boring, one happens upon something like this: The Will Oldham Live Show Archive. Made available via Bandcamp, and free to download, dig into various vintage Palace Brothers / Bonnie 'Prince' Billy live gigs dating back to the '90s . . .
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A scary 32 years ago Londoners Seefeel unleashed their (predominantly) instrumental masterwork Quique on the Too Pure imprint. Effortlessly straddling post-rock and electronic realms might not seem a huge deal today, but back in 1993 it felt almost miraculous. Masters of balancing repetition with subtle, sparkling bejeweled details, Seefeel hit their peak on the album and 32 years later it still sounds timeless. The 2025 reissue comes in several guises – a standard vinyl reissue of the album as it was released in 1993 and a reissue of the 2007 redux edition boasting no less than nine additional tracks including . . .
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Via Agadez, Niger, Etran De L'Aïr touch down in Los Angeles later this month at the Teragram Ballroom. 100% Sahara Guitar, indeed. Maya Ongaku supports. We have five pairs of tickets saved for AD members . . .
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