July 7th 2011 : Cause & Effect : Sunshine Pop

Unemployment, war, equal rights, mother nature's wrath...it all just melts away when you hear songs about how kites are fun or feeling groovy, right? Let's wash away the world's woes and ring in the Summer season with tight vocal harmonies and cheery tempos. Tonight on WRIR from 7pm to 9pm I will be playing the audio equivalent of Valium, a genre of music from the '60s called Sunshine Pop and all its many tentacles of off-shoot genres including bubblegum Pop, lite-psych, surf, Tropicalia,soft Rock,and raga Rock. And even though this music was consider for squares during a time when all the cool musicians were dropping their acoustic guitars, going electric, and getting political - our generation's hip music underground has embraced Sunshine Pop and are offering a whole new spin on the sound. You can listen to the show locally on 97.3 FM on your dial here in RVA or stream the show live at www.wrir.org.




I will be posting a link to the set once the show is over here too if you can't enjoy the show in real time.

Follow me on facebook here.

Here is a link to tonight's show in download form. 

Redefining Heavy : Phurpa

Phurpa = monastic choir from Moscow who perform ancient Tibeto-Burmanese influenced music AKA an exploration in sonic grimness now in LP form thanks to a little help from Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))). At last music for those who wish Lurch from the Adam's Family had put out a solo record influenced by the Far East!

Jim Morrison : "Visions of Love and Death"

Eye Magazine image from April 1968 taken by Tim Page.

"Under the Apple" Advert 1969

 

Maybe the coolest thing I have ever seen in relation to James Taylor.

MC5 Advertisement 1969 : Electrifying!

Rolling Stones, March 1969, Cover of Eye Magazine

 

The artwork is really dark on the cover so I tried to lighten it up a bit for better viewing.

Circuit Bending Eye Candy

People ask me all the time what the hell is that a tattoo of on my arm. Is it Star Wars related? Is it a tribute to Voivod? A copy of some modern art thing-a-ma-jig? None of the above. My first husband was into circuit bending toy keyboards and he had a handful of catalogs / printed matter relating to electrical systems floating around our home. The cover of Motorola's 1977 Hep Program Semiconductor Gross Reference Guide and Catalog always fascinated me and eventually bits from the cover made it onto my arm in the form of a tattoo. I still know next to nothing about electronics but visually I am still really inspired but the guts of anything than runs on electricity.




And the one and only person to ever guess what was on my arm also happened to be an electrician.

I just found this other catalog cover from 1975 on line - also pretty darn cool.

It's like a Bjork is hiding in a line of interactive dresses.

This just keeps my crush on Canada growing.

"Designer Ying Gao is showing three series of "intelligent" garments which move and change in response to sound, motion or light in Quebec City this summer."











And then the Skin series from Philips Design.

Ellen Fullman's Long String Drone

More about Ellen here.

Runhild Gammelsæter Featured on NPR

I don't talk much about my small record label Little Black Cloud often here nor do I talk up the releases much on this blog but every once in a while something so huge happens that I feel it is important to write about it here too.

I recently released Runhild's solo album Amplicon on LP in two forms (complex packaging / simple packaging) and NPR has been kind enough to giver her a feature on the main page of their music site. You can download one of her songs and read an interview with her here.

I would also like to take a minute to thank Runhild for making tremendously brave music and Talia Miller for doing one hell of a PR job. I feel so inspired by the women in my life!