Music Podcast
MMM 028 - Plunder from Seth
After an extended break, I'm back with episode #28 of Mark's Monday Music. My friend Seth was down visiting from Seattle a few weeks back and he brought down a bunch of great music. I took a little slice of it for this week's show. There's some hip-hop, reggae, drum n' bass, down-tempo, and some spacey strangeness. Enjoy!
MMM 027 - Night Music (Nocturnes and Serenades)
With the baby coming in a week or so, I wanted to put together some quiet classical music to play at night when it's time for everyone to calm down. The first half of the show has orchestral pieces written by Sibelius, Debussy, Mahler, and Dvořák. The second half has two solo piano nocturnes by Chopin and one by the Irish composer John Field. Enjoy.
MMM 026 - Goofy Breaks and Remixes
This week is another nostalgia soaked continuously mixed D.J. set. I'm diving into some of the break beat music that I loved to listen to in the 1990s with a few newer songs and goofy novelties thrown in.
Angular Noodling
It's been a while since my last show, so I thought I'd put together one that had a little back story. I remember Mike Welsh and I were sitting around at his dad's house years back and we decided that the Frank Zappa song we were listening to was very "angular". For this week's show I tried to pick some songs that fit that idea with songs that were both rigid and improvisational.
Dub and Reggae
This week I put together a show of dub and reggae music. It's got songs by (in order): King Tubby, Serge Gainsbourg, Augustus Pablo, G-Corp, Jack Dangers, Scientist & The Roots Radics, Jackie Mittoo, Sly & Robbie, Junior Murvin, Toots & The Maytals, Tenor Saw & Buju Banton, Spragga Benz, Bounty Killer, Mad Cobra & Assassin, Tricky & Hawkman, The Brand New Heavies & Jamalski, Paris Connection, The Cimarons, and (of course) Bob Marley. Enjoy.
Some Somber Minimalism
This week is a sample of some of the somber and minimalist music that I picked up last month. First up is a song of off Laurent Garnier's 2005 album called The Cloud Making Machine. I first learned about him when we went to Paris in 2000. Garnier is a French DJ and producer who is famous for his techno tracks, but the songs on this disk are more low key and artistic, with organic solos and intricate production. Next up is a section from Richie Hawtin's 2005 DE9 Transitions disk. I've been a big fan of Richie Hawtin and his Plastikman incarnation since I first heard him perform stripped down, spaced out techno in Louisville and Chicago in the mid-1990s. This album is my favorite to date. It draws from hundreds of songs and sample sources, rebuilding them into a continuous 96 minute piece of music. It's edited down to 72 minutes to fit on a CD, but the package comes with a DVD that contains the whole thing as an mp3 file, and some sort of whiz-bang, surround sound presentation. Next up is a wall of guitar sound off a 1972 release by the German band Neu!. This stuff was a good 20-30 years ahead of its time and tons of noise-rock bands are still trying to catch up. Next is something from Bowery Electric's 1995 self-titled release. It's a great long drone that reminds me of my favorite stuff by the Verve. I leave the rock guitars for a piece by Janice Giteck. I found her CD looking for stuff by Gamelan Pacifica. They appear on this 1992 album called Home (Revisited). Giteck's music is unique, modern, classical that employs a variety of Asian and European instruments. From there I go into a section of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. Steve Reich is one of the fathers of minimal and electronic composition, dating back to work in the 1960s with samples and tape loops. This recording comes from a recent Nonesuch box set that was released to coincide with his 70th birthday last month. I bring things back down to earth with the rural, neo-psyscedelia of Bright Black Morning Light. They are a band that started out in Alabama and recently relocated to Northern California. The music is unapologetic, down-home, stoner chill music. I heard them interviewed on KALX a while back and they are soft spoken environmental activists (really serious about owls and stuff). The CD was made of all recycled materials and included some crazy, prismatic glasses with pot leaves printed on them. Far out. This show ends back where it started with another song from the Laurent Garnier album. It's a politically-minded, spoken word track with funky organs and saxophone that sound more like 1970s Sun Ra than a 1990s rave anthem. Enjoy.
Beehives and Crawfish
For this week's show I set out without a theme in mind. The stream of conscience started with some beat heavy, art rock from Perennial Divide (the first band of Meat Beat Manifesto's front man Jack Dangers), Broadcast, and a 1981 collaboration by Brian Eno and David Byrne. The Eno/Byrne song allowed me to transition into some Algerian influenced music by San Francisco's Cheb i Sabbah, some avantgarde hip hop by Themselves and a lovely, mean spirited ballad by Super Furry Animals. I wanted to included some stuff by the San Francisco based Matmos after seeing an episode of Spark about thier sound installation at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The only logical place to go next was a happy, drug-induced, campfire song by the Moldy Peaches, then a monstrous classic by Blue Oyster Cult, and a mid-1970s, live recording of Roxy Music. Next I had to include a very bizarre song about Elvis by the San Francisco based Kronos Quartet with vocals by Patty Manning, John Taylor, and Larry Caballero, ending the show with an ode to a tasty, little, creature from Johnny Thunders (of the New York Dolls). The show turned out to be slightly slanted toward San Francisco, artsy stuff, but it's still all over the place, so I just took the show's title from the names of the first and last songs. Enjoy.
Clubhaus
More nostalgia this week. I picked out some of the music I remember hearing at the Clubhaus. Clubhaus was the small, dark nightclub tucked into a downtown Cincinnati alley, were my friends and I spent a lot of our formative years. It was originally a predominately gay, 21 and up club called the Metro, but it would frequently would loose its liquor license and open it's doors as an all ages club. I went there for the first time with my buddy Brian and some older friends when I was only 12 (1987). Clubhaus exposed me to low budget drag shows, skinheads fighting each other with 2x4s, multiple tear gas grenades, and lots of other cool stuff that helped make me the calm, jaded, fellow I am today. The place lost steam and closed its doors around 1992. If you look for it down Gano Alley today, all you will find is the service entrance for a soulless, Italian restaurant that caters to theater goers and conventioneers. The music spanned euro synth-pop, cheesey techno, and angry industrial. Enjoy.
Techno and House
This week I'm officially putting a nail in the coffin of my six episode classical music kick with an hour long continuous mix of techno and house music. I haven't collected a huge amount of this stuff in about ten years, so it was a fun exercise in nostalgia.
20th Century
This week's show is the last in my History of Western Music series. I start with a piece by Jean Sibelius performed by the legendary violinist Anne-Sophia Mutter. Next are two pieces by Claude Debussy, an entire sixteen minute movement from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and pieces by Schoenberg and Bartok.
