Posts

Happy Thanksgiving :: Doug Sahm And Friends – Austin, TX 1972

Tradition runs rampant around Thanksgiving: generations of old recipes, football, Alice’s Restaurant, and, of course, a parade of balloons shutting down NYC. What else do you need? If you thought you were covered in the Thanksgiving tradition department, we did too…until a few years ago, when someone blew the dust off a long lost tape — Doug Sahm’s Thanksgiving Jam . . .

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Dylan Tupper Rupert & Jessica Hopper on Groupies :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

It opens with an abduction—and only gets crazier from there. Groupies is the latest series from KCRW's Lost Notes music podcast. Written and hosted by Dylan Tupper Rupert and producer Jessica Hopper, the show's eight episodes span the end of the '60s, the birth of the '70s Sunset Strip culture, and the dawn of punk rock, illuminating the lives of women often written out of the story or viewed as mere accessories to their rock star companions . . .

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The Things :: Coloured Heaven

Prior to this fortieth anniversary reissue, you likely never saw The Things or 1984 debut record Coloured Heaven included on canonical Paisley Underground lists. Wearing its influences on its sleeve, the album is emblematic of their Los Angeles roots from Love to their Paisley peers in Rain Parade. Similar to Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, it's a relic of woozy, melodic neo-psychedelia that stands out across any era or movement . . .

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Quartet :: Live at Gold Diggers (2024)

I first caught wind of Robert Walter around 1998 at a late night show at the Maple Leaf in New Orleans during jazz fest. Now fast forward 26 years. Two months ago Walter joined forces with Dave Harrington, Spencer Zahn and Kosta Galanopoulos for a heady Tuesday night of free improv space jazz/funk at Gold Diggers in East Hollywood, Los Angeles. Spread over the course of two sets, shit got real as the audience played witness to something new, something primal. Thankfully there was a taper in the house . . .

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Sam Blasucci :: Real Life Thing

When he's not singing high harmonies and playing sun-baked folk as one half of the excellent SoCal duo Mapache, Sam Blasucci moonlights on his solo records as a polished purveyor of AM gold. Picking up where last summer's brilliant Off My Stars left off, Blasucci's new album Real Life Thing mines a vein of early 70s soft rock to craft a perfect collection of sophisticated bubblegum . . .

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

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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Kristen Roos :: Universal Synthesizer Interface, Volumes I, II, III

In 2019, Vancouver composer and sound designer Kristen Roos acquired a floppy disc of pioneering computer musician Laurie Spiegel's 1986 algorithmic composition program Music Mouse for a few bucks on eBay. The purchase sent him tumbling down a rabbit hole of vintage music software interfaces. Over the three volumes of Universal Synthesizer Interface, Roos has captured the fruits of his research and experimentation. Composed of pulses and patches, primitive drum machines and bass squelches, Universal Synthesizer Interface emerges as one of the most slyly delightful, engaging and weirdly beautiful musical projects going . . .

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Transmissions :: Phosphorescent

We’ve reached the end of the road for this season—season 9 concludes with this episode, a conversation with Matthew Houck, the leader of the avant-country band Phosphorescent. In April, Phosphorescent released Revelator, the band’s ninth album. It’s their debut for Verve Records, after a string of well-received albums on Dead Oceans. Joined by collaborators like Jim White of the Dirty Three—who you heard earlier this season—Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs, and his wife and songwriting partner Jo Schornikow, it finds Houck examining—what else?—the end of the world . . .

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Bridget St. John :: Paris, 1970

Via French television, check out this terrific 13 minutes of Bridget St. John performing three songs solo in Paris, the songwriter’s crystalline guitar and singular vocals captured perfectly. Do we talk about St. John enough? Sure, she’s had plenty of boosters over the years (John Peel was a huge fan), but in our mind she deserves to be mentioned alongside Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Martyn and others as one of the great English songwriters of the late 60s/early 70s. I’m also going to put her up there among the very best heads of hair of . . .

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Videodrome :: Out Of The Blue (1980)

Out of the Blue (1980) marks Dennis Hopper's return to the director's chair after a decade of exile, transforming what was intended to be a light-hearted coming-of-age drama into a domestic tragedy about wayward youth during the apex of the punk scene . . .

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Bert Jansch & Finn Kalvik :: Norwegian Television (May 7, 1973)

It's officially Bert Jansch season. Recorded live in the spring of 1973 for Norwegian television, the following twenty-eight minute session finds the Scottish troubadour in the company of Norwegian folkie Finn Kalvik. The set kicks off with the pair collaborating on Jansch's own "Running From Home" (via his 1965 s/t LP) before sliding into an alternating guitar pull between the two musicians. Koselig . . .

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Terry Stamp :: Blue Redondo

At some point during the recent hype cycle surrounding the Hard Quartet’s debut LP, Matt Sweeney popped up on our feed singing the praises of Terry Stamp’s Blue Redondo. Stamp, formerly of the English hard rock group Third World War, recorded Blue Redondo after he relocated to El Segundo, CA, in the late 1970s. Each of its 12 tracks are rough gems, hard-bitten but sweetly rendered loner folk bolstered by Stamp’s blues-soaked guitar and vocals, not to mention the occasionally eccentric production touch . . .

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David Pajo :: Scream With Me

In 2004, in a break between a string of Aerial M albums and the first Slint reunion tour, David Pajo found himself at loose ends, sleeping on friends’ couches and wondering what to do next. In Brooklyn during this period and, for once, luxuriating in the rare pleasures of an empty apartment, he struck on the idea of Misfits covers. He’d been a fan since early adolescence . . .

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Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard :: November 2024

Freeform transmissions from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard on dublab. Airing every third Sunday of the month, RFAD on dublab features the pairing of Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Chad DePasquale’s New Happy Gathering. This month, Wilcox leads things off with a selection of dusted late November vibes; DePasquale follows it up with an hour of psychedelic blues, gospel, and soul. Sunday, 4-6pm PT . . .

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Smoke Bellow :: Structurally Sound

“I come crashing down like sunsets gleam,” Meredith McHugh sings in the opening minutes of Structurally Sound, the fourth and final album from Smoke Bellow. The Baltimore via Australia duo of McHugh and Christian Best do, in fact, break up in spectacular, brilliant fashion here – joining forces one last time on guitars, synths, percussion, bass, and vocals for an ecstatic record of funky angular post-punk, damaged motorik-infused disco, and minimalist art-rock . . .

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