Category: Music

I’m down with stoner rock’s sludgy riffs and Sleep’s Dopesmoker is a classic example of the style. I stupidly passed on a chance to see them a couple of years ago when they had some East Coast dates. I hope I can get there this tour as they support their new, surprise release The Sciences.

Happy Friday! I’ve put together a playlist of new-to-me songs from the first three months of 2018.

Not to get all Stefon, but this playlist has everything: oldies, some RVA local, a couple of psych rock jawns, power pop, groups you remember from the 90’s, a Matt Berry remix, Laraaji, and more!

It’s Prince as hell and I love it.

Grabbed this new-to-vinyl 2xLP release of this Spacemen 3 live performance. Originally titled “An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music” the 1st LP is the 45-minute set they played in 1988 at Watermans Art Center in Brentford, London. The 2nd LP is more of their live drone-y work.

I love Spacemen 3 and I love ambient music but this is way out on the drone-inspired end of that spectrum. It’s a niche listen, even for me.

Here is a funny story about this recording from Will Carruthers’ autobiography about his life with the band.

Don’t worry, Adam, I won’t be bringing it up on the podcast.

Fun night of psych rock at The Broadberry. Jjuu Jjuu started the evening with a quick set of spacey rock. I don’t usually get to see that kind of music live so that was great.

Kikagaku Moro is a Japanese 5-piece that makes really nice psychedelic music. I had never heard of them until I was doing research on the Earthless openers. Their album House In the Tall Grass is crazy-good. Highly recommended.

Earthless is a 3-piece heavy psych band from San Diego, CA. I came to them via the drummer, Mario Rubalcalbra. He has been in Rocket From the Crypt (top 5 band of mine) and Hot Snakes. They played for almost an hour, early too long for this old guy. The lights were sick for the Earthless set, provided by The Mad Alchemist Liquid Light Show. I can’t see staying sane if you’d been on acid or mushrooms.

The Biophonic Boombox Recordings is an archived collection of the tapes released by The Nightcrawlers, an 80’s electronic ambient improvisation group. I know, I know. But it’s really been treating me right at the office while I’m working.

All of these songs were recorded directly onto a tape in a JVC boombox. It’s a punk rock way to record your band.

Holy crow, it’s already June! Seems like a reasonable time to share my 1st Quarter Spotify playlist.

Per usual, it’s a big bucket of songs that I really enjoyed. Some are new, some are old, all of them treated me the right way.

When I am driving with Michelle and listening to the radio it’s almost exclusively the classic rock station here in town. We’ll occasionally debate whether the song playing is “real” classic rock or not. It’s lead to some fun conversations. Since I hate commercials (as well as a handful of bands/songs that always seem to be in heavy rotation) I wanted to do an Andy-from-WKRP impression and program my own station. Besides songs that are obvious choices (i.e. any Zeppelin or AC/DC) I have pet songs that I love and others that I do not. I swear, if I could listen to the goddamn radio for 20 minutes without hearing Pink Floyd it would be a minor miracle.

I started a Classic Rock playlist on Spotify to solve my Classic Rock Radio problem. The list was good, but it wasn’t as long I wanted it to be so I started thinking and talking (and talking) about what makes a classic rock song “classic rock” in an effort to dig up more examples and to find songs I had forgotten.

I started with some firm rules about what I don’t want to hear:

• No Pink Floyd.
• No Rush (except Tom Sawyer)
• No Boston.
• No Who (except for “A Quick One While He’s Away” (this is the Rushmore soundtrack exception)). I could do with not hearing Baba O’Riley ever again.
• No post-Run DMC Aerosmith.
• No Ted Nugent
• No Kiss

In the current playlist version (101 songs, 7hr 21mins) there are a few common denominators:

• songs need a guitar solo (“Gimme Three Steps“)
• bands harmonizing in the chorus (“Juke Box Hero“)
• My list seems to really be skewing Southern Rock, which makes sense since I grew up in Virginia. (“Black Water“)
• I think I might have an anti-ballad bias.

One thing that kept coming up was the age of the song determining it’s “classic” credentials. I disagree because there are definitely modern (non-60’s/70’s) songs that I think qualify. “The Bucket” by Kings of Leon is what started this whole thing. Michelle and I were practically impressed that a song from the 21st century was such a great Classic Rock example.

Bands and songs that didn’t make the cut:

• “She’s A Beauty” by The Tubes.
  It’s got some of the classic features (guitar solo, band harmonizing in the chorus) but there is a lot of 80’s radio influence (synths, mid-tempo softness), too.
• “What a Fool Believes” by the Doobie Brothers.
  This one crosses over into Yacht Rock for me. I think it’s all of the Michael McDonald. There are some great pop songs in that vein, but I don’t know that they’re classic rock. I feel like there needs to be at least 2 degrees of separation from Toto.
• “Peg” by Steely Dan.
  It’s a great song and a terrific example of what I meant when I was wondering if my list was too Southern Rock influenced. Peg sounds almost like Disco. It does get major bonus points for being a 3 Feet High and Rising sample.
• “Rocket Queen” by Guns N’ Roses. Great song, but this is metal. (“Paradise City” is 100% classic rock, though, and is 100% in that playlist. Go figure.)
• I don’t have any Metallica in there. I think everything before the Black Album is way more metal than classic rock so I don’t know that any of it fits.
• I struggle with the Eagles, too. Don Henley is such a twat that it’s made it hard for me to enjoy them. “Life In the Fast Lane” and “Witchy Woman” are on the list. I like those songs more than I dislike Don Henley.

Funnily enough, after spending momths talking about it and weeks building the playlist, I had satisfied my appetite for Classic Rock so I didn’t spend much time listening to the playlist I built. It’s there for me when I want it now, which is really all I wanted in the first place.

I’m still trawling Spotify pretty hard. Here’s a link to songs I’ve been digging for the first half of this year.

It’s not in any kind of order and it’s all over the map. I think you’ll find something worth listening to.

I’ve been going to my gym long enough to get occasional access to the stereo so I built a Spotify playlist of Songs to get Swole By. It’s not in any kind of order so I usually just hit it on shuffle.

It would also probably be good to listen to on a run, but I might not find out about that for a while.