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The Graham Bond Organisation :: Early In The Morning

This one's 2am with a matte black finish. The Organizsation's take on the traditional blues holler done up in the hands of mid-sixties young blues freaks and jazzbos. A tonic by the way of The Graham Bond Organization's The Sound of 65.

MP3: The Graham Bond Organisation :: Early in the Morning

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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.

SIRIUS 293: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ The Buff Medways - Troubled Mind ++ Condo Fucks - Gudbuy T'Jane ++ Richard Swift - Drakula (Hey Man!) ++ The Blue Rondos - Baby I Go For You ++ The Skygreen Leopards - Johnny's . . .

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Glenn Jones / Chuck Johnson / Imaginational Anthem, Vol. 6: Origins Of American Primitive Guitar

It's been more than half a century since John Fahey made his first recordings, kicking off what he called the "American Primitive" or Takoma School of acoustic guitar playing -- a movement that today appears to be as vibrant and vital as ever. Fahey still casts a long shadow, of course, but the music is a constantly growing and changing thing, with creative young guitarists like Daniel Bachman and William Tyler injecting new life and veterans like Don Bikoff and Harry Taussig emerging from the mists of obscurity. Somewhere in between, you'll find solo guitar practitioners like Glenn Jones . . .

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Henry Flynt :: Graduation

Reading about Henry Flynt can be a little intimidating. The guy is described as an "avant garde minimalist" and "anti-art activist," and is often mentioned in the same breath as LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad and the Fluxus movement. Flynt himself says: ""I aspire to a beauty which is ecstatic and perpetual, while at the same time being concretely human and emotionally profound." None of this should scare you off. Flynt's music is very, very fun, as demonstrated fully by his chooglin' avant-hillbilly double LP Graduation, freshly reissued on wax by

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Hiss Golden Messenger :: Haw // Golden Gunn :: S/T

A clutch of North Carolina albums have been on my mind of late. Hiss Golden Messenger’s Haw is the third corner of a triangle that started with the solitary winter blues of 2010’s Bad Debt and more full-flowered folk-rock of Poor Moon in 2011. The three albums cover a similar surface area, a haunted little patch of earth that I’m often wary to get too close to. It’s funny: a friend of mine . . .

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Deerhunter :: Monomania

New York, New York: that’s one hell of a shadow you cast. The classic image of the city –  that dark and terrifying Sodom where lawlessness and creativity join in a thrilling dance, the place where anything awful is possible and where people get off on that very possibility – it looms over the psyche of alienated teenagers everywhere. The promise of so much chaos and unchecked weirdness testifies to a strange kind of romance and freedom. Make it there and you can make it anywhere, sure, but if you make it there – as in, if you can physically get . . .

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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.

SIRIUS 292: Jean Michel Bernard - Générique Stephane ++ Apple & The Three Oranges - Curse Upon The World ++ Bill Withers - Better Off Dead ++ The Dirtbombs - Livin' For The City ++ The Don Ezekiel Combination - Ire ++ Chuck Jackson - I Like Everything About You ++ The Soul Lifters - Hot Funky & Sweaty ++ Max Roach With The J . . .

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Serge Gainsbourg / Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: French TV, 1983

weeeeiiiirrrrddd. Hawkins' "Constipation Blues" with Serge Gainsbourg . Indeed, an inspired pairing . . .

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The Lagniappe Sessions :: Mikal Cronin

Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.

The Lagniappe Sessions return with Mikal Cronin, whose sophomore solo LP and Merge Records debut, MCII, lands at your favorite record store today. Five months into 2013, I can tell you it's one of my favorite records this year . . .

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Richard Hell :: I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp

Autobiographies, like most non-fiction, are tricky. Their subject matter require inherent interest -- maybe even passion -- marginalizing most audiences. The best autobiographies circumvent that demand by having a lot in common with good fiction writing: an engaging and original voice and insight that transcends the surface narrative and turns the specific into the universal.  A survivor of severe drug addiction and one of the chief architects of the New York punk scene of the 1970s, Richard Hell is a powerful enough subject to do just that. Enter I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp.

Hell, unlike a lot of the characters from that era, checked out of music almost thirty years ago, removing himself to a life as a writer. It makes sense, then, that Hell chose to focus his autobiography on the years from birth to 1984, when he quit music. It's a must-read for Hell fans, whether from his work with the Voidoids, the scant demos of his time in the Heartbreakers or in Television.

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Kendra Smith Presents The Guild of Temporal Adventurers

Kendra Smith wasn't kidding around when she called her 1994 solo album Five Ways Of Disappearing. Aside from some very low key performances in the late 90s, she's pretty much vanished from the music scene. Or any other scene you'd care to name. Smith is rarely mentioned these days, which is understandable; aside from her work with the Days Of Wine And Roses-era Dream Syndicate, most of her music is out of print. Which is a shame, since that includes two fantastic Opal LPs made in close collaboration with David Roback (who would later take . . .

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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.

SIRIUS 291: Jean Michel Bernard — Generique Stephane ++ Whitefield Brothers — Rampage ++ JD & The Evil’s Dynamite — Beer (So Nice, Right On) ++ Ebo Taylor & Uhuru-Yenza — Love And Death ++ Mor Thiam — Ayo Ayo Nene ++ Nora Dean — Angie La La (Ay Ay Ay) ++ Alex Chilton — Jumpin’ Jack Flash ++ Rob Jo Star Band — I Call . . .

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Tom Waits :: Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour (Spoken Word)

For fellow Tom Waits freaks, the pairing of Waits guesting on Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is something like manna. The following five tracks find Waits calling in to Dylan’s show, commenting on various subjects, reveling in the everyday bizarre. Fantastic.

Tom Waits :: Body Parts (Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour)Tom Waits :: Numbers . . .

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Sevens :: Caitlin Rose – I Was Cruel

(Sevens, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song.)

It's a hard lesson to realize what terrible things you're capable of doing. We like to think the best of ourselves, but there are relationships that send us into dark places within ourselves in word and deed. "I Was Cruel" from Caitlin Rose's second LP The Stand-In takes a classic country trope - the destructive relationship - and opens it up for examination so that the blacks and whites all become a lot greyer.

The best practitioners of alt-country in the past 25 years have taken the influence of country's golden age and given it a shot of post-modern lyrical examination. Where classic country's bad relationship songs would usually mull over how the narrator was treated wrong or how they were the one who just couldn't settle down or play nice, anyone who has ever been in a serious relationship knows that things are never as simple as that. "I would've warned you if I'd known," Rose sings as the chorus gently slides in, "but I never knew I was cruel / No, I never knew I was cruel / Baby 'til I..met you." While the first verse seems to place the blame at the feet of the silent partner ("You throw dirt in my face / then you push me over / push me over the line."), the chorus turns its aim inward and finds our narrator looking hard at him/herself. It's a sharp turn in a song packed with them that manages to make space for some tremendously classic spots in the music as well. The pedal steel and the key change at the end of the bridge are huge parts of what make this song sound as stellar as it does.

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