THE “NEW, NEW WRTZ SHOW” W/ROB Z TODAY (WED.) AT 2:00 PM
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CATCH THE NEW, NEW WRTZ SHOW:
WED. AUG. 24TH AT 2PM PST
SUN. AUG. 28TH AT 8PM PST
only on www.intraffikradio.com
Finally it’s here! An entire hour dedicated to the 90’s. well, lemme re-phrase that. An entire hour dedicated to “OUR 90′S.” I return to more of a talk show type feel and bring you the NNWRTZ: “OUR 90’s SHOW (PART 1)”
That’s right gang, come join me,ROB Z, and my good friend JENNIE SYKES-SCHWENK as we discuss and dissect “OUR 90’s” this is Part 1 of 2 of our 90’s memories, foggily re-hashed for your listening pleasure. In this episode, (part 1), you ‘ll hear us tell the tale of our first encounter, we discuss the joys of indigestion, we reminisce about the by-gone days of the cassette and much much more!
Tune in to THE NEW NEW WRTZ: OUR 90’s show PART 1.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN OR LISTEN HERE VIA iTUNES RADIO
This show sounds like this:
1. “WHO WAS IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT”- BUTTHOLE SURFERS- INDEPENDENT WORM SALOON
2. “FRENCH FRIES W/ PEPPER”- MORPHINE- LIKE SWIMMING
3. “POLLY”- NIRVANA- NEVERMIND
4. “LA VIE EN ROSE”- GRACE JONES- SINGLE
5. “CREEP”- RICHARD CHEESE- LOUNGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
6. “BIG WHEEL”- TORI AMOS- AMERICAN DOLL POSSE
7. “BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL”- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS- FLOOD
Need more NEW NEW WRTZ? Well i can make that happen. go to www.newnewwrtz.podomatic.com for free episodes for download or type in NEW NEW WRTZ into your iTUNES and subscribe today! new episodes up monthly! more coming soon!
DELTRON 3030 RECCOMENDED: Pearl Jam – Backspacer
After visiting NY for a few weeks my eyes were opened to a few things. I learned that:
1) Kids Are Sponges – I realized this only after my niece called me “dickface”.
2) No One Wants to go Watch the Mets Play – Even if you offer them free tickets
3) I Am the World’s Worst Singer.
I learned of my vocal shortcomings after failing out miserably on multiple tracks in the Beatles Rockband. It was a bloodbath. I was not the fifth Beatle as I had once thought. Further insult was added to my injury when, as i sat dejected, I watched my friend’s three year old daughter rock a near perfect score on “Hello Goodbye”. In a desperate save face move I popped in Rockband 2 and pulled off a killer version of Pearl Jam’s “Alive.” At that point I realized why I always liked Pearl Jam. I can do a mean Vedder impression. If Eddie ever got in a freak spelunking accident (and lets face it, he looks like a spelunker) I could slide in behind the mic stand and the band wouldn’t miss a beat. That average joe/everyman quality has always been their draw. Sadly this is the same quality that led to the creation of Creed (Pearl Jesus) and Nickelback (Canada Jam) but it is hardly Pearl Jam’s fault. I blame VH1.
That brings me back to a question I’ve pondered of late. “Is it still cool to not like Pearl Jam?“. It would appear as if Pitchfork has responded with a rousing “YES”…to the point where one has to wonder if Stone Gossard ran over Joshua Love’s dog. Damn the holier than thou music snobs at Pitchfork. Like many a person from my generation, Pearl Jam (and Nirvana) held a special place in my Walkman and my teenage heart, so I’m here to defend them. Pitchfork’s major hangup with the band is the fact that they’ve eschewed change and instead consistently churned out similar sounding albums. This is exactly why I like them. This is their charm. They’re like a time capsule to a long forgotten era. Hearing Vedder’s baritone brings me back to a simpler time of Crystal Pepsi, flannel, and teenage angst. When listening to “Just Breathe” off of Backspacer I feel like Wooderson in Dazed and Confused: “That’s what I love about Pearl Jam, man. I get older, they stay the same age”
Well said, Stoner McConaughey.
LA, Go hit Craigslist for tickets.
Oct 1 2009 8:00P
Gibson AmpitheaterUniversal City, California
Oct 6 2009 8:00P
Gibson AmpitheaterUniversal City, California
Oct 7 2009 8:00P
Gibson AmpitheaterUniversal City, California
Deltron3030 Recommended: Green Day ’21st Century Breakdown’
If long ago you had asked me what band would rise from the ashes of the apathetic and listless 90’s and be reborn as the mouthpiece of the Anti Bush America my first guess would have been Nirvana. I could have seen Cobain ,growing older. and as a father, turning into an artist who could galvanize the youth of America, politically, and not have it feel forced. He’d simply be doing it to ensure a positive future for Francis Bean and the naked Nevermind baby. Thanks to drugs, guns, and Courtney Love that never happened.
My only other guess would have been Rage Against the Machine. The formation of Audioslave stripped all credibility from Tom Morello and company. Damn You Chris Cornell.
Who did that leave us with? That’s right, Green Day. With albums named after poo and songs about masturbation they were definitely not the most likely of candidates. Against all odds they somehow outgrew their nasal jerk pop punk persona and became the champions of tomorrow’s hope and ideals. American Idiot was a huge change for them and for many became the soundtrack to the Bush Era. The formula worked and the timing was right….so right that they are back at it again. The godfathers of pop punk return with their second concept album. This Post Bush anti war/anti religion punk opera opus is divided into three acts: “Heroes and Cons,” (tracks 2-7) “Charlatans and Saints,” (8-13) and “Horseshoes and Handgrenades,”(14-18) and follows a young couple, Christian and Gloria, through the mess and promise of the century so far. The general plot, according to Rolling Stone:
“21st Century Breakdown is a Seventies-style epic, telling the story of two young punk lovers on the run in the wreckage of post-Bush America. The heroes are Christian and Gloria, two kids sold out by the church (“East Jesus Nowhere“), the state (“21 Guns“) and every adult they’ve ever believed in (“We are the desperate in the decline/Raised by the bastards of 1969″). Christian’s the impulsive, self-destructive one (“Christian’s Inferno“), while Gloria’s more idealistic and political (“Last of the American Girls“), but they’re forced to take care of each other — because nobody else will.“
Some pretty heady relevant stuff. A far cry from those mid 90’s Dookie lovers. Check it out now!
21st Century Breakdown will be released tomorrow May 15th
Angel’s Flight Radio: Salty Dogs and Rusty Nails…
by: Cashew Harding
Rarely does one think of a sailors life-style when one thinks of Los Angeles. It isn’t ingrained in the overall civic culture like, say San Francisco or Baltimore.
But under the ultra white-hot flash of the media empire that is LA, floats the busiest port in America. The Wilmington/San Pedro/Long Beach harbors bring in commercial fleets all day and night from Asia that are carried up the Harbor Freeway by trucks to the hub of downtown LA, and sent scattering across the country via wheels or wings.
…but those urban docks have a sterling silver cousin up on the Westside, Marina Del Rey, and I spent a few years living on my sailboat and mixing with the live-aboard community of salty dogs and rusty nails that call it home. While MDR is more known for condominiums and celebrity-owned yachts, there is a huge amount of dumpy boats and dilapidated vessels that thousands of unique characters spend their days drinking their government checks away.
I guess I could have been one myself, but I always felt too young and wet behind the ears….at least compared to Beau, the Irish pirate who literally had a peg leg. Or Dusty, the old school South Bay surfer with Tourettes whose PCP-inspired epithets echoed across the quiet docks in the middle of the night. There was Rob, the tough Jim Morrison-obsessed OG cholo who made his way from Pico-Union to skate the scene in Dogtown the next street over.
There are more, but Ill throw a couple character studies of the two coke dealers on my dock: Jason and Taylor.
Taylor came out of nowhere and moved in on the 32’ sailboat bowside to mine and was immediate trouble. He was straight up Venice Beach white trash and I didn’t like him. He was always nosy, where as I have a side of me that likes to be left alone in my place of residence. Living on a boat gives you the solitude to read and create and I did a lot of that, but Taylor came around almost every hour knocking on my hatch, asking ‘for a light’ or to sing a Nirvana song, or something.
One day after being gone for a week, Taylor all of a sudden came back with a huge bloody bandage on the back of his thigh. His story was believable at first: He said he got it while he was away in Hawaii by falling asleep on the beach after surfing. Apparently he scraped his thigh on coral leaving flesh exposed and as he slept, a mosquito or a critter of some kind crept in and laid some larvae under his skin. Seemed believable to me until a couple days later he took the bandage off and the injury was the size of a golf ball with a tear in the middle, red and frayed. A fuckin’ gunshot wound!
There was a round-the-clock cycle of his customers coming around and neither I, nor my neighbors cared for it. Broken-toothed stoners, underage Westside gangsters, and just bad junkies coming around. They stayed up all night, high on meth and made my early mornings miserable. They scared off a girlfriend of mine once by bringing an aggressive pitbull who didn’t like her on the docks at 3am, waking everybody up in the process. This was the last straw for me. But for the dock residents, tt wasn’t until an inboard engine was stolen off a handicapped live-aboards boat while he was in the hospital that we all banded together.
Ryan, my starboard neighbor, was an underwater repairman for Paramount Studios whose own terrier was being bullied by that same pitbull. One day while Taylor was away, he drilled eight holes into the hull of his boat and within hours it sunk and was being dragged out by the coast guard. There was a warrant out for Taylor, so when he came home not only did he find his home being towed away, but several LAPD officers waiting to take him out.
Jason was a different story.
Tall, overweight, Republican, and a total sweetheart. He moved in on our strip after the whole Taylor debacle and was waaaay more low-profile. He enamored everyone with his generous behavior and was immediately well-taken by the dock.
For instance, I had come back from my wedding in Costa Rica and my wife and I decided to have the LA reception on my boat, though I no longer lived there. He felt so bad about being out of the loop in my personal affairs, he rented a high-powered watercraft cleaner to shine up my boat for the party and assisted in everything, from handing out hors’d oeuvres to helping the elderly guests up the dock ramp. Charmed our families, the whole bit. Then, when it was time for the kids to play in the evening, he busted out with his primo Columbian cocaine and set it up on my table. And I don’t mean like a taste for everyone. I mean, like Scarface. A huge pile and railed up lines the size of Brazilian caterpillars!
Several months later, we got a horrible phone call from Rob, the Doors vato, who told me Jason was found dead in his boat. An overdose. The boy was just too big to be messin’ with that much toot. Huge loss. Big heart.
As far as waterfront property in LA, people think Santa Monica, Malibu, Pac Pal, whatever. But the boat lifestyle in Marina Del Rey is easily the most colorful and vibrant. Regardless of the portrayals I just carried out, it can be the quietest corner of the city. A well-kept secret of low-rent and spectacular So-Cal living. My sailboat, the SS Nipple, still remains my Westside getaway. Where I can be alone and daydream, or I can bring my family and let it all out on a sunny afternoon.
The P.G. Wodehouse of Rock and Roll?
I’m not sure why I even read music reviews anymore. I think there’s a secret website somewhere containing about five phrases you’re supposed to draw from if you’re writing a music review, and the phrase I’d put first on my list of “If I See This Again Somebody’s Gonna Get Castrated” is this one:
“…nothing particularly new here…”
It’s this phrase (and permutations thereof), more than any other, that suggests to me that somebody is probably almost willfully missing the point of something. It’s one of those snarky blogger-phrases that just reek of presumed superiority (number two on my list is “self-indulgent,” because if you’re Making Something, who the fuck else are you going to indulge?). Digression aside, let me explain something, and maybe I’ll boldface it to make sure everybody gets it: There is nothing substantially new in popular music. There may be elements that are new to the genre, but that’s about as much as you can hope for. And that’s fine! I like it that way! The point is not necessarily to be innovative. The point is to be fun to listen to.
I mean, does anybody honestly think for a moment that before (for instance) Nirvana, nobody in the history of creative musical endeavor had ever thought of alternating quiet sections with loud ones? Ever? Maybe nobody had done it quite that way in that style of music before. I’d allow that. But that device had been around for hundreds of years before Kurt Cobain got to it, I assure you.
And let me just add that I emphatically do not want to meet anybody who sets out on some grand quest specifically to become a revolutionary. The one example that springs to mind of somebody who actively set out to revolutionize music is Richard Wagner. And although he was incredibly rare in that he actually accomplished what he set out to do, he was by all accounts a terrible prick.
What all this is leading up to, really, is a discussion about the band Secret Powers. Secret Powers is a band fronted by Ryan “Shmedly” Maynes, who was in the band Arlo (who I know I’ve mentioned before), although I first knew him from the Electrolites, his first post-Arlo band. Anyway, Shmed moved to Montana a few years ago (to my hometown of Missoula, by bizarre coincidence) and got Secret Powers off the ground with former members of other bands there.
The reason I brought up the “nothing new” issue is because I read a review of the Secret Powers album, Explorers of the Polar Eclipse—it was a glowing review, actually—that used that nauseatingly bloggy phrase to describe the album. It’s true that Shmed’s songwriting and production borrow elements from his favorite bands (among them the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Jellyfish, and ELO). But it’s done in such an obviously gleeful and celebratory way, and with such masterful craftsmanship, that to even mention it is to miss the point of this band. More than anything else, and all influences aside, the songs on Polar Eclipse are seamless exaltations of the pop form. It’s everything that’s good about a genre, all at once, done up in layers upon layers of keyboards, guitars, and multi-part vocal harmonies, performed by people who clearly love what they’re doing. To dismiss something like this as “nothing new,” even if it’s meant as part of a compliment, is to misapprehend the whole point of this style of music. It’s not supposed to solve mysteries of the human condition, or deconstruct forms, or plumb the depths of emotion. It’s supposed to make you enjoy being alive for three or four minutes.
If one wanted to oversimplify (and one does at the moment), one could divide melodic/harmonic movement into two types: 1) the type that surprises, and 2) the type that goes exactly where you want it to at just the right time. In my head, these are labeled as the “Whoa!” and the “Fuck yes!” categories, respectively. Secret Powers are good at both. I remember an Electrolites show a few years back where my fellow Get Set Go member, Jim, said something like “I can’t believe people don’t pay Shmed millions of dollars to write these melodies.” This accessible melodic emphasis is true of Secret Powers as well, and I was glad to see that a few Electrolites songs were reconstituted for Polar Eclipse. Especially “Counting Stars.” I could probably go on for pages doing comparisons and analyses and being offensively academic about it all, but I’d rather just say that Secret Powers is a real real good band and recommend that everybody get their album.
I think it’s time to bring my remarks to an anecdotal close now. I was re-reading The Salmon of Doubt the other day. It’s a collection of previously unpublished writings by Douglas Adams, on all sorts of different subjects, and it’s very entertaining. There’s a bit in his introduction to P.G. Wodehouse’s Sunset at Blandings that struck me as being particularly germane to this topic (oh holy shit have I ever wanted so badly to use the word “germane” in a sentence):
“…exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day. In fact, what it’s about seems to me to be wonderfully irrelevant. Beauty doesn’t have to be about anything.”
Sure! P.G. Wodehouse’s stories are about butlers and comically deviant members of the idle rich. Secret Powers songs are mostly about girls and use chords common to the pop genre. But both transcend what they’re about and manage to be enormously entertaining examples of artists joyously practicing their craft.