Freeform!

In a 24 hour time period from 12 noon on Sunday to 12 noon on Monday, 8 hours were spent on the radio.

The 12-4 on Sunday shift was planned as a four hour block of Pop Rocks!, but once I got rolling I realized this was far too ambitious and that two hours is just the right amount of time for pop before even I start getting queasy. The set started off with a short playlist that I made by putting iTunes on random.

New Order - Temptation (Substance)
Jim White - Ten Miles to Go on a Nine Mile Road (No Such Place)
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets (Shake the Sheets)
Heavenly - Sort of Mine (Le Jardin de Heavenly)
Desaparecidos - Man and Wife, the Latter (Damaged Goods) (Read Music/Speak Spanish)
Magnetic Fields - Lindy (Live)
The Zombies - Tell Her No (Singles)

After that was a mess of favorite songs and Pop Rocks! favorites, along with new stuff from Voxtrot ("Blood Red Blood" and "Firecracker" from their forthcoming self-titled debut LP), Wilco, and Low. Eventually my brain started swelling and it all bled into a punk rock/post punk set mostly from records lying around the shack:

Talking Heads - Girlfriend is Better (Stop Making Sense)
Devo - Mongoloid (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo.)
Joy Division - She's Lost Control (Unknown Pleasures)
My Bloody Valentine - Feed Me With Your Kiss (Isn't Anything)
Husker Du - I Apologize (New Day Rising)
Black Flag - I Love You (My War)
Bad Brains - Sailin' On (Bad Brains)
Minor Threat - Steppin' Stone (Minor Threat)
The Minutemen - Viet Nam (Double Nickles on the Dime)

Check out Bruce Conner's video for "Mongoloid."


After that I went home. That night, while sitting around waiting for the Dark Meat show to start, I agreed to do the 4-8 AM shift to keep the station from shutting down. Look at me toot my own horn but I got excited. Then we went and saw Dark Meat. More on that at the bottom.

The morning show was much better. It felt amazing. Lots of slow stuff, lots of long songs, stuff you just can't play in the afternoon. The show essentially culminated with the concept of playing nothing but Low until the sun came up. This was at about 5:30 and I figured the sun would be up by 6:30, disregarding daylight savings time. The Low set completely relaxed me, put me in an almost zen like state and I think I inadvertently compiled my "Essential Low" mix. Sunrise came right at the part of "When I go Deaf" when the song rocks the hell out.

Low - Whore (Things We Lost in the Fire)
Low - Laugh (The Curtain Hits the Cast)
Low - In the Drugs (Trust)
Low - Dragonfly (Drums and Guns)
Low - Silver Rider (The Great Destroyer)
Low - Lazy (I Could Live in Hope)
Low - Sunflower (Things We Lost in the Fire)
Low - Missouri (Secret Name)
Low - Transmission (Transmission EP) *Joy Division Cover
Low - Over the Ocean (The Curtain Hits the Cast)
Low - Shame (Long Division)
Low - Point of Disgust (Trust)
Low - Laser Beam (Things We Lost in the Fire)
Low - Murderer (Drums and Guns)
Low - Starfire (Secret Name)
Low - Cue the Strings (The Great Destroyer)
Low - (That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace (Trust)
Low - Anon (The Curtain Hits the Cast)
Low - Your Poison (Drums and Guns)
Low - When I Go Deaf (The Great Destroyer)
Low - Dinosaur Act (Things We Lost in the Fire)

And that was my evening.

Band of the Week
Dark Meat



Honestly, if Dark Meat comes to your town and you do not go to see them, you are an idiot. I was almost an idiot last night, half heartedly wanting to go. Then I listened to the album and got a little excited. Annie and I accidentally got there early and the openers were a wispy ultra quite couple of girls singing so we went to get sandwiches. Unon returning, a girl was standing at the microphone singing. Were they still playing? And then the band emerged (they had been crouching on the stage) and broke into "Freedom Ritual," the first track from Universal Indian. And that was it. My mind was completely fucking blown. It's been so long since I've seen a band really give everything that they have. There were thirteen people on stage and they looked like a band of crazy people that stumbled onto some magical guitar chords. The sound is somewhere between the Olivia Tremor Control (the band allegedly has some members from OTC and Circulatory System and they are part of Elephant 6) and Black Mountain. Fucking dark, sexy psychadelia. Anyway, go see this band (it's probably pretty cheap, I can't believe I got all of that for five bucks) and buy their record (Universal Indian it is fucking amazing). I wish I had an MP3 of "Well Fuck You Then," undoubtedly the highlight of the show.

Dark Meat - Dead Man
Dark Meat - Angel of Meth

Check out their Myspace! Listen to "Freedom Ritual" and see if they are coming to a town near you!

Orange Twin

Seventh Show!

Time's a crooked bow

After three weeks of themed shows, I finally just played a bunch of random wonderful stuff and had a great time. Here is thee playlist:

Voxtrot - Trouble (Your Biggest Fan EP)
The Pastels - Sit on it Mother (Sittin' Pretty)
The Spinanes - Valency (Strand)
Sugar - Believe What You're Saying (File Under: Easy Listening)
Richard Swift - Buildings in America (Dressed Up for the Letdown)
Andrew Bird - Armchairs (Armchair Apocrypha)
Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers (Saltbreakers)
The Apples in Stereo - Sunndal Song (New Magnetic Wonder)
Love is All - Nothing to Be Done (Pastels cover)
The Ethnobabes - Make Some Sound (Stargazer)
Heavenly - Our Love is Heavenly (Heavenly vs. Satan)
Of Montreal - On the Drive Home (The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit's Flower)
Tullycraft - Secretly Minnesotan (Disenchanted Hearts Unite)
Yo La Tengo - Cherry Chapstick (And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out)
Weezer - Suzanne (Mallrats Soundtrack)
Superchunk - Cursed Mirror (Come Pick Me Up)
Orange Juice - Lovesick (Ostrich Churchyard)
Young Marble Giants - Include Me Out (Colossal Youth)
Future Bible Heroes - I'm a Vampire (Eternal Youth)
The New Pornographers - Your Daddy Don't Know (FUBAR Soundtrack) (Toronto Cover)
The New Pornographers - Graceland (Matador at Fifteen compilation)
Quasi - I Never Want to See You Again (Featuring: "Birds")
Built to Spill - Temporarily Blind (Keep it Like a Secret)
DNTEL (ft. Jenny Lewis) - Roll On (Dumb Luck)
Tobin Sprout - The Natural Alarm (Carnival Boy)
Parks and Recreation - The Perfect Love (What Was She Doing on the Shore That Night?)
Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - It's a Crime (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone/Foot Foot Split)
The Oliva Tremor Control - Fireplace (California Demise)
Beirut - Scenic World (Lon Gisland)

Song of the Week
Richard Swift - Buildings in America
Richard Swift's new CD Dressed Up for the Letdown was handed to me at music staff a few weeks ago seemingly at random. The CD is a little meh, but this song is fucking great.

Show 6 1/2: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Since the show was only an hour today (being truncated due to basketball), I decided to do something that I've been wanting to do for a long time: play Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in its entirety. This record changed my life when I was in high school and I consider it the monolith of my musical evolution. However, I feel extremely bad when I play single tracks from the album on the radio. Occasionally, I'll play "Holland, 1945," but anything else feels like high treason. It was rather funny, the calls that I received this morning were mostly in regards to my well being (people thought that I had died and the record had continued to play on). Anyway, that was that. After the record finished I had about fifteen minutes to kill and played the last three tracks from Of Montreal's brilliant new record Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? So, in short, this show was about genius sequencing.

Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - The Fool (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Communist Daughter (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Untitled (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Of Montreal - Labrynthian Pomp (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)
Of Montreal - She's a Rejector (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)
Of Montreal - We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)

Band of the Week
Neutral Milk Hotel

Who else would it be? Honestly, this show was for everyone who has been living under a rock for the past ten years. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is one of those albums that is almost exclusively discovered by word of mouth and my only goal this morning was to expose this band to as many people as possible. Please, obtain this record as soon as you possibly can. I can't stress that enough. This is a record that can change your life, one where each individual listening is rewarding. It's a record that, after four years, I am still excavating and returning to, and it is still the only record that has ever brought me to tears.