Show #101 June 1, 2013

 
For Charity and the great Scott Miller!

Charity- The Sighs S/T LP
U.S. Girls- Off Broadway Quick Turns
Erica's Word- Game Theory The Big Shot Chronicles
I Do- Randy Gun Shake To Date
Price Of Sex- SVT Extended Play
6 Feet Under- Sugar Stems Can't Wait
Residential Area- Epicycle Cirkle Records Single
Darlin' （And She Called Me)- Elliott Murphy Just A Story In America
^West End Girls- Pet Shop Boys West End Girls
Melody Comes- Spinning Jennies Starstruck 
Shake It Up (Ain't It Time)- The Cryers The Cryers
Dance All Night- Free Energy Love Sign
Playing Bogart- Any Trouble Where Are All the Nice Girls?
Best You Leave- The Early Hours Evolution 
*Berlin Girls- The Cute Lepers Smart Accessories 
*Detroit Girls- Starz Starz 
*Liverpool Girls- The Toms The Toms 
*London Girls- The Vibrators Pure Mania
*Southern Girls- Cheap Trick In Color 
*Tameside Girls- Fast Cars Coming, Ready or Not! 
The Man in the Middle- Godfathers Jukebox Fury
Hello Mr. Jenkins- The Finns Yellow Pills Prefill  
Roxy Girl- The Radiators TV Tube Heart  
>Carolina Girls- Chairmen of the Board Beach Music Anthology 
Boomerang- Jim Freeman and the Golden Gate Jumpers Romantic 
Crystal Ball- The Nomads Up-Tight
My Life in Rhymes- Phil Angotti Life and Rhymes 
Broken Doll- Wreckless Eric Big Smash 
Release Me- L.A. Burgers L.A. Burgers 
Loud- Richard X. Heyman Hey Man! 
Southtown Girls- The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America

^Power Pop Peak:  #1 Billboard Hot 100 3/1/86

*SacroSet:  Girls Around The World

>Power Pop Prototype:  1980

I'm not sure why, but when I was first getting into rock and roll as a kid I never thought of the bands I worshiped as music fans themselves.  I remember being shocked when I read that Gene Simmons of Kiss is a huge Beatles fan.  I thought to myself "but Kiss are so much better than the Beatles!" (An admittedly minority viewpoint that I maintain to this day- seriously, for shear rock and roll abandon I'll put Dressed To Kill up against anything the Fab Four ever released.)  Within a few years I'd come full circle and started to seek out the musical influences of my rock heroes.  When Cousin Rich showed me a New York Rocker interview where Ross The Boss of The Dictators said the MC5 was his favorite band it made us feel closer to him because we were MC5 fans too.  Imagine how awesome this 1981 show in NYC must have been- Ross and Wayne on the same stage!  The Dictators were also big Stooges fans, their second album included a cover of "Search and Destroy," so I can only imagine what is going through lead singer Handsome Dick Manitoba's head when he posed for this photo with Iggy back in the day:

The Handsome One and Mr. Pop

What is especially cool is that, what must have seemed like 100 years later, Iggy stopped by Handsome Dick's Underground Garage satellite radio show for an interview.  I bet those guys have forgotten more awesome rock and roll stories than today's "rock stars" will ever tell.

Still rocking!

Joey should get a refund
for that "Punk Haircut"

Back in the early '80's I always liked reading lists of famous and not so famous people's "Desert Island Discs" in Tower Record's Pulse! magazine.  I learned Joe Strummer and I share a favorite Bob Dylan album (1983's Infidels).  Joey Ramone and I have a passion for Alice Cooper's Love It To Death  while Johnny Ramone and I both love Electric Warrior by T-Rex.  The lists of people who weren't famous were also interesting.  Even in those pre-social networking days you'd see some people put themselves out there naked and exposed (Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom alongside the soundtrack to Grease) while others put on airs (Sonic

Youth's Bad Moon Rising and a Sun Ra bootleg ....really?)  As for myself, I wouldn't have gone the Sun Ra route with my Desert Island Discs but I doubt I'd have had the guts to tell the whole truth and put Dressed To Kill or AC/DC's Highway To Hell alongside London Calling, Rocket To Russia, The Dictators' Bloodbrothers and The Real Kids' debut so who am I to judge.  Anyway, those monthly lists of Desert Island Discs in Pulse! proved that famous or not, we are all music fans.

ALRN in 1980 (Scott Miller center)

Scott Miller, pictured at the top of this post, was also a big fan of rock and roll.  I say "was" because sad to say he passed away on April 15th at the young age of 53.  Miller's musical career started in the vibrant early 80's music scene in Davis, CA featured in ALL KINDSA GIRLS Show #28.  Along with his bands Alternate Learning and Game Theory, this scene spawned The Dream Syndicate, True West and Thin White Rope.  While many of his contemporaries moved to LA, Miller chose to remain in Northern California putting out music on his own Rational Records label.  On January 27, 1987 I saw Game Theory at The Rat in Boston on the tour supporting their magnum opus Lolita Nation.  Throughout the set Miller talked about Boston bands he liked, raving

Christmas

several times about Christmas who had released their debut In Excelsior Dayglo a few months earlier.  At one point, and I'll never forget this, he said "Christmas may be the best band in America right now....but then again there is REM."  It blew me away that Miller was willing to consider an unknown band from my town alongside REM, who were HUGE at the the time, though I was never really a fan.  What's more, about halfway through their set that night, Game Theory covered "Road Runner" by Boston legend Jonathan Richman's first band The Modern Lovers.  How cool is that?

Game Theory On Stage

(Scott Miller far left)

I would definitely put Game Theory on the pop side of the mid-80's college radio spectrum, yet there is a prickliness to their songs (musical, lyrical or both) that seems to deliberately shun REM-like mainstream acceptance.  Miller himself later commented:  “We were fairly close to both the REM jangle camp and the L.A. psychedelic revival camp but the deal breaker in both cases was that we had prominent synthesizer. And of course we weren’t within a country mile of synthesizer music that was actually selling, like New Order.”  Miller clearly understood the music marketplace he just didn't care about it, choosing to write and record on his own terms.  Case in point, when Dan Rather was mugged in 1986 and the phrase "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" became popular lore, Game Theory took it for the title of the bizarre 57 seven second sound collage that leads off Lolita Nation.  Eight years later REM appropriated the same phrase with "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" a Top 40 hit.

After Game Theory imploded in 1989 Miller went on to form The Loud Family who had an "every sound but the kitchen sink" approach I found even harder to follow.  (Actually if they could get sound from a kitchen sink they probably would have.)  Even so, in the midst of every Loud Family record you'd still hear a couple pure pop gems.  That band wrapped it up in the early 2000's and Miller started blogging on the Loud Family website, writing in 2008 that he remained "utterly serious about music, I just respect the buying public’s judgment that it’s not what I should do for a living."

Starting with 1957, the columns run down his top 20 songs from each year and have been published as book titled Music: What Happened?  As always, Miller's observations are spot on, take this from 1981:  "nothing was sadder than watching The dB’s Swiss-watch-precision sense of the progression of music history get lost on a generation that just wanted to dress like Adam and the Ants." Or in the post for 1983, Miller writes "Every Word Means No" by Let’s Active "was my idea of a million-selling hit, and its lack of impact on any but indie circles contributed to my realization that I was getting into the music business at a time when I didn’t have the slightest idea what people wanted."  Brother- I know what you mean. 

I encourage you to head over to the Loud Family website where you can download all the Game Theory albums for free.  See for yourself what a great musician and writer Scott Miller was and I think you'll agree that he was first and foremost a music fan.

Download this week's ALL KINDSA GIRLS at the link below
ALL KINDSA GIRLS #101

p.s.  Thanks to Stephen Burt who wrote this great essay on Scott Miller in 2012

Show #100 May 4, 2013

Our 100th Episode is dedicated to Stacy's Mom!


Stacy's Mom- Fountains Of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers  [#21 Billboard Hot 100 9/29/03]
Animal- Neon Trees Habits [#13 10/22/09] 
There She Goes- The La's The La's [#49 10/22/90]
Always The Last To Know- Del Amitri Hatful Of Rain - The Best Of  [#30 6/9/92]
Radio Free Europe- R.E.M. Radio Free Europe 45 [#78 7/23/83]
We Got The Beat- The Go-Go's Urgh! A Music War (The Album)  [#2 1/30/82]
(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To- Weezer s/t [#81 9/12/09]
Where Have You Been All My Life- Fotomaker Fotomaker [#81 4/22/78]
One Way Or Another- Blondie Parallel Lines  [#24 6/2/79]
Hey Jealousy- Gin Blossoms New Miserable Experience [#25 7/15/92]
Take On Me- A-Ha Hunting High And Low [#1 7/13/85]
I'll Be There for You- The Rembrandts L.P. [#17 5/15/95] 
My Girl- Donnie Iris 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection [#35 3/27/82]
Thank U Very Much- The Scaffold Thank U Very Much [#69 2/10/68]
Hold On Loosely- .38 Special The Very Best Of The A and M Years [#27 2/28/81] 
Why Can't I- Liz Phair Liz Phair [#32 9/8/03]
A Girl In Trouble (Is A Temporary Thing)- Romeo Void A Girl In Trouble 7" [#35 9/1/84] 
Ain't That a Shame- Cheap Trick At Budokan [#35 8/4/79]
Train in Vain (Stand by Me)- The Clash London Calling [#23 3/22/80]
Shannon- Henry Gross Shannon  [#6 2/28/76]
Summertime Girls- Y and T Summertime Girls 7" [#55 7/13/85]
Working In The Coalmine- Devo Working In The Coalmine [#43 9/5/81]
Rendevous- Hudson Brothers Rendevous 45 [#26 6/21/75]
The Loco-Motion- Grand Funk The Loco-Motion [#1 3/9/74]
Manic Monday- The Bangles Manic Monday [#2 1/25/86]
Burnin' For You- Blue Oyster Cult Burnin' For You [#40 8/15/81]
Anywhere With You- Rubber Rodeo Anywhere With You [#86 8/25/84]

Wow- 100 Episodes of ALL KINDSA GIRLS!  That is a surefire sign of quality- just think of all the great TV shows that reached that hallowed 100 episode benchmark, including:

If I ever feel any doubts about my suitability for a TV executive job I just need to remind myself that each of these shows ran for at least 100 episodes while Freaks and Geeks ran for 12.  Small Wonder was especially puzzling to me;  I just couldn't understand the show's appeal.  It was almost surreal:  the broad humor, the canned laughter and canned audience "awwww" that accompanied every "touching moment."  Plus the freaky next door neighbor girl had the most bizarre hair I had ever seen.  Seriously, in a contest of Weirdest "Hair" On TV this girl would give psychic Gary Spivey a run for his money.

Between 1985 and 1989 it seemed like every time I'd flip through my TV channels on the weekend Small Wonder would come up.  I was never able to make it through an entire episode but for five minutes or so I'd sit there in slack jawed amazement at what I was seeing- what madcap antics were robot girl V.I.C.I. (Voice Identified Child Identicant, of course) and her crazy family up to this time?  Were the writers sincerely doing their best to explore the tricky ethical implications of the coming robotic age or were they cynical hacks whose disdain for the show was trumped only by their stunning misanthropy?  You could could practically feel the contempt for their viewers oozing out of the screen.

As they say, there's no accounting for taste and anyway, Small Wonder is probably Seinfeld compared to Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo- which I've never seen but I feel confident are not for me.  I've heard many people decry shows like The Real Housewives as signs of the impending apocalypse and back in the day I would be railing right alongside these folks.  Yet, I've come to realize that these shows are not successful in spite of their insipid mindlessness they're successful BECAUSE OF their insipid mindlessness.  I'm one of those people who will chill out in front of the TV watching The Wire or Game of Thrones but there are a lot more people out there who don't want to engage with television that way- they just want to relax with something light they don't have to think too much about and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.  Truth be told I watched way too much Gilligan's Island and I Dream Of Jeannie in my youth to get all uppity about the modern equivalents (um, Duck Dynasty and Bridezillas?).  While it's a challenge sometimes (I mean Extreme Couponing... really?) I've come to accept that we all watch TV to escape, we just escape in different ways.  I've found that rather than trying to dissuade someone from watching Toddlers and Tiaras, I should ask them what they like about it, listen to their response and then tell them how much I love Homeland.  It's really much better this way- I don't make them feel like an idiot and they don't make me feel like a snob.

It's much the same way with ALL KINDSA GIRLS- yes most of the bands are obscure and the songs unfamiliar, but my hope is that the themes are universal and anyone can listen.  Who can't relate to a catchy three minute pop song about falling into/out of love?  The Intro, Verse, Verse, Chorus, Guitar Solo, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Chorus structure of these songs is embedded in our collective DNA so I'd like to think that anyone would feel comfortable listening and find something to like on any episode of ALL KINDSA GIRLS.

Tonight's 100th Episode is a big "Thanks For Listening!" to you all.  Your prize is a show of nothing but Power Pop Peaks- those rare gems that made it onto commercial radio, MTV and the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Granted, they are not all top ten records, but I'm happy to say more than half hit the Top 40 and a couple made it all the way up to #1.  So, I invite you to enjoy tonight's ALL KINDSA GIRLS- whether you're Shazaming every other record and adding it to your Spotify playlist, keeping the show on in the background while you do other things, or simply relaxing and staring off into space contemplating the genius that is "Stacy's Mom."  Thanks so much for your support and here's to 100 more episodes of ALL KINDSA GIRLS!

Here are the links to stream or download Episode #100 (if the download gets sticky you may need to pause and un-pause)
Hour 1
Hour 2

Show #99 April 20, 2013

Ricki is celebrating Record Store Day!

Ricki- The Go Instant Reaction
I Need That Record- The Tweeds Perfect Fit
45 RPM- The Alarm 45 RPM
45- Elvis Costello When I Was Cruel
"45"- The Gaslight Anthem Handwritten
Record Store Girl- El Camino Record Store Girl
I'm In Love With The Girl On The Virgin Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk- The Freshies s/t single
Record Store Girl- Two Guys Recorded
^Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)- Raspberries Starting Over
The B-Side- The Innocents No Hit Wonders From Down-Under
Picture Sleeve- The dB's Picture Sleeve 7''
Buy Chiswick Records- Radio Stars Songs For Swinging Lovers
Buy This Record- Milk 'N' Cookies Milk 'N' Cookies
Buy My Album- Nilsson The Point
I Fought The Law (Reprise)- The Clash The Cost Of Living EP
*Record Store- The JAC Record Store
*Record Store- The Madison Square Gardeners Teeth of Champions - EP
*The Record Store- The Brunettes Mars Loves Venus
*Record Store- Gold-Bears Are You Falling In Love?
*Record Store- Trolley Head Vs. Heart *Record Store- The Librarians Neighborhood Watch Compilation
*Record Store- Ted Wulfers Here We Go
Heart Songs- Weezer Weezer (Red Album)
Thank You- Descendents Everything Sucks
We Can Get Together- The Hold Steady Heaven Is Whenever
>Stack-A-Records- Tom Tall and The Tom Kats Stack-A-Records
Spin The Black Circle- Pearl Jam Vitalogy
The Record's Over- The Russians Crashing The Party
Vinyl- Brian Ray Mondo Magneto
White Vinyl- The Silos Florizona
Vinyl- Brian Seymour Perfectly Wrong
Old Records Never Die- Ian Hunter Short Back 'N' Sides

^Power Pop Peak:  #18 Billboard Hot 100 9/14/74

*SacroSet:  Record Store Songs for Record Store Day

>Power Pop Prototype:  1958

Record Store Day was born in 2007 at a meeting of independent record store owners in Baltimore.  At the time the media was heralding Tower Records' demise as the death knell for all record stores.  Six years later Record Store Day, always the third Saturday in April, is still going strong with over 400 special vinyl-only releases for sale along with live performances in stores around the world.  More importantly, vinyl record sales continue to rise.  I've never been a fan of the compact disc and I wouldn't be surprised if twenty years down the line CD's have joined cassettes, 8-tracks, reel to reels, etc. in the dustbin of history.  I bet people will still be listening to vinyl though.

I have to credit The JAC with the inspiration for this Record Store Day Episode of ALL KINDSA GIRLS.  Shortly after he sent me his new single "Record Store" I started compiling tonight's show.  Record stores and vinyl records are clearly inspiring topics as I was able to find two hours worth of music fitting the theme.  Back in the day I was in a punk band called V.O.I.D. (vain, obnoxious, ignorant, degenerates) and was inspired to write an ode to vinyl myself.  I only wish I had a nice sounding studio version to play for you but alas it was never recorded.  Nonetheless, in the spirit of Record Store Day, I submit the lyrics with appropriate visual aids:

VINYL JUNKIE by Rick Love (copyright 1997)

It all started off in '71 
with the red Ronco album called Get It On!
I'd listen over and over in my room all alone to 
"Smokin' In The Boys Room"and "The Cover Of The Rolling Stone"

 Live And Let Die Soundtrack and Monster Mash

Grand Funk Shinin' On and Captain' Fantastic

Then it all changed in '75 with Dressed To Kill and Kiss Alive

I bought every Kiss album that I could find I'm in the Kiss Army- you're a member for life

Cheap Trick In Color and Black and White

 

Dream Police, Budokan and Heaven Tonight

Starz Violation and Attention Shoppers!

But nuthin' had prepared me for Rocket To Russia

I was getting bored by age 11 Ramones changed that in '77

I don't know what would've happened to me
Without my friends on 45 and 33
Digital technology don't get me high
I'll be a VINYL JUNKIE until I die

After The Ramones it started to explode I heard Never Mind The Bollocks and Give 'Em Enough Rope

Inflammable Material and Singles Going Steady

Found Boston Rock in Real Kids, DMZ and Reddy Teddy

The Dictators, The Damned, The Dead Boys, 999

Went back and found The Stooges, Dolls and MC5

I couldn't get enough all my money I would spend
Take the T to Harvard Square every weekend

 

I don't know what would've happened to me
Without my friends on 45 and 33
Digital technology don't get me high
I'll be a VINYL JUNKIE until I die!



 
Happy Record Store Day To You ALL!!!!

Click the links below to stream this week's show or to download right click and "Save Link As"
ALL KINDSA GIRLS #99