Before it was time for another show, I figured I should post my last two playlists, including my Jan. 5 show that highlighted many of my favorite songs and albums (didn't get to all) from 2023. To recap, here's my Top 10 albums, previously posted at WMSE:
1. VARIOUS ARTISTS – WRITTEN IN THEIR SOUL: THE STAX SONGWRITER DEMOS (STAX/CRAFT RECORDINGS) 2. TYLER KEITH AND THE APOSTLES – HELL TO PAY (BLACK & WYATT) 3. THEE HEADCOATS – IRREGULARIS (THE GREAT HIATUS) (DAMAGED GOODS) 4. PAT TODD AND THE RANK OUTSIDERS – SONS OF THE CITY DITCH (DOG MEAT) 5. YO LA TENGO – THIS STUPID WORLD (MATADOR) 6. JINKSIE – S/T (SELF-RELEASED) 7. MOVIE MOVIE – STORYBOARDS (TOPSY TURVY) 8. THE BASEBALL PROJECT – GRAND SALAMI TIME! (OMNIVORE) 9. DEX ROMWEBER – GOOD THING GOIN’ (PROPELLER SOUND RECORDINGS) 10. DAN MONTGOMERY – CAST-IRON SONGS & TORCH BALLADS (FANTASTIC YES)
I waited partly because it took a bit for the full audio archive to show up, but it was also because I'm always damn slow to post the playlists!
Typically, I post the newest playlist first, but I'll start with the Jan. 5 show. I did play a few new songs on the Jan. 12 show, including one from the new Greg Cartwright project, the Hypos and the latest single from Xposed 4heads.
Jan. 5
Ramma Lamma "Zero Hour theme" on Self
Thee Headcoats "The Kids are All Square" on Damaged Goods Records
T. Tex Edwards with Homer Henderson "Strcyhnine Wine" on Self-released
Drop Nineteens "Tarantula" on Wharf Cat Records
R. Ring "Still Life" on Don Giovanni Records
Dan Montgomery "Sort It All Out" on Fantastic Yes Records
Graham Day and The Gaolers "Mystery Man" on Damaged Goods Records
Movie Movie "The Girl With the Wandering Eye" on Topsy-Turvy
Ivan Julian "Can't Help Myself" on Pravda Records
Jane Woe "Train Song" on Saustex Records & Entertainment, LLC
Quasi "Queen of Ears" on Sub Pop
Madness "Lockdown and Frack Off" on BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited
CTMF "Beneath the Flowers Serpents" on Damaged Goods Records
Mudhoney "Human Stock Capital" on Sub Pop Records
Gee Tee "Goodnight Neanderthal" on Goner Records
Subsonics "It's a Long Way Suzy To New York City" on Slovenly Recordings
Powersolo "If I Could Fly (feat. The Courettes)" on Crunchy Frog
Jinksie "Slide" on 5744605 Records DK
Sex Scenes "I'm Not Your T.V." on Self-Released
Combustor "Supercool" on Splunge Communications, Inc
Xposed 4heads "Flash Cube" on Internal Combustion
Terry Alan Hackbarth "I Heard That Song Before" on Self-released
The Shivvers "My Love Calling" on The Shivvers
The Shivvers "Reckless" on Self-Released
Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass Kickin Team "Chainsaw Repair Shop" on Doublenaught Records
Superchunk "Learned to Surf (Acoustic Demo)" on Merge Records
Dex Romweber "Good Thing Going" on Propeller Sound Recordings
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band "Learn 2 Re-Luv" on SOPHOMORE LOUNGE
Daddy Long Legs "Star" on Yep Roc Records
Pat Todd & The Rankoutsiders "Livin' In a World of Hurt" on Dog Meat Records
Stephen's Pharmacy "Save it for the Night" on Crepe Murder
Juniper "Bang!" on Confidential Recordings / Fabcom!
Hammel on Trial "Pray" on Saustex
Sweeping Promises "You Shatter" on Feel It Records
Lloyd Cole "Warm by the Fire" on earMUSIC
Sparklehorse "It Will Never Stop" on Anti/Epitaph
Instant Smile "Thorazine Bender" on Slow n Sober Music
Rocket 808 "Long Stretch of Desert" on 12XU
The Timekeepers "Nasty" on Ace
Tyler Keith & the Apostles "Edge of the City" on Black and Wyatt Records
Augie Meyers and the Western Head Band "Baby Baby (Won't You Come Back Home)" on Bear Family
Iris DeMent "Workin' on a World" on FlariElla Records
The Baseball Project "Grand Salami Time" on Omnivore Recordings
Eddie Floyd "Gotta Make a Comeback" on Craft
Son Volt "Sometimes You've Got to Stop Chasing Rainbows" on Transmit Sound
TV Sound "How Do We Know How to Feel?" on Killing Horse Records
Rufus Thomas "Come On Dance With Me" on Craft Recordings
The Goldstars "My Money" on Mordorlorff Music
The Mullens "Lonely Wolf" on Get Hip Recordings
Willie Singleton "Love Treaty" on Craft Recordings
Jan. 12
Ramma Lamma "Zero Hour theme" on Self
Thee Headcoatees "Boysville" on Damaged Goods
The Nomads "Coolsville" on Crypt
Harvey McLaughlin "Bigfootsville" on Saustex Records & Entertainment, LLC
Dave Dudley "Lonelyville" on Mercury
Freakwater "Loserville" on Thrill Jockey Records
Quasi "Nowheresville" on Sub Pop Records
NRBQ "Flat Foot Flewzy" on Sundazed
Shabam "On the Planet of the Apes" on Cherry Red
The Master Plan "Ooh Baby Ooh" on Rum Bar
The Ventures "The Twist" on Dalton
The Dead Brothers "The Laws of Man aka Ode to a Deserter" on Voodoo Rhythm
American Music Club "Challenger" on Reprise
Bo Diddley "Make Up Your Mind Tonight" on Last Call
Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs "Love Me Like Before" on MGM
Xposed 4heads "Mess Up" on Internal Combustion
The Hullmen "Real Cool Time" on Self Released
Beach Patrol "One More Cigarette" on Duck on Monkey Records
Heathrow "You Don't Have to Go" on Easter Records
Fetchin' Bones "Spot" on Capitol Records
Pat Todd & The Rankoutsiders "Long In the Tooth (Before the Dolls)" on Dog Meat Records
The Dirtbombs "Daddy Rockin' Strong" on The Wind Records
Barrence Whitfield & The Savages "Bad Situation" on Folc Records
Art Guy "Where You Gonna Go?" on Ace
The Hypos "My Kind of My Party" on Self-Released
Champion Jack Dupree "New Low Down Dog" on JSP Records
Lee Fields "The Door" on Daptone Records
The Fox Sisters "We're Going Swimming, Baby!" on FOLC Records
They Might Be Giants "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes" on East Side Digital
Morgan and the Organ Donors "Mood Swingin'" on Perennial / K Records
Guided By Voices "Love Set" on GBV Inc
Kelly Hogan "Plant White Roses" on Anti/Epitaph
Los Lobos "Emily" on Rhino/Warner Records
Jane Woe "Dream" on Saustex Records & Entertainment, LLC
Drop Nineteens "A Hitch" on Wharf Cat Records
Oakley Hall "Nite Lights, Dark Days" on Jagjaguwar
The Records "All Messed Up and Ready to Go" on Virgin
The Fleshtones "Tear for Tear" on Yep Roc Records
Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels "Shakedown" on New Voice
The Brothers Johnson "I'll Be Good to You" on A&M
Dave "Baby" Cortez "Soul Rub" on Norton Records Inc.
The Woggles "Karate Monkey" on Wicked Cool Records
The Feelies "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)" on A&M
Another big chunk of playlists for you, from the day after Thanksgiving right up to the end of the 2023! Over that time, you heard a good dose of Christmas songs, my specially themed end-of-the-year-show, and even a few new albums and compilations. Next week, I'll focus on my favorites from 2023 - why-don't-ya join me! Check out my 2023 Top 10! Links in the dates.
Where the hell have I been? Missing lots of shows and missing lots of playlist posting most certainly. Work kept me away from the show, and 11.17 busyness combined with laziness helped keep the blog quiet for a few months, but here I go with what will be my biggest playlist post ever. Featuring the likes of, well, many! Here you go, starting with newest to oldest:
A couple of archived shows for you, separated by a vacation in the middle. New music from The Shivvers, Stupidity, Arthur Alexander, the Baseball Project, Son Volt, Tav Falco, and lots more fun music!
Beyond thrilled for the return of Tyler Keith to Milwaukee at Circle A on Thursday, July 20! He will be backed by the Revelations, which will include the great Jeremy Scott (Reigning Sound, Toy Trucks) who will also play with his band the Drip Edges. Milwaukee's fast-rising Spidora, self-described as a "Tropicalia psych face-melting band" is also on the very stacked bill. Did I mention it will be my birthday? Did I mention I'm giddy as hell?!!!
Here's an interview I did with Tyler back in 2020 over at the now defunct Quixotronic led by the aforementioned Tim Demeter. I will be posting my other articles from that website as time allows. The interview took place as Tyler was releasing The Last Drag on Black & Wyatt; he just released his 14th album, Hell to Pay, in March.
On his 13th album, after a decade-plus of excellent but often underappreciated self-released efforts, Tyler Keith once again finds himself with a new release on a record label.
The upstart Memphis label Black & Wyatt Records recently has put out the longtime Oxford, Mississippi, rock-n-roller’s The Last Drag, an outstanding solo work that came about after a recording session with the band he’s best known for – the Neckbones – fell through at the last minute. Check out my review of The Last Drag for The Big Takeover.
I have frequently played Keith solo and his bands – the Neckbones,the Preacher’s Kids, the Apostles and Teardrop City – on my radio show, Zero Hour, and I’m most definitely a big fan. It was a great pleasure to see him perform in July 2017 at Circle A in Milwaukee (see photo below) and meet Tyler in person.
He graciously agreed to chat with Quixotronic for the Q&A below in which he talks candidly about his music career, love of photography, and how he’s never met a “Stagger Lee” song he didn’t like:
After putting out several music projects on your own, what brought you to Black & Wyatt to release The Last Drag? What are the advantages to working with a label? I’ve tried to get my records out on other labels. It’s kind of a grueling and humiliating experience. I’ve sent all of my other records to other labels, but I’ve usually gotten no response, or a response something like “we don’t have any money right now.” Then the same labels would put out records by bands I know or something. I guess I wasn’t what they were looking for. I could never understand it. The only thing I could come up with is that they didn’t like the albums enough to want to put them out, or they didn’t think I was cool or hip enough to sell any records. Eventually, I just stopped sending them to any labels and just put them out myself. I looked at as creating an artifact that would remain.
When I saw the records that Black & Wyatt Records were putting out (Jack O, Toy Trucks, and others) I was very excited about the music. I felt that the music I had recorded (that would become The Last Drag) fit perfectly with their output. I sent them the record fully expecting to get the usual response, but it turned out that they loved the album and were eager to put it out. We had some beer and pizza and talked about it and listened to the record and everything felt great! The owners of the label, Dennis Black and Robert Jethro Wyatt are serious music fans. Hopefully, they’ll want to do more in the future! I love having a label that is straight up about what they’re doing and you can work together to sell a few records and make your money back then put out more. Most of the time, in the past with labels, it kind of felt like they just wanted to collect your album and save it. I don’t like doing everything myself but I’m not afraid to if I must. I don’t like sitting around on something that much. The process takes so long from recording to manufacturing to getting up the money to put it out you have to just try and get it out there and move on. At this point, I’m banking on my anthology anyway!
I love the videos you have done for The Last Drag (especially your great demise in “Shame, Lies & Cruelty”!). What inspired you to do a series of videos for this release? I’m currently finishing my MFA in Documentary Expression at the University of Mississippi, and I’m making a film about Hill Country Gospel and Blues. During the pandemic, I was given a subscription to Premier Pro video editing software. After the first few weeks of the lockdown, I wanted to search North Mississippi for abandoned drag strips. Then I decided to bring my old Rebel T4i and shoot some footage for a video at this abandoned drag strip in Blue Mountain MS. It was kind of a last-minute thing. It was so fun! And we didn’t really need a crew. And, in fact, it fit the record to just do it with just me in the videos since I didn’t really have a band. So I took the footage and quickly edited with the Premier Pro stuff and it was done in a day! I’ve always been so poor that I’ve never been able to get a video made! Even my friends who made them charged something! I would never ask them to do it free! The first one was so fun and got such a great response that we decided to make more. I’ve been doing documentary work and films for quite a while, and there was nothing else to do! I like to be creating something. I’ve also traveled around taking a lot of photos during the lockdown. I haven’t found it musically inspiring that much, but I haven’t tried to make it so either.
I understand recording for The Last Drag at Dial Back Studios in Water Valley, Mississippi, kind of came out the blue when another band cancelled at the last minute. Did you have all the songs written already at that point? Did you plan for this to be a solo album? Who else was involved in the recording? The studio time was actually for the Neckbones, but the dates got confused or something. I’m not sure what happened, but the date was booked and I just went in there by myself. For the past 25 years, I’ve made a lot of home recordings on 4 track or whatever so I’ve always had a lot of songs. Before I finish one project, I always start thinking about the next thing so by the time the other project is put together with the artwork and pressing or whatever I have some songs for another. It’s some kind of neurosis or something. Haha. Also, boredom.
The difference in this solo project is that when making an album with a band I always let people play what they want and we trust each other to play stuff. But with this album I could play the exact thing that I heard on guitar or organ or bass and I just chose the songs I liked that I had and it didn’t think about how they fit with a particular band or whatever. I really love the process of creating in the home 4 track studio situation. The immediacy of it. I wanted the same kind of thing with this recording. I love to build a song up from nothing. I’ve never been one for doing all the basic tracks for a song and coming back in four months or whenever you can get the money and recording vocals and maracas. I like to build a song from nothing in one night with a few takes and a few beers. I like surprises and I like to create something out of nothing. You gotta go with your first mind on things. So we had Bronson kind of running the session but playing drums and then someone running the board who could push play. It was done during studio downtime and I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it or invite friends to hang out. It was wild and fun.
You have a new podcast, Rip it Up, through the Southwest Review based in Dallas. How did that come about and what are your plans for the podcast? The podcast came about because in the MFA program for my assistantship I was working on a few podcasts involving different departments of campus, and I got the hang of it really quickly and just thought that I should do my own since I had access to the stuff and knew how to do it! I’m friends with the great novelist William Boyle and he had a new book coming out, City of Margins, (which is amazing! Check it out) and I just got him in the booth and campus and cut it! I’m also friends with the folks at the Southwest Review, specifically Bobby Rae. So I approached them about putting it out and it turned out that they were interested in it. And then the pandemic hit! I hope to do more in the future.
Your photography is featured in the latest volume of byNWR.com with the aforementioned William Boyle’s short story, “Cruising the El Nora.” What was that experience like? Did you read his story before taking the photographs? What do you like about photography? What are you looking for when you take a photo? The project with William Boyle came about just being friends and hanging out. He liked a lot of my photography and told me about this project byNWR, an amazing project involving the amazing film director Nicolas Winding Refn involving restoring old forgotten films. Instead of using the standard film criticism format with boring article about the cultural significance or whatever, Refn gets different people to curate a response with whatever happens to be in their head (podcast, short pieces, interviews, whatever). Refn got Bill to curate the noir version. I helped him record some interviews and recorded him reading some stories that he wrote specifically for the project. I played some music for some of it and he interviewed me as well. For the web content, he needed some photography. I have a lot stuff from my travels with work and other things, and I happened to have a lot stuff from Tulsa and that area of the country that fit perfectly with this project. I was lucky to be a part of it.
I love photography because, at this stage, it’s an immediate art form. You can decide to go out on the street with your camera at any moment and take some pictures. You can ramble around. And when I’m traveling it makes me stop and look at things. You get out of your car or you turn down a random street and you find something. That something can lead to something else, something unexpected. It’s an adventurous art form. It’s not something made in your bedroom, although the final part can be done in your bedroom. What I look for in a photograph is the beginning of a story. Something that sparks my imagination. If you ever do any thrift store hunting, sometimes you can find a throw away photograph of a girl standing next to a house and something about it will create the illusion of a story. I like things on the outskirts of town, too. The things everybody’s left behind. I like the unexpected in the mundane.
Do you plan to do any touring for The Last Drag once circumstances allow you to again? I want to do some shows for The Last Drag, but I didn’t have any real plans and I don’t now. I was trying to figure what band or who would travel with me. I was planning some to tour around with just me and my electric guitar and do some stuff but nothing solid. Teardrop City was working on stuff for a new record when the pandemic broke out. We’ve taken a break since but hope to make a record later this year. Meanwhile, we’ve completely sold out of the It’s Later Than You Think album and will be releasing that later this year as well, with some extras, I hope. We’ve gotten some stuff going in Europe. I hope to make it to Milwaukee sometime this year! Probably alone but who knows.
Finally, two questions based on songs from The Last Drag:
Have you ever gone insane? (“Have You Ever Gone Insane”): I’ve had a few breakdowns in my day. Yes. Nothing that’s gotten me locked up or anything, but I’ve had moments of complete breakdown. It’s an odd feeling. A very bad feeling of time standing still and personality disappearance. Oddly similar to playing live sometimes. Losing yourself. Ha. I think at a certain time in my life I sought out these moments possibly subconsciously.
Do you have a favorite Stagger Lee song? (“Down By The …”): My favorite versions of “Stagger Lee” are by Wilson Pickett, Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Rock “Stakerlee”, Nick Cave, and many others. I like all of them!
