Jesse Jarnow

Archive for August, 2008

frow show, fmu-01

Listen here

Detailed playlist.

1. “Waves of Bark and Light” – The Circulatory System (from The Circulatory System)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “For Every Field There’s A Mole” – Bonnie Prince Billy (from Lie Down in the Light
4. “The Warmth of the Sun” – The Beach Boys feat. Willie Nelson (from Stars and Stripes, v. 1)
5. “Sun Spots” – Best of Seth (from Sun)
6. “The Mermaid Angeline” – Apollo Sunshine (from Shall Noise Upon)
7. “I Wish It Would Rain” – The Cougars (from Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk, and Reggae, 1967-1974)
8. “Underground Antes De Primeira Hora” – Quarteto Em Cy (from Quarteto Em Cy (1972)
9. “4” – Greg Davis (from 14 Locations Along Hunter Creek)
10. “No. 15” – Roger Roger (from Space Oddities: A Collection of Rare European Library Grooves, 1975-1984)
11. “Maria Bethania” – Caetano Veloso (from Caetano Veloso (1971)
12. “Love (It’s Been So Long)” – Frankie and Robert (from Eccentric Soul: The Tragar and Note Labels)
13. “Everybody Suffering” – Laurel Aitken (from Woppi King)
14. “Barack Obama” – (from Do You Smell What Barack Is Cooking?)
15. “Electric Music and the Summer People” – Beck (from Cold Brains EP)
16. “Holiday Road” – Lindsey Buckingham (from National Lampoon’s Vacation OST)
17. “Miami Ice” – Icy Demons (from Miami Ice)
18. “Kim Smoltz” – Ween (from The Mollusk demos)
19. “Crazy Fingers” – Grateful Dead (from Blues For Allah)

ylt pool it!, 8/24

24 August 2008
McCarren Park Pool
Brooklyn, NY

Mr. Tough (with horns)
C’mon and Swim > (Bobby Freeman) (with horns)
Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind
Stockholm Syndrome
Pablo and Andrea
The Weakest Part
Somebody’s In Love (Sun Ra)
Cherry Chapstick
Artificial Heart
Moby Octopad (with horns & “Easley makes the turn…” lyrics)
Watch Out For Me, Ronnie
Tom Courtenay
Blue Line Swinger

*(encore)*
Bad Politics (Dead C) (with horns & Titus Andronicus)
Where Eagles Dare (The Misfits) (with Titus Andronicus)

*(encore)*
Autumn Sweater

have read/will read dept.

o Lost scenes discovered from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
o Michel Gondry picks his 25 favorite videos.
o “Personal Emails Are Creepy, Not Effective
o Newish interview with Jim O’Rourke.
o Awful title, handy charticle: James Brown’s children.
o And, relatedly (“Gary Glitter might be James Brown for 2008” – Sancho): Glitter fakes heart trouble, disappears into Hong Kong (who also want him gone).

the frow show moves to WFMU!

Hey everybody!

Sorry the Frow Show has been absent for the bulk of the summer, but it’s all groovy, since we were just waiting to be able to announce the happiest of happiests in radioland: the Frow Show is moving to WFMU! (Let me just add two more exclamation points to demonstrate how honored and psyched I am: !!)

It’s gonna be fairly irregular for starters, probably fill-ins at odd hours. But that’s totally rad, too, ’cause FMU are real good about getting their shows to people who don’t occupy the same physical or linear space as their studio in Jersey City. All future Frow Shows will thus be available at: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/jj (and, once I get comfortable, I’ll hopefully get podcasts going as an option again, too)

I begin with an episode this Saturday, 8/23, as part of The Listener Hour, from 9 am – 10 am.

Frow Show announcements will be made here, and via this handy Google mailing list. Do sign up!

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Thanks so, so much to Andy & Ropeadope for all the hospitality & encouragement over the past three years.

frow show, episode 48: hello, goodbye!

Episode 48: Hello, Goodbye!

Listen here.

The Frow Show is moving to WFMU! See here.

1. “Hello, Goodbye” – The Beatles (from Magical Mystery Tour)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “What Am I Doing HanginRound?” – The Monkees (from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.)
4. “Sunshine Superman” – Donovan (from Sunshine Superman)
5. “This Is It” – Lothar and the Hand People (from Presenting…)
6. “Groovy Girls Make Love at the Beach” – Gary Wilson (from You Think You Really Know Me)
7. “Bessie Smith” – The Crust Brothers (from The Crust Brothers)
8. “U.S. Millie” – Theoretical Girls (from Theoretical Girls)
9. “Rory Rides Me Raw” – The Vaselines (from The Way of the Vaselines)
10. “Rapacite Nocturne” – Camille Sauvage (from Fantasmagories)
11. “Strung Out Deeper Than The Night” – Les Rallizes Denudes (from Heavier Than A Death in the Family)
12. “Hello, Goodbye reprise” – The Beatles (from Magical Mystery Tour)

“jungle drum” – emiliana torrini

“Jungle Drum” – Emiliana Torrini (sorry, nastygrammed by Rough Trade–first time ever!–despite the fact that this is the album’s single! WTF? See below. Good promotion, dudes.)
from Me and Armini (Rough Trade) (out 9/8)

(file expires August 25th)

I have a silly crush on this song. It’s not particularly complicated, but at least one–if not both–of the chorus’s twin hooks were stuck in my head for better parts of a glorious New York weekend. There are all kinds of little appeals: Emiliana Torrini’s ESL cuteness, the kitschy escapism of drums in the jungle, the perky electro groove, the soaring title refrain, and–of course–the onomatopoeic thump of Torrini excitedly sounding a cartoon heart-pulse. The modulation for the final chorus is rather pleasant, too. It feels kind of like a reduced version of Björk or MIA’s foreign otherness: a whiff of the weird to propel it, but–unlike those two–hardly challenging pop’s international, institutional grammar. Who cares, really? It’s just a silly crush.

bibliography, cont.

Some of my stuff has made it into books lately:

o A previously unpublished short story, “The Night Before I Got Home,” will be featured in the Real Magicalism comics/fiction anthology, edited by James Burns.

o A 2003 interview with Hunter S. Thompson, originally in Relix, was reprinted in Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Beef Torrey and Kevin Simonson, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

o A 2001 interview with Bob Weir, a 2003 interview with Mike Doughty, and a 2004 interview with Lou Reed (the latter two in different forms than originally printed) are featured in Song: The World’s Best Songwriters on Creating the Music that Moves Us, published by Writers Digest Books.

o New biographical essays on Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and David Bowie are featured in the Greenwood Icons edition, Icons of Rock, published by Greenwood Press.

o New biographical essays on Prince and Stevie Wonder are featured in the Greenwood Icons edition, Icons of R&B and Soul, published by Greenwood Press.

o Educational book, Presidents: The Race for the White House, illustrated by Scott Peck, published by innovativeKids, edited by Russell Kahn (not necessarily recommended for anybody above, oh, the third grade — though it does come with a nifty jigsaw puzzle)

“rory rides me raw” – the vaselines

“Rory Rides Me Raw” – The Vaselines (download) (buy)
from Son of a Gun EP (1987)

(file expires August 12th)

It’s rare that indie rock is straight dirty. Romantic, sure. Coy, frequently. Sexy, almost never. And, no two ways about it, the Vaselines’ “Rory Rides Me Raw” ain’t about horses, despite the lyrics about galloping through the morning dew. Oddly, I think it’s the just-off double-tracked guitars that add to this impression as much as the lyrics, as if the singer knowing that “I’m gonna do it soon” is making it a bit hard to focus.

the death of fun

Spent some time traveling over the past few days. Through the TSA lines (and especially after they confiscated a nifty swag water bottle I’d gotten), elitist airline terminals (at Delta at JFK, once site of Pan Am’s utopian glass Worldport, coach customers wait in makeshift screening areas, and funnel through a series of endless hallways before only to be spat out at the backdoor of the first class entrance), and down Utah highways, past gas stations (where prices make road-trips for fun or friendship both morally and economically unfeasible), I thought pretty much non-stop of Hunter S. Thompson’s vision of 9/11.

It was the death of fun, unreeling right in front of us, unraveling, withering, collapsing, draining away in the darkness like a handful of stolen mercury. Yep, the silver stuff goes suddenly, leaving only a glaze of poison on the skin. (Kingdom of Fear, 160.)

What a bummer.