Theme: Heaven is above your head |
| As often happens, as soon as I find a new source of music I go crazy and get obsessed about getting all the music from that source ignoring my regular go-to sources. For this show it was my discovery of the great MP3 blog/podcast called "Heaven is above your head", the blog is based in New Zealand but it appears that it started out in Sweden. The blog seems to have been going a few years and this past February they started a podcast that unfortunately seems to have ended this past week. Although the blog mostly plays the same sort of indie pop that I love, the podcast also has a heavy focus on 60s and 70s soul songs which is very cool. It just kind of worked out that about half of the songs from this show are from HIAYH as well as a set specifically focused on those cool soul songs. http://heavenisabove.blogspot.com/ Even with the focus on HIAYH the show was back to the normal sets divided by different musical types and of course I had to end off with a song by the recently departed Michael Jackson. I know that I haven't really been into anything he has put out in the past 20 years, but when I was growing up Thriller was certainly an album that I (like the rest of world) was in love with. I went with P.Y.T. (Pretty young thing) instead of one of the more famous songs as I remember particularly liking that song back in the day. Also, a note to anybody looking for something to do on the evening of Saturday, July 18th that I'll be DJing live at the Jane Bond Cafe in Waterloo starting at 10 pm. So if you can make it that would be great and as I wanted to have a more "indie-pop" name I'm calling the DJ nights "The coolest thing about love" after last show's top song by the Smittens. Things I referenced on the show: Video for the Biker Boy songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBZUaFG7C8 video for Juni Jarvi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SaJr58qHw Video for Little Boots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUs9YzY7t-8 Fireball XL5 Setlist - June 26, 2009 TALK (Theme) Sandstream - Teenage Love Biker Boy - Where Do You Go To? Juni Jarvi - Looking At You Is Like Looking At The Sun Baby Doll Lounge - Paisley Shirt (HIAYH) Bunnygrunt - We Suspect He Was Trying To Spell Monkey (HIAYH) TALK Baby Daylinger - You Push, I'll Go Little Big Adventure - The Hateful Eye Mike Snow - Animal Passion Pit - The Reeling Little Boots - New In Town TALK God Help The Girl - Come Monday Night Au Revoir Simone - All Or Nothing Asobi Seksu - Transparence Helen Love - We Love You (HIAYH) Stolen Hearts - Fire (HIAYH) TALK Even As We Speak - I Won't Have To Think About You (HIAYH) Fireflies - Sledding Godsmania - All Gone Wrong Today The Seven Inches - Open-ness And Honesty (HIAYH) The New Breed - Summers Coming (HIAYH) TALK (HIAYH spotlight) Paul Sindab - You Dropped Your Candy In The Sand (HIAYH) Ty Karim - You Just Don't Know (HIAYH) Ann Perry - That's The Way He Is (HIAYH) Mickey And Silvia - Love Is Strange (HIAYH) The Moments - You Said (HIAYH) TALK California Gold - Love Is All You Need (HIAYH) World Atlas - Inner city Kids (HIAYH) Matt & Kim - Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare Moustache Of Insanity - The Cat Chicken Song The Windmills - Beach Girls TALK Michael Jackson - P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) (C) Denotes Canadian Content (HIAYH) Denotes song from Heaven is above your head |
Friday, June 26, 2009
June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
June 11, 2009
Theme: The New York City Popfest |
| This show highlighted my experience at the New York Popfest back in May, in fact the first two sets were from CDs that I bought at the festival. The next set was a combination of other bands that played the festival and songs that were covered during the shows. Overall, it was a great time and of course being in New York City is always cool, especially walking around Harlem at 2 in the morning. The best conversation I overheard on the subway was one teenage girl telling her friend that she was bummed that she didn't have her iPod, the cops took it when she got busted and she hasn't had the time to get up to the Bronx and get it back, but she only has a month to do it. I won't go into a detailed description of the festival here as you can see the daily summary of my impressions of the New York Popfest on the Wall the Fireball XL5 radio show facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2437232020 Fireball XL5 Setlist - June 11, 2009 Smittens - 11:11 My Teenage Stide - Grim Wind Cats On Fire - Steady Pace Eux Autres - When I'm Up TALK Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Loop Duplicate My Heart Burning Hearts - Iris Pants Yell! - Tried To Be Good A Faulty Chromosome - Bad Things TALK The Radio Dept. - Freddie And The Trojan Horse The Drums - Me And The Moon Very Truly Yours - Homesick The Sixths - Falling Out Of Love (With You) Matt Pond PA - In The Aeroplanes Over The Sea The Go-Betweens - People Say TALK The Lucksmiths - Good Light Spent - Excuse Me While I Drink Myself To Death Surf City - Dickshakers Union Pretend You're Happy - The Other Side Of The Earth Matt & Kim - Daylight TALK Threatmatics - Big Man The Interiors - My Little Pony Ribbons - Plain The Fizzbombs - Sign On The Line TALK Nouvelle Cuisine - Comunicacion no verbal (C) Denotes Canadian Content |
Friday, May 8, 2009
May 8, 2009
Theme: Derek Weiler (1968-2009) |
| This was at the same time the easiest show to do and the hardest. As most of you probably heard my very good friend Derek Weiler passed away in April. I felt that just playing a set or two in a regular show wasn't enough thus this entire show is about Derek. It contains songs that had special connections between me and Derek from the first day we met to the last time I saw him. His influence on my musical tastes (and those of countless others) will be evident in the music I listen to for the rest of my days. If Derek thought that you had even a hint of interest in music you were sure to receive a mixed CD or back in the day a mixed tape. And it wasn't just about the music, but it was about the handwritten linear notes, with special notations for the songs he thought you would really like. Since meeting Derek at a Johnny Cash concert back in the fall of 1991, I can't count the number of bands that I first heard of from him, be it from a mixed tape, mixed CD, in a car, or being dragged to a concert by a band I had never heard of but ended up loving. Apart from going to countless concerts together we also co-hosted a weekly radio show for a little over a year (Jan 1993 to April 1994) called Wackyland, this was the real start of my musical education. This education never stopped as I played a song he recommended on my last podcast and finally got to another recommendation on this show. Every once in a while in the past month I've heard a tidbit about a band and I think "I should really e-mail that to Derek", but then I realized that I can't do that anymore, and that's something I'm going to miss every single day. Again most of you probably know about this, but if not you can see all the things that people have written about Derek on the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=69655274189
|
Monday, April 6, 2009
April 6, 2009
Theme: Back in action |
| Yes it has been a while since the last show, sorry about that. The good news is that I managed to submit my PhD thesis this week, the downside was that I wasn't able to put out a show for over 2 months. Hopefully I should be able to keep a regular schedule from now on. The thing is that I never stopped accumulating music over the past 2 months so I really have enough material for about 4 shows, but I didn't think that putting out a 6 hour show was a good idea. So I kept it down to its usual 2 hours and just took a small dent of the backlog. Apart from playing all the pent up songs from the last 2 months I also did a spotlight on Wee Pop records ( www.weepop.net ). This is a record label out of England that specializes in TWee pop on the format of mini-CDs so each one can only hold about 20 minutes of music. Each release has a very limited edition and the liner notes are all handmade, this combined with the size just makes each release really cute. But they do pose a storage problem as they don't fit well with regular CDs. I got a delivery of 5 releases from Wee Pop just after the last show. Hopefully it won't be such a long break before the next show. Fireball XL5 Setlist - April 6, 2009 TALK-Theme My Teenage Stride - Ears Like Golden Bats Young Rival - Your Island Hooded Fang - Land Of Giants (C) Cuddle-pop - You Moustache of Insanity - I Need MORE!!! TALK Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele - Meet Me In The Garden Nickel Eye - Brandy Of The Damned The Very Most - April Is The Kindest Month FemBots - My Hands Are A City (C) Ezra Furman & The Harpoons - Take Off Your Sunglasses TALK (Wee pop records spotlight) One Happy Island - Temporary Tattoo Horowitz - Drop The Hat Megamoog - Icicle Little My - Sellotape My Hands The Endless Bummer - Boring But Beautiful (C) TALK The Dodos - Winter **See Note 1 The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Really Love You Anymore Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career Red Sleeping Beauty - Don't Say You Love Me The Killers - Spaceman TALK Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - 1999 The Sound Of Arrows - M.A.G.I.C. Lowood - Crash Niels Nielsen - It's All In My Head Architechture In Helsinki - That Beep TALK Black Kids - Listen To Your Body Tonight **See Note 2 Mates Of State - My Only Offer Note 1: The banjo and voice on the song by the Dodos reminded me a lot of Stephin Merrit, thus the reason for playing the Magnetic Fields right after Note 2: I went to see The Black Kids and Mates of State in Toronto just after the show (C) Denotes Canadian Content |
Friday, January 30, 2009
January 30, 2009
Theme: Lots of new music |
| Between my Best of 2008 and the Christmas show, it has been a while since my last show of new music. And of course you have to remember that most of the music I play is stuff that I've been introduced to in the past month or so as well as some familiar songs sprinkled in. So it was nice to get back to playing some of my recent finds along with one set of music from CDs that I picked up from other people during the holidays. So thanks to Derek, Sari, and Michelle for their contribution to the show. In that set I also played a song that I found out from the resurrection of a great show that used to be on CKMS called "The Brown Couch of Liesure". Karim, the host of that show, finally got his act together and is now putting out a weekly podcast from his website ( silenttalkie.com ). He is always listening to great music and I recommend that everybody listen to his podcast and of course I'm sure I'll be stealing lots of stuff from his playlists in the future. Fireball XL5 Setlist - January 30, 2009 |
Friday, January 2, 2009
Januray 2, 2009
Theme: Best of 2008 |
| As usual not much to say about this show, simply my best singles and albums from the past year. It shouldn't be much of surprise that my number one album from the past year was Lykke Li's Youth Novels, a great album from top to bottom that I never get sick of listening to. I was also happy to have seen her twice during the year, once in Seattle and then in Toronto for my birthday. It is also not surprising that just like Lykke Li, Black Kids (my second favourite album from 2008) also had a single on my list from 2007. I had to put Black Kids on as number two as every time I was listening to my MP3 player on shuffle and a song came up that I didn't recognize that I liked when I looked it up it was often by the Black Kids. You can listen to my reasoning for my other picks from the show. On the setlist I have tried my best to remember how I found about the bands on the setlist. Fireball XL5 Setlist - January 2, 2009 |
Friday, December 19, 2008
December 19, 2008
Theme: Christmas show 2008 |
| This was my annual Christmas show and as usual I didn't play your typical holiday songs. I kept the show short to reflect the amount of really good new Christmas songs I found this year, but still had time to add a few Fireball XL5 Christmas classics. The best new holiday song I heard this year was by The Wedding Present featuring Simone White with Holly Jolly Hollywood. I've had to listen to it a few times every day because it is that good. The video is also incredibly fun and insanely cute (well at least Simone is insanely cute), do yourself a favour and watch it from the link below. Merry Christmas Everyone! Links to some of the things I mentioned during the show Fireball XL5 Setlist - December 5, 2008 |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
