Left of the Dial

I’ve often credited my diverse musical taste to the years I spent in college volunteering at the university radio station—WUSC-FM 90.5 in Columbia, SC. It was there I discovered many of the bands and genres I still enjoy to this day. Every year for the school’s Homecoming weekend, they let alumni DJ’s like me get back on the airwaves for a few hours.

This past weekend I put together a set of songs from the late 1980’s era when I was a student DJ, and while it doesn’t show the tremendous diversity of programming that included reggae, punk, afropop, dance, hip-hop, and more, my playlist for the evening (Which I’ve listed below) does read like a preview of the then-nascent “alternative” music boom.

While some of these names may be familiar from their later work, many of them are as obscure now as they were then. Curious? Search the band names on Google, YouTube, and Myspace; there is a lot of material out there posted by others who remember this music as fondly as I do.

Tommy Keene, Places That Are Gone
Marshall Crenshaw, Mary Jean
Waxing Poetics, Walking on Thin Legs
The Broadcasters, Hole In My Heart
The Godfathers, Birth School Work Death

The Catheads, Power Love and Pizza
The Royal Court Of China, It’s All Changed

American Music Club, Firefly
The Silos, A Few Hundred Thank You’s
David Sylvian, Let The Happiness In
Billy Bragg, Must I Paint You A Picture

Big Pig, I Can’t Break Away
Stump, Charlton Heston
Fetchin Bones, A Fable

The Swimming Pool Q’s, Big Fat Tractor
Translator, Un-Alone
The Walkabouts, Jumping Off
Thin White Rope, Elsie Crashed the Party
The Dream Syndicate, Halloween

Green On Red, That’s What Dreams
Rain Parade, Mystic Green
The Wygals, Passion
Bobby Sutliff, Small Town Romance
Easterhouse, Nineteen Sixty-nine
The Waterboys, We Will Not Be Lovers

Close Lobsters, Too Bloody Stupid
The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, Too Much Falling In Love
True Believers, The Rain Won’t Help You When it’s Over
The Del-Lords, The Cool and the Crazy
EIEIO, Andy Warhol’s Dead But I’m Not
Dash Rip Rock, Endeavor
The Reivers (Zeitgeist), Blue Eyes
The Saints, Music Goes Round My Head
Jennifer Warnes, Bird on a Wire
Marti Jones, The Real One
The Rainmakers, Spend It On Love
Paul Kelly, Before the Old Man Died
Dumptruck, Back Where We Belong
Died Pretty, As Must Have
Washington Squares, New Generation
Andy White, Things Start to Unwind
Syd Straw, Hard Times
Peter Case, Horse & Crow
Antiseen, Ruby Get Back to the Hills

Fluid, Fools Rule
The Buck Pets, Hammer Valentine
Splatcats, Surfin Hearse
Droogs, Jack Of Trades
Scruffy the Cat, My Baby She’s Allright

Wenesday Week, I Wonder What We Had
Brian Setzer, Three Guys
Uncle Green, Vulnerability
Wild Seeds, I’m Sorry (I Can’t Rock You All Night Long)
Sister Double Happiness, Sister Double Happiness

Chances Are, Five For Fighting Will Make You Cry

There’s an emotional resonance to the songs of John Ondrasik, who performs as Five For Fighting, and it’s the kind of depth that may sound like greeting card sentiments on the surface but once the words sink in and you relate them to your own experiences, tears well up.

Slice, the new album from Five For Fighting, has one of those moments with the last song, Augie Nieto. It’s about a man many of us have never heard of, who has ALS but who did some things with it that helped a lot of others suffering with the same disease. The clip below from Ondrasik’s performance of the song at this year’s Jerry Lewis telethon has more of Augie’s story in the notes; this version’s even better than the one on the album–perhaps because Augie himself is sitting on stage listening.

As the song says, “It’s not the breaths you take, it’s how you breathe.”

Get Some Classic Mojo, Free

Mojo Nixon, of “Elvis Is Everywhere” fame, has decided to put forth his own “Stimulus package,” and for once that’s not a tongue-in-cheek anatomical reference but a real deal for fans–For the next few weeks you can download Nixon’s entire back catalog for free here on Amazon.com.

(Disclaimer and a warning–if you’re not familiar with Nixon’s music, it can be offensive, vulgar, etc…not for kids, in other words.)

Unfamiliar with much of it other than the Elvis song parodies? My recommendation is to go directly to the very first album when Skid Roper was still playing with him, Mojo & Skid. It’s musically the rawest of the bunch and has “I’m In Love With Your Girlfriend” as well as a killer cover of an obscure Springsteen song, “The Big Payback.”

After that, get Frenzy, which is more of what later Nixon fans would find familiar, though listening now, he sounds positively prescient on songs such as “I Hate Banks.”

Thanks Mojo, for “keeping it up” all these years.

Music For the First Monday In October

In the USA, the first Monday in October is the start of the Supreme Court’s session, which for some reason had me thinking tonight about the Georgia band The Supreme Court, which featured the legendary guitarist Glenn Phillips and also Jeff Calder of the Swimming Pool Q’s. I don’t think it was the primary band for any of the members even when the group was performing fequently, as Phillips has a long string of indie guitar albums and Calder, of course, has his own main gig.

Had the chance to see them live a few times back in my collegiate days and they were always a blast of improvisational musical mayhem, pulling out everything from blues/jazz fusion to classic rock covers. Check out a more recent clip below, of Calder and Phillips running through a rocking take of “Route 66″ with guest guitarist Peter Stroud of Sheryl Crow’s band.

The Future is Just Like the Past (But Shinier)

The last time I mentioned my favorite internet blogger Seth Godin, I had to take something he said about marketing and apply it to the music business-this week, he did it for me:

The future is just like the past (but shinier)

Of course, it’s not true.

The record business, for example, is fundamentally altered by easily sharable, zero-incremental-cost digital files. It’s not just vinyl but shiny.

Your industry has been completely and permanently altered by the connections offered by the internet. Your non-profit, your political campaign, your service business. Not a little different, not just email enabled or website marketed, but overhauled.

Unfortunately, that’s hard to embrace. But it’s still true. What are you going to do about it? If you were starting your business today, knowing what you know now, how would you do things (very) differently?

(The original post is here, btw)

So, if you were starting to play music today, and you wanted to do it professionally, how would you do things differently?

The old model was one of woodshedding, getting things right or at least as right as you could, then doing everything you could to grab for that brass ring, the major label record deal that would ensure you’d be a star. Problem was, there were only so many per year that ‘made it’ and the rest were forgotten, if they were ever even heard in the first place. For them, there wasn’t much they could do other than get straight jobs and join the rest of the work force in punching a clock.

Now, of course, anyone can write a song, post a version on Youtube, and be a viral sensation in a matter of days. That still doesn’t mean they can make any money at it, however.

I know good music when I hear it, and I could probably tell you a few ways to get that music heard by the right people, in the right way, at the right time, but even that won’t guarantee anything like the old “success” story.

Where’s the happy medium, and where does it go from here? dunno, but sooner or later somebody’s going to figure it out, and as much as music is a part of people’s lives, they’ll be bigger than Google.

Happy Anniversary to Me

To this blog, actually, which began just over two years ago on September 24th, 2007 with the following message:

Music matters around here
Posted on September 24, 2007 by Kevin Oliver | Edit
and hopefully it matters to you, too, or you wouldn’t be reading this. In the posts that follow this initial foray into the blogosphere, I’ll be deconstructing the music scene as I experience it, from a local standpoint and into the effects of national and international trends. From the business of making music to those doing it just for the sheer enjoyment of the sounds they create, it’s all fair game.

Two years on, I’d say that I’ve fullfilled that mission and then some, and the hits on my posts (which have gone from hundreds per month to thousands) bear that out. To the musicians I’ve covered here, thanks for creating something worth writing about. To the rest of you, thanks for reading. Now, as they say on my favorite college radio station WUSC-FM 90.5 FM, back to the music.

Get Dizzy With Lunch Money For Free

Columbia, SC kid’s music band Lunch Money is reaching little ears all over the country, with appearances this year at Kidsapalooza, features on NPR, and an upcoming appearance at the Austin City Limits Festival. To celebrate their increased profile, they are offering a download of their entire new album Dizzy for nothing more than your email address.

Lunch Money’s upbeat acoustic rock is deceptively simple and utterly captivating, with singer Molly Ledford’s childlike perspective on songs such as “A Cookie As Big As My Head” sure to delight children young and old.

Go here for your free download of Dizzy

Peter Himmelman Launches a Curious World

There are plenty of children’s musicians out there who claim to make kid’s music that adults will love (or at least be able to tolerate), but Grammy-winning artist Peter Himmelman makes such intelligent children’s music that I’d have to say that it is adult music which kids will love. Just because he sings about kites and trampolines doesn’t make it any less enjoyable for this overgrown kid.

This Sunday, September 27th at 10 am (Central Time), Himmelman will expand his artistic reach with a web-casted kid’s variety show, Peter Himmelman’s Curious World, on www.landofnod.com.

The show promises to have a studio audience of children talking about questions they’re asked by other kids. Himmelman and his band will also perform in each of the ten weekly episodes set to run each Sunday morning through November 29th, and there will be skits and routines such as a talk with King Ferdinand the Turtle.

Himmelman’s latest album for children is My Trampoline, with songs about a turtle, a trampoline, a picky eater named Peter (which turns out to be altogether autobiographical), and how there are so few children named Steve. The reason this appeals to the adult population so well is that Himmelman plays virtually the same way on the kid’s albums as he does in the ones he periodically releases for the general adult market, and that sophisticated pop-rock style carries over well.

See for yourself how the two worlds of Peter Himmelman aren’t really that far apart. Here’s a live clip of “Only Innocent” from his weekly Furious World webcast (the adult version of Curious World)

And here’s a clip of the title track from My Trampoline:

Matt Urmy’s Poetic New Musical Season

Matt Urmy
New Season Comin’

Poet, singer, songwriter, healer, and performing artist Matt Urmy was born in New York and raised in Nashville, but his genesis is less interesting than his creative output, which pokes around in spiritual and transcendental philosophies atop a musical bed of relaxed folk-rock.

On his third album, Urmy has perfected a raspy resonance that’s partly early Tom Waits (think “Diamonds on the Soles Of My Shoes”) and part fellow Tennessean R.B. Morris (circa Zeke and the Wheel.) The songs sometimes serve as little more than musical beds for bluesy verse, as on the loping story-song “Cup of Grace”, but he’s equally capable of writing affecting melodies on tracks such as “Easy Train.”

There are so many great lines crammed into every song, almost tripping over each other to get out, it would be unfair to single out one or two; suffice it to say that Urmy’s poetry is musical and his music is poetic, and he still manages to sound rough enough around the edges to leave you thinking he’d be a great guy to share a couple of beers with.

Matt Urmy Website

Matt Urmy–Cup Of Grace by kageyo

How to Market Your Band, Part 2

A while back I posted some thoughts on how the music business is changing and some different ways to get attention in a changing industry. Seth Godin is a marketing genius who’s as tapped in as anyone to new media and its attendant issues and opportunities, and though it doesn’t mention the music business, this post on his blog, Flipping Abundance and Scarcity , might as well, it fits so well. I highly recommend reading it, even though if you’re a musician it may raise more questions than it answers.

If, as music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz says frequently, music not only will be free in the future but is virtually free now, the question Godin poses is one of how to change the old business model to properly take advantage of the new “Free” paradigm. Doing things the same way (like most record labels still do) and giving away the music isn’t enough; new strategies and promotional efforts must emerge to get the attention that the old scarcity of product used to guarantee.

And there’s no lack of product out there–the New Music Tipsheet noted that there were 400 albums released today across all genres–how many have you heard about?

Guys like Godin and Lefsetz are on the right track, but the big ideas will have to come from artists intent on getting their music heard on whatever level they can.