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West Indies Christmas (A Mixtape)

Holiday MixtapesPosted on

The holidays, West Indies style. With the expansion of record distribution from the UK, the US, and Canada during the 1960s, Christmas music experienced a notable surge, mirroring developments in Jamaica. The following twenty track all vinyl mixtape covers most of that time period, from early 60s through late 70s . . .

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Dollar Diamonds :: Holiday Edition

Dollar DiamondsPosted on

Sadly, the sled has sailed for $1 Xmas albums. You can't even grab an Andy Williams or Perry Como album with bells on it for a buck anymore. For all you non-believers, here's this month's Dollar Diamonds that are not Christmas albums, but “sound” like Christmas albums (if you don't think about it too much . . .

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The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)

SIRIUSPosted on

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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Posted on SIRIUS

Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 36

Book ClubPosted on

Via the British Film Institute, the latest edition of author Michael Atkinson's 88 page intricate and layered analysis of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, unpacking the paradoxical nature of both the film and its legacy. Evan Dando's new auto-biography, tracing the musician from his sweater-punk days in Boston to the commercial success of Ray and beyond. The new, 700-page doorstop that is The Complete Johnny Cash, Gary Lachman's unlikely journey from scrappy rock & roller to one of the premier authors concerning esoterica, and more . . .

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Transmissions :: Cochemea

Cochemea PodcastPosted on

This week’s conversation with Cochemea Gastelum brings our season to a close. The saxophonist and bandleader joins us to discuss his beautiful LP Ancestros Futuros, out now on Daptone Records. Mining his Indigenous roots, soul jazz, and funk, it's a fantastic album, and it completes a trilogy that began with 2019’s All My Relations, continued with 2021’s Baca Sewa, and now concludes . . .

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Posted on Cochemea Podcast

Gene Ammons :: Nice an’ Cool (1961)

Gene Ammons Jazz Midnite JazzPosted on

True to Moodsville’s curation, Nice ‘an Cool is nothing if not a “mood album,” the overall unity of the quartet eclipsing any one section of the arrangement. The band keeps dynamics to a gentle hush; Ammons plays his melody lines straight, keeping embellishments to a bare minimum. Still, the ear can’t help but single out Ammons’ tenor sax. His tone is unmistakable: deep, rich, and warm. He doesn’t so much play notes as he breathes his soul into them, tinting each legato phrase with a lifetime's worth of dreams and regrets . . .

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Posted on Gene Ammons Jazz Midnite Jazz

A John Waters Christmas (2004)

Holiday John WatersPosted on

Christmas provides the perfect setting for Waters to juxtapose with his subversive authorship: taking something cheerful, domestic, and sentimental and gleefully deforming it into tawdry anarchy. So it should come as no surprise that when New Line Records asked the cult icon to compile a Christmas album, Waters curated a track listing far off the beaten path of Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. "I think a few of these songs are awful," Waters would say. "But they're so awful, they're perfect . . .

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Posted on Holiday John Waters

Eberhard Weber on ECM: Primary Colours

Eberhard Weber ECM JazzPosted on

ECM may exist without Eberhard Weber, but it wouldn’t be ECM as we know it. From his 1973 debut through decades of collaboration, Weber’s ECM catalog is difficult to absorb, with offshoots that aren’t for every taste. Still, it’s a body of work that rewards exploration. Here’s one path among many . . .

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Posted on Eberhard Weber ECM Jazz

The Blue Nile :: Hats

The Blue NilePosted on

The Blue Nile’s Hats is filled with lovesick people and nocturnal places, existing in a perpetual state of starless nights and slanted rainfall. The album evokes a liminal metropolis bathed in the amber glow of sodium-vapor street lamps, where lonely souls wander down moonlit alleyways in search of something that has already left them long ago. It is here, where traffic lights blink for no one and smoke curls around sewer lids, that Hats stakes its home. It sustains this atmosphere from beginning to end — each song a jigsaw puzzle piece that forms a mosaic of romance and . . .

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Posted on The Blue Nile

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)

SIRIUSPosted on

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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Posted on SIRIUS

Transmissions :: Mike Ayers ( The Untold Story of the ’90s Jam Bands)

Mike Ayers PodcastPosted on

The '90s were a strange time. From Gregorian chants to swing bands, you never knew what would make it onto the radio. But some of the strangest groups to improbably infiltrate the mainstream came from the post-Grateful Dead jam band scene. Our guest today is Mike Ayers, author of ⁠Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene that Followed . . .

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Posted on Mike Ayers Podcast

Aquarium Drunkard :: Year In Review 2025

2025 Year In Review Year In ReviewPosted on

Looking back to look ahead. The clock never stops, but sometimes music manages the impossible: slowing time for a moment. Our list arrives in the spirit of sharing, and we’re back with our annual Year In Review. As always the following is unranked and unruly. Let it blurb . . .

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Posted on 2025 Year In Review Year In Review

World Standard :: Human Circle of Memory

Japan Soichiro Suzuki World StandardPosted on

While this year marked the fortieth anniversary of the avant-pop debut World Standard, musician Soichiro Suzuki returns with a brand new record Komorevia under the long-running moniker. Lead single "Human Circle of Memory" is a carefully crafted work invoking the spirit of the last four decades of the singular World Standard universe, with fading reverberations and echoes of chiming bells and woodwinds overlapping with layered synthesizers (and soft vocals from Yoriko Matsumoto). A self-described sunlight filtering through the trees, indeed . . .

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Posted on Japan Soichiro Suzuki World Standard

Milton Nascimento :: Maria Maria (1976)

Brazil Milton NascimentoPosted on

While Milton Nascimento is more known internationally for his role in Brazilian jazz fusion, he also composed landmark MPB records of his own, that often brought forth folkloric Brazilians genres like toada, lundu, moda de viola, and even some Medieval revivalism. Maria Maria is a highlight among those explosions of ancestral rhythms. Composed as the soundtrack to a 1976 ballet about a black female slave choreographed by Group Corpo, it would eventually culminate in the historic Missa dos Quilombos in 1982, when Milton led a drum-filled Catholic mass for a legion of Afro-Brazilians in the Praça do . . .

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Posted on Brazil Milton Nascimento

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)

SIRIUSPosted on

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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Posted on SIRIUS