Random Old Records

Yeah dude, EPISODE #35 of Random Old Records is finished, fresh off my hard drive to yours, and this one is chock-full of jams! Not only that, but this time around there's no dance pop. Yep, 100% dance pop free! It kicks off with a track from Vancouver's Dead Ghosts, who put out one of the best rock n' roll debut albums I've heard in a long time earlier this year. It sounds like a bunch of degenerate punk kids who grew up on beat-up vinyl copies of early Stones records. A few minutes later, there's a tune from the upcoming second Dum Dum Girls record on Sub Pop, and Dee Dee Dum Dum has morphed into a master of the pop song. "Bedroom Eyes" sounds straight outta 1985, a simpler time when songs that still resembled rock n' roll made it onto pop radio. It sounds like the love song from a classic big-budget 80s flick, and just try to make it through without getting that chorus stuck in your head. It's impossible!Elsewhere, I dig deep into my bank of classic tunes and pull out stuff by Big Star, The Raspberries, Ca

So yeah, Random Old Records Podcast has been coming out like clockwork every second Wednesday of the month for like a year or so now, but my plans got derailed in the last few days. I had the playlist finalized on Sunday, then came home from work on Monday to find that my computer had taken a dump. LAME! After a couple hours of shopping online and several more hours of staring at progress bars, I had a brand new machine loaded with jams and cracked software and whatnot, so here's Random Old Records Podcast #34, approximately a day late and eight hundred dollars short. It's got roughly an hour of my favorite songs from the past month, and I'm hoping at least some of you faithful readers and listeners will enjoy them, too.Last month, I spoke a bit about being bored with new music, and judging by the stuff coming out lately, it seems like bands across the land are feeling the same way. My ears have gotten burned out by listening to nothing but lo-fi garage rock for awhile, and after hearing like fifty bands deal

Summer, summer, summertime! I threw this one together at the last minute, but I think I did a pretty good job of capturing the mood of this lazy, hazy, hot July. Random Old Records Podcast #33 drifts by in a dreamy blur of psychedelic moods, shimmering reverb guitar, and loping dance beats, with a mix of new and old tracks. If you're one of those people who are melting in this punishing 100+ degree heatwave rocking the midwest, and just want to sit around in a dark room getting lifted all day, this is the podcast for you!Episode #33 kicks off with the all-time classic opening medley from the debut LP by The Soft Machine, a towering groove filled with stunning drums from Robert Wyatt, screeching organs, and slow-burning instrumental fury, and goes into some screaming garage psych from The Night Beats and Thee Oh Sees, then a Brit-psych style workout from The Paperhead, who put out one of the best LPs of the year on Trouble In Mind a few months back. I've been raving about them ever since, and now I'm SUPER-PUM

So yeah, the air conditioning has been broken in my office at work all week long. Neat, huh? It's like eleventy billion degrees outside, so it's a perfect time to drop a brand new podcast of hot rock n' roll jams to sweat out the summer months with! Random Old Records EPISODE #32 features brand new tracks from Black Lips, Wax Museums, Ty Segall, and Cults, each from LPs that are sure to top the year-end lists. Ty Segall in particular has a stunner ready for all of you with Goodbye Bread, which thickens and slows down his bratty garage punk sound and brings the superficial Beatles and Nirvana influences of his past releases to the forefront in a way that will have mainstream rock critics blowing their stacks when they finally get around to checking it out.To be honest, I wasn't much of a Black Lips fan before, but the steady hand of super-producer Mark Ronson guides the band and polishes the shit out of their hooks and sound on the new Arabia Mountain. The blasts of bratty feedback and in-jokey murkiness

Oh wow, is it really May already? Well, according to the calendar it is, so here's EPISODE #31 of Random Old Records! April was an amazing month for rock n' roll, and I spent it buying a whole pile of records and getting my face melted off at live shows by the Black Lips, Vivian Girls, Ty Segall, The Fresh and Onlys, The Black Angels, Davila 666, Magic Jake and The Power Crystals, and YOWZA! Yeah, luckily a whole buncha sweet bands played around Cincinnati and got a fantastic turnout each time, so hopefully that bodes well for the summer and we'll be seeing even more coming soon!Anyway, Random Old Records #31 is loaded with an hour of new rock n' roll, including a BRAND NEW track from glam pop wizard King Tuff, fresh off a recent Scion A/V split single with the Hex Dispensers. It's called "Hands" and it sounds like a long lost Slade song. His upcoming LP is gonna be something else! The featured label this time around is Trouble In Mind, who should get some kinda award for putting out dozens of records without

Hey folks, it's that time again! Random Old Records Podcast EPISODE #29 is out NOW! Yes sir or madam, get ready for a solid hour of new and old rock n' roll, punk, garage, soul, psych, and raw n' REAL shouts from the bottom of the gutter. Kicking things off on #29 is a track from the LP I've been spinning the most in the last few months, the latest and greatest from Ottawa's White Wires! "I Can Tell" is a classic, slow-building power pop punk rawk jam, and the rest of the record is more of the amazing same. After that, you'll hear a track off the long-awaited new 7" from Florida's Garbo's Daughter, the triumphant return of Denton, TX's all star punks High Tension Wires, up-and-coming Richmond trash rockers Sports Bar, the dreamy new Vivian Girls side projects La Sera and The Babies, and a bunch of spankin' NEW bangers from the likes of Charlie and The Skunks, Dead Ghosts, Hornet Leg, Smith Westerns, Wheels On Fire, Trent Fox and the  Tenants, Caroline and the Treats, and WHEW, a whole lot MORE! This

2011 is in full swing, and there's a ton of amazing new jams coming out, so what better time to drop another installment of Random Old Records?! EPISODE #28 is a tribute to the ultimate diva Tura Satana (RIP) and it features a whole bunch of her classic quotes from the classic Russ Meyer flick Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill! As far as the musical portion goes, it starts off with some classic '90s tunes from Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, then moves into a mix of new and old rock n' roll from Spencey Dude And The Doodles, 20/20, Mind Spiders, Mr. Airplane Man, and Bare Wires, then finishes up with brand spankin' new tracks from Smith Westerns, Jail Weddings, and the Strange Boys!Big surprise that the most intriguing track to drop in 2011 so far comes from Austin's Strange Boys, off a FREE Scion Garage A/V single. My favorite band of 2010 goes OUT THERE with a seriously arty song that mixes yacht rock, silly white reggae, barking preacher voices, and their patented Stonesy swagger into a four minute firebomb inter