What Are You Listening To?

[Motor City Sonics]

On my January 25th Under The Radar Radio show I am going to feature Dry Cleaning's new album as Pick Of The Week.  They are an English band with a lead vocalist that speaks rather than sings (most of the time).  So the theme of the whole show is going to be TALKING songs.    Where most of the vocalizing is dialogue, rather than singing.   Did this before and it was a fun show to put together.    Do you have any suggestions so this version can be a little different than the last one?   (it doesn't have to be all speaking, but it has to be more speaking than singing).  

 

 

Examples of the first time in 2021 (and many of these will be repeated, it's been five years, it's okay to double up now, it's well beyond my 6 month barrier for older songs)

 

Monkey Gone To Heaven - The Pixies

Dig, Lazarus, Dig - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Comfort Eagle - Cake

Strobe Light - The B-52's

Fit, But Don't You Know It - The Streets

AEIOU Sometimes Y - EBN/OZN

Common People - William Shatner (it's better than you think)

Business Time - Flight Of The Conchords

 Frank's Wild Years - Tom Waits

The Party Broke Up - Was (Not Was)

Popular - Nada Surf

Belong - R.E.M.

I'm Straight (Hippie Johnny) - Jonathan Richman

Screenwriter's Blues - Soul Coughing

Valley Girl - Frank and Moon Zappa

Had some lesser-known stuff  from PINS, TV Preist, The Hold Steady, Sinead O'Brien.    

Might have to include Take Off by Bob & Doug McKenzie this time and maybe This Is The Picture from Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson.   

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 03:11 PM by Motor City Sonics

[Biff Mayhem]

11 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Valley Girl - Frank and Moon Zappa

The story of how this came into being is infuriating as a dad of girls and yet amusing the way Moon tells it. Frank was an incredibly talented human and a completely self-absorbed jerk. 

[Hongbit]

12 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

 

Business Time - Flight Of The Conchords

 

Hopefully the show is on a Wednesday.

Also have to assume that Detachable ***** is off the table for radio. 

[Motor City Sonics]

2 hours ago, Hongbit said:

Hopefully the show is on a Wednesday.

Also have to assume that Detachable ***** is off the table for radio. 

Yeah,  it sure is.   

 

Back when it was new our station in East Lansing, 92.1 The Edge played that and it played in the Taco Bell on Grand River by campus and that store owner banned our station forever. 

[Motor City Sonics]

2 hours ago, Hongbit said:

Hopefully the show is on a Wednesday.

Also have to assume that Detachable ***** is off the table for radio. 

Not on a Wednesday, but it'll be longer than two minutes. 

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, Biff Mayhem said:

The story of how this came into being is infuriating as a dad of girls and yet amusing the way Moon tells it. Frank was an incredibly talented human and a completely self-absorbed jerk. 

Yeah, Frank was definitely an inward person, if not exactly a loner. Form the time he was rich enough to build his home studio, he would spend every waking hour in it working on composing and arranging music, which was the only entity outside himself he had any passion for, to the detriment of all the other people in his life. He probably had some diagnosable condition leading him to withdraw, but he was also intelligent and insightful enough to seek help for that if it ever bothered him, which to all appearances it didn’t, since it led to his fame and fortune.

There was a very good Washington Post article from a couple years ago about how his kids are divided from one another, and Frank does not come off looking good.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/interactive/2024/frank-zappa-family-feud-moon-unit-dweezil/

[Biff Mayhem]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

There was a very good Washington Post article from a couple years ago about how his kids are divided from one another, and Frank does not come off looking good.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/interactive/2024/frank-zappa-family-feud-moon-unit-dweezil/

His wife is no peach either but that might be PTSD from being married to Frank. 

[Biff Mayhem]

And by all accounts, Moon and Dweezil are really good people. 

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, Biff Mayhem said:

And by all accounts, Moon and Dweezil are really good people. 

Dweezil also fronts an awesome Frank tribute band whom I saw last year (or was it two years ago now? Everything rushing by so fast) that's focuses on the Roxy jazz-rock music from 1974.

 

[Motor City Sonics]

7 hours ago, Biff Mayhem said:

And by all accounts, Moon and Dweezil are really good people. 

I've interviewed Moon (by phone) and she was one of the easiest people to interview I've ever dealt with.   Very open, very nice, smart and funny.     It helps when the person you are interviewing understands why they're doing an interview.   Instead of someone who doesn't want to answer questions and won't lead you.    I've heard Dweezil is like that too, just a nice person.  

I interviewed Cyndi Lauper once.   It was another phoner.   It was a 30 minute interview.  I opened with one question and never got another word in.  LOL.   But she was sweet. 

 

When unsure of my subject I learned this great J.P. McCarthy trick when I was an intern in the 80s.    J.P. would open the interview introducing the name of the person and why they were there,  On the line today with me I am speaking with Biff Mayhem and he's here to talk about the organization that he started after the Back To The Future movies, People For The Ethical Treatment of Biffs.   Good morning, your thoughts?     

worked almost every time.   If it didn't, you knew the person was the wrong subject to be interviewed - because J.P. was a master at disarming and calming the subject and if he couldn't, well, almost no one could?         I didn't even work for his station, I worked for the FM.  I was told not to bother him.   Bad advice, he was actually very gracious with advice.  Just don't bug him when he's busy.  That's fair. 

 

[Motor City Sonics]

I think Frank Zappa was absolutely on the spectrum (many creative people are) and he had the outlet and discipline for it to work in his favor.  But if you didn't think near his level, he'd eviscerate you and he just didn't tolerate anyone that he thought wasn't up to his lofty standards and he seemed rude about it.   He wouldn't fake it for anyone and while there I appreciate the honesty, he could have given it a rest a little bit.   Showing kindness is not a weakness.