Recap of KXLU show June 27, 2008

Hello everybody.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my show. It seems like a lot of people had a really positive reaction to the music.

As I mentioned on air, I had come directly from DJing at The Little Joy in Echo Park. When I play out, I only use vinyl. The real reason I insist on vinyl only is because when I see a DJ spin, it means a lot to know that they left their house for that song. Granted, mail order beats this system, but even still, the search process is a bit more intense than a torrent or whatever the devil the kids are using to download their music these days. Anyhow, I respect the search. There is something about the hours of digging for every track that comes through in the spirit of a DJ. Don't get me wrong, this is not an indictment, I'm just saying what I prefer to see.

So anyway, I had already packed my box and had to rush from Echo Park, so I really stuck a lot to my personal collection. There were also some new gems that I pulled from the KXLU library! What a pleasure to dig through!

So let's review the highlights:

1st song - Yes, I'm Your Angel by Yoko Ono. This is the B side of Watching The Wheels by John Lennon. What's great about it is that it's so friggin' palletable...people rarely figure out that it's Yoko. The song reminds me of Brigitte Bardot's "Bubble Gum" (which I have to play on a future show...maybe back to back with Jane Birkin's Orangutan).

3rd Song - Otis Redding - I've Been Loving You. This recording is on a split with Jimi Hendrix live at Monterey Pop festival. 6 months after this recording, the world would lose one of it's greatest talents in a horrible plane crash. This is the first performance after returning from tour in Europe with the Stax Records packaged tour. Prior to this, the Stax artists had only seen racist America and were discriminated against in the clubs they headlined. The European tour was the first time that they were truly treated as stars and then Monterey Pop was the culmination of all of that energy. The "love crowd" welcomed the musicians as the geniuses they were. It all comes to a head during I've Been Loving You when Otis, completely lost in the moment screams through the breakdown Oh! Oh! Oh...can we do it one more time? Oh! Oh! Oh! One more time...and it keeps going. Total abandon. This was not planned or rehearsed. Hearing this moment never loses its impact for me.

10th song - Rod Stewart doing I Know I'm Losing You. I've received a certain amount of guff over this selection, but I refuse to accept it. This track is so solid. Probably the best moment in Stewart's career. This song is so f$%*ing hard! The only reason this pick takes heat is because it's Rod Stewart. But ask yourself this, would this be a problematic pick if I had played the Faces? Let's take a look at the credits on Every Picture Tells A Story: Organ - Ian McLagen, Guitar - Ronny Wood, Rod Stewart - Vocals/guitar...For all intents and purposes, this is basically The Faces...and this version of the song is so much better than the Faces version. Let me know your thoughts on this one. It's a favorite of mine!

11th song: David Bowie - "Heroes"/"Helden". This is from the Christiane F. Soundtrack. The song "Heroes" (which is properly spelled with quotes to denote irony) is a culmination of the combined genius of Bowie, Brian Eno on synthesizer, Robert Fripp on guitar and Tony Visconte's production. This was the track that features Visconte's famous invention of placing three mics at various distances from Bowie in order to record room ambiance and create natural reverb. This version, however, I find to be far more intense than the album version that we are all used to. When Bowie switches to singing in German the floor is taken from benieth us and the song becomes an emotional free fall...just a wrenching wail.

28th song: John Lennon - Mother. This week was my friend Josh Fishman's birthday. We all went out to a karaoke bar in Korea Town. For some inexplicable reason, someone thought it was a good idea to make a karaoke version of this song. I'd place money that this unnamed someone mistook it for Danzig's song Mother. Anyhow. I picked this song, curled into a wretched ball in the middle of the floor and belted out this classic while writhing across the ground and occasionally up people's legs. Absolutely cathartic!

34th song: Pixies – Monkey Gone To Heaven. During my set, I got a call from my long lost best friend from my undergrad days. She had moved to London and gotten married (maybe not in that order). Anyhow, I got a phone call in the middle of my show…from Denise…from England…UK. Denise was the first person to ever play me the Pixies, and this song was a special dedication to her, her husband and their beautiful daughter.

39th song: No Age – Scheduling Mishaps. This song is off of the tour split 7" from the No Age/Liars tour. What was especially fun about it was that when I see 7", I immediately assume 45. Nope…33 1/3. But this track sounded so good on 45 that I let it play. Then I played it again at 33 1/3. Please feel free to vote and let me know which version you liked best.

40th song: Abe Vigoda – Animal Ghosts. Dean from No Age/PPM handed me this record last weekend. First of all, the music is wonderful. I hadn't actually seen these guys in well over a year, and I cannot believe how far they have come. Second, this is the best album cover that I have seen this year. The photo is by Dan Monick, and it is really really gorgeous.

Finally, new song round-up. KXLU is fortunate enough to have a particularly great group of new albums. Of the new tracks I played, my highest recommendations of the week are (in no particular): The Gang, Gangi, Abe Vigoda, Rainbow Arabia, David Ramos and Make a Rising. Go give these many many listens.

Special thank yous for this show go out to Joe, Dave Reeves, Heather and Pete from Little Joy. This show is dedicated to Danny Gabai, Mandy Kahn, Jason Smith and Mike Berlin. America needs you back quickly! Europe is overrated.

Here is the full playlist from June 27, 2008

Yoko Ono – Yes, I'm Your Angel
Jens Lekman – Postcard to Nina
Otis Redding (Live) – I've Been Loving You
Gangi – Ground
Unicorns – Tuff Ghost
Rainbow Arabia – Omar K
The Ting Tings – That's Not My Name
Funkadelic – Can You Get To This
Staple Swingers – Perfect World
Rod Stewart – I know I'm Losing You
David Bowie – "Heroes"/"Helden"
The War on Drugs – Taking The Farm
Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymn
Panda Bear – Comfy In Nautica
Roxy Music – Street Life
Pere Ubu – Non-Alignment Pact
The Gang – Fits and Shadow Fights
Liars – Sailing To Byzantium
Fuck Buttons – Bright Tomorrow
Melt Banana – Get The Head Back
Make A Rising – Sneffels Yokul
David Ramos – Kings and Queens
Wooden Shjips – Shrinking a Moon For You
Yeasayer – 2080
The Chap – Carlos Walter Wendy Stanly
Child Pornography – New Neighborhood
Xu Xu Fang – These Days
John Lennon – Mother
My Bloody Valentine – Come In Alone
Flaming Lips – Free Radicals
The Notwist – Good Lies
Pulp – This is Hardcore
Pixies – Monkey Gone To Heaven
Sebadoh – Fantastic Disaster
Pavement – Cut Your Hair
Big Star – Kizza Me
Tom Waitz – Anywhere I lay My Head
Flying Lotus – Camel
No Age – Scheduling Mishaps (45 RPM)
No Age – Scheduling Mishaps (33 1/3 RPM)
Abe Vigoda – Animal Ghosts
Awesome Color – Step Up
Grand Old Party – Nasty Habits
Spoon – Anything You Want
Modern Lovers – A Plea For Tenderness
Fellini – Rock Europeu
Wire – Mercy
Asobi Seksu – New Years
Band of Horses – Is There A Ghost
Jarvis Cocker – Black Magic
Rolling Stones – Tumbling Dice
Primal Scream – Movin' on Up
The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatry
Autechre – LCC
The Clash – White Man In Hammersmith Palais

Oh Hi. I Didn't See You There

Hello.

My name is Josh Frankfort. I like music. A lot. What's that? You do too? What were the odds? I like you. You "get it".

Well, I suppose I should tell you a bit about myself.

I'm a graduate student at Loyola Marymount University, getting my masters in secondary education so I can become a high school history teacher.

Before making the decision to become a teacher, I had spent a number of years in the music industry working both for a large agency as well as a small management firm. The management firm was my last job and I was working with Lavender Diamond, Marnie Stern, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Islands, Triangle, Minutes Til Midnight and a few others.

Now I'm a DJ



My show is called Passing Through, because from 2-6am, I like to imagine that the vast majority of people listening are on a crazy cross country road trip in a car with no CD player and that they are frantically searching the lower end of the dial, trying to find good college stations to get them all the way across this gargantuan land mass. That's what I do anyway.

People ask me, "what kind of stuff do you play"?

I have absolutely no idea idea how to answer this question.

I can say this: here are my top 5 albums of all time:

Iggy Pop - The Idiot
David Bowie - Low
Lou Reed - Berlin
Modern Lovers - Precise Order (is this cheating? Can a bootleg be a favorite album?)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

I think out of those records, you can get a decent feel for the aesthetic I generally go for. I play obvious music for people who don't like obvious music.

Okay, so that's me.

"May I start by saying how thrilled we are to have you here. We are such fans of your music and all of your records. I'm not speaking of yours personally, but the whole genre of the rock and roll."

- Lt. Hookstratten