Ear Candle Radio's Top 20, April 2011

1. The Who - Call Me Lightning - The Ultimate Collection
2. John Lee Hooker - John L's House Rent Boogie - The Best of John Lee Hooker
3. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Gloomy - Creedence Clearwater Revival
4. Calamity Jane - You Got It Rough - Martha Jane Canary
5. Alan Price - In Times Like These - Between Today And Yesterday
6. The Slits - Newtown - Cut
7. Scrawl - Public Image - Nature Film
8. Steve Hillage - Solar Musick Suite a)Sun Song (I Love It's Holy Mystery b) Canterbury Sunrise c) Hiram Afterglid Meets the Dervish d) Sun Song - Fish Rising
9. Frank Zappa - The Gumbo Variations - Hot Rats
10. Slim Gaillard - Dunkin' Bagel - Vout For Voutoreenees
11. Mark Eitzel - Seeing Eye Dog - The Invisible Man
12. Division By Zero - InSight - Division By Zero
13. Robert Wyatt - Trickle Down - Cuckooland
14. Peter Green - Hidden Depth - The End Of The Game
15. Pelt - Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky No.2 - Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky
16. Neil Young - Walk With Me - Le Noise
17. The Granite Countertops - Shiny Objects - Crashing Into The Future
18. Fleetwood Mac - Oh Well Part 1 & 2 - Then Play On
19. The Experimental Bunnies - The Process - Bunnies On Fire
20. The Zombies - Care Of Cell 44 - Odessey and Oracle

The Blame SF: Wagons And Boys

Our official video for this deceptively sweet Davis Jones composition by The Blame SF, which was first released on The Full Disclosure Principle in 2008. Originally created for an assignment in J Neo Marvin's Digital Media Skills class at CCSF. (Using vintage 60s TV ads provided by the school.) How's it look?

Poly

She has a new album out this week, and the snippets of songs and her words in this interview make it sound like it's going to be really good. How sad that we have to lose her voice on the eve of her triumphant comeback. Poly Styrene, you left us way too soon.

The Same Five Questions

Thomas Crone is a St. Louis-based writer who was extremely supportive of X-tal back in the 90s. I recently got invited to do a fun interview on his blog The Same Five Questions, which puts me in the company of the great Tony Visconti, two posts below me. Thanks, Thomas!

Spotify! What is this and how will Google provide?

Rather than launch its own digital music service, Google is considering whether to partner with an existing service, including the likes of Spotify, to power Google Music.

According to a source with knowledge of the talks, Google has told the labels that it has begun discussions with Spotify in recent weeks, though no agreement is in place. Spotify is the European streaming-music service that also has ambitions of launching in the United States.

The talks with Google and Spotify have coincided with an inability by Google to reach agreements with the four top record labels on licensing a cloud music service, the source told CNET. Google had originally hoped to launch a new music service by the end of the year, and then was aiming for March, but now it's indefinite on when it might debut.

Google declined to comment for this story. Spotify, however denied that it has spoken to Google about powering the company's service. "Nothing in it," said Spotify spokesman Jim Butcher.

So, the question is whether Google is trying to scare the labels into ceding better terms. All the major labels would like nothing better than to see another large distributor competing against Apple.

Read more

Skystone!

Paula Frazer of Tarnation fame has a new band, Skystone, with a crunchy, soaring "late 60s hard rock meets the Banshees" sound. We shot this video of them at the Make Out Room on Mar. 22, 2011. Dig it.

Kucinich meets Walker: This is priceless!

Getting down to the people's business, even when surrounded by wankers.

Meet The Housemartins -Think for a Minute

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20, March 2011

1. Frankie Rose And The Outs - Memo - Frankie Rose And The Outs
2. Danbert Nobacon - Christopher Marlowe - The Library Book of the World
3. The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - The last time - The Rolling Stones Songbook
4. The Quails - Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of A Fist - Atmosphere
5. Neo Boys - Poor Man's Jungle - Crumbling Myths
6. Colin Newman - Lorries - The Singing Fish / Not To
7. Steve Hillage - Solar Musick Suite a)Sun Song (I Love It's Holy Mystery b) Canterbury Sunrise c) Hiram Afterglid Meets the Dervish d) Sun Song - Fish Rising
8. The Granite Countertops - Atlas Wept - Crashing Into The Future
9. Rob K/MDA - Time to Pay - The Purgatory Home Companion
10. Nico - Frozen Warnings - The Marble Index
11. Love - Love Is More Than Words (or Better Late Than Never) - Out Here
12. Janis Ian - Society's Child - The Essential Janis Ian
13. Incredible String Band - No Sleep Blues - The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion
14. George Harrison - Microbes - Wonderwall Music
15. Funkadelic - Can You Get To That - Maggot Brain
16. The Firesign Theatre - The Giant Toad - Dear Friends
17. The Firesign Theatre - 40 Great Unclaimed Melodies! - Dear Friends
18. The Arrows - Make Love Not War - Everything You Always Wanted To Know About 60's Mind Expansive Punkadelic Garage Rock Instrumentals But Were Afraid To Ask
19. Vivian Stanshall & Kilgaron - Are You Having Any Fun? - Keynsham
20. Tall Dwarfs - Michael Hillbilly - The Sky Above, The Mud Below

New Terese Taylor videos up!

We have some new movies of Terese Taylor from the El Rio on Oct. 28, 2010. We caught Terese and her bandmates working out some new material, resulting in some fresh performances. Dig it:



And another. "Mental health, yeah!"

Let's get the hell out of Flatland

The late, great Carl Sagan on dimensions. Wanna see what a shadow of a four-dimensional object looks like? Watch.

the sights and sounds of Madame P

Madame P and her machines play the Undisclosed Location a few years ago, captured by our cameras.

The bad one

Video montage by an old friend. Sleater-Kinney juxtaposed with the tsunami.

Talking sense to deaf ears

"Oh that crazy fringe politician Dennis Kucinich! Why can't he be pragmatic and reach across the aisle like all the NICE Democrats?"

Meanwhile the "nice" Democrats continue to capitulate. At least Dennis has the guts to call them on the carpet for what they sat on their hands and allowed to happen in 2003.

If we make it out of this disgusting period of history, our great grandchildren will be screaming "What was WRONG with those idiots? He was the only one of them talking any sense at all!"

Watch the video. The man's on fire!

The Content Providers at their most populous...

Neo looks so cute here! This was a fun, but short lived line-up of The Content Providers. All great players... all in transition...

Well, this is exciting.

A small facelift

We just updated our homepage and made a few changes. We kept the listening stations for the X-tal archives but the links for our most recent releases go directly to the iTunes pages. We encourage our friends to follow the links and explore the music. Every time you preview a song, we get a few pennies in our coffers, which helps us survive in this brutal capitalist world.

And of course, we'd love it if you bought an mp3 or a CD. The music still sounds good. Check out that new Experimental Bunnies album.

Wanna balance the budget?

It's not hard. Really, it's not.

Thank you, John Darnielle

The Mountain Goats have never been known for agitprop, but John's always been a conscious guy, and a remake of this classic anthem has never been more timely. (Hat-tip to Truculent & Unreliable for helping put this one out there.)

Power In A Union from JD on Vimeo.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20, February 2011

A lot of songs carried over from the previous month's top 20, but pole-vaulting to the top is something new and beautiful:

The number one song on this month's chart is unique in that it features no humans contributing to the music. And by that we don't mean it is a heavily-sequenced piece of electronica. Oh no, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is exactly what it says it is: original music composed and performed by actual elephants (lovingly assisted by their pet humans).



More empathy for the animal kingdom follows with the late Ari Up delivering the title track of the final Slits album, Trapped Animal. Donovan returns with his impression of Sunset Strip life circa 1966, Brighter Shades deliver the sound of young Baltimore, Tom Verlaine and Sonic Youth give us two extremes of exploratory New York guitar music, and Neil Young woos a beautiful dancer.

Some rare gems surface this month: Portland's Neo Boys offer up some reassuring words from their extremely out of print Crumbling Myths EP, Modmach (led by ex-Unit and current Winston Tong collaborator LX Rudis) serve up a tense, circular depiction of stress and escapism featuring some mad guitar from MX-80's Bruce Anderson, Northern California guitar virtuoso (and firm friend of the Ear Candle posse) Matthew Grasso offers up an original composition that pirouettes intricately around a single note, and Linda Smith shows up with another one of her calm, deliberately paced homemade pop masterworks.

We hear from spoken word guru Ken Nordine, lost genius songwriter Elliott Smith, the mighty Dirtbombs of Detroit, a cool instrumental from Chuck Berry, an evergreen psychedelic ballad by the Troggs, a trippy post-punk drone-rant from Public Image Ltd, Patti Smith and her snakecharming post-Coltrane clarinet, a lovelorn patient by the name of Gregory, and Brian Wilson surfin' with Gershwin.

Thank you dear comrades, and keep listening!

1. Thai Elephant Orchestra - Gentle Monsoon - Water Music
2. The Slits - Trapped Animal - Trapped Animal
3. Donovan - The Trip - Sunshine Superman
4. Brighter Shades - There's Nothing, Stranger - You Shine So Bright
5. Tom Verlaine - Days On The Mountain - Words From The Front
6. Sonic Youth - Silver Wax Lips - Silver Session
7. Neil Young - When You Dance I Can Really Love - After The Goldrush
8. Neo Boys - Nothing to Fear - Crumbling Myths
9. Modmach - Security - Modmach
10. Matthew Grasso - Contemplation On The Corpse - Past Present Future
11. Linda Smith - I'll Never See You Again - Nothing Else Matters
12. Ken Nordine - Reaching into In - The Best of Word Jazz, Vol. 1
13. Elliott Smith - Bled White - XO
14. The Dirtbombs - Start The Party - Dangerous Magical Noise
15. Chuck Berry - Deep Feeling (Instrumental) - After School Session
16. The Troggs - Love Is All Around - The Troggs' Greatest Hits
17. Public Image Ltd. - Flowers of Romance - The Flowers Of Romance
18. Patti Smith - Higher Learning - Land (1975-2002)
19. Gregory Isaacs - Love Is Overdue - Reggae Mix
20. Brian Wilson - They Can't Take That Away From Me - Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin

Ch-ch-ch-changes

We are busy moving earcandleproductions.com, noodlebrain.com, and jneomarvin.com to a new server and the sites are temporarily offline. Please be patient while we make our move. We'll be back up in 24-48 hours and gradually adding improvements both bold and subtle. Watch this space for announcements. We're looking forward to the changes.

UPDATE: Well, that was fast! As of 8:00 AM Sunday, we are back again! Good morning!

Get your shoes on, Mr. President

Liliputmania!

Jenny Woolworth's excellent interview with the great Swiss post-punk band LiliPut can be found here, here, and here.

Some videos for your pleasure:

Solidarity is a beautiful thing

UPDATE: Those bold freedom-fighters of the "tea party" respond:



Compare and contrast.

Happy birthday Yoko Ono!

Even Paul gets into bringing the noise here. We would have bumped "The Long And Winding Road" in favor of some of this lively jam if it had been up to us.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20, January 2011

Two great ladies of the stage appear twice on our charts, so let's raise a glass to Patti Smith and Terese Taylor. Julie London's impeccable lounge take on a bubblegum classic returns to our charts. (Hat tip to Johnny Ray Houston for first turning J Neo on to this great cover) Iggy Pop shows up with a portrait of industrial drudgery from his weirdest album ever, The Velvet Underground give us a sublime instrumental that was first unearthed in the 80s, Tom Verlaine stretches out, and the Slits unleash a boisterous number from their final album. (What a shame that "World Of Grownups" was never recorded!)

Troubled founding Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green released a highly underrated instrumental album shortly after he first went around the bend, and the track "Hidden Depth" holds the number 8 spot here--very much in keeping with the Experimental Bunnies spirit, we're thinking. Paul Kantner's first solo album got a lot of stick from some Jefferson Airplane fans, but when it's good, it's really good, and "Have You Seen The Stars Tonight" is as good as awestruck San Francisco acid-folk gets--certainly miles above anything else to come out under the dreaded "Jefferson Starship" name. The mighty voice of Mark Lanegan calls out for the all-too-rare Pacific Northwest sunshine, Ken Nordine guides us through the plumbing, and the late great Gregory Isaacs croons sweetly.

The Fall offer up the mysterious, haunting "Riddler!" (possibly the definitive mission statement of Mark E. Smith), Donovan witnesses the innocent decadence of a more innocent time, Brighter Shades from Baltimore toss off some superior pop-punk, Public Image go psychedelic and quasi-Arabic, Brian Wilson reimagines Gershwin for the California girls and boys, and the Mountain Goats wrap it up with a supernatural vignette: "When the ghost of your father starts pushing you around/how are gonna make him stop?/I took down all of the crosses/I let him set up shop!"

We listened hard to our dry run of the new playlist last weekend, and realized there is some room for change. We're back on random shuffle while we rework some bits, add and subtract here and there, and record our back-announcements. See you with the new version soon, and keep listening!

1. Patti Smith Group - Pumping (My Heart) - Radio Ethiopia
2. Julie London - Yummy, Yummy, Yummy - Yummy, Yummy, Yummy
3. Iggy Pop - Life Of Work - Zombie Birdhouse
4. The Velvet Underground - Ride Into The Sun [Instrumental] - Another View
5. Tom Verlaine - Days On The Mountain - Words From The Front
6. Terese Taylor - Chief Letters - The Clothes We Wore Before We Were Married
7. The Slits - Trapped Animal - Trapped Animal
8. Peter Green - Hidden Depth - The End Of The Game
9. Paul Kantner - Have You Seen The Stars Tonight - Blows Against The Empire
10. Mark Lanegan - El Sol - Whiskey For The Holy Ghost
11. Ken Nordine - Down the Drain - The Best of Word Jazz, Vol. 1
12. Gregory Isaacs - Love Is Overdue - Reggae Mix
13. The Fall - Riddler! - Bend Sinister
14. Donovan - The Trip - Sunshine Superman
15. Brighter Shades - There's Nothing, Stranger - You Shine So Bright
16. Terese Taylor - Goats For Daddy - The Cryingness Of Your Crying When You Cry
17. Public Image Ltd. - Flowers of Romance - The Flowers Of Romance
18. Patti Smith - Higher Learning - Land (1975-2002)
19. Brian Wilson - They Can't Take That Away From Me - Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin
20. The Mountain Goats - Cao Dai Blowout - New Asian Cinema

Egypt

A quick video of this afternoon's demo in support of Egyptian democracy:

Now playing

Sneak preview of new Ear Candle Radio playlist playing this weekend starting tonight!

No DJ banter yet. We'll be out in the field, perhaps near YOU, soon, recording back announcements. Maybe we'll even ask you to say a few words, you never know.

This time around, I found some great public domain sound clips that we'll be judiciously sprinkling among the music. Everything from history to current events to comedy to just plain weirdness. All part of our never-ending quest to keep it fresh.

I love your solitude, I love your pride

Since the Conspiracy Of Beards are hard at work on a very difficult and haunting new arrangement of "Joan Of Arc", I was drawn to this gut-wrenchingly beautiful essay about "the patron saint of blasphemy" from Tiger Beatdown. It dispels some myths, illuminates the enormity of the hate crime committed against this formidable character, and makes me think (not to say anything glib about Leonard Cohen and his genius) a very different song could have been written about her.

Doctor Dark

The sad passing of Captain Beefheart needs to be noted here. At 15, Trout Mask Replica seized my consciousness and made my isolated life better. I never tried to make music like the Captain (that's a gift that only comes once in a century at least), but his fierce independence was always a model. Like Syd Barrett, he retreated from music early; unlike Syd he moved on to a happy successful life as a painter, with a wife who by all accounts was a true partner. At least he lived a full life before the MS got him.

Notorious as a difficult, capricious bandleader who was both unreliable and a control freak, Don Van Vliet got a lot of criticism from ex-bandmates. At the same time, his unorthodox mind and methods resulted in music like no other. He was the weird old master who abused his students yet left them with skills and insights that few ever gain. A complicated story.

Drummer, transcriber/co-arranger/musical enabler John "Drumbo" French pays tribute here. It's a moving testimonial.

Style and substance

Amanda nails it here. As I once said cynically about one of the crap jobs in my past, "It's not what you're doing, it's what you look like you're doing!" For me that was a glib, sardonic joke. For others, it's a way of life.

Help out a good guy in need

Roy Edroso of Alicublog, one of the smartest, funniest writers on the Internet, is going through a bad patch.Here's a place set up to help him out. If you can spare any donations, do so.

Update: Apparently the response has been overwhelming, and Roy is extremely grateful. We look forward to the resumption of his indispensable commentary.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: December 2010

As we see off 2010 and set a place at our table for 2011, may the road rise for all of our listeners. We could be wrong, we could be right, but PiL's blazingly righteous benediction from the mid-80s is just the thing we need to set a precedent for a better year to come.

A brief bit of hard won wisdom from Gil Scott-Heron is followed by Donovan's 100% scientifically accurate presentation of how astronauts deal with their bodily functions in a weightless environment and World Domination Enterprises' pounding indictment of industrial poison. The Magnetic Fields invite us to walk a lonely road, Faust go exploring the world of inner space, the Dirtbombs bring the party, Baka Beyond take the party to the jungle, and Huun-Huur-Tu find entire universes in their own well-trained throats.

The Experimental Bunnies express uncertainty on a track from the score for Noodle Brain Productions' television show on the Integrity Tone Scale. Nick Drake shows up with one of his sweetest songs in a brief career full of sweet ones, Funkadelic offer one of their greatest should-have-been-hits, Chumbawamba lift their voices on a rollicking vintage anti-sweatshop ballad, Sly Stone and company find the world-weariness in Doris Day's signature tune, and Arthur Lee croons one of his fine late-period melodious gnomic numbers before yielding the floor to an unbelievable guitar freakout by the little-known Gary Rowles.

Following that, we had Muddy Waters' molten lament "Standing Around Cryin'" (listen to that harmonica!), the first movement of Missa Luba, Mark E. Smith riding one of the Fall's most titanic-sounding soundscapes, the late great Vivian Stanshall accosting passers-by about their shirts, and Bill Callahan's deep rumbling voice finding new corners in a Chris Knox song on the Stroke benefit compilation.

And that's a wrap for 2010. Keep listening; an all-new playlist is on the way!

1. Public Image Ltd. - Rise - Public Image Ltd. - Greatest Hits So Far
2. Gil Scott-Heron - On Coming From A Broken Home (Part. 2) - I'm New Here
3. Donovan - Intergalactic Laxative - Cosmic Wheels
4. World Domination Enterprises - Asbestos Lead Asbestos (Heavy Pollution Mix) - Love from the Lead City
5. The Magnetic Fields - Walk A Lonely Road - Realism
6. Faust - So Far - Faust/So Far
7. The Dirtbombs - The Thing - Ultraglide In Black
8. Baka Beyond - Booma Lena - The Meeting Pool
9. Huun-Huur-Tu - Oske Cherde - Sixty Horses In My Herd
10. The Experimental Bunnies - Uncertainty - Music For The Integrity Tone Scale
11. Nick Drake - Cello Song - Five Leaves Left
12. Funkadelic - Can You Get To That - Maggot Brain
13. Chumbawamba - Poverty Knock - English Rebel Songs 1381-1984
14. Sly & The Family Stone - Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) - Fresh
15. Love - Love Is More Than Words (or Better Late Than Never) - Out Here
16. Muddy Waters - Standing Around Cryin' - The Chess Story 1947-197
17. Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Kyrie - Missa Luba
18. The Fall - Gross Chapel -- British Grenadiers - Bend Sinister
19. Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Shirt - Tadpoles
20. Bill Callahan - Lapse - Stroke: Songs For Chris Knox

The Process!

A preview of the next Experimental Bunnies album, BUNNIES ON FIRE. We found this incredibly inspired improvisation that was captured on video, edited out about 8 minutes of fumbling, and ended up with a 26-minute track. Enjoy with the intoxicants of your choice.

Driftglass on "no labels"

This is a thing of beauty.