Waterloo Persuasion & Show # 545

The Black Angels - Waterloo Waltz

“Waterloo Waltz” is a heavy psychedelic track recorded by the Austin, Texas band The Black Angels for inclusion on the Riley Hawk: Northwest Blow Out EP. Released for free download by Scion AV, the tracks on the EP will accompany an upcoming video series by skateboarder Riley Hawk. Titled Scion X Riley Hawk: Driven, the video series will feature Hawk and The Shep Dawgs visiting their favourite skate parks in the Pacific Northwest. Download the EP for free here.

R.E.M. - Pretty Persuasion

“Pretty Persuasion” is a song from the 1984 album Reckoning by Athens, Georgia band R.E.M. The song displays slow melodic post punk influenced basslines amongst Peter Buck’s jangly guitar rhythms and darker lyrical content from vocalist Michael Stipe, which seems to dominate this release. This album was recorded over the course of sixteen days in December 1983-January 1984 at Reflection Sound Studio in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, who produced R.E.M.’s first album Murmur, produced this album in a way to capture the band’s live sound. Binaural recording techniques were also used during the recording process for this purpose. Additionally, a short film was made entitled Left Of Reckoning by Athens filmmaker James Herbert. The short film covers the first five songs on Reckoning in a non-traditional style featuring slow motion footage, close-ups and the use of rephotography that was utilized during the edition process of the film.

Saturday Night Play List:

1. The Raevins - The Edge Of Time
2. The Nocturnals - Detroit
3. The Black Angels - Waterloo Waltz
4. The Go-Betweens - Lee Remick
5. Reverend Horton Heat - Bales Of Cocaine
6. Run Coyote - Stranger (In My Own Home)
7. Peter Doherty - Broken Love Song
8. Muelkik - Savage Company
9. Energy Slime - Bustin’ Up
10. Nocturnal Projectors - Moving Forward
11. Five Pound Snap - I Tell Myself
12. Buzzcocks - Don’t Mess Me Around
13. Guided By Voices - Fly Into Ashes
14. REM - Pretty Persuasion
15. Reigning Sound - Falling Rain
16. The Prehistoric Cave Strokers - Make You Mine
17. The Velvet Underground - There She Goes Again (Live)
18. The Pointed Sticks - My Little Red Book (Live 1980)
19. The Gruesomes - Cry In The Night
20. Johnny & The Canadians - A Million Tears Ago
21. Light Bulb Alley - Roll Over Hang Over
22. The Bell Peppers - Rhinestone Rock
23. The Unusuals - Saving My Best
24. Jets - Original Terminal
25. The Dark - John Wayne
26. Subway Sect - Watching The Devil (BBC Session)
27. The Cramps - Beautiful Gardens
28. The Damned - Melody Lee
29. Richard Hell - You Gotta Lose (Live at CBGB 1978 with Elvis Costello)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for January 31. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.

Coming Up On Revolution Rock in February 2015!

February is theme month once again for Revolution Rock. I will be doing a different themed program for each of the four weeks in February 2015. Each program will air on a Saturday from 7-9 PM and can be streamed/listened to online via www.cjam.ca or on the FM dial at 99.1 FM in the Windsor/Detroit area.

Here is the scheduled line up:

Rock & Roll Music: Revolution Rock Celebrates Black History Month
February 7th, 2015
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

As with every February, Revolution Rock celebrates Black History Month. This year the program will delve into genres that are not always played on the program such as jazz, reggae, funk, blues, R&B, as well as a mix of some garage and everything in between. Join Dave Konstantino and co-host Adam Peltier for this program that will also feature a focus on the music of Chuck Berry. Being a pioneer of rock music, the program will showcase a selection of Chuck Berry recordings from 1957-1979.

Toronto Then and Now
February 14th, 2015
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

Toronto’s Actual Water has been releasing music of differing genres since 2008. Revolution Rock will feature a selection of recordings from this band’s catalog which spans the genres of noise pop, post punk, post-rock, paisley garage jangle pop and most recently the band's foray into power pop on their album Call 4 Fun. In addition to music from Actual Water, the show will also showcase music from Toronto, Ontario’s past and present with garage rock and punk as a main focus.

Unravelling The Basement Tapes
February 21st, 2015
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

In 1967, Bob Dylan and a group of musicians that would eventually be known as The Band began recording what would be known as The Basement Tapes. The sessions, which ran from approximately May - October of 1967 occurred after Dylan had withdrawn himself from his Woodstock home and following his motorcycle accident in July 1966. Recorded in a house known as Big Pink, songs from these sessions would be bootlegged for decades. Join Dave Konstantino and co-host Adam Peltier as they dig deep into the recently released Bootleg Series volume 11, which compiles a plethora of previously unreleased and greatly sought after recordings from the legendary Basement Tapes Sessions that Bob Dylan recorded with The Band in 1967.

Surfbeat: Revolution Surf (The 9th Edition)
February 28th, 2015
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

The February 28th edition of Revolution Rock continues its tradition featuring a program composed entirely of surf music. This year’s program will feature another guest segment from Derk Brigante of The Surfphony Of Derstruction 2000 as we feature selections of sleazy surf tracks. The 9th edition of Revolution Surf will also feature a focus on the album Surfbeat by LA’s The Challengers. Recorded in a whirlwind 3 ½ hour session, Surfbeat was originally released in January of 1963. This album is notable for its historical importance of helping to bring surf music from the west coast into the mainstream subconscious. It is known as the best-selling instrumental surf album of all time.

Viet Cong & Show # 544

Preoccupations’s debut album Viet Cong starts off with “Newspaper Spoons” featuring distorted pounding drums, while reverb vocals penetrate the listener’s subconscious. As the song picks up we hear an icy fuzz pedal that provides a stinging intensity to the song. Towards the end of this track, a synthesizer creeps in and ends the song on a beautiful, somewhat celestial note. The band’s sound has been described as having a post-punk influence and while that is obvious, the remnants of the sounds of Gang Of Four, The Jesus & The Mary Chain, Wire, The Pop Group, This Heat, Joy Division and New Order creep in among this album’s seven-song landscape. Cited as a “winter” album, Viet Cong also takes on an almost industrial aesthetic.

“March of Progress" starts off with an electronic sounding drum pattern, echoing the distorted rhythms of the album’s opening track before a strong melody creeps in with stereo bouncing guitar arpeggios that sound as if they are being played on unplugged instruments. The song shows glimpses of melodies that until this point seem lost amongst the jagged, iced rhythms. Vocalist/bassist Matt Fiegel pours out an impassioned vocal melody near the song's end in between a propelling bassline with lyrics that state “What is the difference between love and hate/We build the buildings and they’re built to break”. This is somewhat appropriate because with each track found here, Viet Cong literally builds and then deconstructs their sound.

“Bunker Buster” appears here in an array of jagged post-punk guitar riffs that bounce back and forth between your speakers in stereoscope. The sounds on this track could be described as Gang Of Four meets Station To Station-era David Bowie. “Continental Shelf” was the first single released for this album back in October 2014. This menacing track could perhaps be best described by the visuals provided by the music video created for this song. In the video a man in a space suit travels through a building as a silver suitcase looms with mysterious smoke pillowing out of it. 80s styled navigation graphics cut in and out, as the character gets closer, the suitcase reveals itself to be rather like a more extreme version of what was found at the end the film noir Kiss Me Deadly. On the surface, some may see Preoccupations’s Viet Cong album as just that, another album by a band that delves deep into their influences. But when you look closer the contents of this album prove to be mysterious, alluring, dark and at times explosive.

“Silhouettes” attacks with up-tempo venom, downplayed with darker sounding bass and vocals as the lyrics “There is no connection left in your head” reverberate within the song's instrumentation. “Death” ends the album appropriately, but in epic proportions. This song is fitting in terms of the subject matter found throughout this release, but it is also notable for melding a series of the band’s influences. This song progresses like an automobile moving through a tunnel on grainy film. It combines the band’s post punk, industrial soundscapes and pop influences all in one. The song ends in a series of aggressive attacks, smooth melodies and dissonance.

Viet Cong is different than its predecessor. The seven song EP entitled Cassette released in 2013, displayed elements of the sounds that would be found on Viet Cong, but on a smaller scale. This album also sets Preoccupations apart from their past. Prior to this album, two of Preoccupation’s members (Matt Fiegel, Mike Wallace) were a part of the band known as Woman. After releasing two albums, Woman split in 2010 and the band ended ultimately with the untimely death of guitarist Christopher Reimer in 2012. When looking at the image on the cover of Viet Cong, we see what appears to be scissors cutting a wrapped up bandaged hand. With seven songs, Calgary’s Preoccupations exposes us to something new as the other hand is revealed.

Saturday's Play List:

1. Dee Dee Ramone - Bad Little Go-Go Girl
2. The Jam - Set The House Ablaze
3. The Fall - Mr.Pharmacist
4. Blitzen Trapper - To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)
5. The New Pornographers - Another Drug Deal Of The Heart
6. Mike Watt & The Missingmen - Up To My Neck In This
7. Manic Street Preachers - Revol
8. Paul Jacobs - Sharp Dress
9. The Missing Lynx With Lloyd J - 13 Reasons
10. Crododiles - Picture My Face
11. James O-L & The Villains - The Old And The New
12. Silent Movie Type - Souvenirs
13. Orphan Choir - Gene Tierney
14. The Lemonheads - Pittsburgh
16. Viet Cong - Silhouettes
17. Women - Locust Valley
18. Chad Vangaalen - Leaning On Bells
19. Viet Cong - Newspaper Spoons
20. The Government - Portrait
21. The Radiators - Contact
22. The Adverts - My Place
23. Sleater-Kinney - No Anthems
24. Iggy & The Stooges - Till The End Of The Night (Detroit Rehearsals Spring 1973)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for January 24. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.

The Unseen Green Obscene & Show # 543

Christian Bland & The Revelators released their third album, The Unseen Green Obscene in the summer of 2014. The album continues Bland’s trend of digging into mid 60s garage and psychedelia nugget styled sounds. On this release he pays tribute to many of his influences, wearing them on his sleeve. “Syd Barrett Blues”, “Diddley Stomp” and “Brian Wilson” all echo Bland’s influences through his own psychedelic filter. Elements of The Black Angels, Bland’s main band are heard sporadically throughout this release, but The Unseen Green Obscene shows Christian Bland & The Revelators standing on their own. Songs such as “The Last Summer” drip with echoes of reverb, the sounds of 13th Floor Elevators and The Beach Boys, “Daughters Of The Sun” is a six minute drone featuring reverberations blurring the lines of psychedelia and The Cramps, and “Gnostic Blues” features crunchy guitar fuzz and sliding basslines. Bland pays homage to his love of reverb literally, with the sounds explored on “The Reverberation Appreciation Society” with the lyrics and its title. It is also the name of his own label. In a fuzzed out fashion, The Revelators pay tribute to their love of motorcycles on the track “CB160”.

“Alone In Deer Park” is a lethargic trip, which reveals a haunting melody amongst the guitar lines that sound like they are from a 60s horror film, just before the enemy attacks. “Lifeboat” ends the album in a psychedelic folk fashion. At times the vocals on this track and on several others reflect a distance or disconnect from the songs. This is something that is noticeable on The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, but on this album Christian Bland & The Revelators combine this with sunnier sounding rhythms and dark lyrics for dramatic effect. The album’s artwork features a combination of white, red and green colours, which look like they could be abstract sound waves or birds, The Unseen Green Obscene takes flight in a wave of sounds. The sounds on this album separate this band from Bland’s other projects, most notably The Black Angels who do incorporate all the elements mentioned here, but they also seem to a attach a different type of heaviness to their music. The Unseen Green Obscene shows Bland taking his songwriting to a different place. The songs found here take us to a place that blurs the lines that we have known, a rearranging if you will. The Unseen Green Obscene takes us somewhere in between.


Saturday Night Play List:

1. Christian Bland & The Revelators - Gnostic Blues
2. UFO Club - Wolfman
3. Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds - Haunted Head
4. The Echo Bombs - King Of Uncool
5. Run Coyote - Only Human
6. Guitar Army - Cruel World
7. The Stray Cats - Built For Speed
8. Paul Camplain - Nicotine
9. The Pretty Things - Get Yourself Home
10. The Black Delta Movement - Ivory Shakes
11. The Aquadolls - Tweaker Kidz
12. The Ketamines - Stay Awake
13. Modern Vices - Keep Me Under Your Arms
14. The Mandates - Wastin’ Time
15. Butthole Surfers - Sea Ferring
16. Scratch Acid - The Greatest Gift
17. The Dirty Nil - Cinnamon
18. Viet Cong - Pointless Experience
19. The Nelsons - Never Hated Fun
20. Those Rogues - Wish I Could See You Again
21. Bradfords - Together We Have Stayed
22. Dum Dum Girls - Bhang Bhang, I”m A Burnout
23. Tire Swing Co. - Happy Valentines Day
24. Beastie Boys - Something’s Got To Give
25. Generation X - Stars Look Down
26. The Hot Nasties - This Is Unlove
27. The Dirty Pretty Things - Deadwood
28. The Libertines - The Delaney
29. The Libertines - The Boys In The Band
30. The Velvet Underground - European Son (Alternate Version)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for January 17. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.

Jack White's Lazaretto & Show # 542

Jack White’s Lazaretto starts off with the piano, organ and heavy drum filled “Three Woman”, which on the surface appears to be a song about, well, three woman. It has been hinted at in old interviews that this is what Jack refers to his guitars as. In the song he states, “I got three woman/Red, Blonde and Brunette”, each one apparently one of the guitars he uses in the different bands that he plays in. When looking at the song in this context as the words “How come I gotta have a woman/To blow these blues away?” hover between the organ riffs, perhaps this song is a subliminal telling of what’s to come from Jack musically in the future, or maybe it is simply about what the song’s title suggests. “Three Woman” is carefully disguised and structured not giving too much away, but it also leaves enough for the listener to think about to keep you wondering. The song ends in a rave up of blues guitar riffs, dizzying organ, bass and drums.

The title track “Lazaretto” is a combination of funky rhythms and distorted guitar riffs. The song, which was apparently based off of some old poems that Jack wrote at the age of 19, builds up with a solo before ending out in a combination of slow lumbering riffs, distortion and violin. Lazaretto is an old term that references a quarantine hospital that housed people of disease and it dates back to the late 1700’s and decades prior to this. Within this dynamic, the album takes on a new form as we are quarantined through eleven tracks, with subjects and music structures falling within Jack White’s song writing abilities.

“Temporary Ground” starts off with folk and country sounds. It features piano, pedal steel and female vocals from Little Mae Rische. The song has the same lighthearted feeling that we heard on Elephant and on some of the slower songs on earlier White Stripes recordings. “Would You Fight For My Love?” starts off in a cinematic way of sorts, as tom fills, piano and female harmonies start off the track. When the chorus hits we hear loud volumes of electric guitar. The sound is intense and reminiscent of the feel of early guitar riffs from Link Wray and gritty White Stripes recordings. This blends in with haunting organ and backing vocals as throughout the song we hear lyrics such as “I’m getting better at becoming a ghost” which shows us a transparent feeling lyrically. The instrumental “High Ball Stepper”, apparently was written when White had a day off from touring. It sounds like it could be from a Western, as heavy guitar riffs drift amongst backwards sounding pedal steel and creepy chants.

On “Alone In My Home” Jack sings of “Becoming a ghost/Becoming a ghost/So nobody can know me” and “Lost feelings of love/They hover above me”, bringing us back into the transparent feeling that was first reflected on “Would You Fight For My Love?” but in a different context here. “Entitlement” is a slow country ballad. This is another song that showcases the space in which Jack White fills on Lazaretto. He adds more instrumentation and production values filling out the stereophonic gaps, upgrading the once ramshackle lo-fi garage-blues recordings he’s been known for. With lyrics such as “Stop what you’re doing get back in line/If we can’t be happy then you can’t be too” and “Don’t they feel like they’re cheating somehow” Jack expands on bitter feelings of being told you’re wrong, being told what to do and of peoples sense of entitlement amongst the lush country arrangements that float softly like blades of grass on an old Hank Williams record.

“Just One Drink” lyrically seems to address alcohol and bad relationships as musically the song features a foundation built of rock dynamics as a house of country arrangements sit atop. “Want and Able” ends the album musically, by featuring basic bare bone instruments. The track features, piano, acoustic guitar and vocals only as lyrically the song is a folk tale. We hear about two characters that seem to represent the greedy and sensible sides of one’s consciousness as they get entangled in societal conventions.

On Lazaretto, the listener floats from song to song, stuck if you will, until the album’s conclusion. When released on vinyl, Lazaretto was featured on what was called the “Ultra LP”. The album featured one side that plays in reverse, continuous loops of feedback and birds crowing on each side of the album respectively and, a hologram of an angel. The vinyl literally takes on a journey physically like no other record has before and lyrically it is different than 2011’s Blunderbuss. As the needle drops on Lazaretto, the listener is exiled to a haunting, vicious, at times beautiful place we’ve never been before, until we get cast adrift and turn the record over again.

Saturday Night Play List:

1. Marshmallow Overcoat - Groovy Little Trip
2. The Night Beats - 18 Glowing Phantoms
3. Neil Jarvis - Shred Met
4. Denise & Company - Boy, What’ll You Do Then
5. Luke & The Apostles - Been Burnt
6. Los Straitjackets - Fury
7. Parkay Quarts - Pretty Machines
8. The Replacements - I.O.U.
9. The Nils - Banditos Calling
10. Alex G - After Ur Gone
11. The Heart Attack Kids - Platonic Love Bomb
12. Silent Movie Type - Spillkit
13. Lowlife - Leaders
14. The Flesh Columns - Time's Up
15. Marshmallow Overcoat - 13 Ghosts
16. Tara Watts - S.O.S
17. The Mallard - Over And Under
18. Andre Williams - I Still Love You
19. Johnny Bell - The Third Degree
20. White Heat - Nervous Breakdown
21. The Swollen Members - I Like Living In Scarborough
22. Tricky Woo - Rock 'n' Roll Vs. The World
23. Death - Freakin Out
24. The Flesh Rags - Night Stalker
25. REM - Rotary Ten
26. Bad News Boys - Alone Again
27. Deja Voodoo - Wall Of Paisley
28. Ariel Pink - Put Your Number In My Phone
29. Useless Eaters - American Cars
30. Indian Wars - Who Needs A Girl Like You
31. Jack White - Temporary Ground
32. Jack White - Would You Fight For My Love?

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for January 10. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.

Roy Orbison At The Rock House & Show # 541

Roy Orbison’s At The Rock House was first released in 1961 by Sun Records at the same time Orbison started gaining success with his singles on the Monument record label. At the time of this album’s release, Orbison had not yet released a full-length album with the Monument record label. Prior to this, a young Roy Orbison cut his early roots in the orbit of Sun Records with the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. In his brief period with Sun from 1956-1958, Orbison first found success with his single “Ooby Dooby” recorded with his backing band The Teen Kings. The song got Orbison a deal with Sun Records, however, The Teen Kings disbanded shortly after the singles success. Orbison remained on the label as a solo artist recording songs, but also wrote songs for other artists. It wasn’t until he provided The Everly Brothers with the song “Claudette”, also the name of Roy’s first wife, that he was able to buy himself out of his Sun Records contract.

At The Rock House begins with the song “This Kind Of Love” which sets the tone for the album and can be seen as setting the tone for Roy Orbison’s musical style to come. With the lyrics “Our love/Won’t die/Can’t die/This kind of love was meant for you and I”, Orbison reveals a certain emphasis within the song’s structure and context in his voice. It is undeniably Orbison, but at the same time it is more upbeat and more in the presentation of early Sun Records recordings. “Devil Doll”, another early Sun Records song and single cut by Orbison gives us a glimpse of the first signs of the future darker ballad style Orbison would be known for. This song is credited to Sam Phillips, but it was actually written by Roy Orbison. There are several songs on this album that were written by Orbison, but were credited to Phillips. These songs include “This Kind Of Love”, “You’re Gonna Cry”, “I Never Knew” and “Mean Little Mama” to name a few. In addition to this, songwriting credits on this album also feature songs that were written by Johnny Cash “You’re My Baby” and a Harold Jenkins collaboration on “Rock House”. Jenkins is perhaps better known as Conway Twitty.

“It’s Too Late” originally recorded in 1956 and “I Never Knew”, both portray more dramatic elements. “I Never Knew” in particular has the feeling of the Elvis Presley song “Blue Moon”. “You’re Gonna Cry” is a mid-tempo rockabilly ballad showcasing the lyrical style that Orbison fans would identify with. The guitar on this track, (most likely added as an overdub after the fact), adds extra intensity to the song. Other tracks of note here are “You’re My Baby”, a frenetic stop and start track in Sun Records rockabilly style, “Mean Little Mama” with Orbison boasting in a style similar to Elvis Presley and “Rock House”. This song, which is where the album’s title originates from is as mentioned earlier, a song collaborated on with Conway Twitty. This song recorded with The Teen Kings as the backing band, jumps with its rolling treble loaded drum fills and Scotty Moore styled electric guitar licks.

“Problem Child” is the last song found on At The Rock House. On this song Orbison lays his distinctive, impassioned, delicate vocals overtop the tracks wild rock ‘n’ roll foundation. Although the song can be seen as a love song about a problematic relationship, it could also be seen as how Orbison viewed himself at the time. With lyrics such as “Well I do believe in my soul/You’re Out of control with this rock ‘n roll”, these lines emphasize that this could also be a love song in disguise, pulling in more subject matter than it appears when you look beneath the surface. Roy Orbison may have said that he wasn’t comfortable within the rockabilly dynamic, but this song and the eleven others on this release serve as an important document. “Problem Child” and the rest of the songs found on At The Rock House show that Roy Orbison was capable of playing rockabilly, but that he was also a songwriter that had his own distinctive style. His songwriting would eventually be focused on in greater detail, which would lead to Orbison’s own successes in the world of rock music. This album shows his early beginnings with a dash of Sun Records echo and twang.

Saturday Night Play List:

1. 999 - I’m Alive
2. The Tomboys - I’d Rather Fight Than Switch
3. The Len Bright Combo - You’re Gonna Screw My Head Off
4. Young Rival - Elevator
5. Acid Baby Jesus - Who’s First
6. John Otway - Baby’s In The Club
7. Wazmo Nariz - Tele-Tele-Telephone
8. Queen’s Rug - Like A Plague
9. AKA & The Charlatans - 634 Dog
10. Little Richard - Keep A Knockin’
11. Jack Scott - Midgie
12. The Gestics - Invasion
13. Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet - Theme From TV
14. Davie Allan & The Arrows - Blues Theme
15. CJ Ramone - Last Chance To Dance
16. Fifth Column - Like This (Brave New Waves Session)
17. The Animals - Don’t Bring Me Down
18. Tire Swing Co. - Time Away
19. The Black Angels - Molly Moves My Generation
20. Sonic Jesus - Lost Reprise
21. The Electric Vomit - Treasure Hunt
22. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - You Belong To Me (Live)
23. The Government - Telephobia
24. Ty Segall - It’s A Problem
25. Actual Water - Waldo Jackson
26. Dead Ghosts - Summer With Phil
27. Dead Ghosts - Cold Stare
28. Roy Orbison - You’re Gonna Cry
29. Roy Orbison - I Never Knew

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for January 3. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.