December 22, 2006

Theme: Playing Christmas of course On Air: Frank

I think I did pretty good job of playing mostly new (ie. songs I have never played before) for this year's Christmas show. The highlights were the first and last songs, do yourself a favour and listen to both of them. The starting song was a great 60s German tune extolling the glories of winter in Canada while the last song was recorded and sent to me by my friend Darryl Reimer from Vancouver. Both are sure to return to future Christmas shows. My favourite discovery during the show was a new album by the Bell Rays that included the song "All I wanna Do Is Shag For Christmas" that went well with a Fireball XL5 Christmas favourite "Back Door Santa". TALK - Theme Elisa Gabbai - Winter in Canada Stufan Stevens - Get Behind Me, Santa Aztec Camera - Walk Out To Winter Badly Drawn Boy - Donna and Blitzen Ron Sexsmith - Maybe This Christmas (C) TALK David Carswell and Megan Barnes - I Wanna Kiss You This Christmas (C) The Naked and the Dead - Ornament (C) The dbs - Christmastime Yo La Tengo - Rock'N'Roll Santa The Ramones - Merry Christmas The Lickity Splits - You Set My Christmas Tree On Fire TALK Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa The Bell Rays - All I Wanna Do Is Shag For Christmas Solomon Burke - Presents For Christmas The Sonics - Don't Believe In Christmas Shuffle Demons - Jingle Bells (C) TALK The Stars - Fairytale of New York (C) The Diskettes - Noel (C) Buck - Santa Baby (C) The Pipettes - In The Bleak Mid-Winter Young and Sexy - Santa Claus Likes Rich Kids Better (C) TALK The Morrisettes - Canadian Christmas Elvis - Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me The Gems - Love For Christmas Mojo Nixon - Christmas Christmas Eels - Everything's Going To Be Cool This Christmas TALK Fountains of Wayne - Man In The Santa Suit Montreal Jubilation Choir - Go Tell It On The Mountain (C) Julie London - I'd Like You For Christmas Eisley - The Winter Song Claudine Longet - Snow The Pretenders - 2000 Miles TALK Darryl Reimer - Merry Big Ole Christmas (C) (C) Denotes Canadian Content

December 8, 2006

Theme: Playing Catch-up On Air: Frank

After the last few shows I had a whole lot of leftover songs that didn't get to play and with the Christmas show up next and the Best of show after that I figured I should start out the new year with a clean slate. Thus there wasn't an overall theme to the show but I still think the show went together very well. The only set that had a theme was one inspired by an article I saw in the Globe and Mail by Russel Smith, in it he discusses the fine division of Indie Pop music called Twee Pop. A lot of music I have been listening to and playing on the show lately could be classified as twee. Most of the article is pretty factual discussing the major bands in twee and describing the sound, he calls the Smiths the proto-twee band and that Belle and Sebastian are the current most famous twee band (I think this might have been true with a lot of their early stuff but no so much lately). But, the parts of the article that I really had problems with were his assertions that somehow the music is part of an organized movement striving to be anti-establishment, in my opinion its just happy music that sounds good. He ends the article by saying that the people who like twee are "uniformly women" (based on my gender I disagree) and you outgrow this type of music as you get older (again based on my advanced age I disagree). However, an upside of the article is that I found out about a great band called "I'm from Barcelona" which is how I started out that set. See the original article here: http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/frseglen/images/smith_article01.gif http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/frseglen/images/smith_article02.gif Find out more about Twee here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twee_pop TALK - Theme The Positions - Back To Me Starflower - Dance Till Morning Light Los Abandoned - Van Nuys (Es Very Nice) Psapp - Hi The Exteriors - The Hates TALK Knock, Knock, Ginger - You Could've Been My Johnny Marr (C) D'Ubervilles - We're Blowing Up (C) Kelly and the Kelly Girls - Ferris Wheel (C) Duke Spirit - House Is Not A Motel The Pants Situation - Fifty Fifty (C) **I love the name of this band! Los Straightjackets - Peppermint Twist TALK Moses Mayes - Tell Me (C) Sasha Dobson - Without You Evy - Quel Genre De Fille El Perro Del Mar - Here Comes That Feeling Dion - I Was Born To Cry TALK Robyn - Be Mine Goldstoned - Always On My Mind Peter, Bjorn, and John - Let's Call it Off Kings of Convenience - Misread TALK From Barcelona - We're From Barcelona Shade Tree - Stupidest Thing The Broken Hearts Club - Abbotsford and Flemington (C) The Diskettes - Jump Up (C) Henry Faberge and the Adorables - Lonely Postcards (C) Lake Holiday - In Whisper (C) Tom Waits - Lie To Me TALK Blow Monkeys - It Doesn't Have To Be That Way (C) Denotes Canadian Content