Episodes
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An overlooked chestnut from 1970s New York City fixture Garland Jeffreys. Good guy and relentless overachiever facing challenges like - having a fanbase more famous than him and - the constant bullying from his best friend's older brother Roy. A solid neck-to-nut worth the time.
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The Paisley Underground bands of Los Angeles were keeping garage rock revivalism on full blast out west in 1984. But on the east coast Monoman and Lyres were doing it alone in Boston. Heavy on passion, lite on precision - Lyres' debut LP On Fyre is a skipless stomper that was recorded in a flurry of single takes into one microphone - let us bask in the oneness of Monoman.
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Missing episodes?
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Not the brightest bulbs in the offseason tanning bed - but Jacksonville's 38 Special stumbled into genius by polishing up their southern rock frame for 1980s MTV consumption with album four - Wild-Eyed Southern Boys - butt rock for the BEDAZZLED jean short.
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Tireless synth-funklordz Chromeo had one goal in mind as they crafted Business Casual, their most presentable LP - make keyboard songs so infectious that even Michael Jackson would guest sing the hooks if heard - Follow the Rockwell Aesthetic.
Never happened - but Chromeo are still awesome and the most reliable summer music festival late-night set artist in the game. When it's 2am in the Legionnaire Tent and you're putting glow sticks in your mouth and doing bumps of K off the backside of a frisbee, Chromeo is probably on that stage.
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Two roughs boys escape the high school tyranny of panty-masked Principal Montoya and form overachieving garage rock band Twin Peaks. Wild Onion is one of a handful of solid LPs they put out in a half-decade span before disappearing.
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During June of 1973 - the year the Grateful Dead got really good at being the Grateful Dead - the band played a weekend run at the gigantic RFK Stadium in the nation's capital. On day two the Dead went for nearly five hours - exploratory jams out the wazoo - including a third set sit-in by a couple of Allman Bros. The show was recorded by famed LSD manufacturer and group benefactor Owsley 'Bear' Stanley - and then dusted off fifty years later for official release by the musical gravediggers at Rhino Records.
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Barely out of their teens Carmelo and Michelangelo La Bionda of Milan established themselves as competent ballad authors for other Italian singers. But after a trip to Munich in 1977 the boys took their action to the dance floor and became pioneers of the emerging Italo-Disco scene. The ★ Collection is a fifteen track German compilation documenting the La Bionda brother's time spent under the glitter ball during the turn of the decade. Viva la Bionda!
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During the 1970s the Doobs were everyone's older brother's THIRD favorite band with their sassy motorcycle riffs and church-ready harmonies. First five LPs with the core original lineup before Michael McMuffin joined are all decent - none are stank. The second one - Toulouse Street - is my overall favorite but we'll nip from the rest of the pack as well.
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Reckless crowned young denim dandy Bryan Adams the surest thing in rock and roll in 1984. Ten flawlessly-constructed and produced songs void of experimentation but full of heart. Adams was at the top of his game - but SOMEONE was watching closely from three-thousand miles southeast of Vancouver.
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We got a fresh one on site tonight - only a few months old. Twisted Teens make infectious New Orleans garage rock and have a pedal steel guitar player named Razor Ramone - with an e. Be cool Chico. Nuff said. Blame the Clown is their second album and you must hear.
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Erasure are NOW regarded as 'homosexual pop' icons - but back when they started in the eighties no one noticed because EVERYONE was wearing spandex and sequined vests. The duo's second album The Circus is a joyous realization of destiny. Keyboardist/leader Vince Clarke had finally found the perfect front-twink in Andy Bell to sing his songs. For Andy - a dream come true - he was now in a group with THEE Vince Clarke - his hero from Depeche Mode and Yazoo.
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The paradoxical Mötley Crüe hit the Hair Hunk heavens with Shout at the Devil in 1983 as Frank Ferrana gets to quit his day job and continue one of rock and roll's greatest swindles full-time.
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Italian prog rock band Goblin found their destiny during the second half of the 1970's when they became the go-to musical score composers for the hot-shot horror movie directors of Italy. Goblin split at their peak but reunited (most of them) for 1982's Tenebrae - directed by their old friend Dario Argento.
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Following the surprise success of their eponymous debut in 1971 the informal New Riders of the Purple Sage needed a couple FULL-time members to keep the party going - including a new pedal steel guitar player - a boutique role not easy to fill. Marmaduke had to go back in time to a quirky train tour across Canada he took part in a year earlier to find their man. Once the classic permanent NRPS lineup was set they continued to uncork records for Columbia including 1973's The Adventures of Panama Red - a deep-track dandy that sounds like the smell of bong water.
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Creatively juiced by the wet-mulleted beefcakes of production team Full Force, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam continued to pump the coffers of the Freestyle genre they helped create with 1987's Spanish Fly - a solid urban dance album in a genre generally defined by singles.
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The atmospheric, echo-laden martian world of Dub is the most 'reggae-sounding' varietal of all the reggaes - and it was created by a workaday radio wireman from Kingston. King Tubbys Meets the Rockers Uptown represents Dub at it's finest - quietly released during the global boom of reggae in 1976.
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In 1974 forty-five year old Cameroonian Renaissance Man Francis Bebey retired from a career as a journalist and musical director of UNESCO to focus more time on his family and the arts. He turned a spare room of his Parisian flat into a studio, bought a synthesizer, drum machine and four-track recorder - and began an early-retirement musical quest that would last thirty years. Trésor Magnétique is twenty tracks beautifully extracted from the wagonload of unused analog material Francis Bebey left behind in that glorified walk-in closet.
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Ten years before transforming into a suited-DILF headed for MTV rapture - Robert Palmer along with the coolest cast of session musicians ever - cranked out a spirited blue-eyed funk winner called Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley. An amazing piece of work and yet another gift of the collaborative spirit (aka Satan).
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A galley pisser and a tighty-whitey wearer meet in a record store in Athens, Georgia and form R.E.M. They begin their thirty year gentle-rock quest with Murmur - a deep-track treasure considered a Rosetta Stone to all indie-rock that followed.
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Released during the height of the Grunge Hunx Dynasty - Dirt remains one of the coolest albums of the 1990s - an absolutely heroic effort by Jerry Cantrell. Dirt was Alice In Chains' brief view from the top before beginning the inevitable slalom down smack mountain.
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