Episode 57 - Christmas Part 1
Part 1 because I will do at least a single follow up but part of me is feeling like I may do one a week. We'll see.
I do love most Christmas songs (I'll admit I could do with a little less Ms. Carey though). After I put this together, I listened to it to see how it fit and I did end up swapping out a Tom Petty song for The Waitresses as Petty wasn't really cutting it.
Also, it wasn't on purpose, but four of these songs have a NYC/Boston connection, so it did hit the homesick nerve a bit and the first two are my personal favorites. I do want to see more original rock/ska/punk Christmas songs get released.
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl
X'Mas Time (It Sure Doesn't Feel Like It) - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
Oi To The World - No Doubt
Groovy Xmas - The Linda Lindas
The Season's Upon Us - Dropkick Murphys
I Won't Be Home For Christmas - blink-182
Don't Shoot Me Santa - The Killers
A Christmas Duel - The Hives & Cyndi Lauper
Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Episode 56
This playlist stems from a recent Uber ride in Orlando. Our driver was a white woman, probably in her early 20s and she was listening to some deep cut and classic Soul music. It reminded me of an a joke during a Kids in the Hall tour in the late 90s/early 2000s that went along the lines of "why is it that if you want to see a lot of white people together, you go to a blues club".
This playlist is a mix of classic Soul songs along with newer artists who I'm not sure is getting the attention they deserve.
On and On - Curtis Harding
Superstition - Stevie Wonder
Love & Hate - Michael Kiwanuka
Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler) - Marvin Gaye
Birds - Dominique Fils-Aimé
You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine - Lou Rawls
Staring at the Sun - TV on the Radio
Like a Woman - Lady Blackbird
Been Here Before - Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram
Stay Away - Charles Bradley
Episode 55 - Soundscapes
Something a little different this time, mainly instrumentals/minimal vocals. Also, this playlist is best experienced in good quality headphones.I was originally going to do a classical music playlist, but I need more time to plan that.
Slow Pigeon - Lulu Rouge
1983 - Main Theme - Sinoia Caves
Take Me Into Your Skin - Trentemøller
Dissolving Time - H.U.V.A. Network
Ageispolis - Aphex Twin
Who Am I - Peace Orchestra
Resynthesis 3D - Max Cooper
Star Guitar - The Chemical Brothers
Water From a Vine Leaf - William Orbit
The Box (Part 2) - Orbital
Episode 54 - Classic WSOU
It's probably a small group of people to whom it makes sense to follow a playlist of 80s/early 90s Freestyle songs with a playlist of Metal/Thrash. Clearly, I am in that group.
I won't deny that I'm going through a bit of homesickness for the past few weeks and the Freestyle playlist reflects that, but so does this playlist.
I was a metalhead in junior high school and freshman year of high school. And if you lived in NYC in the 80s and you wanted to listen to metal--and not the glam stuff--89.5 WSOU was your station. The station is licensed to Seton Hall University out of New Jersey and the two amazing things about that fact is that a) Seton Hall is a catholic university that was playing Slayer and b) only in hindsight do you realize that for a college station, they had a pretty amazing signal and antenna location. This wasn't a station that you had to mess around with the antennae and hope that the skies were clear in order to listen to it, unlike WLIR/WDRE out of Long Island where I worked for a bit.
To give you some context, from my house to WLIR was 14 miles as the crow flies vs. 22 miles for WSOU and yet, crystal clear. I was a radio major in college and I was about to go into explaining AM and FM signals and how different factors could affect them, but I caught myself and spared you.
Anyway, here are 10 of my favorite songs that I would associate with WSOU.
Blackened - Metallica
Epic - Faith No More
Antisocial - Anthrax
E.vil N.ever D.ies - Overkill
Peace Sells...But Who's Buying - Megadeth
Practice What You Preach - Testament
Cult of Personality - Living Colour
The Toxic Waltz - Exodus
You Can't Bring Me Down - Suicidal Tendencies
Ace of Spades - Motörhead
Episode 53 - Freestyle
I originally was going to do a "new to me" playlist tonight, but as I was going through my collection, I came across an old freestyle playlist I made probably about 5 years ago and thought it would be fun to do that. If you're not familiar with freestyle in this context, it's a genre of dance music that really dominated NYC airwaves in the 1980s and early 1990s and was primarily a component of the Latin community (although guidos loved this shit too). The genre did spread a little bit to other cities, but not enough to really garner national attention, which is a shame because even though the songs all have a very similiar sound that some complain is monotonous, there is still something very fun genre. I can and will totally admit that part of that fun for me may stem from nostalgia, but I still think it's worth sharing.
Plus this is the most times I've wrote out "fun" in a while and we need more of that today.
Dreamboy / Dreamgirl - Johnny O & Cynthia
Louder than Love - TKA
Running - Information Society
Give Me Tonight - Shannon
Because of You - The Cover Girls
Can You Feel the Beat - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
Catch Me I'm Falling - Pretty Poison
Fascinated - Company B
Fantasy Girl - Johnny O
Silent Morning - Noel