SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

SIRIUS 345: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Arthur Lee - Everybody's Gotta Live ++ Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - You're A Song That I Can't Sing ++ Billy Nicholls - Girl From New York ++ The Beach Boys - Over The Waves ++ Dion - Baby, Let's Stay Together ++ Glen Campbell - Guess I'm . . .

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Neil Young :: Homefires – Live, 1974

40 years after the fact, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are commemorating their massive, cocaine-fueled 1974 tour with a big box set. Sprinkled amidst the group's tried-and-true warhorses are several unreleased Neil Young songs -- "Pushed It Over The End" (which we highlighted here), "Hawaiian Sunrise," "Traces," and "Love Art Blues." All well and good, but there's one unreleased tune mysteriously missing from the box, "Homefires," which Neil trotted out a . . .

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Christopher Denny :: If the Roses Don’t Kill Us

There’s no getting around Christopher Denny’s voice. At once impossibly fragile and immovably sturdy, it’s a haunting, alien thing. But once you acclimate to its strange beauty — and make no mistake, it’s gorgeous — there are Denny’s words:

“There’s no love like the love I have for you/there’s no kinda love/it’s a love darling and we beat ourselves black-and-blue/to feel our kind of love.” “It’s easy to get feeling so small/when you’re so tall/yeah, you’re God’s height/you’re a tall mama . . .

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Wax Wonders: Los Angeles, Part One

In terms of epicenters of great soul music, Los Angeles rarely enters the discussion. And while the city in the smog and sun didn’t produce the volume of influential work that Detroit-Chicago-Memphis churned out, there were plenty of amazing soul records cut in southern California.

Brenda Holloway :: Echo

I can think of no better place to start than the debut single from Brenda Holloway. Released in 1962, this is one of those records that I classify as transitionary between doo-wop and the birth of soul. Brenda . . .

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Curtis Mayfield :: Jesus

If you’re driving around and “Jesus” comes on the radio, pull to the side of the road, park the car, and sit with the song until the last note. That’s what I did the first and only time I heard Curtis Mayfield sing it over the air. Sunday morning cruising down Camp Street in New Orleans, LA. God Bless WWOZ. “Don’t think that I’m any saint,” he warns, “‘cause I can’t do nothin’ for you.” Nonsense. This turn at the pulpit is mighty enough to bring . . .

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Lux Interior Swallowed A Microphone And Made Me Hate Ted Nugent Forever

Diversions, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, catches up with our favorite artists as they wax on subjects other than recording and performing.

Boys and girls, the circus is coming to town...or in this case, Guided By Voices and Bobby Bare Jr. are gigging Friday night at the Fonda in Hollywood. The club is, indeed, open. Bare not only has has a new LP out (Undefeated), but is the subject of filmmaker William Miller's new documentary, Don't Follow Me (I'm Lost). As such we took this opportunity to catch up with Bobby as he waxes on the transformative music of his youth, growing up in Nashville, TN.

Bobby Bare Jr., in his own words, below...

In late 1982 my parents bought the first VCR machine available to the public. It was HUGE. It weighed about 100 lbs and covered the entire top of our television. It looked like a smashed  microwave with a trap door that rose out of the middle of the top where the VCR tapes would go. Lucky for me my Dad bought a bunch of pirated tapes and one of those was a music movie called URGH: A Music War.   It's a showcase of all the new underground bands from the late 70s/early 80s. The film "stars" The Police but includes many of the other most popular "NEW WAVE" bands including  Devo, The Go-Gos, Oingo Boingo, X, XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, Gang of Four, OMD, Toyah Willcox,  The Cramps, Surf Punks, Jools Holland,  Joan Jett, Pere Ubu, Gary Numan,  and more. IT TOTALLY FREAKED ME OUT.

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Father John Misty :: Trouble (Cat Stevens) / The Hal Ashby Story

Yup, that's Hal Ashby - filmmaker/renegade/iconoclast. And this is Father John Misty covering Cat Stevens' "Trouble" - a track originally birthed via the soundtrack to Ashby's film Harold & Maude in 1971. This, the Misty treatment, comes courtesy via director Amy Scott's forthcoming

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Behold The Yellow King: The Music Of True Detective

Ushering in the opening credits, HBO's juggernaut True Detective begins with the Handsome Family’s “Far From Any Road" -- a song that sets the tone for what has quickly become one of the most talked about, and critically lauded, shows of 2014. If you have yet to dig in, you need to. Living legend T. Bone Burnett plays sonic consigliere and is responsible for the series musical direction and supervision. It's his guiding hand that colors each episode, pulling from the past seven . . .

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SIRIUS/XMU :: Aquarium Drunkard Show (Noon EST, Channel 35)

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday — Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Second hour of today's show can be found HERE...

SIRIUS 344: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Glen Campbell - Guess I'm Dumb ++ The . . .

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Range And Basin: Sonoran Roots, R&B, And Hard Rock 1966-1978

Range and Basin: another set of songs from the Grand Canyon State, or spiritually rooted there, a follow up to our Old Gold: Sonoran Country, Garage Blues, Pop, Soul and Avant-Garde from Arizona 1951-1971 mix from last year. Sunbaked soul, psych, country, garage, and folk, some culled from the archives of historian John “Johnny D” Dixon.

Range And Basin: Sonoran Roots, R&B, and Hard Rock 1966-1978 (49 min.)

tracklisting after the jump....

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Tony Owens :: I Got Soul

Turn those lights way down. I Got Soul, by New Orleans’ Tony Owens. A gritty, no frills, southern soul monster from the late 60s and early 70s, this collection (released by Grapevine Records) has had me reaching for little else than old soul and r&b sides of late. Check the title track, and if you dig it, beg, borrow or steal the whole . . .

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Parquet Courts :: Sunbathing Animal

Because of the type of music they play – proudly traditional alternative rock ‘n’ roll that finds its genesis in The Velvet Underground and stumbles forward from there – and because they do it well and in a way that’s altogether fresh, Parquet Courts were doomed from the start to be over-discussed and misunderstood. On Light Up Gold, their breakthrough second release, the Brooklyn quartet shot from the canon, positioning themselves as heirs to their genre’s great riches. Hearing it . . .

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Dead Notes #8 :: Alligator (5/18/68 Santa Clara, CA)

Welcome to Dead Notes #8 where we find our steadfast pranksters in the pivotal years of 1967 and 1968. Long gone are the proto-psychedelic fuzzy garage jams, replaced with long, exploratory suites awash in subtle instrumental and explosive feedback passages as the band weaves from one song into the next. Deep into the recording of their way-over-budget ‘thick air’ opus, Anthem of the Sun, (which finally sees it’s release in the second half of the year) they enlist of help of their old friend, later renowned lyricist, Robert Hunter. Hunter, living remotely in New Mexico and loaded on LSD, crafts a beautiful, allegorical dig at the riffraff who had recently flocked to San Francisco, aptly entitling it “Alligator”. For his efforts he is handsomely paid $250, which he then blows on a used car as he skips town for the Northwest and a job restringing beads on necklaces. Thankfully, the car breaks down and he instead wanders back to his friends in San Francisco. In turn, “Alligator” becomes a big-teethed, bugged-eyed second set monster as the band morphs into an aggressive 7-day-a-week touring machine.

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Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist

In his new book, Dance of Death: The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist, author Steve Lowenthal cites a review of John Fahey’s performance at Hunter College in New York by the Village Voice’s Paul Nelson in 1975:

“His guitar-playing is a deliberate mixture of psychology, order, mythology, poetry, and genre–all very exact, with . . .

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